The one-day conference, called by the Stop the War Coalition in London and dubbed “Confronting War Ten Years On”, was held on Saturday on the anniversary of the February 2003 coordinated anti-war protests that saw up to an estimated thirty million people march globally to express their opposition to the then imminent war on Iraq.
At the time, the Stop the War Coalition organized a protest that brought some one million people on the streets of London.
The Saturday conference brought together hundreds of pro-peace activists from Britain and other countries and focused on the “war on terror” and the “catastrophe [it has caused] from Afghanistan and Pakistan through Iraq and the Middle East to Libya, Somalia and beyond.”
The conference featured addresses from leading activists and commentators from around the world who analyzed the continuing Western aggression and the ways to confront it.
Participants blasted the so-called war on terror that has so far led to hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths in several countries especially Iraq and Afghanistan and has left millions more displaced.
They also called for immediate withdrawal of British forces from Afghanistan and warned against new military interventions including in Syria.
Moreover, the activists lambasted the British government and its western allies for spending billions of pounds for military adventurism in other countries at a time of paralyzing austerity measures while the west’s war on terror has only worsened security and undermined peace across the globe.
The conference is a prelude to an anti-war rally this Friday outside the British Prime Minister’s office on Downing Street in protest to London’s militaristic approach to Syria and Mali.
