Patrick Cockburn | The Libertarian Institute

Idlib Residents Declare Hatred for All Sides in Syria’s Civil War

by Patrick Cockburn | Oct 15, 2018 | Featured Articles, Foreign Policy

“People in Idlib hate all those with power over them,” says Ahmad Abu Omar, 33, a history teacher living in the province, the last opposition enclave in the west of Syria. He says that the three million people of Idlib fear a return of government forces, but are almost equally hostile to the armed opposition groups now ruling Idlib because they have spread violence and chaos. He sees Turkey and Russia, who this week started implementing their ceasefire agreement to prevent a government offensive into the province, as acting solely in their own interests. Abu Omar, in an exclusive interview...

US, UK and France 'Inflicted Worst Destruction in Decades on Raqqa'

by Patrick Cockburn | Jun 7, 2018 | Featured Articles, Foreign Policy

Air and artillery strikes by the US and its allies inflicted devastating loss of life on civilians in the Isis-held city of Raqqa, according to an Amnesty International report. It contradicts claims by the US, along with Britain and France, that they precisely targeted Isis fighters and positions during the four month siege that destroyed large swathes of the city. “On the ground in Raqqa we witnessed a level of destruction comparable to anything we have seen in decades of covering the impact of wars,” says Donatella Rovera, a senior crisis response adviser at Amnesty. She says that the...

US Troops Will Remain in Syria Despite Trump Comments to Contrary

by Patrick Cockburn | Apr 5, 2018 | Featured Articles, Foreign Policy

Donald Trump has decided to keep US forces in Syria for a limited period, ending speculation about an immediate pull-out fuelled by the president himself. He agreed at a National Security Council meeting that the 2,000 US troops backed by massive airpower should stay in Syria where they support the Kurds in the east of the country. “We’re not going to immediately withdraw, but neither is the president willing to back a long-term commitment,” said a senior administration official. He added that Mr Trump wanted to ensure the final defeat of Isis and would like other countries to help stabilise...

Boris Johnson’s foreign policy in Syria is based on wishful thinking

by Patrick Cockburn | Apr 28, 2017 | Featured Articles, Foreign Policy

Johnson spoke grandly of using ‘submarine-based cruise missiles in the Med’ against Assad to support Trump, but in fact Britain’s capacity to do anything militarily effective is very limited There is nothing surprising in Boris Johnson saying that it would be difficult for the UK not to join US military action in Syria against President Bashar al-Assad’s forces in response to a chemical weapons attack. Since the Second World War British governments have been trying to strengthen the UK’s status as the most important military ally of the US. But after 9/11 this obeisance became more craven...

ISIS used 17 suicide car bombs ‘to help leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi flee Mosul’

by Patrick Cockburn | Apr 4, 2017 | Featured Articles, Foreign Policy

Patrick Cockburn speaks to a Kurdish official who says ISIS were jubilant to have their leader leave Mosul where the group faces defeat - but when the jihadis are gone there are fears about how the territory they once-held will be divided Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of Isis and self-declared Caliph, escaped from the siege of Mosul two months ago when the road to the west was briefly re-opened by a fierce counter attack by Isis fighters, according to a senior Kurdish official. “Isis used 17 suicide car bombs from Mosul and some of their units from Syria to clear the road leading out of...

Who supplies the news?

by Patrick Cockburn | Feb 3, 2017 | Featured Articles, Foreign Policy

Patrick Cockburn on misreporting in Syria and Iraq The nadir of Western media coverage of the wars in Iraq and Syria has been the reporting of the siege of East Aleppo, which began in earnest in July and ended in December, when Syrian government forces took control of the last rebel-held areas and more than 100,000 civilians were evacuated. During the bombardment, TV networks and many newspapers appeared to lose interest in whether any given report was true or false and instead competed with one another to publicise the most eye-catching atrocity story even when there was little evidence...

Trump’s ‘Muslim Ban’ Will Only Lead to More Terrorist Attacks

by Patrick Cockburn | Jan 30, 2017 | Featured Articles, Foreign Policy

Donald Trump’s travel ban on refugees and visitors from seven Muslim countries entering the US makes a terrorist attack on Americans at home or abroad more rather than less likely. It does so because one of the main purposes of al-Qaeda and Isis in carrying out atrocities is to provoke an over-reaction directed against Muslim communities and states. Such communal punishments vastly increase sympathy for Salafi-jihadi movements among the 1.6 billion Muslims who make up a quarter of the world’s population. The Trump administration justifies its action by claiming that it is only following...

The ‘War on Terrorism’ Just Keeps Making It Worse

by Patrick Cockburn | Dec 23, 2016 | Featured Articles, Foreign Policy

European political leaders are making the same mistake in reacting to the massacre at the Christmas fair in Berlin, in which 12 died, as they did during previous terrorist attacks in Paris and Brussels. There is an over-concentration on the failings of the security services in not identifying and neutralising the Tunisian petty criminal, Anis Amri, as the threat he turned out to be. There is too little focus on bringing to an end the wars in Syria and Iraq which make this type of atrocity unstoppable. In the aftermath of the killings the visibility of Amri, who was shot dead in Milan this...