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Hugh Roberts: Western Powers Manipulated Risings

Outside interference, ostensibly on behalf of these 'revolutions', reduced Libya to anarchy and condemned Syria to a devastating proxy war now in its twelfth year. In Egypt, the Free Officers' state was re-booted in its most brutal ever form. The Americans and Europeans did not vainly try to help the Egyptians or anyone else escape from authoritarian rule. Instead, they contrived to seal them up in it. The long oppression of these societies, Kipling’s 'loved Egyptian night', is not going to be ended by the Western powers; these days it is guaranteed by them.

Hugh Roberts's new book political history of the risings in Egypt, Libya and Syria explains how the Western powers manipulated them all.

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