{"id":58779,"date":"2016-09-15T13:08:03","date_gmt":"2016-09-15T20:08:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=58779"},"modified":"2016-09-15T13:08:03","modified_gmt":"2016-09-15T20:08:03","slug":"the-former-prime-minister-david-cameron-blamed-for-rise-of-isis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2016\/09\/15\/the-former-prime-minister-david-cameron-blamed-for-rise-of-isis\/","title":{"rendered":"The former prime minister David Cameron blamed for rise of Isis"},"content":{"rendered":"

Deborah\u00a0Haynes,\u00a0Defence\u00a0Editor | Francis\u00a0Elliott,\u00a0Political\u00a0Editor\u00a0Courtesy \u00a0The Times (UK)<\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n
    \n
  • Damning inquiry into Libya points finger at former PM \u25cf Failed intervention helped terror group grow in Africa<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

    An opportunistic\u201d David Cameron led a botched intervention in Libya that caused the rise of Islamic State in north Africa, a parliamentary inquiry has concluded.<\/p>\n

    The former prime minister was ultimately responsible\u201d for the failure of the 2011 bombing campaign, according to the foreign affairs committee.<\/p>\n

    He relied on poor intelligence as he allowed an operation designed to protect civilians to drift\u201d into a campaign to remove Colonel Gaddafi, the report said. Its publication comes two days after Mr Cameron surprised Westminster by standing down as an MP.<\/p>\n

    Britain and France led airstrikes on Libya after an uprising triggered by the Arab Spring. The threat of further violence by Gaddafi spurred western powers to take action but since then thousands of people have been killed and unrest continues to this day.<\/p>\n

    The report into the conflict said that the chief of the defence staff at the time, General Lord Richards of Herstmonceux, disassociated himself\u201d from the government\u2019s claim that the operation was in the national interest. It accuses Mr Cameron of backing regime change without a coherent strategy for the country after the removal of Gaddafi. By the summer of 2011, the limited intervention to protect civilians had drifted into an opportunist policy of regime change. That policy was not underpinned by a strategy to support and shape post-Gaddafi Libya,\u201d it said.<\/p>\n

    The result was political and economic collapse, inter-militia and inter-tribal warfare, humanitarian and migrant crises, widespread human rights violations, the spread of Gaddafi regime weapons across the region and the growth of [Isis] in north Africa.\u201d The MPs added: Through his decision-making . . . David Cameron was ultimately responsible for the failure to develop a coherent Libya strategy.\u201d<\/p>\n

    The criticism echoes remarks by President Obama this year that Britain and France had not done enough to follow up\u201d after the conflict. Mr Cameron became distracted by a range of other things\u201d, Mr Obama claimed.<\/p>\n

    The MPs\u2019 49-page report on Libya also found that Britain:<\/p>\n

    \u2022 Failed to identify that Islamist extremists were among rebels supported by RAF warplanes and special forces.<\/p>\n

    \u2022 Failed to see that the threat to civilians posed by Gaddafi was overstated\u201d.<\/p>\n

    \u2022 Failed to encourage France to heed a military plan to pause airstrikes and attempt diplomacy once Benghazi, Libya\u2019s second city, had been saved.<\/p>\n

    \u2022 Missed an opportunity to exploit relations between Tony Blair and Gaddafi, which could have resulted in the dictator handing over power.<\/p>\n

    \u2022 Drew up post-conflict plans to stabilise Libya that were not based on reality, with one minister describing them as fanciful rot\u201d.<\/p>\n

    \u2022 Failed to secure weapons and ammunition worth billions of pounds after the collapse of the regime that increased terrorism\u201d across the region.<\/p>\n

    When Mr Cameron responded to the publication of the Chilcot inquiry in July he insisted he had learnt the lessons of Iraq. The Libya report, however, calls for an independent review of the National Security Council, which he set up to ensure that the flawed decision to go to war in 2003 was not repeated.<\/p>\n

    The foreign affairs committee, made up of six Tory MPs, four from Labour and one from the SNP, accused the government of failing to carry out a proper analysis of the people behind the Libyan uprising. It may be that the UK government was unable to analyse the nature of the rebellion in Libya due to incomplete intelligence and insufficient institutional insight and that it was caught up in events as they developed,\u201d the report said.<\/p>\n

    It could not verify the actual threat to civilians posed by the Gaddafi regime; it selectively took elements of Muammar Gaddafi\u2019s rhetoric at face value; and it failed to identify the militant Islamist extremist element in the rebellion. UK strategy was founded on erroneous assumptions and an incomplete understanding of the evidence.\u201d<\/p>\n

    In March 2011 Mr Cameron, who had been elected as prime minister the previous year, and Nicolas Sarkozy, the more experienced president of France, convinced the UN security council to authorise airstrikes against Gaddafi\u2019s forces as they closed in on Benghazi. The US also played a key role.<\/p>\n

    Seven months later Gaddafi was captured hiding in a drainpipe west of the city of Sirte. He was killed by a mob.<\/p>\n

    The report criticised Britain\u2019s failure to plan properly for the aftermath. Little was done to secure \u00a330 billion of weapons and ammunition in warehouses, despite Liam Fox, as defence minister, telling MPs that securing anti-aircraft weaponry was a key objective.<\/p>\n

    The international community\u2019s inability to secure weapons abandoned by the Gaddafi regime fuelled instability in Libya and enabled and increased terrorism across north and west Africa and the Middle East,\u201d the report said.<\/p>\n

    The Foreign Office said that the decision to intervene was an international one, called for by the Arab League and authorised by the UN security council.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Deborah\u00a0Haynes,\u00a0Defence\u00a0Editor | Francis\u00a0Elliott,\u00a0Political\u00a0Editor\u00a0Courtesy \u00a0The Times (UK) Damning inquiry into Libya points finger at former PM \u25cf Failed intervention helped terror group grow in Africa An opportunistic\u201d David Cameron led a botched intervention in Libya that caused the rise of Islamic State in north Africa, a parliamentary inquiry has concluded. The former prime minister was ultimately […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-58779","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58779","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=58779"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58779\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=58779"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=58779"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=58779"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}