Mark Curtis is a British historian and journalist who has been involved with developmental charities. He has written several books on the foreign policy of the United Kingdom and the United States mainly concerning the period since the Second World War.
In 2003 Mark Curtis published Web of Deceit: Britain's Real Role in the World. This book has been his most successful to date. It offers a new academic approach to the role of the United Kingdom in the post 1945 world until the current the War on Terrorism. It further criticises the foreign policy of Tony Blair. Curtis, defending the idea that Britain is a rogue state, describes various relations the United Kingdom undertook with repressive regimes and how he thinks these actions made the world less just. Moreover, the book analyses various recent actions of the British Army in the world, describing not only what he characterises as the immorality of the War in Iraq, but also of the War in Afghanistan, and the Kosovo War. Curtis denounces equally strongly Britain's alliances with states he categorises as repressive, such as Israel, Russia, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia. Additionally, he details and criticises the non-intervention of Britain in the Rwandan genocide. Curtis draws most of his research from recently declassified documents by the British secret service. He attempts to demonstrate the role and complicity of the British in the massacre of hundreds of thousands of Indonesians in 1965, the toppling of the governments of Iran and British Guyana, and what he describes as repressive colonial policies in the former colonies of Kenya, Oman, and Malaysia.
''Unpeople''
In 2004, Unpeople: Britain’s Secret Human Rights Abuses was first published. This book followed a similar line of thought begun in Web of Deceit. Unpeople is based on various declassified documents from the British secret service. Curtis "recounts the British backing of repressive and brutal regimes in Iraq from 1958 until 1968, and its complicity in Iraq's use of chemical weapons and aggression against the Kurds." Curtis asserts that these documents further indict the British government in their role played in the Vietnam War, the coup d'État against Milton Obote in 1971, the coup d'État against Salvador Allende in Chile in 1973, and coups in Indonesia and Guyana. Curtis estimates that Britain bears "significant responsibility" for the direct or indirect deaths of 8.6 million to 13.5 million people throughout the world since 1945.
''Secret Affairs''
In Secret Affairs: Britain's Collusion with Radical Islam Curtis explores the support and accommodation of Islamic terrorist groups by British Governments and intelligence services in the pursuit of short-term policy goals.
Selected publications
Dirty Wars: Britain's Collusion with Radical Islam, Verso, 2008
Unpeople: Britain's Secret Human Rights Abuses, Vintage, 2004
Web of Deceit: Britain's Real Role in the World, Vintage, 2003
Trade for Life: Making Trade Work for Poor People, Christian Aid, 2001
The Great Deception: Anglo-American Power and World Order, Pluto, 1998