Q&A: How strong is the Islamic State group in Afghanistan

ISLAMABAD (AP) — An upstart Islamic State affiliate that first appeared in Afghanistan in 2014 is becoming increasingly deadly and their attacks on the country's minority Shiites have grown bolder. In Sunday's devastating bombing, a suicide bomber walked up to a crowd outside a voter registration office and blew himself up killing 57 people.

Most of the dead were ethnic Hazaras, who are Shiites Muslims. Another 119 people were wounded, many of them seriously.

It was the latest in a series of attacks by IS against the country's minority Shiites. Following last year's attack on the Iraq Embassy in Kabul, the extremist group issued a warning to Shiites that they were coming for them. Since then, they have carried out a number of horrific assaults targeting their places of worship in Kabul and Herat in western Afghanistan.

Like their counterparts in Syria and Iraq, insurgents belonging to Afghanistan's Islamic State group are radical Sunni Muslims who revile Shiites as apostates and believe that the entire Muslim world should be ruled by a single caliphate. In Afghanistan, it is known as the Islamic State in Khorazan province, the ancient name of an area that included parts of Iran, Afghanistan and Central Asia.

HOW STRONG IS THE ISLAMIC STATE IN AFGHANISTAN, AND WHO IS ACTIVE IN IT?

When the Islamic State group first appeared in Afghanistan its ranks were mostly culled from among the most ferocious of Pakistani Taliban from Pakistan's Bajaur tribal region, driven out by a military offensive, as well as from among disgruntled Taliban, who were frustrated with a leadership reigning in its violence and considering negotiations to end fighting.

At its outset, the Islamic State was mostly confined to eastern Afghanistan's Nangarhar province, but in recent years it has gained ground in the north and northeast of Afghanistan. Their ranks quickly swelled with Uzbek fighters, mostly from Central Asia's Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, many of whom were driven out of Pakistan's South Waziristan tribal region by a military offensive. Analysts say the movement brutality's was unmatched and, as outsiders to Afghanistan, the Uzbek fighters show no compunction about carrying out mass killings. IS, with the aid of Uzbeks, has made inroads into northern Afghanistan where Afghan Uzbeks mostly live. There have been several reports of open recruitment by IMU members. The size of IS in Afghanistan is unknown, but estimates generally run between 3,000 and 5,000 fighters.

WHAT DO THEY WANT?

The IS in Khorazan province shares the Syrian and Iraqi IS goal of establishing a caliphate that governs the entire Muslim world. Their only stated goal for Afghanistan, however, is to rid it of Shiite Muslims, who make up roughly 15 per cent of the country's 35 million people. The overwhelming majority are Sunni Muslims, who historically have lived in peace with their Shiite brethren. Shiites have stepped up security around their places of worship but Afghanistan's security forces seem confounded on how to prevent the relentless attacks.

DO THEY HAVE SIGNIFICANT SUPPORT IN THE POPULATION?

There is little support among Afghans for a movement whose sole goal is killing Shiite Muslims. While Afghanistan is a conservative Muslim country that has been alternately ruled by radical religious groups __ first anti-Soviet mujahedeen groups and later the Taliban __ there is practically no support for rule by caliphate. Afghanistan's rulers, even the radical religious ones, have been nationalists, ready to go to war to protect their sovereignty.

WHAT IS THEIR RELATIONSHIP TO THE TALIBAN?

IS and Taliban are battlefield adversaries which has prompted countries like Russia to confer with the Taliban, who they see as a bulwark against a formidable IS on its southern border. While loosely constructed, the Taliban since the death of its supreme leader Mullah Mohammed Omar several years ago are mostly comprised of ethnic Pashtuns and Arab-speaking nationals with ties to al-Qaida. They have condemned IS and the two groups have fought each other in eastern Nangarhar province where both seek full control, and where U.S. and Afghan security forces have been carrying out offensives against IS hideouts.</s>French President Emmanuel Macron has said that the US, France and their allies should not leave Syria when the conflict with ISIS is over, but must stay and build a “new Syria”

In an interview with Fox News Macron said:“We would have to build a new Syria after war,” stressing that the role of the US would be “very important” in this process.

According to Macron, leaving Syria would also allow Iran to consolidate there.

RT reports: Giving his reasons for foreign states to remain in Syria, Macron listed the ‘usual suspects’ – Iran and Syrian President Bashar Assad.

The day we’ll have finished this war against ISIS [Islamic State, IS]; if we leave definitely and totally – even from [the] political point of view – we will leave the floor to the Iranian regime, Bashar Assad and these guys and they will prepare [a] new war. They will fuel the new terrorists.”

Macron has recently been one of the strongest advocates for a prolonged American stay in Syria. He also ordered French forces to join the US-led missile strike on targets in Syria on April 14. The bombardment, which was described as retaliation for an alleged chemical attack by the Syrian government, did not receive approval from the UN Security Council and was conducted without the consent of the French parliament.

While stressing that Paris and allies should be involved in post-war Syria, the French leader still gave some credit to Russia and Turkey, saying that “even” these states will have an “important role.”

Washington and its allies, including France, launched their campaign against Islamic State in Syria in 2014. Apart from airstrikes, it involved support for the so-called “moderate opposition” on the ground with training and weapons. Later, Washington and Paris dispatched limited contingents of troops to Syria, triggering protests from Damascus.

While the US and its allies simply notified Syria before their counter-terrorism campaign kicked off, Russia and Iran have been acting in the country on the request of President Assad.

Moscow and Tehran have also accused Washington of doing nothing to fulfil the declared task of fighting Islamic State, instead working hand in hand with terrorist groups to topple the Syrian government. Notably, the rise of ISIS in Iraq and its further spread to war-torn Syria was enabled by the chaos left after the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003.

While Russia has indeed assisted the Syrian forces with airstrikes against terrorists, it also launched a large-scale humanitarian operation, delivering food and essential supplies to thousands of Syrians. Moscow has repeatedly invited its Western partners to join the efforts, but US coalition members have been reluctant to provide aid to the regions liberated by Syrian government forces.

The diplomatic efforts of Russia, Turkey, and Iran as part of the Astana peace process provided for the creation of several de-escalation zones in Syria, which led last year to the cessation of hostilities in vast parts of the country.

In late March, Donald Trump said the US would be “coming out of Syria very soon” and letting “other people take care of it now.” However, the White House spokesman later corrected the president, saying that Islamic State should be crushed before the 2,000 US troops return home. Other US officials, including Defense Secretary James Mattis and UN Envoy Nikki Haley, announced an even broader set of US goals in Syria.

According to Haley, it wasn’t only about defeating the terrorists, but also making sure chemical weapons aren’t used again and monitoring the actions of Iran – which could well have an indefinite time frame. In early April, there were also reports that the US military is considering the establishment of new military bases in northern Syria, with the American presence in the area to be funded by Saudi Arabia.</s>Baku. 23 September. REPORT.AZ/ United States and its partners are implementing the first air strikes at the "Islamic state" in Syria. Report informs citing Reuters, this was officially claimed by Pentagon.

"I can confirm that U.S. military and partner nation forces are undertaking military action against ISIL terrorists in Syria using a mix of fighter, bomber and Tomahawk land attack missiles,” Pentagon Spokesman, Rear Admiral John Kirby stated. “Given that these operations are ongoing, we are not in a position to provide additional details at this time,” he added.

President Barack Obama unveiled a new strategy against the ISIS on September 11. He said that he would not deploy American troops in Iraq, but intensify air strikes. Furthermore, Obama issued that Washington wanted to create and lead a broad coalition to fight against militants in Syria and Iraq.

Terroristic religious group "Islamic State" grew in strength during operations in Syria, where the ISIL fought against government forces. Several months ago, the IS has launched a massive attack on the northern and north-western provinces of Iraq and occupied a vast territory, where they announced the establishment of the so-called Islamic Caliphate.</s>April 20, 2018 “Information Clearing House” – In Syria, the goal of creating chaos has succeeded in spades. Mnar Muhawesh wrote: [F]oreign powers have sunk the nation into a nightmare combination of civil war, foreign invasion and terrorism. Syrians are in the impossible position of having to choose between living in a warzone, being targeted by groups like ISIS and the Syrian government’s brutal crack- down, or faring dangerous waters with minimal safety equipment only to be denied food, water and safety by European governments if they reach shore.

Of course, many Syrians were unable, or chose not to try, to reach Europe. Continuing her discussion of the refugee crisis created by the destabilization of Syria, Muhawesh added:

Other Syrians seeing the chaos at home have turned to neighboring Arab Muslim countries. Jordan alone has absorbed over half a million Syrian refugees; Lebanon has accepted nearly 1.5 million; and Iraq and Egypt have taken in several hundred thousand. . . . Turkey has [by 2015] taken in nearly 2 million refugees.55

By the end of 2015, the conflict in Syria had “displaced 12 million people, creating the largest wave of refugees to hit Europe since World War II.”56

Planning to Destabilize Syria

 

 Some neocons had come into office with preformed ideas about destabilizing Syria. As mentioned earlier, Richard Perle and other neocons had prepared a 1996 paper for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, en- titled “A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm.” It suggested that Israel seek peace with some neighbors while beginning to topple the regimes of its enemies, especially Iraq, Iran, and Syria. Although regime change in Iraq would be the first goal, it would be achieved primarily for the sake of “weakening, containing, and even rolling back Syria,” ultimately overthrowing Bashar al-Assad. In other words, the road to Damascus would run through Baghdad.57

When Bush and Cheney took control of the White House, a new largely neocon document, “Navigating through Turbulence: America and the Middle East in a New Century,” had the same message: “ e two main targets” of the new administration, the document said, “should be Syria and Iraq.”58 In 2001, a week after the 9/11 attacks, 40 members of the Project for the New American Century, led by Bill Kristol, wrote a letter to President Bush saying:

We believe the administration should demand that Syria and Iran immediately cease all military, financial and political support for Hizbollah [sic] and its operations. Should Iran and Syria refuse to comply, the Administration should consider appropriate measures of retaliation against these known state sponsors of terrorism.59

A few months later, Assistant Secretary of State John Bolton accused Syria of developing chemical and biological weapons and warned Damascus that it might be included in the “axis of evil.” Shortly thereafter, the State Department declared Syria to be a sponsor of terrorism, after which Congress made most US dealings with Syria illegal.60

The Bush-Cheney Hostility to Syria

 

 The Bush-Cheney administration was hostile to Syria partly because Israel was hostile to Syria, and especially to its president, Bashar al-Assad. Syria had opposed Israel and especially Zionism; Syria had been aligned with Iran, which Israel considers its major threat.

 More generally, Assad is an Alawite, which is a branch of Shiite Islam, and Assad has been viewed as, said Parry, the centerpiece of the “Shiite crescent” stretching from Iran through Iraq and Syria to Lebanon. Since Israeli leaders (and thus the American neocons) see Iran as Israel’s greatest enemy, the goal of collapsing the “Shiite crescent” has concentrated on bringing down Assad.61

More particularly, Israel has been hostile to Syria because it had sup- ported Lebanon’s paramilitary fighting force, Hezbollah, which defeated Israel militarily in 2006; and although Israel in the 1967 war took Syria’s Golan Heights—which now provides 15 percent of Israel’s water—Syria wants it back. More generally, Syria, with the assistance of Hezbollah, had prevented Israel from realizing its goal of taking control of land that, it claims, belongs to it by divine right.

There have been, in addition, several other reasons for the US hostility to Syria, Assad in particular. An overarching one is that Syria has remained independent of the US-dominated global order. For example, Syria has its own state-owned bank and has no IMF loans through which it could be ordered around. And Syria has refused to be included within the American empire. The document “Navigating through Turbulence” complained that “[m]aintaining a strong alliance with Israel” had not prevented “every state on Israel’s border, except Syria, from accepting America as their principal source of military aid and matériel.”62

As to why Syria did not want to be absorbed into the American empire: American politicians and media do not remind the world that four years before the CIA overthrew Iran’s elected government in 1953, it had over- thrown Syria’s government for the same reason—the price of oil.63

For a variety of reasons, “ousting the Assad dynasty,” said Parry, had been “a top neocon/Israeli goal since the 1990s,” so the Bush-Cheney administration was from the beginning intent on destabilizing Syria. In 2002, Under-Secretary of State John Bolton named Syria as one of the “rogue states” that “can expect to become our targets.”64

Knowing how he was regarded, Assad made many attempts to develop better relations. In 2004, Assad started secret peace talks in Turkey with Israel, offering what Israel’s leading newspaper called “a far reaching and equitable peace treaty that would provide for Israel’s security.”65

Although the talks were supported by a large number of senior Israelis, “the Bush administration nixed them”— not surprisingly, because Cheney was “an implacable opponent of engagement with Syria.”66 In 2007, the Bush-Cheney administration, discussing “a new strategic alignment in the Middle East,” distinguished between “reformers” and “extremists,” placing Syria, along with Iran and Hezbollah, in the latter category. According to Seymour Hersh’s 2007 article “The Redirection,” the US participated in clandestine operations aimed at Syria as well as Iran.67

Information about what went on behind the scenes in the Bush-Cheney administration has been provided by WikiLeaks, which had obtained the cables of William Roebuck, the political counselor for the US Embassy in Damascus. These cables are discussed by Robert Naiman in a chapter of Julian Assange’s The WikiLeaks Files, entitled “WikiLeaks Reveals How the US Aggressively Pursued Regime Change in Syria, Igniting a Bloodbath.” Roebuck’s cables show, according to Naiman, that regime change had been a long-standing goal of US policy; [and] that the US promoted sectarianism in support of its regime-change policy, thus helping lay the foundation for the sectarian civil war and massive bloodshed that we see in Syria today.68

Some commentators today suggest that the US hostility to Assad began with his brutal response to the Arab Spring protests in 2011. However, “as far back as 2006— five years before ‘Arab Spring’ protests in Syria,” reported Naiman, the cables show that “destabilizing the Syrian government was a central motivation of US policy,” and Roebuck’s cables suggested strategies for doing this. Accordingly, said Naiman:

 We are told in the West that the current efforts to topple the Syrian government by force were a reaction to the Syrian government’s repression of dissent in 2011, but now we know that “regime change” was the policy of the US and its allies ve years earlier.

According to these cables, Naiman summarized, the top US diplomat in Syria believed that the goal of US policy in Syria should be to destabilize the Syrian government by any means available; that the US should work to increase Sunni-Shia sectarianism in Syria. . . ; the US should try to strain relations between the Syrian government and other Arab governments, and then blame Syria for the strain; that the US should seek to stoke Syrian government fears of coup plots in order to provoke the Syrian government to overreact. . . ; the US should work to undermine Syrian economic reforms and discourage foreign investment; that the US should seek to foster the belief that the Syrian government was not legitimate; that violent protests in Syria were praiseworthy.69

The 2011 Protests and the Obama Administration

 

 The Obama administration publicly gave the same reason for hostility to Assad, namely, his excessive reaction to the 2011 uprising against him— a reaction that led to major protests, which soon turned into a civil war between Assad and rebel forces.

 The Need for a Balanced View: However, that was a very limited understanding of the events: The conflict resulted from a complex interplay of factors, some of which were Assad’s fault, some of which were not. One of the factors that was not his fault was the beginning in 2006 of a drought in Syria, which some climate scientists said to be the worst in 900 years; other scientists even call it the worst since agricultural civilization began many thousands of years ago.70 Describing the context for the war, William Polk wrote:

In some areas, all agriculture ceased. In others crop failures reached 75%. And generally as much as 85% of livestock died of thirst or hunger. Hundreds of thousands of Syria’s farmers gave up, abandoned their farms and ed to the cities and towns in search of almost non-existent jobs and severely short food supplies. Outside observers including UN experts estimated that between 2 and 3 million of Syria’s 10 million rural inhabit- ants were reduced to “extreme poverty.”

Also, added Polk, “hundreds of thousands of Palestinians and Iraqis had in previous years taken refuge there, so that the new Syrian refugees had to compete with them for jobs, water, and food.”71

By 2008, the representative of the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization had described the situation as “a perfect storm,” which threatened Syria with “social destruction.”72

However, Assad made the effects of the drought worse by poor governance. Central to this was what Francesco Femia and Caitlin Werrell called criminal mismanagement of Syria’s natural resources, which contributed to water shortages for farmers. Favoring the big farmers over the poor farming communities, Assad’s regime subsidized wheat and cotton, which are water-intensive, and it also allowed unsustainable farming and irrigation techniques. It even allowed the big farmers to take all the water they wanted from the aquifer (although this was illegal), while the government’s wasteful use of water also meant that rural people needed to drill for water, thereby emptying the aquifers. Moreover, Assad gave no aid to the increas- ingly poor farmers, and even raised their expenses: While subsidizing the wheat and cotton farmers, Assad damaged ordinary farmers by cutting subsidies for diesel and fertilizers.73

Because of the severe drought and Assad’s mismanagement, almost a million people, having lost their livelihoods by 2009, were forced to move to the slums, and many more were to follow. By 2011, about a million people had insufficient food. There is little room for doubt, therefore, that the beginnings of the Syrian opposition movement were originally rooted in Assad’s own destructive policies (in conjunction with the drought).74

An important factor in this insufficient food supply was another feature of criminal mismanagement: “Lured by the high price of wheat on the world market, it sold its reserves.” Accordingly, Polk said:

[T]ens of thousands of frightened, angry, hungry and impoverished former farmers constituted a ‘tinder’ that was ready to catch fire. The spark was struck on March 15, 2011, when a relatively small group gathered in the town of Dara’a to protest against government failure to help them.75

The protest in Dara’a began after a group of children had “painted some anti-government graffiti on a school wall” and then were arrested and tortured by city police. Some protesters were shot. This excessive response by the government led to protests in the city. Assad made several attempts to calm the situation: He fired government and security officials for their roles in the overreaction; he assured the residents that the shooters would be prosecuted; and he announced several national reforms. But his response did not satisfy the protestors and they continued destroying property and attacking police and soldiers. Dara’a was declared a “liberated zone.” And the protests spread to other towns.76 But why did the protests turn violent?

The Turn of Violence: The standard portrayal of the protest movement, summarized independent researcher Jonathan Marshall, was that “the protest movement in Syria was overwhelmingly peaceful until September 2011.”77 The Syria government rejected this view from the beginning, but its claim was long dismissed. But Marshall has provided evidence that the government’s view was essentially correct on this point. In an essay entitled “Hidden Origins of Syria’s Civil War,” Marshall said, “opposition to the government had turned violent almost from the start.” For example, unknown gunmen in Dara’a reportedly killed 19 Syrians; in addition “nine Syrian soldiers on their way to quell demonstrations in Banyas were ambushed and gunned down on the highway outside of town.”78

Professor Joshua Landis, the head of Center for the Middle East Studies at the University of Oklahoma, reported that video footage of the fighting showed that the government account was correct: “the soldiers stationed in the town were overrun by armed and organized opposition.”79

The protests in other towns also involved armed men. In one city, about 140 members of the police and security forces were massacred. But media largely ignored this side of the story. After studying the protests and the press’s coverage of them, Landis concluded: “Western press and analysts did not want to recognize that armed elements were becoming active. They preferred to tell a simple story of good people fighting bad people.”80

It is important to recognize that this method of setting up a leader to be overthrown was an oft-repeated modus operandi by the US govern- ment. Besides being used in Libya as well as Syria, it was previously used in the 1990s, recalled William Engdahl, when the Bill Clinton administration wanted to split up Yugoslavia into its six republics. Making a deal with Bosnia to start a war with Serbia, the Washington propaganda machine began demonizing the Serbs as Nazis, and made up fake stories claiming that they not only bombed civilians and hospitals but also raped thousands of Muslim women.81

In any case, at some point the Syrian government cracked down ruth- lessly on the protestors, and several hundred protestors were reportedly killed. But even here it appears that the press, as well as giving a one-sided account, exaggerated. The private intelligence firm Stratfor, sometimes called the “Private CIA,” warned their clients not to be misled by opposition propaganda. “Although it is certain that protesters and civilians are being killed,” said Stratfor, “there is little evidence of massive brutality compared to . . . other state crackdowns in the region.”82

 Some human rights organizations also, pointed out Jonathan Marshall, acknowledged that armed opposition forces had begun committing crimes against civilians.

For example:

 Human Rights Watch sent an “open letter” to leaders of the Syrian opposition, decrying “crimes and other abuses committed by armed opposition elements,” including the kidnapping and detention of government supporters, the use of torture and the execution of security force members and civilians, and sectarian attacks against Shias and Alawites.83

Not incidentally, this same pattern—armed elements joining a largely peaceful protest and shooting police as well as civilians—would occur with the protest leading to the coup d’etat in Ukraine as discussed in Chapter 9. In fact, said Engdahl,

 Washington’s Arab Spring protests often used secret CIA and mercenary snipers to enflame and anger the population against their government by creating innocent martyrs and blaming the killings on the regime.84

Accordingly, the beginning of the opposition was due not only to the drought, Assad’s mismanagement of the country’s natural resources, his foolish and immoral responses to the drought, and his neo-liberal economic policies. The 2011 violence did begin with the Assad regime’s brutal response to the protests, but this response was stimulated by armed elements. Accordingly, whereas Western propaganda has portrayed Assad as almost uniquely evil, said Marshall, “the deadly provocations against Syrian government forces put an entirely different cast on the origins of the conflict.”85

In sum, the Obama administration’s interpretation of the origins of the anti-Assad movement was one-sided to the point of being false.

 US Contributions to the anti-Assad War: An adequate understanding of the war in Syria requires an expanded discussion of the role played by the United States. Some of this role was played by the Bush-Cheney administration.

In 2008, that administration withdrew its ambassador from Damascus as part of an effort to weaken and isolate Assad.86 It also played a role in the Assad regime’s failure to prevent the drought from resulting in so much social destruction. In November 2008, the representative of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization in Syria appealed to USAID for assistance, noting that Syria’s minister of agriculture said that the economic and social fallout from the drought was “beyond our capacity as a country to deal with.” However, the Bush-Cheney USAID director said (in a cable that was later published by WikiLeaks), “we question whether limited USG resources should be directed toward this appeal at this time.”87

More generally, as pointed out above, the Bush-Cheney administration had begun talking about how to destabilize Syria, such as undermining its attempts at economic reform, toward the goal of bringing about regime change.

But the actual beginning of the war in Syria occurred during the Obama administration. His administration made part of its contribution to the war by its false interpretation of the origins of the anti-Assad movement—by saying that that the civil war arose out of a spontaneous and peaceful uprising against Assad. But like Marshall, Muhawesh said that it was not entirely spontaneous: Wikileaks cables “reveal CIA involvement on the grounds in Syria to instigate these very demonstrations as early as March 2011.”88 That is, of course, what should be expected, given Naiman’s report of the Wikileaks cables during the Bush-Cheney administration about ways to destabilize Syria.

 Robert Parry also agreed with Marshall’s account of the instigation of violence: “Since the start of the Syrian conflict in 2011,” wrote Parry,

 the powerful role of Al Qaeda and its spinoff, the Islamic State, has been a hidden or downplayed element of the narrative that has been sold to the American people. at storyline holds that the war began when “peaceful” protesters were brutally repressed by Syria’s police and military, but that version deletes the fact that extremists, some linked to Al Qaeda, began killing police and soldiers almost from the outset.89

Another issue raised by Muhawesh relates to the reports by major media outlets, such as the BBC and the Associated Press, that “the demonstrations that supposedly swept Syria were comprised of only hundreds of people.” Writing in 2015, she asked:

 How did demonstrations held by “hundreds” of protesters demanding economic change in Syria four years ago devolve into a deadly sectarian civil war, fanning the flames of extremism haunting the world today and creating the world’s second largest refugee crisis?

She replied:

 Just a few months into the demonstrations which now consisted of hundreds of armed protesters with CIA ties, demonstrations grew larger, armed non-Syrian rebel groups swarmed into Syria, and a severe government crackdown swept through the country to deter this foreign meddling. It became evident that the United States, United Kingdom, France, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Turkey would be jumping on the opportunity to organize, arm and finance rebels to form the Free Syrian Army as outlined in the State Department plans to destabilize Syria.90

 In other words, without the intervention of the United States and other countries, the protestations could have never turned into a civil war.

 Regarding the Free Syrian Army, the BBC said that by 2013 there were “believed to be as many as 1,000 armed opposition groups in Syria, commanding an estimated 100,000 fighters.”91 The most powerful of these groups were ISIS and al-Qaeda’s al-Nusra Front (which had joined ISIS only briefly). Can anyone say that Assad did not have the right to defend his democratically-elected government against these outside forces?92

As for the United States in particular, its CIA started sending large shipments of weapons by 2012. “The CIA,” reported Seymour Hersh, “was responsible for getting arms from Gaddafi’s arsenals into Syria.”93 In fact, Chris Stevens, who had become the American ambassador in Libya, was killed in Benghazi after he had come there to negotiate a transfer of several hundred tons of Gaddafi’s weapons to Syria. In what Hersh called a “rat line,” these weapons were sent from Libya to Syria via southern Turkey, in an operation headed by General David Petraeus, the then-director of the CIA, under the supervision of Secretary Clinton. Indeed, the “consulate” where Stevens was killed was really only a mission, which existed merely “to provide cover for the moving of arms,” according to a former intelligence officer.94

In 2013, during a Congressional investigation of the Benghazi attack, Clinton swore under oath that she knew nothing about the weapons shipments to Syrian rebels prior to the attack. But in 2015, Judicial Watch obtained previously classified documents from the State Department and DOD that provided the first official confirmation that the US government knew about the shipments of arms from Benghazi to Syria.95

In 2016, moreover, Julian Assange reported that Clinton’s claim was disproven by 1,700 hacked emails about Libya in Wikileaks’ Hillary Clinton collection. These emails included, said Assange, proof that Clinton pushed for weapons to be sent to “jihadists within Syria, including ISIS.”96 This would seem to mean that she had lied under oath.

In any case, the CIA, beginning in 2012, spent $1 billion a year and trained some 10,000 “moderate” rebel forces.97 This was done in spite of the fact that then-DIA director Michael Flynn, reported Hersh, “had sent a constant stream of classified warnings to the civilian leadership about the dire consequences of toppling Assad. The jihadists, he said, were in control of the opposition.” His reports, Flynn told Hersh, “got enormous pushback” from the Obama administration. “I felt,” said Flynn, “that they did not want to hear the truth.” The Joint Chiefs of Staff likewise believed, reported one of their advisors, “that Assad should not be replaced by fundamentalists.”98

Indeed, the idea that the United States and its allies were funding only moderate rebels—ones who were fighting both against Assad and the al- Qaeda jihadists—was increasingly regarded as a myth. Many observers provided evidence that there were now no moderate rebels in Syria.99

 In fact, Vice President Biden admitted this. Saying that America had been trying to identify a moderate middle for a long time, he added:

 [T]he idea of identifying a moderate middle has been a chase America has been engaged in for a long time. The fact of the matter is . . . there was no moderate middle, because the moderate middle are made up of shopkeepers, not soldiers.100

Admitting that the jihadists had been armed by America’s allies, Biden went on to say that America’s “allies in the region were our largest problem in Syria.” Turkey, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, he explained, had “poured hundreds of millions of dollars and tens, thousands of tons of weapons into anyone who would fight against Assad.” The result, Biden added, was that “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.” Biden thereby contradicted the Obama administration’s public posture, according to which, in Secretary Kerry’s words, armed “legitimate opposition groups” exist separately from Al Qaeda’s Nusra Front.101 (Gareth Porter called this “Obama’s ‘Moderate’ Syrian Deception.”102)

The administration’s claim, that the Free Syrian Army (FSA) consisted of non-terrorist rebels, was contradicted by many facts. A 2016 story reported that al-Nusra (which had changed its name to Jabhat Fatah al-Sham [Conquest of Syria Front], claiming that it was breaking ties with the al- Qaeda network103) reportedly took orders from Israel. Alastair Crooke, who had been a senior figure in British intelligence, said that “the FSA is little more than a cover for the al-Qaeda-affiliated al-Nusra.”104

In any case, besides starting to fund so-called moderate anti-Assad rebels covertly, Obama declared that Assad needed to step down. After it was learned in 2012 that Assad had chemical weapons, Obama announced that using them would be a “red line,” to which America would respond militarily. Then in 2013, there was a chemical attack, using deadly sarin gas, which reportedly killed seven hundred civilians. Arguing that Assad was responsible, neocons and other hawks pressured Obama to carry through with his “red line” declaration, and he planned a major attack on Assad’s military.

At the last minute, however, Obama cancelled the attack order. There were evidently two reasons for this cancelation. On the one hand, President Vladimir Putin convinced Assad to destroy his chemical weapons, thereby giving Obama a face-saving out.105 On the other hand, Obama became convinced, according to Seymour Hersh, that there was insufficient evidence to claim that Assad had been responsible for the sarin gas. There seem to have been three reasons for Obama’s reevaluation of the evidence:

James Clapper, he director of national intelligence, told Obama that the intelligence community lacked “slam dunk” evidence of Assad’s responsibility.

A “vector” analysis, which supposedly showed that the rockets carrying the sarin gas could have come only from Damascus, broke down, showing that they could have come from rebel territory. Relevant to this possibility is the fact that, Hersh reported, “the US and its allies knew from highly classified CIA and allied intelligence reporting throughout the spring and summer of 2013, that the jihadist opposition to Assad (primarily al-Nusra) had the ability to manufacture a crude form of sarin.”106

A British laboratory showed that, it Hersh’s words, “the gas used didn’t match the batches known to exist in the Syrian army’s chemical weapons arsenal.” The sarin gas, Hersh concluded, was a false-flag attack launched by Turkey “to instigate an event that would force the US to cross the red line.”107

It is good that Obama resisted the temptation to support an attack on Syria as a “humanitarian intervention.” But his decision not to start a war against Syria led to great pressure on him to reverse it. In 2015, for example, 51 members of the State Department—which Hillary Clinton had headed for four years, during which she gave important posts to neocons108— issued a “dissent,” saying against Obama’s policy that the US should bomb Syria until it agrees to our wishes. The dissent’s argument was based on an extremely superficial understanding of the reasons for the Syrian war. “The government’s barrel bombing of civilians,” the dissent said (according to a summary by the New York Times), “is the ‘root cause of the instability that continues to grip Syria and the broader region.’”109 This interpretation was rejected by Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, who said:

It’s true that the initial phase of the Syrian Spring seems to have been largely spontaneous. Facts show, however, that outside interveners—primarily the United States, the United Kingdom, Turkey, Israel and Saudi Arabia—cooperated in lighting the match that brought the inferno of civil war. Covert funding and provision of weapons and other material support to opposition groups for strikes against the Syrian Government provoked a military reaction by Assad—which created a pretext for our enlarged support to the rebel groups.110

Besides evidently not understanding what had been going on in Syria in 2011, the State Department “dissenters” ignored the fact that they had suggested a policy that would be completely illegal under international law.111 Moreover, they also seemed to be unaware of how terribly unwise their proposed policy would have been.

In an article asking the question “Risking Nuclear War for Al Qaeda?” Parry pointed out that for Obama to have followed the urging of Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Hillary Clinton to permit a full-out attack on Syria would have been insane. If these powers attacked Syria while Russia’s troops were there, Russia—having insufficient ground forces and conventional weapons to protect them—might have been tempted to resort to tactical nuclear weapons, and this response could easily have led to a nuclear showdown. The insanity is that “the United States [is] being urged to take on that existential risk for all humankind on behalf of preserving Al Qaeda’s hopes for raising its black flag over Damascus.”112 (An extensive discussion of the threat of nuclear war is reserved for Chapter 9.)

If the US desire for regime change in Syria was not based on Assad’s crack-down on rebels, we must deal with the question about the real reason (aside from the desire of neocons in general and Hillary Clinton in particular to help Israel—see the section on Israel below). Mnar Muhawesh said that what has been driving the chaos is “control over gas, oil and resources.”113 Wesley Clark—in his report on the Bush administration’s plan to take out seven regimes, including Syria’s—indicated that this strategy was fundamentally about the region’s oil and gas.114

Vast interests in oil and natural gas—both existing and potential—are in play. . . . Competing pipelines—one favoring the West, undercutting Russia, the other bolstering Moscow and Tehran—are in the mix.115

 Dmitry Minin, an independent analyst, wrote:

A battle is raging over whether pipelines will go toward Europe from east to west, from Iran and Iraq to the Mediterranean coast of Syria, or take a more northbound route from Qatar and Saudi Arabia via Syria and Turkey.116

Minin based his ideas primarily upon “renowned researcher on energy issues F. William Engdahl.” Engdahl is, in fact, the researcher who—along with Pepe Escobar, the author of Empire of Chaos117—has over the years written the most about gas pipelines in relation to Syria.

 F. William Engdahl on the Syrian Pipeline War

“In a fundamental sense the entirety of the five-year-long war over Syria,” Engdahl wrote in 2016, “has been about control of hydrocarbon resources— oil and natural gas—and of potential hydrocarbon pipelines to the promising markets of the European Union.”118 Political assessments, he had said in 2012, had not fully appreciated “the dramatically rising importance of the control of natural gas to the future.” This importance had been greatly enhanced in the European Union by its mandate to reduce CO2 emissions significantly by 2020, and natural gas has been considered far less polluting than coal (even if that is questionable119). The importance of this situation to the Middle East was enhanced still further by the discovery of huge natural-gas sources in Syria as well as Israel and Qatar.120

The movement toward the Syrian war as a pipeline war began in 2009, Engdahl said, after “it became clear to some geopolitical Washington strategists that Qatar could play a strategic role in pushing Russia out of the EU natural gas game and put a US-controlled supplier, Qatar, in the dominant role.” Accordingly, the Emir of Qatar, which owns the world’s largest gas field, went to Damascus in 2009 to propose to Bashar al Assad the construction of a natural gas pipeline that would begin in Qatar, cross Saudi Arabia and Syria, then end up in Turkey, where the gas would be sold to EU markets.

However, Assad declined the offer, saying that he wanted “to protect the interests of [his] Russian ally, which is Europe’s top supplier of natural gas.” Engdahl continued: “This was the beginning of the NATO decision to militarily destroy the Assad regime.” That this decision was made in 2009—rather than after Assad’s 2011 response to the protesters—was made clear by Ronald Dumas, a former French Foreign Minister, who in 2009 “revealed that British military were preparing for invasion of Assad’s Syria.” Also, the previously mentioned intelligence firm, Stratfor, reported that by 2011, “US and UK special forces’ training of Syrian opposition forces was well underway.” 121

In any case, Syria chose a competing project, an Iran-Iraq-Syria pipe- line. Iran would get its natural gas from its part of the Pars field (Qatar gets its gas from its portion of the same field) then cross Iraq and end up in Syria. “ The deal was formally announced in July 2011,” pointed out Pepe Escobar, “when the Syrian tragedy was already in motion.”122

Then in July 2012, the three countries signed a Memorandum of Understanding to construct a pipeline from Iran through Iraq to Syria. This route, sometimes called the Shi’ite Pipeline, would leave Turkey and Qatar out in the cold, so they began doing everything they could to thwart the construction of that pipeline, including arming the anti-Assad rebels. The signing of this Memorandum was also, Engdahl added, “the precise point when the US gave the green light to Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey to back regime change in Damascus—mad pipeline geopolitics.”123

Victory would open the door for the Qatar-Saudi Arabia-Turkey gas pipeline to Europe, with its huge natural gas import market. Besides bringing riches to Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey, the war would intend, said Dmitry Minin, to accomplish three goals: “to break Russia’s gas monopoly in Europe; to free Turkey from its dependence on Iranian gas; and to give Israel the chance to export its gas to Europe by land at less cost.”124

The first of these goals

was most important to Washington. Whereas Russia had been filling 40 percent of the EU’s natural gas demand, Washington wanted it and her allies to control much of the gas to meet this demand. Here we find “the true agenda behind Washington’s five-year-long war for regime change in Damascus,” said Engdahl, “a war with terrorist groups such as ISIS or Al Nusra Front-Al Qaeda in Syria financed largely by money from Qatar.”125

In sum, from the perspective of Engdahl and the other researchers discussed in this section, the Syrian War has been primarily about energy and money (not good and bad people). Indeed, Escobar’s 2015 essay on the war in Syria as a pipeline war began by stating, “Syria is an energy war.”126

The Extreme Moral Charges against Assad Contributed to Chaos

The claim that Assad was unbearably evil, like the claims about Saddam and Gaddafi, was used to get politicians and others in America and Europe to support the US drive, begun by the Bush-Cheney administration, to bring about regime change in Syria.

 But even if he were as evil as he was portrayed by US officials, this would not have justified the attempt to depose him. Colin Powell, referring to his “old Pottery Barn rule,” cautioned:

I think you have to be extremely careful. We thought we knew what would happen in Libya. We thought we knew what would happen in Egypt. We thought we knew what would happen in Iraq, and we guessed wrong. In each one of these countries the thing we have to consider is that there is some structure . . . that’s holding the society together. And as we learned, especially in Libya, when you remove the top and the whole thing falls apart. . . you get chaos.127

This chaos has resulted in a tragedy for the Syrian people. In July 2016, international lawyer Franklin Lamb wrote:

The conflict here has, according to some NGO estimates, now claimed the lives of nearly half a million Syrians, out of a pre-war population of 22 million. More than 11 percent of the Syrian population is estimated to have been killed or injured. More than five million have fled the country while approximately 8 million are internally displaced. The UN estimates that nearly 12 million people are in urgent need of humanitarian assistance, more than six million being children ranging from infants to age 12.128

The Syrian chaos resulted primarily from the Bush-Cheney administration and its neocon attitudes, which continued significantly in the Obama administration. Robert Parry observed:

In Neocon Land, it goes without saying that once the United States judges some world leader guilty for having violated international law or human rights or whatever, it is fine for the US government to “take out” that leader. . . . In this view, the “exceptional” United States has the right to invade any country of its choosing and violently remove leaders not to its liking.129

Unless this neocon way of thinking can be overcome, there will be little hope that the United States will quit causing chaos in the Greater Middle East. When this book was first planned, it appeared that the Queen of Chaos herself would be the next US president. She made it clear, said Parry, that she was “eager to use military force to achieve ‘regime change’ in countries that get in the way of US desires.”130 Indeed, argued Andre Damon, “There is little doubt that talks were underway between the Clinton campaign and the Obama administration, and planning was well advanced, for a massive US military escalation in Syria to be launched after the expected election victory of the Democratic candidate.131

Evidently realizing that the United States under Obama and Clinton was going to continue its assault on Syria, rather than helping to achieve a tolerable resolution to the Syrian situation, Russia, Iran, and Turkey set up talks without inviting the United States.132 Excluding the United States, at least under the neocon-inspired Democrats, seemed necessary to begin bringing the ruination of Syria to an end.

Moreover, the ruination resulting from the neocon ideology of the Bush-Cheney administration, continued by Obama and Secretaries Clinton and Kerry, has not been limited to the Greater Middle East. As a 2016 Newsweek article said, “The Tide of Syrian Refugees Is Unraveling Europe”133—a problem to be explored after a discussion of ISIS and Russia. . . .

Near the end of 2015, Russia’s airforce intervened in Syria to protect Assad—at Assad’s invitation. This invitation made Russia’s intervention legal, according to international law, whereas any US intervention in Syria would be illegal. (Secretary Kerry has even admitted this in private.147)

Russia’s intervention allowed Assad to take the offensive against ISIS and the other jihadists. The success of this intervention led the Obama administration to drop its public insistence that Assad had to go, but it continued to try to protect al-Nusra and other jihadists.148

Russia tried to work out a plan in which it and the United States would join forces against ISIS and other jihadists, but it soon concluded that the US was not going to cooperate but instead wanted to use ISIS against Assad’s government. So Russia, along with Syria and Hezbollah, launched “a three-prong attack intended to dispose of the US-backed jihadists.”149

The effort to clean the jihadists out of Syria focused first on Aleppo—in particular, East Aleppo, which had been under the control of al-Nusra since 2012. Not appreciating the successful beginning of this effort, the United States used this as an opportunity to claim that Russia and Syria, having deliberately targeted children and hospitals, were guilty of war crimes. The US corporate press, being almost unanimous in repeating these charges, evidently convinced most Americans that these claims were true.

However, Finian Cunningham pointed out that these press claims should not be accepted at face value, because claims of Russian and Syrian “war crimes” made by Western reporters were based on “rebel sources,” not on interviews with ordinary citizens in Aleppo. Also, much of the “information” that got reported came from the so-called “volunteer aid” group known as the White Helmets, which made many false claims about itself.

For one thing, it called itself the Syria Civil Defense, but it is not Syrian. Rather, it was created by the U.K. and the USA; it was established in Turkey; and its “volunteers” were mainly trained in Turkey and Jordan. In addition, whereas the real Syria Civil Defense has existed since 1953, the White Helmets was formed in 2013 by James Le Mesurier, a former British intelligence officer who was involved in NATO’s interventions in Bosnia and Kosovo. He then “moved into the lucrative private mercenary industry,” where he became “a mercenary with the Olive Group, a private contracting organization that is now merged with Blackwater-Academi.”150

The real Syria Civil Defense, which was founded in 1953, is the only one. “The White Helmets,” said the International Civil Defense Organization, “are not even civil defense concretely. We are working . . . only with official governments… , not the White Helmets.”151

The real Syria Civil Defense no longer operated in East Aleppo. Journalist Vanessa Beeley, who probably wrote the most about the White Helmets, said that in an interview with the real Syrian Civil Defense, inside West Aleppo, she was told that, in 2012, when various militant factions infiltrated East Aleppo, they drove out the real Syria Civil Defense crew—they massacred many, they kidnapped others, they stole equipment, including all of the ambulances and three to five re engines.152

Another false claim by White Helmets was that it was composed of “volunteers” and that it is “fiercely independent and accepts no money from governments.” In truth, it received funding from various governments, especially the U.K. ($65 million) and the US ($23 million), which had collaborated with Le Mesurier in creating the White Helmets. In particular, calling themselves “impartial,” the White Helmets claimed, “We’re not being paid by anybody to pursue a particular line.”153 However, Abdulrahman Al Mawwas, the chief liaison officer of the White Helmets, confirmed that the group was sponsored by the Western governments.154

In any case, this organization did have a very particular, twofold purpose: First, to demonize Assad as a butcher, who killed his own people indiscriminately, so as to argue the need for a no-fly zone (which was, of course, how the attacks on Iraq and Libya began). In campaigning for a no-fly zone, the White Helmets were working together with the public relations organization Avaaz, which had delivered a petition with 1,203,000 signatures to the UN for the Libya no-fly zone. In 2015, Avaaz began trying for a million signatures for a “Safe Zone” petition for Syria.155

Second, although the White Helmets served as a terrorist support group, “in the sense of bringing equipment, arms, even funding, into Syria,” said Beeley, their “primary function is propaganda,” as investigative journal Rick Sterling explained.156

Whereas the US press willingly accepts such propaganda, which supports our government’s negative description of Assad and hence Putin, independent journalists who have spent time in Syria, where they have talked to ordinary Syrians, have presented views of Assad that disagree radically with the claims of White Helmets and the US press. See, for example, interviews of journalist Eva Bartlett, who said, “The Media Is Lying to You!” and Vanessa Beeley, who said, “Everything the US Media Says about Aleppo Is Wrong.”157

Similarly, the highly respected journalist Stephen Kinzer wrote a Boston Globe article entitled “The Media Are Misleading the Public on Syria.” Although the truth about Aleppo was being reported by “brave correspondents in the war zone,” Kinzer said, their reports do “not fit with Washington’s narrative. As a result, much of the American press is reporting the opposite of what is actually happening.”158

David Ray Griffin is a retired American professor of philosophy of religion and theology, and a political writer.

 

 ENDNOTES

55 Mnar Muhawesh, “Refugee Crisis & Syria War Fueled by Competing Gas Pipelines,” MintPress News, 9 September 2015.

 56 Lydia Depillis et al., “A Visual Guide to 75 Years of Major Refugee Crises around the World,” Washington Post, 21 December 2015.

 57 Tyler Durden, “A Short History: The Neocon ‘Clean Break’ Grand Design & the ‘Regime Change’ Disasters It Has Fostered,” Zero Hedge, 1 July 2015.

 58 “Navigating through Turbulence: America and the Middle East in a New Century,” Washington Institute for Near East Policy, 2001.

 59 William Kristol, “Lead the World to Victory,” Project for the New American Century, 20 September 2001.

 60 Charles Glass, “Is Syria Next?” London Review of Books, 3 July 2003.

 61 Robert Parry, “Risking Nuclear War for Al Qaeda?” Consortium News, 18 February 2016.

 62 Adrian Salbuchi, “Why the US, UK, EU & Israel Hate Syria,” RT, 10 September, 2013; William Blum, “Why Does the Government of the United States Hate Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad,” Information Clearing House, 4 November 2015.

 63 Andrew Cockburn, “The United States Teams Up With Al Qaeda . . . Again,” Harper’s, 18 December 2015.

 64 Jonathan Marshall, “The US Hand in the Syrian Mess,” Consortium News, 20 July 2015.

 65 Robert Parry, “Democrats Are Now the Aggressive War Party,” Consortium News, 11 June 2016.

 66 Marshall, “The US Hand in the Syrian Mess.”

 67 Seymour M. Hersh, “The Redirection,” New Yorker, 5 March 2007.

 68 Robert Naiman, “WikiLeaks Reveals How the US Aggressively Pursued Regime Change in Syria, Igniting a Bloodbath,” The WikiLeaks Files: The World According to US Empire (Verso, 2015), Chapter 10.

 69 Ibid.

 70 Andrew Freedman, “The Worst Drought in 900 Years Helped Spark Syria’s Civil War,” Mashable, 2 March 2016; Elaisha Stokes, “The Drought that Preceded Syria’s Civil War Was Likely the Worst in 900 Years,” Vice News, 3 March 2016; Francesco Femia and Caitlin Werrell, “Syria: Climate Change, Drought and Social Unrest,” Think Progress, 3 March 2012.

 71 James Fallows, “Your Labor Day Syria Reader, Part 2: William Polk,” Atlantic, 2 September 2013.

 72 Femia and Werrell, “Syria.” Ibid.; Jan Selby and Mike Hulme, “Is Climate Change Really to Blame for Syria’s Civil War?” Guardian, 29 November 2015.

 73 Femia and Werrell, “Syria.”

 74 Fallows, “Your Labor Day Syria Reader, Part 2: William Polk.”

 76 Jonathan Marshall, “Hidden Origins of Syria’s Civil War,” Consortium News, 20 July 2015.

 77 Ibid.

 78 Ibid.

 79 Joshua Landis, “The Armed Gangs Controversy,” Syria Comment, 3 August 2011.

 80 Ibid.

 81 F. William Engdahl, The Lost Hegemon: Whom the Gods Would Destroy (mine.Books, 2016).

 82 Marshall, “Hidden Origins of Syria’s Civil War.”

 83 Ibid.

 84 Engdahl, The Lost Hegemon, 261.

 85 Marshall, “Hidden Origins of Syria’s Civil War.”

 86 Jim Lobe, “US Brief Talks with Syria Spur Speculation,” Inter Press Service, 30 September 2008.

 87 Fallows, “Your Labor Day Syria Reader, Part 2: William Polk.

 88 Muhawesh, “Refugee Crisis & Syria War Fueled by Competing Gas Pipelines.”

 89 Robert Parry, “The NYT’s Neocon ‘Downward Spiral,’” Consortium News, 6 October 2016.

 90 Muhawesh, “Refugee Crisis & Syria War Fueled by Competing Gas Pipelines.”

 91 “Guide to the Syrian Rebels,” BBC News, 13 December 2013.

 92 In June of [2014], wrote Steve MacMillan, “Assad won Syria’s Presidential election with 88.7 percent of the vote. . . . A group of international observers emphasized that the election was a valid and democratic expression of the views of the Syrian people.” Steve MacMillan, “Bashar al-Assad: The Democratically Elected President of Syria,” Near Eastern Outlook, 20 December 2015.

 93 Seymour M. Hersh, “The Red Line and the Rat Line,” London Review of Books, April 2014; see also Frederick Reese, “Seymour Hersh: Benghazi Attack a Consequence of Weapons ‘Rat-Line’ to Syria,” Mint Press News, 21 April 2014.

 94 Ibid.; Aaron Klein, “CIA Ops Finally Revealed: What the US Ambassador in Benghazi was Really Doing,” Global Research, 23 October 2015; Gareth Porter, “Why the US Owns the Rise of Islamic State and the Syria Disaster,” TruthDig, 8 October 2015.

 95 “Defense, State Department Documents Reveal Obama Administration Knew that al Qaeda Terrorists Had Planned Benghazi Attack 10 Days in Advance,” Judicial Watch, 18 May 2015.

 96 Alex Christoforou, “Julian Assange Says ‘1,700 Emails in Hillary Clinton’s Collection’ Proves She Sold Weapons to ISIS in Syria,” The Duran/Democracy Now; James Barrett, “WikiLeaks: Hacked Emails Prove Hillary Armed Jihadists In Syria—Including ISIS,” Daily Wire, 1 August 2016.

 97 Eric Schmitt, “C.I.A. Said to Aid in Steering Arms to Syrian Opposition,” New York Times, 21 June 2012; C.J. Chivers and Eric Schmitt,” Arms Airlift to Syria Rebels Expands, With Aid from C.I.A.,” International New York Times, 24 March 2013; Trevor Timm, “The US Decision to Send Weapons to Syria Repeats a Historical Mistake,” Guardian, 19 September 2015; Adam Johnson, “Down the Memory Hole: NYT Erases CIA’s Efforts to Overthrow Syria’s Government,” Common Dreams, 21 September 2015.

 98 “Military to Military—Seymour M. Hersh on US Intelligence Sharing in the Syrian War,” London Review of Books, January 2016.

 99 Ben Reynolds, “There Are No Moderate Syrian Rebels,” Counterpunch, 3 October 2014; Stephen Lendman, “No Moderate Syrian Rebels Exist,” Global Research, 6 November 2015.

 100 Quoted in Jonathan Marshall, “The US Hand in the Syrian Mess.”

 101 Ibid.; Parry, “Risking Nuclear War for Al Qaeda?”

 102 Gareth Porter, “Obama’s ‘Moderate’ Syrian Deception,” Consortium News, 16 February 2016.

 103 “Nusra Front’s Rebranding: Story of Rats Trying to Pass for Flurry White Rabbits” Sputnik International, 6 August 2016.

 104 “Syrian Militants in Tumult after Israel Moves to Restructure Fatah Al-Sham Command in Quneitra,” FARS News Agency, 28 September 2016; Alastair Crooke, “How the US Armed-Up Syrian Jihadists,” Consortium News, September 29, 2016.

 105 Mark Landler and Jonathan Weisman, “Obama Delays Syria Strike to Focus on a Russian Plan,” New York Times, 10 September 2013; Juan Cole, “How Putin Saved Obama, Congress and the European Union from Further Embarrassing Themselves on Syria,” Informed Comment, 10 September 2013.

 106 Mark Karlin, “Seymour Hersh on White House Lies about bin Laden’s Death, Pakistan and the Syrian Civil War,” Truthout, 14 August 2016.

 107 Robert Parry, “Will We Miss President Obama?” Consortium News, 19 March 2016; Parry, “ e Collapsing Syria-Sarin Case,” Consortium News, 7 April 2014; Seymour M. Hersh, “ e Red Line and the Rat Line,” London Review of Books, April 2014.

 108 Robert Parry, “Neocons Have Weathered the Storm,” Consortium News, 15 March 2014.

 109 Mark Landler, “51 US Diplomats Urge Strikes Against Assad in Syria,” New York Times, 16 June 2015.

 110 Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, “Intel Vets Call ‘Dissent Memo’ on Syria ‘Reckless,’” Consortium News, 25 June 2016.

 111 Center for Citizen Initiatives, “Seeking a Debate on ‘Regime Change’ Wars,” Consortium News, 20 June 2016; Marjorie Cohn, “US Bombing Syrian Troops Would Be Illegal,” Consortium News, 22 June 2016.

 112 Parry, “Risking Nuclear War for Al Qaeda?”

 113 Muhawesh, “Refugee Crisis & Syria War Fueled by Competing Gas Pipelines.”

 114 James Huang, “Who Exclusive: Gen. Wesley Clark on Oil, War and Activism,” Who. What. Why., 24 September 2012.

 115 Chris Floyd, “Seeing Ghosts: History’s Nightmares Return in Syria,” Empire Burlesque, 12 January 2016.

 116 Dmitry Minin, “The Geopolitics of Gas and the Syrian Crisis,” Strategic Cultural Foundation, 31 May 2013.

 117 Pepe Escobar, Empire of Chaos (Nimble Pluribus, 2014).

 118 F. William Engdahl, “The Syrian Pipeline War: How Russia Trumped USA Energy War in the Mideast,” Russia Insider, 21 September 2016.

 119 See David Ray Griffin, Unprecedented: Can Civilization Survive the CO2 Crisis? (Clarity Press, 2015), 369-72.

 120 F. William Engdahl, “Syria, Turkey, Israel and the Greater Middle East Energy War,” Global Research, October 11, 2012

 121 F. William Engdahl, “Silence of the Lambs-Refugees, EU and Syrian Energy Wars,” NEO, 10 November 2016.

 122 Pepe Escobar, “Syria: Ultimate Pipelineistan War,” Strategic Culture, 7 December 2015.

 123 Engdahl, “The Syrian Pipeline War.”

 124 Minin, “The Geopolitics of Gas and the Syrian Crisis.

 125 Engdahl, “The Syrian Pipeline War.”.

 126 Escobar, “Syria: Ultimate Pipelineistan War.”

 127 Kathy Gilsinan, “The Pottery Barn Rule: Syria Edition,” Atlantic, 30 September 2015.

 128 Franklin Lamb, “Don’t Cry for Us Syria. . . . The Truth Is We Shall Never Leave You!” Counterpunch, 29 July 2016.

 129 Parry, “Delusional US ‘Group Think’ on Syria, Ukraine.”

 130 Parry, “Democrats Are Now the Aggressive War Party.”

 131 Andre Damon, “The Media Disinformation Campaign on Russian Hacking and the US Debacle in Syria,” Global Research, 9 January 2017.

 132 Ben Hubbard and David E. Sanger, “Russia, Iran and Turkey Meet for Syria Talks, Excluding US,” New York Times, 20 December 2016.

 133 Judy Dempsey, “The Tide of Syrian Refugees Is Unraveling Europe,” Newsweek, 25 February 2016.

 134 Karen Yourish et al., “Where ISIS Has Directed and Inspired Attacks around the World,” International New York Times, 22 March 2016; “List of Terrorist Incidents Linked to ISIL,” Wikipedia.

 135 Terrence McCoy, “How the Islamic State Evolved in an American Prison,” Washington Post, 4 November 2014.

 136 Bobby Ghosh, “ISIS: A Short History,” Atlantic, 14 August 2014; “Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant,” Wikipedia.

 137 Bill Palmer, “Why President Obama’s Correct Usage of ‘ISIL’ vs ‘ISIS’ Drives Ignorant People Crazy,” Daily News Bin, 20 December 2015; Kathya, “Why Obama Says ‘ISIL’ instead of ‘ISIS’ — Conspiracy Theory v. Logic,” Liberal America, 11 December 2015.

 138 Stephen Zunes, “The US and the Rise of ISIS,” National Catholic Reporter, 10 December 2015.

 139 Lauren Boyer, “Former US Military Official Says George W. Bush Created ISIS,” US News, 1 December 2015.

 140 Andrew Bacevich, “ e George W. Bush Refugees,” Politico, 18 September 2015.

 141 Andrew Kirell, “4 Most Noteworthy Moments from Obama’s Interview with Vice News,” 16 March 2015.

 142 Savage, Power Wars, 684-86.

 143 Pamela Engel, “ e Air War against ISIS Is Costing the US about $11 Million a Day,” Business Insider, 19 January 2016.

 144 David Swanson, “ e US Wants the Islamic State Group to Win in Syria,” TeleSUR, 29 March 2016.

 145 Chris Floyd, “Seeing Ghosts: History’s Nightmares Return in Syria,” Empire Burlesque, 12 January 2016.

 146 Eric Margolis, “US Fight against ‘Covert Western Asset’ ISIS Is a ‘Big Charade,’” Ron Paul Institute, 2 October 2015; “‘US Has Always Been Main Sponsor of Islamic State’—Former CIA Contractor to RT,” RT, 29 September 2016.

 147 Anne Barnard, “Audio Reveals What John Kerry Told Syrians Behind Closed Doors,” New York Times, 30 September 2016.

 148 Simon Tidsdall, “US Changes Its Tune on Syrian Regime Change as ISIS Threat Takes Top Priority,” Guardian, 25 January 2015.

 149 Mike Whitney, “Putin Ups the Ante: Cease re Sabotage Triggers Major Offensive in Aleppo,” Smirking Chimp, 27 September 2016.

 150 Vanessa Beeley, ‘’White Helmets Campaign for War Not Peace—RLA & Nobel Peace Prize Nomination should be Retracted,” 2 October 2016; Beeley, “ e REAL Syria Civil Defence Exposes Fake ‘White Helmets’ as Terrorist-Linked Imposters,” 21st Century Wire, 23 September 2016; Max Blumenthal, “How the ‘White Helmets’ Became Global Heroes While Pushing for US Military Intervention in Syria,” Alternet, 4 October, 2016; Tim Anderson, The Dirty War On Syria: Washington, Regime Change and Resistance (Global Research Publishers, 2016), 75.

 151 “Syria’s White Helmets Are Multi-million Funded, ‘Can’t Be Independent,’” RT, 7 October 2016.

 152 “Syrian White Helmets a ‘Terrorist Support Group & Western Propaganda Tool,’” RT, 25 October 2016.

 153 Beeley, ‘’White Helmets Campaign for War Not Peace.”

 154 “‘We Don’t Hide It’: White Helmets Openly Admit Being Funded by Western Govts,” RT, 19 October 2016.

 155 Max Blumenthal, “Inside the Shadowy PR Firm That’s Lobbying for Regime Change in Syria,” Alternet, 3 October 2016.

 156 “Syrian White Helmets a ‘Terrorist Support Group’”; Sterling, “Seven Steps of Highly Effective Manipulators.”

 157 See “Journalist Eva Bartlett, ‘I’m Back from Syria. The Media Is Lying to You!’” The Event Chronicle, 13 February 2016; “Liberty Report Talks to Vanessa Beeley: ‘Everything the US Media Says about Aleppo Is Wrong,’” Liberty Report, 29 September 2016. She should not be described as an “Assad supporter,” Beeley said, because she has various criticisms of him. She simply disagrees with the view that Syria should be destroyed in order to save it.

 158 Stephen Kinzer, “The Media Are Misleading the Public on Syria,” Boston Globe, 18 February 2016.

 159 David W. Lesche and James Gelvin, “Assad Has Won in Syria. But Syria Hardly Exists,” New York Times, 11 January 2017.

 160 “Audio Evidence: John Kerry Privately Confirms Supporting and Arming Daesh,” Voltaire Network, 13 January 2017; referring to “Absolutely Stunning—Leaked Audio of Secretary Kerry Reveals President Obama Intentionally Allowed Rise of ISIS,” The Last Refuge (The Conservative Tree House), 1 January 2017.</s></s>“I would clarify here that the history of these three states [U.S., Britain and France] is built on using lies and fabricated stories to wage aggressive wars in order to occupy states, seize their resources, and change governments in them by [genocidal] force.” Dr Bashar al-Jaafari, Syrian Ambassador to the U.N.

On 14 April 2018, the U.S., France and Britain committed another barbaric act of aggression against the majority-Muslim nation of Syria. Donald Trump, Emmanuelle Macron and Theresa May claim that their combined aggression was in response to the alleged “chemical attack” in the Damascus suburb of Douma (in the Ghouta district) by the Syrian Government. The aggression was an act of state terrorism in flagrant violation of UN Charter, the principles of international law and civilised norms.

The attacks targeted a University building, the Higher Institute for Applied Science and Technology (HIAST). Before the attack, the building is used to produce pharmaceutical products and testing toys for safety for a nation under criminal sanctions. By targeting a university and a research centre, the U.S.-led criminals were apparently trying “to destroy Syria’s scientific capabilities as the Centre was pursuing various civilian-use [research] objectives,” said Anton Utkin, a Russian chemical weapons expert. It is a deliberate war crime. The building was previously used by the international Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW). The other targets were empty storage facilities near Homs, and the Dumayr airfield. The timing of the aggression came just hours before the OPCW experts were set to arrive in Syria – at the request of the Syrian government – to visit the suburb of Douma on Saturday to establish whether chemical weapons had been used there last week. It is possible that the attacks were aimed at sabotaging the OPCW mission and preventing a serious investigation. Tampering with evidence is a U.S. tradition.

The reaction of the Russian government to U.S.-led aggression was restrained, despite having considerable military forces, including advanced military aircrafts and ant-aircraft missile batteries, legally deployed in in Syria. With the usual “civilised” rhetoric towards Western leaders, Russian President Vladimir Putin rightly observed that, the attacks were, “an aggression against a sovereign state which is at the forefront of the fight against international terrorism”. One thing the aggression on Syria proves, is that the U.S., France, and Britain are acting as air force for the terrorists, protecting them and facilitating their terror advances.

Meanwhile, the Syrian and Iranian governments condemned the aggression as a “barbaric” and “criminal” violation of Syria’s sovereignty that would only embolden the remaining terrorists there. “The attitude of the French, British and Americans is the same attitude, which used by Adolf Hitler in 1939 to enter into World War Two,” said senior German politician (CDU,) Mr Willy Wimmer. The difference is that, the U.S and its vassal-state allies (namely Britain, France and Israel) are far more dangerous and pose greater threat to world’s peace and humanity than Germany under Hitler. The U.S.-led reign of terror is holding the whole world hostage.

While the world’s eyes have been glazed over by the propaganda of chemical attack in Syria, little notice is given to the on-going massacre of unarmed Palestinian demonstrators by the Israeli army. They were protesting on their own land occupied by the Israeli fascist regime. On “Good Friday”, Israeli soldiers deliberately and in cold blood murdered more than 20 unarmed Palestinian protesters inside the Gaza Concentration Camp, many of them shot in the back. The U.S. gave the Israeli terrorists the green light to shoot to kill peaceful Palestinian protesters. The massacre of Palestinians was endorsed by most Jewish organisations, including the fifty-two Major Jewish American Organisations, who control the U.S. Congress. It is certain that the U.S.-led aggression on Syria was at the Israeli regime’s behest to divert attention away from the regime war crimes against the Palestinians.

The U.S., Britain and France pretend to be concern about “human rights” in Syria in the same way Hitler used human rights to justify his aggression and war crimes. Trump, Macron and May claimed that the aggression against Syria was in retaliation to what they alleged a chemical attack by the Syrian Government on civilians in the city of Douma, which was until recently occupied by Western-backed international terrorists (ISIS, al-Qaeda, Jaish al-Islam and their affiliates). They did not provide any evidence to substantiate their allegation. More on this later.

Since when these three outlaw imperialists became concern about civilians? In fact, in all their wars and genocidal sanctions against sovereign nations, the civilian population were the main target. The U.S., Britain and France have killed far more civilians in the countries they attacked than any other military power. The mass murder of innocent Iraqi civilians is a case in point.

The U.S., Britain and France are the greatest violators of human rights. Their imperialist hands are stained with the blood of African, Iraqi, Syrian, Afghan, Libyan, Palestinian and Yemeni women and children. The U.S. and its attack dog Israel have used chemical weapons to attack civilians in Vietnam, Iraq, and Palestine. Only the most naïve people in the world would buy into such a cock and bull story. Their compassion for the victims of their imperialist wars stops at their borders. For example, the U.S. has admitted no more than 40 Syrian refuges to settle in the U.S. this year, a more than 99% decrease from the 5,800 admitted last year (Washington Post, 12 April 2018). Britain, France and other U.S. vassal-state allies are not better when it comes to human rights of refugees.

There was no chemical attack in Douma. According to on the ground reports by German n-tv and Robert Fisk of the Independent newspaper, People were suffering from hypoxia, oxygen loss because of dust clouds created by the terrorists’ intense shelling (YouTube Video). The morally-corrupt U.S., Britain and France are falsely accusing President Bashar al-Assad of “gassing his own people”. They did not provide a single shred of evidence to support this dirty propaganda. Indeed, on 12 April 2018, U.S. Secretary of Defence James Mattis told the House Armed Services Committee that the U.S. government does not have any evidence that sarin or chlorine was used by the Syrian forces, and that he was still looking for evidence. Furthermore, the Syrian forces have no reason to use chemical weapons. Having liberated Ghouta and Douma from the Western-sponsored international terrorists, who were recruited, armed, funded and defended by the U.S. and its allies (Anderson, 2016), it is increasingly unlikely that the Syrian forces would use chemical weapons against their compatriots, mostly women and children.

There are overwhelming evidence that the allegation of chemical attack was a false flag terrorist attack staged by Western-sponsored terrorists and Western media as detailed by Gregory Shupak, Fair, and Virginia State’s Senator Richard Black. Moreover, former Britain’s Ambassador to Syria, Peter Ford told BBC Radio Scotland, that the chemical attack in Douma “has been staged”. False flag terrorism is a Western tradition. The false flag attack was coordinated with the British intelligence services, the C.I.A. and Western-funded NGOs, such as “White Helmets” (a.k.a. al-Qaeda). The “White Helmets” are funded by the C.I.A. and the British Foreign Office, while the “Syrian-American Medical Society” or SAMS is funded by the USAID and the State Department. Both NGOs are propaganda organs working on behalf of the terrorists (Max Blumenthal, Mint Press). They fabricate lies as a provocation to mislead public opinions and justify aggression against Syria, and of course whip up anti-Russia hysteria. They have unfettered access to Western media to disseminate anti-Syria propaganda. Western NGOs are funded, not because of their “humanitarian” work. They are funded to shape the way abuses and crimes are reported. They are funded because they are cheerleaders for Western aggression. For example, in the West, the “White Helmets” group is known as a humanitarian NGO, but in Syria, it is a terrorist group that committed atrocities against Syrian civilians living under the terrorists imposed reign of terror.

The Syrian government destroyed all its chemical stockpiles several years ago. In 2013, Syria’s stockpiles were handed over to the U.S. and Russia as part of a joint international deal and were destroyed aboard U.S. naval vessel. It was verified by OPCW inspectors. Hence, Syria is clean of chemical weapon. It is important to remember that, in 2003, the U.S. and Britain used the same fabricated lies – accused Iraq of possessing weapons of mass destruction – to justify a premeditated and indiscriminate barbaric attack on Iraq. The illegal military invasion and subsequent military occupation of Iraq caused the death of more than 2.5 million innocent Iraqi civilians and left Iraq lies in ruins. Iraq remains under Nazi-like U.S. military occupation. Today’s Iraq has practically no domestic industry, most Iraqis are living below the poverty line and the literacy of the population has never been as low as it is today. The looted country has become a dumping ground for cheap and outdated U.S. products. Only immoral people will want Syria to suffer the same reign of terror and suffering inflicted on Iraq.

According to the Russian Ministry of Defence (MoD) and the Web Site, Zero Hedge: Out of the 103 or 105 Tomahawk “smart” missiles used by the three aggressor states against Syrian targets, 71 were successfully shot-down by the Syrian Arab Army using out-dated 30 year old Soviet era anti-aircraft systems. In addition, the French Navy confirmed that several French missiles failed to fire. The Dumayr airfield, one of the coalition main targets, emerged completely unharmed. The aggression was nothing more than a hollow show of force that failed to produce Trump’s so-called “perfectly executed mission”. It is a political charade. Independent media reports from Syria after the attacks show Syrians dancing in the morning following the Syrian military’s successful repulsion of an attempted Western aggression on their nation. The “Syrian people are celebrating a historic victory in a battle that threatened to take the entire world to war”, writes Venessa Beeley, an independent correspondent for 21stCentury Wire. The silence of Western media designed to cover-up a different reality, which if it is exposed it will destroy U.S.-Western fabricated image of military “invincibility”.

The U.S. and its vassal-state allies have no interests in Syria. Their primary interest is to destroy and occupy Syria for Israel. The destruction of Syria is part of a planned U.S. aggression to destroy seven Muslim-majority nations, starting with Iraq, moving to Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Iran. The perpetrators of this criminal plan are the pro-Israel U.S. neo-Nazis, better known as the “Neocon cabal”. Their aim is to destabilise the region to safeguard Israel’s fascist interests. It is important to remember that, Trump, Macron and May were put in their positions by big corporations and wealthy pro-Israel Zionists, “the Deep State”, which controls most Western regimes. The deep State constitutes of wealthy and influential (special interests) Jews who control the Western media, the Internet (Google and Facebook), Hollywood industry, and world’s financial system, including Wall Street, and Rothschild Bank. In fact, Emmanuel Macron, Europe’s most enthusiastic supporter of terrorism today, was groomed and put in office by pro-Israel wealthy Jews, including his former employer, Rothschild Bank. It follows that, the barbaric aggression against Syria – like all other U.S.-led wars on Muslim-majority nations – is a war for the fascist state of Israel. The aggression against Syria was an attempt by both Macron and May to show their loyalty and win the approval of the pro-Israel Zionists who put them in office.

As professor Tim Anderson writes: “Although every war makes ample use of lies and deception, the dirty war on Syria has relied a level of mass disinformation not seen in living memory.” The U.S.-led aggression against Syria is another clear case of barbarism. It is paramount that the force of lies and propaganda be exposed and defeated to save world’s peace. Trump, Macron and May should be held accountable in court of law for their barbaric aggression on Syria.



 Ghali Hassan is an independent political analyst and researcher living in Australia.</s>The U.S. Role in the Destruction of Syria 

 By David Ray Griffin

“Information Clearing House” – In Syria, the goal of creating chaos has succeeded in spades. Mnar Muhawesh wrote: [F]oreign powers have sunk the nation into a nightmare combination of civil war, foreign invasion and terrorism. Syrians are in the impossible position of having to choose between living in a warzone, being targeted by groups like ISIS and the Syrian government’s brutal crack- down, or faring dangerous waters with minimal safety equipment only to be denied food, water and safety by European governments if they reach shore.

Of course, many Syrians were unable, or chose not to try, to reach Europe. Continuing her discussion of the refugee crisis created by the destabilization of Syria, Muhawesh added:

Other Syrians seeing the chaos at home have turned to neighboring Arab Muslim countries. Jordan alone has absorbed over half a million Syrian refugees; Lebanon has accepted nearly 1.5 million; and Iraq and Egypt have taken in several hundred thousand. . . . Turkey has [by 2015] taken in nearly 2 million refugees.55

By the end of 2015, the conflict in Syria had “displaced 12 million people, creating the largest wave of refugees to hit Europe since World War II.”56

Planning to Destabilize Syria

 

 Some neocons had come into office with preformed ideas about destabilizing Syria. As mentioned earlier, Richard Perle and other neocons had prepared a 1996 paper for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, en- titled “A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm.” It suggested that Israel seek peace with some neighbors while beginning to topple the regimes of its enemies, especially Iraq, Iran, and Syria. Although regime change in Iraq would be the first goal, it would be achieved primarily for the sake of “weakening, containing, and even rolling back Syria,” ultimately overthrowing Bashar al-Assad. In other words, the road to Damascus would run through Baghdad.57

When Bush and Cheney took control of the White House, a new largely neocon document, “Navigating through Turbulence: America and the Middle East in a New Century,” had the same message: “ e two main targets” of the new administration, the document said, “should be Syria and Iraq.”58 In 2001, a week after the 9/11 attacks, 40 members of the Project for the New American Century, led by Bill Kristol, wrote a letter to President Bush saying:

We believe the administration should demand that Syria and Iran immediately cease all military, financial and political support for Hizbollah [sic] and its operations. Should Iran and Syria refuse to comply, the Administration should consider appropriate measures of retaliation against these known state sponsors of terrorism.59

A few months later, Assistant Secretary of State John Bolton accused Syria of developing chemical and biological weapons and warned Damascus that it might be included in the “axis of evil.” Shortly thereafter, the State Department declared Syria to be a sponsor of terrorism, after which Congress made most US dealings with Syria illegal.60

The Bush-Cheney Hostility to Syria

 

 The Bush-Cheney administration was hostile to Syria partly because Israel was hostile to Syria, and especially to its president, Bashar al-Assad. Syria had opposed Israel and especially Zionism; Syria had been aligned with Iran, which Israel considers its major threat.

 More generally, Assad is an Alawite, which is a branch of Shiite Islam, and Assad has been viewed as, said Parry, the centerpiece of the “Shiite crescent” stretching from Iran through Iraq and Syria to Lebanon. Since Israeli leaders (and thus the American neocons) see Iran as Israel’s greatest enemy, the goal of collapsing the “Shiite crescent” has concentrated on bringing down Assad.61

More particularly, Israel has been hostile to Syria because it had sup- ported Lebanon’s paramilitary fighting force, Hezbollah, which defeated Israel militarily in 2006; and although Israel in the 1967 war took Syria’s Golan Heights—which now provides 15 percent of Israel’s water—Syria wants it back. More generally, Syria, with the assistance of Hezbollah, had prevented Israel from realizing its goal of taking control of land that, it claims, belongs to it by divine right.

There have been, in addition, several other reasons for the US hostility to Syria, Assad in particular. An overarching one is that Syria has remained independent of the US-dominated global order. For example, Syria has its own state-owned bank and has no IMF loans through which it could be ordered around. And Syria has refused to be included within the American empire. The document “Navigating through Turbulence” complained that “[m]aintaining a strong alliance with Israel” had not prevented “every state on Israel’s border, except Syria, from accepting America as their principal source of military aid and matériel.”62

As to why Syria did not want to be absorbed into the American empire: American politicians and media do not remind the world that four years before the CIA overthrew Iran’s elected government in 1953, it had over- thrown Syria’s government for the same reason—the price of oil.63

For a variety of reasons, “ousting the Assad dynasty,” said Parry, had been “a top neocon/Israeli goal since the 1990s,” so the Bush-Cheney administration was from the beginning intent on destabilizing Syria. In 2002, Under-Secretary of State John Bolton named Syria as one of the “rogue states” that “can expect to become our targets.”64

Knowing how he was regarded, Assad made many attempts to develop better relations. In 2004, Assad started secret peace talks in Turkey with Israel, offering what Israel’s leading newspaper called “a far reaching and equitable peace treaty that would provide for Israel’s security.”65

Although the talks were supported by a large number of senior Israelis, “the Bush administration nixed them”— not surprisingly, because Cheney was “an implacable opponent of engagement with Syria.”66 In 2007, the Bush-Cheney administration, discussing “a new strategic alignment in the Middle East,” distinguished between “reformers” and “extremists,” placing Syria, along with Iran and Hezbollah, in the latter category. According to Seymour Hersh’s 2007 article “The Redirection,” the US participated in clandestine operations aimed at Syria as well as Iran.67

Information about what went on behind the scenes in the Bush-Cheney administration has been provided by WikiLeaks, which had obtained the cables of William Roebuck, the political counselor for the US Embassy in Damascus. These cables are discussed by Robert Naiman in a chapter of Julian Assange’s The WikiLeaks Files, entitled “WikiLeaks Reveals How the US Aggressively Pursued Regime Change in Syria, Igniting a Bloodbath.” Roebuck’s cables show, according to Naiman, that regime change had been a long-standing goal of US policy; [and] that the US promoted sectarianism in support of its regime-change policy, thus helping lay the foundation for the sectarian civil war and massive bloodshed that we see in Syria today.68

Some commentators today suggest that the US hostility to Assad began with his brutal response to the Arab Spring protests in 2011. However, “as far back as 2006— five years before ‘Arab Spring’ protests in Syria,” reported Naiman, the cables show that “destabilizing the Syrian government was a central motivation of US policy,” and Roebuck’s cables suggested strategies for doing this. Accordingly, said Naiman:

 We are told in the West that the current efforts to topple the Syrian government by force were a reaction to the Syrian government’s repression of dissent in 2011, but now we know that “regime change” was the policy of the US and its allies ve years earlier.

According to these cables, Naiman summarized, the top US diplomat in Syria believed that the goal of US policy in Syria should be to destabilize the Syrian government by any means available; that the US should work to increase Sunni-Shia sectarianism in Syria. . . ; the US should try to strain relations between the Syrian government and other Arab governments, and then blame Syria for the strain; that the US should seek to stoke Syrian government fears of coup plots in order to provoke the Syrian government to overreact. . . ; the US should work to undermine Syrian economic reforms and discourage foreign investment; that the US should seek to foster the belief that the Syrian government was not legitimate; that violent protests in Syria were praiseworthy.69

The 2011 Protests and the Obama Administration

 

 The Obama administration publicly gave the same reason for hostility to Assad, namely, his excessive reaction to the 2011 uprising against him— a reaction that led to major protests, which soon turned into a civil war between Assad and rebel forces.

 The Need for a Balanced View: However, that was a very limited understanding of the events: The conflict resulted from a complex interplay of factors, some of which were Assad’s fault, some of which were not. One of the factors that was not his fault was the beginning in 2006 of a drought in Syria, which some climate scientists said to be the worst in 900 years; other scientists even call it the worst since agricultural civilization began many thousands of years ago.70 Describing the context for the war, William Polk wrote:

In some areas, all agriculture ceased. In others crop failures reached 75%. And generally as much as 85% of livestock died of thirst or hunger. Hundreds of thousands of Syria’s farmers gave up, abandoned their farms and ed to the cities and towns in search of almost non-existent jobs and severely short food supplies. Outside observers including UN experts estimated that between 2 and 3 million of Syria’s 10 million rural inhabit- ants were reduced to “extreme poverty.”

Also, added Polk, “hundreds of thousands of Palestinians and Iraqis had in previous years taken refuge there, so that the new Syrian refugees had to compete with them for jobs, water, and food.”71

By 2008, the representative of the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization had described the situation as “a perfect storm,” which threatened Syria with “social destruction.”72

However, Assad made the effects of the drought worse by poor governance. Central to this was what Francesco Femia and Caitlin Werrell called criminal mismanagement of Syria’s natural resources, which contributed to water shortages for farmers. Favoring the big farmers over the poor farming communities, Assad’s regime subsidized wheat and cotton, which are water-intensive, and it also allowed unsustainable farming and irrigation techniques. It even allowed the big farmers to take all the water they wanted from the aquifer (although this was illegal), while the government’s wasteful use of water also meant that rural people needed to drill for water, thereby emptying the aquifers. Moreover, Assad gave no aid to the increas- ingly poor farmers, and even raised their expenses: While subsidizing the wheat and cotton farmers, Assad damaged ordinary farmers by cutting subsidies for diesel and fertilizers.73

Because of the severe drought and Assad’s mismanagement, almost a million people, having lost their livelihoods by 2009, were forced to move to the slums, and many more were to follow. By 2011, about a million people had insufficient food. There is little room for doubt, therefore, that the beginnings of the Syrian opposition movement were originally rooted in Assad’s own destructive policies (in conjunction with the drought).74

An important factor in this insufficient food supply was another feature of criminal mismanagement: “Lured by the high price of wheat on the world market, it sold its reserves.” Accordingly, Polk said:

[T]ens of thousands of frightened, angry, hungry and impoverished former farmers constituted a ‘tinder’ that was ready to catch fire. The spark was struck on March 15, 2011, when a relatively small group gathered in the town of Dara’a to protest against government failure to help them.75

The protest in Dara’a began after a group of children had “painted some anti-government graffiti on a school wall” and then were arrested and tortured by city police. Some protesters were shot. This excessive response by the government led to protests in the city. Assad made several attempts to calm the situation: He fired government and security officials for their roles in the overreaction; he assured the residents that the shooters would be prosecuted; and he announced several national reforms. But his response did not satisfy the protestors and they continued destroying property and attacking police and soldiers. Dara’a was declared a “liberated zone.” And the protests spread to other towns.76 But why did the protests turn violent?

The Turn of Violence: The standard portrayal of the protest movement, summarized independent researcher Jonathan Marshall, was that “the protest movement in Syria was overwhelmingly peaceful until September 2011.”77 The Syria government rejected this view from the beginning, but its claim was long dismissed. But Marshall has provided evidence that the government’s view was essentially correct on this point. In an essay entitled “Hidden Origins of Syria’s Civil War,” Marshall said, “opposition to the government had turned violent almost from the start.” For example, unknown gunmen in Dara’a reportedly killed 19 Syrians; in addition “nine Syrian soldiers on their way to quell demonstrations in Banyas were ambushed and gunned down on the highway outside of town.”78

Professor Joshua Landis, the head of Center for the Middle East Studies at the University of Oklahoma, reported that video footage of the fighting showed that the government account was correct: “the soldiers stationed in the town were overrun by armed and organized opposition.”79

The protests in other towns also involved armed men. In one city, about 140 members of the police and security forces were massacred. But media largely ignored this side of the story. After studying the protests and the press’s coverage of them, Landis concluded: “Western press and analysts did not want to recognize that armed elements were becoming active. They preferred to tell a simple story of good people fighting bad people.”80

It is important to recognize that this method of setting up a leader to be overthrown was an oft-repeated modus operandi by the US govern- ment. Besides being used in Libya as well as Syria, it was previously used in the 1990s, recalled William Engdahl, when the Bill Clinton administration wanted to split up Yugoslavia into its six republics. Making a deal with Bosnia to start a war with Serbia, the Washington propaganda machine began demonizing the Serbs as Nazis, and made up fake stories claiming that they not only bombed civilians and hospitals but also raped thousands of Muslim women.81

In any case, at some point the Syrian government cracked down ruth- lessly on the protestors, and several hundred protestors were reportedly killed. But even here it appears that the press, as well as giving a one-sided account, exaggerated. The private intelligence firm Stratfor, sometimes called the “Private CIA,” warned their clients not to be misled by opposition propaganda. “Although it is certain that protesters and civilians are being killed,” said Stratfor, “there is little evidence of massive brutality compared to . . . other state crackdowns in the region.”82

 Some human rights organizations also, pointed out Jonathan Marshall, acknowledged that armed opposition forces had begun committing crimes against civilians.

For example:

 Human Rights Watch sent an “open letter” to leaders of the Syrian opposition, decrying “crimes and other abuses committed by armed opposition elements,” including the kidnapping and detention of government supporters, the use of torture and the execution of security force members and civilians, and sectarian attacks against Shias and Alawites.83

Not incidentally, this same pattern—armed elements joining a largely peaceful protest and shooting police as well as civilians—would occur with the protest leading to the coup d’etat in Ukraine as discussed in Chapter 9. In fact, said Engdahl,

 Washington’s Arab Spring protests often used secret CIA and mercenary snipers to enflame and anger the population against their government by creating innocent martyrs and blaming the killings on the regime.84

Accordingly, the beginning of the opposition was due not only to the drought, Assad’s mismanagement of the country’s natural resources, his foolish and immoral responses to the drought, and his neo-liberal economic policies. The 2011 violence did begin with the Assad regime’s brutal response to the protests, but this response was stimulated by armed elements. Accordingly, whereas Western propaganda has portrayed Assad as almost uniquely evil, said Marshall, “the deadly provocations against Syrian government forces put an entirely different cast on the origins of the conflict.”85

In sum, the Obama administration’s interpretation of the origins of the anti-Assad movement was one-sided to the point of being false.

 US Contributions to the anti-Assad War: An adequate understanding of the war in Syria requires an expanded discussion of the role played by the United States. Some of this role was played by the Bush-Cheney administration.

In 2008, that administration withdrew its ambassador from Damascus as part of an effort to weaken and isolate Assad.86 It also played a role in the Assad regime’s failure to prevent the drought from resulting in so much social destruction. In November 2008, the representative of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization in Syria appealed to USAID for assistance, noting that Syria’s minister of agriculture said that the economic and social fallout from the drought was “beyond our capacity as a country to deal with.” However, the Bush-Cheney USAID director said (in a cable that was later published by WikiLeaks), “we question whether limited USG resources should be directed toward this appeal at this time.”87

More generally, as pointed out above, the Bush-Cheney administration had begun talking about how to destabilize Syria, such as undermining its attempts at economic reform, toward the goal of bringing about regime change.

But the actual beginning of the war in Syria occurred during the Obama administration. His administration made part of its contribution to the war by its false interpretation of the origins of the anti-Assad movement—by saying that that the civil war arose out of a spontaneous and peaceful uprising against Assad. But like Marshall, Muhawesh said that it was not entirely spontaneous: Wikileaks cables “reveal CIA involvement on the grounds in Syria to instigate these very demonstrations as early as March 2011.”88 That is, of course, what should be expected, given Naiman’s report of the Wikileaks cables during the Bush-Cheney administration about ways to destabilize Syria.

 Robert Parry also agreed with Marshall’s account of the instigation of violence: “Since the start of the Syrian conflict in 2011,” wrote Parry,

 the powerful role of Al Qaeda and its spinoff, the Islamic State, has been a hidden or downplayed element of the narrative that has been sold to the American people. at storyline holds that the war began when “peaceful” protesters were brutally repressed by Syria’s police and military, but that version deletes the fact that extremists, some linked to Al Qaeda, began killing police and soldiers almost from the outset.89

Another issue raised by Muhawesh relates to the reports by major media outlets, such as the BBC and the Associated Press, that “the demonstrations that supposedly swept Syria were comprised of only hundreds of people.” Writing in 2015, she asked:

 How did demonstrations held by “hundreds” of protesters demanding economic change in Syria four years ago devolve into a deadly sectarian civil war, fanning the flames of extremism haunting the world today and creating the world’s second largest refugee crisis?

She replied:

 Just a few months into the demonstrations which now consisted of hundreds of armed protesters with CIA ties, demonstrations grew larger, armed non-Syrian rebel groups swarmed into Syria, and a severe government crackdown swept through the country to deter this foreign meddling. It became evident that the United States, United Kingdom, France, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Turkey would be jumping on the opportunity to organize, arm and finance rebels to form the Free Syrian Army as outlined in the State Department plans to destabilize Syria.90

 In other words, without the intervention of the United States and other countries, the protestations could have never turned into a civil war.

 Regarding the Free Syrian Army, the BBC said that by 2013 there were “believed to be as many as 1,000 armed opposition groups in Syria, commanding an estimated 100,000 fighters.”91 The most powerful of these groups were ISIS and al-Qaeda’s al-Nusra Front (which had joined ISIS only briefly). Can anyone say that Assad did not have the right to defend his democratically-elected government against these outside forces?92

As for the United States in particular, its CIA started sending large shipments of weapons by 2012. “The CIA,” reported Seymour Hersh, “was responsible for getting arms from Gaddafi’s arsenals into Syria.”93 In fact, Chris Stevens, who had become the American ambassador in Libya, was killed in Benghazi after he had come there to negotiate a transfer of several hundred tons of Gaddafi’s weapons to Syria. In what Hersh called a “rat line,” these weapons were sent from Libya to Syria via southern Turkey, in an operation headed by General David Petraeus, the then-director of the CIA, under the supervision of Secretary Clinton. Indeed, the “consulate” where Stevens was killed was really only a mission, which existed merely “to provide cover for the moving of arms,” according to a former intelligence officer.94

In 2013, during a Congressional investigation of the Benghazi attack, Clinton swore under oath that she knew nothing about the weapons shipments to Syrian rebels prior to the attack. But in 2015, Judicial Watch obtained previously classified documents from the State Department and DOD that provided the first official confirmation that the US government knew about the shipments of arms from Benghazi to Syria.95

In 2016, moreover, Julian Assange reported that Clinton’s claim was disproven by 1,700 hacked emails about Libya in Wikileaks’ Hillary Clinton collection. These emails included, said Assange, proof that Clinton pushed for weapons to be sent to “jihadists within Syria, including ISIS.”96 This would seem to mean that she had lied under oath.

In any case, the CIA, beginning in 2012, spent $1 billion a year and trained some 10,000 “moderate” rebel forces.97 This was done in spite of the fact that then-DIA director Michael Flynn, reported Hersh, “had sent a constant stream of classified warnings to the civilian leadership about the dire consequences of toppling Assad. The jihadists, he said, were in control of the opposition.” His reports, Flynn told Hersh, “got enormous pushback” from the Obama administration. “I felt,” said Flynn, “that they did not want to hear the truth.” The Joint Chiefs of Staff likewise believed, reported one of their advisors, “that Assad should not be replaced by fundamentalists.”98

Indeed, the idea that the United States and its allies were funding only moderate rebels—ones who were fighting both against Assad and the al- Qaeda jihadists—was increasingly regarded as a myth. Many observers provided evidence that there were now no moderate rebels in Syria.99

 In fact, Vice President Biden admitted this. Saying that America had been trying to identify a moderate middle for a long time, he added:

 [T]he idea of identifying a moderate middle has been a chase America has been engaged in for a long time. The fact of the matter is . . . there was no moderate middle, because the moderate middle are made up of shopkeepers, not soldiers.100

Admitting that the jihadists had been armed by America’s allies, Biden went on to say that America’s “allies in the region were our largest problem in Syria.” Turkey, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, he explained, had “poured hundreds of millions of dollars and tens, thousands of tons of weapons into anyone who would fight against Assad.” The result, Biden added, was that “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.” Biden thereby contradicted the Obama administration’s public posture, according to which, in Secretary Kerry’s words, armed “legitimate opposition groups” exist separately from Al Qaeda’s Nusra Front.101 (Gareth Porter called this “Obama’s ‘Moderate’ Syrian Deception.”102)

The administration’s claim, that the Free Syrian Army (FSA) consisted of non-terrorist rebels, was contradicted by many facts. A 2016 story reported that al-Nusra (which had changed its name to Jabhat Fatah al-Sham [Conquest of Syria Front], claiming that it was breaking ties with the al- Qaeda network103) reportedly took orders from Israel. Alastair Crooke, who had been a senior figure in British intelligence, said that “the FSA is little more than a cover for the al-Qaeda-affiliated al-Nusra.”104

In any case, besides starting to fund so-called moderate anti-Assad rebels covertly, Obama declared that Assad needed to step down. After it was learned in 2012 that Assad had chemical weapons, Obama announced that using them would be a “red line,” to which America would respond militarily. Then in 2013, there was a chemical attack, using deadly sarin gas, which reportedly killed seven hundred civilians. Arguing that Assad was responsible, neocons and other hawks pressured Obama to carry through with his “red line” declaration, and he planned a major attack on Assad’s military.

At the last minute, however, Obama cancelled the attack order. There were evidently two reasons for this cancelation. On the one hand, President Vladimir Putin convinced Assad to destroy his chemical weapons, thereby giving Obama a face-saving out.105 On the other hand, Obama became convinced, according to Seymour Hersh, that there was insufficient evidence to claim that Assad had been responsible for the sarin gas. There seem to have been three reasons for Obama’s reevaluation of the evidence:

James Clapper, he director of national intelligence, told Obama that the intelligence community lacked “slam dunk” evidence of Assad’s responsibility.

A “vector” analysis, which supposedly showed that the rockets carrying the sarin gas could have come only from Damascus, broke down, showing that they could have come from rebel territory. Relevant to this possibility is the fact that, Hersh reported, “the US and its allies knew from highly classified CIA and allied intelligence reporting throughout the spring and summer of 2013, that the jihadist opposition to Assad (primarily al-Nusra) had the ability to manufacture a crude form of sarin.”106

A British laboratory showed that, it Hersh’s words, “the gas used didn’t match the batches known to exist in the Syrian army’s chemical weapons arsenal.” The sarin gas, Hersh concluded, was a false-flag attack launched by Turkey “to instigate an event that would force the US to cross the red line.”107

It is good that Obama resisted the temptation to support an attack on Syria as a “humanitarian intervention.” But his decision not to start a war against Syria led to great pressure on him to reverse it. In 2015, for example, 51 members of the State Department—which Hillary Clinton had headed for four years, during which she gave important posts to neocons108— issued a “dissent,” saying against Obama’s policy that the US should bomb Syria until it agrees to our wishes. The dissent’s argument was based on an extremely superficial understanding of the reasons for the Syrian war. “The government’s barrel bombing of civilians,” the dissent said (according to a summary by the New York Times), “is the ‘root cause of the instability that continues to grip Syria and the broader region.’”109 This interpretation was rejected by Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, who said:

It’s true that the initial phase of the Syrian Spring seems to have been largely spontaneous. Facts show, however, that outside interveners—primarily the United States, the United Kingdom, Turkey, Israel and Saudi Arabia—cooperated in lighting the match that brought the inferno of civil war. Covert funding and provision of weapons and other material support to opposition groups for strikes against the Syrian Government provoked a military reaction by Assad—which created a pretext for our enlarged support to the rebel groups.110

Besides evidently not understanding what had been going on in Syria in 2011, the State Department “dissenters” ignored the fact that they had suggested a policy that would be completely illegal under international law.111 Moreover, they also seemed to be unaware of how terribly unwise their proposed policy would have been.

In an article asking the question “Risking Nuclear War for Al Qaeda?” Parry pointed out that for Obama to have followed the urging of Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Hillary Clinton to permit a full-out attack on Syria would have been insane. If these powers attacked Syria while Russia’s troops were there, Russia—having insufficient ground forces and conventional weapons to protect them—might have been tempted to resort to tactical nuclear weapons, and this response could easily have led to a nuclear showdown. The insanity is that “the United States [is] being urged to take on that existential risk for all humankind on behalf of preserving Al Qaeda’s hopes for raising its black flag over Damascus.”112 (An extensive discussion of the threat of nuclear war is reserved for Chapter 9.)

If the US desire for regime change in Syria was not based on Assad’s crack-down on rebels, we must deal with the question about the real reason (aside from the desire of neocons in general and Hillary Clinton in particular to help Israel—see the section on Israel below). Mnar Muhawesh said that what has been driving the chaos is “control over gas, oil and resources.”113 Wesley Clark—in his report on the Bush administration’s plan to take out seven regimes, including Syria’s—indicated that this strategy was fundamentally about the region’s oil and gas.114

Vast interests in oil and natural gas—both existing and potential—are in play. . . . Competing pipelines—one favoring the West, undercutting Russia, the other bolstering Moscow and Tehran—are in the mix.115

 Dmitry Minin, an independent analyst, wrote:

A battle is raging over whether pipelines will go toward Europe from east to west, from Iran and Iraq to the Mediterranean coast of Syria, or take a more northbound route from Qatar and Saudi Arabia via Syria and Turkey.116

Minin based his ideas primarily upon “renowned researcher on energy issues F. William Engdahl.” Engdahl is, in fact, the researcher who—along with Pepe Escobar, the author of Empire of Chaos117—has over the years written the most about gas pipelines in relation to Syria.

 F. William Engdahl on the Syrian Pipeline War

“In a fundamental sense the entirety of the five-year-long war over Syria,” Engdahl wrote in 2016, “has been about control of hydrocarbon resources— oil and natural gas—and of potential hydrocarbon pipelines to the promising markets of the European Union.”118 Political assessments, he had said in 2012, had not fully appreciated “the dramatically rising importance of the control of natural gas to the future.” This importance had been greatly enhanced in the European Union by its mandate to reduce CO2 emissions significantly by 2020, and natural gas has been considered far less polluting than coal (even if that is questionable119). The importance of this situation to the Middle East was enhanced still further by the discovery of huge natural-gas sources in Syria as well as Israel and Qatar.120

The movement toward the Syrian war as a pipeline war began in 2009, Engdahl said, after “it became clear to some geopolitical Washington strategists that Qatar could play a strategic role in pushing Russia out of the EU natural gas game and put a US-controlled supplier, Qatar, in the dominant role.” Accordingly, the Emir of Qatar, which owns the world’s largest gas field, went to Damascus in 2009 to propose to Bashar al Assad the construction of a natural gas pipeline that would begin in Qatar, cross Saudi Arabia and Syria, then end up in Turkey, where the gas would be sold to EU markets.

However, Assad declined the offer, saying that he wanted “to protect the interests of [his] Russian ally, which is Europe’s top supplier of natural gas.” Engdahl continued: “This was the beginning of the NATO decision to militarily destroy the Assad regime.” That this decision was made in 2009—rather than after Assad’s 2011 response to the protesters—was made clear by Ronald Dumas, a former French Foreign Minister, who in 2009 “revealed that British military were preparing for invasion of Assad’s Syria.” Also, the previously mentioned intelligence firm, Stratfor, reported that by 2011, “US and UK special forces’ training of Syrian opposition forces was well underway.” 121

In any case, Syria chose a competing project, an Iran-Iraq-Syria pipe- line. Iran would get its natural gas from its part of the Pars field (Qatar gets its gas from its portion of the same field) then cross Iraq and end up in Syria. “ The deal was formally announced in July 2011,” pointed out Pepe Escobar, “when the Syrian tragedy was already in motion.”122

Then in July 2012, the three countries signed a Memorandum of Understanding to construct a pipeline from Iran through Iraq to Syria. This route, sometimes called the Shi’ite Pipeline, would leave Turkey and Qatar out in the cold, so they began doing everything they could to thwart the construction of that pipeline, including arming the anti-Assad rebels. The signing of this Memorandum was also, Engdahl added, “the precise point when the US gave the green light to Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey to back regime change in Damascus—mad pipeline geopolitics.”123

Victory would open the door for the Qatar-Saudi Arabia-Turkey gas pipeline to Europe, with its huge natural gas import market. Besides bringing riches to Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey, the war would intend, said Dmitry Minin, to accomplish three goals: “to break Russia’s gas monopoly in Europe; to free Turkey from its dependence on Iranian gas; and to give Israel the chance to export its gas to Europe by land at less cost.”124

The first of these goals

was most important to Washington. Whereas Russia had been filling 40 percent of the EU’s natural gas demand, Washington wanted it and her allies to control much of the gas to meet this demand. Here we find “the true agenda behind Washington’s five-year-long war for regime change in Damascus,” said Engdahl, “a war with terrorist groups such as ISIS or Al Nusra Front-Al Qaeda in Syria financed largely by money from Qatar.”125

In sum, from the perspective of Engdahl and the other researchers discussed in this section, the Syrian War has been primarily about energy and money (not good and bad people). Indeed, Escobar’s 2015 essay on the war in Syria as a pipeline war began by stating, “Syria is an energy war.”126

The Extreme Moral Charges against Assad Contributed to Chaos

The claim that Assad was unbearably evil, like the claims about Saddam and Gaddafi, was used to get politicians and others in America and Europe to support the US drive, begun by the Bush-Cheney administration, to bring about regime change in Syria.

 But even if he were as evil as he was portrayed by US officials, this would not have justified the attempt to depose him. Colin Powell, referring to his “old Pottery Barn rule,” cautioned:

I think you have to be extremely careful. We thought we knew what would happen in Libya. We thought we knew what would happen in Egypt. We thought we knew what would happen in Iraq, and we guessed wrong. In each one of these countries the thing we have to consider is that there is some structure . . . that’s holding the society together. And as we learned, especially in Libya, when you remove the top and the whole thing falls apart. . . you get chaos.127

This chaos has resulted in a tragedy for the Syrian people. In July 2016, international lawyer Franklin Lamb wrote:

The conflict here has, according to some NGO estimates, now claimed the lives of nearly half a million Syrians, out of a pre-war population of 22 million. More than 11 percent of the Syrian population is estimated to have been killed or injured. More than five million have fled the country while approximately 8 million are internally displaced. The UN estimates that nearly 12 million people are in urgent need of humanitarian assistance, more than six million being children ranging from infants to age 12.128

The Syrian chaos resulted primarily from the Bush-Cheney administration and its neocon attitudes, which continued significantly in the Obama administration. Robert Parry observed:

In Neocon Land, it goes without saying that once the United States judges some world leader guilty for having violated international law or human rights or whatever, it is fine for the US government to “take out” that leader. . . . In this view, the “exceptional” United States has the right to invade any country of its choosing and violently remove leaders not to its liking.129

Unless this neocon way of thinking can be overcome, there will be little hope that the United States will quit causing chaos in the Greater Middle East. When this book was first planned, it appeared that the Queen of Chaos herself would be the next US president. She made it clear, said Parry, that she was “eager to use military force to achieve ‘regime change’ in countries that get in the way of US desires.”130 Indeed, argued Andre Damon, “There is little doubt that talks were underway between the Clinton campaign and the Obama administration, and planning was well advanced, for a massive US military escalation in Syria to be launched after the expected election victory of the Democratic candidate.131

Evidently realizing that the United States under Obama and Clinton was going to continue its assault on Syria, rather than helping to achieve a tolerable resolution to the Syrian situation, Russia, Iran, and Turkey set up talks without inviting the United States.132 Excluding the United States, at least under the neocon-inspired Democrats, seemed necessary to begin bringing the ruination of Syria to an end.

Moreover, the ruination resulting from the neocon ideology of the Bush-Cheney administration, continued by Obama and Secretaries Clinton and Kerry, has not been limited to the Greater Middle East. As a 2016 Newsweek article said, “The Tide of Syrian Refugees Is Unraveling Europe”133—a problem to be explored after a discussion of ISIS and Russia. . . .

Near the end of 2015, Russia’s airforce intervened in Syria to protect Assad—at Assad’s invitation. This invitation made Russia’s intervention legal, according to international law, whereas any US intervention in Syria would be illegal. (Secretary Kerry has even admitted this in private.147)

Russia’s intervention allowed Assad to take the offensive against ISIS and the other jihadists. The success of this intervention led the Obama administration to drop its public insistence that Assad had to go, but it continued to try to protect al-Nusra and other jihadists.148

Russia tried to work out a plan in which it and the United States would join forces against ISIS and other jihadists, but it soon concluded that the US was not going to cooperate but instead wanted to use ISIS against Assad’s government. So Russia, along with Syria and Hezbollah, launched “a three-prong attack intended to dispose of the US-backed jihadists.”149

The effort to clean the jihadists out of Syria focused first on Aleppo—in particular, East Aleppo, which had been under the control of al-Nusra since 2012. Not appreciating the successful beginning of this effort, the United States used this as an opportunity to claim that Russia and Syria, having deliberately targeted children and hospitals, were guilty of war crimes. The US corporate press, being almost unanimous in repeating these charges, evidently convinced most Americans that these claims were true.

However, Finian Cunningham pointed out that these press claims should not be accepted at face value, because claims of Russian and Syrian “war crimes” made by Western reporters were based on “rebel sources,” not on interviews with ordinary citizens in Aleppo. Also, much of the “information” that got reported came from the so-called “volunteer aid” group known as the White Helmets, which made many false claims about itself.

For one thing, it called itself the Syria Civil Defense, but it is not Syrian. Rather, it was created by the U.K. and the USA; it was established in Turkey; and its “volunteers” were mainly trained in Turkey and Jordan. In addition, whereas the real Syria Civil Defense has existed since 1953, the White Helmets was formed in 2013 by James Le Mesurier, a former British intelligence officer who was involved in NATO’s interventions in Bosnia and Kosovo. He then “moved into the lucrative private mercenary industry,” where he became “a mercenary with the Olive Group, a private contracting organization that is now merged with Blackwater-Academi.”150

The real Syria Civil Defense, which was founded in 1953, is the only one. “The White Helmets,” said the International Civil Defense Organization, “are not even civil defense concretely. We are working . . . only with official governments… , not the White Helmets.”151

The real Syria Civil Defense no longer operated in East Aleppo. Journalist Vanessa Beeley, who probably wrote the most about the White Helmets, said that in an interview with the real Syrian Civil Defense, inside West Aleppo, she was told that, in 2012, when various militant factions infiltrated East Aleppo, they drove out the real Syria Civil Defense crew—they massacred many, they kidnapped others, they stole equipment, including all of the ambulances and three to five re engines.152

Another false claim by White Helmets was that it was composed of “volunteers” and that it is “fiercely independent and accepts no money from governments.” In truth, it received funding from various governments, especially the U.K. ($65 million) and the US ($23 million), which had collaborated with Le Mesurier in creating the White Helmets. In particular, calling themselves “impartial,” the White Helmets claimed, “We’re not being paid by anybody to pursue a particular line.”153 However, Abdulrahman Al Mawwas, the chief liaison officer of the White Helmets, confirmed that the group was sponsored by the Western governments.154

In any case, this organization did have a very particular, twofold purpose: First, to demonize Assad as a butcher, who killed his own people indiscriminately, so as to argue the need for a no-fly zone (which was, of course, how the attacks on Iraq and Libya began). In campaigning for a no-fly zone, the White Helmets were working together with the public relations organization Avaaz, which had delivered a petition with 1,203,000 signatures to the UN for the Libya no-fly zone. In 2015, Avaaz began trying for a million signatures for a “Safe Zone” petition for Syria.155

Second, although the White Helmets served as a terrorist support group, “in the sense of bringing equipment, arms, even funding, into Syria,” said Beeley, their “primary function is propaganda,” as investigative journal Rick Sterling explained.156

Whereas the US press willingly accepts such propaganda, which supports our government’s negative description of Assad and hence Putin, independent journalists who have spent time in Syria, where they have talked to ordinary Syrians, have presented views of Assad that disagree radically with the claims of White Helmets and the US press. See, for example, interviews of journalist Eva Bartlett, who said, “The Media Is Lying to You!” and Vanessa Beeley, who said, “Everything the US Media Says about Aleppo Is Wrong.”157

Similarly, the highly respected journalist Stephen Kinzer wrote a Boston Globe article entitled “The Media Are Misleading the Public on Syria.” Although the truth about Aleppo was being reported by “brave correspondents in the war zone,” Kinzer said, their reports do “not fit with Washington’s narrative. As a result, much of the American press is reporting the opposite of what is actually happening.”158

David Ray Griffin is a retired American professor of philosophy of religion and theology, and a political writer.

 

 ENDNOTES

55 Mnar Muhawesh, “Refugee Crisis & Syria War Fueled by Competing Gas Pipelines,” MintPress News, 9 September 2015.

 56 Lydia Depillis et al., “A Visual Guide to 75 Years of Major Refugee Crises around the World,” Washington Post, 21 December 2015.

 57 Tyler Durden, “A Short History: The Neocon ‘Clean Break’ Grand Design & the ‘Regime Change’ Disasters It Has Fostered,” Zero Hedge, 1 July 2015.

 58 “Navigating through Turbulence: America and the Middle East in a New Century,” Washington Institute for Near East Policy, 2001.

 59 William Kristol, “Lead the World to Victory,” Project for the New American Century, 20 September 2001.

 60 Charles Glass, “Is Syria Next?” London Review of Books, 3 July 2003.

 61 Robert Parry, “Risking Nuclear War for Al Qaeda?” Consortium News, 18 February 2016.

 62 Adrian Salbuchi, “Why the US, UK, EU & Israel Hate Syria,” RT, 10 September, 2013; William Blum, “Why Does the Government of the United States Hate Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad,” Information Clearing House, 4 November 2015.

 63 Andrew Cockburn, “The United States Teams Up With Al Qaeda . . . Again,” Harper’s, 18 December 2015.

 64 Jonathan Marshall, “The US Hand in the Syrian Mess,” Consortium News, 20 July 2015.

 65 Robert Parry, “Democrats Are Now the Aggressive War Party,” Consortium News, 11 June 2016.

 66 Marshall, “The US Hand in the Syrian Mess.”

 67 Seymour M. Hersh, “The Redirection,” New Yorker, 5 March 2007.

 68 Robert Naiman, “WikiLeaks Reveals How the US Aggressively Pursued Regime Change in Syria, Igniting a Bloodbath,” The WikiLeaks Files: The World According to US Empire (Verso, 2015), Chapter 10.

 69 Ibid.

 70 Andrew Freedman, “The Worst Drought in 900 Years Helped Spark Syria’s Civil War,” Mashable, 2 March 2016; Elaisha Stokes, “The Drought that Preceded Syria’s Civil War Was Likely the Worst in 900 Years,” Vice News, 3 March 2016; Francesco Femia and Caitlin Werrell, “Syria: Climate Change, Drought and Social Unrest,” Think Progress, 3 March 2012.

 71 James Fallows, “Your Labor Day Syria Reader, Part 2: William Polk,” Atlantic, 2 September 2013.

 72 Femia and Werrell, “Syria.” Ibid.; Jan Selby and Mike Hulme, “Is Climate Change Really to Blame for Syria’s Civil War?” Guardian, 29 November 2015.

 73 Femia and Werrell, “Syria.”

 74 Fallows, “Your Labor Day Syria Reader, Part 2: William Polk.”

 76 Jonathan Marshall, “Hidden Origins of Syria’s Civil War,” Consortium News, 20 July 2015.

 77 Ibid.

 78 Ibid.

 79 Joshua Landis, “The Armed Gangs Controversy,” Syria Comment, 3 August 2011.

 80 Ibid.

 81 F. William Engdahl, The Lost Hegemon: Whom the Gods Would Destroy (mine.Books, 2016).

 82 Marshall, “Hidden Origins of Syria’s Civil War.”

 83 Ibid.

 84 Engdahl, The Lost Hegemon, 261.

 85 Marshall, “Hidden Origins of Syria’s Civil War.”

 86 Jim Lobe, “US Brief Talks with Syria Spur Speculation,” Inter Press Service, 30 September 2008.

 87 Fallows, “Your Labor Day Syria Reader, Part 2: William Polk.

 88 Muhawesh, “Refugee Crisis & Syria War Fueled by Competing Gas Pipelines.”

 89 Robert Parry, “The NYT’s Neocon ‘Downward Spiral,’” Consortium News, 6 October 2016.

 90 Muhawesh, “Refugee Crisis & Syria War Fueled by Competing Gas Pipelines.”

 91 “Guide to the Syrian Rebels,” BBC News, 13 December 2013.

 92 In June of [2014], wrote Steve MacMillan, “Assad won Syria’s Presidential election with 88.7 percent of the vote. . . . A group of international observers emphasized that the election was a valid and democratic expression of the views of the Syrian people.” Steve MacMillan, “Bashar al-Assad: The Democratically Elected President of Syria,” Near Eastern Outlook, 20 December 2015.

 93 Seymour M. Hersh, “The Red Line and the Rat Line,” London Review of Books, April 2014; see also Frederick Reese, “Seymour Hersh: Benghazi Attack a Consequence of Weapons ‘Rat-Line’ to Syria,” Mint Press News, 21 April 2014.

 94 Ibid.; Aaron Klein, “CIA Ops Finally Revealed: What the US Ambassador in Benghazi was Really Doing,” Global Research, 23 October 2015; Gareth Porter, “Why the US Owns the Rise of Islamic State and the Syria Disaster,” TruthDig, 8 October 2015.

 95 “Defense, State Department Documents Reveal Obama Administration Knew that al Qaeda Terrorists Had Planned Benghazi Attack 10 Days in Advance,” Judicial Watch, 18 May 2015.

 96 Alex Christoforou, “Julian Assange Says ‘1,700 Emails in Hillary Clinton’s Collection’ Proves She Sold Weapons to ISIS in Syria,” The Duran/Democracy Now; James Barrett, “WikiLeaks: Hacked Emails Prove Hillary Armed Jihadists In Syria—Including ISIS,” Daily Wire, 1 August 2016.

 97 Eric Schmitt, “C.I.A. Said to Aid in Steering Arms to Syrian Opposition,” New York Times, 21 June 2012; C.J. Chivers and Eric Schmitt,” Arms Airlift to Syria Rebels Expands, With Aid from C.I.A.,” International New York Times, 24 March 2013; Trevor Timm, “The US Decision to Send Weapons to Syria Repeats a Historical Mistake,” Guardian, 19 September 2015; Adam Johnson, “Down the Memory Hole: NYT Erases CIA’s Efforts to Overthrow Syria’s Government,” Common Dreams, 21 September 2015.

 98 “Military to Military—Seymour M. Hersh on US Intelligence Sharing in the Syrian War,” London Review of Books, January 2016.

 99 Ben Reynolds, “There Are No Moderate Syrian Rebels,” Counterpunch, 3 October 2014; Stephen Lendman, “No Moderate Syrian Rebels Exist,” Global Research, 6 November 2015.

 100 Quoted in Jonathan Marshall, “The US Hand in the Syrian Mess.”

 101 Ibid.; Parry, “Risking Nuclear War for Al Qaeda?”

 102 Gareth Porter, “Obama’s ‘Moderate’ Syrian Deception,” Consortium News, 16 February 2016.

 103 “Nusra Front’s Rebranding: Story of Rats Trying to Pass for Flurry White Rabbits” Sputnik International, 6 August 2016.

 104 “Syrian Militants in Tumult after Israel Moves to Restructure Fatah Al-Sham Command in Quneitra,” FARS News Agency, 28 September 2016; Alastair Crooke, “How the US Armed-Up Syrian Jihadists,” Consortium News, September 29, 2016.

 105 Mark Landler and Jonathan Weisman, “Obama Delays Syria Strike to Focus on a Russian Plan,” New York Times, 10 September 2013; Juan Cole, “How Putin Saved Obama, Congress and the European Union from Further Embarrassing Themselves on Syria,” Informed Comment, 10 September 2013.

 106 Mark Karlin, “Seymour Hersh on White House Lies about bin Laden’s Death, Pakistan and the Syrian Civil War,” Truthout, 14 August 2016.

 107 Robert Parry, “Will We Miss President Obama?” Consortium News, 19 March 2016; Parry, “ e Collapsing Syria-Sarin Case,” Consortium News, 7 April 2014; Seymour M. Hersh, “ e Red Line and the Rat Line,” London Review of Books, April 2014.

 108 Robert Parry, “Neocons Have Weathered the Storm,” Consortium News, 15 March 2014.

 109 Mark Landler, “51 US Diplomats Urge Strikes Against Assad in Syria,” New York Times, 16 June 2015.

 110 Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, “Intel Vets Call ‘Dissent Memo’ on Syria ‘Reckless,’” Consortium News, 25 June 2016.

 111 Center for Citizen Initiatives, “Seeking a Debate on ‘Regime Change’ Wars,” Consortium News, 20 June 2016; Marjorie Cohn, “US Bombing Syrian Troops Would Be Illegal,” Consortium News, 22 June 2016.

 112 Parry, “Risking Nuclear War for Al Qaeda?”

 113 Muhawesh, “Refugee Crisis & Syria War Fueled by Competing Gas Pipelines.”

 114 James Huang, “Who Exclusive: Gen. Wesley Clark on Oil, War and Activism,” Who. What. Why., 24 September 2012.

 115 Chris Floyd, “Seeing Ghosts: History’s Nightmares Return in Syria,” Empire Burlesque, 12 January 2016.

 116 Dmitry Minin, “The Geopolitics of Gas and the Syrian Crisis,” Strategic Cultural Foundation, 31 May 2013.

 117 Pepe Escobar, Empire of Chaos (Nimble Pluribus, 2014).

 118 F. William Engdahl, “The Syrian Pipeline War: How Russia Trumped USA Energy War in the Mideast,” Russia Insider, 21 September 2016.

 119 See David Ray Griffin, Unprecedented: Can Civilization Survive the CO2 Crisis? (Clarity Press, 2015), 369-72.

 120 F. William Engdahl, “Syria, Turkey, Israel and the Greater Middle East Energy War,” Global Research, October 11, 2012

 121 F. William Engdahl, “Silence of the Lambs-Refugees, EU and Syrian Energy Wars,” NEO, 10 November 2016.

 122 Pepe Escobar, “Syria: Ultimate Pipelineistan War,” Strategic Culture, 7 December 2015.

 123 Engdahl, “The Syrian Pipeline War.”

 124 Minin, “The Geopolitics of Gas and the Syrian Crisis.

 125 Engdahl, “The Syrian Pipeline War.”.

 126 Escobar, “Syria: Ultimate Pipelineistan War.”

 127 Kathy Gilsinan, “The Pottery Barn Rule: Syria Edition,” Atlantic, 30 September 2015.

 128 Franklin Lamb, “Don’t Cry for Us Syria. . . . The Truth Is We Shall Never Leave You!” Counterpunch, 29 July 2016.

 129 Parry, “Delusional US ‘Group Think’ on Syria, Ukraine.”

 130 Parry, “Democrats Are Now the Aggressive War Party.”

 131 Andre Damon, “The Media Disinformation Campaign on Russian Hacking and the US Debacle in Syria,” Global Research, 9 January 2017.

 132 Ben Hubbard and David E. Sanger, “Russia, Iran and Turkey Meet for Syria Talks, Excluding US,” New York Times, 20 December 2016.

 133 Judy Dempsey, “The Tide of Syrian Refugees Is Unraveling Europe,” Newsweek, 25 February 2016.

 134 Karen Yourish et al., “Where ISIS Has Directed and Inspired Attacks around the World,” International New York Times, 22 March 2016; “List of Terrorist Incidents Linked to ISIL,” Wikipedia.

 135 Terrence McCoy, “How the Islamic State Evolved in an American Prison,” Washington Post, 4 November 2014.

 136 Bobby Ghosh, “ISIS: A Short History,” Atlantic, 14 August 2014; “Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant,” Wikipedia.

 137 Bill Palmer, “Why President Obama’s Correct Usage of ‘ISIL’ vs ‘ISIS’ Drives Ignorant People Crazy,” Daily News Bin, 20 December 2015; Kathya, “Why Obama Says ‘ISIL’ instead of ‘ISIS’ — Conspiracy Theory v. Logic,” Liberal America, 11 December 2015.

 138 Stephen Zunes, “The US and the Rise of ISIS,” National Catholic Reporter, 10 December 2015.

 139 Lauren Boyer, “Former US Military Official Says George W. Bush Created ISIS,” US News, 1 December 2015.

 140 Andrew Bacevich, “ e George W. Bush Refugees,” Politico, 18 September 2015.

 141 Andrew Kirell, “4 Most Noteworthy Moments from Obama’s Interview with Vice News,” 16 March 2015.

 142 Savage, Power Wars, 684-86.

 143 Pamela Engel, “ e Air War against ISIS Is Costing the US about $11 Million a Day,” Business Insider, 19 January 2016.

 144 David Swanson, “ e US Wants the Islamic State Group to Win in Syria,” TeleSUR, 29 March 2016.

 145 Chris Floyd, “Seeing Ghosts: History’s Nightmares Return in Syria,” Empire Burlesque, 12 January 2016.

 146 Eric Margolis, “US Fight against ‘Covert Western Asset’ ISIS Is a ‘Big Charade,’” Ron Paul Institute, 2 October 2015; “‘US Has Always Been Main Sponsor of Islamic State’—Former CIA Contractor to RT,” RT, 29 September 2016.

 147 Anne Barnard, “Audio Reveals What John Kerry Told Syrians Behind Closed Doors,” New York Times, 30 September 2016.

 148 Simon Tidsdall, “US Changes Its Tune on Syrian Regime Change as ISIS Threat Takes Top Priority,” Guardian, 25 January 2015.

 149 Mike Whitney, “Putin Ups the Ante: Cease re Sabotage Triggers Major Offensive in Aleppo,” Smirking Chimp, 27 September 2016.

 150 Vanessa Beeley, ‘’White Helmets Campaign for War Not Peace—RLA & Nobel Peace Prize Nomination should be Retracted,” 2 October 2016; Beeley, “ e REAL Syria Civil Defence Exposes Fake ‘White Helmets’ as Terrorist-Linked Imposters,” 21st Century Wire, 23 September 2016; Max Blumenthal, “How the ‘White Helmets’ Became Global Heroes While Pushing for US Military Intervention in Syria,” Alternet, 4 October, 2016; Tim Anderson, The Dirty War On Syria: Washington, Regime Change and Resistance (Global Research Publishers, 2016), 75.

 151 “Syria’s White Helmets Are Multi-million Funded, ‘Can’t Be Independent,’” RT, 7 October 2016.

 152 “Syrian White Helmets a ‘Terrorist Support Group & Western Propaganda Tool,’” RT, 25 October 2016.

 153 Beeley, ‘’White Helmets Campaign for War Not Peace.”

 154 “‘We Don’t Hide It’: White Helmets Openly Admit Being Funded by Western Govts,” RT, 19 October 2016.

 155 Max Blumenthal, “Inside the Shadowy PR Firm That’s Lobbying for Regime Change in Syria,” Alternet, 3 October 2016.

 156 “Syrian White Helmets a ‘Terrorist Support Group’”; Sterling, “Seven Steps of Highly Effective Manipulators.”

 157 See “Journalist Eva Bartlett, ‘I’m Back from Syria. The Media Is Lying to You!’” The Event Chronicle, 13 February 2016; “Liberty Report Talks to Vanessa Beeley: ‘Everything the US Media Says about Aleppo Is Wrong,’” Liberty Report, 29 September 2016. She should not be described as an “Assad supporter,” Beeley said, because she has various criticisms of him. She simply disagrees with the view that Syria should be destroyed in order to save it.

 158 Stephen Kinzer, “The Media Are Misleading the Public on Syria,” Boston Globe, 18 February 2016.

 159 David W. Lesche and James Gelvin, “Assad Has Won in Syria. But Syria Hardly Exists,” New York Times, 11 January 2017.

 160 “Audio Evidence: John Kerry Privately Confirms Supporting and Arming Daesh,” Voltaire Network, 13 January 2017; referring to “Absolutely Stunning—Leaked Audio of Secretary Kerry Reveals President Obama Intentionally Allowed Rise of ISIS,” The Last Refuge (The Conservative Tree House), 1 January 2017.

Filed under: Al Qaeda, ISIL, US Congress, US Foreign Policy, USA, War on Syria, Wars for Israel |</s>French President Emmanuel Macron has urged the US to overthrow Assad in order to build a “new Syria” more aligned with globalism.

Speaking with Fox News on Sunday, Macron said France, the US and its allies “would have to build a new Syria after war,” adding that the US role would be “very important” in this process.

Rt.com reports: He added that “it’s not automatically US forces” that should carry out this task, but “that’s US diplomacy and it’s your President.”

Giving his reasons for foreign states to remain in Syria, Macron listed the ‘usual suspects’ – Iran and Syrian President Bashar Assad.

The day we’ll have finished this war against ISIS [Islamic State, IS]; if we leave definitely and totally – even from [the] political point of view – we will leave the floor to the Iranian regime, Bashar Assad and these guys and they will prepare [a] new war. They will fuel the new terrorists.”

Macron has recently been one of the strongest advocates for a prolonged American stay in Syria. He also ordered French forces to join the US-led missile strike on targets in Syria on April 14. The bombardment, which was described as retaliation for an alleged chemical attack by the Syrian government, did not receive approval from the UN Security Council and was conducted without the consent of the French parliament.

While stressing that Paris and allies should be involved in post-war Syria, the French leader still gave some credit to Russia and Turkey, saying that “even” these states will have an “important role.”

Washington and its allies, including France, launched their campaign against Islamic State in Syria in 2014. Apart from airstrikes, it involved support for the so-called “moderate opposition” on the ground with training and weapons. Later, Washington and Paris dispatched limited contingents of troops to Syria, triggering protests from Damascus.

While the US and its allies simply notified Syria before their counter-terrorism campaign kicked off, Russia and Iran have been acting in the country on the request of President Assad.

Moscow and Tehran have also accused Washington of doing nothing to fulfil the declared task of fighting Islamic State, instead working hand in hand with terrorist groups to topple the Syrian government. Notably, the rise of ISIS in Iraq and its further spread to war-torn Syria was enabled by the chaos left after the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003.

While Russia has indeed assisted the Syrian forces with airstrikes against terrorists, it also launched a large-scale humanitarian operation, delivering food and essential supplies to thousands of Syrians. Moscow has repeatedly invited its Western partners to join the efforts, but US coalition members have been reluctant to provide aid to the regions liberated by Syrian government forces.

The diplomatic efforts of Russia, Turkey, and Iran as part of the Astana peace process provided for the creation of several de-escalation zones in Syria, which led last year to the cessation of hostilities in vast parts of the country.

In late March, Donald Trump said the US would be “coming out of Syria very soon” and letting “other people take care of it now.” However, the White House spokesman later corrected the president, saying that Islamic State should be crushed before the 2,000 US troops return home. Other US officials, including Defense Secretary James Mattis and UN Envoy Nikki Haley, announced an even broader set of US goals in Syria.

According to Haley, it wasn’t only about defeating the terrorists, but also making sure chemical weapons aren’t used again and monitoring the actions of Iran – which could well have an indefinite time frame. In early April, there were also reports that the US military is considering the establishment of new military bases in northern Syria, with the American presence in the area to be funded by Saudi Arabia.</s>Iraq says its strikes in Syria killed 36 IS militants

BAGHDAD (AP) — A spokesman for Iraq's military says 36 Islamic State militants have been killed in Thursday's airstrikes by Iraq's air force in Syria.

In a statement issued on Sunday, Brig. Gen. Yahya Rasool says that the airstrikes hit a location where IS militants were meeting, among other targets. Rasool added that six IS leaders were among the dead.

Hours after launching the airstrikes, Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi's office said Iraqi fighter jets had hit IS positions in an area along the border, saying they posed a threat to Iraq.

Syrian and Iraqi forces have driven IS from nearly all the territory it once held, but the extremists have maintained a presence in the remote desert areas along the border. Iraq has previously carried out airstrikes against the group in Syria.</s>Baghdad (Iraqinews.com) – As many as 36 Islamic State (IS) militants were killed on Sunday after Iraqi warplanes targeted their terrorist hotbed located in Syria, a spokesman for the Iraqi Security Media Council was quoted as saying.

Alghdad Press quoted Brig. Gen. Yehia Rasool as saying in a statement that Iraqi Air Forces launched a series of airstrikes on Syrian territories using F-16 jets to eliminate Islamic State terrorists, who were planning to carry out terrorist attacks in Iraq.

According to the statement, the air raids left 36 IS militants dead, including six senior leaders who were gathering at one of their hotbeds inside Syria.

The Islamic State group appeared on the international scene in 2014 when it seized large swathes of territory in Iraq and Syria, declaring the establishment of an Islamic “caliphate” from Mosul city.

Later on, the group has become notorious for its brutality, including mass killings, abductions and beheadings, prompting the U.S. to lead an international coalition to destroy it.

Despite the group’s crushing defeat at its main havens across Iraq last December, Islamic State continues to launch sporadic attacks against troops with security reports warning that the militant group still poses a threat against stability in the country.
Iraq claims airstrikes on Thursday in Syria killed 36 Islamic State militants.