Atrocity Fabrication and Its Consequences

by AB Abrams

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Atrocity Fabrication and Its Consequences

propagating false information such as Radio Free Asia were relied on particularly heavily as sources. Targeting audiences across the world in multiple languages, China was also portrayed as a threat to their countries or regions including as a “financial imperialist.” The Stanford study observed:

These accounts – a fake persona and sham media outlet – mainly focused on the genocide of Uighurs and Muslim minorities in 're-education' camps in Xinjiang. Posts described alleged organ trafficking, forced labour, sexual crimes against Muslim women, and suspicious disappearances of ethnic Muslims in Xinjiang. The assets also posted about the Chinese Communist Party's poor treatment of women in the country and often framed these stories around news about domestic violence.

Propagating false Xinjiang narratives among Muslim populations had very significant potential benefits for Western interests. While no governments in Muslim-majority countries appeared swayed by the Western campaign, turning public opinion within their borders could place pressure on these governments to downgrade ties with and condemn China – complementing the external pressure coming from Western countries to do so. This would be a valuable boon to Western economic warfare efforts against Beijing, to efforts to derail B.R.I, and to overall strategic competition.

Portraying China as the world's most egregious oppressor of Muslims to turn Muslim opinion had the potential to empower Islamist extremist groups that sought to wage war on China. As the Jamestown Foundation reported in 2019, reports of persecution “continue to give enough fodder for jihadist groups such as al-Qaeda and Islamic State I.S to raise their virtual jihadist campaigns against China and its interests abroad.” Senior analyst with Singapore's International Centre for Political Violence and Terrorism Research, Mohammed Sinan Siyech, noted to similar effect that “jihadists are seizing on Beijing's suppression of Uyghurs in Xinjiang … in an effort to find a new villain to help justify their existence,” highlighting that the Xinjiang narrative “can be exploited by terrorist groups to recruit individuals.” This fuelled predictions that Islamist attacks on Chinese overseas interests could rise considerably, with businesses, overseas communities and infrastructure projects all being potential targets. Terror attacks against Chinese interests could be seen in the early 2020s from Pakistan to Indonesia and beyond.

A notable example of how Islamic extremists could be influenced by Western content to see China as the new enemy of Islam was the overseas Uyghur Islamist social media influencer Arslan Hidayat, who had close ties with anti-Beijing radical groups and resolved on Twitter “to be a better extremist and separatist.” Hidayat supported calls for ethnic cleansing of non-Uyghurs in Xinjiang, and conceded multiple times during interviews that his view of Xinjiang was very largely shaped by Western internet content including social media, Adrian Zenz and Radio Free Asia. Other prominent anti-Beijing Muslim and Uyghur figures, including World Uyghur Congress chairman Omer Kanat himself, consistently stated that they relied on “Western media estimates” when making various extreme claims of Chinese misconduct.

A further major benefit of fabricating the Xinjiang narrative, and particularly allegations of Uyghur concentration camp victims being used as slave workers, was to provide a pretext for restrictions on trade with China. These Western claims emerged from December 2018, with the Australian government-funded A.S.P.I, various U.S. government-funded groups, and many of the anti-Beijing activists that worked for them, being the sole sources. As bifurcation of the American and Chinese economies became a central goal in Washington, the U.S. increasingly cited alleged forced labour in Xinjiang from 2020 as a pretext to escalate this, leading it to be seen by several analysts as a new pretext for economic protectionism. While America's arbitrary restrictions on Chinese imports had been ruled to be in violation of the World Trade Organisation's terms, its claims of human rights abuses could be used to justify its escalated economic warfare efforts while avoiding being seen to do so for geopolitical or economic reasons. This allowed trade restrictions and other more serious economic warfare measures to be portrayed as altruistic, moral and humanitarian.

After it was approved by the Senate and passed in the House on May 14 and 27 respectively, the Uyghur Human Rights Policy Act was signed into law by President Donald Trump on June 17, 2020. It stipulated that sanctions be imposed both on Chinese individuals alleged to be responsible for humanitarian abuses and on their relatives. In July 14 Chinese firms were sanctioned on the basis that they were “implicated in human rights violations and abuses in the implementation of China's campaign of repression, mass detention and surveillance.” A further five were sanctioned for their ties to China's military, and four more for doing business with other firms that had already been sanctioned. The measures were framed by Washington as: “taking strong, decisive action to target entities that are enabling human rights abuses in Xinjiang or that use U.S. technology to fuel China's destabilising military modernisation efforts.”

The U.S. Departments of Treasury and Commerce both issued sanctions on private companies, individuals and quasi-government agencies in Xinjiang, including on the sprawling Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps on July 31, 2020. Eleven firms “implicated in human rights violations and abuses in the implementation” were added to the Commerce Department's Entity List, restricting them from doing business with U.S. firms. On September 14 the U.S. Customs and Border Protection Agency issued Withhold Release Orders (W.R.O) banning cotton, apparel, hair products and computer parts from four Xinjiang firms. This appeared to be just a small taste of what was to come, with commissioner Mark Morgan telling reporters he was “absolutely confident they're not going to be the last” W.R.O orders targeting Chinese products. Eighty-five percent of China's cotton was produced in Xinjiang, and U.S. annual textile imports from China were valued at $50 billion in 2019. Deputy Secretary at the Department of Homeland Security Kenneth Cuccinelli said these trade restrictions were “combating illegal and inhumane forced labour, a type of modern slavery,” slamming China for holding Uyghurs in “concentration camps.” He added that restrictions would also advantage American workers.

September also saw the House of Representatives pass the Uyghur Forced Labour Prevention Act stipulating that American law should presume that any goods produced either wholly or in part in Xinjiang were produced using forced labour and treated accordingly unless the U.S. government could certify with “clear and convincing” evidence that they were not. This essentially presumed the guilt of all producers linked to Xinjiang. The Act also directed the administration to formally determine whether alleged forced labour in Xinjiang constituted crimes against humanity. Representative Tom Suozzi was one of many who called for measures to support the cotton industries of U.S.-aligned Latin American states as a means to decouple from China's cotton industry.

Others, such as the legislation's author Representative Jim McGovern, called for measures to be taken much further. It was only a wave of lobbying efforts from major American corporations and trade associations, which were concerned about its impact on their supply chains, that stopped the legislation. This represented one of several cases where private sector interests aligned with China against geopolitically or ideologically motivated government actions against it. Despite this setback, the bill was reintroduced in 2021 and passed in July that year.

Much more effectively than declaring a Trade War, the Trump and Biden administrations instead waged a 'humanitarian economic war' under which almost any Chinese firm could be deemed complicit in humanitarian abuses and targeted, as the complexity of supply chains meant a great many products could trace at least some inputs to Xinjiang. ^{xxi} In June, amid deepening concerns regarding the growing advantages of China's tech sector over its Western rivals, President Biden said China's use of technology “facilitates repression or serious human rights abuses,” and by executive order banned Americans from investing in firms that could support surveillance efforts. The administration added several firms connected to China's solar power industry that month – again without evidence of any malpractice.

On June 24, 2021, trade bans on five Chinese entities over forced labour allegations were imposed citing joint G.7 goals to “clean up” supply chains primarily by purging Chinese inputs. Industries affected such as A.I, solar energy and electronics, had been targeted by the U.S. for some time, some for almost a decade, with claims of human rights abuses providing a pre-text to bypass norms of international trade including W.T.O rules. Almost any area of China's economy could be alleged to be using forced labour from Xinjiang if Washington sought to suppress it. As progress in China's semiconductor industry was seen as a major challenge to key Western strategic interests, allegations surfaced in December 2021 that Uyghur forced labour was used in its supply chains. As Chinese electric vehicles were beginning to gain traction in Western markets, allegations emerged in July 2022 that the Xinjiang slave labour was used in their supply chains. Some Chinese firms responded by opening their production lines to Western journalists and to analysts from major firms such as Goldman Sachs, H.S.B.C and J.P Morgan to prove their innocence, while others launched lawsuits against Washington for its arbitrary actions.

One of the world's largest shirtmakers, the Hong Kong-based Esquel Group, employed 400 Uyghur workers including almost 15 percent who had worked there for over 10 years, and suffered considerably from U.S. policies as a result. Its chairman, Marjorie Yang, reported “devastating harm” after the firm was placed on the Entity List without evidence of wrongdoing. Its case was far from exceptional with multiple Chinese firms being similarly affected. Esquel Group lost a number of clients as a result including Nike, Gap and Michael Kors and was forced to close factories and reduce operations. In response Esquel invited U.S. Commerce Department staff to visit the facilities in Xinjiang with free and open access but received no response. When it subsequently invited independent labour audit specialists to visit the facilities in Xinjiang and carry out unstructured interviews with randomly selected Uyghur workers, every instance found no evidence of the forced labour or coercion being alleged by Western sources. The American footwear producer Sketchers was notably the only major Western clothing firm to investigate allegations itself rather than take them at face value, and after conducting multiple audits over several years to specifically investigate its supplies from Xinjiang it found no evidence to support claims that forced labour was used. Its conclusions notably received almost no coverage in Western press.

Western firms pressed to purge Xinjiang inputs from their supply chains were far from restricted to clothing brands. Volkswagen, for example, was criticised for continuing to operate a plant in the province due to speculation that it may be using forced labour. Western anti-China human rights activists likened such practices to the German firm's use of slave labour during the Second World War, although Volkswagen stressed that there was no evidence to substantiate such allegations. Other anti-China figures took this further and alleged that, even if forced labour was not proven, the very presence of Western firms in Xinjiang represented a tacit approval of the humanitarian abuses Western sources were alleging.

It was notable that multiple firms targeted based on allegations of forced labour had very high levels of automation in their production lines, which brought claims of forced labour to serious question. The high-purity polysilicon manufacturer Xinjiang Daqo was a prominent example. The Western allegation that over half a million Uyghur slaves were being used to pick cotton – another image which had strong resonance in the Western mind due to historical practices in the American south and British Caribbean ^{xxii} – was similarly widely seen by analysts to be absurd considering that cotton picking had long been automated. It was nevertheless used as a pretext to further target Chinese industries. Headlines in Western media outlets such as “There's a good chance your cotton T-shirt was made with Uyghur slave labour,” and “U.K business must 'wake up' to China's Uighur cotton slaves” fuelled Western public pressure on major brands such as H&M, Gap and Nike to boycott Xinjiang cotton. The backlash from Chinese consumers against the brands which joined the boycott was significant, with these brands themselves being boycotted in China leaving an opportunity for non-Western brands with apolitical positions to gain market share.

In March 2021 the European Union sanctioned China on the basis of alleged abuses in Xinjiang, which led Beijing to retaliate with a proportional set of sanctions targeting E.U officials. These retaliatory sanctions were considered unacceptable in Brussels and led to further European escalation through suspension of a major trade deal with Beijing. All across the Western media China was blamed for refusing to accept European sanctions quietly, as the Western world was far from accustomed to its targets retaliating with proportional sanctions of their own. Washington was the primary beneficiary, and had strongly opposed the trade deal as it sought a united front against Beijing – a goal which atrocity fabrication had brought closer to being realised.

As a result of U.S. moves to impose arbitrary bans based on unproven allegations of forced labour, several international firms in Xinjiang became reluctant to hire Uyghur staff due to concerns that they could be blacklisted. The metanarrative built up in the West led the Western mind to jump to conclusions that any Uyghur in a job would likely be a slave labourer – why else would he or she not be in a concentration camp? Indeed, Western purchasers at times went as far as to ask firms in China whether or not they had Uyghur staff, expressing a preference for a negative response in order to avoid possible negative reactions from overseas. ^{xxiii} In this way the West's humanitarian-premised economic warfare campaign fuelled actual discrimination against Uyghurs by the private sector, and led many Uyghur workers to move out of Xinjiang to find employment in other provinces where there was less Western scrutiny. ^{xxiv}

Beyond restrictions on trade, anti-China hardliners in several Western countries sought to reap further gains from the narrative of genocide in Xinjiang. Some, for example, claimed that cooperation between China and the West on climate change should be ruled out on the basis that if China could commit genocide, it could not possibly care about preserving the planet nor could it be depended on to work towards any kind of constructive arrangement. Political figures with Western supremacist tendencies repeatedly cited the alleged genocide in Xinjiang to portray China as “evil” and stress the need to ensure the perpetuation of Western-led global order to which China was the primary challenger. Charlie Kirk, a popular far-right activist frequently retweeted by President Donald Trump, used Xinjiang as a pretext to call for “a worldwide alliance against evil” to counter China. “We should launch cyber warfare against them. We should have sanctions on China. They have to suffer … to choke them out the way we did to the Soviet Union,” he stated in April 2021. Fuelled by China's challenge to Western hegemony, which it had previously been assumed would be totally unchallenged after the Soviet collapse, such animosity had been widespread in the West long before the Xinjiang issue was raised, with the emergence of the genocide narrative providing useful justification for it. Many of the fiercest advocates for a hard line against Beijing to preserve Western primacy went from making anti-Muslim statements to campaigning for Uyghur Muslim rights effectively overnight, just as the perceived primary challenge to Western power shifted from the Islamic World to China.

On May 18, 2021, House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi called ^{xxv} for the U.S. to lead the world in boycotting the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics. “Let's not honour the Chinese government by having heads of state go to China,” she stated, elaborating: “For heads of state to go to China in light of a genocide that is ongoing – while you're sitting there in your seat – really begs the question, what moral authority do you have to speak again about human rights any place in the world?” Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo referred to Beijing 2022 as the “genocide Olympics,” and was among many in the West to call for pressure on the International Olympic Commission to move the games to another country on the basis of allegations of genocide. The New York Times notably also referred to Beijing 2022 as “the Genocide Olympics in Beijing” that month in the title of a prominent article.

The Xinjiang genocide narrative provided a pretext for calls across the Western world to boycott the Winter Olympics, with Britain, Spain, Italy and Germany leading Europe in advocating such action which had widespread public backing in several Western countries. In Canada, for example, 54 percent of Canadians polled in 2021 supported a boycott. Anti-Chinese human rights activists in Europe displayed the Olympic rings as rings of barbed wire to campaign for a boycott – which the European parliament passed as a non-binding motion on July 9.

These kinds of humanitarian-premised campaigns were common whenever a major international sporting event was hosted by a Western adversary. When Russia was set to host the Winter Olympics in February 2014, for example, there were widespread calls in the West to move them to Canada or at the very least for a Western boycott on the basis of Russia's allegedly improper political and value systems. When Russia was set to host the World Cup in 2018 British members of parliament called for action to press fifa to move the tournament to the U.K using many of the same pretexts. Both the Russian World Cup, and more so the Chinese Olympics, were widely compared by Western commentators to Nazi Germany's hosting of the summer Olympics in 1936 – providing an opportunity for Western media outlets and N.G.O's to liken the Nazis and China's ruling parties as two “genocidal regimes.” Outside the Western world, however, the possibility of a boycott of Beijing 2022 was not even raised, which again highlighted the West's isolation from the wider world and from international norms.

The Olympic boycott was far from likely to be the last hostile measure against China which Western countries would implement or consider using the fabricated Xinjiang genocide narrative as a pretext for. It was notable that preceding the West's construction of the Xinjiang narrative, allegations of humanitarian abuses in Tibet had served as the pretext for opposition to the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympic Games, with Western cities through which the Olympic torch passed filled with protestors many of whom tried to attack the torchbearer. Alleged abuses in Tibet and the memory of an alleged massacre in Tiananmen Square were key themes in Western coverage of the Games, casting a shadow over them much as Western coverage of Xinjiang did for the Winter Games 14 years later.

As China emerged as the world's largest economy, and one which could annually publish more scientific papers, spend more on new armaments and apply for more patents than the U.S., it would have been highly unusual and sharply contrary to historical trends for Western sources not to fabricate atrocities to vilify it. Allegations of Xinjiang atrocities, concentration camps, and genocide, emerged at a time of rising Sino-U.S. tensions in the mid-late 2010s and a growing consensus in the Western world on the need for a hard line against Beijing. Xinjiang's Uyghur population were the latest Kuwaiti incubator babies, the latest American civilians killed in Cuban terrorist attacks, the latest Filipino civilians brutalised by the Huks or Syrian victims of their government's chemical weapons. They were Park Yeonmi forced to walk across three mountains and bury her father, Iraqi dissidents fed live into human shredders, students run over by tanks in Tiananmen Square, or Libyan women raped by Gaddafi's black African mercenaries. What all these alleged victims had in common was that the crimes against them were never actually committed but were very widely publicised to build narratives which furthered Western foreign policy objectives. The Xinjiang narrative was the culmination of decades of Western atrocity fabrication intended to justify hostile measures against adversaries, and targeted a country which represented an unprecedentedly strong challenge to Western hegemony..

Historical precedent provides important insight into the conditions, if any, under which the West may eventually accept the erroneous nature of its claims on Xinjiang. After having played a central role in persuading the world of an imminent threat posed by Iraqi weapons of mass destruction and knowingly committed serious lies to record at the U.N Security Council, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell had postulated in 2003: “I wonder what'll happen when we put 500,000 troops into Iraq and comb the country from one end to the other and find nothing?” His statement highlighted that only full U.S. control over Iraq was sufficient for the superpower to be able to acknowledge that its narrative had been false and there was no possibility of the Iraqi government hiding anything. In Kosovo, in much the same way, it was admitted that the clearly fabricated and poorly evidenced allegations of genocide were false only after nato militaries gained control of the territory – by which time it was also far too late and the fabrication had served its purpose. It would stand to reason, based on precedent, that only if Xinjiang were to somehow fall under complete Western control could the West acknowledge the false nature of its claims – by which time China's innocence would be nothing but a historical sidenote as it had been for the many countries targeted before it.

Even then, however, the possibility of fabrication to retro- spectively justify Western actions would remain a significant pos- sibility. A notable precedent was Britain's fabricated claim in 2004 that the mass graves of 400,000 people had been found in Iraq to justify its illegal invasion the previous year – which was later ad- mitted to be entirely false. Some parallels could be drawn with

British soldiers' practice of planting weapons on civilians they killed to claim they were legitimate targets. Whatever the state of affairs in a targeted country was, abuses could always be fabri- cated to justify Western actions – whether current or retrospective.

Ultimately fabrication of atrocities in Xinjiang is expected to continue to profoundly shape Western perceptions of and political narratives surrounding China, much as the fabricated atrocities mentioned throughout this work have done for the West's many prior targets. In this case, however, serious and unprecedented limits to the West's ability to press the rest of the world to fall into line against a target have emerged which mark a potentially pivotal moment. As the Xinjiang narrative will likely continue to set the Western world at odds with the international community, it has the potential to discredit the Western sources that have supported it to an extent heretofore unseen. The significant investment the West's information networks have put behind the Xinjiang fabrication, including assets such as Human Rights Watch, the B.B.C and R.F.A, means that pressing this narrative too far, and limited international receptivity to it, may well erode Western international credibility when commenting on humanitarian issues beyond a point of no return. Should this materialise, the result will be a Western world far less able to shape global perceptions to assault the reputations, economies and the borders of those actors which oppose its hegemony and imperial interests.

Notes

Index

9/11 Attacks 9, 257, 258, 261 to 265, 267, 269 to 272, 276, 280, 281, 418, 454

A

bu Ghraib Prison 292 to 297

Acheson, Dean 87, 108, 113, 123

Afghanistan 230, 257, 289, 365, 447 to 449, 445, 453, 482

Afghan Insurgency (1980s) 160, 163, 220 to 222, 365, 409, 420, 446, 479

Africa 5, 23, 184, 209, 277, 282, 315, 358 to 362, 371, 378 to 381, 384 to 393, 484 to 485, 489, 502

African Gold Dinar 360 to 362

African Investment Bank 360

African Union 360, 378, 388, 391, 484, 489

Al Jazeera 127, 368, 376, 377, 385 to 387, 389, 408

Al Nusra Front 409, 415 to 419, 424

Al Qaeda 222, 257, 298, 365, 366, 370, 377, 380, 409, 415, 418, 421, 422, 424, 425, 434, 445, 446, 451, 467, 468, 492 alleged links to Iraq 258, 259, 262 to 265, 267, 269 to 272, 274 to 276, 279 to 281, 283, 286 al-Ebraheem, Hassan 175 al-Hawil, Ali 178

Albright, Madeline 229, 230, 274, 346, 347

Amnesty International 171 to 174, 190, 192, 213, 230, 387, 485

Annan, Kofi 17, 268

Australia 2, 15, 284, 289, 379, 465, 472, 473

Australian Strategic Policy

Institute 472, 478, 493, 499

B

achelet, Michelle 485, 486

Bamford, James 26, 50

B.B.C 6, 130, 131, 214, 460, 463, 458, 460, 461, 463, 464, 468, 475, 485, 504

Belgium 2, 3, 369

Belt and Road Initiative 360, 444, 445, 448, 456, 492

Bendjedid, Chadli 162

Benghazi Counterinsurgency

Campaign (2011) 362, 363, 365,

367, 372 to 376, 388

Biden, Joe 9, 393, 468, 495, 496

Blair, Tony 227, 243, 266, 277, 285, 286, 287, 459

Bryce Commission 2 to 4, 62

Bundesnachrichtendienst B.N.D 6

Bush, George H. W. 158, 160 to 163, 173, 174

Bush, George W. 257, 258, 260, 263, 264, 266, 267, 269 to 273, 276, 280 to 281, 283, 285, 286, 373, 375

C

Canada 23, 144, 369, 379, 474, 501

Castro, Fidel 22, 24 to 27, 31

Central Intelligence Agency C.I.A

3 to 6, 23 to 25, 27, 29, 34 to 37, 43,

51 to 53, 60, 79, 98, 122, 123, 128,

139, 141, 143, 204, 206, 208,

226, 235, 258, 269, 271 to 274,

299, 331, 340, 346, 373, 417,

445 to 448, 457, 458, 491

Chai, Ling 138, 142, 460

Cheney, Dick 162, 262 to 264, 271, 273, 280

China–U.S. Cold War

(1949 to 1979) 119 to 124

Chinese Civil War 34, 85, 119 to 121

Citizens for a Free Kuwait 166, 175, 177 Clinton, Bill 145, 226, 228 to 230, 243, 260

Clinton, Hillary 9, 169, 338, 366, 376

Colonial Wars 13 to 17

Council on Foreign Relations 18, 219, 268, 337, 445, 462 crime of aggression 17, 157, 160,

279, 286, 299, 420, 422, 427,

428, 433, 503 democratising mission as justification 37, 104, 126, 140,

259, 284 to 286

Cunningham, Philip J. 134 to 136, 475,

Cunningham, Philip J. 134 to 136, 475, 476

D

ayton Agreement 210, 219

Defector Testimonies in Atrocity

Narratives 62, 64, 65, 263, 283,

312 to 329, 345, 457, 460, 461, 465

Deng, Xiaoping 124, 125, 136, 141

Denmark 369

Depleted Uranium Weapons

178 to 182, 191, 236, 290, 291

Dooley, Tom 36, 37

Dugan, Michael J. 158

E

ast Turkistan Islamic

Movement 445, 449

Eisenhower, Dwight D. 25, 26, 34, 35, 37, 78

European Court of Human Rights 233

F

irst Indochina War 32 to 35

First Opium War 15

First World War 1 to 3

France 3, 13, 14, 32 to 35, 142, 147, 185 to 186, 190 to 191, 215, 232, 360, 361, 367 to 369, 379, 408, 412, 423, 424, 428 to 430, 434, 456

Free Syrian Army 409 to 411, 423

G

addafi, Muammar 7, 358, 359, 364 to 369, 372 to 374, 376 to 381, 384 to 388, 391

Gelinas, Andre 62 to 64

Genocide of Black Africans in Libya

386 to 389

Germany 2, 3, 6, 23, 205, 206, 207, 214, 222, 226, 239, 335, 370, 489, 501

Nazi Germany, comparisons to 81, 83, 84, 107, 174, 204, 208, 209, 215, 217, 241, 287, 457, 459, 467, 478, 479, 484, 490, 501

Great Man-Made River 381 to 383

Grenada 156, 157, 178, 279, 430

Grotius, Hugo 15

Gulf of Tonkin 34, 39, 41, 42, 46, 48 to 54, 59, 417

Guomindang 119 to 122

Guterres, Antonio 17, 489

Gutman, Roy 208, 215 to 217

Gwangju Uprising 147

H

anley, James M. 90 to 94

Hanyok, Robert J. 40

Harff, James 208, 209

Hass, Richard N. 18

Hidayat, Arslan 461,462,493

Hill+Knowlton 166, 168 to 169, 174, 176, 177, 319

Hitler, Adolf, comparisons to 163, 170, 175, 177, 184, 215, 227, 228, 262, 284

Holocaust (Europe) 1941 to 45

66, 82, 209, 215, 217, 218, 244,

287, 457, 459, 463, 467, 476,

478, 479, 482

Hong Kong 131, 132, 139, 141, 142, 144

Human Rights Watch 230, 297, 322, 333, 363, 385, 387, 389, 458, 485, 489, 504

Hunter, Duncan D. 288 Hussein, Saddam 9, 157 to 159, 161 to 164, 170, 172, 174, 175, 179, 184, 190, 261 to 264, 268, 270, 271, 273, 276, 277, 281, 346, 359, 375

I

dlib (Syrian governate) 423, 425, 447, 450 to 452

Information Research Department (British) 5

International Atomic Energy Agency I.A.E.A 266, 268, 274, 433

ee-rahn 7, 28, 156, 163, 278, 299, 310, 393, 407, 421, 422, 470, 490

Iraq 9, 10, 132, 138, 140, 141, 156 to 193, 211, 230, 238, 257 to 299, 310, 312, 314, 333, 346, 359, 365, 373, 375, 376, 382, 393, 407, 410, 412, 417, 418, 421, 427, 430, 433, 450, 451, 457, 458, 459, 472, 476, 477, 478, 480, 482, 487, 490, 502 to 503

Iraq Survey Group 272, 281, 282

Islamic State 298, 384, 409, 423, 445, 447, 448, 451, 492

Israel 6, 157, 231, 407 to 409, 423, 430

Italy 214, 222, 235, 367, 369, 501

Izetbegović, Alija 208, 216

J

amaica 29, 31

Japan 86, 99, 120, 160, 163, 289, 360, 487 to 489

Johnson, Lyndon 37 to 39, 41 to 43, 48 to 51, 63

Joint Chiefs of Staff (U.S.) 24 to 27, 37, 50, 413, 418

Joint Chiefs of Staff (Korean) 338

K

arzai, Hamid 448

Kelly, David 278

Kenney, George 209, 224, 225, 235

Kim, Dong Choon 82

Kim, Jong Il 330, 331, 346, 347 Kim, Jong Nam 339, 340

Kim, Jong Un 163, 319, 320, 328, 330, 339

Kennedy, John F. 26, 30, 37

Kennan, George 361

Kosovo Liberation Army 222 to 227, 228, 231, 242 to 244

Kuwait 156 to 171, 174 to 179, 185 to 187, 189 to 191, 276, 283, 285, 291, 480, 482, 489, 502

L

ansdale, Edward G. 27, 36, 53

Lantos, Tom 169, 170

Lemnitzer, Lyman 25 to 27, 30, 32

Lartigue, Casey 319

Libya 358 to 395

Liu, Xiaobo 139, 140

Lumumba, Patrice 24

M

acArthur, Douglas 79, 86, 87, 94

Maddox, J. D. 281, 282

Mandela, Nelson 140, 358, 359

McCain, John 189, 394

McGehee, Ralph 36, 37

McKinley, William 16

McNamara, Robert S. 37, 38, 41, 44, 45, 50

Milosevic, Slobodan 210, 211, 215, 225, 228 to 229, 239, 241

Moyers, Bill 219

Muccio, John 107, 108

N

ational Endowment for

Democracy 139, 140, 206, 457

National Security Agency (U.S.) 26, 40, 416 to 418

National Security Council (U.S.) 23, 238, 257, 373

nato 17, 217, 223, 226 to 244, 370 to 372, 377, 378, 383, 385, 386, 389 to 393, 429, 448, 452

Nayirah 164 to 167, 169 to 173, 193, 314, 318, 319, 480

Netherlands 13 to 15, 234, 241 Network of Chinese Human Rights

Defenders 457

Newlines Institute 469, 470

Nichols, Donald 79, 80

North Korea 310 to 347

O

bama, Barak 9, 18, 296, 298, 324, 334, 338, 344 to 345, 372, 374, 375, 412 to 414, 416 to 418, 420 to 421, 427

Office of Special Plans (U.S.) 259

Office of Strategic Influence (U.S.) 6

Olympic Games 145, 146, 454, 500 to 502

Operation Desert Fox 192

Operation Desert Storm 141, 159, 179 to 193 attacks on critical infrastructure 182 to 84, 382 biological weapons centre claims 183 death toll 186, 187 depleted uranium rounds 178 to 182, 191 incubator deaths at Saddam Paediatric 189 to 191 live burial of Iraqis 179 napalm attacks 179 to 180 oil tanker coverup 184, 185 press relations 187 to 188

Operation Earnest Voice 7, 8

Operation Mockingbird 3

Operation Mongoose 23, 24

Operation Northwoods 25, 26, 32, 50

Operation Southern Focus 265

Operation St Bailey 123

Operation Yellowbird 141, 483, 489

Organisation of Islamic Cooperation 483, 489

Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons 422, 425, 431 to 434

P

anama 29, 156, 157, 178, 279, 430

Paringaux, R. P. 64

Paris Massacre (1961) 147

Park, Yeonmi 314 to 320, 461, 502

Philippines 4, 16, 36, 53, 223, 289, 484

Phillips, Joan 216, 217

Pompeo, Mike 143, 467, 468, 501

Porter, John E. 169, 170

Portugal 14

Powell, Colin 192, 257, 260, 269, 274 to 276, 280, 281, 314, 375, 447, 503

Psychological Strategy Board (U.S.) 105 to 106

Putin, Vladimir 380, 394, 421, 422

Q

atar 367 to 370, 376, 377, 385, 387, 390, 407, 409, 412, 429

R

adio Free Asia 330, 331, 345, 458, 460, 462, 464, 465, 470, 492, 493, 504

Rhee, Syngman 79, 80, 82, 106

Rice, Condoleezza 263, 268, 274, 375

Rice, Susan 259, 272, 386

Ridgway, Matthew 84, 91, 93, 94

R.O.K's Cheonan 334 to 339

Rumsfeld, Donald 257 to 260, 263, 271, 296

Russia 143, 421 to 423, 426, 428 to 430, 444, 446, 447, 468, 470, 482, 501

S

arkozy, Nicholas 361, 367

Saudi Arabia 158, 161 to 163, 174, 278, 408, 409, 415, 416, 418, 423, 480, 481, 487, 490

Shin Dong Hyuk 313 to 314

Solana, Javier 17

Sony 343 to 346 South Africa 358, 359, 378

South Korea 78 to 84, 87, 93, 103, 107, 140, 147, 311, 317, 318, 320 to 330, 334 to 340, 345

Soviet Union U.S.S.R 3, 4, 17, 22, 31, 85, 86, 87, 119, 121, 124, 137, 139, 141, 143, 147, 157, 158, 159, 160, 161, 163, 177, 179, 186, 204, 407, 446, 500

Spain 14, 132, 369, 370, 501

Sudan 126, 184, 230, 257, 387, 392, 485

Sun Yee On triad 141

Sweden 369

Syria 161, 181, 184, 216, 257, 278, 298, 310, 358, 364, 365, 369, 370, 377, 391, 393, 394, 407 to 435, 446, 447, 449 to 453, 455, 467, 470, 480, 486, 487, 502

Syrian Democratic Forces 423

T

aejon Massacre 81, 82

Taiwan 5,43,103,106 to 110,121,122,137

Taylor, Letta 279

Tenet, George 236, 269, 273

Thatcher, Margaret 159, 163

Tibet 122, 123, 445, 449, 502 transnational Jihadism 221, 222, 366, 409, 446 to 453

Trinidad and Tobago 31

Truman, Harry 105, 106, 120, 123

Trump, Donald 340, 427, 428, 430, 464, 469, 494

Turkey 222, 228, 230, 408, 412, 423, 447, 464, 465, 482 terrorism sponsorship 409, 418, 434, 445, 449 to 453

Turkistan Islamic Party 445, 450, 451, 467, 449

U

lfkotte, Udo 6, 7

unicef 381 to 382

United Nations Charter 17, 279, 427, 429

United Nations General Assembly 86, 263, 267

United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights 485, 486, 471, 487

United Nations Security Council 17, 78, 86, 176 to 178, 189, 191, 268, 269, 275, 279, 368, 419, 422, 427, 428, 503

United Nations Undersecretary

General for

Counterterrorism 483, 487

United States Africa Command 359, 391

United States Congress 4, 38 to 41, 45, 48 to 50, 60, 61, 63, 142, 166, 169, 170, 259, 319, 320, 325, 421