Britain’s royal Harry – a prince among thieves

Britain’s Afghan-killing Prince Harry, the Malvinas Islands in the South Atlantic and Northern Ireland are all in the news recently for seemingly disparate reasons. But there is a unifying link – British imperialist thievery, violence and deception.

Let’s start with young Prince Harry. He is finishing “a tour of duty” for British forces as an Apache helicopter pilot in Afghanistan, a land that was once stolen by the British Empire and is currently undergoing a modern imperialist smash-and-grab operation under the auspices of NATO.

Harry caused a media stir this week with his glib admission of shooting-to-kill Afghans. “Take a life to save a life,” was how Captain Wales justified murdering people from the skies, during his interview with the Press Association, conducted from the fortress of Camp Bastion in Helmand Province.

What’s more, the prince thought it was all jolly good fun, by comparing the firing of air-to-surface Hellfire missiles or 30mm machinegun cannon to playing a video game. “I’m useful with my thumb,” he says with a smirk. Given the controversy over civilian casualties from NATO air and drone strikes in Afghanistan, one wonders how the British royal media handlers could have let such a crass comment out?

We can be sure that such a high-profile interview was permitted under tight scrutiny, with every word vetted by Buckingham Palace. So, we have to conclude that the prince’s callous remarks were aimed with a purpose. What is that?

Well, it may be recalled that last year while the fun-loving prince was undergoing Apache pilot training in Nevada, he found time to shoot the British royal family in the foot by being photographed naked with a bunch of young ladies in a Las Vegas luxury hotel room.

In this latest interview, Harry is rehabilitated as the “soldier prince” – “just one of the lads” who is “doing his bit” for Queen and country and “making Afghanistan safe”. His royal handlers must be aware of the public sensitivity to civilian deaths in Afghanistan – reckoned at more than 20,000. It is saying something of the depth of cynicism and callousness of the British monarchy that it would ignore or be oblivious to the deaths of thousands of men, women and children – the collateral damage of NATO’s 12-year illegal occupation of that country – in its haste to refurbish a tarnished media image.

But there is a more subtle ideological level to the “killer prince” story. Bear in mind that the British monarchy is the head of that state. Constitutionally, the British royals are the source of sovereignty and, although such claptrap is not expounded too loudly, the monarch is defined as ruling by divine right. God save our glorious queen is the outward expression of this imperial delusion.

To that end, the British royals are deliberately made the figureheads of Britain’s military establishment. Queen Elizabeth II is the titular head of all British forces. Next in line to the throne, Prince Charles, and father of Harry, is the commander of the Parachute Regiment – Britain’s storm-troopers.

The British royal family is not just some quaint tourist attraction. It has a deadly serious ideological function, which is to enable British rulers to justify to their people and the world all their military and imperialist adventures overseas – as a God-given right – no matter how criminal and barbaric. Afghanistan is thus transformed from a giant thieving and killing zone under British (and NATO) forces into a noble duty in which “God is on our side”.

Which brings us to Las Malvinas, or as the British like to call them, the Falkland Islands. Tensions have been boiling again between Argentina and Britain over disputed territorial claims, sparked by the 30th anniversary last year of the war between these two countries. Argentina accuses Britain of militarizing the South Atlantic after it dispatched a nuclear submarine and its most advanced destroyer, HMS Dauntless, to the islands. Argentine President Christina de Kirchner has called on British Prime Minister David Cameron to negotiate the row – as various United Nations resolutions stipulate – but Britain remains adamant that there is nothing to discuss. The South Atlantic territory is British and that’s it. Indeed, earlier this month Cameron warned that Britain would go to war again if pushed too far.

During last year’s commemorative war anniversary it was notable that Prince William, the older brother of Harry, was sent as part of a military delegation to the islands. William, who is also a helicopter pilot, was dressed in full military gear – a pointed statement of sorts that irked the Argentine government.

The dispatch of Prince William to the South Atlantic along with a nuclear submarine and warships is another illustration of Britain believing that it has royal, and therefore divine, prerogative to whatever it lays claim to – no matter that these islands are more than 13,000 kilometers from London and that the name Las Malvinas predates that of Falklands.

Part of the rationale and legal justification for Britain retaining sovereignty over the islands – apart from the scarcely mentioned vast oil reserves yet untapped in the surrounding seabed – is that the old colonial power claims the Falkland islanders are exercising the right of self-determination to declare themselves British.

In a recent rebuff to Argentina, David Cameron said the territory will stay British as long as the inhabitants want that. “The future of the Falkland Islands should be determined by the Falkland Islanders themselves – the people who live there,” said Cameron with typical British haughtiness and affected sense of propriety.

A referendum to be held in March on the future sovereignty of the islands is a foregone conclusion. This is because most of the islanders are descendants of British expatriates whom the British authorities placed there when they took possession of the territory in 1833 and onwards.

A spokesman for the Falkland Islands local government said: “Unlike the government of Argentina, the United Kingdom respects the right of our people to determine our own affairs, a right that is enshrined in the UN Charter and which is ignored by Argentina.”

This mendacious a la carte use of the principle of self-determination is a specialty of British colonialism. Which, appropriately, brings us to the issue of Northern Ireland.

The British-controlled northern province on the island of Ireland has been racked by more than a month of sectarian riots. Most of the violence is carried out by gangs and paramilitaries proclaiming to be pro-British. Their grievance is over a decision by the Belfast City Council to reduce the number of days that the British Union flag is flown from 365 days a year to 17. Fearing that concession represents an erosion of British identity in Northern Ireland, pro-Unionist youths and paramilitaries have gone on the rampage, clashing with police and Irish Nationalist communities.

The London government has deplored the upsurge in violence with its usual hand-wringing piousness. And there are concerns that Northern Ireland may be plunged back into the deadly conflict that prevailed for nearly 30 years, which claimed more than 3,000 lives, before that bloodshed was largely – though perhaps temporarily – halted by the Good Friday Agreement signed between Unionists and Nationalists in 1998. That deal was overseen by the talented Mr Tony Blair.

Why does the specter of recurring sectarian violence in Northern Ireland persist? This is because the root of the Irish problem was not addressed, in fact was furtively concealed, by the so-called peace process that the British government congratulates itself on. The root of the Irish problem is Britain’s unlawful partition of Ireland and its continuing possession of the northern Irish territory – in defiance of Irish national rights.

Just like Las Malvinas, Britain gerrymandered a demographic mandate for its presence and meddling in Ireland, which it ascribes to “self-determination”. When Britain partitioned the island of Ireland under imperialist aggression in 1921, it claimed that it had a mandate to do so from the majority pro-British Unionist population that resided in the northern counties. That population was only a minority on the island as a whole and was introduced into Ireland as British colonizers over the preceding centuries. Ever since 1921, successive British governments claim that Northern Ireland will remain British “so long as the people there demand it”. That false premise underpinned the 1998 Good Friday Agreement and continues to justify British manipulation of Irish national rights.

Conveniently, however, British governments have successively abnegated the right to self-determination for the Irish people, collectively, on the whole of the island. It’s another case of British rulers deftly moving the goalposts to score their imperial aims – albeit warping history and denying norms of justice in the process.

Tragically, as the resurgence in violence shows, the poisonous sectarian conflict injected into Ireland historically by Britain, as a means of colonial rule, continues to be a scourge because the sectarian division and theft of Irish national rights by Britain continues to this day.

But don’t expect British truth or abiding by international law. As the killer-Prince-Harry story illustrates, the British ruling class always has a knack for glib self-justification in the face of outrageous imperialist crimes. A prince among thieves indeed.