Blair warns of ‘arc of extremism’…

I missed the most important bit:

Blair links Kashmir crisis to Islamic extremism

RASHMEE ROSHAN LALL

LONDON: A furious political row has erupted over British PM Tony Blair\’s decision to link the Kashmir dispute and Chechen fighting with the conflict in Iraq, Afghanistan and West Asia — which he described as part of an over-arching “arc of (Muslim) extremism” across the world.

Just hours after he called for the West to totally rethink its strategy on the war on terror, Blair’s critics said it was wrong to link regional territorial disputes such as Kashmir to global Islamist extremism.
In his speech at the World Affairs Council in Los Angeles on Tuesday, the British PM said: “The fanatics, attached to a completely wrong and reactionary view of Islam, had been engaging in terrorism for years before September 11.”

In Chechnya, in India and Pakistan, in Algeria, in many other Muslim countries, atrocities were occurring.” He declared that “these acts of terrorism were not isolated incidents. They were part of a growing movement.”

Blair said the “movement believed Muslims had departed from their proper faith, were being taken over by Western culture, were being governed treacherously by Muslims complicit in this takeover, whereas the true way to recover not just the true faith, but Muslim confidence and self esteem, was to take on the West and all its works.”

In Chechnya, in India and Pakistan, in Algeria, in many other Muslim countries, atrocities were occurring.” He declared that “these acts of terrorism were not isolated incidents. They were part of a growing movement.”
In his speech, Blair said that the West had been mistaken in previously failing to link Kashmir and Chechnya-inspired terrorist attacks to a growing baleful Islamism.

“We were not bending our eye or our will to it as we should have… We rather inclined to the view that where there was terrorism, perhaps it was partly the fault of the governments of the countries concerned,” he said.

He said it was time to recognize that “whatever the outward manifestation at any one time — in Lebanon, in Gaza, in Iraq in Afghanistan, in Kashmir, in a host of other nations including some in Africa now — it is a global fight about global values; it is about modernisation, within Islam and outside of it”.
Note how the BBC story completely ignores the mention of Kashmir.

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Blair warns of ‘arc of extremism’

Tony Blair has warned that an “arc of extremism” is stretching across the Middle East and he called for a radical rethink on foreign policy.

Mr Blair told the World Affairs Council in Los Angeles that Syria and Iran had to stop supporting terrorism or they would “be confronted”. His speech was planned some weeks ago but he said the Lebanon crisis had “brought it into sharp relief”. He said there was now a war “of a completely unconventional kind”. The prime minister said: “There is an arc of extremism now stretching across the Middle East and touching countries far outside that region.”

He said in Iraq, Syria had allowed al-Qaeda operatives to “cross the border” while Iran had supported extremist Shia. “The purpose of the terrorism in Iraq is absolutely simple – carnage, causing sectarian hatred, leading to civil war,” he said. ‘Export of instability’

Mr Blair added: “We need to make clear to Syria and Iran that there is a choice: come in to the international community and play by the same rules as the rest of us; or be confronted. “Their support of terrorism, their deliberate export of instability, their desire to see wrecked the democratic prospect in Iraq, is utterly unjustifiable, dangerous and wrong.

“If they keep raising the stakes, they will find they have miscalculated.” Mr Blair also spoke about the conflict between Israel and Lebanon and said that the “purpose of the provocation” that began it “was clear”.

“It was to create chaos, division and bloodshed, to provoke retaliation by Israel that would lead to Arab and Muslim opinion being inflamed, not against those who started the aggression but against those who responded to it,” he said. However, he said it was still possible to come out of the crisis “with a better long-term prospect for the cause of moderation in the Middle East succeeding”.

He added: “But it would be absurd not to face up to the immediate damage to that cause which has been done.” Mr Blair said all would be done to try to halt the hostilities in the conflict. “But once that has happened we must commit ourselves to a complete renaissance of our strategy to defeat those that threaten us,” he said.

‘Alliance of moderation’

Mr Blair spoke of how he believed “global extremism” should be tackled.

“To defeat it will need an alliance of moderation that paints a different future in which Muslim, Jew and Christian, Arab and Western, wealthy and developing nations can make progress in peace and harmony. “We will not win the battle against this global extremism unless we win it at the level of values as much as force, unless we show we are even-handed, fair and just in our application of those values to the world.”

He said this “unconventional” war must be won through these values. “This war can’t be won in a conventional way, it can only be won by showing that our values are stronger, better and more just, more fair than the alternatives,” he said.

‘Values change’

However, he said this required a dramatic change in strategy. The prime minister told his 2,000-strong audience there was now an “elemental struggle” about values that was set to shape the world’s future. He said it was a part of struggle between what he called reactionary Islam and moderate mainstream Islam. And in Iraq and Afghanistan he said “the banner was not actually regime change it was values change”.

“What we have done therefore in intervening in this way, is probably far more momentous than we appreciated at the time,” he said

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/uk_politics/5236862.stm

Published: 2006/08/02 06:31:33 GMT

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