Blowback: The Road to Manchester
Directed by Mark Curtis and Phil Miller
(Declassified UK)

NOTING “the traditional media have never covered British foreign policy accurately,” Mark Curtis has explained he co-founded Declassified UK with Matt Kennard to “provide public service journalism … to inform the British public what is being done in their name.”

Since it was set up in 2019, the investigative news website’s three staff journalists have arguably published more critical reporting of UK foreign affairs than the rest of the British media combined. And somewhat fittingly, with the admirable exception of the Morning Star, the British media have all but ignored Declassified UK’s output.

For example, while the 2011 UK-Nato intervention in Libya has been largely forgotten by the British commentariat, Declassified UK has repeatedly exposed Britain’s nefarious interference in the North African nation.

Presented by Curtis, this quietly incendiary 72-minute documentary brings together their work on the topic, concluding that the May 22 2017 Manchester Arena terrorist attack “was partly the result of blowback from decades of UK intervention in Libya.”

Highlighting the eternal relevance of Lord Palmerston’s dictum that nations “don’t have perpetual enemies, only eternal interests,” the film runs through the West’s changing relations with Libyan head of state Muammar Gadaffi over the decades.

In the ’80s and ’90s he supported international terrorism and was Public Enemy No1, with MI6 allegedly carrying out a failed plot to assassinate the Libyan leader in 1996. Then came the 2004 “deal in the desert” between UK prime minister Tony Blair and Gadaffi, which led to Libya becoming a partner in the so-called War on Terror, before Britain worked to overthrow him during the Arab Spring uprising in 2011.

It is worth quoting the damning 2016 foreign affairs committee report into the UK-Nato military intervention in Libya: “The government failed to identify that the threat to civilians was overstated and that the rebels included a significant Islamist element,” the committee concluded.

Furthermore, the West’s “opportunistic policy of regime change” led to “political and economic collapse, inter-militia and inter-tribal warfare, humanitarian and migrant crises, widespread human rights violations, the spread of Gadaffi regime weapons across the region and the growth of Isil in North Africa.”

Salman Abedi, the British Muslim of Libyan ancestry whose suicide bomb killed 22 people in Manchester, travelled with his father to Libya in 2011 when he was just 16. Declassified UK believe he likely trained with the February 17 Martyrs Brigade, an Islamist militia fighting the Libyan government, and became radicalised during this period.

As Curtis points out: “it was a war where the British military were ... fighting on the same side as the Abedis.”

Indeed, having interviewed several former rebel fighters now back inBritain, in 2018 Middle East Eye explained the “British government operated an ‘open door’ policy that allowed Libyan exiles and British-Libyan citizens to join the 2011 uprising.”

Amazingly, in 2014 Salman Abedi was evacuated from the ongoing fighting in Libya on the Royal Navy’s HMS Enterprise.

Speaking at the public inquiry into the Manchester bombing, Abdal Raouf Abdullah, a close friend of Abedi’s, testified that he, Abdullah, received basic weapons training from Nato in Libya during the war.

Other shameful footage from the inquiry shows Detective Chief Superintendent Dominic Scally from counterterrorism policing north-west stonewalling questions about links between Abedi and the British security apparatus.

Andrew Roussos, whose eight-year old daughter Saffie-Rose was murdered by Abedi, is less circumspect, arguing the “security services and government have blood on their hands.”
 
There are certainly lots of unanswered questions about the British state’s role in Libya and relationship with Abedi and his family and acquaintances.

Of course, one way to smoke out the truth would be for the mainstream media to devote some serious journalists, time and resources to the story.

I’m not holding my breath.

Blowback: The Road to Manchester can be viewed for free at declassifieduk.org.