The U.S. intelligence that Syrian forces used chemical weapons has, according to CBS News, been has been rated as «low to moderate» confidence, hardly believable enough for America to launch an attack on Syria. The Russian government has provided a 100-page report to the United Nations showing that Syrian rebels conducted a chemical attack on Khan al-Assal in northern Syria on March 19. Russian experts concluded that the missile used by the rebels was not a standard issue device found in Syrian arsenals and, therefore, did not originate from the Syrian military. The delivery missile was called «artisan» by the Russian specialists and the chemicals found in soil samples, sarin and diisopropyl fluorophosphate, were reportedly not manufactured in a standard «industrial environment».

The head of the United Nations team investigating chemical weapons use in the Syrian civil war, Carla del Ponte of Switzerland, said in May that there was evidence that Syrian rebels had used sarin nerve gas . 

Where could the chemicals have originated? 

One likely source is the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA)–funded Richard G. Lugar Center for Public Health Research outside of Tbilisi, Georgia in the town of Alekseyeva. It is a facility that operates as a civilian biological warfare research facility but which also warehouses stocks of chemical weapons procured from supplies discovered in some of the republics of the former Soviet Union. DTRA is responsible for monitoring the destruction of weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) around the world. However, the Tbilisi facility, also known as the Central Public Health Reference Library, is also heavily-linked to the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) and the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute for Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) in Fort Detrick, Maryland. Russian language U.S. intelligence linguists working for DIA are assigned to the Georgia facility.

Middle East intelligence sources report that the Lugar Center is the likely source for the «artisan» devices and «non-standard» chemical substances, adding that they were transported to Syria by Chechen guerrillas working for the CIA. The Lugar Center devices and substances were also used by rebels against civilians in Ghouta, a Damascus suburb, on August 21. In May, Turkish security forces arrested members of the Al Nusra guerrillas near the Turkish-Syrian border with a cylinder containing sarin nerve gas.

However, there is little veracity to a narrated video that was released on YouTube that is said to show Syrian rebels firing a blue-tipped chemical weapons projectile inside Syria. The video’s narration states that the chemical weapon was:

«Deployed from a research facility controlled by the United States government, the Jack Kemp Research Facility named after an American senator. The weapons closely resemble the weapons that were built by Saddam Hussein.»

The narration implies that the weapon came from stocks transferred to Georgia from Iraq. However, the facility in Georgia is named after Richard Lugar, the former Republican U.S. senator from Indiana. Jack Kemp was a Republican U.S. congressman from New York.

When it was opened in March 2011, the official dedication was attended by Andrew Weber, the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Nuclear, Biological, and Chemical Defense Programs and U.S. ambassador to Tbilisi John Bass. No stranger to covert operations, Bass served as a special advisor to Vice President Dick Cheney from 2004 to 2005.

Such disinformation and «information operations» are now a hallmark of modern warfare. As many battles take place in cyberspace as on the battlefield. 

Oddly, the initial cost for the facility was $15 million. However, the overall cost skyrocketed to $100 million with no reasonable explanation. The head of the facility is a former chief of Georgia’s Foreign Intelligence Service, which maintains close links to the CIA and Mossad. Requests for visits to the site by government officials of Iran, Azerbaijan, Russia, and Armenia have all been turned down by Georgia.

Ever since Georgian intelligence elements favorable to the more Russian-friendly Prime Minister Bidzina Ivanashvili revealed the connections between the late alleged Boston Marathon bomber, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, and the CIA-linked Jamestown Foundation and the training of Dagestani and Chechen operatives, as well as Tsarnaev, at seminars in 2012 co-sponsored by Ilia State University in Tbilisi, Georgian intelligence has been a wellspring of information on CIA and Mossad activities in the Caucasus and surrounding areas. The deal with DTRA and DIA on the Lugar Center involved the former government that was loyal to pro-U.S. and pro-Israeli President Mikheil Saakashvili.

Ivanashvili has improved relations, much to the chagrin of the Obama administration, with Russia. Russia even offered assistance in evacuating Georgian citizens from Syria. One way to show their appreciation to Russia is for pro-Ivanashvili intelligence agents to have revealed the source of the Syrian rebels’ chemical weapons to the media. That gives a black eye to Saakashvili while bolstering Russia’s stance that the chemical weapons in Syria are being used by the rebel forces, not by the Syrian army. Saakashvili and his neo-conservative allies have recently criticized Ivanashvili for suggesting that Georgia might join the Eurasian Union, a project initiated by Russian President Vladimir Putin. Ivanashvili’s proposal was met with derision among the Americans and their partners in Europe and the Middle East.

However, a poorly-sourced video claiming the chemical weapons originated at the «Jack Kemp Research Facility» named for a U.S. senator. Such major errors are always the sign of a disinformation campaign. 

There is stronger evidence that Syrian rebels used chemical weapons in Syria as a way to prod the United States into attacking Syria than in the «low to moderate» confidence intelligence proffered by the U.S. intelligence community. A report by two Middle East-based journalists, Yahya Ababneh, a Jordanian freelancer and Dale Gavlak, a stringer for the Associated Press, places blame on the rebels for launching chemical attacks based on the rebels’ own admission. The rebels also claim that it was Saudi Prince Bandar bin Sultan, the chief of Saudi intelligence who arranged for the provision of the sarin nerve gas to the rebels.

Bandar has never hesitated to use false flag terrorism to advance his goals, along with those of the United States and Israel. While he was ambassador to the United States, Bandar’s fingerprints were found all over the financing, mainly through the Bush family-connected Riggs Bank of Washington, of the hijacker «patsies» who were blamed for carrying out the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. A Senate Intelligence Committee report on 9/11 saw 25 pages redacted by the Bush administration because it tied Bandar directly to the 9/11 attacks. Recently, Bandar was in Moscow where he offered to give his Al Qaeda units a «stand down» order to not attack the Sochi Winter Olympics if Russia would simply abandon its support for the Bashar al Assad government in Damascus. There is little doubt that Bandar would have been involved in staging a series of false flag terrorist attacks in Syria to blame the Syrian government regardless if children were killed in the attack. A number of children of all ages were killed in the 9/11 attacks.  A former U.S. senator who knows what is in the missing 25 pages about Saudi Arabia, Bandar, and 9/11 is afraid to discuss it openly because he fears for his safety from a Saudi- and/or CIA-sponsored «hit» squad.

This is the scenario that Washington and its NATO allies are contriving for the Syrian government of President Bashar al-Assad…

The so-called international peace conference that may take place in the coming weeks, at the behest of Washington and Moscow, is ostensibly aimed at finding a negotiated end to the conflict in Syria that is now in its third year and which has resulted in up to 80,000 deaths. At least half of these deaths are believed to be civilian.

Russian officials have confirmed that the Syrian government is willing to participate, in principle, in the conference with factions of the Syrian «opposition» – provided, says Damascus, that the latter participants do not have «blood on their hands».

That criterion may yet turn out to make the forthcoming conference a non-runner since the main opposition group – the Western-backed Syrian National Coalition (SNC) – is entwined with a host of mercenary forces on the ground that are drenched in blood from a relentless campaign of terrorism and sabotage. 

However, it is not even clear if the fractious and mainly exile-based SNC has any authority over the motley crew of militant groups – more than 75 per cent of whom are foreign self-styled jihadi extremists that emanate from 30 or more Arab and other countries, according to United Nations reports. 

Chief among these groups that comprise the so-called Free Syrian Army is the Al Nusra Front, the main fighting force, which is aligned with the Al Qaeda-affiliated network that stretches from Russia’s Caucus region, through Afghanistan and Iraq, to Libya, Mali and Niger. 

It has to be said that Russia’s intentions for a negotiated peace settlement seem to be honourable – and based on the principle of arriving at some kind of internal Syrian consensus. To that end, Russia maintains the position of not setting preconditions about the political fate of the incumbent President Assad. Russia is supported in this view by Iran and China. It is not, they say, for foreign governments or their regional allies and proxies to determine the outcome of the conference and in particular the political future of Assad.

Contrast that with the position of the other broker – Washington. At a preliminary meeting in Jordan this past week, the US Secretary of State John Kerry insisted, along with NATO allies, Britain, France, Italy and Germany, as well as the Persian Gulf Arab sheikhdoms, that Assad «must go».

Kerry told the assembled «Friends of Syria» that the US was not dictating the outcome of the planned peace conference, but then contradicted himself flatly by repeating the assertion that President Assad would not be part of any Syrian political transition. 

«Can a person who has used artillery shells and missiles and Scuds and tanks against women and children and university students – can that person possibly be judged by any reasonable person to have the credibility and legitimacy to lead that country in the future?» asked Kerry.

The veracity of these allegations against the Assad regime is more than a moot point. There is substantial evidence that the violations Kerry was attributing to Syrian government forces, such as the rocket attack on Aleppo University in January that resulted in more than 80 deaths, were in fact committed by Western-backed militants. The use of chemical weapons near Aleppo in March has also been shown recently by Russian RTR journalists to be the work of Western-backed militants, not the regime, as Western governments have been insinuating. 

But that aside, the immediate point here is that Kerry and his «Enemies of Syria» coalition are very much trying to dictate terms on the anticipated political process. That same Western intransigence was largely why the Geneva accord reached last June by the UN Security Council came unstuck – and tens of thousands more Syrian deaths followed. 

Adding to the warped framework of negotiations, the US, Britain and France are also insisting – in contrast to Russia and China – that Iran should not be permitted to take part in the process. Of course, the NATO powers can rely on their Sunni allies among the Persian Gulf monarchies of Saudi Arabia and Qatar to endorse that stipulation. Why the Western powers and their Arab dictator friends have any more right than Iran – an ally of Syria with vital interests at stake in the conflict – is beyond their permitted rationale or discussion. 

So, the upshot is that Assad is being offered a poisoned political chalice. On one hand, he is being told to forfeit the sovereign rights of his people to have him as their leader, and by all accounts a leader with a popular mandate, to give way to a negotiation with «opposition» parties who are solely designated, funded and patronised by foreign powers. 

The SNC’s Ghassan Hitto, a Texas-based Syrian businessman, is designated by Washington, London and the former colonial power Paris as Syria’s premier-in-waiting. It is fair to say that Hitto, as with many other American-accented members of the SNC, has negligible popular support within Syria. That is, without any mandate from the Syrian population, these exiles are being foisted to negotiate the political future of Syria – a future that is extremely prejudicial in favour of Western geopolitical interests. 

On the other hand – and this is where the Mafia analogy takes hold – the Western powers are making thinly veiled threats that if Assad does not conform to the warped political framework, that is, drink from the poisoned chalice, then all hell will break lose on this country with an even greater escalation of Western-backed violence. 

«The United States is lobbying European governments to back a British-led call to amend [lift] the EU arms embargo on Syria,» reported the British Guardian this week, as Washington and its friend were gathering in Jordan. 

Up to now, Washington has at least been maintaining the fiction that it is not arming the anti-Assad militants. It has, of course, been plying the mercenaries covertly with weaponry and logistics, along with its NATO allies and the Gulf Arab dictatorships. 

Militant commander Brigadier General Salim Idriss has been pleading for Washington to begin openly supplying anti-tank and anti-aircraft missiles – not just the assault rifles and explosives that have come so far through the clandestine CIA/MI6 conduits of Turkey, Jordan, Qatar and Saudi Arabia. 

Since last month, Washington officials have begun briefing media outlets, such as the Washington Post and the New York Times, that the Obama administration is moving towards more direct military intervention in aid of the militants in Syria. «We’re clearly on an upward trajectory,» a senior US official said somewhat cryptically on 30 April. «We’ve moved over to assistance that has a direct military purpose.»

Days later, in the first week of May, US Secretary of Defence Chuck Hagel hosted a press conference at the Pentagon with his British counterpart, Philip Hammond. «Arming the rebels, that’s an option,» said Hagel, indicating an apparent reversal of White House policy of ostensibly only sending «non-lethal aid».

And this week a US Senate committee voted in favour of Washington arming the «rebels» in Syria.

Secretary of State John Kerry is adding to this increasingly articulated threat. Voice of America reported from the Jordanian meeting last week: «Kerry says the Obama administration hopes President Assad ‘will understand the meaning of that’ [shift in US military policy towards Syria].»

This latent threat of greater aggression against Syria by the US, if it does not toe the political line as ordained by Washington, is not a new tactic in America’s underlying objective of regime change. 

Last month, the Iranian FARS news agency reported that Syrian envoy to Iran, Adnan Mahmoud, disclosed that as far back as March 2011 – when the conflict was kicking off in Syria – that the then US Secretary of Defence, Robert Gates, had starkly told the Damascus government that it faced «a choice».  

The Syrian envoy to Iran was quoted by FARS as saying: «Of course, in the very first weeks of the conflict in Syria, the US Secretary of Defence [Robert Gates] sent a message to the Syrian government, and said we should have cut our ties with the Islamic Republic of Iran if we wanted to stop the war, and stressed that if we did so, they [the US] would provide us with whatever we want». In other words, Washington was making Syria back then «an offer it couldn’t refuse». Well, Syria did refuse back in early 2011 to comply with US demands to cut its strategic ties with Iran, and as time has shown Damascus has since paid a heavy price in terms of human lives and the destruction of the country. 

Now again, as the American-backed «peace conference» is being dangled in front of Damascus, Washington is replaying that same cynical offer. Either, drink from this poisoned political chalice – or «we’ll send the boys around to do their worst». 

The main fighting force is still directed by Turkey and it equips the Free Syrian Army (FSA), which is recruited from Syrian army deserters and criminals, «al-Qaeda» insurgents, Salafists and jihadists… About 80% of the units recognize as their spiritual leader Sheikh Adnan Al-Arour who lives in Saudi Arabia. The militants command center is in the Turkish city of Adana near a U.S. military base at Incirlik and is controlled by the CIA, through which the Americans «legally» provide the gangs with information, financial and logistical support.

All the while, the Syrian National Council has denied the presence in Syria of the radical Salafist movement, which do not make for very comfortable allies. However, beginning in October, the SNC, and Western diplomats openly expressed concerns about «extremist violence» and «the presence of radical Islamists in northern Syria, which in the future may end up in the rebel’s hands» (although all that is really going on there, is the implementation of the Western strategist’s plans). (1)

A famous French journalist, Thierry Meyssan, pointed out a strange thing, evidence of a new transition in U.S. tactics. Surprisingly, he wrote, was the fact that the command of the NATO air base at Incirlik six times in a row gave instructions to the jihadists to prepare a broad offensive, which the Syrian army effectively resisted in classic battle. Each time it surrounded and destroyed FSA militants. As noted by Meyssan, «the first attempt can be viewed as a tactical error, the second was down to the tyranny of some illiterate general, and for the sixth time we can consider another hypothesis: NATO deliberately sends its fighters to their death». From Morocco to Xinjiang, jihadists have increasingly been acting on their own initiative, so Washington decided to cut the number of burdensome and dangerous fighters, and began to give orders to the jihadists that put them under fire from the Syrian army, which destroyed them on mass. (2)

Pushing aside the radicals, the «center» has started to restructure the opposition, recognizing that the SNC is unable to act as a leader. As U.S. State Department spokesman Patrick Ventrell openly expressed, a new structure should be established to ensure the management of the country after the fall of Assad and in «interaction with the international community.» Actually the task was to create a «government in exile», which would not discredit sophisticated Western society. In this Ventrell made no secret that the United States had selected people and organizations to participate in the conference of the League of Arab States held in Doha, Qatar, which was designed to create such a new structure. (3)

On November 11 representatives from disparate Syrian factions were united in the «National Coalition of Syrian revolutionary and opposition forces» (NCSROF), all places and positions were assigned by the head of the U.S. delegation at the conference in Doha, U.S. Ambassador to Syria Robert S. Ford. In the years 2004-2006, he worked as assistant to John Negroponte, who headed the U.S. mission in Iraq and applied war methods there which had been perfected in Honduras: the use of «death squads» and «the Nicaraguan contras». Robert S. Ford is using the same model to destabilize the situation in Syria.

Although the establishment of the Coalition allowed the Americans to gain control of the armed opposition, it in no way solves the problem of representation, as the Coalition immediately distanced themselves from different FSA units, and the forces opposing the armed struggle, in particular the National Coordination Committee for Democratic Change. But it seems that the main achievement of the West has been to promote a previously little-known figure to a leadership position, a former imam of a mosque in Damascus, Sheikh Ahmad al-Khatib Moaz.

He is suited immediately by two criteria: to be recognized by the militants, he must be a religious figure, but to be accepted by the West, he must be «reasonable». However the most valuable thing for the West about him is that he has the knowledge and experience necessary to conduct business meetings and, above all has knowledge of the gas business.

He is presented to the public as a political figure, who enjoys popular support and has the ability to achieve a «consensus»; the Western media immediately began to mould the image of an ideal politician. So, Agence France Presse reported that Ahmad al-Khatib Moaz is an independent, moderate religious leader, who has studied international relations and does not belong to any Islamist movements. In 2012, he was repeatedly arrested for public calls for the overthrow of the Assad regime, and he was forbidden to preach in the mosques of Syria, after which he moved to Qatar.

However, as indicated by the same Thierry Meyssan, in fact, everything is actually different. Ahmad al-Khatib Moaz never studied international relations. He worked as a geophysicist for six years (1985-1991) for the venture capital firm al-Furat Petroleum Company, part of Anglo-Dutch Royal Dutch Shell, with whom he had close ties. In 1992 he inherited from his father the prestigious post of imam in the Umayyad Mosque in Damascus, soon after he was stripped of his powers and forbidden to serve anywhere in Syria. This happened during the time of Bashar al-Assad`s father and at a time when Syria supported the international intervention against Iraq, and spoke in support of Kuwait. Moaz Ahmad al-Khatib condemned the «Desert Storm» operation, not for political but for religious reasons, in which he was also supported by Bin Laden, who considered any Western presence in the Arab world to be a sacrilege. Later al-Khatib was engaged in teaching, in particular, at the Netherlands Institute in Damascus, and often went abroad, mainly to the Netherlands, the UK and the U.S., before he settled in Qatar. In 2003-2004 he worked in Syria as a lobbyist for Royal Dutch Shell, when it sought oil and gas concessions from the Syrian government. In 2012 Moaz al-Khatib came back to a “hot” Syria to expand anti-government propaganda. After being arrested and then pardoned, he left the country and settled in Cairo.(4)

As for his religious and political views, according to the AFP news agency, Al-Khatib is a member of the «Muslim Brotherhood», is a supporter of the introduction of Sharia law in Syria and considers Shiites to be heretics.

The West, now having a «representative» figure, has hastened to recognize the new structure of the self-styled representative of the Syrian people as legitimate. The first to do this was the French president, who said during a reception for Moaz al-Khatib in Paris, he was ready to accept the Syrian Ambassador to be appointed as head of the coalition. Following the French, the coalition was recognized by the governments of the U.S., the UK, the Gulf Cooperation Council and the EU.

As for F. Hollande, this confirms their commitment to a change of power in Syria, nurturing a dream to again turn this country into a French colony. It is no accident, that in his speech to the UN, he demanded that the Security Council issue a mandate for the establishment of «zones freed by rebels», similar to the mandate that was given to France by the League of Nations from 1923 to 1944. It is also significant that immediately after the establishment of the «National Coalition» the French demanded the withdrawal of the European embargo on «defensive weapons» for those warring against the Assad regime. Thus France, ahead of other Western powers, attempted to usurp the right to establish and equip the «liberated zone» in Syria.

The role of Moaz Ahmad Al-Khatib in NCSROF activity will be purely decorative and will be reduced solely to a representative function, and all the dirty «liberation» work will continue to be performed by the Wahhabist and Salafist groups, which have also begun the centralization and the elimination of «dissident» commanders. Since at a meeting of the armed groups entrenched in Aleppo, they condemned the creation of NCSROF and any project imposed on them from the outside, calling for the establishment of a Caliphate, the West can now be removed from any responsibility for their actions.

As always, the hypocrisy of Western politicians is unprecedented. Having advanced to the forefront of the «Syrian opposition», they continue to arm Islamist thugs, clearing the way for the establishment of a new European colonial slavery.

As was expected the meeting of Syrian insurgents / opponents of the Bashar regime in Doha hosted by Qatar but having the strong backing of the USA and its allies along with the GCC countries came up with a creation of a new Syrian Opposition group called «The National Coalition for Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces». The Syrian National Council, which hitherto had regarded itself as the representative of the Syrian opposition will have a much-reduced role in the new Coalition with only 22 members in the 60-member Council of the New Coalition.

The 12 point agreement to set up the Coalition would create a Supreme Military Council, a Judicial Committee and a transitional government-in-waiting of technocrats. It was also agreed that the parties work «for the fall of the regime and of all its symbols and pillars», and would rule out any dialogue with Assad's government…

The newly elected leader, Sheikh Ahmed Moaz al-Khatib has a strong religious background and an equally strong background, it appears from published material, of preaching moderation, inter-religious harmony and resistance to Bashar al-Assad’s dictatorial rule. As the Imam, prayer leader and religious guide in one of Damascus’ most famous mosques he enjoys considerable respect within Syria particularly since he stayed in Damascus during the first year of the insurgency and left only when he feared arrest some months ago. His deputies also hail from mixed backgrounds, with Seif reportedly backed by Washington and Atassi belonging to a Homs family active in the secular opposition. A third vice president post will remain vacant for a Kurd. This last point is of importance. It appears that there is not adequate representation in the new coalition of the minorities-the Christians, the Alawites and the Kurds.

Minority representation apart, all indications are that the new coalition has a much larger number of members who live in Syria and have been personally involved in the fighting and is better placed to bridge the differences within insurgent ranks. There are also clear signs, however, that while some of the fighters in Syria will be under their direct influence there will be many others who will be faithful only to their local commanders and may not become part of what the coalition hopes to achieve- a central command structure and a unified approach to securing and distributing the financial and military assistance that is expected to increase as the coalition secures international recognition.

One of the hardest tasks that Khatib will have is bringing all fighters under a central command and reversing the current trend of much of the assistance from the oil rich countries of the Gulf-both official and private – being channelled to the «Islamists» who played a small part in starting the insurgency but who, having greater access to funding and weapons have now becoming increasingly assertive.

It is of course the GCC countries with Qatar in the forefront, which have proved to be the main financiers of the insurgency and the main force, with clear American backing, for the creation of the new coalition. It was to be expected therefore that the GCC would be the first to recognise the «National Coalition for the Forces of the Syrian Revolution and Opposition … as the legitimate representative of the brotherly Syrian people," and the GCC Secretary General announced this immediately. The Qatari Prime Minister also then accompanied the Khatib to the Arab League meeting in Cairo but there some reservations on the part of Iraq and Algeria caused the League to stop short of recognising the coalition as representing the Syrian people and chose instead to recognize it as reflecting the «aspirations of the Syrian people» and «the sole interlocutors with the Arab League». The coalition was granted observer status at the League but was not asked to occupy the Syrian seat, which has been vacant since the Assad regime was expelled.

In a break with the rest of the western world, which generally welcomed the formation of the coalition but refrained from going further, the French have recognised the new coalition as the representative of Syria and are apparently now contemplating accepting its envoy. The French have of course had an old connection with Syrian, which was under French control after the breakup of the Ottoman Empire. Other countries are currently marking time but it is reported that a meeting in Morocco is planned on the next few weeks at which the expectation is that the coalition may secure recognition from a large number of countries

In the meanwhile Iran has announced that it will be convening a meeting of Syrian representatives where again they will try and push for an intra-Syria dialogue for a negotiated solution. The problem is that according to some analysts the coalition is prepared for such a dialogue but only after Bashar and ten people belonging to his inner circle have been thrown out. They realize that they must not commit the error of dismissing the entire government because then the same chaos would ensue as happened in Iraq after the Iraqi army was dissolved and all Baathists were thrown out of the administration.

It was perhaps in this context that British Prime Minister David Cameron has suggested that Bashar could be offered safe passage out of Syria. In an apparent response Bashar in an interview to a Russian TV channel said, «I am not a puppet. I was not made by the West to go to the West or to any other country», «I am Syrian; I was made in Syria. I have to live in Syria and die in Syria».

From the perspective of Bashar and his close aides, the conflict in Syria, unlike the revolutions in Yemen, has acquired a strong sectarian dimension. It would be unlikely that any transitional arrangement would allow a largely Alawite government structure to survive or to allow any Bashar loyalists to continue to serve.

In the meanwhile the slaughter continues. The Syrian Red Crescent now estimates, and the UN agrees, that the number of internally displaced persons in Syria exceeds 2.5 million people. The Turkish foreign Minister while recognising the new coalition as the legitimate representative of Syria said that some 120,000 Syrians are living in refugee camps in Turkey while another 80,000 are living there on their own. A similar number is said to be in Jordan. How many have fled elsewhere-Lebanon and Iraq – is not clear but it is certainly a substantial number.

The fighting in densely populated urban areas has intensified. Heartbreaking pictures appear on TV showing the large-scale destruction of houses and infrastructure while the estimates of the daily toll of lives lost stands above a hundred with the total loss of life exceeding 36,000. Insurgent fighters have been seen in these TV reports shooting unarmed Syrian soldiers. This constitutes a war crime since the International committee of the Red Cross has now decreed that the conflict in Syria is a civil war and combatants are required to abide the laws governing such conflicts.

On the international front the daily barrage of artillery exchanges with Turkey continue and an ominous new dimension has been added by the recent exchanges of artillery fire in the Israel occupied Golan Heights. If this were not enough the USA has sent an army contingent to Jordan ostensibly to assist with the refugee crisis but with the additional and more substantive purpose of being positioned to seize or destroy the chemical weapons that Syria is said to possess.

In the interview referred to above Bashar also touched upon the possibility of a western invasion maintaining that «I think that the price of this invasion, if it happened, is going to be bigger than the whole world can afford… It will have a domino effect that will affect the world from the Atlantic to the Pacific». He is probably right in assuming that there will be no physical invasion by a war weary America wary of any physical involvement in yet another conflict in the Middle East. The possible use of chemical weapons may change Obama’s current view. Western news media has highlighted the fact that the Pentagon has drawn up estimates of the number of forces that would be required for an invasion if Bashar resorts to the use of chemical weapons.

The regional situation is deteriorating. Now there are demonstrations in Jordan in which for the first time participants have called for the ouster of the King. Ostensibly these demonstrations are protesting increases in fuel prices ordained by the IMF as a condition for its continued financial support for Jordan. In practice however there is no doubt that the Syrian situation and the influx of refugees has contributed to the unrest.

In Lebanon which is inextricably linked to Syria, there is an uneasy peace but it is evident that sectarian differences have been exacerbated with the Hezbollah sending its units into Syria to help Bashar while Sunni fighters are joining the insurgents.

In Iraq too the Syrian situation has exacerbated the sectarian divide and has contributed to straining further the tense relation between the central government and the Kurdish regime which acknowledges being actively engaged with the Syrian Kurds and their effort to create an autonomous Western Kurdistan in Syrai.

In Turkey, the influx of refugees, the disruption of trade and above all the increase in Kurdish activity has created new strains. There is no evident connection between the Syrian situation and the Israeli onslaught on Gaza in retaliation for the rocket attacks Hamas has been launching on Israel. This too has however given rise to new frustrations in the Arab world and has the potential for bringing to an end the uneasy treaty relations Israel has with Egypt and Jordan. This in turn will create new tensions on the Israel Syria border and probably lead to further fighting in the Golan Heights.

More fighting and more destruction lie ahead. The Bashar regime is tough and one sees few signs despite the defections that the regime is on the brink of collapse In the future it can be anticipated that the new coalition will get more arms from abroad and the Syrian regime too will beg borrow and steal to enhance its own arsenal.
 

The Purposes of the Attacks of the Syrian National Council and the Free Syrian Army

Both the SNC and its military wing, the so-called Free Syrian Army, have been used to subvert Syria. Their primarily goals are not to establish democracy or democratic reforms in Syria, but to transform Syria into a client state of the United States. In this regard, in the last year there has been a consistent and methodological attempt to destabilize all of Syria’s border areas.

The destabilization of Syria’s borders is tied to several tactics. One aim is to ensure that a continuous flow of arms and fighters from the borders of other countries is insured. Another aim is to cripple the Syrian economy by deactivating important Syrian economic activities and trade in strategic areas in tandem with U.S. and E.U. sanctions against Syria. In this regard, the oil producing hub of Deir Ezzor has been attacked as have pipelines and the Syrian port of Lattakia, rumoured to possibly be the home of a future Iranian naval base in the Mediterranean that would complement the Russian naval base in the port of Tartus. A third aim is to transform these destabilized areas as bridgeheads for forced entry into Syria as “protected areas” and “humanitarian corridors.”

Since 2011, all of Syria’s neighbours have been used to launch attacks against Syria. Lebanon, Turkey, Jordan, Israel, and Iraq have all been used in one way or another to transport weapons, supplies, money, and fighters into the besieged Arab republic. Lebanon and Iraq have been involuntary parties in the siege on Syria. Turkey, Jordan, and Israel, however, have all been wilful parties to the siege against Damascus.

The Syrian National Council’s Lebanese Connections

The connection between the March 14 Alliance and the SNC is very important to note. According to the Christian Lebanese politician Suleiman Frangieh, plans for a so-called “buffer zone” along the Lebanese-Syrian border were in the works for some time. This reflects the divided nature of Lebanon where a vocal minority led by Saeed (Said) Hariri and his allies in the March 14 Alliance have foolishly misdirected some of the energies of the Lebanese Republic.

In Lebanon, the Hariri-led March 14 Alliance has been supporting the insurgents and elements of the opposition in their efforts to topple the Syrian regime. Moreover, Hariri has acted as a lobbyist for the Syrian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood. In 2006, he held discussions for a joint strategy against Syria with U.S. diplomats in their embassy in Beirut. The nature of the discussions were about isolating Syria and working to replacing President Al-Assad and his government with a new regime composed of the Muslim Brotherhood and a number of regime defectors, like Abdul Halim Khaddam and Hekmat Shehabi. In his lobbying efforts, Hariri compared the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood to the Turkish Justice and Development (AKP) of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and gave his full support establishing a regime in Damascus run by the Syrian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood.

Hariri’s lobbying for regime change in Syria, especially in 2006 when Washington and Tel Aviv planned on replacing President Al-Assad through military intervention with a new puppet regime, should come as no surprise to anyone. In fact after the Israeli defeat in Lebanon plans were underway for a new strategy to topple the government in Syria, including plans for setting up border posts on the Lebanese border with Syria. In this regard U.S. agents started visiting Lebanon and studying the borders with Syria in preparation for operations into Syria.

Not only has Lebanon been involuntarily used as an arms corridor and point of illegal entry into Syria, but it has been a source of manpower for the insurgent forces in Syria. Many of the sectarian Hariri clan’s allies are outright ideological supporters of Osama bin Laden and members of the same elk of deviant so-called Salafist movements working in Syria. Elements within the Lebanese security forces may also have a hand in setting up communication lines and a Lebanese-based command post for the insurgents and foreign special forces operating inside Syria. Aside from geographic proximity, this is one of the reasons why many of the defeated insurgent forces have tried to pull back into Lebanon.

In August 2011, eleven prison guards at Lebanon’s largest prison, Roumieh Prison, were detained and questioned after the escape of five inmates. Because of the fighting in the sister-republic of Syria, the timing of this prison escape inside Lebanon quickly aroused suspicion. It was suspected of potentially being tied to efforts by Hariri to send fighters into Syria. Four of the prisoners who escaped were members of Fatah Al-Islam and the fifth a Kuwaiti member of Al-Qaeda; two of the escapees were also young Syrians. Fatal Al-Islam is a group that has startling similarities in its world-view with the insurgents in Syria; Hariri and the U.S. government imported the deviant group into Lebanon, housing them in the Palestinian refugee camps near the Lebanese city of Tripoli, with the objective of unleashing them against Hezbollah, which when documented by American Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh was angrily denied by the governing March 14 Alliance.

Added to all this, insurgents who have been captured have confessed to Syrian authorities that they were supported through Lebanon by Lebanese parliamentarian Jamal Al-Jarrah, a member of the Hariri-led Future Movement and the March 14 Alliance. Al-Jarrah was known to have helped recruit and organize the formation of the Hariri militia movement known as the Sunni Tigers in preparation to fight Hezbollah, Amal, the Free Patriotic Movement, and their political allies. One year after the plan to use Fatah Al-Islam backfired on Hariri and his allies, the fruits of Jamal Al-Jarrah’s work materialized in May 2008 when Hezbollah and its allies fought and defeated the Tigers and other March 14 Alliance militias. Although Hariri and his cronies deny their involvement in building any armed movements or support of deviant armed groups, high ranking military officials and experts say that they have been party to both. The Syrians went on to accuse Al-Jarrah of arming religiously-motivated insurgents and funding protesters through middlemen in April 2011 and Ali Abdul Karem Ali, the Syrian ambassador to Lebanon, demanded that legal action be taken by the Lebanese government to investigate Al-Jarrah.

The Faces of the Ostensible Syrian Opposition: From Khaddam to Ghalyun

The regime defectors that Hariri suggested to U.S. officials for consideration as candidates in a new Syrian regime are actually corrupt figures that since their defections have become little more than foreign proxies for Washington and its allies. For example, Abdul Halim Khaddam, the former Syrian vice-president, was responsible for many of the Syrian atrocities in Lebanon during Syria’s military presence that the March 14 Alliance constantly brings up. Khaddam was also directly tied to narcotics trafficking in Lebanon from the Bekaa Valley.
Khaddam would flee Syria in 2005 and later create the Syrian National Salvation Front in 2006. Despite the March 14 Alliance’s criticism of Syrian officials, ironically Khaddam is said to have been close to the Hariri family, which aside from their direct allegiances to Saudi Arabia also acted as major Syrian proxies in Lebanon up until 2005. In addition to all this, Khaddam would meet with members of the U.S. government and establish an office for himself and his Syrian National Salvation Front in Washington.

In regards to Khaddam’s collaboration with the U.S. government, something important has to be noted. In January 2006, Khaddam would announce that the Syrian government would collapse before 2006 ended. This was before Israel attacked Lebanon during the war in the summer of that year. It is very likely that he was aware that Israel was planning on attacking Lebanon as a means of starting a war with Syria. In 2006, Syria was the main target of the Israelis. In coordination with the U.S. and NATO, Tel Aviv had planned to eventually expand the operation into a war against Syria, which is confirmed by Israel’s own Winograd Commission and Meywar Wurmser, an associate of the Office of U.S. Vice-President Richard Cheney.

The U.S., NATO, and the Arab dictatorships have put their weight behind the SNC at the expense of the authentic internal opposition in Syria. All of the members of the SNC do not enjoy popular support in Syria and most of them are clueless about what is happening on the ground, but they have no problems or feelings of guilt about claiming to speak on behalf of all the people of Syria. The SNC is essentially composed of three fractions: (1) the Syrian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood that controls and composes the bulk of the SNC; (2) a small purportedly liberal group that serves as the public face of the SNC to hide the Muslim Brotherhood; and (3) a militant ultra-deviant jihadist wing that wants to purge Syria.

The scholar Burhan Ghalyun (Ghalioun), the supposed leader of the SNC, has repeatedly proven he is both incapable and two-faced. In October 2011 at the SNC gathering held in the Turkish city of Istanbul he claimed that 10,000 or more Syrians had been killed by the Syrian Army, which is something that even the U.S. and Syria’s other enemies did not claim at the time. In contrast, Navy Pillay and the U.N. believed that the death toll was 4,000 in December 2011. Originally Ghalyun said he was against NATO intervention inside Syria, then changed his position to one calling for foreign “non-military” intervention, and finally admitted that he wanted NATO to intervene militarily in Syria in January 2012. He tried to justify this by saying that he was asking for military intervention only involving air and naval units. The request for naval involvement makes zero sense in context of establishing a so-called “humanitarian safe zone.” No Syrian naval vessels have been involved in the fighting; like in the case of Libya, the proposal of naval involvement is meant to waste away Syria by cutting off supplies.

Ghalyun has also publicly lied about the authentic Syrian opposition in Syria. Since his ascendency as the leader of the SNC has fallen in love with the Saudi and Qatari regimes while he continuously claims to be a democrat. He has also presented his credentials to Israel through a December 2011 interview with Jay Solomon and Nour Malas about the SNC’s foreign policy plans.

Members of the SNC have continuously called for violence and NATO intervention. Haitham Al-Maleh, an executive of the SNC known as a human rights activist, has declared that President Al-Assad and his family will be murdered just like Colonel Qaddafi was in Libya. Other opposition figures like Mamun Al-Humsi, the former Syrian parliamentarian who spent five years in prison, have uttered deeply hateful and sectarian statements about the Alawites.

These so-called “human rights campaigners” and “democrats” have been in self-styled “negotiating” for weapons shipments with entities like Turkey, the Transitional National Council of Libya, the U.S., and the GCC. Following a script from McCarthyism, they thuggishly silence any opposition towards themselves by calling anyone who opposes them “shabiha.” Shabiha in Arabic means “goons” or “bullies” and in a Syrian political context means regime agent.

The SNC has even backtracked on an agreement signed with the actual internal opposition in Syria, the Syria National Coordination Committee (SNCC), which has outright rejected foreign military intervention in Syria as treachery. The SNC-SNCC agreement only lasted for one day. Burhan Ghalyun publicly lied to save face about it. He falsely claimed that the SNC-SNCC agreement was a draft and that the SNC executive had to look over the agreement. Haytham Al-Manna’s interview with Al-Akbar, however, exposes this as being untrue. Again, the issue of military intervention was a big issue in the deal, because the SNCC said they would never support it. It would be after the nullification of the agreement that Ghalyun would admit that he supports a NATO attack on Syria and the SNC would start slandering Al-Manna.

The SNC and its main leaders have been nothing, but dishonest. They have denied supporting military intervention and that have been involved in violent acts inside Syria, but turned around on both counts. The acts of terrorism conducted by their Syrian Free Army, have become infamous amongst Arabs and the SNC no longer hide its hopes of attaining power by means of foreign armies. The Washington Times has even quoted Samir Al-Nashar, an executive of the SNC, admitting that most of the SNC leadership wants military attacks to take place on Syria in an interview with Benjamin Birnbaum.

The Discredited Syrian Observatory for Human Rights

The SNC has been involved in the continuous dissemination of misinformation. It has largely coordinated and used the principally discredited British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights as a propaganda outfit. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights has made some of the crudest propaganda claims, including claims that Hezbollah was attacking Syrian dissidents with missiles from Lebanon. The propaganda has also included claims that the Iranian Revolutionary Guard had sent large detachments of snipers into Syria.

In a real case of irony, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights has also saluted the repressive Al-Sauds as supporters of democracy and freedom. The original website of the group was filled with so much propaganda that they eventually had to blame it all on an uneducated maverick member who was unilaterally publishing articles without verification by the other members of the organization for weeks without end. Like the process that the SNC is now facing, in the end petty internal bickering in the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights has helped expose it.

The Sectarian Nature of the Syrian National Council

The sectarian card in the SNC is a heavy one. Syrian minorities, which collectively form a large demographic cross-section of the population, are not represented in the SNC and there is good reason for this. The militant ultra-extremist wing of the Syrian National Council is very bigoted and detests the Alawite population and all other branches of Shiite Muslims. As well as hating Sunnite Muslims that disagree with them, they also abhor the Druze, Christians, and Jews. It is in this sectarian context that their supporters chant thus: “Alawites to the ground and Christians to Lebanon!” Should these deviant groups come to power they would persecute Syria’s minorities and anyone who disagrees with them ideologically in Syria.

Shiite Muslims, consisting of the Alawites, the mainstream Twelvers (Jafaris), and the Ismailis, form a sizeable minority in Syria. So do the Christians. Syrian Christians are mainly divided amongst the different churches of Eastern Catholic Christianity and Christian Orthodoxy. Along with the Druze, these three religious minorities form well over one-third of Syria’s population. This total becomes even larger when ethnic minorities like the Kurds, which are predominately Sunni Muslims, are added into the picture.

The Foreign Policy Goals of the Syrian National Council

The foreign policy objectives of the SNC are not only sectarian; they also embody the interests of the U.S. and Israel. The Wall Street Journal conducted an interview with Burhan Ghalyun as the leader of the SNC that clearly spells this out. It was a very revealing interview to say the least. While calling for a no-fly zone, Ghalyun clarified that Syria would end its strategic alliance and military ties with Iran, which he called “abnormal.” He also said that the SNC would also withdraw Syrian support for resistance movements like Hezbollah and Hamas.

It is clear who the intended audience of the interview was and who Ghalyun’s message was intended for: the U.S. and Israel. This becomes especially clear when Ghalyun explains that Hezbollah would be forced to modify its behaviour once the SNC governed Syria. This last statement says much. Firstly, by going out of his way to discuss the consequences of regime change in Damascus for Hezbollah, the SNC is catering to the interests of Washington and Tel Aviv. Moreover, when asked about Syria’s Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, Ghalyun said that the SNC would negotiate with Israel.

Around the same time, several Iranian engineers working in Homs on an Iranian power plant were kidnapped. A previously unheard of group called “The Movement Against the Shiite Tide in Syria” claimed in a communication to Agence France-Presse that it was behind the kidnappings of the Iranian engineers. It said that the act was a warning to Syria’s allies Iran and Hezbollah. The kidnapping was really the work of the armed branch of the SNC, the Syrian Free Army and was aimed at paining the events in Syria as a Shitte-Sunni conflict.

While it is a verbal critic of Iran and Russia, the SNC is ominously silent about Israel, which is very unusual for purported grassroots Arab democrats. Many of the SNC’s leaders and affiliates have even refused to make critical statements about Israel when drilled at meetings or forums loosely open to the public. In large part, the support that the SNC receives from Washington is based on the fact that its foreign policy caters to geo-political interests of the United States, which includes de-linking Syria from Iran and its other allies.