The Dirty War on Syria
http://www.911forum.org.uk/board/viewtopic.php?p=171489#171489
By
<http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-dirty-war-on-syria/http://www.globalresearch.ca/author/tim-anderson>Prof.
Tim Anderson
Global Research, November 27, 2015
Region:
<http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-dirty-war-on-syria/http://www.globalresearch.ca/region/middle-east>Middle
East & North Africa
Theme:
<http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-dirty-war-on-syria/http://www.globalresearch.ca/theme/us-nato-war-agenda>US
NATO War Agenda
In-depth Report:
<http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-dirty-war-on-syria/http://www.globalresearch.ca/indepthreport/syria-nato-s-next-war>SYRIA:
NATO'S NEXT WAR?
http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-dirty-war-on-syria/5491859
The following text is the introductory chapter
of Professor Tim Anderson’s forthcoming book entitled The Dirty War on Syria
Although every war makes ample use of lies and
deception, the dirty war on Syria has relied on a
level of mass disinformation not seen in living
memory. The British-Australian journalist Philip
Knightley pointed out that war propaganda
typically involves ‘a depressingly predictable
pattern’ of demonising the enemy leader, then
demonising the enemy people through atrocity
stories, real or imagined (Knightley 2001).
Accordingly, a mild-mannered eye doctor called
Bashar al Assad became the new evil in the world
and, according to consistent western media
reports, the Syrian Army did nothing but kill
civilians for more than four years. To this day,
many imagine the Syrian conflict is a ‘civil
war’, a ‘popular revolt’ or some sort of internal
sectarian conflict. These myths are, in many
respects, a substantial achievement for the big
powers which have driven a series of ‘regime
change’ operations in the Middle East region, all
on false pretexts, over the past 15 years.
Dr. Tim Anderson
This book is a careful academic work, but also a
strong defence of the right of the Syrian people
to determine their own society and political
system. That position is consistent with
international law and human rights principles,
but may irritate western sensibilities,
accustomed as we are to an assumed prerogative to
intervene. At times I have to be blunt, to cut
through the double-speak. In Syria the big powers
have sought to hide their hand, using proxy
armies while demonising the Syrian Government and
Army, accusing them of constant atrocities; then
pretending to rescue the Syrian people from their
own government. Far fewer western people opposed
the war on Syria than opposed the invasion of
Iraq, because they were deceived about its true nature.
In 2011 I had only a basic understanding of Syria
and its history. However I was deeply suspicious
when reading of the violence that erupted in the
southern border town of Daraa. I knew that such
violence (sniping at police and civilians, the
use of semi-automatic weapons) does not spring
spontaneously from street demonstrations. And I
was deeply suspicious of the big powers. All my
life I had been told lies about the pretexts for
war. I decided to research the Syrian conflict,
reading hundreds of books and articles, watching
many videos and speaking to as many Syrians as I
could. I wrote dozens of articles and visited
Syria twice, during the conflict. This book is a result of that research.
Dirty wars are not new. Cuban national hero Jose
Martí predicted to a friend that Washington would
try to intervene in Cuba’s independence struggle
against the Spanish. ‘They want to provoke a
war’, he wrote in 1889 ‘to have a pretext to
intervene and, with the authority of being
mediator and guarantor, to seize the country …
There is no more cowardly thing in the annals of
free people; nor such cold blooded evil’ (Martí
1975: 53). Nine years later, during the third
independence war, an explosion in Havana Harbour
destroyed the USS Maine, killing 258 US sailors
and serving as a pretext for a US invasion.
The subsequent ‘Spanish-American’ war snatched
victory from the Cubans and allowed the US to
take control of the remaining Spanish colonial
territories. Cuba had territory annexed and a
deeply compromised constitution was imposed. No
evidence ever proved the Spanish were responsible
for the bombing of the Maine and many Cubans
believe the North Americans bombed their own
ship. The monument in Havana, in memory of those
sailors, still bears this inscription: ‘To the
victims of the Maine who were sacrificed to
imperialist voracity and the desire to gain
control of the island of Cuba’ (Richter 1998).
The US launched dozens of interventions in Latin
America over the subsequent century. A notable
dirty war was led by CIA-backed, ‘freedom
fighter’ mercenaries based in Honduras, who
attacked the Sandinista Government and the people
of Nicaragua in the 1980s. That conflict, in its
modus operandi, was not so different to the war
on Syria. In Nicaragua more than 30,000 people
were killed. The International Court of Justice
found the US guilty of a range of terrorist-style
attacks on the little Central American country,
and found that the US owed Nicaragua compensation
(ICJ 1986). Washington ignored these rulings.
With the ‘Arab Spring’ of 2011 the big powers
took advantage of a political foment by seizing
the initiative to impose an ‘Islamist winter’,
attacking the few remaining independent states of
the region. Very quickly we saw the destruction
of Libya, a small country with the highest
standard of living in Africa. NATO bombing and a
Special Forces campaign helped the al Qaeda
groups on the ground. The basis for NATO’s
intervention was lies told about actual and
impending massacres, supposedly carried out or
planned by the government of President Muammar
Gaddafi. These claims led rapidly to a UN
Security Council resolution said to protect
civilians through a ‘no fly zone’. We know now
that trust was betrayed, and that the NATO powers
abused the limited UN authorisation to overthrow
the Libyan Government (McKinney 2012).
Subsequently, no evidence emerged to prove that
Gaddafi intended, carried out or threatened
wholesale massacres, as was widely suggested
(Forte 2012). Genevieve Garrigos of Amnesty
International (France) admitted there was ‘no
evidence’ to back her group’s earlier claims that
Gaddafi had used ‘black mercenaries’ to commit
massacres (Forte 2012; Edwards 2013).
Alan Kuperman, drawing mainly on North American
sources, demonstrates the following points.
First, Gaddafi’s crackdown on the mostly Islamist
insurrection in eastern Libya was ‘much less
lethal’ than had been suggested. Indeed there was
evidence that he had had ‘refrained from
indiscriminate violence’. The Islamists were
themselves armed from the beginning. From later
US estimates, of the almost one thousand
casualties in the first seven weeks, about three
percent were women and children (Kuperman 2015).
Second, when government forces were about to
regain the east of the country, NATO intervened,
claiming this was to avert an impending massacre.
Ten thousand people died after the NATO
intervention, compared to one thousand before.
Gaddafi had pledged no reprisals in Benghazi and
‘no evidence or reason’ came out to support the
claim that he planned mass killings (Kuperman
2015). The damage was done. NATO handed over the
country to squabbling groups of Islamists and
western aligned ‘liberals’. A relatively
independent state was overthrown, but Libya was
destroyed. Four years on there is no functioning
government and violence persists; and that war of
aggression against Libya went unpunished.
Two days before NATO bombed Libya another armed
Islamist insurrection broke out in Daraa, Syria’s
southernmost city. Yet because this insurrection
was linked to the demonstrations of a political
reform movement, its nature was disguised. Many
did not see that those who were providing the
guns – Qatar and Saudi Arabia – were also running
fake news stories in their respective media
channels, Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya. There were
other reasons for the durable myths of this war.
Many western audiences, liberals and leftists as
well as the more conservative, seemed to like the
idea of their own role as the saviours of a
foreign people, speaking out strongly about a
country of which they knew little, but joining
what seemed to be a ‘good fight’ against this new
‘dictator’. With a mission and their proud
self-image western audiences apparently forgot
the lies of previous wars, and of their own colonial legacies.
I would go so far as to say that, in the Dirty
War on Syria, western culture in general
abandoned its better traditions: of reason, the
maintenance of ethical principle and the search
for independent evidence at times of conflict; in
favour of its worst traditions: the ‘imperial
prerogative’ for intervention, backed by deep
racial prejudice and poor reflection on the
histories of their own cultures. That weakness
was reinforced by a ferocious campaign of war
propaganda. After the demonisation of Syrian
leader Bashar al Assad began, a virtual
information blockade was constructed against
anything which might undermine the wartime
storyline. Very few sensible western perspectives
on Syria emerged after 2011, as critical voices were effectively blacklisted.
In that context I came to write this book. It is
a defence of Syria, not primarily addressed to
those who are immersed the western myths but to
others who engage with them. This is therefore a
resource book and a contribution to the history
of the Syrian conflict. The western stories have
become self-indulgent and I believe it is
wasteful to indulge them too much. Best, I think,
to speak of current events as they are, then
address the smokescreens later. I do not ignore
the western myths, in fact this book documents
many of them. But I lead with the reality of the war.
Western mythology relies on the idea of imperial
prerogatives, asking what must ‘we’ do about the
problems of another people; an approach which has
no basis in international law or human rights.
The next steps involve a series of fabrications
about the pretexts, character and events of the
war. The first pretext over Syria was that the
NATO states and the Gulf monarchies were
supporting a secular and democratic revolution.
When that seemed implausible the second story was
that they were saving the oppressed majority
‘Sunni Muslim’ population from a sectarian
‘Alawite regime’. Then, when sectarian atrocities
by anti-government forces attracted greater
public attention, the pretext became a claim that
there was a shadow war: ‘moderate rebels’ were
said to be actually fighting the extremist
groups. Western intervention was therefore needed
to bolster these ‘moderate rebels’ against the
‘new’ extremist group that had mysteriously
arisen and posed a threat to the world.
That was the ‘B’ story. No doubt Hollywood will
make movies based on this meta-script, for years
to come. However this book leads with the ‘A’
story. Proxy armies of Islamists, armed by US
regional allies (mainly Saudi Arabia, Qatar and
Turkey), infiltrate a political reform movement
and snipe at police and civilians. They blame
this on the government and spark an insurrection,
seeking the overthrow of the Syrian government
and its secular-pluralist state. This follows the
openly declared ambition of the US to create a
‘New Middle East’, subordinating every country of
the region, by reform, unilateral disarmament or
direct overthrow. Syria was next in line, after
Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya. In Syria, the proxy
armies would come from the combined forces of the
Muslim Brotherhood and Saudi Arabia’s Wahhabi
fanatics. Despite occasional power struggles
between these groups and their sponsors, they
share much the same Salafist ideology, opposing
secular or nationalist regimes and seeking the
establishment of a religious state.
However in Syria Washington’s Islamists
confronted a disciplined national army which did
not disintegrate along religious lines, despite
many provocations. The Syrian state also had
strong allies in Russia and Iran. Syria was not
to be Libya Take Two. In this prolonged war the
violence, from the western side, was said to
consist of the Syrian Army targeting and killing
civilians. From the Syrian side people saw daily
terrorist attacks on towns and cities, schools
and hospitals and massacres of ordinary people by
NATO’s ‘freedom fighters’, then the counter
attacks by the Army. Foreign terrorists were
recruited in dozens of countries by the Saudis
and Qatar, bolstering the local mercenaries.
Though the terrorist groups were often called
‘opposition, ‘militants’ and ‘Sunni groups’
outside Syria, inside the country the actual
political opposition abandoned the Islamists back
in early 2011. Protest was driven off the streets
by the violence, and most of the opposition
(minus the Muslim Brotherhood and some exiles)
sided with the state and the Army, if not with
the ruling Ba’ath Party. The Syrian Army has been
brutal with terrorists but, contrary to western
propaganda, protective of civilians. The
Islamists have been brutal with all, and openly
so. Millions of internally displaced people have
sought refuge with the Government and Army, while others fled the country.
In a hoped-for ‘end game’ the big powers sought
overthrow of the Syrian state or, failing that,
the creation of a dysfunctional state or
dismembering into sectarian statelets, thus
breaking the axis of independent regional states.
That axis comprises Hezbollah in south Lebanon
and the Palestinian resistance, alongside Syria
and Iran, the only states in the region without
US military bases. More recently Iraq – still
traumatised from western invasion, massacres and
occupation – has begun to align itself with this
axis. Russia too has begun to play an important
counter-weight role. Recent history and conduct
demonstrate that neither Russia nor Iran harbour
any imperial ambitions remotely approaching those
of Washington and its allies, several of which
(Britain, France and Turkey) were former colonial
warlords in the region. From the point of view of
the ‘Axis of Resistance’, defeat of the dirty war
on Syria means that the region can begin closing
ranks against the big powers. Syria’s successful
resistance would mean the beginning of the end
for Washington’s ‘New Middle East’.
That is basically the big picture. This book sets
out to document the A story and expose the B
story. It does so by rescuing some of the better
western traditions: the use of reason, the
maintenance of ethical principle and the search
for independent evidence in case of conflict. I
hope it might prove a useful resource. Here is a
brief overview of the chapters.
Chapter 2, ‘Syria and Washington’s ‘New Middle
East’’ puts Syria in context of the US plans for
a ‘New Middle East’, the latest chapter in a
longer history of US attempts to dominate the region.
Chapter 3, ‘Barrel Bombs, Partisan Sources and
War Propaganda’ addresses the problem of
reporting and reading the Syrian crisis. Media
channels have shown a hyper-reliance on partisan
sources, committed to the war and denigrating the
Syrian Army. This is the key barrier to
understanding the controversies around chemical
weapons, civilian massacres and the levels of
support for or opposition to President Assad.
Chapter 4, ‘Daraa 2011: Another Islamist
Insurrection’ reconstructs, from a range of
sources, the Saudi-backed Islamist insurrection
in Daraa in March 2011. Those armed attacks were
quite distinct from the political reform rallies,
which the Islamists soon drove off the streets.
Chapter 5, ‘Bashar al Assad and Political Reform’
explains the political reform movement from the
time Bashar assumed the presidency in the year
2000 to the beginning of the crisis in 2011. From
this we can see that most opposition groups were
committed to reform within a Syrian context, with
virtually all opposing attacks on the Syrian
state. The chapter then reviews the role of
Bashar as a reformer, and the evidence on his popularity.
Chapter 6, ‘The Empire’s Jihadis’ looks at the
collaboration between Salafist political Islam
and the imperial powers in the Middle East.
Distinct from the anti-imperial Islamic currents
in Iran and south Lebanon, Salafist political
Islam has become a sectarian force competing with
Arab nationalism across Egypt, Palestine and
Syria, and drawing on long standing collaborative
relations with the big powers. This history
provides important background to the character of
Syria’s Islamist ‘revolution’, and its various slogans.
Chapter 7, ‘Embedded Media, Embedded Watchdogs’
identifies the propaganda techniques of media
channels and the network of ‘human rights’ bodies
(Human Rights Watch, Avaaz, etc) which function
as megaphones and ‘moderators’ for the Washington
agenda. Many have become fierce advocates for
‘humanitarian war’. A number of newer western
NGOs (e.g. The Syria Campaign, The White Helmets)
have been created by Wall Street agencies
specifically for the dirty war on Syria. A number
of their fabrications are documented here.
Chapter 8, ‘The Houla Massacre Revisited’
considers in detail the evidence from the first
major massacre designed (following success of the
technique over Libya) to influence UN Security
Council consideration of military intervention.
While the first UN inquiry group, actually in
Syria, found contradictory evidence on this
massacre, a second UN group outside Syria and
co-chaired by a US diplomat, tried to blame the
Syrian Government. Yet more than a dozen
witnesses blamed Farouq FSA Islamists, who killed
pro-government villagers and took over the area,
holding it for some months. Several other ‘false flag’ massacres are noted.
Chapter 9, ‘Chemical Fabrications: the East
Ghouta Incident’ details the second major ‘false
flag’ incident of international significance.
This incident in August 2013, which nearly
sparked a major escalation involving US missile
attacks on Syria, was used to accuse the Syrian
Government of killing hundreds of civilians,
including children, with chemical weapons. Within
a fairly short time multiple sources of
independent evidence (including North American
evidence) disproved these accusations.
Nevertheless, Syria’s opponents have repeated the
false accusations, to this day, as though they were fact.
Chapter 10, ‘A Responsibility to Protect and the
Double Game’ addresses a recent political
doctrine, a subset of ‘humanitarian intervention’
popularised to add to the imperial toolkit. The
application of this doctrine in Libya was
disastrous for that little country. Fortunately
the attempts to use it in Syria failed.
Chapter 11, ‘Health and Sanctions’ documents the
NATO-backed Islamist attacks on Syria’s health
system, linked to the impact of western economic
sanctions. These twin currents have caused great
damage to Syrian public health. Such attacks
carry no plausible motive of seeking local
popular support, so we must interpret them as
part of an overall strategy to degrade the Syrian
state, rendering it more vulnerable to outside intervention.
Chapter 12 ‘Washington, Terrorism and ISIS: the
evidence’, documents the links between the big
powers and the latest peak terrorist group they
claim to be fighting. Only evidence can help
develop informed opinion on this contentious
matter, but the evidence is overwhelming. There
is little ideological difference between the
various Salafi-Islamist groups, and Washington
and its allies have financed and armed every one of them.
Chapter 13, ‘Western Intervention and the
Colonial Mind’ discusses the western cultural
mindset that underlies persistent violations of the rights of other peoples.
Chapter 14 ‘Towards an Independent Middle East’,
considers the end-game in the Syrian crisis, and
its implications for the Middle East region. At
tremendous cost the Syrian Arab Republic, its
army and its people, have successfully resisted
aggression from a variety of powerful enemies.
Syria’s survival is due to its resilience and
internal unity, bolstered by support from some
strong allies. The introduction of Russian air
power in late September 2015 was important. So
too were the coordinated ground forces from Iran,
Iraq and Lebanon, in support of an independent Syria.
When the attacks on Syria abate the Middle East
seems set to be transformed, with greater
political will and military preparedness on the
part of an expanded Axis of Resistance. That will
signal the beginning of the end for Washington’s
15 year spree of bloodshed and ‘regime change’ across the entire region.
Notes:
Edwards, Dave (2013) ‘Limited But Persuasive’
Evidence – Syria, Sarin, Libya, Lies’, Media
Lens, 13 June,
online:<http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-dirty-war-on-syria/http://www.medialens.org/index.php/alerts/alert-archive/alerts-2013/735-limited-but-persuasive-evidence-syria-sarin-libya-lies.html>http://www.medialens.org/index.php/alerts/alert-archive/alerts-2013/735-limited-but-persuasive-evidence-syria-sarin-libya-lies.html
Forte, Maximilian (2012) Slouching Towards Sirte:
NATO’s War on Libya and Africa, Baraka Books, Quebec
ICJ (1986) Case concerning the military and
paramilitary activities in and against Nicaragua
(Nicaragua v. United States of America) Merits’,
International Court of Justice, Judgement of 27
June 1986, online:
<http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-dirty-war-on-syria/http://www.icj-cij.org/docket/?sum=367&p1=3&p2=3&case=70&p3=5>http://www.icj-cij.org/docket/?sum=367&p1=3&p2=3&case=70&p3=5
Knightley, Phillip (2001) ‘The disinformation
campaign’, The Guardian, 4 October,
online:<http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-dirty-war-on-syria/http://www.theguardian.com/education/2001/oct/04/socialsciences.highereducation>http://www.theguardian.com/education/2001/oct/04/socialsciences.highereducation
Kuperman, Alan J. (2015) Obama’s Libya Debacle’,
Foreign Affairs, 16 April,
online:<http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-dirty-war-on-syria/https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/libya/2015-02-16/obamas-libya-debacle>https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/libya/2015-02-16/obamas-libya-debacle
Martí, Jose (1975) Obras Completas, Vol. 6,
Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, La Habana
McKinney, Cynthia (Ed) (2012) The Illegal War on Libya, Clarity Press, Atlanta
Putin, Vladimir (2015) ‘Violence instead of
democracy: Putin slams ‘policies of
exceptionalism and impunity’ in UN speech’, RT,
28 September, online:
<http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-dirty-war-on-syria/https://www.rt.com/news/316804-putin-russia-unga-speech/>https://www.rt.com/news/316804-putin-russia-unga-speech/
Richter, Larry (1998) ‘Havana Journal; Remember
the Maine? Cubans See an American Plot Continuing
to This Day’, New York Times, 14 February,
online:
<http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-dirty-war-on-syria/http://www.nytimes.com/1998/02/14/world/havana-journal-remember-maine-cubans-see-american-plot-continuing-this-day.html>http://www.nytimes.com/1998/02/14/world/havana-journal-remember-maine-cubans-see-american-plot-continuing-this-day.html
Dr Tim Anderson is a Senior Lecturer in Political
Economy at the University of Sydney. He
researches and writes on development, rights and
self-determination in Latin America, the
Asia-Pacific and the Middle East. He has
published many dozens of chapters and articles in
a range of academic books and journals. His last
book was Land and Livelihoods in Papua New Guinea
(Australian Scholarly Publishing, Melbourne, 2015).
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Please consider seriously the reason why these elite institutions are not discussed in the mainstream press despite the immense financial and political power they wield?
There are sick and evil occultists running the Western World. They are power mad lunatics like something from a kids cartoon with their fingers on the nuclear button! Armageddon is closer than you thought. Only God can save our souls from their clutches, at least that's my considered opinion - Tony
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