By hook or by Crooke
James Harkin, writing in The Financial Times delivers a most interesting and entertaining article on Alistair Crooke of Conflicts Forum.
You have to register to read the full article, but it’s free and worth the trouble. Here’s an extract:
One of Crooke’s first postings was to Ireland, in the chaos of the early 1970s, where he cultivated a range of contacts in and around the IRA. One former high-ranking MI6 agent told me that the Secret Intelligence Service strategy was to build discreet long-term relationships with reasonable people within radical movements and then, over a long period, use those relationships to separate moderates from extremists and thus “influence the situation”. Crooke confirmed that this was indeed the general approach, though he feared that patience was increasingly being sacrificed for expediency. “You can lose a relationship in a day and it might take you 20 years to repair it,” he said. In postings to Pakistan during the Afghan war and to South Africa in the years leading to the end of apartheid, it was a lesson that Crooke took to heart. “The point is to understand the people who it is hardest to understand,” he said. “It is easy to talk to people who you might want to have around your dinner table.”
Could he imagine negotiating with al-Qaeda, I wondered? “Never say never,” he replied, though he couldn’t really see the point. Groups such as al-Qaeda only get a hearing, he said, because of the failure of more mainstream political Islamism to speak to the Muslim world.
Though proud of his work for the British government, Crooke admits to a period of reassessment after he was sacked. His views appear to have undergone something of a sea-change. Unusually for a former British spy, Crooke sprinkles his lectures with references, for example, to the work of Marxist postcolonial thinker Frantz Fanon. He believes that Hizbollah is a key factor in the renaissance of Islam - particularly its Shia variant - in the Middle East. The fact he remained in Beirut throughout the Israeli bombing might have stoked his sympathetic approach to Israel’s enemies. From his balcony he pointed out where some bombs fell, even criticising the Israeli Air Force for poor targeting and outdated intelligence.
His sympathy for Islamism extends beyond the political. Islam, he believes, has a valuable “imaginative, intuitive” approach to the individual that has been lost in the west. He views the 1979 Iranian revolution as progressive and enthusiastically explained obscure theological differences between its main Islamic protagonists. In the past two years he has visited Iran regularly - at one point he said “our view”, before correcting himself: “the Iranian view, I mean”.
At the end of the conference Crooke held a dinner at a restaurant for a few friends. He was on playful form, pretending to feed Amistis, his daughter, some alcohol. Sitting opposite me was Tom Clark, a gruff, bearish man who seemed dissatisfied with the seminar’s direction. There was, he felt, too much talk of theology and “the other”, and not enough about the politics of who should meet whom and what could be done. Clark is a financial supporter of Conflicts Forum’s work, and so his opinion matters. (He is a member of the extended family that owns the bulk of the shoemaker Clarks.) Long sympathetic to the Palestinians, his peace activism got him thrown out of Israel a few years ago. Shortly afterwards, he heard Crooke talking on the BBC’s Newsnight about the Middle East peace process. The first time he met Crooke, he said: “He was wearing a plaid shirt, a jacket with arm-patches and a stringy tie. He looked like a geography teacher from Chipping Norton.” It wasn’t long before Crooke invited him to Beirut. The first Hamas officials he met told him, “Any friend of Alastair is a friend of ours.” And that was it, he said. “I became one of his groupies.”
The question dangling in the air, of course, is whether Crooke is still a Bristish spy playing a version of ‘The Great Game’, or has he just become an Islamist shill?
Comments
| 5 January 2009, 5:46 pm |
Self-shillying crook in a shell-cup.
| 5 January 2009, 5:49 pm |
What an excellent and beautifully callibrated article.
Crooke is either a great hero or a great villain. I’m really not sure which.
I tend toward the latter view: but then perhaps that is just what he wants you to think ;)
| 5 January 2009, 6:06 pm |
The question dangling in the air, of course, is whether Crooke is still a Bristish spy playing a version of ‘The Great Game’, or has he just become an Islamist shill?
Either way the work of Conflicts Forum and Alistair Crooke is extremely counterproductive to Britan’s standing in the Middle East.
I,ve had the ill fortune to have come across Crooke’s Conflict Forum and seen its meetings with Islamists at first hand.
Crooks approach to Islamists inevitably alienates moderate Muslims and Israelis, and Middle Easten governments allied to Britain and at the same time will fail in convincing hardcore Islamists into “moderation” (whatever that means in the context of radical Islam).
When will the FCO and SIS learn that using obsequious pleasantries of the type that Alistair Crooke specialises in gets you nowhere?
One needs a strong stomach to hear one of Crooke’s honeycombed speeches to his Islamist guests at his bi-annual Beirut conferences where Osama Hamdan (Hamas) and various Hezbollah luminaries are in attendance.
It’s this type of discredited approach – usually first concocted in the FCO or at SIS – and its more amateur variant as played by Dan Brett and his fake Al Ahwazi front in Iran that give the British a terrible reputation for manipulation and underhandedness throughout the Middle East.
Much the same was tried in relation to the Nazis during the FCOs “appeasement phase” of diplomatic engagement with Germany for much of the 1930s. Crooke’s engagement with Islamism will end in much the same way.
Martin Bright has uncovered some of what Crooke gets up to.
http://www.jihadwatch.org/dhimmiwatch/archives/012221.php
http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/martin-bright/2008/07/islamexpo-hamas-sawalha-speak
| 5 January 2009, 6:09 pm |
The funniest bit about this article is at the end where the author approvingly cites the fact that Crooke knows no Arabic as a further point in his favour in dealing with the Middle East. I’ve met various British ‘Middle East experts’ along the way, and as far as I can gather, knowing no regional languages is one of the necessary qualifications for the post.
Out of interest, tho, what is the ‘hero’ version of Crooke that David T alludes to? Is there an idea that actually he is working to undermine Hizb and hamas? It seems to me that in the best case, he is selling a soft version of these guys to the british and other govts, and in the worst case, he really has ‘gone native’ in a way far more sinister than learning a language would be. On that note, an acquaintance of mine at the british consulate in Jerusalem told me that crooke always refers to Hamas as ‘my boys’ when chatting with other splendid chaps at the Consul’s residence.
| 5 January 2009, 6:16 pm |
Sounds like another SIS barking mad tosser; it’s as if it’s a requirement.
| 5 January 2009, 6:22 pm |
I believe it was Mr Crooke who was interviewed with great deference on Simon Mayo’s show on 5Live this afternoon?
He was treated like some sort of impartial authority.
he managed to get through the whole interview without saying anything vaguely understanding of the Israeli position, mentioning Iran or being in any way critical of Hamas.
It was ugly stuff (although on Al Beeb thats up against some pretty stiff competition).
Assume its the same bloke?
MattG
| 5 January 2009, 6:25 pm |
In addition to Crooke and Dan Brett’s (Balochi/Al Ahwazi fronts) I forgot to mention Forward Thinking … William Sieghart’s motley gang of Hamsistas … ah such fond memories of “Hamas at Hay on Wye” - whatever became of them.
http://www.forwardthinking.org/middleeast.html
No “new initiatives” there - although Lord Levy Jr still enjoys
spouting off his useless prescriptions aimlessly.
I guess the recession is cutting into every type of budget - even at the Ministry of Underhanded Skullduggery.
| 5 January 2009, 6:33 pm |
Islam, he believes, has a valuable “imaginative, intuitive” approach to the individual that has been lost in the west
Oh, dear. Yet more glue-sniffing news from planet Zog.
Or does he perhaps have evidence that it’s easier to be a gay atheist under Islam than in the West?
| 5 January 2009, 6:34 pm |
Gawd help us if that’s how they think in the secret service.
Of course you have to have contacts with terrorists but you certainly don’t play their game.
He should perhaps reflect on what sort of religion it is that finds a renaissance in a gangster outfit like Hezbollah…
I mean what have Hezbollah done apart from lob bombs and rockets? Have they made any medical discoveries, painted any interesting pictures, written any pleasant music, built any stunning edifices? Their music is the rattle of machine guns, their paint is martyr’s blood, their medical discoveries are how to preserve the body parts of Israeli soldiers for bargaining purposes and their edifices are mounds of bodies.
Any right thinking human being will view them with total disgust.
| 5 January 2009, 6:36 pm |
Nah, the funniest bit in the article was when the author said he thought he heard Crooke saying ‘Israeli’ but actually Crooke was saying “is really” in his profoundly posh accent.
| 5 January 2009, 6:45 pm |
Rostram
Am I right in thinking that you have absolutely no evidence for the claims you repeatedly make about Dan Brett, other than your belief that ‘it is the sort of thing the Brits might do, to undermine Mother Persia?’
A simple yes or no will do.
Put it this way. The Iranians no doubt think that Scottish independence would harm Britain. But most supporters of Scottish independence are not agents of Iran.
| 5 January 2009, 6:52 pm |
He was on TV this morning and managed to go through the whole interview describing Hamas as “the Resistance”
| 5 January 2009, 7:02 pm |
The thing is, there’s a need to have some channel of communication with these nutters. Particularly if they come to power: but even if they don’t, we still need to know what they’re up to.
To get their trust, you’d have to act much as Crooke does.
During WWII, literally every single Nazi spy in the UK was caught. 39 were turned. They spent the war feeding disinformation to the fascists, mixed with some low level but genuine assistance.
My only question is: which side is Crooke actually on? Who is he playing - Iran and its proxies, or - like another famous Irishman - Great Britain.
I honestly don’t know.
Similar doubts about double agents occurred to both sides in WWII
| 5 January 2009, 7:21 pm |
I have just read the FT article, its is a gem of its kind.
His accent is so posh that he sounds like he’s from an earlier era: he pronounces “off’ as “orrff” and says “reelly” for “really”. At one point my ears pricked up when he appeared to mention the Israelis - noticeably absent from the conversation thus far - but it turned out that he was only saying “is reelly”.
It never ceases to surprise me but the FCO/SIS remain bastions of a unique Old English Schoolboy worldview. One that is unashamedly racist but in a very British way - an English Charlie Wilson weltangschauung. And its not only me that is surprised there are others closer to home like Derek Pasquill.
To understand this view and how misguided and racist it is you need read no further than the first paragraph of Harkin’s piece.
For the FCO, foreigners come in two types: the westernised elite in charge (here the district commissioner). They are not genuine mainly because they ape Western roles and values. Then there are the angry locals (Balochi tribesmen) who represent “genuine local values and methods” – like kidnapping.
Now no matter how repugnant or savage these “native” values and methods may seem to a “civilised” Westerner these are the genuine representatives of the third world and it is these people who must be cultivated and engaged and its is the district commissioner who can/should be undermined.
Forget the fact that the district commissioner – or whoever his modern counterpart is (an Iranian Student fighting the Islamic Republic, a moderate Muslim, a member of the Palestinian Authority, an Israeli, a liberal secularist, a moderate Arab government official) is the closest approximation to the liberal Western values that Britain supposedly stands for. He is to be castigated as corrupt and out of touch.
Instead it’s the “Franz Fanlon reactionary Leftist” and/or Muslim Brotherhood Islamist (the one who despises everything that Britain stands for) that is to be cultivated and engaged with for he is the true representative of the savage locals.
Its that type of racist FCO thinking that ends up confusing and alienating anyone who allies themselves with Britain values and its encourages the enemies of those same liberal democratic values.
| 5 January 2009, 7:27 pm |
Rostram
Am I right in thinking that you have absolutely no evidence for the claims you repeatedly make about Dan Brett, other than your belief that ‘it is the sort of thing the Brits might do, to undermine Mother Persia?’
A simple yes or no will do.
No. You are wrong.
(i’ll post some evidence when I get some time - just dont delete it).
| 5 January 2009, 7:36 pm |
You can email it to me at davidt.harryblog@gmail.com, and I will pass it on to Dan Brett.
I want to make it absolutely clear that I won’t stand for baseless allegations being made about espionage about people who post on this blog. I wouldn’t allow somebody to post the claim, repeatedly, that you are a Mossad operative, for example.
That is just common civility.
| 5 January 2009, 7:39 pm |
To get their trust, you’d have to act much as Crooke does. During WWII, literally every single Nazi spy in the UK was caught. 39 were turned. They spent the war feeding disinformation to the fascists, mixed with some low level but genuine assistance.
DT
Thats a false misguided comparison. Was expecting better from you. You need to read up on this period.
Nazi agents werent interned successfully because of the appeasment efforts of dillitant British diplomats with pro-Nazi sympathies in the 1930s. They were interned inspite of the efforts of such diplomats and right wing go betweens.
The go betweens types that did their best to arrange contacts between misguided members of the Royal family and the aristocracy and Nazis. From the Prince of Wales, to Unity Mitford, via Viscount Halifax, and the Duke of Hamilton.
Rudolph Hess wasnt mad, he just showed up in Scotland to meet what he believed were sympathetic members of the ruling elite at a stage where it was too late. Churchill’s faction already controlled the government. But it was a very close run thing. One should never underestimate the damage that such contacts can do.
My only question is: which side is Crooke actually on? Who is he playing - Iran and its proxies, or - like another famous Irishman - Great Britain.
I honestly don’t know.
Crooke no longer knows either. My belief is that he is totally captivated by Islamism be it of the Sunni MB kind or the Shia Islamic Republic variant.
| 5 January 2009, 7:47 pm |
I want to make it absolutely clear that I won’t stand for baseless allegations being made about espionage about people who post on this blog. I wouldn’t allow somebody to post the claim, repeatedly, that you are a Mossad operative, for example.
Its not baseless allegations and I never said that Dan Brett was a spy.
I have however repeatedly said that he is part of an effort that is fostering false ethnic seperatist movements that are NOT emenating from within Iran but that are funded by foreign governments as a means of pressuring the Islamic Republic.
I believe that its a very misguided approach by whoever is mounting it.
It doesnt serve to help Iran’s minorities.
It totally alienates the very people that the British government should be cultivating - Iranians who believe in liberal democratic values.
It strengthens the propaganda of the Islamic Republic.
I’ll post the facts that are already in the public domain. There should be no harm done to anyone in reading here what is available with a few minutes of googling.
Its your blog you can delete what you like.
| 5 January 2009, 7:58 pm |
“On that note, an acquaintance of mine at the british consulate in Jerusalem told me that crooke always refers to Hamas as ‘my boys’ when chatting with other splendid chaps at the Consul’s residence.”
Well he just sounds like a good old-fashioned upper class, public school turncoat to me. We have seen the likes of him before. Obsessed with a foreign culture, not despite its violence and sadism, but because of it. To him, anything is better than being stuck at home among the British.
| 5 January 2009, 8:04 pm |
Dan
I would just like to make it clear that Peter Tatchell, the Henry Jackson Society, the British Ahwazi Friendship Society, Harry’s Place and I have never supported ethnic separatism in Iran, nor said anything that could be construed as separatist.
Beating a hasty retreat Dan? … Go on and pull the other one.
Dan was it not Reter Tatchell that said this? On the now defunct rightwing 18 Doughty Street website? (No reference by Peter to Islamic Republic but only to racist Iranians)
Iran is a racist, imperialist state, which is ethnically cleansing its Ahwazi Arab population. Tehran is using sham trials, … torture, executions, cultural colonialism, forced re-locations and mass impoverishment to subjugate its Arab population. The south-west Arab region of Iran is the richest in oil, but has African levels of malnutrition, slums, illiteracy and unemployment. Dr Karim Abdian, Director of the Ahwaz Human Rights Organisation discusses the persecution of his people with Peter Tatchell. 20.08.07
and is that not Peter in the video
http://www.veoh.com/videos/v15577546TBcXNG8w
and did Peter not threaten this?
If, however, Tehran continues to rebuff moderate, mainstream Arab opinion, there is a danger that many Arabs will turn to armed struggle and wage a full-scale national liberation war with the aim of outright independence. This would turn oil-rich al-Ahwaz into another zone of violent instability, with adverse global economic consequences as a result of diminished oil production and rising oil prices.
http://www.ahwazstudies.org/main/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2420&Itemid=47&lang=EN
and did you not present this to the Henry Jackson Society
Iran’s Occupied Territories
By Daniel Brett, 16th April 2008
http://www.henryjacksonsociety.org/stories.asp?id=597
and do you Dan deny that you set up these sham websites amongst a dozen others
http://www.ahwaz.org.uk/bafs.html
http://www.alahwaz.com/
http://www.ahwazstudies.org/main/index.php?option=com_content&task=blogsection&id=4&Itemid=47&lang=EN
and is this not your variant of Harry’s Place?
| 5 January 2009, 8:15 pm |
Of course, if Crooke was still working for MI-6 all this would serve as the necessary cover for getting close to groups like Hezbollah and Hamas.
Who is Crooke really working for? That may be something that is never known for sure.
| 5 January 2009, 9:42 pm |
Clark is a financial supporter of Conflicts Forum’s work, and so his opinion matters. (He is a member of the extended family that owns the bulk of the shoemaker Clarks.)
Does this mean we ought to be boycotting Clarks shoes? I used to wear them almost all the time, I found them very comfortable. But when I moved to Brazil, in the heat and humidity the uppers came unglued from the soles — on two separate occasions causing a certain degree of embarrassment in a public place.
| 5 January 2009, 10:57 pm |
Aren’t the Clark family Quakers?
| 5 January 2009, 11:25 pm |
By the way, is it in order to mention a branded product in posts on this site? If not, will somebody kindly delete (5 Jan. at 9:42 pm)
| 5 January 2009, 11:29 pm |
David T
I don’t think it really matters which side he is on as it is his strategy that is naively hopeless at best and extremely counterproductive at worst.
He personally does not (no doubt to his eternal disappointment) find himself at a moment in history where he is even able to have the enormously camp but practically modest role of a TE Lawrence.
His power of leverage over events is of a minimal but meddlesome kind.
In the Middle East Britain really does not have the traction of anything remotely resembling its previous Imperial power.
It is the decidely non-Islamist Muslim governments, on behalf of their majority moderate populations, that we need to maintain cordial diplomatic relationships with.
The domestic spin off in the UK of this end of Empire co-option of the Islamist natives is as you so carefully point out nothing short of catastrophic.
| 5 January 2009, 11:34 pm |
Aren’t the Clark family Quakers?
That’s good enough reason to boycott the fuckers as is.
| 5 January 2009, 11:39 pm |
I want to make it absolutely clear that I won’t stand for baseless allegations being made about espionage about people who post on this blog. I wouldn’t allow somebody to post the claim, repeatedly, that you are a Mossad operative, for example
Well I understand that SIS have now dropped the entry requirement that one be an ex top public school….Marlbrough, Eton, Charter House etc, Oxbridge arts graduate, gay communist to join SIS, but I must confess, it could be one of those ‘baseless allegations’; it may still be a requirement.
Whilst we’re on the topic…has anyone else noticed how Eton accents have distinctly drifted towards the Estuarine in the last number of years?
I wonder why that is.
| 6 January 2009, 12:50 am |
Good for you DT, and HP for putting up some of the evidence and not deleting anything I posted. Lets see what Dan/Peter have to say.
My suspicion for all not being above board with Dan and Peter humanitarian efforts were first aroused by the conspicous absence of a mention of Iran’s Kurdish minority in their list of aggrevied Iranian minorities. The Kurds are the one minority more than any other that has suffered at the hands of the Islamic Republic. So why I thought would Dan & Peter not address their concerns?
The answer to anyone in the know about the region is that the Kurds form important restive minorities in two other mid eastern countries allied to the West - Turkey, and Iraq.
The interestingly named front the Democratic Solidarity Party of Al Ahwaz has a man representing its called Bababozorg (Grandfather) he apparently likes the Coors …
http://uk.youtube.com/user/bababozorg28
Meanwhile the laby announcer on Al Ahwaz TV needs to read her script wearing dark glasses.
http://uk.youtube.com/user/Ahwaztv
Meanwhile the seperatist state of Al Ahwaz has grown from one province in Iran’s south east to a claim along Iran’s entire southern coastline. Im sure this little girl can explain.
http://uk.youtube.com/user/ahwaziasslii
In any event I hope that whoever is funding this stops. Its as counter productive to Britain’s interests as Alistair Crooke’s efforts.
| 6 January 2009, 1:27 am |
The answer to who Crooke really is is likely to be a “follow the money” one. Who funds the Conflicts Forum? Unlikely to be just Clark, since running an outfit like that must be costing a very tidy sum per annum, and the British shoe trade isn’t doing that well. Everything Crooke says and does suggests to me he’s wholly owned by either Muslim Brotherhood or Iranian interests.
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