But it’s not just Turkey. Saudi Arabia, UAE, Qatar and Kuwait have all been heavily implicated in the past – according to the CIA’s own classified assessments – in financing the most virulent extremist elements of the Islamist rebel groups in Syria. Yet they did this under a covert operations programme to destabilise the Assad regime that was coordinated primarily by the US and UK.
Three years after the US and its NATO allies used air power to help the militants achieve victory over the former leader Gaddafi, the country has descended into a failed state without cohesive government and rival militias fighting for power.
The situation began to spiral out of control, when the Fajr Libya coalition launched an offensive on Tripoli’s airport last month to force it out of Zintan militia control.
Begin with the fact that one of Gadhaffi’s first acts after deposing the western puppet King Idris was to evict the US from its only military base on the continent. This act, taken four decades ago, left the US in the position of having to base its AFRICOM force, established in October, 2008, in Stuttgart, Germany, laying bare the nature of this “alliance.”
