“I believe in a cruel God who made me in his image and who in fury I name.”

– Iago, in Verdi’s Opera Othello

On June 22, 2021, Bulgarian journalist Dilyana Gaytandzhieva published an expose titled “US fuels Syrian war with new arms supplies to Al Qaeda terrorists,” showing documents obtained by the US Federal Contracts Registry, revealing that the US Army Contracting Command, ACC Picatinny Arsenal,  has contracted eight American companies to procure Category 1 End User Certificate weapons from 2020-2025.

According to Gaytandzhieva, the Pentagon is buying $2.8 billion worth of weapons for conflict zones around the world. Most of the weapons are destined for Syria. After all, the Idlib Province in Syria (which is presently entirely controlled by Al Qaeda) has been recognised as one of the most strategic locations in the Middle East.

There are even a number of propaganda videos by Hayat Tahrir Al Sham HTS (formerly known as Al Nusra Front, which is Al Qaeda’s branch in Syria), showing them using American TOW anti-tank missiles.

A US-made TOW missile system seized by Syrian troops during their offensive in Urum al-Kubra in the de-escalation zone of Idlib. The province is under the control of the terrorist group HTS. (Telegram)

Propaganda footage published by Ibba news agency, linked to the terrorist organisation HTS, shows HTS militants being trained to operate American BGM-71 TOW weapon systems, Kornet and Konkurs anti-tank systems in the Syrian province of Idlib (Telegram @new_militarycolumnist)

Abu Mohammad al-Julani is the commander of Hayat Tahrir Al Sham (HTS), the Al Qaeda in Syria, and has been listed under the US State Department as a “Specially Designated Global Terrorist.” And yet there is ample evidence that the US has been arming Al Qaeda in Syria all along.

In addition, there is the strange April 2, 2021, PBS fluff piece on Abu Mohammad al-Julani with a fashion make-over, appearing to prepare the American public for his running for public office. Why would a government-funded American broadcasting company do such a thing?

Above picture: Abu Mohammad al-Julani in natural habitat.

Abu Mohammad al-Julani in PBS habitat.

Eight American companies have been contracted to procure non-US standard weapons from 2020 to 2025 through the US Army Contracting Command (ACC) Picatinny Arsenal. The weapons are not American made and thus cannot be used by American soldiers, however, according to the Pentagon solicitation W15QKN-19-R-0049 “Non-standard Weapons, Parts and Accessories”, the weapons will be used in “theaters of conflict”.

The weapons are described as Category 1 End User Certificate, these are issued by the US to third parties other than governments, which means militia or terrorist groups.

Source: dilyana.bg

According to Gaytandzhieva’s report, the weapon descriptions of these non-US standard weapons indicate that they originate from Bulgaria, Serbia and Romania, (see her report for a detailed run through).

Details on End User Certificates. Source: W15QKN19R0049, US Army Contracting Command (ACC) Picatinny Arsenal

What this means is that Eastern European weapons are going to be flooded into “theaters of conflict” and once released “into the wild” will be very difficult to trace where the source came from, say the United States. Eastern European weapons are analogous to Soviet weapons that are being used by the Syrian army. This will also make it difficult to determine the source in acts of terrorism, since the equipment used by both sides will be virtually indiscernible.

However, as already noted above, for sophisticated equipment such as the American-made TOW anti-tank weapon systems, these are still being supplied by the good ‘ol US of A directly.

Of course, for anyone who has been paying attention to the situation in Syria, this is no surprise.

It should be obvious that the American, European and Turkish arms supplying of Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups is meant as a stubborn continuation of Brzezinski’s Arc of Crisis, which he coined in 1977 as President Carter’s National Security Adviser, and which led to the formation of the Nationalities Working Group (NWG) the following year. The Arc of Crisis concept was and is designed to foment ethnic tensions through encouraging religious fanaticism and terrorism in the Muslim communities of the Middle East which could then offshoot into Central Asia. It was believed that such Islamic fanaticism would direct its wrath against the Soviet Union, sparking Islamic anarchy within the Muslim community of the USSR itself. This was thought to be the “soft underbelly” of the Soviet Union.

However, 54 years later, the west is still in a Cold War with Russia and  terrorist cells have now spread across the Middle East, Asia, Africa and even within western countries who thought perhaps they were too far removed from these “theater of conflicts” to be burnt by the fires they started.

Yet strangely, this rather disastrous foreign policy has not been recognised for the absolute lunacy and general mayhem that it emboldens but rather, the disaster has been used as the very justification for why western countries, who cannot even employ the majority of their populace or offer proper healthcare, needed to enter and spend billions of dollars on the forever “War on Terror,” to which these governments are presently arming the other side to combat!

It is not the Assad government who has proven to be a threat to “western democracy,” but rather it is the very terrorism that the west has created and is backing that has caused the most destruction to western people’s lives at home.

These acts of terrorism are then used to justify why the civil rights of a country’s populace need to be “temporarily” revoked, such as the 20 year old and still going strong Patriot Act, to which we can expect further add-ons in addressing “domestic terrorism.”

It is clear that the declared “enemy” in this “War on Terror,” is not what we were led to believe, and increasingly, it is beginning to look like the enemy may in fact be, anyone who resists this global agenda.

Made in London Mullahs

In a previous paper, I went through the origins of the Muslim Brotherhood as being essentially a British funded and backed creation, which dates back to intellectual founder of the Salafiyya movement, Jamal al-Din al-Afghani back in 1869.

Al-Afghani’s student Muhammad Abduh would receive direct and full support of the representatives of her Majesty’s imperial force and was given positions of high station and influence in British occupied Cairo. Abduh would work closely and openly with Lord Cromer (aka Evelyn Baring), London’s Egyptian proconsul, and scion of the enormously powerful banking clan (Barings Bank) under the city of London, in establishing the base for the Salafiyya movement. (1)

After London defeated ‘Urabi’s revolt against the British consortium in Egypt, which lasted from 1879 to 1882, Baring returned to Egypt in 1883 as a British agent and consul general, and served as the virtual ruler of the country until 1907.

British support continued with Hassan al-Banna (a follower of al-Afghani) who in 1928 officially founded the Muslim Brotherhood which would be linked with the Wahhabism of Saudi Arabia, which also has a history of British funding.

Banna’s Muslim Brotherhood, which was created in Egypt, would receive a grant from England’s Suez Canal Company. (2) It is no coincidence that the Muslim Brotherhood would be run-out of Egypt by President Gamal Abdel Nasser, only after he managed to nationalise the Suez Canal and successfully call an end to Britain’s occupancy of Egypt in 1956.

And thus it was clear that the British military occupancy of the Suez Canal was quite literally being used as a terrorist hub in support of the Muslim Brotherhood, for more on this refer to my paper.

Thanks to the Sykes-Picot affair, British dominance was not only found in Egypt but also, most notably, Saudi Arabia. As a result of the British orchestrated Sykes Picot, Abdul-Aziz ibn Saud, the British India Office favourite, was proclaimed King of Hejaz and Najd in 1926, leading to the founding of the kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

From the 1920s on, the new Saudi state merged its Wahhabi orthodoxy with the Salafiyya movement, now organized into the Muslim Brotherhood and has taken form as the modern militant Islamic extremism we are supposedly fighting today.

Who Really Runs the Middle East?

Islamic banking [that is the banking system dominated presently by Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States] was born in Egypt and financed by Saudi Arabia and then spread to the far corners of the Muslim world. Eventually the Islamic banking movement became a vehicle not only for exporting political Islam but for sponsoring violence. However, Islamic banking did not get off the ground on its own, as Ibrahim Warde (a renowned scholar of international finance) explains in his book “Islamic Finance in the Global Economy,” Islamic banking:

“…operates more out of London, Geneva, or the Bahamas than it does out of Jeddah, Karachi or Cairo…Ideologically, both liberalism and economic Islam were driven by their common opposition to socialism and economic dirigisme…Even Islamic Republics have on occasion openly embraced neo-liberalism…In Sudan, between 1992 and the end of 1993, Economics Minister Abdul Rahim Hamdi – a disciple of Milton Friedman and incidentally a former Islamic banker in London – did not hesitate to implement the harshest free-market remedies dictated by the International Monetary Fund. He said he was committed to transforming the heretofore statist economy ‘according to free-market rules, because this is how an Islamic economy should function.’  ” [emphasis added]

However, perhaps the best case study to this phenomenon is the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI).

BCCI was an international bank founded in 1972 by Agha Hasan Abedi, a Pakistani financier. The bank was registered in Luxembourg with head offices in Karachi and London. A decade after opening, BCCI had over 400 branches in 78 countries in excess of $20 billion USD, making it the seventh largest private bank in the world.

In the 1980s investigations into BCCI led to the discovery of its involvement in massive money laundering and other financial crimes, and that the BCCI had illegally and secretly gained the control of a major American bank, First American, according to Robert Morgenthau (Manhattan DA) who had been investigating the bank for over two years.

BCCI was also to be found guilty for illegally buying another American bank, the Independence Bank of Los Angeles, using a Saudi businessman Ghaith Paraon as the puppet owner. The American depositors lost most of their money when BCCI was forced to foreclose since it was essentially operating a Ponzi scheme to fund illegal activity of all sorts.

Investigators in the United States and the UK determined that BCCI had been “set up deliberately to avoid centralized regulatory review, and operated extensively in bank secrecy jurisdictions. Its affairs were extraordinarily complex. Its officers were sophisticated international bankers whose apparent objective was to keep their affairs secret, to commit fraud on a massive scale, and to avoid detection.”(3)

This is an incredibly sophisticated operation, and interestingly, uses the very same methods that the City of London has been using for centuries and presently operates to a diabolical perfection today. There is no way that a solo Pakistani financier, even if he was financed by the Sheik of Abu Dhabi, could rise in less than a decade , operating on the turf of ancient banking channels that go back several centuries, to rise to become the seventh largest bank in the netherworld of finance without a little help from the big boys.

Ibrahim Warde writes:

“At the international level, the major Islamic banking groups, rather than trying to establish a global Islamic network that would rival the global banking system, are keen on remaining embedded within that system. Indeed, in its transnational operations, Islamic banking operates more out of London, Geneva or the Bahamas, than it does out of Jeddah, Karachi or Cairo. As for the Islamic Development Bank (IBD), its statutes provide for coordination and collaboration with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and other international organizations.” (4) [emphasis added]

On July 29^th, 1991, a Manhattan grand jury indicted BCCI on twelve accounts of fraud, money laundering and larceny. Morgenthau has described BCCI as “the largest bank fraud in world financial history.”

So what does this all mean? It means that the so-called terrorists we are supposed to be fighting in this “War on Terror” are essentially working for the orchestrators that justify said narrative.

What it means is that the sin cities steeped in crime, dope, sex-trafficking (including children), arms-trafficking and terrorist groups, are all being funded by the same centralised system of finance, located in the London-Geneva-Bahamas (which is an offshoot of the City of London) triangle.

And it isn’t just Islamic banks that are involved in funding this kind of netherworld activity. It is being done by banks that continue to have an incredibly large role to play in more “respectable” global finance such as HSBC.

Yes, HSBC is still bizarrely considered reputable despite several very embarrassing lost lawsuits, however, the biggest to date occurred in 2012 when allegations were made against HSBC for allowing terrorists to move money around the financial system  and for which it had to pay a record $1.9 billion, with no form of regulated control on the bank afterwards but rather an agreement with the DOJ that the bank itself would install a 5 year independent monitor. (For more on this refer to my paper.)

HSBC managed to avoid being criminally prosecuted, a move that could have stopped the bank from operating in the US.

Lanny Breuer, assistant attorney general at the time, stated:

“HSBC is being held accountable for stunning failures of oversight – and worse…that led the bank to permit narcotics traffickers and others to launder hundreds of millions of dollars through HSBC subsidiaries and to facilitate hundreds of millions more in transactions with sanctioned countries.”

And just as Africa is being looted twice over with capital flight that amounts to 5x their foreign debt, which then returns to City of London offshore nether regions, only to ask for loans to pay off this debt at exorbitant interest rates by the very same grouping who stole the money…So the “privileged” western world is starting to feel a similar brunt.

While western countries are increasingly unable to provide a proper standard of living, with mass unemployment, lack of healthcare, increased crime and suicide rates, and increased overdoses and homelessness, and pretty much everything you would expect to rise during a Dark Age straight out of a Goya painting, these “first-world” governments are applying further austerity measures on the people, even after prolonged lockdowns, while openly pumping billions of dollars into wars that not only fund the destruction of entire nations, but funds the global drug, arms and sex-trafficking trade. All of this dirty money then circles back into the London-Geneva fondi, benefitting a select class that has existed and thrived for centuries on this sort of backdrop.

In this system, you do not own your money and you do not get to decide what your money is used for. Unknowingly, we are all tied to it, we all labour for it, and if so decided for us, we may even die for it.

Iago’s Prophecy

“From the very vileness of a germ or an atom, vile I was born. I am a wretch because I am a man, and I feel within me the primeval slime. Yes! This is my creed! …I think and do by destiny’s decree. I believe the just man to be a mocking actor in face and heart; that all his being is a lie: tear, kiss, glance, sacrifice and honour. And I believe man the sport of evil fate from the germ of the cradle to the worm of the grave. After all this mockery then comes Death. And then? …Death is nothingness…”

–        Iago, in Verdi’s Opera Othello

For those who are not familiar with Shakespeare’s play “The Tragedy of Othello, the Moor of Venice.” Iago is a Venetian, and though he most certainly would have called himself a “Christian,” as we see with his above monologue, his interpretation is rather more akin to that of the Devil.

Venice, was the center of world intelligence at the time, and the direct descendant of the Roman Empire. Venice was an enemy of Florence (the birthplace of the Italian Renaissance) and is the reason why Machiavelli wrote ‘The Prince,’ which was meant as a guidebook to the prince of Florence in understanding Venetian techniques so that he could defeat them.

Iago dislikes Othello and wants to remove him from his position as general. Not only this, but he wants to see Othello destroyed. However, in order to destroy Othello, Iago does not use physical force or confront him directly but rather, from the shadows, plays the fears and insecurities of Othello against himself.

Through this strategy, Othello becomes increasingly distrustful of those who he should keep close and is drawn ever closer to his destructor Iago, thinking him his only true confidante. Finally, Othello turns against his beloved wife and trusted friend Cassio and is driven mad by Iago’s relentless poisoned whisperings in his ear. In the end, Othello in a blind fury suffocates his faithful wife Desdemona in their bedroom chamber.

Incredibly controversial at the time of its first performance, it remains so today. What is the lesson we are to take from Shakespeare? Was Shakespeare making the point that Othello simply acted what was in his nature the entire time, as that of a Berber/Arab Muslim man, nothing more than a savage? Was it only a matter of time before Othello would have committed such atrocities against his beloved and his good friend, and that Iago merely inflamed what was already within him?

Othello is a tragedy, because Othello the man did not recognise that he was caught in the middle of someone else’s orchestration.  He allowed himself to be the plaything of another and to execute actions that were not his own conceptualisation. Othello is guilty of his crimes, but it is Iago who is by far the most formidable and terrible monster in the play. It is Iago who manipulates behind the scenes, and it is an Iago that goes undetected and unchecked by most, allowed to continue his atrocities without ever facing any justice until his death, when he will finally be confronted by the eternal.

As Schiller stated in his Ghost Seer about the Venetian technique, one will only be freed by masked tyranny’s terrible grip when one can comprehend what is the nature of true villainy, that is, the orchestrator of evil and not just a mere hand of evil. Only then will such a villain be unmasked to us, otherwise we will forever be pitted against the other, just a plaything for a higher will than our own.

Thus, let us not be fully distracted by the mayhem on center front stage…but rather, let us take a look at who is standing behind that curtain.

The author can be reached at https://cynthiachung.substack.com/

Notes

(1) Elie Kedourie, “Afghani and Abduh: An Essay on Religious Unbelief and Political Activism in Modern Islam.”
(2) Richard P. Mitchell, “The Society of the Muslim Brothers.”
(3) John Kerry “The BCCI Affair: A Report to the Committee on Foreign Relations.”
(4) Ibrahim Warde “Islamic Finance in the Global Economy.”

By Ben NORTON, Max BLUMENTHAL

March 2021 marked the 10th anniversary of the Western regime-change war on Syria. And after a decade of grueling conflict, Washington is still maneuvering to extend its longstanding relationship with the Salafi-jihadist militants fighting Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

With the northeastern province of Idlib under the control of a self-proclaimed “Syrian Salvation Government” led by the rebranded version of Syria’s al-Qaeda franchise, and protected under the military aegis of NATO member state Turkey, powerful elements from Brussels to Washington have been working to legitimize its leader.

This June, PBS Frontline aired a special, “The Jihadist,” featuring a sit-down interview with Abu Mohammad al-Jolani, de facto president of the “Syrian Salvation Government” and founder of the Syrian branch of al-Qaeda originally called Jabhat al-Nusra, today re-branded as Hay-at Tahrir al-Sham, or HTS.

Having traded in his battlefield garb for a freshly pressed suit, Jolani was presented with the once unthinkable opportunity to market himself to a Western audience and pledge that his forces pose no threat to the US homeland because they were merely focused on waging war against Syria’s “loyalist” population.

The PBS correspondent who conducted the interview, Martin Smith, previously starred in a 2015 PBS special, “Inside Assad’s Syria,” which presented a US audience with a rare and relatively objective look at life inside Syrian government-controlled territory, as insurgents backed by NATO and Gulf monarchies encircled and terrorized its population.

Whether or not he realized it, when Smith returned to Syria this March to meet Jolani, he was on more than a journalistic field expedition. A network of think tanks and Beltway foreign policy veterans were engaged in a simultaneous push to remove Jolani and his militant faction HTS from the State Department’s list of designated terrorist groups.

This would open the door for international acceptance of his de facto government in Idlib, which regime-change advocates view as an important piece of leverage against Damascus, and as a human warehouse for the millions of refugees languishing there.

In turn, the audacious PR campaign would consolidate a branch of the organization responsible for the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States into a de facto US asset.

The campaign to normalize Jolani was publicly initiated by the International Crisis Group, a Brussels-based think tank with close ties to the Biden administration and NATO. By the time of Smith’s interview, operatives from a network of Gulf-funded, pro-Israel think tanks had spent years quietly lobbying for Washington to support al-Qaeda’s Syrian franchise, and succeeded in securing shipments of weapons from the CIA to some of its battlefield allies.

Though figures involved in this coordinated lobbying push were featured in Smith’s PBS Frontline report, they were presented to viewers as dispassionate analysts or former officials with no ulterior interests.

Framed as hard news yet shaped by one of the most insidious public relations campaigns in recent history, the nationally broadcast PBS special provided an effective vehicle for rehabilitating a jihadist leader and perpetuating the decades-long dirty war against Syria.

Whitewashing US and foreign support for Syria’s extremist insurgency

When Muhammad Jolani first crossed the Syrian-Iraqi border in 2012 with a small detachment of fighters, he belonged officially to al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia, an extremist group responsible for countless attacks on US military occupiers and Shia civilians across Iraq.

Upon their thrust into Syria, Jolani’s forces enabled the late self-proclaimed leader of the caliphate, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, to establish his Islamic State, or ISIS, in the northeastern city of Raqqa. A feud over strategy and finances soon prompted Jolani to split from the Islamic State and establish Jabhat al-Nusra, the Syrian franchise of al-Qaeda, with the explicit blessing of the jihadist group’s global leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri.

Martin Smith recounted this history in his PBS Frontline report, albeit briefly, while neglecting any mention of the scandalous covert US operation that made Nusra’s rise possible.

Smith, for instance, neglected mention of the prescient August 2012 Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) assessment which stated clearly that “the Salafist, the Muslim Brotherhood, and AQI [al-Qaeda in Iraq] are the major forces driving the insurgency in Syria,” and that the Western-backed opposition would likely create a “Salafist principality in eastern Syria” if weapons were placed in the hands of anti-Assad Islamist militants.

Despite the warning, in 2013, the CIA launched Operation Timber Sycamore, an arm-and-equip program that funneled up to $1 billion per year (one out of every $15 in the CIA’s budget) into material support for an armed opposition thoroughly dominated by Islamist extremists. It was the agency’s largest covert operation since a similar initiative in Afghanistan in the 1980s, which gave birth to al-Qaeda and the Taliban.

Just as the DIA predicted, an extremist “Salafist principality” took root in northeastern Syria, while Al Qaeda’s local franchise quickly emerged as the dominant force within the armed opposition.

Nusra militants – including a former fighters of the CIA-created “Free Syrian Army” – were filmed cutting open the chests of Syrian soldiers, tearing their hearts out, and eating the organs raw (while receiving sympathetic media coverage from the BBC).

Abu Sakkar, a former CIA-backed Free Syrian Army militant who later joined al-Qaeda, eating the raw heart of a soldier

As it seized control of the Idlib province and moved to take Damascus, Nusra earned a reputation for grisly suicide attacks and executions, while instituting a medieval-style theocratic regime in the areas it controlled. An undercover 2017 documentary filmed by local residents, “Undercover Idlib,” exposed the dystopia that unfolded under Nusra control, with all non-religious music and public celebrations banned, the wearing of colorful headscarves outlawed, and Druze and Christian residents killed or forced to convert at gunpoint.

Rather than being uprooted from its “safe haven,” Nusra was encouraged by its NATO-aligned sponsors to rebrand and superficially distance itself from al-Qaeda so it could survive. First, in 2016, the al-Qaeda franchise changed its name to Jabhat Fateh al-Sham, then morphed into Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) the following year.

Under tutelage from Turkey, which controlled the northern border of Idlib, HTS subsequently formed the “Syrian Salvation Government,” and embarked on a PR campaign for international legitimacy.

Mohammad Jolani announces the formation of Jabhat Fateh al-Sham, formerly Jabhat al-Nusra, in 2016

Syria’s rebranded Al Qaeda branch courts Western media

In 2020, Idlib’s “Salvation Government” established a media relations office to assist the entry of Western journalists and provide them with fixers to guide them in its territory. While independent reporters (including the co-author of this article) have been subjected to waves of online abuse by mainstream Western correspondents for visiting Damascus, a New York Times tour of Idlib that was openly managed by al-Qeada’s Syrian affiliate took place without a hint of criticism.

A New York Times press interview with Professor “Ali Keda,” Prime Minister of the Salvation Government, in coordination with the Government’s Media Relations Office and the Idlib Center for Media Services pic.twitter.com/z2V9QqxpXR

— Idlib center for media services (@Idlibcenter) March 30, 2021

Martin Smith’s March 2021 visit to Idlib was a similarly guided venture. His report on Jolani blended interview footage with scenes of the HTS leader pressing the flesh with residents of Idlib City, conveying the image of a popular retail politician stumping for local office.

Mohammad Jolani greeting locals around Idlib as a PBS Frontline crew films

Idlib “does not represent a threat to the security of Europe and America. This region is not a staging ground for executing foreign jihad,” Jolani reassured Smith. Over the past decade, he added, “we haven’t posed any threat to the West.”

In the interview, Smith focused entirely on whether Jolani would attack the West or not, demonstrating a near-total lack of interest in the lives of the millions of Syrians trapped under HTS’ neo-feudal rule in Idlib, and the minority groups threatened by its sectarian violence in nearby areas.

Dressed in a pressed shirt and blazer suitable for any job interview, Jolani rattled off rhetoric about the “Syrian revolution,” while stressing that his Salafi-jihadist brethren and Washington shared a common goal: regime change in Damascus.

The leader of rebranded Syrian al-Qaeda, Abu Mohammad al-Jolani, doing a friendly interview with PBS in Idlib

Days after Smith left Idlib, HTS stoned three women to death as punishment for alleged adultery. It was far from the first public execution carried out by the group. Back when it was still known as Nusra, the al-Qaeda affiliate shot a woman in the head in the middle of a plaza in Idlib because she, too, had been accused of adultery.

None of these gruesome events were mentioned in Smith’s June 2021 PBS report, which represented the culmination of a years-long campaign to normalize HTS control in northeastern Syria.

Syria’s al-Qaeda affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra executing a woman in public in Idlib in 2015 after she was accused of adultery

“Al Qaeda has really got it right”

A powerful Brussels-based think tank that is funded by Western governments helped ignite the PR campaign to legitimize HTS with a highly sympathetic 2020 “conversation” with Jolani.

The think tank behind the whitewash, the International Crisis Group, gets the plurality of its funding from the European Union, Germany, France, and Australia, among other countries. It is effectively a Western intelligence cutout, and has consistently, over years, advocated for more Western military intervention in Syria.

The Crisis Group revealed that it had “[spoken] with Jolani in Idlib for four hours in late January” of 2020 while it pushed a narrative that he had become a new man.

“Following a series of rebranding efforts and internal transformations, Jolani told us, HTS presents itself today as a local group, independent of al-Qaeda’s chain of command, with a strictly Syrian, not a transnational, Islamist agenda,” the think tank wrote.

The softball interview was promoted by prominent members of the Syria regime-change lobby, including an Israeli fellow at the neoconservative, Washington DC-based Newlines Institute, Elizabeth Tsurkov, who has emerged as a de facto jihadi whisperer of the US and Israeli foreign policy nexus.

Excellent insights by @dkhalifa who recently returned from Idlib, where she spoke at length with Abu Muhammad al-Jolani, the Commander of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, the dominant faction in the last rebel-held pocket of Syria. https://t.co/nhSA9pxbvI

— Elizabeth Tsurkov (@Elizrael) February 20, 2020

Tsurkov complimented the extremist rulers of Idlib, writing, “HTS is arguably the most pragmatic al-Qaeda offshoot to exist.”

Excellent insights by @dkhalifa who recently returned from Idlib, where she spoke at length with Abu Muhammad al-Jolani, the Commander of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, the dominant faction in the last rebel-held pocket of Syria. https://t.co/nhSA9pxbvI

— Elizabeth Tsurkov (@Elizrael) February 20, 2020

Then there was Ken Roth, the executive director of Human Rights Watch (HRW), a billionaire oligarch-funded NGO that frequently promotes sanctions and regime-change operations against governments that have been targeted by Washington, from Syria to Venezuela, China to Nicaragua, Belarus to Bolivia.

Roth took to Twitter twice to promote the International Crisis Group’s interview with Jolani. Both of his tweets demonized the Syrian government and its ally Russia while making no mention of the array of crimes committed by the Salafi-jihadist militia in Idlib.

Any of the millions of civilians in Idlib “will tell you that they prefer living in makeshift camps where their kids are dying in harsh weather conditions over returning to [Syrian] regime areas where they know they will be tortured and killed.” https://t.co/PhwtBxk6M3

— Kenneth Roth (@KenRoth) February 22, 2020

Roth’s message was clear: liberal interventionists in the Western human rights industry were on board with the HTS rebranding campaign.

Russian & Syrian forces in Idlib “have repeatedly targeted population centres, including markets, schools and hospitals, with the effect of emptying these areas to ease the way for their recapture by regime ground forces.” Who will stop them? @CrisisGroup https://t.co/yQ0xWCXFIt pic.twitter.com/hd9BGuDDMF

— Kenneth Roth (@KenRoth) February 21, 2020

In February 2021, the International Crisis Group published a follow-up paper explicitly aimed at convincing policy makers to remove the rebranded Syrian al-Qaeda franchise from the State Department’s list of terrorist organizations.

“HTS’s continued status as a ‘terrorist’ organisation (as designated by the U.S., Russia, the UN Security Council and Turkey) presents a major obstacle,” lamented the authors of the absurdly titled paper, “In Syria’s Idlib, Washington’s Chance to Reimagine Counter-terrorism.”

A co-author of the document, Syria consultant Noah Bonsey, called for Western policymakers to show more “nuance” on the rebranded al-Qaeda extremists.

The continued “terrorist” status of Syrian dominant rebel group #HTS presents a major obstacle to avoiding violence in Syria.

The Biden administration should push HTS to address key local and international concerns, so it can lose its “terrorist” label.https://t.co/PILLcRqoqO

— Crisis Group (@CrisisGroup) February 4, 2021

The thrust of the think tank’s argument was that, unlike ISIS and other al-Qaeda affiliates, “HTS has distanced itself from transnational attacks and the militants who advocate for them.” In other words, the extremist group’s campaign of violence is acceptable as long as it stays focused on the Syrian government and its allies – not on targets in Western countries.

The usual suspects enthusiastically promoted the policy paper, including the former Israeli soldier, Tsurkov.

In Syria’s Idlib, Washington’s Chance to Reimagine Counter-terrorism https://t.co/sjYNlwF4l7 Important new piece by @dkhalifa & @NoahBonsey, informed by fieldwork in Idlib & meetings with HTS’ top leadership

— Elizabeth Tsurkov (@Elizrael) February 3, 2021

Perhaps the most influential member of the Syria regime-change lobby on Washington’s K Street, Charles Lister, happily promoted the proposal as well.

The British pundit, who does not speak Arabic, has spent years advocating for Syria’s Islamist extremist occupation from within think tanks such as the Brookings Doha Center and Middle East Institute, which are funded by theocratic Gulf monarchies.

During a 2017 panel discussion at NATO’s de facto think tank, the Atlantic Council, Lister described Idlib as “the heartland of al-Nusra,” acknowledging that “Al-Qaeda’s relative success in Syria has seen its ideology and its narrative mainstreamed, not just in parts of Syria, but also in parts of the region.”

At a subsequent 2018 Capitol Hill panel discussion aimed at gathering congressional support for military intervention, Lister gushed about Nusra, “Al Qaeda has really got it right, I hate to say… Their strategy is so much more effective on the ground. They are winning hearts and minds.”

Lister has even celebrated Jolani as an Islamist version of Che Guevara who “goes deep on modern Arab political history.” As for HTS, Lister praised them as “a more politically mature and intelligent jihadist movement.”

“Al-Qaeda has really got it right” – @Charles_Lister.

From my new @GrayzoneProject mini-doc “The Syria Deception – Al-Qaeda Goes to Hollywood”. Watch here: https://t.co/KOxwQx8Xro pic.twitter.com/mXPcLN5q10

— Dan Cohen (@dancohen3000) September 16, 2018

Rankled by the successful advocacy by Lister and his Gulf monarchy-backed colleagues for arming Islamist fanatics in Syria, Brett McGurk, the former US special envoy against ISIS, grumbled to a reporter that the think tankers “got a lot of people killed.”

By 2021, Lister was comfortable enough to call for the rebranded al-Nusra franchise to become an official Western asset.

This is great by @jeromedrev & @patrickhaenni — #HTS has come to represent something uniquely challenging.

After violently achieving domination (vs. #FSA, #AQ & #ISIS), it’s now pursuing a policy of “gradual opening & mainstreamisation,” giving concessions & seeking acceptance. https://t.co/syWJZ9wBko

— Charles Lister (@Charles_Lister) February 3, 2021

US special envoy on Syria James Jeffrey with Turkey’s defense minister in Ankara in 2019

James Jeffrey and Andrew Tabler’s undisclosed Turkish and Israeli ties

The PBS Frontline special on Jolani provided an uncritical platform to James Jeffrey, the former US special representative for Syria engagement, and Andrew Tabler, a de facto Israel lobbyist and think tank pundit, presenting them to viewers as serious Syria experts without disclosing their longstanding ties to two of the most pernicious foreign backers of Syria’s Islamist insurgency.

HTS is “the least bad option of the various options on Idlib, and Idlib is one of the most important places in Syria, which is one of the most important places right now in the Middle East,” Jeffrey declared to Frontline’s Martin Smith. He was finally acknowledging what was already well known in foreign policy circles but which few dared to say out loud: Washington has been allied with al-Qaeda in Syria.

The United States has not had formal diplomatic relations with Syria for years. Damascus formally broke contact with Washington in 2012 over its support for armed militants seeking to overthrow the country’s internationally recognized government.

The absence of diplomatic relations has led to the appointment of a series of US special envoys. One of the most influential, and aggressively interventionist, of these envoys has been Jeffrey.

When mainstream US media outlets mention Jeffrey, they are often careful to stress that he has served in both Republican and Democratic administrations, branding him as a bipartisan figure with extensive experience working at diplomatic posts in the Middle East.

What is almost never mentioned in the many glowing media portraits of Jeffrey, however, is his deep commitment to strengthening ties with Turkey, his close personal ties to the government in Ankara, and his fellowship with one of the most influential pro-Israel think tanks in Washington.

From 2013 to 2018, Jeffrey was a “distinguished fellow” at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP), a DC-based think tank that effectively serves as a cutout for Israeli intelligence. There, Jeffrey co-authored policy papers with neoconservative operatives such as Dennis Ross, advocating for hardline anti-Iran positions and even more US intervention in the Middle East.

While presenting Tehran as the “biggest challenge” for the United States, Jeffrey has been an enthusiastic advocate of closer cooperation with the Turkish government. In a report at WINEP, he maintained that “Turkey is one of the most important countries for the United States overall, and of central importance for U.S. policy.”

Jeffrey called for Washington to build deeper ties with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who he noted is “the most powerful Turkish leader since Mustafa Kemal Ataturk established the Turkish republic in 1923.” Jeffrey warned that failing to do so could inspire Ankara to improve its relations with longtime rival Russia.

Top US diplomat James Jeffrey with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan

Alongside the United States, Turkey has played a pivotal role in the regime-change war on Syria. Ankara worked with the CIA to create training camps inside Turkish territory, while southern Turkey became the de facto base for Syria’s political opposition in exile, with cities like Gaziantep serving as a hub for Western intelligence agencies and their assets.

For years, Erdogan maintained an open border with his southern neighbor, allowing tens of thousands of hardened Salafi-jihadists from around the world to enter Syria and wage war on the Assad government. This arrangement, known informally as the “jihadi highway,” allowed the Syrian opposition’s foreign sponsors to send billions of dollars worth of advanced weapons, including anti-tank missiles. It also gave extremist insurgents free rein to go back and forth across the porous border, seeking reinforcements and escaping retaliations by Damascus.

Ankara directly supported fanatical Islamist groups inside Syria, playing a “double game” with ISIS and effectively turning al-Qaeda affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra into a proxy.

The Turkish military has illegally invaded Syrian sovereign territory several times since 2016, and Ankara military occupies parts of Idlib and northern Syria. The rebranded al-Qaeda extremists who run Idlib, HTS, collaborate openly with the Turkish military.

Jeffrey publicly broadcasted his pro-Ankara views when, in March 2020, he and then US Ambassador to United Nations Kelly Craft visited Turkey on a joint trip. On the southern border with Syria, the two diplomats posed for a photo op with the Western government-funded White Helmets, while calling for the overthrow of President Bashar al-Assad and reaffirming Washington’s support for Turkey’s policy in Idlib.

US Syria envoy James Jeffrey and UN Ambassador Kelly Craft in southern Turkey, posing with the White Helmets, in March 2020

A few weeks before the visit, Jeffrey conducted an interview on Turkish TV that was republished by the US embassy. The US special envoy on Syria enthusiastically defended Ankara’s military occupation of parts of Idlib: “There the United States totally agrees with Turkey on the legal presence and justification for Turkey defending its existential interests against refugee flow and dealing with terror and finding a solution to the terrible Syrian conflict with the war criminal regime of President Assad. We understand and support these legitimate Turkish interests that have Turkish forces in Syria and specifically in Idlib.”

Jeffrey later admitted that he had lied to then-President Trump about the number of troops in Syria to prevent a total withdrawal. “We were always playing shell games to not make clear to our leadership how many troops we had there,” he boasted to the military website Defense One.

A 2019 report in Foreign Policy identified Jeffrey, alongside neoconservative operative and former National Security Advisor John Bolton, as part of a group of anti-Iran hawks who “repeatedly sought to reverse Trump’s Syria withdrawal over nearly two years, culminating in a disastrous Turkish invasion that has destabilized the region.”

Foreign Policy explained: “Jeffrey began making plans to stay in northeastern Syria indefinitely as an obstacle to Assad’s attempts to consolidate power. In particular, Jeffrey’s team aimed to deny the Syrian president and his Iranian backers access to the coveted oil fields in Deir Ezzor province, which are mostly under SDF control.”

Despite Jeffrey’s relentless advocacy for more Turkish control in northern Syria, PBS Frontline’s Martin Smith portrayed him as an objective expert who was delivering clinical policy analysis uncorrupted by any ulterior political interest.

Similarly, Smith interviewed Andrew Tabler, who offered effusive praise for Turkey’s role in Idlib. Though Tabler works for the same pro-Israel Washington Institute for Near East Policy which employed Jeffrey for years, Smith presented him to viewers as a former journalist with years of supposed expertise on Syria.

In fact, Tabler has aggressively advocated a US regime-change war on Syria during apparently paid Israel lobby lectures like the one he delivered to the Israel Club of Florida’s Valencia Isles.

“The United States needs to develop and execute a plan to develop its Sunni allies’ spheres of influence in Syria to help retake and stabilize those areas from ISIS and al Qaeda,” Tabler told his pro-Israel audience. “However, such an operation will only succeed if Washington not only maintains its goal of al-Assad stepping aside, but adds a military component to the strategy as well.”

WINEP’s Andrew Tabler at the Valencia Isles Israel Club, October 15, 2015

Both Israel and Turkey have played central roles in destabilizing Syria from its north and south. And in Washington, figures like Jeffrey and Tabler have helped advance the interests of these two religiously sectarian human rights violators with zealous dedication.

But none of this context was provided to viewers of Smith’s PBS Frontline special on Jolani, leaving them with the impression that the two regime-change lobbyists were merely a couple of seasoned and unbiased analysts.

“Well, it’s complicated”: A PBS reporter on Jolani’s record as Al Qaeda leader

The June 2021 release of Smith’s PBS Frontline report prompted an exuberant Twitter victory lap by Lister, who erupted in quasi-orgasmic celebration at the portrayal of HTS as a “semi-technocratic ‘govt’”, and touted his own 10 years of work whitewashing the exploits of its jihadist founders.

Though Jolani’s de facto job interview with the US government was received positively inside the Beltway, an independent  interviewer managed to challenge Smith on his approach.

He was Scott Horton, the Austin, Texas-based libertarian anti-war author and Pacifica radio host. In an interview with Smith before the full PBS special appeared, Horton asked Smith if he confronted Jolani about his militia’s record of slaughtering members of Syria’s Druze religious minority who refused to convert to Islam, or the vicious theocratic regime he operated from East Aleppo to Idlib.

Smith responded with spin that sounded like damage control for al-Nusra: “Jolani says that a lot of mistakes were made,” the journalist said. Later, he insisted, “Well, it’s complicated,” when challenged about Jolani’s rampage of sectarian violence.

HTS is “considerably different” from al-Qaeda, Smith maintained, and “don’t participate in large-scale attacks against civilians.” He even insisted that Jolani had pledged protect the rights of Druze, Christians, and other religious minorities – although all have been ethnically cleansed from Idlib or forced to convert.

Finally, Smith claimed that Syria’s secular president was exponentially worse than the rebranded al-Qaeda leader, whose forces permitted no one but Sunni Muslims to exist under their rule. “There is no comparison between Assad and Jolani,” he argued.

In one of his only direct criticisms of HTS in the interview with Horton, Smith conceded that HTS’ prisons “can be pretty nasty places,” adding in another massive understatement that Jolani “still runs a pretty tough ship.”

However, the PBS reporter insisted that Jolani never affiliated with al-Qaeda because of ideology, but rather because of the terrorist group’s powerful “branding.”

“At this point they’re trying to get the West to warm up to them,” Smith conceded. “They are engaged now in an ongoing effort to try to set up dialogue with the West; they would like to have the terrorism designation lifted.”

Smith insisted that despite the ongoing public relations campaign on HTS’s behalf, he was not a participant in it. “The Americans are tired of wars in the Middle East,” the journalist claimed, implying that Jolani is someone the imperial planners in Washington can rely on to leave in charge.

Whether or not he was wittingly complicit, Martin Smith and his PBS Frontline report represented the culmination of the Washington-led lobbying campaign to clean up Syrian al-Qaeda’s image and secure its status as a respectable US proxy.

Lindsey Snell, an American independent journalist who was held captive by Jabhat al-Nusra in Syria, scoffed at the public relations campaign waged on behalf of HTS by American media and think tanks. In an interview with The Grayzone, Snell said HTS still upholds the same ideology as ISIS, but has decided to appeal to the West in order to preserve its influence in Idlib while pocketing millions of dollars a month in international aid and oil money.

“Actually, their rebranding campaign started when I was their captive,” Snell told The Grayzone. “They changed their name for the first time and they announced their split from Al Qaeda when I was their captive. And of course, it didn’t actually change anything.”

“To this day most of them still call themselves ‘Nusra,’” Snell added. “Their split from Al Qaeda was really just a cosmetic, surface level thing and they’re still the same terrorists inflicting Sharia law on everyone in their territories.”

thegrayzone.com

By Ben NORTON

The United States government has designated the enemy of al-Qaeda in Yemen as a terrorist organization, after spending years backing al-Qaeda in the country.

Like the US-led wars on Syria, Libya, former Yugoslavia, and 1980s Afghanistan, Yemen represents an example of an armed conflict where Washington has supported al-Qaeda and similar Salafi-jihadist extremists in order to foment regime change and extend its hegemony.

Since March 2015, the United States has helped oversee a catastrophic war on Yemen, the poorest country in the Middle East, aiding Saudi Arabia as it launched tens of thousands of air strikes on its southern neighbor, bombing the impoverished nation into rubble — and unleashing the largest humanitarian crisis on Earth.

Hundreds of thousands of Yemenis have died in this US-backed war. Tens of millions of civilians have been pushed to the brink of famine, as a result of intentional US-backed Saudi targeting of food production. Yemen’s health infrastructure was ravaged by the Western-sponsored bombing, precipitating the worst cholera outbreak in recorded history.

Throughout the war, al-Qaeda and other Salafi-jihadist groups have metastasized across the south of Yemen. The spread of these dangerous extremists is not a mere coincidence; it is the result of US government policy choices.

For years, forces in Yemen backed by the United States, Britain, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates have fought in alliance with al-Qaeda. (And it is not the only ongoing conflict in the Middle East where the terror group has been allied with Washington. Former top Hillary Clinton advisor Jake Sullivan, now Joe Biden’s national security advisor, chirped in a 2012 email, “AQ is on our side in Syria.”)

There is overwhelming evidence exposing this de facto alliance between Washington and al-Qaeda. It has been documented even by mainstream corporate media outlets, from the Associated Press to the Wall Street Journal.

Why US troops may fight alongside al-Qaeda in Yemen against Houthi/Saleh forces, as Trump escalates https://t.co/yV6Pyi05vY

— Ben Norton (@BenjaminNorton) April 5, 2017

Western governments and Gulf monarchies are allied with al-Qaeda in Yemen because they share a common enemy: the Houthis, an indigenous, politically orientated Shia movement that emerged out of local struggles to resist Saudi Arabia’s extremist Wahhabi influence in the northern border area of Yemen.

The Houthis, who officially call themselves Ansar Allah, govern the northern regions of Yemen, where the majority of the population lives. They took control of the country after overthrowing an unelected and deeply corrupt US-backed authoritarian regime on September 21, 2014, in what they dubbed the September 21 Revolution.

Since March 2015, the United States and its allies Britain, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates have proven unable to dislodge Ansar Allah from power. In desperation, the coalition has collectively punished the entire Yemeni civilian population, destroying much of the country around them in the process.

On January 10, 2021, the US State Department took its hybrid war on Yemeni civilians to the next level by officially designating the Houthi movement as a terrorist organization.

The @StateDept‘s designation of Ansarallah will further isolate terrorists in Yemen while the United States takes available steps to facilitate continued humanitarian aid. https://t.co/KWVrQtTmn9

— Morgan Ortagus (@statedeptspox) January 11, 2021

The terror label constituted a major blow to the international aid organizations working to prevent a famine and save civilian lives in Yemen. Because the Houthis run the government in most of Yemen, the designation effectively criminalized aid work in the majority of the country not under Washington’s de facto control.

We are ceasing all operations in the United States for the time being, as well as putting a temporary halt to our intended plans for humanitarian fundraising.

Let it be known that the Trump Administration just criminalized foreign humanitarian aid to #Yemen. pic.twitter.com/uUDEgEu9hP

— Yemen Solidarity Council (@YSCouncil) January 11, 2021

The southern part of Yemen not governed by Ansar Allah is run by a US puppet government, ostensibly led by unelected President Abed Rabbuh Mansour Hadi, who has spent nearly the entire war living in Saudi Arabia.

Yemen’s US- and Saudi-backed southern government is closely linked to al-Qaeda. And with the full knowledge of officials in Washington, it has used al-Qaeda as the tip of the spear in its war on the Houthis.

US- and Saudi-backed coalition forces in Yemen have actively recruited al-Qaeda extremists in their fight against Ansar Allah, and the US military halted drone strikes on the Salafi-jihadists.

Yemeni al-Qaeda extremists who are individually named on the US terrorism list have been supported and funded by US-backed Gulf monarchies, and have carved out top positions in Yemen’s southern puppet government.

The Salafi-jihadist militants in Yemen are part of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, or AQAP, one of the terror group’s most extreme and brutal international affiliates, which used an ISIS-style flag for years before the self-declared Islamic State emerged out of the US-backed wars on Iraq and Syria.

Militants from Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), which has been supported by the US and Saudi Arabia in Yemen

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo claimed the terrorist designation was part of Washington’s drive to weaken Iranian influence in the region, as part of the US-led propaganda drive to paint the group as a mere “Iranian proxy.”

But though the Houthis have received political and media support from Iran, they are an independent indigenous group whose resistance struggle is deeply ingrained in Yemen’s history.

Terrorist designations of Ansarallah in Yemen confront its terrorist activity and seeks to deter further malign activity by the Iranian regime in the region.

— Secretary Pompeo (@SecPompeo) January 11, 2021

Like the Lebanese nationalist group Hezbollah, which is often compared to Ansar Allah, the Houthis are allies of Iran, but they are independent. Both grew out of indigenous struggles against attempted foreign domination of their countries – the Israeli war on Lebanon in the case of the former, and Saudi aggression in the case of the latter.

Ansar Allah, which adopted the slogan “Death to America, Death to Israel,” has also demonstrated a consistent anti-imperialist ideology and support for global resistance movements.

The Houthi government refuses to recognize Israel and vociferously promotes the Palestinian liberation struggle. It has also backed the Syrian government and its allies against Western-sponsored Salafi-jihadist militants.

Consistent with their ideology, the Houthis publicly expressed solidarity with Venezuela against the US-led coup attempt to install Juan Guaidó in 2019. Back in 2015, a senior Ansar Allah leader told journalist Safa al-Ahmad, “We will help oppressed people all over the world… We support Chávez in Venezuela. Why this insistence that we receive support from Iran, other than wanting to turn the struggle in this country and the region into a sectarian one, based on the American and Zionist agenda?”

Yemenis from the Houthi movement and leftist parties hold a solidarity rally with Venezuela against a US coup attempt, in Sanaa in 2019

The US terrorist designation is clearly meant to criminalize the Houthi movement, and the majority of Yemen as a whole, for its resistance to Washington’s geopolitical interests.

This labeling is ironic, because Yemenis have themselves held numerous protests under the banner, “No to American Terrorism on Yemen.”

Few English-language journos have been able to get into Yemen to report on the US-Saudi war. Frontline managed to: https://t.co/iRPIV0hTzw

— Ben Norton (@BenjaminNorton) July 21, 2017

During a protest marking the anniversary of the US-Saudi coalition bombing of a funeral hall that killed more than 140 people and wounded 600 more, Yemenis erected a blood-stained, demonic Statue of Liberty holding American and Israeli bombs, alongside a sign reading, “USA Kills Yemeni People.”

1 year ago, the US-Saudi coalition bombed a funeral hall in Sanaa, Yemen, killing 150 and wounding 500.
This is the rally Yemenis held today pic.twitter.com/QsHdBX64IX

— Ben Norton (@BenjaminNorton) October 8, 2017

In a viral photo, a Yemeni man dressed up as Donald Trump, posing with an American flag cape and hat reading “oil” in front of a cow covered by a Saudi flag, standing above an Israeli flag.

A Yemeni man at a “Stop U.S. Terrorism on Yemen” protest in Sanaa in 2017

The US terrorist designation of Ansar Allah recalls similar labels applied to other national-liberation movements in the Global South.

South African anti-apartheid leader Nelson Mandela was on the US government’s terrorism list until 2008 (after the CIA helped the apartheid regime imprison him for 27 years).

Mandela’s African National Congress, or ANC, was designated a terrorist organization by Washington because of its support for armed struggle against South Africa’s US-backed apartheid regime. The ANC remained on the US terrorist list even after it became the elected government of the country’s post-apartheid democracy.

But the US government’s terrorist labeling of the Houthis is doubly hypocritical, considering Washington’s cozy relationship with al-Qaeda in Yemen.

Mainstream corporate media extensively documents US alliance with al-Qaeda in Yemen

The existence of a de facto alliance between the United States, Saudi Arabia, and al-Qaeda is not just speculation by anti-war journalists; it has been acknowledged by mainstream corporate media outlets.

The Western and Gulf monarchy alliance with the notorious Salafi-jihadist terrorist group has been known since the very beginning of the international war on Yemen in 2015.

In July 2015, the Wall Street Journal published a report acknowledging that “Local militias backed by Saudi Arabia, special forces from the United Arab Emirates and al Qaeda militants all fought on the same side this week to wrest back control over most of Yemen’s second city, Aden, from pro-Iranian Houthi rebels.”

The Journal continued: “Saudi-backed militias are spearheading efforts to roll back Houthi gains and reinstate the government that the rebels drove into exile in neighboring Saudi Arabia. But they have turned to Yemen-based al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, or AQAP, for help, according to local residents and a senior Western diplomat. This puts the U.S.-allied Gulf kingdom on the same side as one of the world’s most notorious extremist groups.”

After al-Qaeda helped US-backed Yemeni forces expel the Houthis from the major southern city of Aden, “AQAP militants celebrated the victory alongside the militias, parading cadavers of Houthis on a main commercial street in the city to a cheering crowd,” the Wall Street Journal wrote.

Aden residents told the newspaper that they saw al-Qaeda flags flying all across the city.

The US government was well aware of the fact that it was strengthening al-Qaeda in Yemen. However, it continued to place the responsibility on Yemen’s Ansar Allah movement. The Journal reported, “American officials acknowledge that AQAP is one of the war’s biggest benefactors, but say Houthi rebels are ultimately to blame.”

In February 2016, video evidence of the dark alliance emerged for the first time. Journalist Safa al-Ahmad filmed forces from the US-, Saudi-, and UAE-backed coalition fighting alongside al-Qaeda against the Houthis, battling for control of the major city of Taiz. She published the footage with the BBC.

In January 2017, a United Nations panel of experts published an annual report on the Yemen war. The document (PDF) acknowledged that al-Qaeda “members have also taken part in the fight in Ta’izz on the side of the ‘resistance’ against Houthi and Saleh forces” (referring to previous President Ali Abdullah Saleh, who had formed an uneasy alliance with the Houthis until he turned on them and was killed in 2017).

A few sentences before in the same report, the UN experts added, “The Panel also assesses that AQAP is actively working towards preparing terrorist attacks to be launched against the West using Yemen as a base.” The statement represented a clear warning about the same kind of potential “blowback” attacks that American and European civilians have endured thanks to their governments’ sponsorship of Salafi-jihadist fanatics.

And yes, the US also bombs/raids AQ in Yemen, showing yet again that a tool of imperialism can also be an ostensible target of imperialism.

— David Mizner (@DavidMizner) June 13, 2017

Washington’s support for al-Qaeda in Yemen under President Barack Obama was quietly acknowledged, but mostly ignored. When President Donald Trump came into office, however, corporate media outlets that had long whitewashed and ignored the Yemen war began to report more critically.

The Associated Press published a detailed investigation in August 2018 further documenting how US- and Saudi-backed coalition forces in Yemen “cut secret deals with al-Qaida fighters, paying some to leave key cities and towns and letting others retreat with weapons, equipment and wads of looted cash… Hundreds more were recruited to join the coalition itself.”

“Coalition-backed militias actively recruit al-Qaida militants, or those who were recently members, because they’re considered exceptional fighters,” the AP wrote.

The news outlet noted that some Yemeni al-Qaeda extremists on the US terrorism list were simultaneously being funded by Gulf monarchies to lead troops in the US-backed coalition.

“Key participants in the pacts said the U.S. was aware of the arrangements and held off on any drone strikes,” the report added.

“The larger mission is to win the civil war against the Houthis, Iranian-backed Shiite rebels. And in that fight, al-Qaida militants are effectively on the same side as the Saudi-led coalition — and, by extension, the United States,” the AP report stated bluntly.

The news outlet quoted a fellow at the Jamestown Foundation, a Cold War-era neoconservative think tank close to the CIA, who admitted, “Elements of the U.S. military are clearly aware that much of what the U.S. is doing in Yemen is aiding AQAP and there is much angst about that… However, supporting the UAE and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia against what the U.S. views as Iranian expansionism takes priority over battling AQAP and even stabilizing Yemen.”

The damning AP investigation was followed by a 2019 CNN report which acknowledged that weapons sold by the United States to Saudi Arabia and the UAE were then transferred to al-Qaeda in Yemen.

In branding the Houthi movement as terrorists, the United States has not only evinced a staggering level of hypocrisy; it has effectively given a gift to the same extremist organization it used to justify its so-called “war on terror.”

thegrayzone.com

While no one wants to blow up innocent civilians, in other words, what really counts is which civilians and in whose behalf.

With that in mind, it’s worth revisiting a talk that then-Vice President Biden gave at Harvard’s Kennedy School in October 2014. If you enjoy listening to an empty-headed politician spouting endless clichés, you can access all ninety minutes of it here. But if you’re not a glutton for punishment, you can jump to the 53:35 mark and zero in on Sleepy Joe’s specific thoughts regarding America’s Mideast partners and their inordinate fondness for ISIS and Al Qaeda.

The topic was the US-Saudi effort to overthrow Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, and here’s what the veep had to say, run-on sentences and all:

“The Saudis, the emirates, etc. what were they doing? They were so determined to take down Assad and essentially have a proxy Sunni-Shia war, what did they do? They poured hundreds of millions of dollars and tens of thousands of tons of weapons into anyone who would fight against Assad, except the people who were being supplied were Al Nusra and Al Qaeda and the extremist elements of jihadis coming from other parts of the world. … So now what’s happening? All of a sudden everybody is awakened because this outfit called ISIL, which was Al Qaeda in Iraq when they were essentially thrown out of Iraq, found open space and territory in … eastern Syria, worked with Al Nusra, who we declared a terrorist group early on, and we could not convince our colleagues to stop supplying them. So what happened? Now all of a sudden, I don’t want to be too facetious, but they have seen the Lord. … Saudi Arabia has stopped funding, Saudi Arabia is allowing training on its soil… the Qataris have cut off their support for the most extreme elements of terrorist organizations, and the Turks, President Erdogan told me, he’s an old friend, he told me, you were right, we let too many people through. Now he’s trying to seal their border….”

Words like these are worth savoring because they undermine years of propaganda about American exceptionalism and the US as a force for good. Obama, for instance, claims to oppose sectarianism. Yet here was his second-in-command saying that US allies didn’t merely want to topple Assad, but that they wanted to topple him by fomenting “a proxy Sunni-Shia war.”

In other words, they wanted to mobilize thousands of bigoted Sunni head-choppers in order to topple the Alawite president of one of the most religiously diverse countries in the Middle East.

Obama also claims to oppose terrorism and, of course, vehemently objects to any suggestion that Al Qaeda is a western creation. Yet here was Biden stating in the very next sentence that Saudi Arabia & Co. had “poured hundreds of millions of dollars and tens of thousands of tons of weapons into … Al Nusra and Al Qaeda” and that “we could not convince our colleagues to stop supplying them.”

So they did supply Al Qaeda despite US protests, which, in any event, were strictly private. While Biden went on to say that the Saudis have seen the light thanks to the dramatic rise of the Al Qaeda offshoot known as ISIS or ISIL (Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant), his wording was curious. Qatar, he said, had cut off support for “the most extreme elements,” while adding that Turkey, after admitting that it had let too many fighters traverse its border, was now trying to close the barn door after the horse had left.

But what does “most extreme” mean? That Qatar was still funding some Al Qaeda elements providing that they were not too outré? As for letting “too many people through,” was Biden suggesting that Turkey was right to let some Al Qaeda fighters cross, but that too many were spoiling the stew?

So it seems, and so numerous other reports attest. So not only did the Saudis fund Al Qaeda and ISIS to the hilt, they cut off aid to the latter only when they finally figured out, as Biden went on to say, “that ISIL’s target wasn’t Ramadi” in northern Iraq, but Mecca and Medina in their own kingdom. Killing thousands of people, raping and enslaving hundreds of Yazidi women, imposing a terrifying theocracy – such activities are permissible as long as they remain confined to Syria and Iraq. But once they threaten the House of Saud, well, that’s more than any civilized nation can bear.

The fresh-faced Harvard students who listened to such nonsense did not respond by booing, jeering, or tossing buckets of red paint. Amazingly, they instead responded with polite applause. Even more striking was the reaction when word got back to Washington. Instead of congratulating Biden for his forthrightness, Obama ordered him to go on what the New York Times described as “a Middle East apology tour” by phoning up Riyadh, Abu Dhabi, Ankara, etc. and conveying his personal regrets – not for being incorrect, that is, but for being indiscreet. Vice presidents are supposed to know what they can and cannot say in a public place.

All of which calls to mind something known the Bush Doctrine. In case no one can remember that far back, it goes like this:

“Every nation, in every region, now has a decision to make. Either you are with us or you are with the terrorists. From this day forward, any nation that continues to harbor or support terrorism will be regarded by the United States as a hostile regime.”

So George W. Bush told a joint session of Congress just a few days after 9/11, and since no subsequent administration has expressly repudiated those words, presumably they’re still in effect. If so, then the next time reporters get an opportunity, they should ask the president-elect if he still supports the doctrine and whether he plans to sever ties with Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey, and the UAE if he does.

They might also ask Hillary Clinton whether she would recommend a cut-off since, right around the time Biden was holding forth at Harvard, she was confiding in an email that “the governments of Qatar and Saudi Arabia … are providing clandestine financial and logistic support to ISIL and other radical Sunni groups in the region.” It’s yet another example of top US officials saying one thing in public and the opposite when they think no one is listening.

Of course, the chances of severing ties with the Saudis are zero, while the chances of America’s fearless press corps posing such a question in the first place are nil as well. The Saudis may be terrorists, but they’re America’s terrorists, and that’s all that counts.

Steven CHOVANEC

Near the end of July, one of the most important recent developments in U.S. foreign policy was quietly disclosed during a U.S. Senate hearing. Not surprisingly, hardly anybody talked about it and most are still completely unaware that it happened.

Answering questions from Senator Lindsey Graham, Secretary of State Pompeo confirmed that the State Department had awarded an American company, Delta Crescent Energy, with a contract to begin extracting oil in northeast Syria. The area is nominally controlled by the Kurds, yet their military force, the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), was formed under U.S. auspices and relies on an American military presence to secure its territory. That military presence will now be charged with protecting an American firm from the government of the country that it is operating within.

Indeed, the history of how the U.S. came to be in a position to “capture and subdue” these resources is a sordid, yet informative tale that by itself arguably even rivals other such colonial adventures.

To capture and subdue

When a legitimate protest movement developed organically in Syria in early 2011, the U.S. saw an opportunity to destabilize, and potentially overthrow, the government of a country that had long pushed back against its efforts for greater control in the region.

Syria had maintained itself outside of the orbit of U.S. influence and had frustratingly prevented American corporations from penetrating its economy to access its markets and resources.

As the foremost academic expert on Middle East affairs, Christopher Davidson, wrote in his seminal work, “Shadow Wars, The Secret Struggle for the Middle East,” discussing both Syria and Libya’s strategic importance, “the fact remained that these two regimes, sitting astride vast natural resources and in command of key ports, rivers, and borders, were still significant obstacles that had long frustrated the ambitions of Western governments and their constituent corporations to gain greater access.”

“With Syria,” Davidson wrote, “having long proven antagonistic to Western interests… a golden opportunity had presented itself in 2011 to oust [this] administration once and for all under the pretext of humanitarian and even democratic causes.”

US Senators John McCain and Joseph Lieberman meet with Syrians at the Yayladagi camp on the Turkish-Syrian border. April 10, 2012. Umit Bektas | Reuters

The U.S., therefore, began organizing and overseeing a militarization of the uprising early on, and soon co-opted the movement along with allied states Turkey, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Qatar. Writing at the end of 2011, Columbia University’s Joseph Massad explained how there was no longer any doubt that “the Syrian popular struggle for democracy [has] already been hijacked,” given that “the Arab League and imperial powers have taken over and assumed the leadership of their struggle.”

Soon, through the sponsoring of extremist elements, the insurgency was dominated by Salafists of the al-Qaeda variety.

According to the DIA and the Joint Chiefs of Staff, by 2013 “there was no viable ‘moderate’ opposition to Assad” and “the U.S. was arming extremists.” Investigative journalist Seymour Hersh revealed that “although many in the American intelligence community were aware that the Syrian opposition was dominated by extremists,” still “the CIA-sponsored weapons kept coming.”

When ISIS split off from al-Qaeda and formed its own Caliphate, the U.S. continued pumping money and weapons into the insurgency, even though it was known that this aid was going into the hands of ISIS and other jihadists. U.S. allies directly supported ISIS.

U.S. officials admitted that they saw the rise of ISIS as a beneficial development that could help pressure Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to give in to America’s demands.

Leaked audio of then-Secretary of State John Kerry revealed that “we were watching… and we know that this [ISIS] was growing… We saw that Daesh was growing in strength, and we thought Assad was threatened. We thought, however, we could probably manage — that Assad would then negotiate.” As ISIS was bearing down on the capital city of Damascus, the U.S. was pressing Assad to step down to a U.S.-approved government.

Then, however, Russia intervened with its air force to prevent an ISIS takeover of the country and shifted the balance of forces against the jihadist group. ISIS’ viability as a tool to pressure the government was spent.

The arsonist and the firefighter

So, a new strategy was implemented: instead of allowing Russia and Syria to take back the territories that ISIS captured throughout the war, the U.S. would use the ISIS threat as an excuse to take those territories before they were able to. Like an arsonist who comes to put out the fire, the U.S. would now charge itself with the task of stamping out the Islamist scourge and thereby legitimize its own seizure of Syrian land. The U.S. partnered with the Kurdish militias who acted as their “boots on the ground” in this endeavor and supported them with airstrikes.

The strategy of how these areas were taken was very specific. It was designed primarily to allow ISIS to escape and redirect itself back into the fight against Syria and Russia. This was done through leaving “an escape route for militants” or through deals that were made where ISIS voluntarily agreed to cede its territory. The militants were then able to escape and go wreak havoc against America’s enemies in Syria.

Interestingly, in terms of the oil fields now being handed off to an American corporation, the U.S. barely even fought ISIS to gain control over them; ISIS simply handed them over.

Syria and Russia were quickly closing in on the then-ISIS controlled oilfields, so the U.S. oversaw a deal between the Kurds and ISIS to give up control of the city. According to veteran Middle East war correspondent Elijah Magnier, “U.S.-backed forces advanced in north-eastern areas under ISIS control, with little or no military engagement: ISIS pulled out from more than 28 villages and oil and gas fields east of the Euphrates River, surrendering these to the Kurdish-U.S. forces following an understanding these reached with the terrorist group.”

A man works a primitive refinery making crude oil into diesel in a U.S-backed Kurdish village in Rmeilan, Syria, April 6, 2018. Hussein Malla | AP

Sources quoted by the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights claimed that ISIS preferred seeing the fields in the hands of the U.S. and the Kurds rather than the Syrian government.

The rationale behind this occupation was best described by Syria expert Joshua Landis, who wrote that the areas of northern Syria under control of the Kurds are the U.S.’ “main instrument in gaining leverage” over the government. By “denying Damascus access to North Syria” and “controlling half of Syria’s energy resources” “the U.S. will be able to keep Syria poor and under-resources.” So, by “promoting Kurdish nationalism in Syria” the U.S. “hopes to deny Iran and Russia the fruits of their victory,” while “keeping Damascus weak and divided,” this serving “no purpose other than to stop trade” and to “beggar Assad and keep Syria divided, weak and poor.”

Or, in the words of Jim Jeffrey, the Trump administrations special representative for Syria who is charged with overseeing U.S. policy, the intent is to “make life as miserable as possible for that flopping cadaver of a regime and let the Russians and Iranians, who made this mess, get out of it.”

Anchoring American troops in Syria

This is the history by which an American firm was able to secure a contract to extract oil in Syria. And while the actual resources gained will not be of much value (Syria has only 0.1% of the world’s oil reserves), the presence of an American company will likely serve as a justification to maintain a U.S. military presence in the region. “It is a fiendishly clever maneuver aimed at anchoring American troops in Syria for a long time,” Stephen Kinzer explains, one that will aid the policymakers who hold “the view that the United States must remain militarily dominant in the Middle East.”

In essence, by protecting this “global ‘sprawl’ of extractive companies” the U.S. Department of Defense “provides a giant subsidy to companies operating overseas,” one that is paid for by the taxpayer, not the corporate beneficiaries. It is hard to estimate the exact amount of money the U.S. has invested into the Syria effort, though it likely is near the trillion dollar figure. The U.S. taxpayer doesn’t get anything out of that, but companies that are awarded oil contracts do.

What is perhaps most important about this lesson however is that this is just a singular example of a common occurrence that happens all over the world. A primary function of U.S. foreign policy is to “make the world safe for American businesses,” and the upwards of a thousand military bases the U.S. has stationed across the globe are set up to help protect those corporate investments. While this history is unique to Syria, similar kinds of histories are responsible for U.S. corporation’s extractive activities in other global arenas.

So, next time you see headlines about Exxon being in some kind of legal dispute with, say, Venezuela, ask yourself how was it that those companies became involved with the resources of that part of the world? More often than not, the answer will be similar to how this U.S. company got involved in Syria.

Given all of this, it perhaps might seem to be too mild of a critique to simply say that this Syria enterprise harkens back to older imperial eras where conquerors simply took what they wished: the sophistication of colonialism has indeed improved by leaps and bounds since then.

mintpressnews.com

For all his bluster, threats and unfortunate tweeting habits and boasting, up to this point U.S. President Donald Trump has proved himself up to this point to be the least bloody-minded and most war resistant leader in modern U.S. history in the 43 years since Gerald Ford left office.

Every U.S. president since then has either drastically expanded wars he inherited, launched new ones or encouraged other nations to start them: Jimmy Carter and his national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski started the process when they urged Saddam Hussein to invade Iran in 1979, unleashing a bloodbath that killed one and half million people.

Until January 2020, Trump had proved remarkably resilient in resisting one trap, manipulation and pressure from the U.S. Deep State after another. His decision to order the assassination of al-Bakr, who personally repeatedly raped and beheaded female hostages, did not cross any red line. Bakr was an outcast on the world stage and previous President Barack Obama had personally authorized the killing of Osama bin Laden, founder and head of al-Qaeda.

The killing of Abu Bakr exposed the fraudulence of hundreds of liberal pundits and think tank “experts” in the United States who all pronounced that Abu Bakr would be easily and quickly replaced.

They forgot, however, first, that Bin Laden was not replaced when he died: The franchises of Al-Qaeda around the world obviously still exist but they are now isolated orphans without a master.

Second, Al-Qaeda did not enjoy a smooth succession of leadership. His supposed successor Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurashi has so far been a nonentity. Some analysts have expressed skepticism whether he even exists at all. ISIS, like al-Qaeda before it appears to have been a franchise based on extremely specific charismatic leadership with the founding group rapidly losing cohesion and credibility even before its founder was eliminated.

Contrary to the mouthing of America’s endless armies of chattering pundit grasshoppers, decapitation theory works in hunting down and eliminating the leaders of terrorist groups. Russia’s security services proved this in the long, hard fighting to eliminate such murderous groups in Chechnya and the Syrian armed forces have proved it again. It turns out that you can fight successful against extremist ideas when you know how to do so.

The Saudis applied decapitation theory repeatedly against Al-Qaeda in Arabia (AQIA). To be “honored” with the leadership of AQIA in the first decade of this century was a death sentence.

Thus, we have repeatedly seen over the past 20 years that non-state radical Sunni Muslim revolutionary Islamist movements, while capable of flaring up very fast, have no stability and staying power if resolutely confronted and isolated on the international scene.

The United States and its allies predictably boast arrogantly about how they destroyed ISIS. However, real credit for the destruction of its genocidal reign of terror across half the territories of Iraq and Syria goes to the Syrian Army, its Hezbollah allies, the armed forces and intelligence services of Iran and the Russian air force.

Russian tactical air support for Syrian ground troops operated skillfully and effectively to smash al-Baghdadi’s vicious and passionate but poorly coordinated forces.

General Soleimani was a vital figure in ensuring the smooth running of this coalition. Far from being the arch terrorist of the world as Trump proclaimed, he was therefore the arch enemy and most successful opponent of the worst and most dangerous terrorist organization on the planet.

It is therefore no wonder that ISIS surviving groups rejoiced when he was killed in a U.S. drone strike at Baghdad International Airport last month.

Soleimani was certainly a dedicated opponent of U.S. and Israeli influence across the Middle East. But his death will not benefit Washington and Jerusalem. On the contrary, it is certain to backfire catastrophically on them.

In Iranian terms, Soleimani was a pragmatic moderate who acted as an ally of the United States when it was in his country’s interests to do so in two major wars.

Iranian intelligence and cooperation played a major role in so quickly and smoothly toppling the Taliban regime in Afghanistan in November 2001.

In 2014, ISIS might well have swept to Baghdad and occupied all of Iraq despite the desperate use of U.S. air power if Soleimani had not committed Iranian forces, assets and allies in such determination to destroy it.

Finally, Soleimani’s tremendous prestige as his country’s preeminent general, strategist and military hero has now been eliminated. This will not aid “moderates” in Iran. Instead, it is already strengthen the passionate religious and eschatological Twelver elements in the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps.

In killing Soleimani, Trump destroyed a responsible Iranian leader who fought Islamist extremism and genocide in Syria and pursued cautious pragmatic policies at home. Now Iran’s revolutionary End of Days extremists will likely take advantage of his elimination to seize power and take over: What follows will not be pretty.

At long last, Syria’s army and Russia’s air force are no longer being threatened with World War III by the US and its allies if they proceed to destroy the tens of thousands of Al-Qaida-led jihadists whom the US had helped to train and arm (and had been protecting in Syria ever since December 2012) in order to overthrow Syria’s non-sectarian Government and replace it by a fundamentalist-Sunni Government which the royal Sauds who own Saudi Arabia would appoint. All throughout that war, those Al-Qaeda-led ‘moderate rebels’ had been organized from the governate or province of Idlib (or Idleb). But now, most (if not all) of their leadership are dead.

Turkey’s leader Tayyip Erdogan had hoped that he would be allowed both by Russia’s Vladimir Putin and by the United States’ Donald Trump to grab for Turkey at least part of Idlib province from Syria. But now, he is instead either participating in, or else allowing, Syria’s army and Russia’s air force, to slaughter Idlib’s jihadists and restore that province to Syria. On 9 September 2018, Russia and Iran had granted Turkey a temporary control over Idlib, and Erdogan then tried to seize it permanently, but finally he has given it up and is allowing Idlib to become restored to Syria. This turn-around signals Syria’s victory against its enemies; it’s the war’s watershed event.

Here is the history of how all that happened and how Syria is finally a huge and crucial step closer to winning its war against the invaders (which had originally been mainly Al Qaeda, US, Turkey, Qatar, and the Sauds,, but more recently has been only Al Qaeda and US):

I reported, back on 10 September 2018, that:

—

Right now, the Trump Administration has committed itself to prohibiting Syria (and its allies) from retaking control of Idlib, which is the only province that was more than 90% in favor of Al Qaeda and of ISIS and against the Government, at the start of the ‘civil war’ in Syria. Idlib is even more pro-jihadist now, because almost all of the surviving jihadists in Syria have sought refuge there — and the Government freely has bussed them there, in order to minimize the amount of “human shield” hostage-taking by them in the other provinces. Countless innocent lives were saved this way.

Both Democratic and Republican US federal officials and former officials are overwhelmingly supportive of US President Trump’s newly announced determination to prohibit Syria from retaking control of that heavily jihadist province, and they state such things about Idlib as:

It has become a dumping ground for some of the hardcore jihadists who were not prepared to settle for some of the forced agreements that took place, the forced surrenders that took place elsewhere. … Where do people go when they’ve reached the last place that they can go? What’s the refuge after the last refuge? That’s the tragedy that they face.

That happened to be an Obama Administration official expressing support for the jihadists, and when he was asked by his interviewer “Did the world fail Syria?” he answered “Sure. I mean, there’s no doubt about it. I mean, the first person who failed Syria was President Assad himself.”

—

Idlib city, incidentally, had also been the most active in starting Syria’s ‘civil war’, back on 10 March 2012 (that’s a news-report by Qatar, which had actually helped to finance the jihadists, whom it lionized as freedom-fighters, and Qatar had also helped the CIA to establish Al Qaeda in Syria). Idlib city is where the peaceful phase of the “Arab Spring” uprisings transformed (largely through that CIA, Qatari, Saudi, and Turkish, assistance) into an armed rebellion to overthrow the nation’s non-sectarian Government, because that’s where the Syrian branch of Al Qaeda was centered. On 29 July 2012, the New York Times headlined “As Syrian War Drags On, Jihadists Take Bigger Role” and reported that “Idlib Province, the northern Syrian region where resistance fighters control the most territory, is the prime example.” (Note the euphemism there, “resistance fighters,” not “jihadists,” nor “terrorists.” That’s how propaganda is written. But this time, the editors had slipped up, and used the honest “Jihadists” in their headline. However, their news-report said that these were only “homegrown Muslim jihadists,” though thousands of jihadists at that time were actually already streaming into Idlib from around the world. Furthermore, Obama lied and said that the people he was helping (the al-Saud family who own Saudi Arabia, and the al-Thani family who own Qatar) to arm, were not jihadists, and he was never called-out on that very blatant ongoing lie.) But the US-allied, Saud-and-Thani-financed, massive arms-shipments, to the Al-Qaeda-led forces in Syria, didn’t start arriving there until March 2013, around a year after that start. And, then, in April 2013, the EU agreed with the US team to buy all the (of course black-market) oil it could that “the rebels” in Syria’s oil region around Deir Ezzor were stealing from Syria, so as to help “the rebels” to expand their control in Syria and thus to further weaken Syria’s Government. (The “rebels,” in that region of Syria, happened to be ISIS, not Al Qaeda, but the US team’s primary target to help destroy was actually Syria, and never ISIS. In fact, the US didn’t even start bombing ISIS there until after Russia had already started doing that on 30 September 2015.)

A week following my 10 September 2018 news-report, I reported, September 17th, about how Erdogan, Putin, and Iran’s Rouhani, had dealt with the US alliance’s threat of going to war against Russia in Syrian territory if Russia and Syria were to attack the jihadists in Idlib:

—

As I recommended in a post on September 10th, Russia’s President Vladimir Putin and Turkey’s President Tayyip Erdogan jointly announced on September 17th, “We’ve agreed to create a demilitarized zone between the government troops and militants before October 15. The zone will be 15-20km wide,” which compares to the Korean DMZ’s 4-km width. I had had in mind the Korean experience, but obviously Putin and Erdogan are much better-informed about the situation than I am, and they have chosen a DMZ that’s four to five times wider. In any case, the consequences of such a decision will be momentous, unless US President Donald Trump is so determined for there to be World War III as to stop at nothing in order to force it to happen no matter what Russia does or doesn’t do.

What the Putin-Erdogan DMZ decision means is that the 50,000 Turkish troops who now are occupying Idlib province of Syria will take control over that land, and will thus have the responsibility over the largest concentration of jihadists anywhere on the planet: Idlib. It contains the surviving Syrian Al Qaeda and ISIS fighters, including all of the ones throughout Syria who surrendered to the Syrian Army rather than be shot dead on the spot by Government forces.

—

However, after Erdogan got control over Idlib, he double-crossed Putin and Rouhani, by trying to solidify his control not only over Idlib but over adjoining portions of Syria, I headlined on 14 July 2019 “Turkey Will Get a Chunk of Syria: An Advantage of Being in NATO”, and reported:

Turkey is already starting to build infrastructure even immediately to the north and east of Idlib in order to stake its claim to a yet larger portion of Syria than just Idlib. This might not have been part of the deal that was worked out by Russia’s Putin, Iran’s Rouhani, and Turkey’s Erdogan, in Tehran, on 9 September 2018, which agreement allowed Turkey only to take over — and only on a temporary basis — Idlib province, which is by far the most pro-jihadist (and the most anti-Assad) of Syria’s 14 provinces. Turkey was instead supposed to hold it only temporarily, but the exact terms of the Turkey-Russia-Iran agreement have never been publicly disclosed.

Turkey was building in those adjoining Syrian areas not only facilities from two Turkish universities but also a highway to extend into the large region of Syria to the east that was controlled by Kurdish separatist forces which were under US protection. In July 2019, Erdogan seems to have been hoping that Trump would allow Turkey to attack those Kurdish proxy-forces of the US.

For whatever reason, that outcome, which was hoped for by Erdogan, turned out not to be realized. Perhaps Trump decided that if the separatist Kurds in Syria were going to be allowed to be destroyed, then Assad should be the person who would allow it, not he; and, therefore, if Erdogan would get such a go-ahead, the blame for it would belong to Assad, and not to America’s President.

Given the way Assad has behaved in the past — since he has always sought Syrian unity — the likely outcome, in the Kurdish Syrian areas, will be not a Syrian war against Kurds, but instead some degree of federal autonomy there, so long as that would be acceptable also to Erdogan. If Erdogan decides to prohibit any degree of Kurdish autonomy across the border in Syria as posing a danger to Turkish unity, then Assad will probably try (as much as he otherwise can) to accommodate the Kurds without any such autonomy, just like in the non-Kurdish parts of the unitary nation of Syria. Otherwise, Kurdish separatist sentiment will only continue in Syria, just as it does in Turkey and Iraq. The US has backed Kurdish separatism all along, and might continue that in the future (such as after the November 2020 US Presidential election).

Finally, there seems to be the light of peace at the end of the nightmarish eight-year invasion of Syria by the US and its national (such as Turkey-Jordan-Qatar-Saud-Israel) and proxy (such as jihadist and Kurdish) allies. Matters finally are turning for the better in Syria. The US finally appears to accept it. America’s threat, of starting WW III if Russia and Syria try to destroy the jihadists who have become collected in Syria’s Idlib province, seems no longer to pertain. Maybe this is because Trump wants to be re-elected in 2020. If that’s the reason, then perhaps after November of 2020, the US regime’s war against Syria will resume. This is one reason why every US Presidential candidate ought to be incessantly asked what his/her position is regarding the US regime’s long refrain, “Assad must go”, and regarding continued sanctions against Syria, and regarding restitution to Syria to restore that nation from the US-led war against it. Those questions would reveal whether all of the candidates are really just more of the same actual imperialistic (or “neocon”) policies, or whether, perhaps, one of them is better than that. Putin has made his commitments. What are theirs? Will they accept peace with Russia, and with Iran? If America were a democracy, its public would be informed about such matters — especially before the November 2020 ‘elections’, and not merely after they are already over.

Last week saw the return to relative normalcy in the northwestern town which had been held under siege by al Qaeda-affiliated militants for over five years. Situated south of Aleppo on the road to the capital Damascus, Khan Sheikhoun was officially declared under the control of Syrian state forces on August 21 after a hard-fought battle against militants.

International journalists from Italy, Bulgaria, Greece and Russia witnessed the return of residents and efforts to resume electricity services and reopening of schools. Khan Sheikhoun was ransacked by the routed jihadi terror groups, with the typical depravity that had been seen in other liberated areas. But despite the devastation, residents were relieved to begin the task of restoration of what was previously a town renowned for its culture and beauty before the war erupted in March 2011.

The remnants left behind by the defeated militants as well as the identity of dead fighters testified to their terrorist affiliation. Many of them were foreign mercenaries. Khan Sheikhoun was a stronghold for the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham group which was formerly known as Al Nusra Front. Notwithstanding the chameleonic name, they are part of the jihadi Al Qaeda terror network which is internationally proscribed and which Western governments are officially opposed to.

The capture of the town again demonstrates the vile nature of the Syrian war as being one of foreign-sponsored aggression for regime change. In particular, the United States government and its NATO allies, Britain, France, Turkey, and others, are now known to be fully complicit in covert sponsorship of these terrorists.

Khan Sheikhoun is of particular significance because on April 4, 2017, it was dramatically reported by Western news media as being the site of a Sarin chemical weapon attack, allegedly carried out by the Syrian state forces. Three days later, on April 7, the US, Britain and France launched over 100 airstrikes on Syria in what was claimed to be “revenge” against the “Syrian regime” for allegedly committing an atrocity with chemical weapons. Syrian authorities and Russia asserted the alleged Sarin attack at Khan Sheikhoun was a false-flag provocation, fabricated by the militants with the aim of eliciting a military strike on Syria by the US and its NATO allies.

Clearly, after the liberation of the town this month, it is evident that it was a den of terrorist groups which held residents under a reign of terror. Yet for years, the Western news media had proclaimed that these fighters were “rebels” who deserved support from Western intervention. Even as Syrian forces were launching their assault on Idlib Province in recent months, the Western media were animated by shrill reports of “rebels” and civilians being killed by indiscriminate “regime” air strikes.

Tellingly, the momentous victory at Khan Sheikhoun was met with an astonishing silence among Western governments and news media.

The same duplicitous pattern has been seen before when the Syrian army and its Russian ally liberated Douma, Ghouta, Daraa, Aleppo, Maaloula and many other areas besieged by the so-called “rebels” so lionized in Western media. Syrian residents have been invariably relieved and overjoyed to have their freedom and dignity restored by the Syrian army and Russian forces. Their stories of the horror they endured under captivity are shocking from the depravity and cruelty meted out by Western-backed “rebels”.

That is why the liberation of Khan Sheikhoun, as with other locations in Syria, has had to be studiously ignored by the Western news media. Because if they really performed normal journalistic duty what the Western public would learn is that their governments and media have been complicit in huge war crimes against the Syrian nation.

It is all the more despicable therefore that the US is shifting its efforts to block the reconstruction of war-torn Syria. This week, the country is to hold the annual Damascus International Trade Fair. Delegates from some 40 nations are attending and exploring ways to regenerate the Syrian economy and to meet the challenge of reconstruction. Some estimates put minimal repair of infrastructure at a cost of $388 billion. The true figure could be in trillions of dollars.

That bill should be assigned to Washington, London, Paris, Ankara, Riyadh, Doha and Tel Aviv for the criminal aggression they collectively and stealthily inflicted on Syria.

Ahead of the Damascus trade fair, the US was warning prospective foreign investors that they could face sanctions if they did business with Syria. Russia’s foreign ministry condemned the American effort to sabotage Syria’s reconstruction.

As Russian lawmaker Valery Rashkin, who was in Syria this week, put it, the US is trying to destroy Syria through economic warfare after losing its dirty-war military agenda.

The European Union also stands condemned for continuing to impose economic sanctions on Syria. The war is over and it has been exposed as Western-backed criminal aggression. All past accusations against the Syrian state are null and void as malign propaganda. Thus, sanctions on Syria are a contemptible attack on the country by nations whose criminal complicity should actually be a matter of prosecution.

We can only wish the people of Syria well. With international solidarity from Russia, China, Iran and others, Syria will recover its former strength and pride. Syria has won a tremendous victory. The losers are the Western governments and media who have been exposed for the corrupt charlatans they are.

On Wednesday the alternative media outlet Southfront published an article titled “New Video Throws Light On Jaysh Al-Izza High-Tolerance To Al-Qaeda Ideology” about newly discovered footage showing the leader of a “rebel” faction in Syria cozying up with a militant who was wearing a badge of the official flag of ISIS.

“The video shows Jaysh al-Izza General Commander Major Jamil al-Saleh congratulating a group of his fighters on the occasion of Eid al-Fitr in a underground bunker,” Southfront reports. “One of the fighters greeted by Saleh was wearing a batch of the Islamic Black Standard with the Seal of Muhammad. This is a well-known symbol of al-Qaeda and the official flag of ISIS.”

Today, mass media outlets are mourning the death of a well-known Jaysh al-Izza fighter named Abdel-Basset al-Sarout with grief-stricken beatifications not seen since the death of war criminal John McCain. An Associated Press report which has been published by major news outlets like The New York Times, The Guardian, PBS and Bloomberg commemorates Sarout as a “Syrian soccer goalkeeper” who “won international titles representing his country”, as “the singer of the revolution”, and as “an icon among Syria’s opposition”.

Remember Major Jamil al-Saleh from two paragraphs ago? AP features his glowing eulogy in its write-up on Sarout’s death:

“He was both a popular figure, guiding the rebellion, and a military commander,” said Maj. Jamil al-Saleh, leader of Jaish al-Izza rebel group, in which Sarout was a commander. “His martyrdom will give us a push to continue down the path he chose and to which he offered his soul and blood as sacrifice.”

Other mainstream outlets like BBC, The Daily Beast and Al Jazeera have contributed their own fawning hagiographies of the late Jaysh al-Izza commander.

New Video Throws Light On Jaysh Al-Izza High-Tolerance To Al-Qaeda Ideology https://t.co/2P2LdcGP0S

— SouthFront (@southfronteng) 5 June 2019

“Formed in 2013, Jaysh al-Izza was one of the first Free Syrian Army (FSA) groups in northern Syria to benefit from U.S. support through the CIA’s ‘Timber Sycamore’ train and equip program, which had been approved by then U.S. President Barack Obama,” Southfront reports in the aforementioned article. “The group received loads of weapons from the U.S. including Grad rockets, as well as Fagot and TOW anti-tank guided missiles (ATGMs).”

“Jaysh al-Izza received this support under the pretension of being a ‘moderate group’ led by a known Syrian Arab Army (SAA) defector, al-Saleh,” Southfront adds. “However, the group’s acts were not in line with these claims. Since its formation, Jaysh al-Izza has been deeply linked to al-Qaeda’s branch in Syria, the al-Nusra Front. The group became one of the main allies of al-Nusra when its changed its name to Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) in 2017.”

“Western thought leaders are lionizing Abdel Baset al-Sarout who was killed fighting the Syrian army,” tweeted journalist Dan Cohen of the mass media response to Sarout’s death. “They conveniently omit that he fought in a militia allied with al-Qaeda and pledged allegiance to ISIS.”

Cohen linked to an excerpt from his mini-documentary The Syria Deception featuring footage of Sarout holding an ISIS flag, leading chants calling for the extermination of the Alawite minority in Syria, and announcing his allegiance to ISIS.

Western thought leaders are lionizing Abdel Baset al-Sarout who was killed fighting the Syrian army. They conveniently omit that he fought in a militia allied with al-Qaeda and pledged allegiance to ISIS. From my mini-documentary: The Syria Deception https://t.co/MpdkUbJkP7 pic.twitter.com/vLThkIMZFB

— Dan Cohen (@dancohen3000) 8 June 2019

Other publicly available video footage includes a speech by Sarout urging cooperation between his own faction, ISIS and Jabhat al-Nusra (Al-Qaeda’s Syrian franchise), saying “we know that these two groups are not politicized and have the same goals as us, and are working for God.”

“God willing we will work with them shoulder-to-shoulder when we leave here,” Sarout has been translated as saying in the speech. “And we are not Christians or Shiaa to be scared of suicide belts and car bombs. We consider these things as strengths of ours, and God willing they will be just that. This message is to the Islamic State and our brothers in Jabhat al-Nusra, that when we come out of here we will all be one hand to fight Christians and not to have internal fights among ourselves. We want to take back all the lands that have been filthied by the regime, that were entered and taken over by Shiaas and apostates.”

This bloodthirsty terrorist warmongering was taken by the aforementioned AP hagiography and twisted into the single sentence, “He repeatedly denounced rebel infighting and called on Syrians to unite against government forces.”

The Atlantic’s Hassan Hassan framed Sarout’s unconscionable agendas as mere “flaws” which actually add to his inspiring and heroic story, tweeting, “Some individuals celebrated as heroes make you doubt all stories of heroes in history books. Others, like Abdulbasit Sarout, not inspire of but despite his flaws, make those stories highly plausible. He’s a true legend & his story is well documented. May his soul rest in peace.”

Yeah, come on, everybody’s got flaws. Some people suck at parallel parking, some people team up with ISIS and Al-Qaeda on genocidal extermination campaigns. We’ve all got our quirky little foibles.

Some individuals celebrated as heroes make you doubt all stories of heroes in history books. Others, like Abdulbasit Sarout, not inspire of but despite his flaws, make those stories highly plausible. He’s a true legend & his story is well documented. May his soul rest in peace: pic.twitter.com/FfCzqtyuPT

— Hassan Hassan (@hxhassan) 8 June 2019

We can expect more and more of these mass media distortions as Syria and its allies draw closer to recapturing Syrian land from the extremist forces which nearly succeeded in toppling Damascus just a few short years ago.

As these distortions pour in, keep this in mind: all of the violence that is still happening in Syria is the fault of the US and its allies, who helped extremist jihadist factions like Jaysh al-Izza overrun the nation to advance the preexisting goal of effecting regime change. The blame for all the death, suffering and chaos which ensues from a sovereign nation fighting to reclaim its land from these bloodthirsty factions rests solely on the government bodies which inflicted their dominance over the region in the first place.

You will see continuing melodramatic garment-rending from the US State Department and its mass media stenographers about “war crimes” and “human rights violations” as though the responsibility for this violence rests somewhere other than on the US-centralized power alliance, but they will be lying. What these warmongering propagandists are doing is exactly the same as paying a bunch of violent thugs to break into a home and murder its owner, then standing by and sounding the alarm about the way the homeowner chooses to fight off their assailants.

After it was discovered that the US and its allies armed actual, literal terrorist factions in Syria with the goal of effecting regime change, the only sane response would have been for the public to loudly and aggressively demand that all governments involved to take immediate action to completely rectify all damage done by this unforgivable war crime at any cost, and for there to be war crimes tribunals for every decision maker who was a part of it. Instead, because of propaganda circulated by the same mass media narrative management firms who are sanctifying the memory of Abdel-Basset al-Sarout today, the public remains asleep to the depravity of its rulers. This dynamic must change if we are to survive and thrive as a species.

medium.com