Syria: The West and Gulf Allies Arming Terrorists and WMDs Return

Topher Morrison

PurpleSerf.com

The New York Times on Thursday came out with the shocking headline - that is if you weren't paying attention: “C.I.A. Said to Aid in Steering Arms to Syrian Opposition."  However, rather than attempt to detail the larger context of the Syrian crisis it is obvious the author Eric Schmidt and this kingpin of the mainstream media (MSM) have merely moved on to the next chapter in Syrian propaganda in light of an increasingly astute alternative media and informed public.

When the uprising began in Janurary of 2011 during the larger Arab Spring (Arab Nightmare, whatever you’d like to call it) the media painted the Syrian uprising suffuse in glowing terms of fledgling democracy – the demonstrators could do no wrong and why would they?

The dark underbelly of the uprising, left untouched and out of regular reports by MSM journalists for over a year, is its connections with the larger geopolitical machinations of Washington and nations of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) alliance.  Slowly, reality set in as the actors once called “demonstrators,” changed to “protestors,” then to “activists,” then “opposition,” and “rebels” until now, peppering the rebels, it is finally being acknowledged that there is a sordid mixture of foreign back terrorists hailing from all over the region.

The Cold War II Panorama

Syria is just one piece of America’s greater hegemonic mosaic planned by realist and neoconservative cliques since the fall of the Soviet Union.  It encompasses the whole of what has been envisioned as the "New Middle East," the Pacific and the rest of the world.

Syria is witnessing first hand the clash of a newly realigned international political system between the NATO alliance and its ostensible counter balance - the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO).   The SCO, most importantly its prominent members China and Russia, is a mutual security organization and as an economic bloc of major eastern powers it is of great import.   Its emerging prominence is what Paul Wolfowitz, then Undersecretary of Defense for Policy, in the ensuing years after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, referred to as the “rise of the next superpower” and what the neoliberal agenda has been preparing for over two decades since.

As early as 1991 Syria was slated for regime change.  In 2002, then US undersecretary of State, John Bolton added Syria to the growing “Axis of Evil.”   In 2005 the Washington Post revealed that millions of dollars were funneled through various State Department proxies to Syrian political opposition groups and other endeavors including an anti-regime satellite channel, Barada TV, based in England.

The US government has also taken an active role in training activists and developing new technologies to help protect them against prosecution by authoritarian governments.  In an April 2011 the French news agency AFP reported that the US government for two years budgeted $50 million dollars to train 5,000 activists from various parts of the world including Tunisia, Egypt, Syria and Lebanon.  When these democracy cells were sent home they spread and created, what a State Department official referred to as, “ripples,” which reverberated throughout the region during the Arab Spring.

While this type of social intervention is an example of freedom of association we must remember we are not speaking of private individuals, but the fate of nations. This subversive strategy may be disagreeable to many taxpayers, it may not, and how this type of social engineering is justified under the Constitution is, if anything, unclear, unfortunately it’s also irrelevant to a certain extent because it is only one part of the larger geostrategic stratagem.

These relatively innocuous covert actions merely lay a foundation of leverage against a target government.  The subsequent acts are promoted by a complicit, gullible and negligent media enamored with the idea of democratic struggle regardless of where it may lead.  It is finally brought to a crescendo in the eyes of the international community and eventually acted upon by multilateral military intervention.  Call it humanitarian intervention or as CNN last Thursday attempted to inject no less than five times – securing weapons of mass destruction.

Imagine for instance the Chinese handpicking the brightest and most charismatic activists among US society during Occupy Wall Street or the Tea Party Movement then training, funding and equipping them for political sabotage.  It would make the Citizens United case pale in comparison.

Regardless of the merit, foreign political influence (to be distinguished from cultural, business, etc.) of any kind especially to this degree creates massive distrust and unrest and therefore opportunity for intervention and bloodshed with no guarantee a liberal democracy will replace autocratic rule.

Lack of Context

Eric Schmitt while detailing much of the dubious actions on the part of US intelligence and the Obama administration narrows the scope of the Syrian civil war within the known paradigm.  Without question the goal of “regime change” is advanced.   Schmidt reports for the New York Times:

“The weapons [being supplied to Syrian rebel groups] including automatic rifles, rocket-propelled grenades, ammunition and some antitank weapons, are being funneled mostly across the Turkish border by way of a shadowy network of intermediaries including Syria’s Muslim Brotherhood and paid for by Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar, the officials said.

The C.I.A. officers have been in southern Turkey for several weeks, in part to help keep weapons out of the hands of fighters allied with Al Qaeda or other terrorist groups, one senior American official said. The Obama administration has said it is not providing arms to the rebels, but it has also acknowledged that Syria’s neighbors would do so.”

If Libya is any indication of how the US government refuses to help “fighters allied with Al Qaeda or other terrorist groups” Syria is in big trouble.  The Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) ranked #28 on the US State Department’s list of terrorist organizations was the beneficiary of the NATO led no fly zone that aided opposition groups – of which LIFG (an Al Qaeda affiliate as of 2007) made up a significant part – in their deposal of dictator Muammar Ghaddafi.
 

Leaders of Al Qaeda affiliate LIFG have been helping the Syrian National Council and its Free Syrian Army in repeated reports since at least late last year.  The US government has since the Carter administration had a dubious history of creating, funding and training known terrorist organizations.  In the region the US governement was reported to have trained the Iranian Mujahedin-e Khalq Organization (MEK) in the deserts of Nevada. 

Schmidt's article continues:

"With Russia blocking more aggressive steps against the Assad government, the United States and its allies have instead turned to diplomacy and aiding allied efforts to arm the rebels to force Mr. Assad from power."

"Diplomacy" is evidently a catch all term, which occupies the space outside of direct military action.  When Joe Sixpack thinks of diplomacy ambassadors, summits and negotiations come to mind.  The problem is the US has had no official diplomatic relations with Syria since 2005, and according to the administration diplomacy, as most would understand it, will only occur after regime change.

Schmidt additionally neglects to mention Iran and China are also attempting to thwart a possible invasion and are supporting the Assad regime in kind, fearing a war would undoubtedly destabilize the region and allow western interests to set up shop for the inevitable confrontation with Iran.  Syria, in other words, is the Path to Persia.  Continuing:

"By helping to vet rebel groups, American intelligence operatives in Turkey hope to learn more about a growing, changing opposition network inside of Syria and to establish new ties. “C.I.A. officers are there and they are trying to make new sources and recruit people,” said one Arab intelligence official who is briefed regularly by American counterparts."

Indeed this is the endgame, “to establish new ties.”  By doing so western powers can more easily back the right horse during a bid for leadership and therefore have a great influence on the decision making in any subsequent administrations.  Additional support like “providing satellite imagery and other detailed intelligence on Syrian troop locations and movements” or setting “up a rudimentary intelligence service” all serve this purpose and future designs in the Middle East.  And finally:

"The struggle inside Syria has the potential to intensify significantly in coming months as powerful new weapons are flowing to both the Syrian government and opposition fighters."

The “allies,” a term which is supposed to bring us back to WWII, and the new “axis” of China, Russia and Iran are playing Syria like a game of Rock’em Sock’em Robots.  The thing is the Syrian people and their nation aren’t a toy and western citizens should refrain from using them as such in some vain attempt at reliving the democratic revolutions of our own past.

Global Research’s Professor Michael Chudovksy gives a comprehensive breakdown of Syria.  More importantly that the "protests" was in fact an armed insurrection from the beginning:

Syria’s Srebrenica Blamed on Iranian Special Forces

Topher Morrison

PurpleSerf.com

Iran's Quds Force

The massacre in Srebrenica was the last best piece of propaganda of the 20th century.  Syria’s Houla massacre, if swallowed whole, will produce the same deceit.

In 1995, after the Dayton Peace Accords were signed in Ohio, purportedly 8,000 Bosniaks (Bosnian Muslims) were massacred during a summer in Srebrenica.  It was referred to as the worst mass murder since World War II and the blame was quickly laid at the feet of the usual suspects – Serbian forces.  The result was NATO’s aerial bombardment and the invasion of 60,000 troops under United Nations command.

The Bosnian invasion was predicated on the idea that Srebrenica was a result of “ethnic cleansing” the endgame of course to stymie if not eradicate the Bosniak bloodline.  The only problem was women and children were evidently put on buses and allowed to flee.  When the graves were exhumed and the bodies examined mostly men of fighting age were found.  It took over a decade for the Hague to exonerate Serbia in the action and place it squarely on a Croat, but by 2007 the damage was irreparable in more ways than one.  So goes the fog of war and propaganda.

Syria over the Memorial Day weekend suffered a microcosm of that massacre when 108 civilians (32 children under 10-years-old) in Hula, outside Homs, were summarily dispatched without mercy.  Initial reports suspected the Syrian army, if not, the Alawite Shabiha militia, loyal to the Assad regime.  A Syrian investigation, however, found the culprits to be an 800-man death squad.

Thus far the trial of the Houla Massacre has taken place in the court of public opinion, which has been severely biased in favor of the opposition since the beginning of the Arab Spring, imbued with democratic legitimacy.   In reality the Free Syrian Army (FSA) based from behind NATO lines in Turkey and under the direction of the Syrian National Council (SNC) is supplemented by a dubious international coalition of Islamic fundamentalists from all over the Middle East.

Rather than merely appealing for democratic reforms this sordid sum has created an environment of rampant sectarian violence not scene since Iraq in 2007.  Unfortunately like in Afghanistan and Iraq the grand irony is that the West’s “crusade” as it is often referred to has actually displaced hundreds of thousands of Christians.  According to French Bishop Philip Tournyol Clos:

“…the picture for us is utter desolation: the church of Mar Elian is half destroyed and that of Our Lady of Peace is still occupied by the rebels. Christian homes are severely damaged due to the fighting and completely emptied of their inhabitants, who fled without taking anything. The area of Hamidieh is still shelter to armed groups independent of each other, heavily armed and bankrolled by Qatar and Saudi Arabia. All Christians (138,000) have fled to Damascus and Lebanon, while others took refuge in the surrounding countryside.”

Continuing…

“the enemies of Syria have enlisted some of the Muslim Brotherhood in order to destroy the brotherly relations that traditionally existed between Muslims and Christians: Yet, to date,they are not able to: they have provoked a contrary reaction and the two communities are more united than before. The Syrian soldiers in fact, continue to face foreign fighters, mercenaries Libyans, Lebanese militants from the Gulf, Afghans, Turks”

This heartfelt testimony reflects what we have known for the better part of a year, that the “protestors” and “activists” in Syria are very much part of a larger proxy war which pulls support from a vast cross section of the NATO-Sunni alliance.  Funding of groups like the Muslim Brotherhood has been in the pipeline since at least 2007 when it was reported in the New Yorker that Israel and the US were funneling support through Saudi Arabia so as not to compromise the “credibility” of the ostensibly “Islamic” movement.  A similar tactic was utilized through Pakistan in creation of Al’ Qaeda in 1980s during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan (we all know how that worked out).  As members of the Muslim Brotherhood are now honored guests at the White House, one must wonder if “credibility” is any longer an issue.

To continue with the Srebrenica analogy, while there has been no peace accord as there was in Bosnia former UN secretary general, Kofi Annan, has been attempting to monitor a ceasefire (part of his six point plan) as he did in Rwanda and Bosnia, which has by all accounts demonstrably failed as it did twice before.  To be sure, as the Washington Post’s distorted, but still revealing op-ed detailed, wherever Kofi goes killings follow.

The common narrative parroted throughout the MSM (here and here) is that these UN monitors are naively providing “cover” for the Assad regime’s reprisals and add credibility to the Syrian government under the idea that diplomatic solutions are being ardently pursued.  Given what we know about the composition of the insurgency, however, it is much more likely the opposite is true.  UN monitors legitimize the conflict itself as a wholly indigenous uprising that requires diplomacy and time rather than expose it for what it is – a foreign invasion aimed at dismantling a key ally of Iran and Russia.

Srebrenica “claimed 8,000 lives”, however, it later turned out those numbers were grossly exaggerated (more like 700) and the motive – ethnic cleansing – proved tenuous at best.  In reality it was another horror of war propagandized as the international version of a hate crime – a crime against humanity – ostensibly far worse and deserving of invasion.  In Houla, while the scene has changed the goal is very much the same: demonize a vulnerable target government, intervene with force and with overwhelming humanitarian legitimacy post-haste.

The massacre, however, retains all the hallmarks of a shake and bake propaganda piece: the group was nearly 1/3 children, the fatalities purportedly as a result of “tank shells” and while many victims were in fact “mutilated and killed by knives.”  Indeed, the footage was “released by the rebels” for Western consumption, that much is undeniable.   Thing is, the Syrian army doesn’t enjoy a monopoly on that type of ordinance since the FSA has been reported to have captured Syrian army tanks as well as receiving even more tanks from defectors.

What was true in Srebrenica (see the Srebrenica fact sheet) is most likely true in Houla, both parties are were responsible for the death and destruction rather than one fail swoop of merciless destruction at the hands of an all-powerful Assad hell bent on crushing the moral of his people and their wishes for democracy.

Tempered with the aforementioned facts, the understandable and demonstrable desire of the media to sensationalize the events, geopolitical interests and the thin evidence (lies of satellite photos showing pro Assad forces “at the time of the attack” were in fact a day old, testimony of defected “air force officer” with “super human” hearing and sight, and testimony from a child in shock and impressionable) an objective analysis may come forth.  Until that time beware the sirens call.

What is Qud’s Force Doing in Syria, Re-balancing or Massacring?

It has been reported that Iranian Revolutionary Guard General Ismail Qa’ani, second-in-command of Iranian Special Forces – Quds Force – has been training Assad’s soldiers since before the Syrian uprising.  This from the International Business Times:

“The Quds, named for the Farsi word for Jerusalem, are Iran’s special forces unit — in American equivalents, a mix between black-ops and the CIA. As the Revolutionary Guard’s external force, the Quds support and facilitate Islamic movements in other nations on Teheran’s behalf, movements that allegedly include terrorist organizations.”

OMG, so like terrorist organizations like NATO backed Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) or Nevada trained MEK both listed on the US State Department’s “Don’t Feed the Terrorists” list, those types of terrorists?  Looks like two can play at this game.

The state department attempted to connect the dots for us in the wake of the Houla massacre neglecting to brief us on the opposition’s questionable allegiances and design.  Its spokesperson, according to IBT:

"Victoria Nuland said that the Shabiha militia, accused of carrying out the Houla massacre, has been modeled after Iran’s paramilitary Basij force, suggesting that the Iranian military could have trained the Syrian civilian soldiers."

This could be true, but it doesn’t explain the inconsistencies and gaps in the favored fiction of Houla, rather it supplies a red hearing.

In reality the official narrative is fraying.  The IEDs, reports of wahabbists, displaced Christians and clandestine support are piling upon a delicate ruse.  The idea that the opposition’s “demonstrators” and “activists” are a homogenous, indigenous and innocuous bunch of freedom loving non-state actors has been so undermined that Sec. of State Hillary Clinton revealed the true mastermind behind the Houla massacre claiming in Copenhagen that Quds “are coaching the Syrian military … helping them set up these sectarian militias.” She effectively, in one line, used up her lifetime supply of irony.

It is evident, according to defectors, the Quds Force was needed because Syria’s Army wasn’t up to task in crucial engagements with the foreign backed FSA and its fundamentalist friends.  Hm, odd.  In the end, the Syrian government (backed by Iran, Russia and China) faces a foreign backed insurgency (under the aegis of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Libya, Turkey, NATO). We are in effect seeing World War III in a fishbowl, perhaps a peak into the future and its only going to get uglier from here.