Secret Affairs: Britain's Collusion with Radical Islam [Paperback]

This is a very informative book on the true relationship between Britain and Islamist. In a sense it takes the lid off the 'Secret Affair' between the British state and Islamist and reveals why this geo-political relationship exists. And how Britain has attempted to use extreme Islamists to her advantage.

Mark Curtis is one of only a few British dissidents in the UK who focuses on British foreign policy per se. He is not one of these Chomsky regurgitators, who simply focuses on what America is getting upto. Curtis brings dissent back to us.

If you are looking for something truely beyond the headlines,'BBC impartiality' and formuliac American-obsessed dissent, then this book is certainly the starting point.

In this stunning book, historian Mark Curtis details the British state's collusion with Islamic terrorists and their state sponsors.

Britain is allied with the two major sponsors of Islamist terrorism, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. Saudi Arabia funded Al Qa'ida and Pakistan funded the 7/7 bombers. As the interim report of the 9/11 Commission said, "Pakistan, not Iraq, was a patron of terrorism."

Britain was the second largest investor in Pakistan, which received Britain's third largest aid programme in Asia. By 2001, 900 British citizens were visiting Kashmir for military training every year.

London is a base for many jihadist groups including Algeria's Armed Islamic Group, Egyptian Islamic Jihad, and Osama bin Laden's front, the Advice and Reformation Committee. After 9/11, the Terrorism Act made it an offence to send someone abroad for terrorist training, yet Abu Hamza wasn't touched for years.

In 2004, MI5 heard the London bombers `talking about jihadi activity in Pakistan and support for the Taliban', but as they weren't talking about terrorist attacks in Britain, MI5 left them alone. Britain, like Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, tries to get its own terrorists to attack only targets abroad.

In April 2005, three months before the London bombings, the Joint Intelligence Committee said that the war in Iraq `has exacerbated the threat from international terrorism'. The bombings stemmed from the terrorist bases set up by the Pakistani state, backed by the British state. British governments accuse Iran of what Saudi Arabia and Pakistan do - backing and training terrorists.

The war in Afghanistan in the 1980s was Britain's biggest covert operation since 1945. Britain's support for, and arms supplies to, the mujehadin started months before the Soviet intervention. Thatcher praised the mujehadin as `genuine freedom fighters'. The SAS trained the mujehadin and SAS units were involved in operations. The CIA, MI6 and Pakistan's ISI jointly raided into Soviet Central Asia.

Saudi Arabia has spent $50 billion on promoting Wahhabism, its extremist version of Islam, building 1,500 mosques and 2,200 madrassas across the world. The Saudi state is the world's leading source of funds for Al Qa'ida and other jihadists; it has been the major sponsor of terrorism for the last 30 years, and it provided 45 per cent of the foreign fighters in Iraq.

Britain, the USA, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Turkey and Iran all illegally sent arms to Bosnia, in breach of the UN embargo. Britain helped 4,000 Islamist militants to travel to Bosnia. British-born jihadists fought in Bosnia and Kosovo: 3,000 passed through Al Qa'ida training camps in the 1990s.

In 1998, Britain, the USA and the EU all denounced the Kosovo Liberation Army's terrorism, its heroin-trafficking and connections with Al Qa'ida and Osama bin Laden; by March 1999, the KLA was NATO's ground force there. Also in 1998, Britain started arming and training KLA fighters, violating UN Resolution 1160, which banned arming and training any forces in Yugoslavia.

A NATO report of August 2009 on the Afghan war said, "the overall situation is deteriorating"; NATO forces face a `resilient and growing insurgency' and admitted that NATO forces are causing `unnecessary collateral damage'.

While claiming to support Islamic moderates, the British state has backed Islamic extremists - the Saudi Arabian and Pakistani states, the Muslim Brotherhood, the KLA, the mujehadin. The British state backs these Islamists against democrats, nationalists, secularists and supporters of women's rights, as its proxy fighters against secular nationalism and socialism.

I have recently returned from a four week holiday to Iran. Whilst this beautiful country is full of very friendly people, who apologized endlessly for their country's poor relations with the rest of the world, they all asked me why the UK and US keep "scheming behind the scenes" in the Middle East and Central Asia. This book substantiates this belief, but from a European perspective, and goes a long way to explaining how it is that the UK Government, which claims every day to be here to protect its citizens from terrorism, was the principal sponsor if not creator of Islamic terrorism. What a sad world we live in!! The saddest part is, having chosen its friends, the UK Government can not even be loyal - look at the speed with which David Cameron dumped his buddy Mr Mubarak. This book explains all in simple terms and with a lot of detailed evidence. It joins the dots between well know events and fills in the missing parts to make a coherent story. My only (small) complaint is that Mr Curtis does not clearly explain reason the Islamic terrorists turned on their sponsors (the UK and US) in the early 1990s. I recommend this book.