BY RICHARD KEMP AND DAVID DEPTULA

Article published in the Miami Herald, 12 March 2016.

Arguing for the authorization of airstrikes on Syria in the British House of Commons recently, British Shadow Foreign Secretary Hilary Benn — a life-long campaigner against war — noted succinctly that we know this about Islamic State: They are fascists, and we have to defeat them.

Experience makes plain that when terrorist movements control territory where they can organize and train, the threat increases exponentially. The United States, the United Kingdom and our coalition partners must intensify our anemic action to destroy the Islamic State.

Coalition airstrikes alone will not defeat the Islamic State, nor end Syria’s brutal civil war. Ground forces will be necessary to take back and hold territory in urban centers in Syria and Iraq. We cannot predict the ultimate makeup of such forces. But we can be certain that they will face an unconventional enemy that will act with utmost brutality and pay no heed to the rules of warfare.

This is the fundamental challenge our democracies face.

We are confronted by ruthless Islamist death cults that pervert the rules of war to achieve victory and have no respect for basic humanity.

Military planners know from conflicts in Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia and elsewhere that terrorist organizations use a form of hybrid warfare combining terror with more traditional structures found in armed forces to even the odds against technologically superior forces reluctant to risk civilian casualties. Headquarters are placed around, or even within, schools and hospitals. Civilians are prevented from leaving conflict zones. Combatants deliberately dress in civilian clothes, and embed fighting units in homes. Islamic State uses these tactics to slaughter innocent civilians and commit savage acts to increase human suffering in flagrant violation of any moral code.

Rooted in democracies that promote the rule of law, our own militaries will never abandon the values that define us. Continue reading →

ALL THE arguments in favour of leaving the EU, defence and security are the most clear cut.

Article published in The Sunday Express, 28 February 2016. © Richard Kemp

There is no benefit in staying in the EU and national security would be strengthened if we left. Most EU members’ lack of commitment to defence is shown by their spending. No other EU state equals the amount the UK commits in absolute terms, or as a percentage of GDP. Other than Britain and France, no major EU military power comes close to meeting the two per cent of GDP membership of Nato requires.

Germany, most vocal in demanding Britain stays, spends a mere 1.1 per cent. Nato is our main military alliance, not the EU. Any EU army, an inevitable development of ever-closer union, would weaken our defences, drawing commitment away from Nato and costing vast sums of taxpayers’ cash. There would be shiny new headquarters, flags and generals, but an EU army could never become a serious deterrent or fighting force.

The rise of Islamic State presents a grave security challenge to us at home. The most important weapon in the fight against terrorism is intelligence. But there can be no viable EU intelligence-sharing mechanism. All sharing of sensitive information is bilateral, between individual states. Our most important intelligence partner is not any EU state but the US. Continue reading →

Up to 5,000 terrorists trained by Islamic State are now back in Europe, with the right to come to Britain

Article published in The Times, 22 February 2016. © Richard Kemp

According to David Cameron and Theresa May, Britain is safer from terrorism inside the EU than out. The Islamic State terrorist attack that killed 130 people in Paris in November — the deadliest in Europe since 2004 — proves them wrong.

Not only was there a catastrophic failure in intelligence sharing between France and Belgium, but the terrorists were able to travel unchecked from Belgium into France precisely because both countries are members of the EU.

The single most important element in preventing attacks is intelligence. Intelligence must be protected and that is why sharing of significant and sensitive intelligence is bilateral between individual states. It is not done through the EU or any other collective mechanisms that would lead to compromise.

These critical bilateral relationships would persist regardless of being in or out of the EU. Our closest intelligence relationship by far is not with any EU member state but with the US.

Nor would Brexit undermine any other area of security co-operation between us and EU member states or central organisations. It is absurd to suggest that the EU would deliberately put its citizens, or ours, at greater risk by reducing co-operation.

Rob Wainwright, chief of Europol, the EU police agency, said last week that up to 5,000 terrorists trained by Islamic State in the Middle East are now back in Europe. This is certain to be a gross underestimate and anyway these numbers will grow. Many are experienced killers. While we remain in the EU these terrorists have the right to come freely into our country. Continue reading →

Article published by the Gatestone Institute, 16 February 2016.

by Richard Kemp and Jasper Reid

• The UN’s assertion that the Saudi-led coalition has committed war crimes in Yemen is unlikely to be true. UN experts have not been to Yemen, depending instead on hearsay evidence and analysis of photographs.
• The UN has a pattern of unsubstantiated allegations of war crimes against the armed forces of sovereign states. Without any military expertise, and never having visited Gaza, a UN commission convicted the Israel Defense Force of deliberately targeting Palestinian civilians in the 2014 conflict. It was an assessment roundly rejected by America’s most senior military officer, General Martin Dempsey, and an independent commission.
• The Houthis have learned many lessons from Hamas and Islamic Jihad in Gaza, groups also supported by Iran. Those lessons include the falsification of civilian casualty figures and their causes. The UN swallowed the fake Gaza figures hook, line and sinker, and are now making the same error in Yemen.
• The Houthis exploit gullible or compliant reporters and human rights groups to facilitate their propaganda, including false testimony and fabrication of imagery.
• Forensic analysis shows that rather than deliberately targeting civilians, the Saudis and their allies have taken remarkable steps to minimize civilian casualties.

The United Nations, Amnesty International and other groups have accused the Saudi-led coalition of war crimes in Yemen. A leaked UN report claims the bombing campaign against Iranian-supported Houthi insurgents seeking violently to topple the legitimate government of Yemen has conducted deliberate, widespread and systematic attacks on civilian targets.

Continue reading →

Article published in The Times, 9 February 2016. © Richard Kemp

Following a leaked UN report alleging war crimes by the Saudi-led coalition against civilians in Yemen, there have been calls, including by Jeremy Corbyn, for Britain to cease supplying military equipment and to withdraw our military advisers.

The Saudis are not fighting this war as we would. That is true also of the Afghan, Iraqi, Libyan, Malian and Nigerian forces that we have trained, armed, funded, advised and fought alongside. I knew an Iraqi military unit whose immediate action under attack was to form the “death bloom”, spraying rapid fire in every direction at anything that moved.

In fighting the global war on terrorism, our preferred policy is to support and advise the indigenous forces of countries where violent jihad is taking a hold in a way that threatens our interests and those of our allies. This is preferable to deploying our own combat forces to deal directly with the problem, especially in the wake of long and costly campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Such support, sometimes including military trainers and advisers in headquarters or at the front, not only helps to defeat the threat but also buys vital political influence.

We do all that we can to induce the local forces to fight according to the laws of armed conflict. But we cannot always dictate to them and if we were to make our support for them conditional on them fighting exactly as we do, then this policy would cease to exist and we would either have to accept the growing threats against us or send in our own troops. Of course we do have red lines, and our forces cannot actively participate in operations that breach the laws of armed conflict. Continue reading →

The Yellow Star is the account by S B Unsdorfer of his experiences in Auschwitz and Buchenwald, originally published in 1961. Richard Kemp wrote this foreword to the recently re-published book at the request of the author’s son, Zalmi Unsdorfer.

I am writing these words in a dark and malignant wooden hut at Auschwitz-Birkenau, seated on what the author of this book describes as “a hollow brick ledge running down the centre of the block from one end to the other”. A ledge like the one upon which Doctor Josef Mengele stood unmoved amidst scenes of heartless brutality, blood, screaming and despair as he made his ruthless selection on the day Simche Unsdorfer and his family were brought into this place.

Simche Unsdorfer, pale, skinny and with glasses that seemed bigger than his face, was 19 years old when he was transported by cattle car to this vast death camp. He has been an inspiration to me for forty years and during many military campaigns since the day I first opened his heart-rending account of extraordinary courage in the face of unexampled savagery. Continue reading →