Field
Marshal Asim Munir, Pakistani Chief of Army Staff and Chief of Defence Staff
According
to Pepe Escobar, a Brazilian journalist and geostrategist who is based in East
Asia, Mossad, the foreign intelligence service of Israel, recently plotted to
assassinate Pakistan's Army Chief Field Marshal Asim Munir in Switzerland for
his role in brokering talks between the United States and Iran. However, while
it is difficult to ascertain the veracity of this claim, it is worth noting
that Zionism has a record of plotting and carrying out the assassinations of
statesmen who act against its perceived interests.
For
instance, the Zionist Stern gang of pre-Israel Palestine assassinated Lord
Moyne and Count Folke Bernadotte respectively in 1944 and 1948. Moyne was the
Middle East Envoy for Britain and Bernadotte was a UN Peace Mediator. The
former was gunned down in Cairo, while the latter suffered a similar fate
during an ambush in Jerusalem.
And
various British political and military
leaders were threatened with death through a letter bombing campaign by the
terrorist organisation Lehi, known to the British authorities as the Stern Gang.
The targets included Prime Minister Clement Atlee, Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery,
then the Chief of the Imperial General Staff, and even Sir Winston Churchill.
The
letter bombs were reportedly intercepted in the Italian city of Genoa.
The
threats extended to the British royal family. In 1946, extra security
precautions were taken to protect King George VI because of threats of Zionist
violence aimed at the state opening of Parliament. This followed a boast by a
leader of the Irgun, the larger organisation from which Lehi had split, that it
would “attack London’s heart and even Buckingham Palace itself.” In a front
page article of its June 8th, 1947 edition, the Australian newspaper
The Truth stated that the “"arrogant boasting of Jewish terrorists
and their cowardly threats, particularly that Princess Elizabeth, have
disgusted the world."
Ezer
Weizman, a future Major General who would become the commander of the Israeli
Air Force, joined a cell of the Zionist terror group Irgun to plot the
assassination of General Evelyn Barker, the head of Britain's military in
Palestine, by placing a mine on a road outside his home in England. However, the
group gave up the plan after arousing the suspicions of Scotland Yard.
Interestingly,
John Gunther Dean, a U.S. Ambassador to India in the 1980s alleged that the
MOSSAD had assassinated General Zia ul-Haq, the military ruler of Pakistan. Zia
died in a plane crash in 1988. Dean, who provided no evidence of this, based
his assumption on the fact that Israel did not want Pakistan to obtain a
nuclear weapon. He was censored by the U.S. State Department and forced to
retire on the grounds that he was "mentally unbalanced".
A
German Jew by heritage, Dean was targeted in a failed
assassination by Israel in 1980 while he was serving as the U.S. Ambassador
to Lebanon. Responsibility for the rocket attack on his motorcade in Beirut was
claimed by the FLLF (The Front for the Liberation of Lebanon from Foreigners),
a phantom terror group formed and directed by the Northern Command of the IDF. Dean was able to trace the source of the
projectiles that targeted him to a shipment of arms in 1974 from the United
States to Israel. However, his findings were never officially investigated,
although he was officially rehabilitated.
The
rationale for an Israeli orchestrated assassination of Field Marshal Munir would
be consistent with previous assassinations conducted by Zionist terror militias
and later by the Israeli state on those seeking peaceful compromise. Count
Bernadotte’s murder arose from his belief that the Palestinian people were entitled
to the right of return, while Dean was targeted for his suggestion that Israel
should abandon its heavy-handed approach and enter into peace talks with the
Palestinian Liberation Organisation. The targeting in more recent times of
peace negotiators of Hamas and the Iranian state testify to a longstanding
policy embedded in the mentality of Zionists.
Lieutenant
Colonel Benjamin Adekunle, the General Officer Commanding the Federal Third Infantry
Division & the Officer Commanding Land Forces (left) and Commander James
Rawe, the Forward Control Officer of naval forces on the bridge of Rawe’s
vessel NNS Penelope during the amphibious attack on Oron, March 1968. (Credit:
Photo archive of the late Captain James Rawe).
A
post titled "The Liberation of Calabar, 1967" by a Facebook group
named "Ibibio History" reminds me that I urgently need to complete my
research project on all Nigerian Navy orchestrated landings during the civil
war. Several errors of fact and improbable analyses stimulated me to make the
following comments and observations.
These
are the thoughts I jotted down soon after encountering the post:
1.
The AI depiction of NNS Nigeria -a frigate- as a tiny patrol boat is a
bit of an eyesore. Nigeria was 314 feet and possessed an array of gun
armament vastly more than what a patrol boat would have.
2.
The date of "14th, September 1967" in the image should have been
removed as the combined operation occurred in October 1967.
3.
Benjamin Adekunle, the General Officer Commanding the Federal Third Infantry
Division, was a Lieutenant Colonel at the time - not yet a Brigadier or a
Colonel as the text later states.
4.
The text neglected to inform the reader how Major Anthony Ochefu, who the narrative initially
states was on NNS Nigeria, later "disembarked from (NNS) Lokoja."
5.
While Major Ochefu was on NNS Lokoja and successfully fought from a
landing site and captured key territory in Calabar, the narrative -even if
intended to be brief- ought to give an indication of how extremely tough it was
for the Federal troops.
For
one, the landing site was on lowland while the Biafran forces had taken up
defensive positions on highland. Calabar is situated on high ground overlooking
the Cross River. This meant that Ochefu and his troops were pinned down on the
landing vessel Lokoja and could not open its heavy steel bow door for a
considerable period because of the sheer volume of bullets smashing into the
metallic structure of Lokoja.
The
Federal side lost a lot of troops as they established a beachhead and slowly inched
their way up the hilly terrain.
6.
So, the sentence "small Biafran resistance was quickly overwhelmed"
is an untrue portrayal of what went down. The Federal commanders of the navy
and army expected the secessionist side to put up a spirited fight to preserve
their last port. The operation was not as easy as both landing accomplished
earlier at Bonny in July 1967 and at Sapele, Warri and Koko in September 1967.
At
Bonny overconfidence on the part of the Biafran leadership that the Nigerian
Navy was incapable of staging a landing because of the internal sabotage
carried out by defecting naval personnel of Eastern region origin at the Apapa
base, and by the thinking that the Nigerian Navy lacked the smarts to
orchestrate an amphibious landing led to a state of gross underpreparedness.
The
Biafrans failed to shift buoys at the entrance to the Bonny River which could
have directed Federal naval navigators towards shallow waters where thier ships would have run aground. They failed to set up watchtowers, plant incendiaries in the river and
station a garrison of appropriate strength to confront a potential invading
force. They even failed to anticipate an invasion by keeping daily tabs on the
rise and fall of the tide.
So
far as Warri, Sapele and Koko is concerned, the Nigerian Navy vessels were
extremely vulnerable to attacks while navigating the narrow rivers which were
too shallow for NNS Nigeria to participate. The Nigerian ships and
barges carrying soldiers of the Third Infantry Division would have been sitting
ducks for an organised ambush involving rocket-propelled grenades and
artillery.
But
things were different for the Calabar landing.
The
Biafran troops were well prepared. They laid Ogbunigwe bombs in
uncharted rivers they correctly anticipated some Nigerian Navy vessels would
use en route to attacking Calabar. They placed bombs on jetties, and they also
placed tape recorders with sounds of gunfire amplified by loudspeakers on trees
and other vantage points. The aim was to confuse the Federal soldiers as to
where gunfire was coming from.
7.
Another impediment to the Nigerian operation were an assortment of 105mm guns which the secessionist side fired from Oron, a town which is almost opposite to
Calabar on the other side of the Cross River estuary. Lt. COL. Adekunle had
wanted the operation to involve capturing both Calabar and Oron. But Commander James Rawe, the architect of the landing, successfully argued that the Federal
side would be better off focusing on Calabar so as not split up naval and army
resources. Rawe was aware of the "guns of Oron”, but it was a necessary
risk for naval and merchant vessels to run the gauntlet to secure the more
important target of Calabar.
Oron
was captured in the final amphibious operation six months later in March 1968.
8.
The conclusion is overblown.
The
poster writes: "This decisive operation marked a turning point in the
Nigerian Civil War, demonstrating the effectiveness of joint naval and ground
forces in reclaiming strategic territory."
Each
amphibious operation prior to the Calabar landing was incrementally important
in achieving the objective of creating a southern front and setting the scene
of the ultimate encirclement of secessionist Biafra.
.
Capturing Bonny town and securing the mouth of the Bonny River was important in
ensuring that the secessionist side would not control the production and export oil.
.
Capturing Warri, Koko and Sapele ensured that the Biafran side had no sea
outlet through the Mid-West after the Biafran attack on the Mid-West in August
1967. It also played a part in ensuring the recapture of the Mid-West by the
Third Infantry Division in combination with the Second Infantry Division which
was led by Lieutenant Colonel Murtala Muhammed.
It
should also be noted that the Nigerian Navy made an unopposed landing at
Forcados in August 1967 soon after the Mid-West invasion.
.
Capturing Calabar ensured that the Federal side could begin gaining territory
in a northward direction while completing the task of sealing off the border
with Cameroon.
I
hope to complete or write the bulk of what should be an 8,000 to 10,000-word
scholarly article over the coming summer months.
Adeyinka
Makinde is a writer based in London, England. His late father was a Nigerian
Navy officer, and he has presented lectures to naval officers and other
officers of the armed forces on the Naval Warfare Course run by the Naval War
College Nigeria.
First,
for all its glory-laden history of ruling the waves, it became apparent to all
after World War 2 and particularly after Suez that Britain was finished as a
global military power. And with the decolonisation of empire in Africa and
Asia, it was clear that the size and reach of the Royal Navy would have to be
reduced.
Secondly,
the ending of the ideological Cold War with the USSR ought to have further
curtailed the size a British maritime force. NATO should have been disbanded
and a new security architecture established on continental Europe which would
have involved Russia.
The
problem is that Britain has hung onto the coattails of the United States which
succeeded it as a world power. This has meant regular involvement in military
endeavours engineered by the United States, a situation that gives Britain's
political, military and intelligence leaders the false impression of been still
relevant in shaping a global dominium.
Felton
mentions in the style of a pub debate that if Britain had a Falklands-type
crisis, it would not be able to reclaim the islands.
But
he forgets to mention that had Margaret Thatcher's proposed cuts to the Royal
Navy gone through (she sacked her Navy Minister Keith Speed who opposed them)
Britain would not have been able to have mounted a task force in 1982.
Importantly,
Felton assumes that a large Royal Navy would be able to cope with any and every
type of Falklands-type emergency.Does
he think that the Royal Navy could have kept Hong Kong as a British colony if
Britain had refused to cede it to China in the 1990s?
He
also refuses to contend with developments in maritime warfare. The
Russia-Ukraine War and recent conflicts in the Red Sea and Persian Gulf have
exposed the limitations of naval vessels including the vulnerability of
aircraft carriers to shore-based ballistic missile and drone attacks.
The
Royal Navy in combination with other NATO and non-NATO navies led by the U.S.
Navy failed in the attempt to open up the Red Sea during continuous operations
under the Biden and Trump administrations. And the U.S. Navy has discovered
that it is incapable of opening the Strait of Hormuz given Iran's capability of
sinking any and all U.S. vessels if they pressed the issue.
And
while not all will go so far as to rule out aircraft carriers as obsolete in a
similar vein to the those who argue that tanks are, Felton should be aware of
the problems associated with developing new generation naval vessels. Just as
the U.S. military have had issues in developing the F35 fighter jet, the U.S.
Navy has admitted the failure of the development of the Zumwalt-class of naval
destroyers.
Given
these facts, why on earth would Felton propose that the Royal Navy can only be
effective with a multitude of frigates, destroyers and carriers?
A
more purposeful critique would have been to acknowledge the diminution of
Britain's world power status and the non-efficacy of maintaining a large global
naval force. He could have framed his argument by expounding on what a
repurposed British naval Force would look like.
This
would have encompassed the role that would need to be played by manned and
unmanned drones including those with an underwater role. Submarine warfare
remains a crucial aspect of waging modern wars and any cuts in this area should
be validly scrutinised.
A
correct means of addressing reforms to the naval service would be to calibrate
what quantities of equipment and manpower should be deployed for defensive and
offensive capabilities.
So
far as manpower is concerned Felton's focus on advertisements featuring females
and persons from non-white backgrounds points to a lazy but effective way of
rousing nationalistic sentiment and positioning the dire state of the armed
forces in the context of the culture wars. Felton makes the subtle but
unmistakable proposition that the navy has become mired in so-called "woke"
culture and is seeking to recruit "wogs" and "girlies" at
the expense of white males.
His
assertion that the army, although facing much the same problems as the navy, is
better off because it has recruited more soldiers of Gurkha and Fijian heritage
is a devious attempt at deflecting from the racialist undertone by invoking two
longstanding sources of loyal non-white manpower. What goes unsaid is the
unequal treatment both groups have been subjected to. Over twenty years ago
veteran Gurkhas took the British government to court in a racial discrimination
suit over their pensions, pay and conditions.
But
Felton fails to consider the reasons why young white working-class males no
longer have the urge to pursue a career in the military. As in the United
States there are issues related to the general physical conditioning,
competitive remuneration in the private sector, the physical demands of
military service and different attitudes held by the younger generation to
military service. Yet another challenge to recruitment which will become more
pronounced in the non-so-distant future is that of falling birth rates which is
shrinking the pool of potential recruits.
Britons who are well-versed in the maritime history of their nation unsurprisingly and understandably think of the Roya Navy - the Senior Service- as the heroic figures who
sank The Bismarck, whose plucky light cruisers backed up The Admiral
Graff Spee in the Battle of the River Plate, who went toe-to-toe with the
High Seas Fleet at Jutland and with imperious Nelsonian pride swiftly avenged
their defeat at the Coronel by destroying a German squadron during the Battle
of the Falklands. The British navy also played a decisive role in suppressing the transatlantic slave trade.
But of course, the Royal Navy had its dark side, subduing -in
the service of empire- a multitude of sovereign African and Asian city states
and kingdoms. It also served as the instrument for conducting gunboat diplomacy by, for instance, assuming the role of a debt-collecting Leviathan
Sea monster in the Don Pacifico Affair and by launching a series of amphibious assaults and blockades in the course of forcibly opening trade with China during the Opium Wars. Also, prior to 1807, the Royal Navy protected Britain's slave-based sugar economy by escorting slave ships and directly enslaving Africans who worked as labourers at dockyards on islands such as Jamaica and pressganging people into military service.
And notwithstanding the navy's laudible efforts in combating the drug trade on the high seas, its contemporary role alongside other branches of the British armed forces is
often mired by their supporting act to the hegemonic adventures of the U.S.
empire, endeavours in relation to which Britain has given diplomatic cover to American-instigated
conflicts which do not stand the test of morality and which consistently breach the strict application of international law.
The
question Felton does not address is precisely what an imperial-sized Royal Navy
would be doing in this age? Provoking Russia in the Baltic and Black Seas? Or
China in the Strait of Malacca? And does he envisage the Royal Navy follow the
same path as the U.S. Navy which itself has been repurposed as a piratical
maritime force which extrajudicially kills the occupants of speedboats far from
its national jurisdiction, enforces illegal blockades aimed at stealing the
natural resources of other nations such as Venezuela, as well as conducting medieval
like sieges with the objective of starving countries such as Cuba into
submission?
I
certainly believe Felton to be highly selective in terms of the information he
has deployed on this latest critique of the Royal Navy and would go as far as
to accuse him of sensationalism and even intellectual dishonesty.
Adeyinka
Makinde is a writer based in London, England. His late father was a Nigerian
Navy officer, and he has presented lectures to naval officers and other
officers of the armed forces on the Naval Warfare Course run by the Naval War
College Nigeria.
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