PM MAY made crystal clear yesterday that Russia is the main enemy of crisis-wracked UK imperialism. In fact, Tory newspapers have been making it crystal clear for some time that Russia is the UK’s main enemy, not ISIS.
The truth is that the UK ruling class in its frenzy to overthrow Saddam Hussein and grab Iraq’s oil helped create ISIS, and have used it in Libya to overthrow Gadaffi, and then Syria to try and overthrow the government of President Assad. They are murderous oil thieves!
The UK ruling class also thought it was a very good idea to help export the UK’s and Europe’s young Islamists to Syria where they could be used as cannon fodder to overthrow Assad. But having failed in Syria, the UK and US are now trying to save ISIS so that it can be used in the Lebanon.
Despite imperialist threats that all ISIS members should be killed, thousands of ISIS members and their families have just been saved from death in Raqqa, and have been transported to Idlib, from where they will no doubt go either to Turkey or to the Lebanon to take part in the next imperialist war to smash Hezbollah and assist Israel.
Lorry driver Abu Fawzi, who drives an 18-wheeler, told BBC reporters that drivers were hired by SDF forces under US command on October 12 to take hundreds of families displaced by fighting to a special camp. They were told that the job would take six hours, in fact it took three days. When the drivers assembled their convoy they realised they had been lied to. They were in fact involved in a plot to ‘let IS fighters escape from Raqqa.’
‘We were scared from the moment we entered Raqqa,’ he says. ‘We were supposed to go in with the SDF, but we went alone. As soon as we entered, we saw IS fighters with their weapons and suicide belts on. They booby-trapped our trucks. If something were to go wrong in the deal, they would bomb the entire convoy. Even their children and women had suicide belts on.’
Fawzi continued: ‘We took out around 4,000 people including women and children – our vehicle and their vehicles combined. When we entered Raqqa, we thought there were 200 people to collect. In my vehicle alone I took 112 people.’
Another driver said the convoy was six to seven kilometres long. It included almost 50 trucks, 13 buses and more than 100 of the Islamic State group’s own vehicles. IS fighters, their faces covered, sat on top of some of the vehicles. Footage secretly filmed and passed to BBC reporters shows lorries towing trailers crammed with armed men. Despite an agreement to take only personal weapons, IS fighters took everything they could carry. Ten trucks were loaded with weapons and ammunition.
It was also understood that no foreigners would be allowed to leave Raqqa alive. Back in May, US Defence Secretary James Mattis described the fight against IS as a war of ‘annihilation’. He added: ‘Our intention is that the foreign fighters do not survive the fight to return home to north Africa, to Europe, to America, to Asia, to Africa. We are not going to allow them to do so.’
However, ‘This wasn’t so much an evacuation – it was the exodus of the so-called Islamic State. Foreign fighters – those not from Syria and Iraq – were also able to join the convoy,’ according to the drivers. One explained: ‘There was a huge number of foreigners. France, Turkey, Azerbaijan, Pakistan, Yemen, Saudi, China, Tunisia, Egypt …’ Other drivers added: ‘Two Humvees were leading the convoy ahead. They were organising it and wouldn’t let anyone pass them.’
Along the route many people said they heard coalition aircraft, sometimes drones, following the convoy. From the cab of his truck, Abu Fawzi watched as a coalition warplane flew overhead, dropping illumination flares, which lit up the convoy and the road ahead.
He said: ‘When the last of the convoy were about to cross, a US jet flew very low and deployed flares to light up the area. IS fighters shat their pants.’ The Anglo-US coalition has now confirmed that, while it did not have its personnel on the ground, it ‘monitored’ the convoy from the air. The way to smash ISIS is to overthrow British imperialism and the imperialist powers, to allow the Arab people to establish a Palestinian state and decide on their own future.
