LAST Friday at the Oxford Union, Natalia Narochnitskaya, a Russian academic working in a Paris-based think tank, was “interviewed” by Mehdi Hasan of Al Jezeera.

It was an unedifying sight watching Hasan, interrupting and shouting at a 67-year-old woman; all the more so as she had a stark warning: impending catastrophe in the entire Middle East.

By contrast, Hasan criticised Russia for condemning the Western invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq while now intervening in Syria to prop up Assad.

This is, in fact, a continuation of traditional Soviet policy of backing nationalist regimes like Saddam Hussein’s Iraq and Syria’s Baath Party. It has had the effect of paralysing local working-class organisations and communist parties over many decades.

It has led indirectly to the growth of fundamentalist parties in the region, in the case of the Taliban, sponsored initially by the West.

That said, it is not the policy of the strong-armed gangster.

That role belongs to Britain and USA, meddling in the region for a century – with dire consequences since 2003 – in order to safeguard their oil interests. Hasan did not mention this.

In the circumstances, for Hasan to play to the Oxford Union’s jeering Hooray Henrys was a cad’s act. Refusing to engage in debate about the role of imperialism in the Middle East is also poor training for those present who came to learn.

ISIL is blowback from the Iraq invasion.

As Cameron and co make their plans to crush the so-called Caliphate, we should be aware that they risk destabilising the entire region. The current refugee crisis will seem like a school outing compared to the waves that could follow.

JONATHAN SAUNDERS
Ramsay Road
Headington