To See Assad's Rear: The Mess in Syria

Statutory Warning: This post is a statement of my thoughts on this subject and my sources are linked to in the body of the text. I am not in any way responsible for any fights/disagreements/fallings out resulting from discussion arising from this post, whether on this site or elsewhere on the internet or other media where it might appear or be referenced. Also, this post is not meant to be an “apology” for “genocide”. If that’s the best you can manage as a counter, you’d probably be better off reading something else.

One of the most interesting bits of news I came across in the last few days came not from Syria but from further west, from Libya, scene of an unending civil war stoked and affected by the West, in the shape of NATO, in the name of humanitarian intervention. That little bit of news was that the head of the so-called “government” of Libya, the National Transitional Council, threatened to use force to “unite the nation” – in other words, to compel the eastern part of the country, Cyrenaica, and especially its capital, Benghazi, to abandon its declaration of partial autonomy.

The irony of this situation is delicious. Benghazi – for those who have the attention span and awareness to remember – was the “epicentre” of the so-called “popular uprising” against Muammar Gaddafi, the “evil tyrant” who was bombed out of power by the West and murdered after capture, to the happy laughter of the Evil Empire’s Lucrezia Borgia, someone who I will henceforth refer to as Killary Klingon. It was to “protect the citizens of Benghazi” that a no-fly zone was imposed by a NATO Coalition of the Killing, followed by a “humanitarian” bombing campaign which murdered an unknown number of civilians – NATO, of course, denying any such thing happened.

And now NATO’s own puppet ruler is threatening to attack...Benghazi...in order to “unite the nation” and end an attempt at autonomy. Can anyone tell me exactly how this is different from what Gaddafi was doing? And if the NTC assaults Benghazi and the civil war goes into top gear again instead of merely sputtering along, as it is now, will NATO planes intervene again to “protect civilians”?

Of course not. I know that, you know that, and the Syrians, Russians and Chinese know that.

In fact, the key to understanding the civil war in Syria lies in Libya, where a UN resolution was made into an excuse to intervene in a civil war on one side, and destroy a country and society in order to privatise its oil industry and hand it over to private players. Even countries which didn’t say a word at the time noticed what was going on, and knew what was in store for Syria even when the first inflamed rhetoric began to fly in the air.

This, basically, is why Russia and China have repeatedly and “perversely” blocked resolutions at the UN made by the exact same people who have destroyed Libya: because, while leaving the current government in power may by some standards be bad, the alternative is far, far worse.

This might as well be the place to make another observation: the fact that while  the same people in NATO circles of power are itching to start a war against Syria, the same people on the ground are also fighting in Syria. Yes, the same Islamic warriors who fought the Gaddafi government are now part of the so-called Free Syrian Army (FSA); and its military chief is Abdelhakim Belhadj.

Does that name sound familiar? It should; I have written about him before. Abdelhakim Belhadj, ex-Al Qaeda fighter in Afghanistan and Libya, arrested by the CIA and imprisoned by Muammar Gaddafi, pardoned and released by his son Saif al-Islam, only to restart the rebellion against the Gaddafis with the full support of the same CIA which had shopped him. Abdelhakim Belhadj, military governor of Tripoli, Al Qaeda-affiliated terrorist, and leading the Great Hope of Freedom, the Free Syrian Army.

The enlightened democrats of the FSA

Is this a joke, perhaps? No, it isn’t. It’s interesting to think of why.

Old time Marxists had a term worth remembering: objective allies. It referred to forces, which while apparently at loggerheads, were united, secretly or otherwise, against a common foe. Anyone who has a fair knowledge of current affairs and a mind capable of even basic analysis can hardly come to any other conclusion but that the Empire and Al Qaeda are objective allies.

Look at the actual evidence. With the single exception of Afghanistan in 2001, the regimes overthrown (directly or indirectly) by the Empire in Muslim countries have followed a pattern. They have been secular dictatorships with a strongly socialist economy, where resources were nationalised and religious fundamentalism ruthlessly crushed. Such was the pattern in Iran with the CIA-run coup which overthrew Mohammad Mossadegh. That was the pattern in Afghanistan, where the Empire conspired with Muslim religious fundamentalists to destroy the socialist government of Najibullah. So too it went in Iraq – Saddam, for those readers who have chosen to forget, was a secular dictator under whom Christians and other religious minorities were perfectly safe (oh, by the way, there are some 14 million Christian Arabs in the world, which is more than the planet’s entire Jewish population – those who love to call Arabs uncivilised Muslim ragheads should think about that for a moment.)

Such was also the case in Libya, where Gaddafi had destroyed an Al Qaeda rebellion earlier. Such was the case even in Chechnya, where the West provided full backing for the Al Qaeda affiliated Islamic terrorists who fought the Russians – to this day, surviving Chechen warlords are hosted in London. Even Afghanistan, which I mentioned earlier, is fast slipping back into religious intolerance under the Western-anointed puppet government. In Pakistan, the broadly modern and secular society is under a double threat, from the Empire and the fundamentalists, who seem to work to reinforce each other.

Consider: in every one of these cases, the Empire and Al Qaeda are on the same side. Despite all the “they hate our freedoms” rhetoric, the actual target of Al Qaeda isn’t the Empire – it’s the secular Muslim governments on the one hand, more so if they dare follow socialist policies; and the corrupt and despotic Saudi monarchy on the other. The Saudi monarchy is too vital to the Empire to sacrifice. Therefore, diverting Al Qaeda’s attention to the socialist and secular Arab regimes had a twofold advantage for the Empire: it protected the Saudi royals, and at the same time it furthered the Empire’s double agenda of controlling the world’s oil deposits and strengthening the hand of the Zionazi pseudostate. The elimination of an irrelevant liability named Osama bin Laden, quite likely orchestrated by Al Qaeda itself, is neither here nor there. 

What, ultimately, was the effect of the 11/9 attacks on the World Trade Centres? Wasn’t it the opening up of Iraq to Al Qaeda activity, and the energising of Sunni fundamentalist terrorism around the globe? Isn’t “stopping Al Qaeda” the excuse behind virtually every single occupation or intervention the West is running in a Muslim nation today, from Yemen to Somalia, from northern Nigeria to Afghanistan, even where there is no evidence that Al Qaeda even exists?

Let me ask this question: if it were not for the brave resistance fighters who fought the Empire to a stalemate in the streets and alleys of Iraq, would not Shiite, anti-Al Qaeda Iran, and Shiite Alawite-ruled, anti-Al Qaeda Syria, have long since been invaded in their turn? Remember the neocon boast from 2003: “Everyone wants to go to Baghdad; real men want to go to Tehran”? This isn't the first time lies have been told about Syria, either.

Is it so surprising, then, that the “freedom fighters” of the FSA were attacking civilians and murdering Shia and Christian people in Homs and forcing them to flee? Is it so surprising that the Sunni people of western Iraq, who logically should be on the side of the Sunni people of Syria who are allegedly suffering under a Shiite dictatorship, are strongly against arming the Free Syrian Army? They have seen what Al Qaeda can do, and they have no wish to see it happen again. Car bombs, for instance, have already gone off in Damascus and Aleppo; the “price of freedom”?

Is it, then, surprising at all that Killary Klingon admitted that Al Qaeda and the Empire were on the same side in Syria? It wasn’t. Is it so surprising that Russia and China are deeply suspicious of the Empire’s motives? Not at all.

Of course, the Russians and the Chinese have their own agendas as well. They know perfectly well that – whatever Al Qaeda wants – the ultimate targets of the Empire are their own nations. The Empire isn’t even particularly subtle about it, openly trying to encircle China in the Pacific while denouncing Vladimir Putin’s entirely legitimate election win in Russia (even though the aforesaid Killary Klingon admitted it was legitimate). They know that Syria is meant to be captured as a prelude to the invasion of Iran – the Empire and its Arab vassals have made no secret of their belief that the fall of the legitimate Syrian government of Bashar Assad will be a “major blow for Iran” – and that if Iran falls, the Empire’s stranglehold on most of the world’s oil supplies will be complete. And if Muslim fundamentalism triumphs in West Asia, renewed Islamic terrorism in the Chechen and Uighur areas will be sparked off almost at once; terrorism which the West has historically supported and will enthusiastically support again.

This, then, is the ultimate reason Russia and China have stood firm against NATO bullying and expansionism: Libya was a wake-up call. They simply cannot afford to lose Syria.

Meanwhile, what is happening on the ground in Syria? Another interesting thing about reports from that nation is how many of them are sourced to unnamed “activists”. When those activists acquired names, they have been regularly exposed as being fake identities of people in Britain; the same Britain which took the lead in bombing Libya and which continues to help occupy Afghanistan. And yet these unsourced, unverified “reports” have been made the basis of denunciations of the Assad regime and its alleged genocide of peaceful civilians.

Let me take a moment to say something which might shock some readers: like much of the world’s population, if a “reputable Western media source” says the sun rises in the East, I’d demand independent verification. And after the WMD lies in Iraq, the continuing campaign of calumny against Iran, the whitewashing of the crimes of the Zionazi pseudostate, the lies about Gaddafi’s alleged complicity in the Lockerbie bombing (which led to many Britons in particular supporting the war against him in the name of revenge, just as revenge is now a keyword for intervention in Syria), and on and on and on, I think mine is the logical position. I can barely think of a single substantive issue where, if the West and anyone else differed, the West was proved to have been telling the truth when the facts came out.

As such, I have extreme scepticism about the Western version of events anywhere in the world, least of all in Syria; and I shall continue to maintain said scepticism for the rest of this article.

Click to enlarge

The epicentre of the Libyan war was, allegedly, Misrata, a city on the way to Benghazi. Misrata held out against Gaddafi’s troops and was later made the springboard for the assault on Tripoli by the so-called “freedom fighters”. In Syria, the epicentre was the city of Homs, where “brave” (which, in Western propaganda, always means Western-backed) “freedom fighters” (in this case, the Al Qaeda affiliated terrorists of the FSA) were fighting the Syrian Army.

Let’s also say something here: the Syrian government would under no circumstances have abandoned Homs. That city has always been the nerve-centre of Syrian revolutionary activity; the Syrians could no more have abandoned it than they’d have abandoned Damascus. This is why both sides went head-to-head in Homs, a battle that only the Army could win.

But the fact that the Syrian Army would inevitably win in Homs wasn’t a factor in the Free Syrian Army’s decision to fight in the city; what they wanted was to try and engineer a Libya-like Western intervention in Syria, and use it as a casus belli. All the actual evidence, including their proved habit of lies and exaggerations. points to that.

Those of you who keep up with the news will remember the reports that kept on repeating that Homs was “pounded again by Syrian artillery” – day after day after day. I don’t know how many have actually taken the time to wonder what said bombardment would mean in real terms. But, if you’ve ever seen the aftermath of a real bombardment, even on TV, you’ll know that pretty much nothing is left of a town but a heap of rubble. An artillery shell is a case of explosives and shrapnel which blasts down walls and shatters everything from trees to streets, blows roofs off buildings, and leaves doors and windows as gaping holes. Think of Stalingrad, or Berlin. Think of Grozny or Fallujah.

So, if the news of the bombardment was to be taken at face value, there shouldn’t have been anything left to be shelled day after day after day. But there was, even according to the “brave freedom fighters”, since they claimed that the hospitals of Homs were converted into torture centres. How these hospitals and other buildings survived the shelling was a mystery nobody seems to have thought to ponder. Did the Assad regime deliberately spare them? Was then the shelling not so indiscriminate after all, or not so intense, or both?

There are reports from the Battle of Homs itself, where Western journalists who entered Syria illegally and embedded themselves with the terrorist gangs were killed or injured. The gangs themselves used these reporters virtually as human shields, and claimed that they were cut off and surrounded by the Syrian Army, which was going to murder everyone unless stopped. Well, what happened?

What happened was that the allegedly “surrounded” FSA units withdrew from Homs. This proves that either Bashar Assad’s regime (in the shape of his “brutal” brother, who commands a division) is foolhardily generous to its defeated opponents, or that the FSA units weren’t surrounded at all. There is no third explanation. Corollary: either way, the FSA is lying. But really that’s not so surprising any longer, is it?

The "bad guys", also called the Syrian Army

Also, when Homs fell, thirteen French officers were captured there by the Syrian Army. This squares with reports that the same NATO war criminal regimes who bombed Libya and armed terrorist gangs there were on the ground in Syria from as early as December of last year; that the West supports and encourages terrorism against any country like Iran which doesn’t bow to its diktats isn’t even news. Apparently the fate of these thirteen French war criminals is the subject of secret negotiations. Syria would do better to parade them on TV in chains before marching them off to a firing squad. As illegal combatants, they have no rights, and if the situation had been different, the utterly vile Sarkozy regime in Paris would have shown no mercy.

Meanwhile the legitimate Syrian government of Assad held a referendum for a new constitution, ending one-party rule, which was approved of by 80% of the people who voted, which was 57% of the population. Not surprisingly, the Al Qaeda gangs forming the FSA denounced the exercise. No more surprisingly, the West, which only supports democracy when the “right side” wins (look at what happened when HAMAS won a democratic election in Occupied Palestine), also denounced the exercise.

Coming to the aid of the Western propaganda effort are alleged “liberals” like Uri Avnery, a “peace activist” from the zionazi pseudostate who enthusiastically supported the bombing of Libya and now no less enthusiastically longs for Syria to be invaded and regime-changed. Such people are dangerous, because readers look at what they are saying on one topic, for instance, that Palestinians should be treated like human beings, and then are taken in by their regurgitated lies and propaganda on other topics. One telling fact is that Avnery has fallen completely silent on Libya; the fact that the armed militias there are carrying on their own internecine civil war and terrorising civilians apparently is of no moment to him. There are also websites like Uruk net, which denounce Syria and Iran and yet supported Gaddafi in Libya; their cognitive dissonance is either so extreme as to be literally blinding, or, just as likely, they are paid agents taking part in a sophisticated propaganda exercise on behalf of those who are anti-Syria and anti-Iran. I’ll leave you to contemplate who those might be.

It’s certainly true that the Assad regime is in many ways unsavoury; but the same West which supports, props up and mollycoddles regimes like the murderous ones in Ethiopia, Bahrain or Yemen, among others, the same West which once supported Assad, as it did Gaddafi, has absolutely no moral leg to stand on when it comes to Syria.

But the fact that they are lying in their teeth won’t stop them. Only Russia and China can do that.

And actual and legitimate governments of Syria, now and in the future, of course.

  


Further reading:

Ten Things You Didn't Know About The Syrian Revolution