The Road To Tehran Goes Through Damascus
By Nile Bowie
NileBowie.blogspot.com
February 15, 2012
Between the chaos and artillery fire unfolding in Homs and Damascus, the current siege against the Ba’athist State of Bashar al-Assad parallels events of nearly a century ago. In efforts to maintain its protectorate, the French government employed the use of foreign soldiers to smother those seeking to abolish the French mandated, Fédération Syrienne. While former Prime Minister Faris al-Khoury argued the case for Syrian independence before UN in 1945, French planes bombed Damascus into submission. Today, the same government – in addition to the United States and its client regimes in Libya and Tunisia – enthusiastically recognize the Syrian National Council as the legitimate leadership of Syria. Although recent polls funded by the Qatar Foundation claim 55% of Syrians support the Assad regime, the former colonial powers have made a mockery of the very democratic principles they tout.
Irrespective to the views of the Syrian people, their fate has long been decided by forces operating beyond their borders. In a speech given to the Commonwealth Club of California in 2007 retired US Military General Wesley Clark speaks of a policy coup initiated by members of the Project for a New American Century (PNAC). Clark cites a confidential document handed down from the Office of the Secretary of Defense in 2001 stipulating the entire restructuring of the Middle East and North Africa. Portentously, the document allegedly revealed campaigns to systematically destabilize the governments of Iraq, Somalia, Sudan, Libya, Syria, Lebanon and Iran. Under the familiar scenario of an authoritarian regime systematically suppressing peaceful dissent and purging large swaths of its population, the mechanisms of geopolitical stratagem have freely taken course.
Syria is but a chess piece being used as a platform by larger powers. Regime change is the unwavering interest of the US-led NATO block in collaboration with the feudal Persian Gulf Monarchies of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). This is being accomplished by using Qatar-owned media outlets such as Al-Jazeera to project their version of the narrative to the world and by arming radical factions of the regions Sunni-majority population against the minority Alawi-Shia leadership of Assad. Since 2005, the Bush administration began funding Syrian opposition groups that lean toward the Muslim Brotherhood and their aspirations to build a Sunni-Islamic State. The Muslim Brotherhood has long condemned the Alawi-Shia as heretics and historically attempted multiple uprising in the 1960’s. By arming radical Sunni factions and importing Iraqi Salafi-jihadists and Libyan mercenaries, the NATOGCC plans to topple Assad and install an illegitimate exiled opposition leader such as Burhan Ghaliun (leader of the Syrian National Council) to be the face of the new regime.
The recent example of implementing foreign policy by arming Al-Qaeda fighters in Libya has proved disastrous – as the rule of law passes from the NATO-backed Libyan Transitional Council to hundreds of warring guerilla militias. At a meeting between Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu and Hillary Clinton, Davutoglu pledged to find ways outside the United Nations Security Council to pressure Assad. In addition to bolstering longstanding sectarian divides in Syria, the US is smuggling arms into Syria from Incirlik military base in Turkeyand providing financial support for Syrian rebels. Syrian opposition forces led by defected Syrian colonel Riad al-Assad have been trained on Turkish soil since May 2011. Exclusive military and intelligence sources have reported to Israel’s DEBKAfile that British and Qatari special operations units are assisting rebel forces in Homs by providing body armor, laptops, satellite phones and managing rebel communications lines that request logistical aid, arms and mercenaries from outside suppliers.
Although the UK has vehemently denied these reports, Qatar’s leader Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani recently suggested sending troops into Syria to battle Assad’s forces. Military bases situated near Turkey’s southeastern border with northern Syria have become a crucial hub used for the delivery of outside supplies. Unmarked NATO warplanes near Iskenderum have received fighters from Libya’s Transitional National Council wielding weapons formerly belonging to Gaddafi’s arsenal. Abdel Hakim Belhaj, (former leader of the extremist Libyan Islamic Fighting Group turned NTC military governor at the directive of NATO) is leading the infiltration of Libyans into Syria in person with the help of the Turkish government. It has also been reported that Mahdi al-Harati, resigned from his functions as deputy chief of the Military Council in Tripoli to oversee the Free Syrian Army.
Syrian press has also reported that armed terrorist groups brandishing up-to-date American and Israeli weapons have roamed the countryside of Damascus committing blind acts of terror by setting off explosive devices and kidnapping civilians. As the NATOGCC continue to insist that Assad is committing acts of genocide against unarmed civilians, one must draw correlations between events reported by the Syrian state media and recent statements released by the leadership of Al-Qaeda in Iraq, praising the arrival of Iraqi fighters in Syria and advising rebels to use roadside bombs. Paradoxically, Al-Qaeda front man Ayman al-Zawahri has called on Muslims from across the Arab World to mobilize and support the Free Syrian Armyafter the disappointing Russian and Chinese veto at the UNSC. Few things are more absurd than the notion of Al-Qaeda terrorists – unanimously portrayed as ostensible “savages” by virtually all-Western media sources – entrust the apparatus of the United Nations and their capacity to resolve the Syrian conflict. The true purpose of Al-Qaeda and its role in influencing foreign policy has never been more evident.
Surely, Assad accusing foreign-sponsored terrorist groups of fomenting violence in Syria is simply evidence of his illegitimacy – as Western and Gulf allies assert. Even as Syrian state TV broadcasts reports showing seized weapons stockpiles and confessions by terrorists describing how they obtained arms from foreign sources, the NATOGCC continues to draft legislation in an effort pressure the Assad regime into dissolution. In the face of an outright campaign of foreign-funded sabotage, Syrian hackers have targeted Al-Jazeera’s “Syria Live Blog”, which provides ongoing coverage of the unrest. The hacker-ring boldly denounced Al Jazeera for broadcasting “false and fabricated news to ignite sedition among the people of Syria to achieve the goals of Washington and Tel Aviv.”
Through the fiery rhetoric of Susan Rice and her relentless condemnation of Assad – like Gaddafi before him – the United States is again attempting to invoke the Right to Protect (R2P) doctrine to take direct action against the Assad regime. In another parallel to the Libyan conflict, the UN’s astounding official death toll in Syria is taken solely from human rights groups, backed by the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), the International Criminal Court and the Syrian National Council. The official numbers rely exclusively on an obscure organization known as the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) – based in London, not Damascus – whose evidence is largely reliant on hearsay, pixelated YouTube videos and activist Twitter feeds. SOHR’s disputed reports present evidence that would not hold up in any court of law, much less should it be the basis of United Nations resolutions. The Observatory’s director Rami Abdelrahman collaborates directly with British Foreign Minister William Hague and derives legitimacy solely from connections with corporate/foundation-funded civil society networks. Claims that Assad’s security forces indiscriminately kill scores of newborn babies are palpably a product of Britain’s foreign office.
As a further indication of the on-going media war in Syria, none is more telling than the report produced by the Arab League’s observer mission into Syria. The contents of the report were completely ignored by the corporate-media after Qatar disputed its findings, the only nation to do so in the Arab League’s Ministerial Committee. The report unalterably concluded that the Syrian government was in no way lethally repressing peaceful protestors. Furthermore, the report credits armed gangs with the bombing of civilian buses, trains carrying diesel oil, bombing of police buses and the bombing of bridges and pipelines. During an interview with Arab League observer Ahmed Manaï, he praises the Sino-Russian veto at the UNSC and encouraged the Syrian leadership to implement reforms. Manaï states, “The Arab League is entirely discredited by burying the report of its own observers’ mission and its appeal to the Security Council. It missed the opportunity to participate in the settlement of the Syrian affair. All it can offer in the future will be worthless.”
While the initial observer report is predictably absent from mainstream media coverage and cited as inept (presumably for contradicting the official line of the allied Western-Gulf powers), Arab League mission leader Mohammed al-Dabi officially resigned, stating, “I won’t work one more time in the framework of the Arab League, I performed my job with full integrity and transparency but I won’t work here again as the situation is skewed.”The United Nations and the Arab League are now considering what was originally a joint observer mission – now referred to as a peacekeeping mission. The Arab League, in tandem with Saudi Arabia is preparing a nearly identical resolution calling for an armed peacekeeping council to present to the UN. Much like the indistinguishable saber rattling seen before Libyan intervention, the new resolution condemns Assad for lethal repression and calls for a transitional shift to democracy. The resolution is expected to create similar Sino-Russian divisions over its implementation, Russia’s deputy foreign minister, Gennady Gatilov, previously scorned the document as “the same unbalanced draft resolution text.”
The conflict in Syria has brought light to longstanding Cold War divisions between world powers. The Sino-Russian veto of the UNSC resolution calling for intervention has blocked the opportunity for Western powers to exert overt aggression, as demonstrated by NATO in Libya. Instead, it appears that the Assad regime will be destabilized through covert mercenary groups bent on committing blind acts of terrorism by means of sniper assassinations and roadside bombs. Learning from the Libyan experience, Russia and China perceive the UN Human Rights Report authored by Karen Koning AbuZayd, a director of the Washington-based corporate-funded think-tank, Middle East Policy Council – to be explicitly comprised; victims among the civilian population are a result of armed paramilitaries doing battle with the Syrian military in residential areas. In an interview with former Russian Joint Chiefs of Staff, Colonel-General Leonid Ivashov pledges that Russia will protect Iran, Syria, and the world from American fascism. In a show of support for the Syrian government, Russia has sent a large naval force into the region and China has further warned against a strike on Syria.
It is truly a paradox that the countries least fit to dictate principles of human rights, do so largely unhindered on the world stage. Without hesitation Hillary Clinton proclaimed, “What happened yesterday at the United Nations was a travesty” referring to the Sino-Russian veto. She then called for the formation of an international alliance between the war-profiteering elite of the West and absolutist Wahhabi Persian Gulf monarchies – amusingly titled, the Friends of Syria. International calls to abstain from violence have done little to influence the Gulf Cooperation Council and their brutal crackdown against Shiites in Bahrain. Incredibly, Saudi Arabia has entered the dialogue on human rights and democracy promotion – perhaps the world’s most defining feudalistic theocracy, a nation that prohibits political parties and national elections and executes those who apostatize Islam.
Iran’s Press TV news network has reportedly leaked intelligence exposing the American agenda in Syria. The report calls for the recognition of the Syrian National Council as the legitimate government and their positioning in Turkey to work against the Assad regime. Washington would then task Turkey with sending troops into Syria to arm the opposition forces, followed by Wahhabi fighters and Libyan mercenaries. Ominously, the intelligence stipulates that Israel will enter the fray to carry out military operations against Syria. If the regime fails to dissolve, Syrian state television channels will be taken down and Assad will be assassinated. Considering how other enemies of the West have faired in recent times, the sequence of events reported by Press TV would be largely unsurprising. The Wahhabis of the Persian Gulf are playing junior to American aggression in an effort to dominate the Shia-Alawi religious faction presently upheld by the leadership of Syria and Iran, but also to secure their places as regional powers.
Domestic affairs in Syria are of little consequence to the powers trying to topple the nation; the real priority is to further isolate Iran by eliminating its Shia-Alawi ally in Damascus. Israel reaps enormous benefit from toppling the Assad regime, as the Syrian Nation Council pledges to cut ties with Iran and discontinue arms shipments to Hezbollah and Hamas. If Syria falls and Iran is directly threatened, the potential for a regional conflict of the utmost seriousness exists, assuming China and Russia move in to defend Iran. Such a conflict would create detrimental implications for the global economy, potentially triggering a hyper-inflationary financial crisis. William Hague and billionaire financiers behind the civil society groups bestowing legitimacy to violent opposition actors are not the legitimate representatives of the Syrian people. Although the reforms have been slow, the Assad government is in the midst of drafting a new constitution. Syria’s sovereignty has come under direct fire from powers claiming to be defending Syria’s people. An attempt on the life of Bashar al-Assad may have similar consequences to the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. As the Syrian National Council familiarly calls for the implementation of a no-fly zone, those members of the International Community with any integrity left must work diligently to diffuse conflict in the region.
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[hat tip: Land Destroyer Report]
Syria to Hold Referendum and Enact a New Constitution in Less than Two Weeks … Will U.S. and Its Allies Attack Anyway?
Global Research
February 15, 2012
Syria to Hold Multi-Party Democratic Elections and Enact New Constitution on February 26th
Agence France-Presse reports:
Syria’s president decreed a vote this month on a new constitution that would effectively end nearly 50 years of single party rule, state media said, as troops reportedly stormed centres of dissent.
***
Bashar al-Assad called the ballot for February 26, in a move clearly aimed at placating growing global outrage over the bloodshed.
Under the newly proposed charter, freedom is “a sacred right” and “the people will govern the people” in a multi-party democratic system, state television said.
***
The new constitution also … prohibits parties based on religion.
Assad, who in April lifted a state of emergency in force since 1963, when his Baath Party took power, has made repeated promises of reforms that have failed to materialise since a popular uprising erupted on March 15.
The embattled president, who succeeded his late father Hafez in 2000, has said the constitution would usher in a “new era” for Syria, SANA state news agency reported.
This is what the U.S. and its allies have said that they want.
But – given that the U.S. government has been consistently planning regime change in Syria for 20 years (and dreamed of regime change for 50 years), and that the U.S., Britain, Qatar and other countries have already started a covert war in Syria – it is uncertain whether democratic elections and a new constitution can avoid a Syrian war involving the West.
Global Research Articles by Washington’s Blog
Bloodshed & Blame Game: Both sides spur Syria crisis [video]
Russia Today
February 15, 2012
A blast has ripped through an oil pipeline in the Syrian city of Homs, where clashes between regime troops and opposition fighters have continued for over a week. Thick smoke can be seen hanging over the city – activists say the explosion was caused by a government airstrike. Reports also suggest the army has sent tanks which are attacking residential areas in the country’s fourth largest city of Hama. And in the capital Damascus, troops are said to be raiding houses, looking for members of the Free Syrian Army. But with information hard to verify, there are concerns that some want only the regime painted in a bad light, and not the opposition.
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Fears Of Kosovo Or Iraq Fate For Syria
Global Research
February 13, 2012
Xinhua News Agency and Stop NATO
Escalating situation in Syria evokes fears of similar Iraqi fate
Syria’s private press reports have talked about a recent behind-closed-doors meeting held by U.S. President Barack Obama and the chief of the CIA, in the presence of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, noting that the meeting called for the need to reinforce military preparedness for a unilateral military intervention at any time in Syria, and to implement a series of concentrated shelling of military sites…
DAMASCUS: The accelerated situation and the obsession of almost all world countries, including major powers, about the Syrian crisis have raised many question marks about the future of this small but influential country and evoked fears that it’s nudged towards becoming a new Kosovo or at least a new Iraq.
The Syrian government’s decision to harshly track down alleged terrorist groups in restive Syrian cities has been encountered by vitriolic criticism from world countries, accusing it of capitalizing on the recent Russian and Chinese veto at the UN Security Council that has blocked a resolution condemning the Syrian government’s violence against protesters.
The harsh crackdown also raised concern about new measures against Syria, including a possible military intervention or at least an imminent civil war.
Internally, terrorism is strongly beating. The northern province of Aleppo was rocked on Friday with two suicide blasts that claimed the lives of 28 people and the injury of 234 others.
Also, alleged gunmen assassinated Saturday the head of a military hospital in Damascus, the first incident in the capital since the outbreak of violence in mid-March of last year.
Externally, Arab foreign ministers huddled in Cairo to discuss the Syrian crisis and have agreed to halt diplomatic dealings with Syria’s representatives and called on the UN to endorse their calls to send joint Arab-UN troops to Syria.
Turkey, Syria’s northern neighbor that has recently maintained a quiet diplomacy, raised its anti-Syria rhetoric over the past days and its Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu vowed Friday to work with Washington and like-minded European and Arab states to bolster humanitarian protection for Syrian civilians allegedly endangered by the Bashar al-Assad regime.
Davutoglu, speaking to journalists in Washington ahead of a Monday meeting with U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, threw support to Clinton’s proposed idea for a “Friends of Syria” international contact group to find ways to get humanitarian aid to Syrian civilians and support that country’s transition to democracy.
Furthermore, Syria’s private press reports have talked about a recent behind-closed-doors meeting held by U.S. President Barack Obama and the chief of the CIA, in the presence of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, noting that the meeting called for the need to reinforce military preparedness for a unilateral military intervention at any time in Syria, and to implement a series of concentrated shelling of military sites, in a bid to bridle the alleged repressive crackdown of the Syrian government on protesters.
Reports said Obama’s lingering intervention is attributed to mounting concern that the Lebanese Hezbollah, a close ally of Syria, might open a military front on Israel’s northern borders and drag Tel Aviv into a long-standing war with unpredictable consequences.
In yet another serious escalation in the Syrian scene, news has been leaked that Qatar and Britain mull dispatching special forces to Syria in the context of the so-called “Friends of Syria” group.
Victoria Nuland, the U.S. State Department spokeswoman, said Washington is holding consultations with some countries on convening a meeting of the group to render humanitarian aid to the Syrian people.
In the same context, the White House spokesman said the U.S. plans to intensify consultations with its partners, including representatives from the Syrian opposition, to crystallize the next steps of the international community to stop bloodshed in Syria and to ensure a peaceful and democratic transition.
The worldwide plans and calls stirred concerns among Syrians that the situation, which is currently experiencing some kind of a cold war between major powers and even regional heavyweights, is getting closer to a new Iraq amid escalated violence and explosions that recall memories of what is happening in neighboring Iraq.
Syria has claimed that five major explosions that hit the two largest cities in the country, Damascus and Aleppo, over the past few months bore the hallmarks of al-Qaida.
Websites that have links to al-Qaida and other Wahhabi organizations have lately posted names of some of their members who were either killed or wounded in Syrian territories.
Al-Haqiqa, or Truth, website, said the so-called Free Syrian Army is no more than a “fictitious” cover that hides behind other Takfiri and fundamentalists, who flocked to the fighting in Syrian territory.
Libyan websites disclosed the death of three Libyan Islamists at the Baba Amro neighborhood in Homs last Monday. Other websites cited similar cases about the killing of a number of fundamentalists who came in from Iraq, the United Arab Emirates and Jordan to fight in Syria.
Even the foreign press has reported the killing of five Wahabbi terrorists in the Damascus suburb of Zabadani, including the Kuwaiti Fuad Khaled, better known as Abu Hozaifa, during clashes with security men.
Media reports also said that no less than 1,000 gunmen from al-Qaida have infiltrated into Syria and most of them are stationed in Damascus suburbs and the central city of Homs.
The U.S. McClatchy newspapers said in a recent report that al-Qaida was behind the two explosions that rocked the capital of Damascus in December of 2011, raising the likelihood that it might also be responsible for the Aleppo blasts.
The paper said its account is based on CIA reports. It said al-Qaida wants to exploit the current turmoil in Syria to reassert its potency.
In a videotaped statement released Saturday, al-Qaida chief Ayman al-Zawahri called on Muslims in countries neighboring Syria to back Syria’s uprising against the “pernicious, cancerous regime.”
He said the rebels cannot depend on the West for help, spiking fears that Syria might meet Iraq’s fate.
Despite this fearsome development, Syrian officials are still trying to inspire hopes. Deputy Syrian Foreign Minister Faisal Mekdad confirmed Saturday that the country will overcome all difficulties and win through reconciliation and through embarking on a dialogue with all spectra of the Syrian society.
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Syria gives Tunisia, Libya 72 hours to close their embassies
Global Research
February 12, 2012
Russia Today
Syria’s foreign ministry is giving Tunisia and Libya just 72 hours to close down their embassies in the capital, Damascus. The move comes after the two North African countries announced similar measures against Syria. Libya said earlier this week it had given Syria’s charge d’affaires and his staff in Tripoli three days to leave the country, and Tunisia has also started procedures to expel the Syrian ambassador and withdraw recognition of the Syrian leadership under President Bashar al-Assad.
How the Arab League Has Become a Tool of Western Imperialism
By Finian Cunningham
Global Research
February 9, 2012
It’s an intrigue befitting the machinations of classical colonialism in past centuries, such as the Sykes-Picot carve-up of the Middle Eastern Levant territories, or the betrayal of the Arabs after World War I, or the theft of Mesopotamia’s oil by British capitalists.
Only this time, it is Arabs who are helping the neocolonial powers to deceive and subjugate other Arabs. Enter the Arab League.
Over the past year, the 22-member organization has emerged as a useful deceptive cover for Western powers as they seek to redraw the political contours of the Arab World, and beyond, for their own strategic interests.
The momentous popular upheavals that began in early 2011 across the Arab World have in many ways been co-opted or manipulated by Western imperialist powers to minimize democratic gains and to refashion the political map to their continuing advantage. A feat of achievement considering that these same powers have for decades supported the repressive regimes that have inflicted so much misery and suffering.
The leitmotif for Western intervention is “responsibility to protect” (R2P) – the notion that these powers are motivated by concern for human rights and the protection of civilian lives. But given that the United States, Britain, France and other NATO states have been conducting criminal wars of aggression over the past decade in mainly Muslim lands, with a death toll exceeding one million and casualties amounting to many more millions, these powers found themselves with a huge credibility problem when it came to contriving a pretext to intervene in the Arab upheavals.
What better than to shroud the Western agenda for intervention in Arab affairs with an appearance of Arab support? The League of Arab States has fulfilled this role. Since its inception in 1945, it has only ever suspended two member states. The first of these was Libya in March 2011; the second is Syria, suspended eight months later in November.
Ostensibly, the Arab League has been motivated to take such measures because it purportedly shares the concern of Washington, London, Paris, for the safety of civilians being violently repressed by their rulers. Without the League’s sanction, the intervention of Western powers would ring decidedly hollow and smack of old-fashioned colonialism. This is in fact what it is, but the addition of Arab voices to the Western sanctimonious chorus lends a crucial veneer of international solidarity.
The arrangement works like this: foment violence and instability within the country of choice, arm dissident groups, and direct these same groups with covert special forces; when government forces move to quell the insurrection, then accuse them of violating human rights. The Arab League then suspends the country, marking it out for international pariah status, which in turn provides a pretext for Western powers to mount military strikes, committing atrocities in the name of “responsibility to protect”, and engineering regime change in the interests of the Western powers. It’s neocolonialism in Arab lands – with the help of other Arab states.
Libya can be seen as a dress rehearsal for this routine, which is now being played out feverishly with Syria. Recall that it was the spurning of Libya in March by other League members that immediately presaged the seven-month NATO aerial bombardment of that country, resulting in possibly thousands of civilian deaths, a crime that is not yet fully realized because of a corporate-controlled media blackout, but a despicable crime nevertheless with bloodied Arab hands involved.
It appears that the Arab League is now taking on an even more pronounced role as the routine finesses. Clearly in Syria what is happening is an insurrection that is being fomented and armed by foreign governments, with Turkey and Saudi Arabia taking a lead role in arming the so-called Free Syrian Army against the state forces of President Bashar Al Assad.
And it was the Arab League that brought the motion last week at the UN Security Council aimed at shackling the Assad government and setting it up for Libya-style NATO military intervention. The veto by Russia and China has for the moment derailed that plan. No doubt, Russia and China have learnt the lesson of Libya where a similar Security Council sanction was used by Western powers to launch a blitzkrieg on that country – in the name of the specious R2P.
The insidious role of the Arab League as the West’s hound-dog can be gleaned from the comment by British Foreign Secretary William Hague following the Russian and Chinese veto at the UN.
Hague said: “Russia and China faced a simple choice today: would they support the people of Syria and the Arab League, or not? They decided not to, and instead sided with the Syrian regime and its brutal suppression of the Syrian people in support of their national interests.”
This is British spin on facts and truth at its best. Firstly, Russia and China decided to side with the “Syrian regime” because – despite biased Western media coverage – the government of Assad appears to retain the support of the Syrian people, and therefore it retains sovereign legitimacy. And the “brutal repression” that the solemn Hague speaks of relates to violence that Western and foreign Arab states have assiduously fomented in Syria, as they did in Libya.
Secondly, the position of Russia and China concurs with that of the Arab League’s own observer mission to Syria. The mission actually reported that much of the violence was being conducted by an “armed entity” and “armed opposition groups” involved in the killing of civilians – flatly contradicting the Western corporate media’s portrayal of unilateral state brutality. Indeed, the observer mission was subsequently cancelled by the League’s secretariat because the mission was exposing this Western disinformation [1]. So, far from not supporting the Arab League, as Britain’s William Hague contends, Russia and China have acted more consistently with the League’s observer mission. It is the executive of the League that has not supported their own people on the ground with regard to accurately reporting the situation in Syria.
Thirdly, note the way the British Foreign Secretary emphasizes that Russia and China “did not support the Arab League” in its move to have Syria sanctioned. Those few words blow the cover of the Arab League’s real purpose.
For it is the Arab League that is serving as a stamp of moral and political legitimacy for Western military aggression in Syria in the same way as Libya before. Washington, London and other Western powers are disguising their neocolonial strategy under an Arab cover of humanitarian concern and Arab League states are obliging for their own selfish interests.
The bigger picture here is the Western ploy of manipulating restive Arab populations to engineer regime change where the incumbent government is considered inconvenient to Western strategic interests. Syria is a major prize in that its support for Palestinian rights against Western-backed Israeli aggression is but one of many inconveniences. Its backing for the Hezbollah resistance against American imperialism in the Middle East is another. Of most immediate concern to Washington and allies is beyond Syria itself – its long-time alliance with the Islamic Republic of Iran. The US and its allies are convulsed by the desire for regime change in Tehran. Taking out Assad’s Syria is a long-held Western roadmap on the way to taking out Iran. Syria’s present fate of being in Western crosshairs was probably sealed when it rebuffed Washington’s overtures for a deal against Iran back in February 2010 [2].
But the US and Western military roadmap goes beyond re-carving the Middle East. As Michel Chossudovsky cogently explains in his new book, Towards a World War III Scenario, Washington’s military roadmap is aimed at global dominance in which hegemony over the vast energy-producing Middle East and Central Asian regions is crucial to marginalizing the heavyweight rivals of Russia and China. The alliance between the latter two and both Syria and Iran only gives these current targets added impetus for Western regime change.
Getting back to the treacherous role of the Arab League in serving the Western powers’ agenda, it is surely a bitter irony that one of the founding tenets of the League is to “defend the independence and sovereignty” of its members. Syria, which was one of the original seven founders of the League in 1945, is being stabbed in the back by its fellow members precisely to have its independence and sovereignty attacked. And it is the rump of Persian Gulf Arab states within the organization that has emerged as the most treacherous. Saudi Arabia and Qatar, along with the other Gulf Cooperation Council states of Kuwait, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates and Oman, have been most vocal in lending Arab denunciations of Libya and Syria and creating the pretext for Western aggression.
However, deploying these Arab dupes is where Western pretensions of supporting democracy and human rights become unstuck. The Persian Gulf monarchs have been the most repressive towards any popular stirrings for democracy within their own countries. Described variously as kingdoms, shaikdoms, emirates, or sultanates, these states are invariably ruled with iron rods by family dynasties that control their people as little more than serfs. It is surely ridiculous when the absolute despotic rulers of Saudi Arabia and Qatar in particular exhort the Syrian government to enact greater political reforms when these same countries do not brook any dissent and where it is a crime punishable by law to publicly criticize the royal rulers.
Over the past year, Saudi Arabia has cracked down murderously against peaceful protesters within its own borders. And it was Saudi Arabia – where women are flogged for driving cars unchaperoned and where public executions by beheading are carried every year – that led the invasion force of Gulf Cooperation Council states into Bahrain last Spring to ruthlessly crush peaceful pro-democracy demonstrations. In Bahrain, Saudi-led Gulf forces continue with Washington and London’s support to murder women and children in the streets and in their homes [3].
The pay-off for these Arab despots is that they continue to enjoy Western patronage and support in suppressing their own people. Additionally, the Sunni monarchs share the Western agenda to destroy the Syrian-Iranian alliance, which garners much greater regional popular respect and influence than any of the Persian Gulf tyrants.
The illegitimacy of Western powers meddling in Syrian affairs and elsewhere and the risible alliance with repressive Arab states in pushing this agenda is only obscured because of the corporate-controlled media’s deliberate blindness towards the deception. An honest appraisal of the protagonists – the Western criminal governments and their Arab tyrants – is, to put it bluntly, a sick joke.
Finian Cunningham is Global Research’s Middle East and East Africa Correspondent
NOTES
[1] Syria: Arab League Suspends Observer Mission for Revealing Media Disinformation
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=29060
[2] Syria: A Clenched US Fist Behind the Hand of Friendship
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=17664
[3] ‘Responsibility to Kill’ (R2K): Washington Gives Green Light to Toxic Terror in Bahrain
Al Qaeda Backs US Regime Change in Syria
By Tony Cartalucci
Land Destroyer
February 12, 2012
US plan-B after UN veto – deploy Al Qaeda “foreign legion.”
It is now a matter of established public record that the “Libyan rebels” the US, through the UN and NATO, funded, armed, trained, recognized politically, and even provided special forces and air support for, were in fact led by the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), listed by the US State Department (page 1) as a “Foreign Terrorist Organization.” Two West Point reports confirm that LIFG was formally joined with Al Qaeda with many of its top leaders constituting the core of Al Qaeda’s upper echelons. These reports also confirm that LIFG fighters were operational in both Afghanistan and Iraq, killing US and British troops and that the vast majority of their fighters were recruited from the Libyan cities of Benghazi and Darnah. In 2011, it would be these two cities that served as the epicenter of NATO-backed resistance against Qaddafi.
More recently it was exposed by French independent reporter Thierry Meyssan of VoltaireNet.org that LIFG commander Abdul Hakim Belhaj has left the NATO bombed city of Tripoli and is now directing the “Free Syrian Army” from the border of Turkey (a NATO member since 1952).
In the wake of growing international anger toward Wall Street, London, and its NATO forces, led by Russia and China’s vetoing of their UN Security Council resolution designed to tip off another foreign military intervention, this time in Syria, the corporate media is now reporting that Al Qaeda has called on its supporters to “join the uprising against Assad’s “pernicious, cancerous regime.”” We are expected to believe that Al Qaeda – allegedly depraved, beheading, civilian bombing, trade tower-toppling modern-day Huns – had pinned their hopes on the UNSC to resolve the Syrian conflict through the mechanisms of “international rule of law” and are only just now mobilizing their forces to act after the “disappointing” Russian and Chinese veto. It is a narrative as bizarre as it is contradictory.
Image: G.I. al-Zawahri: Al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahri has called on Muslims from across the Arab World to mobilize and support the Syrian uprising against what he called, “Assad’s pernicious, cancerous regime.” Apparently he held off military involvement because he had faith in the US-backed UNSC resolution, and is only now mobilizing his forces after the “disappointing” veto – a narrative so ridiculous it can only have come from Langley, Virginia.
We are also expected to believe that as large swaths of the global population begin turning against what is obviously fraudulent human rights concerns masking naked global military conquest by the West, the extremist ranks of Al Qaeda whom the West was supposedly locked in mortal combat with for over a decade are one of their few remaining allies. Considering that the West, and more specifically, the CIA, created Al Qaeda in the mountains of Afghanistan in the first place, it seems as if the terrorist organization has and still is executing US foreign policy covertly and illegally, when the US military and its NATO allies cannot.
With this official endorsement by Al Qaeda of Syria’s violent, foreign-funded uprising, the West can now begin blaming NATO-backed terrorism on “Al Qaeda” while simultaneously highlighting the urgency and necessity with which NATO must intervene, lest Al Qaeda terrorists fill the void. The Associated Press even made a point of mentioning that the “head of Al Qaeda” claimed Muslims across the Arab World “cannot depend on the West for help,” a comment that so suspiciously compliments the howling protest of U.S. Ambassador Susan Rice recently at the UN, it seems oafishly scripted.
From Afghanistan in the 1980’s, to Libya in 2011, and now Syria in 2012, the one steadfast ally the US can always depend on bringing arms and militants in to carry out its foreign policy when its overstretched military cannot, is Al Qaeda, America’s Arab foreign legion. This illustrates both the fraud of the West’s current “human rights” agenda, as well as the ongoing hoax that is the “War on Terror.”
