by Mark Curtis, Declassified UK, 5 October 2023 The Ukraine conflict is but the most recent case where UK policy-makers and weapons manufacturers seek commercial opportunities from devastating wars – often by arming both sides. When my colleagues Phil Miller and Matt Kennard visited the world’s largest arms fair in London last month, they found weapons manufacturers […]
Topic: Pakistan
by Mark Curtis, Declassified UK, 14 June 2023 When the Taliban took over Afghanistan in 1996, UK officials knew Pakistan was directly aiding it, but continued to arm the government in Islamabad. British policy aided Osama Bin Laden who was then setting up his terrorist infrastructure in Afghanistan. In October 1996, UK prime minister John […]
By Matt Kennard and Mark Curtis, Declassified UK, 9 September 2021 Britain has long trained and supported Pakistan’s military intelligence establishment despite Islamabad aiding Taliban operations in Afghanistan – where 457 British soldiers were killed Last week, British foreign secretary Dominic Raab made his first trip to Pakistan after the botched withdrawal of troops and civilians from […]
By Mark Curtis and Matt Kennard Declassified UK, 17 September 2019 The United Kingdom is fighting at least seven covert wars largely outside parliamentary or democratic oversight. The British government states that its policy on the covert wars it fights is “not to comment, and to dissuade others from commenting or speculating, about the operational […]
George Thomson, Commonwealth Secretary, to Prime Minister Harold Wilson, 19 October 1967 Since March 1966 UK policy is to supply arms to both India and Pakistan. The Pakistani government wants the UK to approve a proposal to establish a factory in either Pakistan or Iran to manufacture Vickers tanks for the armies of Pakistan, Iran […]
Documents ‘The Road to Partition 1939-1947’ (National Archives) Tanks to India and Pakistan, 1967 (click here) U.S. and British Combined to Delay Pakistani Nuclear Weapons Program in 1978-1981’ (19 documents, National Security Archive) ‘US embassy cables: UK – we’re not importing moderate imams’ (US Embassy, UK, 24 April 2008) ‘US embassy cables: After Mumbai, UK […]
This is an edited extract from Secret Affairs: Britain’s Collusion with Radical Islam by Mark Curtis Rigid Islamisation affected all areas of public life in Pakistan in the 1980s, as General Zia ul-Haq introduced draconian measures and punishments that, he declared, constituted the true implementation of Islamic law. In this he was guided by the […]
This is an edited extract from Secret Affairs: Britain’s Collusion with Radical Islam by Mark Curtis In 1947 the partition of colonial British India into two new states, India and the Muslim state of Pakistan, involved massive population transfer and a bloodbath: up to a million people lost their lives in the communal violence that […]
This is an edited extract from Secret Affairs: Britain’s Collusion with Radical Islam by Mark Curtis By 1994, the Pakistani military under Benazir Bhutto’s government was training hundreds of Chechens, Uzbeks and Tajiks at camps in Afghanistan in techniques of guerilla warfare, the aim being to export Islamist revolution in the Central Asian region and […]
This is an edited extract from Secret Affairs: Britain’s Collusion with Radical Islam Mark Curtis Sponsorship of Islamic militants by Britain’s key ally, Pakistan, went furthest in Afghanistan, where, beginning in 1995, the ISI and Saudi intelligence funded and armed the Taliban movement. This backing enabled the Taliban to win a brutal civil war among […]