8 Jun, 2015 14:56

‘G7 countries completely destabilized Middle East region’

There is huge irony at the G7 summit: those picnicking on sausages, pretzels and beer today, earlier created a military, political and social vacuum and destabilized the whole Middle East region, says political and social commentator Mo Ansar.

Today the G7 leaders are discussing the main security challenges their countries face. Some of the countries have been victims to terrorist attacks over the last 6 months. US, UK and Japanese have become victims of Islamic State beheadings. The inflow of illegal migrants from North Africa and Syria to the EU is rising. However these are the problems created in some way by the G7 countries that at least approved the bombing campaigns in Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, Syria and Yemen.

RT:Several G7 countries played a significant role as places like Iraq and Syria crumbled - countries they consider the main extremist threat is coming from. How do you think they will deal with this situation?

Mo Ansar: What we’ve seen is a huge great irony. On the one hand we’ve seen the beautiful Bavarian summer welcome the G7 leaders and people like Iraqi ministers there. And while Obama jokes about lederhosen and Merkel and the others are picnicking on sausages, pretzels and beer, the discussion has been somewhat gloomier.

At the end of the day, these are the countries that have completely destabilized the region. They decided a bombing campaign in battle-torn Iraq would be the best solution of course… What we’ve seen them do is create a military, a political and a social - and more importantly - an ideological vacuum in Iraq and Syria which everybody with a sensible head said would be taken up by the extremists. And that’s exactly what we’ve seen. I’m not sure these nations are looking to do anything other than continue the conflicts.

RT:France's Foreign Minister says the EU needs Russia in the fight against Islamic State. But Russia is not invited to the G7 table. How might that affect any anti-terror planning?

MA: We’ve seen world leaders, like Blair, Obama, the former head of NATO, Rasmussen, continuing to extol the virtues of NATO and Western European alliances and the Anglo-American alliance. And meanwhile, we’ve seen them continue to ratchet up tension against Russia over Ukraine while arguably and demonstrably it’s been the West, the US, the NATO who is looking to destabilize the region and provoke Russia into a conflict.

RT:One of the protesters' campaigns is an appeal to 'Be more than hot air'. Do you believe the G7 have the will or ability to change the world for the better, or is this gathering going to be just more bluster?

MA: I think people around the world and electorates are right to be skeptical. We’ve seen over the last decade or so people talking about the one percent and the 99 percent. Ultimately, if we want to talk about counter-radicalization, counter-extremism, and counter-terrorism policies, if we want to look at returning stability on the geopolitical stage, those things are going to be led politically and they cannot be led without a strong and an independent Russia being there.

Whilst the West continues to attack Russia, whilst people have become across the world completely disenfranchised and disillusioned by the work of our politicians, I’m not sure we’re going to see any real steps taken there. It was interesting to hear Obama say that he sees the strategic priorities being: Russia, Ukraine, and then tackling ISIS.