The Syria war drags on. Continuing it has become too expensive and too dangerous for its neighbors. Russia, which aims to re-establish itself in the Middle East, is trying to show the United States that it is in their best interest to allow Moscow to resolve the conflict.
The military situation in Syria is turning against those in Washington and Brussels who hoped to change the regime there by force. Two successive attempts to take Damascus have failed and it has become clear that that objective cannot be achieved.
Where NATO has failed to make war, the CTSO is preparing to make peace. The Secretary General of the Organization Nikolay Bordyuzha is setting up a peacekeeping force of 50,000 men, ready to be deployed in Syria.
Where NATO has failed to make war, the CTSO is preparing to make peace. The Secretary General of the Organization Nikolay Bordyuzha is setting up a peacekeeping force of 50,000 men, ready to be deployed in Syria.
On July 18th, an explosion killed the leadership of the Council of National Security, signalling the beginning of a vast offensive during which tens of thousands of mercenaries descended on the Syrian capital from Jordan, Lebanon, Turkey and Iraq. After several days of pitched battles, Damascus was saved when the fraction of the population hostile to the government chose out of patriotism to assist the National Army rather than bid welcome to the forces of the FSA.
On September 26, al-Qaeda jihadists were able to penetrate the interior of the Defense Ministry, disguised as Syrian soldiers and carrying false papers. They intended to detonate their explosive vests in the office of the joint chiefs of the military but did not get close enough to their target and were killed. A second team attempted to take over the national TV station to broadcast an ultimatum to the President but were not able to reach the building as access was blocked moments after the first attack. A third team targeted government headquarters and a fourth was aimed at the airport.
In both cases, NATO coordinated the operations from its Turkish base in Incirlik, seeking to provoke a schism at the core of the Syrian Arab Army and rely on certain generals for the purpose of overthrowing the regime. But the generals in question had long been identified as traitors and marginalized from effective command. In the aftermath of the two failed attacks, Syrian power was reinforced, giving it the internal legitimacy necessary to go on the offensive and crush the FSA.
These failures put a damper on those who had been crowing in advance that the days of Bashar al-Assad were numbered. In Washington, consequently, those counselling withdrawal are carrying the day. The question is no longer how much time the «Assad regime» will hold out but whether it costs the U.S. more to continue the war than to stop it. Continuing it would entail the collapse of the Jordanian economy, losing allies in Lebanon, risking civil war in Turkey, in addition to having to protect Israel from the chaos. Stopping the war would mean allowing the Russians to regain foothold in the Middle East and strengthening the Axis of Resistance to the detriment of the expansionist dreams of the Likud.
US Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney says, if elected, he would work with the US allies to arm the insurgents fighting against the government of President Bashar al-Assad in Syria.
This comes as a group of Syrian political parties have held a forum in the country’s capital, Damascus, to discuss a peaceful solution to the unrest in the Arab state.
The participants of the meeting said political dialogue, national reconciliation and fighting terrorism are the sole means to restoring security.
The Syrian figures reiterated that their country is entangled in an international conspiracy by some Arab and Western countries, adding that the unity of the Syrians would foil any plots.
The Syrian government says that the chaos is being orchestrated from outside the country, and there are reports that a very large number of the insurgents are foreign nationals, mostly from Egypt, Algeria, Saudi Arabia, and Afghanistan.
Press TV has conducted an interview with Michel Chossudovsky, Director of the Centre for Research on Globalization, from Montreal, to further discuss the issue. The following is a rough transcription of the interview.
Press TV: When Romney says that Washington’s ambition is to impose American values in Syria, what do you think American values imply exactly?
Chossudovsky: Well, I’m a little bit confused as to Romney’s interpretation of Western values. For me, Western values actually come from Mesopotamia. They come from the ancient Aramaic language which is still spoken in Syria.
That is the cradle of Western civilization. That’s where Christianity was born. That’s where both the New Testament and the Old Testament were written and formulated in Aramaic. And Aramaic is still spoken in Syria.
If Romney wants to support Western values, it’s not by channeling weapons to al-Qaeda and to an opposition which is integrated by terrorists and which, ultimately, these military formations reject what I understand as Western values — which are the values of the Western world but also of the Middle East.
Press TV: We’ve earlier discussed the possibility of a full-scale military intervention by NATO in Syria, starting off with Turkey first getting involved. We’re already seeing shelling across the border.
Right now, as these countries beat the drums of war against Syria, where is the UN Arab League Envoy Lakhdar Brahimi? Where is the so-called six-point peace plan that was put forth by Kofi Annan?
Chossudovsky: Well, it would seem that the same Western countries which have put forth these peace plans are now involved in, ultimately, boycotting or undermining these peace plans.
Turkey has threatened military intervention in Syria based on very tenuous evidence that Syrian armed forces shelled a border city inside Turkish territory. The New York Times says that there’s no evidence one way or the other as to who actually committed these acts of shelling.
Turkey is already within Syrian territory, supporting the rebels, providing them with weapons and so on. I should mention that there’s a lot of opposition inside Turkey to any kind of military adventure which could lead to a full-fledged war with Syria.
People are prepared to die even if fighting with sticks and stones. Warfalla are the name of the Tribe that is the town of Bani Walid which has been under siege for about two weeks. Nothing allowed in or out. A young man from Bani Walid with excellent English explains – he happens to have the flavour of Libya in him.
That desert feel ….
The speaker in this video is concerned that when he said warfalla is 300 years old he was wrong – and it is in fact much older.
It was quite moving to be with these people – the mood while perhaps defiant was also somber.
All more dignified than what the paid rats were doing last year
Prime Minister Erdogan of Turkey has told his country to prepare for war against Syria relying on an unproven shelling that landed in Turkey from Syrian territory.
The Turkish military has fired mortar shells into Syria for the fourth day in a row after a number of projectiles slammed into the southern border province of Hatay.
Press TV has interviewed Michel Chossudovsky, Centre for Research on Globalization, Montreal, about the recent steps Turkey has taken and how the plan for NATO involvement inside Syria may unfold.
What follows is an approximate transcript of the interview.
Press TV: Five days of military strikes and now the Turkish prime minister is calling on his country to prepare for war.
With the way things have gone so far, would Turkey had come to this regardless of the mortar that fell in from Syria?
Chossudovsky: Well, this has been a hidden agenda for quite some time. The war on Syria is already de-facto because Turkey is supporting the Free Syrian Army; it’s training the rebels; it’s allowing for the influx of mercenaries through its territory; it is providing logistics to the terrorists inside Syria; and it has Special Forces also within Syrian territory.
And I should say that the military high command has concern that it’s supporting the Muslim Brotherhood as well involved in insurrection. So the war is de-facto.
The incident is being used as a pretext when in fact even according to the Western media, we do not know who is behind this shelling incident inside Turkish territory.
The Ankara government blames Damascus; it blames the Syrian armed forces, but if you look at some of the press reports emanating from the New York times on the one hand and the German media, there is absolutely no proof that these shots were actually done by the Syrian governmental forces.
And they could have been done by the Free Syrian Army. They could also be used deliberately as a pretext to enable Turkey to proceed to the next phase of this war.
Now what is also of course very disturbing is the fact that Turkey as a member of NATO may well invoke Article 5 of the Washington Treaty, which stipulates that an attack on one member is an attack on all members. It’s the doctrine of collective security and this might be the first step for a NATO involvement.
Press TV: That leads me to my next question, do you think that through this escalation of this conflict we are going to see direct NATO involvement, because we are already getting reports that NATO artillery and weapons are already being used by the Turkish military in their shelling?
Chossudovsky: Well, it’s clear that Turkey is already involved. Turkey is already involved inside Syria.
Now what I think is possible is that Turkey is going to demand the formation of some kind of a buffer zone, which essentially means the occupation of certain border areas of Syria. This has been on the drawing boards of military planners for quite some time. Turkey has territorial aspirations as far as Syria is concerned. But it is more than that.
The coast line, which links Turkey to Lebanon and Israel going through Syrian territory. This is also an objective, to gain control over that coastline.
In other words, we have to understand that Turkey is a major military power in the region; it is involved in the conflict; it is supporting mercenary fighters inside Syria; and there is the distinct danger of military escalation not only in terms of Turkish regular forces, which are now entering officially into Syrian territory, but also that this might extend to a subsequent NATO involvement under the doctrine of collective security.
Al Qaeda-style terrorist bombings slaughter/maims scores, Western media spins war crime as terrorists “targeting government forces.” by Tony Cartalucci
October 3, 2012 – NATO-backed terrorism swept the northern Syrian city of Aleppo this week, killing and maiming scores of civilians. Al Qaeda-style car bombings targeted public squares throughout the city in a coordinated attack the Western press has attempted to claim was “targeting government forces.” CNN in their article, “Syria: Dozens killed in blasts at Aleppo public square,” bases this conclusion on the discredited “Syrian Observatory for Human Rights,” a single man, Rami Abdelrahman, who is admittedly a biased member of the so-called “Syrian opposition,” based not in Syria but in Coventry England disingenuously posing as an entire “human rights organization.”
But even Abdelrahman’s baseless claims state that “most of the casualties were government forces” meaning that the remaining victims were indeed civilians. Attacking public squares populated with civilians using indiscriminate explosive devices in such attacks is a brazen war crime, one made possible by Western cash, armaments, and political support supplied to sectarian extremist groups starting as far back as 2007.
The city of Aleppo has suffered heavily at the hands of NATO-backed terrorists, entire battalions of which consist of Libyan terrorists, not Syrian “freedom fighters” as the Western media attempts to repeatedly state. Libyan militants from the listed terror organization, the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), are stationed, armed, and funded in NATO-member Turkey by Western and the Persian Gulf states of Qatar and Saudi Arabia, before crossing into northern Syria to carry out atrocities against the Syrian people under the guise of the so-called “Free Syrian Army.”
Image: Libyan Mahdi al-Harati of the US State Department, United Nations, and the UK Home Office (page 5, .pdf)-listed terrorist organization, the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), addressing fellow terrorists in Syria. Harati is now commanding a Libyan brigade operating inside of Syria attempting to destroy the Syrian government and subjugate the Syrian population. After ravaging many of Libya’s historical sites out of sectarian spite, these very same terrorists are attacking heritage sites across the ancient northern city of Aleppo, Syria.
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As these terrorist battalions continuously fail to achieve any significant military gains against the Syrian Army, they have resorted to brazen terrorist attacks like the recent coordinated car bombings, as well as targeting high profile historical sites across the ancient city. The Western media then attempts to portray the ravaging of Syria’s historical treasures as perpetrated by the Syrian government, when these same Libyan terrorists ravaged their own historical sites in acts of sectarian spite toward the end of last year’s NATO-backed destruction of the Libyan nation-state.
Three United Nations independent experts today strongly condemned the destruction of Sufi religious and historic sites in various parts of Libya, as well as the intimidation and excessive use of force against unarmed protesters opposing the destruction.
According to media reports, ultra-conservative Islamists were responsible for the damage, reportedly with the acquiescence of members of the security forces. The sites are revered by Sufis, a branch of Islam known for its moderation but considered heretical by some branches of the Islamic faith.
These same sectarian extremists are now busy at work in Syria, again, with NATO arms, cash, and both political and covert military support carrying out identical atrocities with the Western press repeating identical lies to obfuscate from the public the true scope of the conflict.
Global Research
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