His legacy? The collapse of Iraq... and the rise of IS
LONG before his decision to step down as Middle East peace envoy, the credibility of this perma-tanned multimillionaire had been badly eroded. Crossing the globe on private jets, Tony Blair mixed big business, charity, faith, and politics in a way that many regarded as morally odious.
Indeed, this was the man who assumed the job of ‘ peace envoy’ after, as prime minister and leader of the once-pacifist Labour Party, he took Britain to war five times in six years: in Iraq in 1998, Kosovo, Sierra Leone, Afghanistan, and Iraq again. This was the man, too, who was ridiculed when he later explained how he prayed to God when deciding whether or not to send UK troops to Iraq.
After the breathtaking extent of Blair’s lucrative business links were revealed – including deals with leaders of some of the world’s most brutal regimes – many people looked at his risible role as Middle East peace envoy and wondered what he valued more: the pursuit of peace, or money?
His position certainly irked Palestinian leaders. For instance, the former Palestinian Authority minister Hanan Ashrawi was offended that, as part of his one- week- a- month peace envoy duties, Blair would typically appear in Jerusalem late on a Monday evening and was gone by Thursday.
He was ‘useless, useless, useless’, said another Palestinian.
Viewed with hindsight, his appointment was perverse, given that following his decision to join the US in the illegal invasion of Iraq in 2003, the country and the wider region plunged into chaos from which it still suffers.
Indeed, there is a direct link between the collapse of Iraq into feuding regions and the rise of the jihad terror group ISIS which has brutally exploited the power vacuum.
Of c ourse, the thi nking behind Blair’s appointment was his first- class CV: a well - known global player, respected in America (especially for his loyalty to George W Bush), a man of strong faith and who presided over the Northern Ireland peace settlement.
His aim was to try to impose in the Middle East a similar peace process to the one that had been achieved in Ulster. But this was a truly arrogant act of postimperial hubris.
Ulster and the Middle East were hugely different. On the one hand, despite leading an outfit of bombers, IRA negotiators wanted to live on and seize political power. Whereas Muslim terrorists cared l ess about their own personal futures and were happy to blow up themselves and their enemy in the name of Allah.
Regardless, Blair’s belief was that if the Israeli-Palestinian con- f l i ct could be tackled, all the other conflicts in the region could be quelled.
But for most observers, that was patently not true. Many fellow Arab regimes have no interest in the Palestinians – while scores of conflicts in the region have nothing to do with Israel. Instead, they are based on hatreds between Sunni and Shia or Saudi Arabia and Iran. As for Blair’s deep personal religious faith, who better, it was thought, to try to intercede between peoples who disagreed over fundamental issues of doctrine.
But the fact is that, many conflicts in the Middle East involve other issues – such as access to oil or water, inequality and lack of economic and political opportunity, or clashes over disputed borders. In any case, those dealing with Blair were never sure in what capacity he was appearing, considering his vast personal business portfolio on which he spent more time than his one-week-in-four as a peace envoy.
For example, when he persuaded the Israelis to release electromagnetic frequencies for the Palestini an mobile phone operator Wataniya, it was noted that the firm was a client of JP Morgan bank, for which Blair also worked as a consultant for a £3million-ayear fee.
MEANWHILE, his company, Tony Blair Associates, was active in the gulf states of Abu Dhabi, Qatar and Kuwait (where his contract is worth a reported £27million). It was deeply unfortunate that his firm worked for the dictator of oil and gas rich Kazakhstan, shortly before he won an election with a dubious 95 per cent of the vote and then his police shot dead 15 striking oil workers.
And so, what of the peace being brokered by Blair, who, l i ke t he Richard Wagner’s Flying Dutchman, was doomed to wander the seas?
Not only has there been little progress over the last eight years, but now the peace ‘ process’ has ground to a halt.
As well as Iraq being occupied by a group of murderous religious zealots, there is a vicious civil war in Yemen that threatens to escalate into a larger Iran-Saudi Arabian conflict. And, of course, in Libya, where, as PM, Blair enjoyed a fawning relationship with the country’s tyrant leader Colonel Gaddafi. Following the dictator’s fall, Libya has imploded, becoming an open exit door for millions of Arab and African migrants to seek a new life in Europe across the Mediterranean.
Blair’s answer to this growing crisis? In recent years, he became increasingly delusional – for example urging the West to blast President Assad’s Syria to smithereens.
Now, though, Blair can stop worrying about the Middle East – unless what happens there damages Moneybags’s next money-making venture. For issues of conscience don’t seem to bother a man of such self-righteousness.