- On Saturday evening the UK came under a terrorist attack once again.
- Just under two weeks ago the Manchester Arena was attacked by a suicide bomber at the end of a concert featuring American singer Ariana Grande.
- Twenty-three adults and children, including Abedi (the suicide bomber), were killed and 116 were injured, 23 critically.
As London’s Mayor Sadiq Khan said at the time, “We don’t yet know the full details, but this was a deliberate and cowardly attack on innocent Londoners and visitors to our city enjoying their Saturday night. I condemn it in the strongest possible terms. There is no justification whatsoever for such barbaric acts,” he added
We in Sri Lanka who suffered a near 30-year reign of terror at the hands of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (self-styled ‘sole representatives of the Tamils’) do fully emapthise and sympathise with the people of the UK and other European countries which have today become targets of terrorism. And all Sri Lankan’s irrespective of race, religion or ethnicity condemn such cowardly attacks.
It was of course a pity and a shame, the leaders and in some instances even the people in ‘free Europe’ were unable to recognize the unimaginable horrors which were unleashed on Sri Lanka in the name of liberating the Tamil people and lent moral and financial support to an organization described by the US itself as the ‘most ruthless terrorist outfit’ at that time.
Even today, many a democrat in the western nations do not realise that more Tamils were killed intentionally by the LTTE, than by the Sri Lankan military.
In like manner the western nations armed and backed militant Islamic groups in Asia and the Middle East to bring about regime change in countries whose policies were felt to be in conflict with those of the self-styled ‘free west’.
SYRIA
In Syria too the US and Britain helped arm and train militant organizations affiliated to both al-Quaeda and the IS in their attempt to overthrow the Syrian regime which is supported by Russia.
Today the Syrian people are subject to aerial bombardment by the Russians, the US, and subsequently the Turkish government who has got involved for reasons of its own.
The death toll in Syria according to the United Nations and Arab League Envoy to Syria is estimated at 400,000.
Human Rights Watch quoting the Syrian Center for Policy Research -an independent Syrian research organization put the death toll at February 2016 as 470,000.
Syria processed 2.5 billion barrels of crude oil as of January 2013, which makes it the largest proved reserve of crude oil in the eastern Mediterranean according to the Oil & Gas Journal estimate. Syria also has oil shale resources with estimated reserves that range as high as 50 billion tons, according to a Syrian government source in 2010.(International Business Times, Syrian Oil And Gas: Little-Known Facts on Syria’s Energy Resources And Russia’s Help) Syria’s natural resources include iron ore, crude oil, phosphate rock, manganese ore, asphalt, marble, rock salt, and gypsum. Syria also accounted for around 2% of the world’s supply of phosphate rock in 2010. It ranked ninth in the world in phosphate rock production.
The mining sector also produced cement, marble, natural crude asphalt, nitrogen fertilizer, phosphate fertilizer, salt, steel, gypsum, and industrial sand.(AZO Mining)
These countries from Afghanistan, to Iraq, to Libya, to Syria all continue to suffer from military interventions of imperialist powers. The death and destruction spewed on innocent civilians has created the conditions for the growth of terrorism as a means to counter the state terrorism of the invaders and the puppet regimes they have installed. The Soviet Union during its occupation of Afghanistan faced numerous terrorist attacks which took grim toll of its cities and citizens. The withdrawal of the Soviets from the Afghan conflict, has led to a dramatic drop in terrorism in today’s Russia. It is time the west looks at its conscience, sees the continued destruction its presence in the countries from Afghanistan to Iraq, to Libya and Syria has caused and gets its fingers out of the affairs of these countries. Heightened aerial bombardments, troop surges use of artillery and abuse by troops involved in the battles only feeds the anger and hatred of the suffering people and breeds terrorists and terrorism. Only the complete withdrawal of the forces of imperialism from these and other countries suffering under their yoke can bring an end to the causes. A refusal to get out will only breed more terrorism and attacks like those in London, Paris, Manchester and Brussels whose combined loss of life does is still a fraction of the losses suffered in Asia and the Middle East
Afghan villagers line up in front of nine tiny bodies shrouded in cloth, girls aged between nine and 11, were killed in a bomb blast as they collected firewood
AFGHANISTAN
The US and the West financed, armed and backed the fundamentalist Islamic Taliban, al Queda and a variety of warlords in Afghanistan. Their actions helped bring the Taliban into power in Afghanistan.
al-Quaeda a terrorist group of Saudi Arabian extraction fighting against the then Soviet invader of that country, was trained and armed by the CIA to overthrow Soviet-backed government in Afghanistan. It was this self-same al-Quaeda which carried out the 9/11 attack in the US, and it was al-Quaeda which spawned the dreaded Islamic State (IS) which has been behind major terror attacks in Europe. 
The US invasion of Afghanistan and the overthrow of the Taliban-led government of that country in the aftermath of the 9/11 terror attack led to the ongoing war in that country. According to the UN, civilian casualties in Afghanistan in 2016 were the highest recorded by the United Nations.
A total of 3,498 civilians were killed and 7,920 were wounded in 2016, a combined increase of three percent over the previous year, according to the annual report for 2016.
Today nearly sixteen years after the US invasion and the installation of a puppet regime in that country Afghanistan is a failed state. It vast mineral resources which should have made the Afghan people among the most developed in the world has only brought tem suffering and grief.
Both then Soviet and the US invasions were not about helping the Afghan people. It was about gaining control of the countries vast mineral wealth.
A U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) began inspecting the mineral resources Afghanistan held after US-led forces drove the Taliban from power in the country in 2004.
The surveys verified all the major Soviet finds. Afghanistan may hold 60 million tons of copper, 2.2 billion tons of iron ore, 1.4 million tons of rare earth elements such as lanthanum, cerium and neodymium, and lodes of aluminum, gold, silver, zinc, mercury and lithium.
The Khanneshin carbonatite deposit in Afghanistan’s Helmand province alone is valued at $89 billion, full as it is with rare earth elements.
(Live Science September 4, 2014).
IRAQ
The British-US invasion of Iraq based on blatant untruths of Iraq possessing weapons of mass destruction (WMD) has led to unbelievable suffering and death among ordinary Iraqis, the destruction of cultural heritage, in addition to seeing the rise into power of the Islamic State (IS) in that country, leading to its enforcement of an evil brand of violent Islam and terror tactics -which is fact unIslamic- throughout the Middle East and has now spread its tentacles into western countries as well.
While WMD charge was the cover for the British/US-led invasion of Iraq, it was greed for its petroleum and mineral resources which led Britain and the US to invade that country.
In 2001, the Iraqi state organization for minerals reported the discovery of sulfur deposits in the western desert, near Akashat. Production figures for 2001 in tons were: phosphate, 100,000, down from 300,000 in 1999; sulfur, 98,000, down from 475,000 in 1996; and salt, 300,000.
Geological surveys have indicated usable deposits of iron ore, copper, gypsum, bitumen, dolomite, and marble; these resources have remained largely unexploited(Mineral Resources of Iraq March 6, 2013)
Iraq produced an average of 3.11 million barrels per day (Mbbl/d) of crude petroleum and was the world’s sixth-ranked crude petroleum producer. Iraq was also the world’s third-ranked crude petroleum exporter after Saudi Arabia and Russia. Iraq holds the world’s fifth largest proven crude petroleum reserves.
Iraq has also the world’s 11th largest proven natural gas reserves, which were estimated to be 3.6 trillion cubic meters, or about 2% of the world’s total.(USGS 2014 Minerals Yearbook)
The war to drive the invading forces out of Iraq has according to ‘The Iraq Bodycount’ (IBC) recorded 4,162 civilian deaths from violence in 2011. The total number of deaths since the war commenced according to stats of the IBC stands at 119,915.
However new research into war-related deaths in Iraq since the US-led invasion in 2003, has revealed that nearly half a million people have died. A study -Death Toll Reaches 500,000 Since Start Of U.S.-Led Invasion, New Study Says- (Huffpost Jan 23, 2014)- published in the United States in 2014 by university researchers in the United States, Canada and Baghdad in co-operation with the Iraqi Ministry of Health covers not only violent deaths, but other avoidable deaths linked to the invasion, insurgencies and subsequent social breakdown. That toll is far higher than the nearly 115,000 violent civilian deaths reported by the British-based group Iraq Body Count.
