Syria

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Re: Syria

Post by blindpig » Sat Apr 03, 2021 1:24 pm

This is a good synopsis

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US-NATO Targeting of Assad in Proxy War Against Syria
April 2, 2021 Shane Quinn Bashar Al-Assad, European Union (EU), Syria, US Imperialism, US-NATO, War
By Shane Quinn – Mar 31, 2021

The Syrian president Bashar al-Assad must have looked on with some concern, as US-NATO began their attack on Libya in mid-March 2011. There was good reason for Assad to be worried, considering Libya’s close enough proximity to Syria, coupled with the fact that the Americans had designated him for removal years before.

Washington’s plan to oust Assad was outlined in a classified memorandum, written up in the Pentagon as early as the autumn of 2001, a few months into the George W. Bush presidency. Muammar Gaddafi’s Libya was included at the same time on the Pentagon list for invasion, along with other countries such as Iraq and Iran.

Former NATO commander Wesley Clark, a retired four-star US general, spoke candidly about all of this in an interview on 2 March 2007, with American journalist Amy Goodman (1). Since March 2003 US troops were stationed just across Syria’s eastern border in Iraq, following president Bush’s invasion of that country.

Regarding Syria, the Bush administration wanted to increase its control over the lucrative Mediterranean area – and to tighten the noose on arch enemy Iran, a short distance to the east of Syria. Assad is an ally of Iran and Russia, which ensured that he was viewed with misgiving in the West.

As Washington has long known, since 1971 Russia’s navy has been using a base in Tartus, the ancient Syrian port city in the west of the country. This facility is of importance to Moscow, as it is one of the Kremlin’s last military bases located outside of the former Soviet Union. It serves as a critical fueling spot for Russian vessels.

President Vladimir Putin had plans, by 2012, to refurbish and expand their Tartus base, allowing it to receive large warships and helping to secure a Russian presence in the Mediterranean (2). Putin also intended to erect naval bases in Yemen and Libya. He offered Gaddafi shipments of heavy weaponry, which could have prevented the Libyan leader from being toppled and killed by Western-backed forces.

Since 2005-2006, president Bush was funding the anti-Assad elements in Syria, as Washington laid the groundwork to ultimately destroy the Syrian Arab Republic (3). Part of the thinking behind this was to thwart the tightening Syria-Russia naval relations, and to undercut Assad’s alliance with the Iranians, along with Hezbollah based in Lebanon and Hamas in Palestine. They are all sworn enemies of Israel.

In Bush’s State of the Union Address, on 2 February 2005, he directly accused Syria – without providing evidence – of enabling “its territory, and parts of Lebanon, to be used by terrorists who seek to destroy every chance of peace in the region”. By this point, the Syrians were already placed under US sanctions through the Syria Accountability Act, signed into law in Washington during December 2003.

The Bush administration was intent on redrawing the Arab world in its favour, securing complete US hegemony over the Mediterranean and the Middle East’s oil and gas reserves.

There was certainly cause for public unrest in Syria; unemployment was increasing, living conditions were deteriorating, especially with the implementation from 2006 of IMF economic programs; including austerity, a cap on wages, privatisation and the deregulation of the financial system. Nor was Syria a model of civil rights or freedom of expression. Yet Syria’s stance was anti-imperialist. From the beginning Assad criticised the 2003 US invasion of Iraq, calling it “flagrant aggression” – and the country had a secular foundation relating to its dominant Baath Party, which integrates various sections of Syrian society.

Following Assad’s assumption to power in July 2000, it can be mentioned that he commanded considerable respect among the masses of the Syrian people. Assad’s popularity with Syria’s ethnic groups has been acknowledged by the English foreign correspondent, Jonathan Steele (4). Steele noted how “inconvenient facts get suppressed” as Assad’s support with the Syrian public has been virtually ignored by the Western media.

While the fighting in Syria commenced from the spring of 2011, separate pro-government rallies in Syria’s two largest cities, Damascus and Aleppo, attracted tens of thousands of Assad supporters into the streets (5) (6). The Syrian leader has enjoyed something of a cult following; portraits of him could commonly be seen in Damascus and Aleppo. Assad also drew significant backing from a broader part of Syria’s 21 million population, including among its Christians, Alawites, Shia, Druze, Kurds and other groups. (7)

Assad’s father, Hafez al-Assad, who was in charge of Syria for 29 years until his death in June 2000, was well regarded at home and in the Arab world. This was mainly because he stood up to the US-Israeli alliance, and brought a measure of security to Syria after a generation of consistent upheaval.

The first anti-government demonstrations that broke out in Syria, during mid-March 2011, occurred in Daraa. This is an obscure border town in Syria’s far south beside Jordan, and populated by less than 100,000 people. The opening protests, one might add, did not unfold in the major cities where the bulk of organised political opposition was based. Anti-Assad protesters were not altogether peaceful or unarmed. In their midst were insurgents carrying guns, some on rooftops with sniper rifles, shooting at civilians, military personnel and policemen. (8)

In the West, Assad has been universally condemned for responding to the revolts with an iron fist. Scarcely mentioned, however, is that he would have been unwise indeed not to take note as NATO warplanes pounded Libya, in the obscene guise of a “humanitarian intervention”. It is quite conceivable that Assad’s harsh reaction, to the unrest in Syria, was influenced by what was taking place in Libya; and his fear that he would be next in line to bear the brunt of the US-NATO war machine. Assad was scarcely reassured when on 18 August 2011 Barack Obama publicly stated, “For the sake of the Syrian people, the time has come for president Assad to step aside”. (9)

At the same time, the European Union (EU), toeing the line as usual, urged “the necessity for him [Assad] to step aside” and its High Representative Catherine Ashton made the completely erroneous claim: “The EU notes the complete loss of Bashar al-Assad’s legitimacy in the eyes of the Syrian people”. Five months later, Steele wrote that “most Syrians are in favour of Bashar al-Assad remaining as president”.

From the earliest stages, NATO and the Turkish authorities were making moves to train, arm and equip the Islamist “freedom fighters”. According to Israeli intelligence sources (DEBKAfile) on 14 August 2011, NATO and Turkey’s high command “are meanwhile drawing up plans for their first military step in Syria”, which involved US-NATO supplying the insurgents with weapons “for combating the tanks and helicopters spearheading the Assad regime’s crackdown on dissent”.

The Israeli intelligence report revealed that NATO strategists wanted to pour large amounts “of anti-tank and anti-air rockets, mortars and heavy machine guns into the centers for beating back the government armored forces”. This scheme, supported by the Gulf dictatorships, drew comparisons with the past CIA recruitment of Mujahideen extremists to fight Soviet armies in Afghanistan. Israel’s DEBKAfile stated also that the NATO plan involved “a campaign to enlist thousands of Muslim volunteers” in the Middle East and elsewhere “to fight alongside the Syrian rebels”. The Turkish military would be heavily involved in this initiative.

As a Middle East and Mediterranean country, Syria’s importance is clear, and it shares frontiers with such states as Turkey, Israel and Iraq. Syria itself does not contain large quantities of oil or gas, but its location is significant moreover as a crossing point for pipelines, transporting raw materials through different areas; such as the Arab Gas Pipeline which originates in Egypt before bypassing among others Israel, Jordan and Syria. Furthermore, the Levantine Basin beside Syria’s coastline is estimated to contain 122 trillion cubic feet of gas, and 107 billion barrels of oil.

With Saddam Hussein’s capitulation in Iraq by April 2003, the neoconservatives around Bush were imploring him to advance next on either Syria or Iran. When Bush appeared set on attacking Syria, the Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon (2001-2006) warned him, were they to destroy Assad, the Muslim Brotherhood of Syria might well replace him. Sharon argued that such a scenario would be more detrimental to US-Israeli goals in the Middle East.

In early November 2012 Assad said in an interview, “We are the last stronghold of secularism and stability in the region”. If his administration was to fall Assad insisted “it will have a domino effect that will affect the world from the Atlantic to the Pacific”; when posed with the question of fleeing the country, if he himself became gravely threatened, he replied, “I am Syrian, I was made in Syria, I have to live in Syria and die in Syria”. (10)

Assad would remain in the country despite his position, by the summer of 2015, being “increasingly precarious” and “under mounting pressure on several fronts”, the Guardian newspaper expounded (11). Most of Syria at that stage was under the control of insurgents and jihadist groups, including ISIS, the Al-Nusra Front and Ahrar al-Sham, some of whom were receiving funding and armaments from the CIA and NATO members like Turkey.

The CIA supplied the terrorists in Syria with heavy weaponry, such as wire-guided anti-tank missiles (12). This hardware was inflicting extensive damage on the Syrian Army, contributing to their retreat. It seems that it was CIA involvement in the war on Syria, which at least in part prompted Putin to intervene militarily there from late September 2015 – so as to bolster his ally Assad and safeguard Russian interests in the region.

Putin had proposed a negotiated settlement on Syria in February 2012, with the aim of bringing the fighting to a conclusion. The ex-Finnish president Martti Ahtisaari, who was involved in the talks, said of Putin’s offer, “It was an opportunity lost in 2012”. Why was it lost? It had been rejected by the West. Not just the Americans, but by the British and French too, because they preferred to remove Assad by force of arms and establish a client regime of their choice.

London was planning armed action against Syria since at least 2009, as commented on by Roland Dumas, the former French foreign minister and lawyer. Dumas said that in 2009 he had “met with top British officials, who confessed to me that they were preparing something in Syria… Britain was preparing gunmen to invade Syria”. (13)

In 2011, British and Qatari special units were partaking in covert operations in the Syrian city of Homs, just 90 miles north of the government stronghold of Damascus (14). The British and Qatari operatives were collaborating with the insurgents. On the ground in Syria from early on, were members from Britain’s Special Forces Support Group (SFSG) and the Special Boat Service (SBS), which are both part of the British Armed Forces. These groups were supplying the opposition with arms and intelligence support, relating to troop movements from Assad’s Syrian Armed Forces. The CIA was flying drones over Syria, gathering information. Mercenaries continued to enter Syria from Turkey, to engage in combat against the Syrian Army.

In November 2011, the newspapers Le Canard enchaîné (of France) and Milliyet (of Turkey) reported that French special forces, from the DGSE and Special Operations Command, were training defectors from the Syrian Army (15). The deserters were taught urban guerrilla warfare tactics by their French supervisers, and encouraged to form the ironically titled Free Syrian Army. This organisation was supported from the outset by the triumvirate (America, Britain and France) and funded also by the Western-backed oil dictator countries, such as Saudi Arabia and Qatar, along with Turkey.

The ranks of the Free Syrian Army was swollen by mercenaries recruited from Libya, and furthermore Al Qaeda, Wahhabi and Salafist militants, in other words extreme Islamic fundamentalists. These were the “moderate Syrian opposition” forces that news outlets like Reuters was describing well into the war, and which the Western powers were propping up. US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton acknowledged in a BBC interview, from late February 2012, that a “very dangerous set of actors” were present in the region to fight against Assad’s divisions, including as she said “Al Qaeda”. (16)

The Syrian Army deserters were trained in camps located in Tripoli, and on the very borders of Syria in southern Turkey and north-eastern Lebanon. The aim of the Medieval-style Wahhabi regimes of Saudi Arabia and Qatar, supported by US-NATO, was to destroy the Syrian Arab Republic. Turkey’s leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan likewise wanted to see Assad gone. This he felt would help him to realise his dream of establishing a 21st century Ottoman Empire. Erdogan was strongly backing the jihadist factions in Syria.

US-NATO had exploited the Arab Spring uprisings, which began in December 2010, as a pretext for “humanitarian intervention”, in order to initiate regime change in countries like Libya and Syria. As with Libya in March 2011, during October of the same year the West tried to procure a UN Security Council resolution on Syria. This would act as cover for another Western invasion (17). On 4 October 2011 America, Britain and France therefore proposed a draft resolution regarding Syria, due to their supposed fears over “the use of force against civilians by the Syrian authorities”. It was supported in addition by NATO and EU states, Germany and Portugal. (18)

The cat was out of the bag, however. The resolution put forth was based on the old falsehoods: to “save civilians” through the “Responsibility to Protect” (R2P), as in all likelihood NATO warplanes would then be sent to bomb the Syrian state and its infrastructure, paving the way for Assad’s removal. By October 2011, after unleashing thousands of air raids over Libya in the previous months, it was starkly obvious that NATO was a lawless organisation acting in the name of imperialist interests (as was the case for many years). Russia and China vetoed the resolution. They knew plainly enough that the West wanted to intervene militarily in Syria.

Undeterred, the same trick was attempted a few months later on 4 February 2012. A vote for a new Security Council resolution was proposed on Syria, backed by US-NATO and the Arab League, the latter dominated by the Gulf autocracies (19). Russia and China also quashed this resolution. The “international community” was using its heartfelt concerns about human welfare as a pretext for military aggression. (20)

In October 2012 Kofi Annan, the former UN Secretary-General, praised Russia and China for blocking Western efforts to internationalise the conflict in Syria (21). Washington had little credibility to fall back on. The US Armed Forces invaded Iraq under the guise of finding non-existent weapons of mass destruction; they attacked Libya on the pretext of rescuing civilians, when in actual fact the US-NATO bombardment led to a massive rise in human suffering. As much as a tenfold increase in deaths occurred in Libya following the invasion, according to American political scientist Alan Kuperman (22). He outlined that the US-NATO attack on Libya prolonged the length of the civil war there “by approximately six times”.



Notes

1.- Democracy Now!, “Gen. Wesley Clark Weighs Presidential Bid: ‘I Think About It Every Day’”, 2 March 2007

2.- Luiz Alberto Moniz Bandeira, The Second Cold War: Geopolitics and the Strategic Dimensions of the USA, (Springer 1st ed., 23 June 2017) p. 240

3.- Ibid.

4.- Jonathan Steele, “Most Syrians back President Assad, but you’d never know from Western media”, The Guardian, 17 January 2012

5.- Reuters, “Syrians rally for Assad, president due to speak”, 29 March 2011

6.- BBC News, “Syria unrest: Aleppo see huge pro-Assad rally”, 19 October 2011

7.- Bandeira, The Second Cold War, p. 250

8.- Ibid., pp. 245-246

9.- Scott Wilson, Joby Warrick, “Assad must go, Obama says”, Washington Post, 18 August 2011

10.- Rania El Gamal, Andrew Hammond, “Assad said he will live and die Syria”, Reuters, 8 November 2012

11.- Kareem Shaheen, “String of losses in Syria leaves Assad regime increasingly precarious”, The Guardian, 11 June 2015

12.- Noam Chomsky, David Barsamian, Global Discontents: Conversations on the Rising Threats to Democracy (Hamish Hamilton, 1st edition, 5 Dec. 2017) p. 123

13.- Nafeez Ahmed, “Syria intervention plan fueled by oil interests, not chemical weapon concern”, The Guardian, 30 August 2013

14.- Bandeira, The Second Cold War, p. 264

15.- Ibid., p. 246

16.- Irish Times, “Syria referendum held amid heavy military onslaught”, 26 February 2012

17.- Bandeira, The Second Cold War, p. 241

18.- UN News, “Russia and China veto draft Security Council resolution on Syria”, 4 October 2011

19.- United Nations, “Security Council Fails to Adopt Draft Resolution on Syria as Russian Federation, China Veto Text Supporting Arab League’s Proposed Peace Plan”, 4 February 2012

20.- Bandeira, The Second Cold War, p. 250

21.- Jon Snow, “Kofi Annan’s dire warning on Syria”, Channel 4 News, 8 October 2012

22.- David Bosco, “Did NATO Intervention Make Libya’s War Bloodier?”, Foreign Policy, 18 July 2013

https://orinocotribune.com/us-nato-targ ... nst-syria/
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Re: Syria

Post by blindpig » Sun Apr 04, 2021 2:17 pm

Former U.S. Official: Al-Qaeda In Syria Is "An Asset" For U.S. Strategy
There is a new public relation campaign pushed by Turkey to whitewash al-Qaeda in Syria. 'Western' journalists were invited to Idleb governorate through some Turkish agency to make some fan flicks about Hayat Tahrir al Sham, the al-Qaeda entity under Abu Mohammad al-Jolani, which rules in Idelb.

The U.S. Public Broadcasting Service sent a crew for the gig and scored an interview with Jolani himself:
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/arti ... -al-qaeda/

In his first interview with an American journalist, Jolani told FRONTLINE correspondent Martin Smith that his role in fighting Assad and ISIS, and in controlling an area with millions of displaced Syrians who could potentially become refugees, reflected common interests with the United States and the West.
Jolani told Smith that his group, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, posed no threat to the United States, and the government should remove him from its list of designated terrorists.

“First and foremost, this region does not represent a threat to the security of Europe and America,” Jolani told Smith. “This region is not a staging ground for executing foreign jihad.”

There is of course no reason to believe such nonsense:

Aaron Y. Zelin, whose research at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy focuses on jihadi groups in North Africa and Syria, told Smith that it’s hard to know what Jolani’s intentions are “because he has been a chameleon.” Zelin said in an interview conducted March 8, “How can you necessarily trust somebody that’s just trying to survive and continue to remain in power, because that’s the only way he can?”
Still - PBS is whitewashing the guy. Just see this passage:

Since the start of the conflict in Syria a decade ago, the Assad regime’s forces and ISIS have conducted large-scale human rights abuses. The Assad regime’s actions, Jolani told Smith, fit the definition of terrorism because it was “killing innocent people, children, poor people, women.”
Human rights organizations have also documented violations by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, from indiscriminate attacks on civilian areas to arbitrary arrests.

"Arbitrary arrests" seems mild when compared to "large-scale human rights abuses". That is until you learn form recent news how Hayat Tahrir al Sham really rules:

Three women and one man were stoned to death in Idlib, northwestern Syria, on Monday, on the orders of Islamist militant group Hay'at Tahrir Al-Sham (HTS).
According to sources close to HTS, who spoke to The New Arab’s Arabic language service Al-Araby Al-Jadeed, the individuals executed were charged with "adultery" and "attempted murder".

They were brutally executed in the city centre and the sentence was carried out by the security apparatuses, sources said.

But the U.S. government and its media never had trouble to ally with entities who commit such crimes. They are in fact often seen them as valuable tools. Former U.S. officials no problem with admitting that:

James Jeffrey, who served as a U.S. ambassador under both Republican and Democrat administrations and most recently as special representative for Syria engagement and special envoy to the global coalition to defeat ISIS during the Trump administration, told Smith that Jolani’s organization was “an asset” to America’s strategy in Idlib.
Is Jeffrey now in breach of the Intelligence Identities Protection Act?

The Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982 (Pub.L. 97–200, 50 U.S.C. §§ 421–426) is a United States federal law that makes it a federal crime for those with access to classified information, or those who systematically seek to identify and expose covert agents and have reason to believe that it will harm the foreign intelligence activities of the U.S.
Probably not. The law protects only covered agents and it has long been obvious that Jolani and his group were working in U.S. interests.

Posted by b at 17:05 UTC | Comments (50)

https://www.moonofalabama.org/2021/04/f ... l#comments
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Re: Syria

Post by blindpig » Tue Apr 27, 2021 2:07 pm

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The Balance of Forces in Syria
April 26, 2021
By Yanis Iqbal – Apr 24, 2021

Russia, Iran and Syria have established a mission aimed at securing a safe and stable flow of oil supplies, wheat and some other materials to Syria via the Mediterranean. The mission’s work is to secure multi-sided coordination to secure the arrival of oil in the first place, especially after the fuel crisis that is the largest that Syria has witnessed in decades.

After intensive meetings, the three countries approved a mechanism for Russian warships to escort Iranian oil tankers coming to Syria, as soon as they reach the Mediterranean gate of the Suez Canal, and until they reach the Syrian territorial waters, in order to protect them from piracy or any targeting of a different nature. These initiatives come in the context of an intensifying economic war against Syria, consisting of the US occupation of oil-rich and agriculturally productive Syrian territories, a Euro-American blockade and repeated US-Israel attacks on the high seas against oil tankers bound for the country.

With the launch of tripartite coordination, interventionist attempts at siege, sabotage and starvation could be partially thwarted as arrangements are made for the provision of essential commodities.

Washington’s Strategy
Increasing collaboration between America’s strategic adversaries is a reflection of the failure of Washington’s strategy in Syria. For the USA, the Arab country was crucial for extending domination in the entire region. Syria borders Turkey, Iraq, Lebanon, Israel, and Jordan. Iran flies arms into Damascus, which are then transported over land to Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Whoever holds power in Syria will have significant, long-term impact on the region. Syria fought two wars with Israel and continued a cold war with that country ever since. It became Iran’s only Arab ally and a key supporter of Hezbollah. Syria’s continued alliance with Iran became one of the main justifications of Western attempts to overthrow President Bashar al-Assad.

Tom Donilon, former President Barack Obama’s national-security adviser, said in 2011 that the “end of the Assad regime would constitute Iran’s greatest setback in the region yet—a strategic blow that will further shift the balance of power in the region against Iran.” Syria’s location came into play with plans to build a new natural-gas pipeline. Qatar wanted to construct a pipeline from its gas fields, through Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Syria, and ultimately to Turkey. It would have provided a new source of energy for Europe and potentially competed with Russia’s gas exports.

Assad refused to sign the deal in 2009, and instead in 2012, inked an agreement with Iran for a different pipeline. It would cost $10 billion and carry Iranian gas through Iraq, Syria, and possibly Lebanon. Although the war made construction impossible, the Obama administration and its Middle Eastern partners were not pleased that Iran would have a potentially new and lucrative source of income.

From the standpoint of the US and its allies, the 2011 protests in Syria appeared like an opportunity to get rid of one of the last “rogue states” in the region and to sever the link between Iran and Hezbollah. Within Lebanon, such a development would have most likely convinced some of Hezbollah’s more pliant allies to switch sides and join forces with the pro-West, Saudi-linked Future Movement.

The prospect of a weaker Hezbollah and an ever more isolated Iran, in turn, would have advanced US, Saudi, and Israeli interests and cleared the way for greater economic integration in the Levant. For various reasons, though, a direct military intervention, as had been the case in Libya, appeared difficult in Syria. Firstly, Syria’s relatively modest natural resources meant that even after a political transition its government could not reasonably be expected to pay the cost of post-war reconstruction. Secondly, the governments of Russia and China were angry that member states of North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and their allies had interpreted the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) resolution authorizing the use of force to protect civilians in Libya as a carte blanche to bomb and destroy the country. As a result, Russia and China vetoed any resolution involving the use of force in Syria, making any intervention illegal under international law.

Proxy War
Unable to intervene directly in Syria, the US and its allies waged a proxy war to bring about regime change in Syria.

The US, Britain and France at first led a diplomatic offensive, attempting to isolate the Syrian government and to impose successive non-elected exile groups as the “legitimate representatives” of the Syrian people. Nevertheless, along with regional collaborators, particularly Turkey, Qatar and Saudi Arabia, they funded and armed all the various armed groups. Turkey provided training grounds and a staging post for attacks on northern Syria. Qatar funded the Muslim Brotherhood (a Sunni Islamist organization) and provided arms through Turkey, recruiting foreign fighters, for example from Yemen, to be trained by US Special Forces in Qatar before being sent to Syria.

Saudi Arabia, which armed the insurrection from its beginning in March 2011, backed various foreign groups including Pakistani Taliban. From 2012 onwards, foreign Salafi-jihadists, from a range of countries including Saudi Arabia, Libya, Tunisia, Yemen, Iraq, Chechnya, Pakistan and various parts of Europe, began participating in large numbers. Muslim Brotherhood and Salafist forces were able to prolong their attacks because of the participation of thousands of outside fighters, most often paid by Qatar and Saudi Arabia and trained in Jordan and Turkey. Indeed, the Syrian Islamists had been effectively defeated by early 2012; but they were reinforced by many thousands of foreign jihadists, most of them passing through Turkey.

Over the course of 2012 and 2013 foreign state support for the insurgency progressively brought ever larger pockets of territory under rebel control: first the Jebel Al-Zawiya, in the Idlib governorate, along the Turkish border; then a series of neighborhoods and small towns between Homs and Zabadani, along the Lebanese border, as well as some of the suburbs of Damascus; and eventually the eastern borderlands and parts of the city and the countryside of Aleppo. In 2014, Raqqa was captured by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), becoming the first provincial capital to fall under rebel control The forward march of jihadists was temporarily halted by a fraternal struggle that opened up in 2013 between Jabhat al-Nusra and ISIS.

Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi—the emir of the Islamic State of Iraq who had set up Jabhat al-Nusra as the al-Qaeda front in the Syrian war—changed the name of his group to ISIS, including Syria in his dominion and telling his al-Nusra acolyte, Abu Mohammad al-Golani, to work under him.

Al-Nusra and ISIS had slightly different goals, with the latter less interested in the fight against Assad alone and more interested in the creation of an emirate. Beginning with 2014, ISIS engaged itself in a war within a war, in which it battled the rest of the Syrian armed opposition, jihadi and non-jihadi. Up to 7,000 fighters may have been killed in this fighting. ISIS would retain control of Raqqa and eastern Syria, and all other rebel groups retrenched in the Aleppo and Idlib governorates and remained dominant in the rebel fronts along the Lebanese border, in the south, and in the suburbs of Damascus.

Western support for the Islamist opposition in Syria was firmly situated in the context of post-Arab Spring developments elsewhere in the region: between late 2011 and early 2012, Ennahda (an Islamist party) and the Muslim Brotherhood had won elections in Tunisia and Egypt respectively, and the governments of the US and its allies had for the most part come to terms with them. Erdogan’s Turkey meanwhile positioned itself as an interlocutor and advocate for Islamist rule in the Arab world. Indeed, Erdogan had long contended that political Islam, democracy, and capitalism were fully compatible and at this time many Western leaders appeared to believe his narrative.

In Libya, meanwhile, Qaddafi had been killed, violent forces had seized Tripoli, and nationwide elections were in the works, with Islamists playing once again a prominent role in the political process. In Syria, Western support for a largely Islamist insurgency was thus part of the same broad strategy, aimed at promoting greater imperialist integration.

Ending Interventionism
The prolongation of the proxy war in Syria has brought sheer devastation for civilians.

There is thus an imperative need to immediately stop this war. On April 6, 2021, Massachusetts Peace Action called on all progressives and peace activists to support the following demands: 1. Ending US military intervention and occupation of Syrian territory. 2. Ending US military and diplomatic support to the armed opposition, 3. Ending US sanctions on Syria so the country could begin a process of economic re-construction.

These demands need to be emphasized by peace movements all over the world so that Syrians are allowed access to basic rights. Of a population of about 21 million, some six million Syrians are internally displaced and another five to six million refugees have fled the country for different reasons. Without the end of interventionism, these horrors will continue to plague Syria.


Featured image: A Syrian fighter looks on while on guard duty in the west of Tal Abyad in Raqqa province, along the front-line with Syrian Kurdish forces. (AFP)

https://orinocotribune.com/the-balance- ... -in-syria/
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Re: Syria

Post by blindpig » Wed May 12, 2021 2:12 pm

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White Helmets Corruption Scandal Deepens: Dutch Gov’t Investigated Parent org for Fraud, but Covered it up

May 10, 2021
By Ben Norton – May 7, 2021

The Netherlands investigated fraud by the Mayday Rescue Foundation, which funded the Syrian White Helmets with over $120 million in Western government contracts. But top Dutch officials covered up the corruption.

The decade-long dirty war on Syria proved to be a cash cow for some of the most prominent US and UK regime-change operatives. Western government contractors got hundreds of millions of dollars to run schemes to destabilize Damascus – and some of them took a cut for themselves, profiting off of the pillage.

One of the main players in the cottage industry of contractors that helped run the Western regime-change war on Syria, and which was eventually implicated in a massive corruption scandal, was the Mayday Rescue Foundation.

Mayday served as the fiscal sponsor of Syria Civil Defense, known popularly as the White Helmets, a deceptive humanitarian interventionist operation that became a key propaganda weapon in the dirty war on Damascus.

With more than $120 million in funding from numerous Western governments, the White Helmets were portrayed in servile media campaigns and by slick PR films as a noble philanthropic group dedicated to saving civilian lives. In reality, the organization functioned as the de facto civil and medical infrastructure for areas in Syria that were controlled by brutal, theocratic Salafi-jihadist insurgents.

The White Helmets operated exclusively in areas run by the Syrian armed opposition, and collaborated extensively with extremists, including ISIS and al-Qaeda. White Helmets were even filmed assisting in public executions on numerous occasions.

The White Helmets helped NATO member Turkey militarily invade and ethnically cleanse Kurdish-majority towns in northern Syria as part of a plan to repopulate those areas with Sunni Muslim Arabs who supported Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Following the invasion, schoolchildren were indoctrinated with Turkish nationalist propaganda.

A Syria producer at the BBC has even stated that the White Helmets helped stage a fake chemical weapons attack in the city of Douma, to try to pin the blame on the Syrian government and spur Western military intervention against it.

Yet while Western governments were lavishing the White Helmets with praise and funneling huge sums of taxpayer money into their parent organization, the Netherlands-based Mayday Rescue Foundation, they were also quietly investigating the group for fraud.

A series of mainstream Dutch media reports document how the Netherlands knew Mayday had presided over serious financial irregularities, but top officials covered it up, refusing to inform elected lawmakers and even ignoring recommendations from their own regulators to reclaim millions of dollars worth of contracts.

Dutch officials feared that exposing Mayday’s corruption could harm the Western regime-change efforts targeting Syria, and might sully the benevolent image of the White Helmets that was carefully constructed over years of constant promotion and obsequious propaganda.

The scandal is a particularly disturbing illustration of how footsoldiers of the Non-Profit Industrial Complex tug at the heartstrings of Western liberals not only to advance Western foreign policy interests, but also to line their own pockets with millions of dollars flowing through opaque contracts.

The controversy also demonstrates how Western government officials protected war profiteers while keeping the constituents whose tax dollars were wasted away in the dark about the documented corruption in their midst.

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The US government-funded White Helmets assist a public execution in Daraa, in rebel-held Syria in 2017

Dutch government investigated White Helmets sponsor Mayday Rescue for fraud – but covered it up
This May 7, the Dutch-language newspaper de Volkskrant published a report revealing that the Netherlands had investigated the Mayday Rescue Foundation for fraud.

Western European governments poured more than €100 million ($121 million) into Mayday to fund the White Helmets, including Britain, Germany, Canada, Denmark, and the Netherlands. The United States also pitched in, sending tens of millions of dollars to the White Helmets.

The Dutch government contributed €12.5 million ($15.2 million) to Mayday. But by late 2018, the Netherlands suspected corruption and stopped funding the organization, “due to concerns in The Hague about financial supervision and the organization,” de Volkskrant wrote.

The Dutch government subsequently investigated, and in mid-2020 the Netherlands’ Central Audit Service advised the government to reclaim more than €3.6 million in tax money that it had given to Mayday.

“It is not certain whether the millions were spent on their intended purpose,” the newspaper stated.

But the Dutch government did not request this money. Instead, the Netherlands’ minister for foreign trade and development cooperation, Sigrid Kaag, decided to halt a final payment of a mere €57,000 to Mayday – just 1.6 percent of what the audit office had recommended be returned to the state’s coffers.

Even this paltry decision was largely symbolic, because Mayday had already spent the more than $120 million in government contracts it received and was bankrupt by the time Kaag decided to halt payments.




In a letter to Western governments, the late founder and director of Mayday Rescue, James Le Mesurier admitted to fraud and unethical financial behavior, such as “very high salaries, cash bonuses and unpaid taxes,” de Volkskrant noted.

But the newspaper report makes it clear that the fraud investigation had become a point of conflict inside the Dutch government. Officials who supported the regime-change war on Syria sought to downplay the scandal.

The foreign trade minister, Kaag, wanted to inform the parliament about the fraud investigation, so she wrote a letter, and planned to send it to the Dutch House of Representatives. (De Volkskrant obtained drafts of the document via a public records request.)

But Kaag was pressured to censor the letter. Top officials at the Foreign Affairs Ministry insisted she not send it because she was not legally obligated to do so. They feared the revelation “may unjustly harm” Mayday and the White Helmets.

The result: The letter was never sent, MPs were never informed of the known corruption, and Dutch taxpayers were not able to learn that Mayday mishandled enormous sums of money it received from numerous donor governments, including their own.

White Helmets czar James Le Mesurier admits fraud, then dies days later
In November 2019, the Mayday Rescue Foundation’s founder, former British military intelligence officer James Le Mesurier, died under strange circumstances in Istanbul, Turkey.

Turkish authorities said he committed suicide, jumping to his death.

Le Mesurier had served in the British army in Northern Ireland and former Yugoslavia, before later working for private security companies. By 2014, he founded Mayday Rescue and became the key Western point-man running the White Helmets psychological operation.

While corporate media marketed Le Mesurier as a humanitarian hero, he and his colleagues were cashing in on the regime-change scheme.

Three days before his death, Le Mesurier confessed to serious financial improprieties. On November 8, he sent an email to donor countries admitting that Mayday had committed fraud. He said he had forged receipts, writing, “I take full and sole responsibility for it.”

But Le Mesurier insisted that the corruption must not come to light, because if it were leaked to the media, it would be a “victory for Russia and the pro-Assad trolls.”

De Volkskrant reported this in July 2020, in an article titled “Founder of Foundation behind White Helmets Admits Fraud.”

A journalist who co-authored the report, Ana van Es, noted that the Western governments that had funded the White Helmets had heeded Le Mesurier’s warning and were “keeping quiet about the wrongdoings.”




The earlier de Volkskrant report details how a Dutch accountant began investigating Mayday in November 2019, and found that Le Mesurier had forged receipts and paid money that was designated for the White Helmets to himself personally.

The article reveals just how suspicious Mayday’s financial dealings were. While the foundation was often portrayed in fawning Western media coverage as a benevolent non-profit humanitarian organization, it actually had for-profit commercial branches in Turkey and Dubai.

“There was no supervisory board, which meant that administrators could decide their own salaries, which in some cases amounted to 26,000 euros a month,” de Volkskrant wrote.

This means that some Mayday staff were being paid around $380,000 per year. “Such figures are above the approved salary ceiling of a subsidised organisation in the Netherlands,” the newspaper noted.

“In addition, Le Mesurier, his wife – also one of the administrators – and a third administrator would pay themselves cash bonuses, on top of their salaries,” the article continued.

James’ wife Emma Le Mesurier has rejected the claims of fraud which her own late husband admitted to, and aggressively trolls virtually any journalists on Twitter who mention the scandal.

However, a new administrator hired to try to clean up Mayday’s reputation, Cor Vrieswijk, acknowledged to the Dutch newspaper that the enormous salaries were indeed “excessive,” but added that the Western “donor countries knew about this and had given their consent.”

Western diplomats covered up White Helmets corruption to “avoid political risks” and ensure “minimal exposure”
The May 2021 report in de Volkskrant revealed that when Western governments learned of the corruption scandal at the Mayday Rescue Foundation, they immediately plotted to cover it up.

When Le Mesurier admitted fraud and died three days later, Western diplomats quickly convened a series of “crisis meetings” in the Dutch consulate in Istanbul, the newspaper said.

“The Netherlands saw itself politically as ‘extra vulnerable,’” de Volkskrant wrote. “After all, Mayday is located in Amsterdam. The millions of payments from the foundation went through Dutch accounts.”

When accountants subsequently investigated and found serious irregularities, the donor countries continued their damage control.

In February 2020, Western diplomats met again in Istanbul, where they discussed “avoiding political risks” and ways to ensure “minimal exposure.”

An accounting firm called Grant Thornton investigated Mayday. It technically said it did not find evidence of fraud beyond what Le Mesurier admitted to, but that was largely because the firm’s finances were such a mess that it was nearly impossible to audit them.

As Dutch government officials told de Volkskrant, “Fraud cannot be proven because ‘critical’ parts of the accounts are ‘not traceable.’”

“The bookkeeping was seriously inadequate,” the newspaper wrote. “There was no internal financial supervision. Payments turned out not to be traceable afterwards.”

De Volkskrant continued:

The report did not allay concerns at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Grant Thornton’s findings raised doubts about the accuracy of financial reports previously submitted by Mayday. According to officials, ‘it could not be established with certainty’ that the Dutch subsidy had indeed been spent on the White Helmets. When an officer asks which expenses cannot be audited, a colleague replies, ‘All expenses to the White Helmets.’

Western government funding for White Helmets continues despite corruption
Despite the corruption documented by the Dutch government, Western state funding for the White Helmets has continued, as the United States and European Union have doubled down on their dirty war against Syria.

The US and EU have imposed one of the most aggressive sanctions regimes in modern history to destabilize Syria and oust its government. The de facto blockade, amounting to collective punishment of millions of civilians, has unleashed a large-scale economic depression, fuel shortage, and food crisis.

Meanwhile, the Netherlands resumed its support for the White Helmets during the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020, claiming to use the group to provide humanitarian assistance to insurgent-held territory in Syria.

Western governments have been able to continue funding the White Helmets without a hitch, largely because a compliant corporate media has almost without exception refused to acknowledge anything negative about the proxy group.

These Dutch media reports on Mayday’s corruption have received next to no attention in other countries. This can partially be explained because James Le Mesurier had forged many friendships within the Western press, cultivating journalists as assets in the dirty war by feeding them scoops and even facilitating propaganda trips into Syria across Turkey’s southern border.

The BBC – which The Grayzone exposed for covertly participating in UK Foreign Office information warfare campaigns – even created an error-filled, hagiographic podcast series dedicated to rewriting the history of the dirty war on Syria, sanctifying Le Mesurier, and rehabilitating the image of Mayday. Its subtle title? Mayday.

And Mayday is not the only Western government contractor exposed for corruption.

Another regime-change lobby group called the Commission for International Justice and Accountability (CIJA) received an estimated €42 million ($50 million) in funding from the United States and Western European nations to wage legal warfare, or lawfare, on Syria – and collaborated with al-Qaeda in the process.

CIJA, too, was investigated for large-scale fraud. As The Grayzone reported, the European Anti-Fraud Office (OLAF) formally accused CIJA of fraud, “submission of false documents, irregular invoicing, and profiteering.” The EU regulator even recommended that legal authorities in the UK, the Netherlands, and Belgium prosecute CIJA.


But CIJA’s corruption was wholly ignored in corporate media as well. Le Mesurier’s friends and colleagues went to great lengths to depict the thoroughly documented fraud scandal as a malign campaign of disinformation supposedly run out of the Kremlin.

Western governments and their stenographers in the press have helped shield war profiteers from any consequences, as they have defrauded taxpayers in numerous countries out of huge sums of money, all in a desperate crusade to destroy Syria.

Today, a stunning array of mind-blowing scandals involving the dirty war on Syria remain either untouched or covered up by Western corporate media, from the White Helmets’ role in staging false chemical attacks to Western governments silencing and punishing scientific whistleblowers at the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW).

Beneath the surface of the corruption scandal involving Mayday and the White Helmets is a seemingly bottomless pit of bloodshed and sleaze.



Featured image: White Helmets cheering with armed Salafi-jihadist militants that just overtook Idlib, Syria

(The Grayzone)

https://orinocotribune.com/white-helmet ... red-it-up/

Just remember that Norton was for regime change in Syria until he was against it, which only occurred after his position became untenable if he cared to retain his 'left' audience. His work should be examined closely.
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Re: Syria

Post by blindpig » Fri Jun 11, 2021 11:55 am

Syria Rejects US Declaration on Occupied Golan Heights

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In 2018, the government of former President Trump recognized Israeli sovereignty over the region in clear violation of international resolutions and the Security Council of the United Nations (UN). | Photo: @Amani90_

Published 9 June 2021 (16 hours 35 minutes ago)

Syria considers that it has legitimate rights over the Golan region illegally occupied by Israel since 1967.

Syria on Wednesday rejected statements by U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken regarding the Syrian Golan which is occupied by Israel, and reiterated that this is and will continue to be its territory.

According to the Syrian Foreign Ministry, Blinken's pronouncements are part of Washington's continued and unlimited support for the occupying entity and its criminal aggressions.

Furthermore, the Foreign Ministry ratified that history and international legitimacy reaffirm the Golan as Syrian Arab land and that the former President Donald Trump's administration's recognition of Israel's annexation is a further sign of its flagrant violation of international legitimacy and its resolutions and treaties.

Syria is waging a struggle to regain its occupied lands by all available means and considers it its legitimate right guaranteed by all international laws and charters. He further stressed that the US officials cannot and will not be able to harm this right.

According to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates, it is clear to the whole world that Israel is a usurper entity and its policy of expansion and aggression is the main cause of tensions and instability in the region, and is a serious threat to international security.


"Syria expresses its categorical rejection of the U.S. Secretary of State's statements on the occupied Syrian Golan, affirming that the Golan is and will remain Syrian territory."

According to the text, the "foolish statements by U.S. officials" will not be able to harm this right or influence Syria's insistence on regaining its legitimate rights.

The Golan was occupied by Israel after the so-called Six-Day War in 1967 and included that territory in its legal system in 1981, for which it received the rejection of the international community.

In 2018, the government of former President Trump recognized Israeli sovereignty over the region in clear violation of international resolutions and the Security Council of the United Nations (UN).

https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Syr ... -0012.html

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China, Russia, Syria To Trump: Respect UN Resolutions on Golan Heights

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People holding Syrian and Druze flags in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, Feb. 14, 2019. | Photo: Reuters

Published 22 March 2019

An eventual U.S. recognition of Israel-occupied territory could destabilize the Middle East.


China called Friday on "all concerned parties" to respect the United Nations Security Council resolutions on the Golan Heights, a request that comes after U.S. President Donald Trump announced his intention to recognize Israeli sovereignty over the Syrian territory.

"Regarding the occupied Arab territories, including the Golan Heights, there are very clear guidelines set by United Nations Security Council 242 and 338 resolutions," China's Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang recalled, adding that all parties should respect the international law with the aim of "resolving territorial disputes through negotiation for a deep, just and lasting peace in the Middle East."

Trump's decision contradicts with U.N. Security Council resolution 242, which urged Israel to withdraw from the territories it had occupied after the 1967 war. His decision also goes against the 1974 Israel-Syria ceasefire agreement, which establishes a demilitarized zone between the two countries.

The Golan Heights are a plateau which extends between the northeastern border of Israel, Lebanon, Jordan and Syria. Part of this region remains under Israeli occupation; another one has been controlled by the United Nations Disengagement Observer Force (UNDOF) since 1974; and the rest of the area remains under the sovereignty of Syria.

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Disregarding multilateral agreements, however, President Trump tweeted Thursday that “after 52 years it is time for the United States to fully recognize Israel’s Sovereignty over the Golan Heights, which is of critical strategic and security importance to the State of Israel and Regional Stability.”


The U.S. government announcement, which came 20 days before Trump's ally right-wing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is set to run for reelections, has faced many criticisms not only because it violates the norms of international law but also because it could fuel new episodes of conflict in the region.

“That the U.S. is the only country in the world that is contemplating recognizing Israel’s sovereignty over militarily conquered territory –be it the Golan Heights or the West Bank and East Jerusalem– is an indication of further isolation from the norms of interactive foreign policy,” Imad K. Harb, the Research Director of the Arab Center Washington DC (ACW) said, adding that “by siding with Israel and its supporters on the Golan issue... the U.S. would be allowing the exceptionalism that is embodied in its policy toward Israel to become the norm in dealing with all other consequential issues around the world.”

The Syrian Foreign Ministry called Trump's statements "irresponsible" and said they reaffirm the U.S. "unlimited support" for Israel's "aggressive behavior."

"The U.S., with its cowardly policies which are driven by arrogance and a mentality of hegemony, has become... a threat to international peace and stability," Syria's Foreign Ministry said, stressing that the Syrians are "more determined" to liberate the occupied Golan "by all means."


Russia also criticized Trump's intention of recognizing Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights and warned that his declaration could destabilize the region.

"Such calls may considerably destabilize the already strained situation in the Middle East," Russian presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov told TASS, explaining that "the idea as such by no means works for the tasks and goals of the Middle East settlement. It’s the other way round."

The recent controversy over the occupied territory seems to follow the U.S. "human rights report" in which the Trump administration changed the usual State Department description of the Golan heights from “Israeli-occupied” to “Israeli-controlled.” The move came amid intensified efforts by Israel to win U.S. recognition of its claim to sovereignty over the strategic regions.

https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Chi ... -0010.html
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Re: Syria

Post by blindpig » Thu Jun 17, 2021 12:07 pm

GENOCIDE AND WAR CRIMES: THE EFFECTS OF THE "SANCTIONS" AGAINST SYRIA
15 Jun 2021 , 5:26 pm .

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Sanctions against Syria: a silent death (Photo: Yuri Kozyrev / TIME)

In Venezuela we have experienced firsthand the direct offensive of the US unilateral coercive measures (UCM). But we are not the only country that has been a victim of the financial-economic-commercial crime of the United States and its "partners", nor the last to suffer its consequences.

Other peoples in their resistance struggle against the Anglo-Zionist empire can attest to the attacks produced by the so-called "sanctions" of Washington, emanating numerous testimonies, visions and data that help to better understand the economic weapons of the enemy.

Undoubtedly, the economic and social impact of financial wars hits the back of the population and the entire country. In the case of Venezuela, the blockade and the oil embargo have caused the destruction of the oil industry and its income in a significant way. The consequences on society are well known nationally and internationally, even though the United States denies any negative impacts with supremacist excuses.

The case of Syria can be understood as a mirror of the Venezuelan. British journalist and photographer Vanessa Beeley lives in Damascus, the Syrian capital, from where she has covered the war against the Arab Republic and its people. In a panel discussion sponsored by the International Manifesto Group last Sunday, June 13, " The violence of non-violence. A geopolitical analysis of the social and health effects of sanctions ", he took stock of the US MCU on the Syrian people worth bringing up.

Beeley argues that "sanctions" are "more devastating than a military war" when "they are used as a brutal and vindictive component of a neocolonial hybrid warfare strategy." And they become "weapons of mass destruction" if "global superpowers target nations like Syria," attacked by terrorist armies and mercenaries promoted by the United States and NATO. The proxy army factor (by delegation) against the Arab authorities and the Syrian people cannot be underestimated : "It is almost impossible - he says - to speak of the economic sanctions against Syria in isolation."

"I would say that the effects of the sanctions of the United States, the United Kingdom, the European Union, the Arab League and Turkey are equivalent to the campaign of destruction of infrastructure carried out by the illegal armed groups financed and armed by the coalition of change. of the United States regime and promoted by its aligned media. Terrorism can be defined as the 'illegal use of force or violence against persons or property in order to coerce or intimidate a government or the civilian population to promote objectives political or ideological '", says the journalist.

It is an act of "economic terrorism", since it "denies the means of sustenance of life to innocent civilians in order to force an entire nation to submit to foreign agendas in the region." It adds: "The destruction of vital civil infrastructure is an act of war, the retention of essential resources or the occupation of these resources is also a war crime."

In his opinion, the Atlanticist coalition has committed genocide in Syria, in accordance with the United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, article II, point c : "Intentional submission of the group to conditions of existence that have to bring about its physical destruction, total or partial ".

One should remember the words of the US diplomat James Jeffrey for Syria, who not only describes Al Qaeda as an "American asset" in Syria for an interview with Al-Monitor , but speaks openly about the misery that the "sanctions entail. "for the Syrian people:

"And, of course, we have increased the isolation and the pressure of sanctions on Assad, we have maintained the line of lack of assistance for the reconstruction [of infrastructure] and the country is desperate for it. You see what happened to the Syrian pound, you see what happened to the whole economy. So it has been a very effective strategy. "

The reports on the damage to key sectors of Syrian society give an example of how there is a correlation between the issuance of MCU and the terrorist attacks and the US occupation that violate the sovereignty and socioeconomics of the Arab Republic, hitting the quality of life of the population and their fundamental human rights, as stated by Beeley.

OIL SECTOR
The executive order 13582 of the August 18, 2011 "prohibits the importation of petroleum or petroleum derived products of Syrian origin, and prohibits Americans from engaging in transactions involving oil or products derived from the Syrian oil."

From 2011 to 2014 the loss from oil revenues is estimated at about $ 21 billion for Syria.

When the Islamic State (ISIS) occupied the oil-rich northeast region of Syria, it was stealing a daily rent of $ 3 million. Those who now benefit from such revenues are the separatist Kurds protected by the Pentagon and NATO. The United States also steals the oil resources in the area through the Delta Crescent Energy company , established during the Trump administration. Al Qaeda receives stolen crude oil and markets it in Turkey with the company WATAD .

Says Beeley: "Indeed, the United States or its proxies seized Syrian oil fields early in the conflict, this has provided revenue for the various counter forces under their control (including ISIS), allowing them to steal more resources. , ethnically cleanse areas of Syria and destroy infrastructure while increasing sanctions and imposing a brutal blockade on the Syrian people, most of whom live in areas under the protection of the Syrian government.

INDUSTRIAL SECTOR
"A large number of factories have been forced to cease to exist" due to the financial-economic-commercial blockade, which has been escalating over time, affecting production. "The cause is the lack of fuel, electricity, spare parts for machinery (most came from the EU)," says the journalist.

A report from the Aleppo Chamber of Commerce in 2015 detailed the total closure of 26,000 factories, the partial closure of 17,000 and the suspension of production in 50,000 factories. At the same time, armed groups, including the Nusra Front and ISIS, invaded Aleppo's industrial areas and dismantled thousands of factories, destroyed power grids, railways, etc., and to provide business income in Turkey, many factories were re-established within Turkey. In October 2015, the US coalition bombed the Aleppo thermal power plant, then under ISIS control, ensuring a total blackout in Aleppo and the surrounding countryside, "says the British photographer.

AGRICULTURE SECTOR
Vanessa Beeley affirms that this sector "has been affected by the increase in gasoline costs and the lack of machinery parts thanks to the sanctions. Some of these olive and cotton growing areas have been occupied by the armored groups that Again, they profit from the illegal trade in Syrian food via Turkey and Iraq. In 2020 large tracts of wheat crops and Syrian forestry were deliberately burned. "

Food has been a military objective by the United States, a genocidal tactic by all sides: "The American coalition - continues Beeley - threw thermal balloons ( thermal baloons ) on the wheat crops in the northeast, the Kurds took control of wheat storage facilities and restricted the supply to Damascus for the Syrian people. Bread lines became a familiar scene throughout Syria and food prices skyrocketed. Syria is being driven into dangerous food insecurity by a combination of military and economic force, both backed by the same criminal alliance led by the United States and the United Kingdom. "


HEALTH SECTOR
As has also been denounced from Venezuela, the "humanitarian sector" is not exempt from the blockade, contrary to what US spokesmen commonly declare. The Damascus-based photographer also provides the following information:

"Almost 50% of Syrian hospitals have been destroyed during the war against this country, many were occupied by terrorist groups and turned into military centers, Sharia courts, detention and torture centers, for example, the Eye Hospital and Children in eastern Aleppo, which was finally liberated by the Syrian Arab Army and its allies in December 2016. An estimated 20 pharmaceutical factories were also destroyed or occupied during the terrorist invasions. Syria had a fleet of 703 ambulances in 2011, 350 have been destroyed or stolen by armed groups or their Western-backed auxiliaries, the White Helmets, the rest of the hospitals and equipment suffer from a lack of up-to-date technology, parts and maintenance because most of the hardware was originally supplied by the EU.

"This has led to shortages of drugs for chronic diseases such as cancer, heart disease and kidney disease. The health sector, which offers free healthcare for everyone within Syria, has always been a source of pride for the state. Syrian: Now 41 public hospitals and 621 medical centers are out of service. There are restrictions on the import of chlorine gas used as a water purifier, which has led to the spread of infectious diseases due to contamination of drinking water. At the same time, NATO member state Turkey is deliberately depriving the Syrian people of water in the Hasaka region of northeast Syria.The sanctions are again just one element in a war of hydrohegemony waged by the US coalition against the Syrian people, a war that impacts the healthcare sector with devastating consequences.

"The most recent and savage Caesar Act sanctions introduced under Trump are preventing the rebuilding of hospitals and the repair of essential machinery. The closure of many of the rural hospitals is causing unavoidable overcrowding in city hospitals, leading to delays in treatment and the spread of disease. Sanctions on the health sector are a deliberate and criminal target of the US coalition against the Syrian people. This violates all human rights conventions and should be condemned, "he denounces Beeley.


THE ELECTRICITY AND TRANSPORT SECTORS
The combination of proxy warfare and MCUs have had a devastating effect on the power sector. The British reporter says that "there has been a drastic reduction in production that is affected by the lack of fuel due to the occupation of oil resources and the inability to obtain spare parts. Damages in 2015, due to electricity cuts, were they estimated at 16 billion dollars, now in 2021 that number will increase enormously. "

During the imposed war, armed groups, especially the Al-Nusra Front (Al-Qaeda in Syria) "have systematically destroyed power plants, fuel depots, oil and gas pipelines, and stolen entire power grids to trade in Turkey. entire railway lines within Turkey have been destroyed and melted down or sold for scrap. The Syrian transportation system is affected by a lack of fuel, spare parts and the destruction of essential infrastructure. All of these have a debilitating effect on Syrian society and its functioning. "

"The education and tourism sectors in Syria are also being undermined by sanctions and the inability to rebuild and restart after the effects of the war," concludes Vanessa Beeley.

EFFECTS OF ECONOMIC TERRORISM AGAINST THE SYRIAN PEOPLE
The devastation of the Syrian economy by foreign aggression has been aberrant, an experience similar to that experienced by Venezuela and many other nations victims of the Empire. It is worth quoting in full Beeley's final conclusions, since they draw a panorama that resembles what has been experienced in our country.

"There have been huge increases in food prices throughout Syria, around 300% in some cases. Fuel prices have skyrocketed, inflation is barely under control. This is leading to food insecurity, malnutrition and poverty in 80%. Wages have remained static, so the average government employee earns 50,000 Syrian pounds per month ($ 16 at the current rate) while, for example, 2 kilos of chicken now costs 20,000 Syrian pounds. In the winter, many areas of Damascus received electricity for only three hours a day, in rural areas even less. The cost of heating fuel and cooking gas is now exorbitant: for a bottle of gas on the black market, between 30 and 40 thousand,while there are long waits for government-subsidized gas.

"There is a fuel shortage, which has caused queues of up to two days to receive 20 liters of fuel. Lebanon has also run out of fuel, as it has been one of the main black market fuel suppliers to Syria. Unemployment is rising exponentially. Apartment rental costs have skyrocketed, while construction of new projects is at a standstill due to lack of materials, equipment and investment. Families are being torn apart as young people risk the dangers of travel routes illegal immigrants to the EU and beyond to try to earn money and send it to their impoverished relatives in Syria.The sanctions are suffocating Syria and are being used to deliberately increase the suffering of the Syrian people who have withstood ten years of war waged against them by the coalition of the United States and the United Kingdom that guarantees their inability to escape the quagmire of war .

"The US coalition is effectively pursuing a policy of collective extermination of the Syrian people by military and economic means. This is a crime against humanity, a war crime, and a flagrant violation of the right to life and a decent life. Syria. is a member of the United Nations, these MCUs targeting the people of Syria are a violation of the UN Charter.

"Under the most recent and barbaric sanctions of the Caesar Law, considered illegalBy many experts, increased pressure is being exerted against nations that would try to help rebuild Syria. At the same time, the United States, the United Kingdom, the EU, Turkey and Israel continue to support and promote terrorism in Syria and allow their representatives to loot and plunder Syrian resources, further punishing the Syrian people. The sanctions against Syria are a malevolent attempt to bring the country to its knees after one of the longest and costliest wars of regime change led by the United Kingdom and the United States failed militarily. The sanctions are not affecting the alleged targets, they are killing the Syrian people and they are killing hope; we must campaign against them to restore peace and stability in Syria and the region. "


https://misionverdad.com/globalistan/ge ... ntra-siria

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Re: Syria

Post by blindpig » Mon Jun 21, 2021 2:01 pm

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A Western-Backed war Couldn’t Destroy Syria, now Sanctions are Starving its People
June 18, 2021
By Eva Bartlett – Jun 16, 2021

A little over a decade ago, Syrians lived in safety and financial security. After ten years of war on Syria, while safety has largely returned, Syrians are struggling to exist under increasingly crippling Western sanctions.

As Syrian analyst Kevork Almassian noted, “Were it not for the CIA regime change war, arming & training tens of thousands of multinational terrorists, draconian sanctions, foreign occupation of North & East, looting the oil & burning the wheat, Syria would’ve now a brilliant economy & high standard of living.”

When I first visited Syria in 2014, and in the years following, mortars and missiles fired from terrorist groups occupying eastern Ghouta pummeled Damascus on a daily basis. Likewise in government-controlled areas of Aleppo, and elsewhere around Syria.

Parents never knew if their children would return from school, or be shelled while at school. Untold numbers of Syrian civilians have been maimed over the past decade by such shelling, untold numbers more killed.

So one might expect that in 2021, with most of the terrorism in Syria eradicated, Syrians would have begun returning to the normal lives they had ten years prior. But the brutal sanctions have truly wrought hell on Syrians over the years, and under the latest ones, life has gotten exponentially worse.

Last year, I was in Syria for half of the year, after the borders closed due to Covid confusion. With ample time on my hands, I walked for hours around Damascus daily. One afternoon, wanting to get a good view of the city, I walked along narrow lanes going up the side of Qasioun mountain, encountering locals who spoke of community and supporting one another in hard times.



I had stopped to take a photo of the vista when a young girl’s voice called out to me. Shortly after, I was seated in her family’s humble sitting room, drinking cold water and talking with the family.

Only by chance did I learn that the father was ill with prostate cancer and suffering greatly for a want of affordable medications, increasingly difficult to get a hold of due to the sanctions. And that was in April, before the sadistically-named Caesar Syria Civilian Protection Act came into effect months later.

I say sadistically, because these sanctions, while ostensibly intended to target the Syrian government and its allies in order to punish and discourage supposed “war crimes” against civilians, in reality inflict endless misery on those same Syrian civilians. This is, as I wrote, something former US envoy for Syria, James Jeffrey, boasted about, reportedly saying that the sanctions “contributed to the collapse of the value of the Syrian pound.”

It’s a pattern we’ve already seen with Western sanctions – in Venezuela, they have not only made people’s lives hell, but as I also wrote, have killed up to 40,000 Venezuelans in the span of one year, according to the Center for Economic and Policy Research.

A recent guest article in the Financial Times addressed Syria’s ongoing (and orchestrated) economic crisis, with particular attention to the sanctions, noting that 60% of Syrians are suffering from food insecurity.

That number might actually be significantly higher, as in a July 2020 article detailing the illegality of the sanctions, the author cited 83% of the population living below the poverty line. That article noted, of the Caesar sanctions:

“Unlike the pre-existing sanctions, they apply to transactions anywhere in the world that engage the Syrian Government or certain sectors of the Syrian economy, even when those transactions have no connection to the United States.

“Such sanctions cripple a state’s economy; disrupt the availability of food, medicines, drinking water, and sanitation supplies; interfere with the functioning of health and education systems; and undermine people’s ability to work.”

These are not unintended effects – they are the whole idea.

The FT article notes that after the Caesar Act came into effect, the Syrian pound, “lost almost 70% of its value against the dollar in the following months. This spurred an inflationary spiral affecting food prices, which more than tripled in 2020.”

And, in contrast to how the US pretends to “protect” Syrians with these sanctions, the Caesar Act is, “severely affecting the local economy especially in the construction, energy, and financial sectors, blocking any possibility of reconstruction in this phase of lower-intensity conflict.”

Although I continued to follow events in Syria after leaving in late September 2020, when I returned in the last week of May this year, even I was surprised at the skyrocketed cost of basic things. About half a kilo of hummus that was 400 Syrian pounds last year is 2,200 now. At the current official exchange rate of 2,500 that’s slightly less than a dollar – but the average salary in Syria is around 50-60,000 Syrian pounds/month.

The FT article noted a kilogram of beef “costs about a quarter of a public employee’s average monthly salary. For perspective, in Italy this translates as €700 per kg. In the UK? £300 per lb.”

I chatted with a friend who has just one child. He described spending 15,000 (about $6) on vegetables, that would last several days. That’s a quarter of his salary gone, and many expenses still to pay.

In the Midan district of Damascus—an area usually brimming with shoppers coming for the famous sweet shops there, but not crowded the day I went—a cigarette vendor I spoke with described how he struggles to provide food for his wife and two sons. Like the majority of Syrians, selling cigarettes is a second job for him. Some are working three jobs, morning to late evening, and still can’t make ends meet.

He spoke of the self-sufficiency Syria had prior to the war, how everyone had work, but now, people are suffocating.

“We are rationing! I used to buy a kilo of meat every month, but now I buy 200 grams. My salary is 55,000, and if I can earn 50,000 from this second work, I will have 100,000 Syrian pounds. But, this amount is still not enough.”

“Yesterday, I bought some yogurt, cheese, a box of mortadella (meat), and a box of tissues. I paid 11,000 Syrian pounds. This is for one day, and just breakfast.”

He said a dearth of fertilizers and insecticides, due to sanctions, is directly impacting the agricultural sector.

While in Damascus, I also met with French humanitarian, Pierre Le Corf, who has lived in Syria for six years, most of that time in Aleppo. Le Corf, working and living with some of the poorest and most affected Syrians in Aleppo, spoke of how the sanctions are designed to kill hope, in addition to killing civilians.

“You might not see people starving in the street, but that’s not what suffering is. People are suffering in silence. More and more, the youth are leaving the country, not because they want to leave Syria or feel oppressed, but because they feel that they have no hope anymore.

The currency went from 50 Syrian pounds [for a dollar, before the war] to 4,000 Syrian pounds. People work from morning to night, and at the end of the day, their kids might ask for a banana. One kilogram of bananas is 5,000 Syrian pounds. When you earn 60,000 a month…”



He spoke of the pressure the US puts on every company and person who deals with Syria, that they can be imprisoned, fined. “They are forcing companies to not work with Syria,” to isolate Syria.

“I know families for who I’m trying to figure out how to bring them medicines that they can’t find any more. A week ago, I went to bury a guy who we had been bringing medicine, because we couldn’t find it any more. It became 90,000 pounds a box, he needed four boxes a month. He needed more medicine and better treatment that we can’t have, because it’s forbidden. Forbidden why? Because they pretend it’s ‘double use’, maybe it could be used for the army. The people are paying the price, no one else.”

In an interview on Syria Insider, British journalist Vanessa Beeley condemned the sanctions against Syria, saying:

“Western governments are starving the Syrian people. They are depriving them of their right to return home, because the rebuilding process is being delayed. They are punishing the Syrian people for the resistance of the Syrian people against what they want to impose upon them. It’s nothing to do with the Syrian government or President Assad.”

Sanctions are never ever non-lethal practises. They are almost the most lethal of all weapons used in the hybrid war against the people of a targeted nation.

“At the same time as the sanctions are in place, the West is stealing the oil, burning the food resources, selling the food resources outside of Syria, all to deprive the Syrian people of their own resources, of the abundance of their own country.”

In a recent, detailed, presentation focussing on the sanctions, Beeley highlighted their effects not only on incomes, food, medicines, but also on fuel, industry, agriculture, health care and hospitals, electricity and water.
vanessa beeley
@VanessaBeeley
"The US Coalition is effectively following a policy of collective extermination of the Syrian people by military and economic means. This is a crime against Humanity, a war crime and a flagrant violation of the right to life & a life of dignity."
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Sanctions on Syria – a silent death and killing hope
The act of withholding means of sustaining life to innocent civilians in order to coerce an entire nation into submission to foreign agendas in the region must surely qualify as economic terrorism.…
thewallwillfall.org
2:57 AM · Jun 14, 2021·Twitter Web App
She aptly noted: “One could argue that the US Coalition is responsible for genocide in Syria under Genocide Convention article II (e) – deliberately inflicting on the group, conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.”


In US President Joe Biden’s meeting with Russia’s Vladimir Putin today, perhaps among the scripted talking points there was tut tutting of Syria and Russia’s alleged preventing of humanitarian aid, a tired old trope debunked but still trumpeted by hypocrites in the West.

And while such integrity-devoid Western representatives launch accusation after accusation at Syria and Russia, it is abundantly clear that the suffering of Syrians is a product of the illegal war on Syria and the deadly, criminal, sanctions against the Syrian people.

Eva Bartlett is a Canadian independent journalist and activist. She has spent years on the ground covering conflict zones in the Middle East, especially in Syria and Palestine (where she lived for nearly four years). Follow her on Twitter @EvaKBartlett

Featured image: Women walk at a market in Douma, in the eastern suburbs of Damascus, Syria March 10, 2021. Picture taken March 10, 2021. © REUTERS/Omar Sanadiki

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Re: Syria

Post by blindpig » Fri Jul 02, 2021 1:17 pm

Cover-up of a Cover-up: US Media Ignore OPCW Fraud to Justify Missile Strikes on Syria
Ann Garrison, BAR Contributing Editor 01 Jul 2021

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Cover-up of a Cover-up: US Media Ignore OPCW Fraud to Justify Missile Strikes on Syria

Aaron Maté tells Ann Garrison that US media helps the OPCW cover up its cover-up for the US, UK, and France.

The inspectors’ superiors tried to write a bogus version of their report, falsely suggesting that Syria was guilty.”

The US was aiding rebels fighting the government of Bashar Al-Assad at the outset of the Syrian Civil War in March 2011. During the second year of the war, on July 20, 2012, Syria acknowledged possessing chemical weapons. A month later, President Barack Obama stated, in a White House press conference, that he had informed every player in the region that “chemical weapons are a red line for us and that there would be enormous consequences if we start seeing movement on the chemical weapons front or the use of chemical weapons.” Suspicious types might imagine that he was setting up a pretext for the US/NATO missile strikes that came later.

In January 2013, reports did begin coming in that the Syrian government had in fact crossed Obama’s red line, but why would Syria dare the US, the greatest military power the world has ever seen, to attack it directly? It defied rationality, but pundits answered that Assad was a madman, a sociopath who couldn’t be expected to behave rationally. The same has been said of a long list of leaders the US has removed or tried to remove from power, including Slobodan Milosevic, Muammar Gadaffi, Nicholas Maduro, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, and various Iranian leaders.

I spoke to The Grayzone ’s Aaron Maté about the Organization for the Prevention of Chemical Weapons docs published by Wikileaks, which prove that the organization released fraudulent reports to justify US, UK, and French aerial bombing attacks on government facilities in Douma, Syria in April 2018.

Ann Garrison: Could you tell us why you think this is the most important story you've ever covered?

Aaron Maté: We're talking about allegations of a cover-up at the world's top chemical weapons watchdog to basically justify US military strikes. And the evidence is overwhelming. So it's certainly the most important story that I've ever covered. And it's just incredible that it continues to be ignored by most of the media.

You have this instance where the US bombed Syria in April 2018, along with Britain and France, claiming that Syria was guilty of a chlorine gas attack. About a year later, in March 2019, the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, the OPCW , comes out with a report that aligns with the US narrative that Syria was guilty of a chlorine attack. But then you get this extraordinary series of leaks that would show that the actual OPCW team that went to Syria wrote up a report, found no evidence of a chemical weapons attack and raised major inconsistencies in the claims that chlorine gas was used, but that their report and their findings were censored. And not just censored. In fact, their superiors tried to write a bogus report, a bogus version of their report, falsely suggesting that Syria was guilty.

That led to the standoff internally, within the OPCW, where the original team led by the key inspector who wrote the original report, protested the censorship.

And that resulted in two extraordinary things. First, a US delegation came to The Hague to meet with the team, something that has never happened before, to my knowledge, in OPCW history, and tried to convince them to basically ignore their own findings and conclude that Syria was guilty of a chlorine attack. And when that didn't work, the original team was taken off of the case and replaced by a so-called core team that consisted mostly of people who didn't even set foot in Syria.

“The OPCW team that went to Syria found no evidence of a chemical weapons attack and raised major inconsistencies in the claims that chlorine gas was used, but that their report and their findings were censored.”

And since this has come out, what has happened? The OPCW has refused to address the documented scientific fraud. They refuse to meet with the inspectors. And when you have people alleging wrongdoing, and you have documents showing the massive distortions that took place internally, and you have a multi-year refusal to meet with the people lodging the complaint, what does that tell you? It tells you that there's something to hide and what the OPCW is hiding is its cover-up. So it's basically covering up its own cover-up. And amazingly, the US has been basically complicit in the cover-up, because with the exception of a couple of outlets like The Grayzone, where I work, the story has been completely ignored. So, it’s a story in itself, just given the facts of it, but then, compounding that, you have the prevailing media refusal to cover it, which makes it even more important for me to go after it.

AG: To many of us, the US war in Syria has been an abomination and a violation of international law from the beginning with the covert support of forces that were trying to topple the Syrian government. Why is this incident so much more important than the others?

AM: I'm not saying it's more important, only that it's extensively documented. There are reasons to doubt all the previous allegations of these chemical weapons attacks by Syria. Just on the surface, they make no rational sense. Why would Syria do the one thing that it knows would invite US military intervention, especially if you look at case after case when it's on the brink of victory in the areas involved, as was the case of Douma.

But in the case of Douma, you have this added component of a cover-up at the OPCW. You have the censorship of the investigation that actually got on the ground to investigate this. And all this effort is now being made to ignore the inspectors who brought that cover-up to light, who challenged it from within. So I'm not saying it's more important; it's just so extensively documented that the prevailing refusal to cover it is that much more shameful.

AG: Were there any autopsies or death certificates?

AM: No. The bodies were buried by the White Helmets , who claimed that they gave the coordinates of their graves to the OPCW. The OPCW discussed trying to exhume the bodies but ultimately decided against it.

AG: Okay, can you talk about Arria Formula meetings of the United Nations Security Council that you addressed first on September 29, 2020, and then on April 16, 2021. This is the first time I've heard of this type of meeting, but a UN website says they’re less formal in that they might not require consensus about agendizing the issue, and some members might choose not to attend. Who organized those meetings and invited you?

AM: Those meetings were held in the context of a prevailing refusal by the OPCW leadership and the states that bombed Syria--the US, UK and France--to hear from the inspectors. There have been multiple proposals at the OPCW, at the executive level, to let the dissenting inspectors speak, to let them air the evidence that was suppressed. Those have been blocked.

At the UN Security Council, the US and its allies have gone so far as to prevent the first Director General of the OPC, Jos é Bustani from speaking.

Bustani wanted to come to the Security Council to speak in support of them, and to advocate for them to be heard. What happened to him? He was blocked by the US, UK, and France, the nations that bombed Syria over the alleged chlorine attacks.

So in that context, Russia and China have used the mechanism at the UN Security Council called the Arria Formula, which allows member states to convene meetings on certain topics without the consensus of all five permanent members of the Council [US, UK, France, Russia, and China]. They've done that to address the Douma cover-up, and they've invited people like myself. They've also invited Ian Henderson, who is one of the standing OPCW inspectors. They've also invited Hans von Sponeck , the former UN Assistant Secretary General, and Lawrence Wilkerson , who was the former Chief of Staff to Colin Powell.

“The US and its allies have gone so far as to prevent the first Director General of the OPC, Jose Bustani, from speaking.”

Bustani was invited to address the Council in an Arria Formula meeting in the fall of 2020 because of two things. One, he was the first chief of the organization and so he basically designed the protocols that are used in missions like the one in Syria, the one that was suppressed. And also, these dissenting inspectors who were on that Douma mission, are so senior, so veteran with the OPCW, that their tenure coincides with Bustani’s. Going back to the founding of the organization, that's how long the two key dissenting inspectors have been with the organization on two separate tours of duty going back to 1997-1998, when the organization was founded.

And all of us have raised concerns about the cover-up. And that underscores the fact that you have people like Hans von Sponeck and Lawrence Wilkerson raising alarm about this. It shows that concern about it is not just limited to people like me, and my colleagues at The Grayzone. It includes some of our world's most experienced and conscientious diplomats.

Lawrence Wilkerson has first-hand experience with lies used to justify war. He helped write that speech that Colin Powell made at the UN Security Council to make the phony case for invading Iraq back in 2003. So here he was this year, returning to the UN Security Council to actually raise concerns about another pro-war deception, and that is the Syria cover-up at the OPCW.

And, of course, what was the response from the states that have tried to bury the scandal? They don't address it on the substance. They just say that all this is the result of Russian disinformation, and they change the topic. They bring up side issues like Alexei Navalny, which, whatever you think about that issue, has nothing to do with the OPCW cover-up. They don't want to address the cover-up because the facts are so damning to their narrative, so they just have to try to pretend that it doesn't exist and change the topic.

AG: UN Security Council meetings are usually webcast and archived in the UNSC webcast archives. Is an archive of this meeting available there?

AM: Yes.

AG: That’s good to know.

OPCW Chief José Bustani, who lost his job in 2003, at the time of the Iraq war, was trying to negotiate with Iraq—as the Russian government ultimately did with Syria—to negotiate an agreement to comply with the Convention on the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons. Vladimir Putin seemed to prevent a US NATO attack in 2013 by actually doing what José Bustani was fired just for trying to do 10 years earlier. Could you talk some more about that?

AM: Well, yeah, but I'm not sure if the agreement brokered by Russia to bring Syria into the Chemical Weapons Convention prevented an attack. I mean, that's the official story. But look, the reality is we know from the reporting of Seymour Hersh, that US intelligence officials, including James Clapper, came to Obama and told him that the intelligence was not there to find Syria guilty of committing that chemical attack in Ghouta in 2013. In fact, they had ample evidence that it was carried out by the insurgents who had received sarin gas materials from Turkey.

The British military lab at Porton Down did an analysis, and they found that the sarin found in Ghouta did not match the sarin found in the Syrian government arsenal. So already at the time, the US basically knew that it wasn't Syria. But there were people inside the administration who were pushing for missile strikes anyway, because they really wanted to bomb Syria and take the regime change war even further. They kept pushing Obama to do it.

But Obama was basically saved, not even so much by Russia, but by his own intelligence officials telling him that the intelligence wasn't there, because they all knew that it was so implausible that Syria would do it. Why would Syria do the one thing that they knew would invite US military intervention? And by the way, why would they do it after they had just invited UN investigators to come into the country to investigate another alleged chemical attack by the insurgents in Syria? So it made no sense. Obama knew that, and having Russia come in to broker this agreement, was convenient for him. He was able to use that as an official story for why he didn't bomb Syria. But the real reason, I think, was that he knew the intelligence wasn't there.

AG: Can you tell us who made an issue of the OPCW leaks in the European Parliament and what unfolded there?

AM: That was two Irish members of the European Parliament, Mick Wallace and Claire Daly. And they both question OPCW Chief Fernando Arias directly about why he wouldn’t simply meet with the dissenting inspectors, and he didn't give them a direct answer. He instead told a whole series of lies. He said he doesn't even know why the Douma report was contested, which is just patently false. Arias himself, even if he's managed to ignore somehow all of the leaked documents that have come out, and all the media reports on the issue, even if he somehow avoided all that, he received a personal letter from the key dissenting inspector, Dr. Brendan Whelan , who wrote the original report, the one that got doctored and censored. Arias received a letter from Dr. Whelan back in April 2019, before this issue was even public. It was a private letter, just raising Whelan's concerns with the investigation. Whelan wrote this in response to the final report that had come out one month earlier.

And Arias responded to Whelan, saying, “I read your letter with great interest.” So assuming that that's correct, that he actually read Whelan's letter, there's no way that Arias can now claim that he doesn't know why Whelan and the other dissenting inspectors contested the investigation. So his response to critical questions has been to either avoid them or to make false statements.

AG: From your testimony and Lawrence Wilkerson's, I got the idea that you feel this international institution, the OPCW, and other institutions created to investigate atrocity reports and/or rule on issues of international law are important, but that they've obviously been corrupted at many points.

AM: Even before this serious scandal, we knew that the OPCW was seriously jeopardized in its ability to carry out its functions independently. I mean, what happened to José Bustani, back before the Iraq War, when he was trying to bring Iraq into the Chemical Weapons Convention? That would have been great for world peace, but it would have been a disaster for the Bush Administration's plans to invade Iraq, because it would have subjected Iraq to the kinds of inspections that would have undermined the Bush Administration's pro-war, weapons-of-mass-destruction propaganda.

So what did John Bolton do? He personally flew to The Hague, went into the office of José Bustani, told him to basically resign, and said to him, “We know where your kids live,” which was a physical threat to Bustani’s children, but Bustani refused to back down.

So what did Bolton then do? He threatened the OPCW's budget, and they bullied enough states into going along. And Bustani actually told me last year in an interview that, even if he had survived the vote to keep him in his job, he still would have resigned because there's no way the OPCW could have functioned without the US budgetary contribution. It would have been completely gutted. So the US, because of its extreme power and financial leverage, was able to bully the OPCW into ousting its first Director General.

And by the way, this happened shortly after Bustani’s second term was renewed. So right after the guy gets a unanimous vote of confidence to a second term, John Bolton strolls in, threatens his kids, and manages to get him kicked out, because he's standing in the way of the Iraq War. So that right there completely undermined the integrity of OPCW, and it's not surprising that 15 years later, the same sort of bullying is repeating itself. Agents of the US were able to come in, have a very unusual briefing with the inspectors who went to Syria, meet them face to face, and basically tell the inspectors what they think they should conclude.

“John Bolton strolls in, threatens Bustani’s kids, and manages to get him kicked out, because he's standing in the way of the Iraq War.”

And according to Bustani, when I spoke to him, he said that would have never happened under his watch. It's a complete breach of the OPCW’s independence, and it also puts the inspectors at risk, because they're not supposed to be identified. They're supposed to be protected and have their privacy secured. So the fact that the OPCW’s integrity is now compromised is not even in question, especially when you look at what the reaction has been.

In any normal case, when you have allegations of wrongdoing, especially these kinds of allegations, what's the obvious response? Investigate them; at least meet with the whistleblowers who are lodging the allegation, but the OPCW basically refused to acknowledge their existence. The only time they talk about them is to attack them in public, and make false statements about them, as I've documented many times in The Grayzone. So the OPCW is an organization with a major credibility problem.

And it doesn't just raise a credibility issue with this particular investigation in Douma, but with all its other investigations in Syria, because it's very clear that there's an agenda here.

AG: Norman Finkelstein said recently, with regard to the ICC, Human Rights Watch and other international institutions devoted to international law, that these institutions are fallible, because humans are fallible. He even said that 99 of 100 humans are corruptible. But he said that these institutions have a lot of status nevertheless, so you have to challenge them when they're wrong, but cite them if they actually get something right, instead of dismissing them altogether. Would you agree?

AM: Sure, yeah, of course. And in the case of the OPCW, the dissenters have been portrayed as people attacking the OPCW, which is not true. They actually believe in the OPCW’s mission and purpose very strongly. They spent a large part of their lives working for it and trying to carry out its noble mission of freeing the world from chemical weapons.

What they're doing now is trying to protect the OPCW from political influence. So there's no contradiction here in saying that the OPCW has been compromised, but that if that issue is addressed, it could be a noble institution. It's not irredeemable.

AG: There really is no alternative, is there?

AM: No, there is no alternative.

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Re: Syria

Post by blindpig » Wed Jul 14, 2021 11:34 am

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Former British Ambassador to Damascus Says OPCW Mere ‘Puppet’ of West Against Syria

July 13, 2021 Editor2 chemical attack, Douma, Elijah Magnier, false flag operation, France, OPCW, Peter Ford, Syria, UK, US

It is a “tragedy” that the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) has been “corrupted” in a way that it is being used as a “puppet” by the West to exert pressure on Syria rather than being an international and technical monitoring organization, the former British ambassador to Syria tells Press TV.

Peter Ford, who is also an expert on West Asian affairs, made the comments from Manchester during Press TV’s Spotlight program, which was aired on Friday night.

He said that he was completely in agreement with what the Syrian government has recently reiterated that the global chemical watchdog is no longer a technical organization but a political tool in the hands of the United States, the United Kingdom, and France to exert pressure on Damascus.

“Sadly I have to agree one hundred percent with that take on the OPCW. It is a tragedy that a very important international monitoring body should be corrupted in this way by being politicized by Western powers. The OPCW should be playing an impartial role and should be seen to be extremely impartial. But for the last few years, decision after decision, it is shown that it is a puppet of the Western powers,” Ford said.

He added that the UK and the US, in particular, were responsible as they have staffed the OPCW with officials from their own administrations.

These officials do not respect the impartiality of the watchdog but rather “carry out the wishes of their masters in Washington and London. This is basically why the OPCW is well underway to be completely discredited,” Ford further said.

Comments by the former British ambassador to Syria came hours after the chairwoman of the Syrian mission to the OPCW said the US and its allies had lowered the status of the international watchdog, and turned it into a political tool to level baseless accusations against Damascus and exert pressure on it.

Addressing the 97th session of the Executive Council of the OPCW, Rania al-Refaei stated earlier on Friday that anti-Syria claims are meant to advance the agendas of certain countries, and implement the plots hatched by terror outfits.

She categorically dismissed allegations that the Damascus government has chemical weapons in its possession, terming such accusations as “spurious and unfounded.”

Syria surrendered its stockpile of chemical weapons in 2014 to a joint mission led by the US and the OPCW, which oversaw the destruction of the weaponry. It has also consistently denied using chemical weapons.

However, the Western media and governments have repeatedly accused the Syrian government of using chemical weapons against its own citizens in the war against terrorists.

The OPCW, in line with the Western powers, accuses Damascus of using chemical weapons, including an alleged attack in Hama in 2017. Damascus has repeatedly rejected such accusations, describing them as false flag operations.

Elsewhere in his remarks, Ford said that the Western powers and the so-called rebels obviously benefit from such accusations and false flag operations.

“The Western powers needed to justify their illegal bombing of Syria. That’s why they can never admit, that it was carried out on the basis of falsehood. That’s why they continue to sustain this lie. They have to justify their continuing of war on Syria which mainly takes the form of economic warfare, in the shape of sanctions and withholding reconstruction,” he added.

Brussels-based Elijah Magnier, a veteran war-zone correspondent and political analyst covering West Asia and North Africa, was the other panelist invited to the Spotlight program, who also confirmed that the OPCW’s reports have been politicized.

“When Jose Bustani came out with his narrative saying that we inspectors are scientists and according to scientists’ opinion there is no chemical attack on Douma. The reason why the OPCW is insisting is to justify the US, UK and France’s attack on Damascus. The whole world watched that the OPCW is lacking trust these days, particularly after the Douma attack and it is obvious that a lot of pressure was put on the organization,” he said

If the decision is made before the attack by the West, there is no need to go there and gather evidence impartially, Magnier added.

On April 7, 2018, an alleged chemical attack hit the Syrian city of Douma near the capital Damascus. Western countries were quick to blame it on the government of President Bashar al-Assad.

A week later, the US, Britain, and France launched a coordinated missile attack against sites and research facilities near Damascus and Homs with the purported goal of paralyzing the Syrian government’s capability to produce chemicals.

Damascus, however, said that no chemical attack had happened and that the Douma incident had been staged by foreign intelligence agencies to pressure the government in the face of army advances against militants.

In October 2019, Jose Bustani, the OPCW’s first chief, said that convincing evidence of irregular behavior in the OPCW investigation of the alleged Douma chemical attack confirmed doubts and suspicions he already had.

In October next year, he was scheduled to testify at the UN Security Council about the alleged cover-up by the OPCW regarding the Douma chemical attack. However, the US, UK, and France blocked Bustani from testifying, claiming that he left the watchdog in 2002 and thus was not involved in the issues being discussed.

Nevertheless, the Russian envoy at the UNSC read out Butsani’s statement, which stated that the OPCW engaged in “evidence suppression, selective use of data and exclusion of key investigators” when it was making its report about the so-called Douma chemical attack.

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Re: Syria

Post by blindpig » Wed Jul 28, 2021 12:52 pm

FIVE MILLION DISPLACED PEOPLE HAVE RETURNED TO THEIR HOMES IN SYRIA
27 Jul 2021 , 9:18 am .

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The war imposed on Syria has claimed the stability of millions of people in the country (Photo: Alaa Al-Faqir / Reuters)

The Acting Minister of Municipal Administration of Syria, Hussein Majluf, revealed this Monday, July 26, that some 5 million internally and externally displaced persons returned to their homes voluntarily and safely.

He attributed this figure to the improvement of the security situation in almost the entire national territory, and the constant government effort to guarantee services and a dignified life for returnees.

Unilateral coercive measures imposed by the United States and Western countries against the Syrian people hinder actions aimed at facilitating the return of the displaced, the Minister denounced at a joint Russian-Syrian meeting held in Damascus.

Among other measures aimed at facilitating the return of the displaced, he mentioned the issuance of amnesties, the release of detainees, normalizing the legal status of Syrians who left the country illegally, and simplifying procedures at the borders.

In turn, the head of the Joint Ministerial Coordination Body of the Russian Federation, Mikhail Mizintsev, commented that the returned Syrians receive free medical care, food aid and education.

It revealed that 987 schools, 255 health centers, and almost 5,000 residential buildings were rebuilt, while more than 14,400 industrial plants were back in operation.

Bridges and roads, electricity lines and hundreds of bakeries and drinking water wells were also rehabilitated, he said.

Taken from Al Manar .

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Which begs the question, "If Syria is such a horrible dictatorship why are all these people returning?"

How long until the US beats a retreat from the entire region? Leaving the beachhead of Israel aside, I'd guess not too long, as Iraq is negotiating it's occupation away, which will leave the oil rich territory the Kurds have claimed with US support hanging in the air with no land supply. As they say in these parts, it's time for a 'word of prayer' for the Kurds. They must 'make nice' with the Syrian government and admit that they have been screwed yet again by the US. This is what, the forth or fifth time?
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