Jabhat al-Nusra terrorist in Jisr al-Shugour, just south of the Turkish border, 25/4/15
Ankara, SANA – Unions, civil society organizations, and political parties in Turkey organized a protest in Taksim area in Istanbul on Friday to express solidarity with the Syrian people and to denounce the support provided to terrorists by Recep Tayyip Erdogan and the Justice and Development Party government.
The protestors rallied in front of Galatasaray School in Taksim area, denouncing the terrorist organization Jabhet al-Nusra and the government of the Justice and Development Party.
Speeches delivered during the protest held the Justice and Development Party responsible for the massacres committed against Syrian people, calling for stopping all the military and logistic support provided by the Party to ISIS, Jabhet al-Nusra, and ISIS terrorists.
On a relevant note, similar protests denouncing the support provided by Erdogan and his government to terrorists were also held in Antioch, Iskenderun, Samandag, Ankara, Izmir, Mersin, Tunceli.
Another protest was organized in Istanbul by supports of Beshiktash FC to denounce the massacre committed by terrorists in the town of Eshtabraq in Syria and condemn the role played by the Justice and Development Party government in this massacre.
These protests follow a protest that was held on Thursday in the town of Samandag in Iskenderun area, in which the participants also condemned Erdogan’s government for its support for terrorism and held it responsible for the massacres committed by terrorists in Syria.
"Yarmouk is only a few kilometres south of Damascus. It was once a thriving centre of colour and life with a vibrant market that made it much more than just a Palestinian enclave. Over the last four years though it has been the centre of so much violence and death that it is now the most festering wound on the ailing Syrian body. And perhaps the most tragic dimension of Yarmouk at the moment is the way the suffering of these people is being manipulated to provide a new rationale for Western military intervention."
Originally published at the Prayers for Syria site by Father Dave [1] under the title of "What's going on in Yarmouk? Title changed to indicate more about subject.
I thought it might prove difficult to get to Yarmouk. My God, it’s hard enough to get into Syria at the moment!
At first I thought we weren’t even going to make it out of Sydney! As soon as the airport authorities saw the word ‘Syria’ on our exit visas we were handed over to the counter-terrorism unit! Even so, we eventually got out of the country, made it smoothly through Beirut airport and then to the Syrian border by taxi, where we found, to our delight, that our visas had been approved. A short drive further and we were at the beautiful Dama Rose hotel, and you wouldn’t know that you were at the centre of a nation-wide war (except for the 40 or so checkpoints that we had to pass through to get there).
I announced our intention to get to Yarmouk right away to the people I thought might be able arrange something, and various phone calls were made. Even so, it wasn’t till we met with the Minister for Tourism the next day (a man whose portfolio sadly leaves him with time on his hands) that the right connections were made and plans were put in place.
Yarmouk is only a few kilometres south of Damascus. It was once a thriving centre of colour and life with a vibrant market that made it much more than just a Palestinian enclave. Over the last four years though it has been the centre of so much violence and death that it is now the most festering wound on the ailing Syrian body. And perhaps the most tragic dimension of Yarmouk at the moment is the way the suffering of these people is being manipulated to provide a new rationale for Western military intervention.
The dominant narrative at the moment is that ISIS, by lodging themselves in Yarmouk, are on the doorstep of the Presidential palace, threatening to take over Damascus! The Assad government, in response, is throwing everything it has at Yarmouk (including its notorious ‘barrel bombs’), killing rebels and civilians alike, in a desperate attempt to stave off the inevitable. The only hope for the poor people of Yarmouk (so the narrative goes) is to send in the Marines!
Of course the Marines don’t have a great track record when it comes to solving other peoples’ problems, especially in the Middle-East (think Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, …). Even so, if the people of Yarmouk are suffering at the hands of a reckless government in its death throes, can we really expect our benign super-powers to sit on their hands?
My thought was that I needed to get to Yarmouk to see for myself what was going on, and we got there.
We got to within about 300 meters of the border anyway, where the Syrian military made sure we stopped. We could see the front line from where we were but, as our guides pointed out, this meant that ISIS snipers could see us too, and so we soon moved off from the main entrance road and entered a school on the government controlled side of the border where a number of Yarmouk residents were being housed as well as schooled.
We spent our first few hours there teaching the children to box. I appreciate that most people would see that as a crazy thing to do but the kids certainly enjoyed themselves. There was lots of laughter and cheering as young and old put on the gloves and learnt how to throw punches against the pads without hurting their hands (which is not as easy as some think).
After we’d exhausted ourselves playing we sat down with the Principal of the school and some of the elders of the camp and talked, while enjoying the obligatory coffee that always accompanies such meetings.
From our day at Yarmouk, and through subsequent discussions with local Palestinians and with others in Damascus who knew what they were talking about, I came to some pretty firm conclusions about the situation in Yarmouk and, as I expected, the truth is pretty much the reverse of what we’re being told.
The Syrian Arab Army are not the chief villains in this drama. On the contrary, the Yarmouk residents that we met were being housed and fed by that army, and the children that we saw treated the army men like benign uncles. Indeed, when one of the officers who was with us put on the gloves and started throwing punches, all the children started cheering for him!
This is what I’d expected to find, as I’d spent time in a similar encampment for displaced persons from Yarmouk almost exactly 12 months earlier. There again we’d met hundreds of children, all of whom had been relocated to safe places by the army, and we’d taught them to box.
So let’s be clear on a few points:
Firstly, Syrian Army never enters Yarmouk. This isn’t contested by anyone on the ground. The army may work inside Yarmouk through their proxies in the Palestinian militia but army personnel never enter the camp themselves.
Likewise, the army does not shell Yarmouk. Clearly the Assad government does not want to be remembered for murdering Palestinians.
Finally (and predictably) those who are fleeing Yarmouk are running in the direction of the Syrian army in order to escape ISIS. They aren’t running to ISIS in order to escape the Syrian army. And the army is finding shelter and protection for the fleeing residents.
This is not to say that every Palestinian loves the Syrian army or the Assad government. Indeed, one Palestinian man I spoke to swore that the army had deliberately shelled ISIS in such a way as to force them into Yarmouk! “Why would they do that?” I asked? “In order to bring ISIS into contact with their other great enemy, Hamas, so that they would destroy each other”.
Whether or not that guy was right, his analysis highlights the absurdity of the other side of the media narrative. ISIS are not threatening the Presidential palace from Yarmouk. On the contrary, whether by design or by good fortune, the Syrian army is probably quite pleased to have ISIS in Yarmouk.
There are apparently only around 2000 ISIS militants in Yarmouk in total, and even with superior weapons (being channeled in from Qatar) it seems that they can still be contained by the Palestinian factions opposing them, let alone the Syrian army who have been containing rebels within Yarmouk for a number of years now. The residents have paid a terrible price for that, but the strategy has certainly been effective in protecting the capital.
And so the big lie needs to be turned on its head. The people of Yarmouk are not suffering at the hands of the Syrian army. They are suffering, but the Syrian Arab Army is probably the best friend they have at the moment.
And the army is not about to be overrun by ISIS troops streaming out of Yarmouk. That’s not to say that the army isn’t in trouble. Indeed, they have real problems to deal with in Aleppo and Idlib, but Yarmouk is a relatively minor headache.
In truth, I’m not sure what more can be done for the people of Yarmouk or for the Syrian army. One thing I am sure about though is that we don’t need the Marines, or any more foreign military intervention in Syria. Indeed, the further away our military stays the better are the chances for the people of Yarmouk and for the country as a whole.
Rev. David B. Smith, B.A. (Hons), B.Th., Dip.A.
Parish Priest, Holy Trinity Dulwich Hill
Professional Boxer, 6th degree black belt,
Senior Trainer, Father Dave’s Fight Club
Manager, Binacrombi Boot Camp
Managing Director, Fighting Fathers Ministries
President, Friends of Sabeel Australia
Marrickville Citizen of the Year 1994 & 2009
Nominated Australian of the Year 2004 & 2009
Guiness World Record “Most Continuous Rounds of Boxing” 2012
A delegation of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Mediterranean arrived in Damascus on Tuesday 28 April 2015 to discuss ending the crisis in Syria. Participants discussed the role of Western-backed armed groups in destabilizing the country. They also discussed ways in which the Mediterranean Parliament can support a peaceful solution in Syria. The Parliamentary Assembly is working on a UN resolution to condemn all violent extremism and prevent funding for groups that perpetrate it. Members consider the prolongation of the crisis as very dangerous for the region. This sounds like a concerted approach from an organisation that is able to name some of the problems out loud.
Member states of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Mediterranean (PAM)are: Albania, Algeria, Andorra, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, Cyprus, Egypt, France, Greece, Israel, Italy, Jordan, Lebanon, Libya, Malta, Monaco, Montenegro, Morocco, Palestine, Portugal, Serbia, Slovenia, Syria, Macedonia, Tunisia, Turkey.
Associate and partner states are: Romania, San Marino, Bulgaria, Georgia, Russia and the Holy See.
The organisation was established in 2005.
According to Wikipedia, "The main objective of PAM is to forge political, economic and social cooperation among the member states in order to find common solutions to the challenges facing the region, and to create a space for peace and prosperity for the Mediterranean peoples.
PAM's membership is open exclusively to Mediterranean countries, which are represented on equal footing. This is reflected in the composition of the Bureau and the alternating Presidency. The current President of PAM is Sen. Fayez Al-Tarawneh of Jordan. Each national delegation has five members with equal voting and decision-making powers. Associate Members and Observers do not have voting rights.
PAM conducts the bulk of its work within three standing committees. The standing committees focus on three strategic areas; the first standing committee is dedicated to political and security cooperation, the second is focused on economic, social and environmental issues, while the third standing committee addresses dialogue amongst civilisations and human rights issues. The PAM may also set up ad hoc committees or special task forces for particular topics, such as the Middle East, migration, free trade, terrorism, climate change, and others."
Itai Anghel: No Free Steps to Heaven (Four Corners, No April 27, 2015.) This is an amazing video showing how female Kurdish fighters claim they are causing ISIS fighters to turn and run. Although the female soldiers are obviously well-trained, effective, and brave, they say that ISIS soldiers run away because they believe that if they are killed by a woman, they will go straight to hell. If they are killed in battle by men, they think they will go to heaven. Two prisoners identified as captured ISIS soldiers affirm that this is true.
The video makes clear that the Turkish Government (Australia's ally) is allowing foreigners to join ISIS via Turkey using connections to the Muslim Brotherhood. President Erdogan of Turkey is said to be a great sympathiser with the Muslim Brotherhood, indeed he has been described as a deluded fanatic by the Syrian president. (See CNN interview.) See also, ""Turkey appears to have overlooked the anger bubbling among its own Kurds towards its Syria policy."". Source: http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2015/01/how-turkey-misread-kurds-201511910421859659.html
Unfortunately the narration of the video curtly damns Bashar al-Assad as suppressor of Kurds, whereas the truth is complex. Some Kurds in Syria have citizenship, others have work permits, others lack these rights. It depends on when they came to Syria, where from, and other historic circumstances. On the 20th of April, however, Syrian Minister for Information, Omran al-Zoubi, indicated that President Bashar al-Assad's government is willing to accept Kurdish autonomy in Syrian Kurdistan to the north, where much of the fighting against ISIS has taken place. Source: Source: http://ekurd.net/assad-regime-ready-to-accept-kurdish-autonomy-in-syrian-kurdistan-2015-04-20 and http://rudaw.net/english/middleeast/syria/130320151 (Some interesting comments under this article.)
There are problems of trust with some Kurds because of Israel's investment in Kurdish territory, notably in Iraq. Israel is suspected of divisive activities against Palestinians in Yarmouk in Damascus and elsewhere. Syria is the only country that gives full rights to Palestinians. This is probably a major reason why it is thought to be a target of Israel/US demonization and military undermining. The film about the Kurdish women fighters was made by an Israeli.
Meet the women taking up arms against Islamic State.
"We are ISIS's nightmare." Ahin, female Kurdish guerrilla
"They should fear me... What I have and they don't is a purpose worth fighting for... I'm here to protect my existence." Zozan, female Kurdish guerrilla
These highly effective female fighters are taking on Islamic State forces in northern Iraq and Syria as part of the Kurdish guerrilla army.
One of their senior leaders is Commander Media and she's clear about her purpose:
"For people like that even hell is not enough. My role is to make sure they get a one way ticket."
Commander Media and the story of her soldiers feature in No Free Steps to Heaven, a film that takes you right into the conflict zone as these women take charge during tense fire fights.
Through the camera of Israeli film-maker Itai Anghel, we meet young women giving up any prospect of a normal life to train and fight in tough conditions.
Sitting fireside at night in the mountains, 20-year-old Zozan says: "I am fighting to live, they are fighting to die."
Then there's newly trained Ahin on her way to join two siblings on the frontline. Anghel asks if she is afraid of ISIS. Her reply: "On the contrary they are afraid of us."
These female guerrillas also engage in psychological warfare. As they go into battle they taunt the ISIS fighters, who believe dying in combat will lead them to heaven and 72 virgins, but not if they are killed by a woman.
Anghel also meets ISIS soldiers captured by the Kurds. They chillingly boast about the pleasure they take in killing their enemies. One claims to have beheaded at least 70 people.
As an Israeli, Anghel went undercover to film these close encounters. A friend of murdered American journalist James Foley, Anghel was well aware of the dangers facing journalists in the region. Using trusted contacts within the Kurdish forces, his journey provides a fascinating insight into the fight against ISIS.
NO FREE STEPS TO HEAVEN, reported by Itai Anghel and presented by Kerry O'Brien, goes to air on Monday 27th April at 8.30pm on ABC. It is replayed on Tuesday 28th April at 10.00am and Wednesday 29th April at midnight. It can also be seen on ABC News 24 on Saturday at 8.00pm, ABC iview and at abc.net.au/4corners
Yerevan, SANA – Syria expressed on Thursday at a global forum its condemnation of the genocide which the Ottoman Turks committed against the Armenian people in 1915.
The global forum "Against the Crime of Genocide" was held in the Armenian capital Yerevan commemorating the Centennial of the well-known genocide, which is marked on April 24 every year.
Delivering Syria's speech, Speaker of the People's Assembly Mohammad Jihad al-Laham said history will not forgive those "who didn't learn the lessons of wars on other peoples."
The current Turkish government, the successor of the Ottomans, has thrust itself so deeply in the current crisis in Syria, opening its land wide to terrorists coming from all corners of the world to cross border into Syria and commit horrible crimes against its people.
"Any crime against humans must be condemned and rejected whoever the perpetrator, and how if that crime was a genocide in which more than a million and a half of the brotherly Armenian people were killed," al-Laham told the forum.
"We in Syria have always felt the Armenians' sense of belonging is as much to Syria as it is to Armenian and vice versa," he said, affirming that the Armenians in Syria are an integral part of its people.
Al-Laham drew parallels between the Armenian Genocide and the mass crimes targeting the people in Syria and Iraq, saying the crimes systematically committed by the terrorists in both countries target all of the two peoples' components and are aimed at cleansing areas of their inhabitants.
These, and the deliberate damaging of the cultural heritage and the archeological and historical sites in Syria and Iraq, all constitute "a genocide against humanity" and crimes against the history and culture, he added.
While stressing that the history of appalling criminality is repeating itself now through the terrorists of today, al-Laham said this would not have happened was it not for those states and sides that are supplying the terrorists with whatever funds, arms, training and political and media cover they need to commit crimes.
Armenian Premier: We support Syria in confronting terrorism, seek more economic cooperation
Later, Armenian Prime Minister Hovik Abrahamyan said his country supports Syria in its fight against the terrorism exported to it from different countries.
During his meeting with Speaker al-Laham Abrahamyan stressed that the historical relations between Syria and Armenia are firmly established.
He saw that the Syrian participation in the forum, which marks the Centennial of the Armenian Genocide, committed by the Ottomans in 1915, reflects how much deep is the friendship relations binding the people of Syria and Armenia.
Out of Armenia's interest in further activating the parliamentary, political and economic relations with Syria, Abrahamyan used the opportunity of his meeting with al-Laham to extend an invitation to the Syrian Prime Minister to visit Armenia with a view of expanding the areas of economic cooperation between the two countries.
Al-Laham renewed Damascus's solidarity with Yerevan on the occasion, calling for joint work on the international level to prevent such crimes from being repeated through eliminating the terrorism ravaging Syria and Iraq.
Qabas/Haifa Said
Appendix: Other articles about the Armenian Genocide
Damascus, SANA – President Bashar al-Assad described in an interview with the Swedish Expressen Newspaper the outcomes of Moscow talks as a breakthrough and said that the UN envoy’s Aleppo plan, which is supported by the government, was spoiled by external intervention, renewing his warning that the terrorism imported to Syria will "bite" its backers whenever it has the chance. He also called on Sweden to influence the EU to lift the economic sanctions imposed on the Syrian people. President Assad also answers (yet again) re-posed questions about chemical weapons and talks about contradictions in US policy and treatment of terrorism since 9-11. The following is part of the full text of the interview, which was first published by Al-Masdar News on April 17, 2015. (The 22:59 minute video and part 1 and part 2 of the full transcript of the original interview 1 can be found in the Swedish Expressen magazine.)
Question 1: Mr. President, I would like to offer my most sincere thanks on behalf of Expressen for giving us this interview. Thank you so much. While we are sitting here, doing this interview, the terrorist organization ISIS and even al-Nusra is overrunning al-Yarmouk refugee camp. At the same time, al-Nusra is controlling the Syrian-Jordanian border and have taken control over Idleb. How serious would you describe the situation now?
President Assad: Whenever you talk about terrorism, it’s always serious, because it’s always dangerous, anytime, anywhere, no matter how. That’s what you always say about terrorism, and it is not related directly to the example you have mentioned, because this is only a manifestation of terrorism. It’s a long process that started years ago even before the crisis in Syria. Terrorism is serious and dangerous because it doesn’t have borders, it doesn’t have limits. It could hit anywhere, it’s not a domestic issue. It’s not even regional; it’s global, that’s why it’s always dangerous. In our case, it’s more dangerous, let’s say, the situation is worse not only because of the military situation that you have mentioned in your question. Actually because this time it was having a political umbrella by many countries, many leaders, many officials, but mainly in the West. Many of those officials didn’t see the reality at the very beginning. It’s more dangerous this time because we don’t have international law, and you don’t have the effective international organization that would protect a country from another country that uses the terrorists as a proxy to destroy another country. That’s what’s happening in Syria. So, I’ll say yes, it is dangerous, but at the same time, it’s reversible. As long as it’s reversible, it’s not too late to deal with it. It’s going to be more serious with the time when the terrorists indoctrinate the hearts and minds of people.
Question 2: But they are overrunning more areas in Syria. Are the Syrian forces and army weakened?
President Assad: That’s the natural, normal repercussion of any war. Any war weakens any army, no matter how strong, no matter how modern. It undermines and weakens every society, in every aspect of the word; the economy, the society, let’s say, the morals, and of course the army as part of this society. That’s normal.
Question 3: But is the army weaker than before? Because last year, we could see win-win effect from your side, from the army’s side, you overrunning more areas, more control over al-Qalamoun and other areas, but now, they have control over Idleb, as an example.
President Assad: It’s not related to that issue, whether it’s stronger or weaker. As I said, any war undermines any army, that’s the natural course of events. But in your case, when you look at the context of the war for the last four years, you have ups and downs. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, and that depends on many criteria, some of them related to domestic, internal and military criteria, or factors, let’s say, which is more precise. Some of them are related to how much support the terrorists have. For example, the recent example that you mentioned about Idleb, the main factor was the huge support that came through Turkey; logistic support, and military support, and of course financial support that came through Saudi Arabia and Qatar.
Question 4: Is it information, or is it an opinion?
President Assad: Information, everything, they were like one army; the terrorists, al-Nusra Front which is part of al-Qaeda, and the Turkish government or institutions or intelligence, were like one army in that battle, so it doesn’t depend on the weakening of our army. It depended more on how much support the terrorists have from Turkey.
Question 5: Turkey and Qatar and Saudi Arabia, they had an agenda four years ago. Did it change? Did they change that agenda?
President Assad: First of all, they’re not independent countries, so they won’t have their own agenda. Sometimes they have their own narrow-minded behavior or vengeful behavior or hateful behavior that’s been used by others’ agenda, let’s be frank here, sometimes the United States. So, we cannot say that they have their own agenda, but they haven’t changed. They still support the same terrorists, because this behavior is not related to the crisis in Syria. They supported the terrorists in Afghanistan, they supported the Wahhabi ideology, the extremism that led to terrorism recently in Europe, for decades, and now they are supporting the same ideology and the same factions under different labels and names in Syria. So, there’s nothing to change because this is their natural behavior.
Question 6: Which ideology you mean?
President Assad: The Wahhabi ideology, which forms the foundation for every terrorism in the world. No terrorist acts for the last decades in the Middle East and in the world happened without this ideology. Every terrorist bases his doctrine on the Wahhabi ideology.
Question 7: Wahhabi ideology, it’s linked to 9-11 and all the terrorist groups. Doesn’t the United States know about that link between Wahhabi ideology and terrorists? But they continue to support Saudi Arabia.
President Assad: This is a very important question, because the United States in the 1980s called the same groups of al-Qaeda and Taliban, in Afghanistan, they called them holy fighters, and that’s what president Bush described them as, holy fighters. And then, after the 11th of September 2001, they called them terrorists. The problem with the United States and of course some Western officials is that they think you can use terrorism as a card in your pocket, as a political card. Actually, terrorism is like a scorpion; whenever it has the chance, it will bite. So, they know, but they didn’t estimate how dangerous terrorism is to be used as a political card.
Question 8: Mr. President, the official Syrian delegation and part of the opposition have recently met in Moscow. Are there any effective results of that meeting?
President Assad: Actually, yes. We can say yes, because this meeting was the first time to reach – because you know we had many dialogues before – this is the first time to reach an agreement upon some of the principles that could make the foundation for the next dialogue between the Syrians. We haven’t finalized it yet, because the schedule of that meeting was very comprehensive, so four days wasn’t enough. Actually, two days, it was four days, but two days between the government and the other opposition representatives. It wasn’t enough to finalize the schedule, but because when you have a breakthrough, even if it’s a partial breakthrough, it means that the next meeting will be promising in reaching a full agreement about what are the principles of Syrian dialogue that will bring a Syrian, let’s say, solution to the conflict.
Question 9: It’s very important, what you say, Mr. President, because the United Nations’ Syria Envoy, Mr. Staffan de Mistura, he’s planning a series of consultations to begin in May or June to assess the chance of finding a common ground between the main states with an interest in the conflict. What do you think about it?
President Assad: Actually, I agree with de Mistura about this point, because if we want to look at the conflict in Syria as only an internal conflict between Syrian factions, that’s not realistic and that’s not objective. Actually, the problem is not very complicated, but it became complicated because of external intervention, and any plan you want to execute in Syria today in order to solve the problem – and that’s what he faced in his plan towards Aleppo – it will be spoiled by external intervention. That’s what happened in Aleppo, when the Turks told the factions, the terrorists they support and supervise, to refuse to cooperate with de Mistura, so I think he’s aware that if he couldn’t convince these countries to stop supporting the terrorists and let the Syrians solve their problem, he will not succeed.
Question 10: What is your opinion about de Mistura’s efforts?
President Assad: We discussed with him the plan for Aleppo, and it comes in line with our efforts in making reconciliations in different areas in Syria. This is where we succeeded, and this is where you could make things better, when you have people going back to their normality, when the government gives them amnesty and they turn in their armaments, and so on. So, his plan for Aleppo comes in line with the same principle of reconciliation, so we supported it from the very beginning, and we still support his efforts in that regard.
Question 11: Mr. President, Sweden is the only country in Europe that grants permanent rights of stay for people that flee the war in Syria. What has that meant, and how do you view Sweden’s policy?
President Assad: In that regard or in general?
Question 12: In that regard, that’s right.
President Assad: I think that’s something that’s appreciated around the world, not only in our country, and this humanitarian stand of Sweden is appreciated regarding different conflicts, including the Syrian one. So, this is a good thing to do, to give people refuge, but if you ask the Syrian people who fled from Syria “what do you want?” They don’t want to flee Syria because of the war; they want to end that war. That’s their aim, that’s our aim. So, I think if you give people refuge, it is good, but the best is to help them in going back to their country. How? I think Sweden is an important country in the EU. It can play a major role in lifting the sanctions, because many of the Syrians who went to Sweden or any other country, didn’t only leave because of the terrorist acts; they left because of the embargo, because they have no way for living, they want the basics for their daily livelihood. Because of the embargo, they had to leave Syria, so lifting the embargo that has affected every single Syrian person and at the same time banning any European country from giving an umbrella to terrorists under different names, whether they call it peaceful opposition, whether they call it moderate opposition. It’s been very clear today, it’s been proved, that this opposition that they used to support is the same al-Nusra and al-Qaeda and Muslim Brotherhood. Third one is to make pressure over countries that support terrorists and prevent any plan of peace in Syria, like the one that you mentioned, of Mr. de Mistura, to be implemented in Syria, mainly Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Turkey. So I think this is the best help and humanitarian help on the political title that Sweden could offer to the Syrian people.
Question 13: Embargo and war, and millions of refugees or people who fled from the country. This has been described as the worst refugee crisis since World War II. How big of a responsibility, Mr. President, do you have for this situation?
President Assad: I think to compare between what’s happening in Syria, even from a humanitarian point of view, and what happened in World War II, I think it’s kind of a huge exaggeration. We cannot compare, for political reasons. But regardless of this exaggeration, we have millions of people who are displaced from their areas to other areas because of the terrorist acts, and that’s a huge burden. Actually, so far, we bear the major brunt of the crisis. You hear a lot of fuss about what the international organizations and what they call themselves “friends of Syria” spend money and give support and donations to the Syrians. Actually, if you want to have just a glimpse of what we are doing, for example in 2014, last year, all those countries and organizations offered in the food sector 22% of what we offer as a country during the war. That’s a huge difference, which is 1 to 5.
Question 14: Inside the country?
President Assad: Inside Syria, yes. Regarding the healthcare sector, it was 1 to 18 in our favor. So actually, we are bearing the brunt. Besides that, we’re still paying salaries, sending vaccines to the children, offering and providing the basic requirements for the hospitals in the areas that are under the control of the terrorists. So, we are still running the country and bearing the brunt.
Question 15: According to SAPO, the Swedish intelligence agency, returning jihadists – there are many here in Syria now – returning jihadists are the biggest domestic threat in Sweden today. Do you agree?
President Assad: I wouldn’t look at terrorism as domestic or as regional. As I said, it’s global. So, if you want to look at Sweden as part of Europe or part of the Scandinavian group of European countries, you have to take into consideration that the most dangerous leaders of ISIS in our region are Scandinavian.
Question 16: This is information?
President Assad: Yes, it’s information. That’s what we have as information. So, you cannot separate this group of countries or Sweden from Europe. As long as you have terrorism growing in different European countries, Sweden cannot be safe. As long as the backyard of Europe, especially the Mediterranean and Northern Africa is in chaos and full of terrorists, Europe cannot be safe. So, yes I agree that it is a primary or prime threat, but you cannot call it domestic, but it’s a threat.
Question 17: Has Sweden asked you to share information about these ISIS fighters or other jihadists?
President Assad: No, there’s no contact between our intelligence agencies.
Question 18: Mr. President, in December 2010, Taimour Abdulwahab, a Swedish terrorist who was trained in Iraq and Syria, carried out a suicide attack in Stockholm. Recently, the same scenario in Paris, Charlie Hebdo, and even Copenhagen. Do you think Western countries will face the same scenario in the future?
President Assad: Actually, everything that happened in Europe, and I mean terrorist attacks, we warned from at the very beginning of the crisis, and I said Syria is a fault line, when you mess with this fault line you will have the echoes and repercussions in different areas, not only in our area, even in Europe. At that time, they said the Syrian president is threatening. Actually, I wasn’t threatening; I was describing what’s going to happen. It doesn’t take a genius because that’s the context of events that happened many times in our region, and we have experience with those kinds of terrorists for more than 50 years now. They didn’t listen, so what happened was warned of before, and what we saw in France, in Charlie Hebdo, the suicide attempts in Copenhagen, in London, in Spain, ten years ago, this is only the tip of the iceberg; terrorism is a huge mountain. It’s not isolated events. When you have those isolated events, you have to know that you have a big mountain under the sea that you don’t see. So, yes, I expect, as long as you have this mountain, and as long as many European officials are still adulating countries like Saudi Arabia and Qatar just for their money and selling their values and allowing the Wahhabi dark ideology to infiltrate and be instilled in some communities in Europe, we have to expect more attacks in that regard.
Question 19: What is the most effective way to deal with terrorism?
President Assad: First of all, terrorism is not a war. First of all, it’s a state of mind, it’s a culture, so you have to deal with this culture. You have to deal with it in an ideological way, and that implicates the education and the culture. Second, those terrorists exploit the poor people. You have to deal with poverty, so economic growth is very important, development. Third, you have to deal with the political issue that’s being used by these terrorists in order to indoctrinate those youths or children in solving the political problems in our region, for example the peace issue was one of the primary reasons for those terrorists to recruit terrorists.
Question 20: Which peace? You mean the peace process?
President Assad: I mean between the Arabs and the Israelis. Solving this problem, because this is one of the reasons to having desperation, you have to deal with the desperation of those youths who wanted to go and die to go to heaven to have a better life. That’s how they think. So, you have to deal with these desperations. The last measure is exchanging information between the intelligence. War is only to defend yourself against terrorism. You cannot go and attack terrorism by war, you can only defend yourself if they use military means, so that’s how we can defend against terrorism.
Question 21: Mr. President, ISIS has asked its supporters from around the world to come to Syria and Iraq to populate their so-called caliphate. How do you see the future for ISIS?
President Assad: I don’t think that ISIS so far has any real incubator in our society. Let me talk about Syria first. I cannot talk on behalf of other societies in our region, because when you talk about ISIS it’s not a Syrian issue now; Syrian, Iraqi, Lebanese, Libyan, in Egypt, in many areas they have it. But regarding Syria, they don’t have the incubator, so if you want to talk about the short term, ISIS doesn’t have a future, but in the midterm, in the long term, when they indoctrinate the hearts and minds of the people, especially the youths and children. This area will have only one future; al-Qaeda future, which is ISIS, al-Nusra, and Muslim Brotherhood, and this is going to be your backyard, I mean the European backyard.
Question 22: In the middle and long term, it’s very dangerous.
President Assad: Of course it is, because you can take procedures against many things, but ideology you cannot control. When it is instilled, it’s very difficult to get rid of. So, when it’s instilled, this is the only future of the region.
Question 23: ISIS and al-Nusra, they get help, they receive support from outside, you said Turkey, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and like that, but so does your side too. You have Hezbollah fighting for you. Do you need Hezbollah here in Syria?
President Assad: As a Swedish citizen, you don’t accept anyone to tell you or to draw comparison between Taimour Abdulwahab, for example, as a terrorist, and your government, no matter whether you agree with your government or oppose your government. The same for Charlie Hebdo, terrorists and the French government, you cannot make comparison. So, we don’t accept as Syrians to have comparison between the state and the terrorist organizations. Our mission is to help the country, to defend the citizens, while I don’t think this is the role of ISIS or al-Nusra or the Muslim Brotherhood. Their role, actually, is only to kill people and terrorize them. So, you cannot make a comparison. Second, as a government, we have the right to ask for support from any state or organization or any entity that will help us in our war against terrorism. Third, because when I said terrorism cannot be a domestic issue, and this is wrong to look at it as a domestic issue, the good thing is to have cooperation with different powers in the region. For example, we had cooperation between the Syrians and the Iraqis even before the rise of ISIS recently during the summer of last year in Mosul. Before that we had good cooperation, intelligence and even military, for one reason; because the Iraqis were aware that the terrorism in Syria could spill over to Iraq, and that’s what happened in Mosul. The same is with the Lebanese. So, Hezbollah is aware that terrorism in Syria means terrorism in Lebanon. Chaos here means chaos there, so this kind of regional cooperation is very important for all of us.
Question 24: Mr. President, once again you are accused for having used chemical weapons in Syria. Two sets of tests carried out for TheTimes and medical charities reveal that your forces chlorine and cyanide, according to The Times and even Amnesty International, I think. What do you have to say about it?
President Assad: We always said this is propaganda against Syria from the very first day, to demonize the president to demonize the state, in order to bring the hearts and minds of the Syrian people toward their agenda. That didn’t work, and if you want to compare this propaganda to what is happening now in the West regarding Ukraine, it’s nearly the same; demonizing Putin and telling and forging, a lot of videos and things that only tell the public opinion in the West lies. This is reality. Western people should be aware about this. That doesn’t mean we don’t have mistakes, we don’t have something wrong or something bad going on, but at the end, this media propaganda doesn’t reflect the reality in our region. So, talking about the chemical weapons, they didn’t have a single evidence regarding this, and even the numbers that are being published by many European organizations as part of that propaganda were varied from 200 victims to 1,400 victims. It means it’s not objective, it’s not precise, and so far there’s no evidence that those people were killed because of this attack. The only evidence that we have when the committee came from the United Nations, it proved that the sarin gas was used in that area, but they couldn’t tell how and by whom, so they just keep accusing Syria of that. That’s not realistic, because if you want to use WMDs, you don’t kill a few hundreds; you kill tens of thousands of people, and that’s beside the capital, it will affect everyone. So, many stories regarding this issue are not correct. Second, we are the party who asked the United Nations to send a delegation to verify this allegation.
Question 25: You still do that?
President Assad: We did, Syria did. Syria asked the United Nations, not any other country. When there was proof that terrorists used it in the north of Syria, they didn’t try to verify it. They didn’t mention it. So it’s part of the political agenda against Syria.
Question 26: As you know there are many serious allegations against your government, about human rights abuses committed by your side. How much do you know about torture in your prisons here?
President Assad: When you talk about torture we have to differentiate between policy of torture and individual incidents that happen by any individual. When you talk about a policy of torture, the closest example is what happened in Guantanamo. In Guantanamo, there was a policy of torture by the American administration that was endorsed by president Bush and by his minister of defense and the rest of the administration. With Syria we never had under any circumstances such a policy. If you have any breach of law, torture, revenge, whatever, it could be an individual incident that the one who committed should be held accountable for. So, that’s what could happen anywhere in the world, like any other crime.
Question 27: Can Amnesty International or Red Cross visit your prisons here?
President Assad: We had many reporters and many organizations that came to Syria, but if you want to mention a certain name to come and visit, that depends on the kind of cooperation a certain organization and our government and that depends on the credibility of the organization. But in principle, many organizations and entities can visit our prisons.
Question 28: Mr. President, I have covered the war in Syria for the last four years. I met different groups and activists who were involved in the conflict. I even met soldiers from your army here. Some of those activists are actually not Islamists. I have been told that they fight for freedom. What would you like to say to them?
President Assad: We never said every fighter is an Islamist. We know that. But they are prevailing now, the terrorists, ISIS and al-Nusra, but if you want to talk about freedom, freedom is a natural instinct in every human since our ancestor Adam, and this is a divine thing for anyone to ask for, so it’s going to be illogical and unrealistic and against the nature of the Earth and the people to be against freedom. But we have to ask a few simple questions. Is killing people part of that freedom? Is destroying schools and banning children from going to schools part of that freedom? Destroying the infrastructure, electricity, communications, sanitation system, beheading, dismemberment of victims. Is that freedom? I think the answer to that question is very clear to everyone regardless of their culture. So, we support anyone who works to get more freedom, but in an institutional way, under the constitution of that country, not by violence and terrorism and destroying the country. There’s no relation between that and freedom.
Question 29: They blame even the Syrian army for the same things, as in killing and like that.
President Assad: They have to prove. I mean, the army has been fighting for four years. How can you withstand a war against so many countries, great countries and rich countries, while you kill your people? How could you have the support of your people? That’s impossible. That’s against reality, I mean, that’s unpalatable.
Question 30: If you could turn back the time to 2011 and the start of the crisis, what would you, with the benefit of hindsight, have done differently?
President Assad: We have to go to the basics first. I mean, the two things that we adopted in the very beginning: fight the terrorists, and at the same make dialogue, and we started dialogue during the first year, a few months after the beginning of the conflicts in Syria. We invited everyone to the table to make dialogue, and we cooperated with every initiative that came from the United Nations, from the Arab League, and from any other country, regardless of the credibility of that initiative, just in order not to leave any stone unturned and not to give anyone the excuse that they didn’t do this or didn’t do that. So, we tried everything. So, I don’t think anyone could say that we should have gone in a different way, whether regarding the dialogue or fighting terrorism. These are the main pillars of our policy since the beginning of the problem. Now, any policy needs execution and implementation. In implementation, you always have mistakes and that’s natural. So, to talk about doing things differently, it could be about the details sometimes, but I don’t think now the Syrians would say we don’t want to make dialogue or we don’t want to fight terrorism.
Footnote[s]
1. ↑ Whilst Expressen's Middle East correspondent Kassem Hamade conducted the interview fairly and professionally, the same cannot be said of all of Expressen's editors.
Unlike with part 1 of the interview, part 2 of the interview commences with an 'introduction'. The heading, in huge font, which precedes, is:
The poison gas victims al-Assad refuses to see.
The 'introduction' is:
He denies that he sold out his country to Iran.
He denies that he sold out his country to Iran.
He talks about his dependency on support from Hizbollah.
But Syria's President Bashar al-Assad refuses to admit that his regime uses poison gas, despite reports of several horrific attacks where children were killed.
Those who do take the trouble to objectively read part 2, in addition to those who have already read part 1, will find that the above claims are not borne out. Possibly the claims were designed to sow prejudice against President al-Assad in readers' minds in the hope that they won't commence to read part 2 of the interview.
"We live in a time when compassionate rhetoric is used as a weapon of state-corporate control. The rhetoric focuses on ethical concerns such as racial, gender and same-sex equality, but is disconnected from any kind of coherent ethical worldview. Corporate commentators are thereby freed to laud these moral principles, even as they ignore high crimes of state-corporate power." (Media Lens editor David Edwards)
See: other articles which refute claims that the Syrian Government used chemical weapons against its own people. The ABC World Today 'report' can be found here.
Australians who are alarmed at the situation in Syria have today expressed disappointment and concern at the emotive bias and poor research shown in ABC World Today 17 April 2015 report, "Syria chemical attack: UN ambassadors 'moved to tears' by video of child victims" on renewed investigations into purported use of chlorine and sarin gas on civilians in Syria. As noted in the interview, there would indeed need to be very strong proof of the government's use of such gases, and there is not. 1 It should by now be well known that the chlorine necessary to make gas is available everywhere as a household chemical, but also that chlorine gas is an ineffective poison to use in war. President Bashar al-Assad of Syria has repeatedly denied using such a gas and no-one has been able to come up with wholly convincing arguments that such a gas was used by anyone in any effective manner, let alone the Syrian government. There is evidence of the use of sarin gases in Syria but these have also not been convincingly linked to the Syrian Government, but they have been linked to 'rebels'. The Syrian Government surrendered all chemical weapons stocks in 2012. You can read a very detailed analysis and correspondence on how the facts have been tested and sifted here: The Red Line and the Rat Line, Seymour M. Hersh on Obama, Erdogan and the Syrian rebels Why does the ABC persist in entertaining the reinvention this barrel-bomb-chemical-weapons story? Has it no memory of how the United States has run this line before as an excuse to destroy several states? Have the reporters concerned no sense of pity or responsibility for the consequences?
How long do they think that Syria can survive an assault funded and driven by world powers? Syrians voted overwhelmingly for Bashar al-Assad in an election monitored by UN observers last year. See "Attacking Syria is simply illegal". We are not talking about a 'regime' here. We are talking about a very popularly elected leader by a population determined to save its country even as that country is reduced to rubble by US, French and British arms whose public relations people weep crocodile tears for their victims - and blame Bashar al-Assad.
The Syrian government is the only protective force left in Syria. It is the only force capable of routing ISIS and other 'rebel' forces out and bringing populations to safety.
Even if Bashar al-Assad were using gases or 'barrel bombs', given that his government is the only chance of survival for his people, why would the US/NATO and allies try to remove him except to destroy Syria and raze its people from the earth? For this seems to be in train via the numerous so-called 'rebels' supported and unleashed on Syria with funding and weapons supply from Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United States and Turkey (see Turkey's latest here)- to name a few war criminal states.
Tell me, how does pursuing Bashar al-Assad to the end help anyone?
And how can the ABC and the awful people it allows to rehash the chemical weapons furphy support the brutal Saudi Arabia dictatorship - whose dreadful religion is the prototype for ISIS doctrine - and damn Bashar al-Assad, who presides over a secular Arab state where women may wear what they want and go about their business, where there is free education and health care for all, and the home of millions of permanent refugees 2 well before al-Assad became 'the enemy' and the only permanent home to Palestinians in the Middle East?
Appendix: Other articles which refute claims that the Syrian Government used chemical weapons against its own people
1. ↑ For those who immediately go to Wikipedia, I can tell you that you will find that journalists mostly get their opinions about weapons in the Middle East from a blogger in Britain called Elliot Higgins who has learned through following events on the internet. If you go right to the end of the article, you will find a short paragraph entitled, "Criticism": "Richard Lloyd and Theodore Postol of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology stated that "although he has been widely quoted as an expert in the American mainstream media, [he] has changed his facts every time new technical information has challenged his conclusion that the Syrian government must have been responsible for the sarin attack. In addition, the claims that Higgins makes that are correct are all derived from our findings, which have been transmitted to him in numerous exchanges." Note 16 will take you to The Red Line and the Rat Line, Seymour M. Hersh on Obama, Erdogan and the Syrian rebels If you click on the link this will take you to a very comprehensive analysis of Higgins's observations in the light of much more varied sources. You might also take the time to listen to some interviews with Bashar al-Assad on you-tube, where he argues his case very logically. The most recent is by Charlie Rose of CBS News, 30 March 2015. (The complete video below is also embedded, with the transcript, here on candobetter. The full transcript can also be found on the Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA). - Ed)
2. ↑ Including 1.3m Iraqis who fled the illegal sanctions and wars of 1991 and 2003 and against Iraq in which Australia was complicit.
Those rightly outraged at the murder of Tori Johnson and the death of Katrina Dawson on 16 December at the end of the Martin Place siege and at the murder of 11 people on 7 January 2015 in Paris by terrorists (see embeddedSyrian Girl video) should also contemplate the fact that, since March 2011, the people of Syria have suffered terrorism on a scale which is vastly greater than these two tragedies. Since March 2011, they have faced an invasion by hordes of foreign terrorists coming from almost every corner of the globe and not just the Arab world. These invaders have been paid for and supplied by the United States, its European allies and its allies amongst the Arab dictatorships including Saudi Arabia and Qatar. So far, over 200,000 Syrians have been killed at the hands of these terrorists. As a consequence, the Syrian government has demanded of the United Nations act against the terrorists' sponsors.
The article below was previous published in SANA (12/4/15).
Damascus, SANA – Syria demanded deterrent measures by the United Nations against the terrorist organizations and the states backing and sponsoring them.
The Syrian demand was expressed in two identical letters which the Foreign and Expatriates Ministry addressed to Chairman of the UN Security Council and UN Secretary General on Sunday.
It was prompted by the bloody terrorist rocket attacks which hit Aleppo city yesterday, leaving heavy casualties of at least 19 civilians dead and scores of others wounded and causing massive material damage.
The new crime, the letters said, came as a response from the regimes of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey and Jordan to the "important" outcomes that were reached at the latest Moscow inter-Syrian talks.
In their "clear message" delivered by their agents of the so-called "moderate opposition", those regimes have sought to foil any political solution that could be reached by the Syrians themselves without foreign interference, the letters added.
The Foreign Ministry dismissed the claim of those and other countries of them sending "non-lethal" weapons to the terrorists, stressing that a new type of destructive weapons seemed to have been used in Aleppo attack.
Several four-story buildings were completely demolished, falling on their inhabitants’ heads, according to the letters.
The Ministry blamed the continuation of terrorist acts on those countries which have not ceased providing direct support to the Takfiri terrorist organizations, including the notorious Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and Jabhat al-Nusra, in addition to the so-called "Free Army", "Islam Army", "Islamic Front", "Liwa al-Fateh", "Ahrar al-Sham Movement", "Al-Ansar Front", etc.
Striking out at this continued support, the Ministry said the terrorist organizations would not have been capable of launching such bloody attacks, was it not for those countries shielding these organizations against punishment and continuing to supply them with weapons and explosives.
It named France, Britain, Jordan and the US as accomplices in backing the terrorists.
The Ministry demanded a Security Council non-politicized action towards enforcing counterterrorism resolutions in deeds not only in words.
The Security Council, it said, is also called upon to cooperate and coordinate with the Syrian government, which "has been combating terrorism for years on behalf of the entire world people."
The Syria government, the Ministry said, stresses dodged determination to continue fighting terrorism in Syria and defend its people by virtue of its constitutional responsibilities.
Popular conspiracy theories have it that al-Qaeda and the “Islamic State” (also known as DAESH, ISIS or ISIL) are Israeli- and/or US-intelligence creations.
Ash continues:
While there’s no evidence for that, it’s certainly true that the US-UK invasion of Iraq in 2003, and its consciously sectarian occupation regime of the country thereafter, created the conditions in which al-Qaeda in Iraq (later known as ISIS) was formed and thrived. Veteran journalist Patrick Cockburn demonstrates this most convincingly in his essential new book The Rise of Islamic State, which I have previously lauded here.
From my recent viewing of some of the articles about the Syria conflict to which Asa seems to be referring, a conspiracy by the United States and its allies to set up ISIS as a bogus extremist 'anti-west' army to undermine popular domestic opposition to war seems to be a highly plausible explanation of the recent course of events. However, having read these words by Asa Winstanley, I will have to re-examine these articles more closely.
Another irritating feature of this article and so much other material which otherwise seems to be strongly opposed to the United States' planned aggression against Syria, is its insistence on labeling of the Syrian government a 'regime' :
Hizballah (my spelling is 'Hezbollah' - Ed) and Iran, allies of the Bashar al-Assad regime, are aiding the government in Syria and fighting on the ground alongside Syrian army troops against al-Qaeda, the “Islamic State” and other Sunni rebel groups.
Could Asa be truly unaware that on 4 June 20914, Syrians overwhelmingly endorsed President Bashar al-Assad in presidential elections, as attested to by four International observers at a United Nations Press conference. See Global Research | Syria's press conference the United Nations doesn't want you to see (20/6/15) with embedded 52:45min video, republished on Candobetter.
Many refugee advocates seem to be entirely unaware that Syria - constantly damned by the mainstream media - is the only country which has given permanent status to the Palestinians who lost their country to Israel. Knowing this gives us a perspective on why US/Israel/NATO is so keen to destroy Syria: their chief target is to destroy any chance of Palestine reestablising itself from Syria. In this article the author, a former resident of Aleppo, with relatives still in Syria, describes some of the history of Palestine-Syrian cooperation and how recently foreign 'Arab Spring' money has religiously radicalised resistance movements in Palestinian refuges in Syria to turn against the secular Syrian Government, to the great satisfaction of Palestine's enemies. Author's name updated 12-4-2015
The situation in Yarmouk (if not in all the region) is so surreal, that I neither can imagine nor describe it without feeling as if I'm drunk or having drug-induced hallucinations. It all looks incoherent to me.
The Syrian government helped "Hamas" for decades, and had suffered international sanctions because of this. It supported them, and gave them safe haven when every other Arab nation refused.
The Syrian government trained Hamas in digging underground tunnels to fight Israel, as a resistance movement. Then the "Arab Spring" started, and the leaders of "Hamas", who are "Muslim Brotherhood" in origin, changed loyalties, thanks to the temptation of the money of Qatar; the allurement of the Great Neo-Ottoman Erdogan; and the glamour of ruling the whole Middle East, starting with Egypt and Tunisia (by their fellow Muslim Brotherhood). They thought they had become a Super Power that didn't need Iranian aid anymore, nor a haven in Syria, nor Hezbollah's training.
It would have been way better if they had just left Syria when it needed friends to stay with it in this time of crisis, or if they had just become neutral and not joined the government or the rebels.
Instead, they stabbed the government in the back! Using all the techniques that had been taught by Syrians, Lebanese, and Iranians to use against the Israelis, they used them against Syrians! They spread the "knowledge" of digging tunnels and taught it to the Free Syrian Army and all those crazy rebels; they taught them how to make bombs in a certain way which both Hezbollah and Syrian intelligence knew that no other Hamas knew!
Then, they created a military faction called "Aknaf Beit al-Maqdes # The Environs of Jerusalem" (ABM), between 26th of Dec 2012 - early Mar 2013, who occupied Al-Yarmouk Refugee Camp and used it as their base against the Syrian government. Their name should mean that they would fight in Jerusalem, not in a refugee camp in Damascus, but that is logic, and we are talking about living a surreal nightmare where nothing makes any sense! That ABM prevented any relations with the Syrian government on grounds that it was going to fall sooner or later, or because it was "infidel", and they don't need its help! People in the camp started to starve, and many died because of extreme starvation as there was no way for food to come in!
Dozen of conciliation attempts had been rejected at the last minute because of the moody and elusive ABM militia, while blaming it on the "murderer regime" of the mainstream media. The Syrian Government chose to use other Palestinian movements to try to regain the camp from the ABM, and the Syrian Arab Army (Syria's army) besieged the whole camp to keep it isolated from Damascus, although it's not that easy because the camp is almost a part of the greater Damascus today. Before these crises, unless you were one of the camp's inhabitants, you would not have known whether you were inside or outside the camp's borders.
In 1948 and 1967 Yamouk was 8 km away from Damascus, but not anymore because of the urban expansion through the intervening decades. The Syrian president didn't want to be involved in a war against any Palestinian movement, because he didn't want history to say that he had once killed a Palestinian refugee. They were defending Damascus city when necessary, and they preferred other loyal Palestinian movements to do the work. (A minor scale proxy war? So be it).
All that time though, Hamas refused to admit their relationship with the ABM militias, claiming that they were individuals from Hamas who took their own decisions, and that they weren't coordinating with the head of Hamas. Everyone though knew that no other than the notorious Khaled Mish'al, one of the main heads of Hamas, who lived in Syria for more than a decade (2001-2012) and who is living today in Qatar, was the creator of the ABM! A few days ago, Mesh'al reportedly made contact with one the leaders of loyal Palestinian resistance movements in Damascus, Ahmed Jibril, asking for them to assist the ABM against ISIL! For 2 years, he maintained that ABM were not part of Hamas, but lately, he seems more responsible and aware.
'Rebels' refused to use allocated battlefields, preferred civilian areas
Many other nearby towns and small cities had succeeded in conciliation attempts, agreeing that all the armed gangs of "al-Nusra / al-Qa'eda" could leave peacefully to go to other areas. There was a government plan to push them out to some arid areas where there were no civilians, where fighting would be easier and civilian causalities would not be involved.
So, where did these armed gangs go? Right to Yarmouk Refugee Camp, where the ABM greeted them like brothers!
Well, those very "brothers" (who included Palestinians, Syrians, and multinational foreigners) pledged allegiance to no one but the wealthy ISIL, which pays way more than any other terrorist group these days, and which was in the nearby town of el-Hajar el-Aswad.
From el-Hajar el-Aswad, 400 ISIL militants invaded the Refugee Camp at night, in the early hours of April the 1st, where another 200 Nusra fighters joined them, and started their usual orgy of killing against whoever remained of the unfortunate people and the elusive ABM fighters.
The outcome was that ABM fighters divided into 3 factions: One division joined ISIL; the other resisted it and fought it; and the third surrendered to the loyal Palestinian parties who besieged the camp, and therefore, to the Syrian Army.
ISIL had invaded most of the camp, and its members beheaded the very elusive heads of ABM militias. They removed the Palestinian flags from the tops of the buildings and trampled them!
The population of Yarmouk before the Syrian crisis was around 150,000. Although mostly Palestinians, many Syrians lived there as well, as individual Syrian families or through intermarriage with Palestinians. Most of them fled within the last few years. Some even made it all the way to Gaza. There they suffered in the last war with Israel, so that they said wherever they go the war is running after them. Some of them left for other areas in Syria. Some left Syria completely. Some went to Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon, where they discovered the great difference between Palestinian Refugee camps in Syria and Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon. In Syrian refugee camps they lived well, with full rights except for voting and citizenship, just like the holders of Green Cards in the U.S., or Permanent Residence in Canada, and a special passport which permitted them to travel. They were entitled to free education and health care, like any Syrian citizen. In the Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon they had only minimum rights as human beings, not including the right to work They suffered from the double racial stigma of being both Syrian and Palestinian - the very two nationalities that are so hated by half the Lebanese. (That is another long story for another time.)
After all these events, the number left in Yarmouk before ISIL invasion was less than 20,000.
Now, because ISIL is in the camp, it's a completely different story for the Syrian Arab Army. They won't wait until ISIL becomes a threat to Damascus. The Palestinian authority in Ramallah has told the Syrian government to do whatever they need to do. [ 1 ] That means the refugee camp is likely to be flattened like a parking lot very soon, unfortunately.
Hamas has a different attitude. They are asking all fighting parties in the camp to stop the bloodshed between the "brothers"! I bet they are still going to use any Syrian attack against the camp as another smear to demonize the Syrian "regime"!
As PLO Secretary Khaled ‘Abdel-Majeed reportedly said, "If the Syrian Arab Army were dropping perfume they would probably be accused of using chemical weapons". Those mysterious "Barrel Bombs" sound as if they are way more dangerous than any atomic bomb in the mainstream media! Like parrots, they keep talking about that elusive weapon as if it was the most dangerous weapon ever used in wars! [ 2 ]
Syria's Palestinian refuges major target of Israel, US NATO war on Syria
Israel is living its real Spring! One of the main goals of that war on Syria, was to destroy the Palestinian refugee suburbs (known as camps) in it, and to create hatred and enmity between Palestinians and Syrians. Each Palestinian refugee camp in Syria and other surrounding states is a memory for the people. They are stubs and seeds for future resistance against Israel, a motivation for all Palestinians to go back home one day in the future.
No wonder that those camps have been attacked everywhere in Syria, for no reason but to scatter their inhabitants and turn them into double and triple refugees, and maybe, to leave that land and go as far away as Latin America, where they do indeed accept Palestinian refugees !!!
Israel's proxy war against Palestinians
But, Israel didn't carry out these acts itself. It had a proxy war. Coordinating with the entire Axis (NATO, Gulf states, ISIL), they succeeded in one of their goals. Whether Hamas knew that and didn't mind because it was drunk with sectarianism and filthy petro-dollars; or they didn't know and thought that they were doing the right thing for their people: the result is a complete catastrophe for Palestinians!
Today, most Syrians say that they don't care about Palestine anymore, and to let them go and liberate their country themselves! I refuse to say so, because I know that this is exactly what Israel wants, however I have a real problem with few of Hamas's corrupted heads and leaders. If the movement doesn't kick them out, or split from Hamas and create another group under another name, there will be no solution for that complex problem.
The wound is so deep, and such treason usually has no cure for many generations to come. I heard for the last eight months that a split has already happened inside Hamas, as the people fighting on the ground in Gaza are very upset with their corrupted leaders in Qatar and Turkey. The fighters in Gaza still have good relations with both Iran and Hezbollah, while their leaders do not, and still have a dream of the Muslim Brotherhood controlling states and countries, thinking this to be an opportunity that comes once a century. They can't let it go without gambling all their resources on it. Turkey and Qatar would make Khaled Mesh'al live in five star hotels with a seven digit bank account, way better than the life of Yarmouk Refugee Camp.
But neither Turkey or Qatar will give him a bullet to fight Israel.
Plus these states are blackmailing those leaders and putting pressure on them by using the People Cards: They are ready to rebuild Gaza, and to feed the Palestinians, but that is not for free. In exchange, I guess, they have to turn into a political authority, just like the one in Ramallah, and get rid of their arms and missiles. More illusions, more promises, more wishful thinking and blah blah blah.
We all saw what happened after the Oslo Accords in the early 90's till today: NOTHING! Or let's say, nothing for the Palestinians, while ongoing benefits for the Israelis.
It's a surreal situation that shows how stupid humans can become. On the subject of Palestinians, the Israeli-Gulf-NATO axis has won and succeeded 100%, unfortunately.
3. ↑
With regard to the mythical and legendary weapon of "Barrel Bombs"! It seems that everyone in the whole world is talking about these weapons, and I wonder why, if such a powerful weapon exists in Syria, why the Syrians didn't use it against Israel to liberate the Golan Heights at least? Or is this mythical weapon a pretext to try to prevent he Syrian army from using its airforce against the terrorists? What should the Syrian army use? Swords and Daggers ? It's a war, and it's a very dirty one, against criminal terrorists that have no mercy in their hearts. Those terrorists are launching daily random shells from what they called "Hell Cannon". Hell Cannon is a weapon used against civilians, as a punishment because they didn't join the "Blessed Revolution", and because they supported the "Infidel Regime"! The UN doesn't see those arms, nor the slaughtering, nor the massacres, nor the suicide bombers in children's schools and busy markets. It sees only the mighty "Barrel Bombs"!
This article is based on a press release dated 9 April 2015 from Ahmed Majdalani of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), published by the Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA) in Damascus. The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) said any decision about the terrorist-besieged Yarmouk Camp neighborhood will be coordinated with the Syrian government. According to this information, the Syrian government has so far evacuated 12,000 people from Yarmouk (which is a permanent suburb) to temporary shelters in Damascus in order to protect them from ISIS. It is thought that the ISIS attack on Yarmouk may be part of a plot by enemies of the Syrian government to reduce the Palestinian population whom Syria has given a safe home now for years, in order to make the Palestinian 'problem' disappear. Candobetter.net comment: If this were true then the major beneficiaries would be Israel/US and their allies. See Voltaire.net article alleging Mossad involved in these attacks. http://www.voltairenet.org/article177039.html
Terrorists, mostly from the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), in cahoots with Jabhat al-Nusra, entered the neighborhood recently and have been committing terror acts against its inhabitants, which include Palestinian refugees and Syrian citizens.
Any future steps to be taken in Yarmouk Camp will be coordinated between Syria and the Palestinians, Member of the PLO Executive Committee Ahmed Majdalani told a press conference on Thursday.
“The decision will be jointly made by the two sides to retake the camp from the obscurantist terrorists who seize it now,” added Majdalani, who is on a visit to Syria.
He stressed that the Syrian leadership has been dealing with the situation in the neighborhood, which is located in southern Damascus city, with a high level of sensitivity given its special status as it symbolically stands as “the capital of Palestinian Diaspora” in terms of its size, the population and the national and historical role it has played for the launch of “the Palestinian revolution of today.”
Stemming from this sensitivity, Majdalani said, there has not been “any Syrian security solution” in order not to look as if there is a Syrian attitude to liquidate the Palestinian cause.
“Nor has there been Palestinian intervention so that it wouldn’t appear as a Palestinian infighting,” he added.
Terrorists have aborted attempted political solutions
Speaking about the options for the coming period, Majdalani said former options of reaching a political solution were aborted by the terrorists and their criminal acts of killing, kidnapping and rape against civilians.
He said, "This leaves us with other options of going for a security solution that takes into consideration the partnership with the Syrian state in view of its sovereignty over its territories.”
He made it clear that the issue is first and foremost in the Syrian state’s hands in terms of preserving the security and stability of the Palestinians and Syrians alike.
About the results of calls made with the Syrian government and Palestinian factions regarding the arising situation, Majdalani said it has been agreed with the Ministry of Social Affairs to secure the requirements of “safe evacuation” for residents who want to leave Yarmouk Camp.
Makeshift residential centers will be secured for those in Qudssaya area, along with garnering the necessary humanitarian and relief support, in addition to the support provided by the Syrian government, he added.
Out of the 17,500 residents who were in the neighborhood before ISIS entered it, approximately 12000 Palestinians have been evacuated in cooperation with the Syrian government.
Over the past two days, Majdalani has met with a number of officials and stressed that implicating the Palestinian refugee camps in the current events in Syria is aimed at attempting to liquidate the Palestinian issue and ending the refugees’ right to return home.
Thank you for opposing Harper’s extended and expanded war in Iraq and Syria, and for pointing out in parliament that conducting a military intervention in Syria, without the permission of the Syrian government and the UN Security Council, is a flagrant violation of international law. It’s reassuring to know that “an NDP-led government will end Canada's involvement in this war immediately.”
I am writing today to make three comments on your e-mail message to me, entitled “New Democrats on War in Iraq and Syria.”
First, I would like to draw to your attention that Tunisia is the latest of several countries to re-establish diplomatic ties with the government of Syria. (http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-32172974) The Tunisian government went so far as to invite its Syrian counterpart to send an envoy to Tunis.
I feel that it is now incumbent upon you and the New Democratic Party to call upon the government of Canada to re-establish diplomatic relations with the Syrian government as well. This move would help pave the way for a diplomatic solution to the Syrian crisis. It would assist in ending over four years of terrible violence and the suffering of millions of Syrian refugees. It could contribute to the peace process under UN auspices at Geneva, as more and more countries realize that there is no military solution to the tragedy in Syria.
My second comment is that, to the best of my knowledge, neither you nor the NDP caucus have ever publicly declared that you are in favour of the UN-sponsored peace process for Syria. If I am wrong, please correct me. Canadians need to know that the opposition is indeed in favour of the peace process.
Instead, you and other members of the NDP caucus have raised unsubstantiated allegations about the conduct of the Syrian government, namely that the Syrian government has used chemical weapons against its own citizens and that it cooperates with ISIS. Repeating these allegations, which are not supported by the facts or by various UN investigations, is counterproductive to the peace process, since it impedes opening a dialogue with the Syrian government, without whose participation no peace process is possible.
If you have concerns about the conduct of any of the warring parties in Syria, the appropriate place for these concerns to be raised is at the peace conferences at Geneva. Raising these allegations at other times only serves to reinforce the demonization of the Syrian government, which is part and parcel of the Harper government’s determination to have a military, rather than a humanitarian, mission in Iraq and Syria. We all know that this extended and expanded military mission in Syria could easily morph into a regime change operation.
My third comment is that your job as leader of the opposition requires that you hold the Canadian government to account. You might ask why the Harper government saw fit to help the USA organize the pre-conference in Tunisia (in December 2011) for the founding conference in Tunis in February, 2012, of the Friends of Syria Group of Countries (FSG), which group, in turn, organized a covert war for regime change in Syria – partly with Canadian tax dollars. You might demand an accounting for the several millions of our tax dollars that the Harper government donated directly to Syrian “rebels”, who are, in fact, the terrorist mercenaries who morphed into ISIS and invaded Iraq in 2014. You might question the wisdom of the Harper government’s hosting in Ottawa in June of 2013 – with our tax dollars - of a meeting of FSG countries for the purpose of co-ordinating economic sanctions against Syria - again without the approval of the UN Security Council.
Please focus your criticism on the Harper government of Canada and seek positively to influence public opinion for a resumption of diplomatic relations with the government of Syria and the continuation of the UN-sponsored peace process at Geneva.
I look forward to your reply on this very important matter,
Ken Stone
member, Hamilton Mountain Federal Riding Association
exec member, Hamilton Coalition To Stop The War
Why do Medecins Sans Frontieres (MFS), Avaaz and the Electronic Frontier Foundation push the claims of insurgents and their supporters?
On 19 March 2015, Al-Jazeera provided details about the alleged attack from Sarmin’s ‘local coordinating committee’, which claimed three children, their parents and grandmother suffocated to death after a ‘barrel bomb attack in the town’. The activist group ‘said chlorine gas had been used’.
The “National Coalition of Syrian Revolution and Opposition Forces” draws attention to the call for a no-fly zone by Avaaz, following the alleged attack.
It is vital that detective work is done in regards to allegations such as these since they can be used to support an escalation of the war and terror in Syria.
Contributors to the website "A Closer Look on Syria" probe the claims and the 'evidence' in regards to this 16 March 2015 ‘chlorine attack’.
Below is some of the discussion from the "A Closer Look on Syria" page. This discussion relates to a video purportedly showing a helicopter dropping a barrel bomb with chlorine onto Sarmin. Like so much of the video 'evidence' presented by the militarized opposition in Syria or their supporters, the evidence in this video is questionable.
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Extract from Closer look on Syria list discussion
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=apH795JpL7I Claims to show a barrel bomb attack, posted March 17, filmed in full daylight. Looks legit. Helicopter, right-shaped bomb, large blast. Might well be a recycled video, apparently too late to matter directly to the attack on the night of the 16th. I was tempted to try and geo-locate it in Sarmin, but only if it seems worthwhile (partly because I may only be able to rule it out, after lots of looking) --Caustic Logic (talk) 08:34, 29 March 2015 (UTC)
The video is titled "Throw explosive barrels on the city of Daraa Angel 17 32 015". Uploader LCCMedia seems to show videos from all over Syria --Charles Wood (talk) 20:00, 29 March 2015 (UTC)
Okay, will leave that to illustrate the dangers of taking suggested videos without proper scrutiny. :) --Caustic Logic (talk) 22:38, 29 March 2015 (UTC)
There are plenty of structures there to cue on, so if it's Sarmin, geo-locating might be easy. A couple of points—
1. Is that a barrel? Maybe the term has a broader definition in Syria.
2. It's falling through a slate-grey sky, but the ground shots show a complex sky w/ cumulus clouds against bright blue.
3. The camera is very steady but begins jerking around at 0:21 but the bomb doesn't land until 0:26. I don't have ear buds w/ me at the moment -- maybe the audio explains why all the pre-impact jerking.
4. There have been so many airbases over-run or almost over-run in the last 3 years. Does anybody have an inventory or guess as to what type aircraft and how many the insurgents (incl IS) are flying now? Pierpont (talk) 20:06, 30 March 2015 (UTC)
Just to reiterate the video is completely unrelated to the alleged attack in Idlib. The video is from Daraa. Given that I think it's two spliced videos that may not be related.
The currents state of play with the insurgent 'airforce' is they have got two L-39 trainers to the point of being able to taxi on a runway, but there is no evidence they have ever flown. I've not seen any helicopters that have been repaired enough to fly. As I recall, the two L-39s have now been captured from moderates by either DAESH or Jabhat al-Nusra. I forget which. Expect perhaps a suicide bombing at some stage -- Charles Wood (talk) 01:20, 31 March 2015 (UTC)
On the webpage, there is more discussion and analysis of the victims of this alleged attack as well as mention that some of the videos related to the attack have been uploaded by Al-Nusra.
There is also reason to question the objectivity and intentions of MFS and Avaaz, two prominent NGOs disseminating the allegations about chlorine or gas attacks. Both NGOs have much closer links with insurgents and their supporters than with Syrian people who support the Syrian army.
For example, in August 2013, MFS worked with doctors in rebel-held Ghouta, Damascus, and it was those doctors through MFS that provided details about hundreds of alleged victims of a sarin attack, allegedly by the Syrian army. MFS presentation of the allegations gave the claims some credence, yet later investigations and reports by highly regarded professionals in the west raise serious doubts about the Syrian army being responsible.
By working with doctors and medical personnel who operate only in rebel-held territory in Syria, MFS presents a blinkered and partisan view of the war. It should be noted that a co-founder of MFS, Dr Bernard Kouchner, was French Minister for Foreign and European Affairs Minister (2007 – 2010) under President Sarkozy, a president who was to give strong backing for foreign intervention in Syria. (In 2010, Kouchner was listed by The Jerusalem Post as number 15 in their list of the 50 most influential Jewish people in the world.) And interestingly, Dr Kouchner and MFS were involved in controversy in October 2008 when MFS protested comments made by Kouchner in Jerusalem. Kouchner said at a press conference, “Officially, we have no contact with Hamas, but unofficially, international organization working in the Gaza Strip – in particular, French NGOs – provide us information.”
As for Avaaz, a Guardian article indicates how heavily involved Avaaz is on the ground in Syria to support the insurgents. Another article by Jillian York, who heads the Electronic Frontier Foundation, provides another critique of Avaaz and its man in Syria (who is Lebanese), but it should be noted that Jillian York and the EFF actively support the insurgency in Syria, so her article is not as damning as it could be.
MFS, Avaaz and EFF seem to have the same Syrian brief: support the insurgents, damn the army and government, and ignore millions of Syrians who want peace and no foreign interference.
It should be noted that the sources of funding for both Avaaz and EFF are similar in that they are mostly 'establishment' sources, and there are links between George Soros / Open Society and both EFF and Avaaz, (This could be researched a lot deeper than is done here. One link between Avaaz and George Soros that is noted in articles involves Res Publica .)
A simple web search shows Soros has close ties with MSF , even if they are only socially and professionally supportive ties.
The 2012 Guardian article "the Syrian Opposition: Who's doing the talking?" is required reading for anyone interested in understanding the war against Syria and the role of the US State Department, NGOs and other groups and individuals such as Soros who provide funding and support for opponents of the Syrian government (and the secular state?).
This article in New Republic is interesting in regards to the conclusion it draws after examining some of the actions Avaaz has purportedly taken in Syria:
…the temptations of power and fame seem to have encouraged Avaaz to sacrifice one of its most fundamental principles: That truth is an activist’s greatest weapon
The New Republic article also makes mention of the inevitable rivalries between activist groups.
Are there any humanitarian groups in the west that support peace and present the viewpoints of the general public in Syria, i.e. over 20 million people?
Presumably the vast majority of Syrian people put their trust in the Syrian Army to defend the state, as Syrian activist Edward Dark attested in a recent article. (Dark had originally supported the ‘revolution’.)
If Syrians don’t support their army, what is the alternative? Anonymous 'activists' and insurgents funded by the US, Saudi Arabia and Qatar? Yet it is insurgents and their supporters whom MFS, Avaaz and EFF support. Why?
For any chance of peace, such questions must be asked by us.
On Wednesday April 1, 2015 at Yarmouk Palestinian camp in the outskirts of Damascus, a ceremony was held, organized by the Syrian Ministry of Reconciliation. However, the camp was attacked by elements from the nearby village of Hajar al-Aswad, allied with some ex-militants of Hamas who first joined the Al-Nusra Front (al-Qaeda) and who have now joined Daesh. [ISIS.]
During several hours, heavy fighting between Daesh and the various Palestinian militias, including their former comrades of Hamas. By late evening, the jihadists controlled most of the camp. But during the night, the Syrian Arab Army deployed reinforcements and Daesh withdrew completely.This article republished from Voltaire Network, 3 April 2015 Underneath is a second Voltaire.net article which alleges the presence of Israeli Mossad agents provocateur in Yarmouk.
The "Yarmuk" and "Palestine" camps are not tent camps or slums as in other Arab states, but concrete cities, built to Syrian standards. Traditionally, the Syrian Arab Republic administers them in link with Palestinian political parties.
At the end of 2012, militiamen loyal to Hamas Khaled Meshaal allowed jihadists from the Al-Nusra Front (al-Qaeda) and Israeli Mossad officers into the camp in an attempt to assassinate the leaders of Fatah and the PFLP [1] . The Syrian Arab Republic immediately, via SMS, called the 160 000 inhabitants to flee. 120,000 of them had been relocated within 48 hours in schools and hotels of the capital. The Syrian Arab Army had then stormed the camp with the support of the Palestinian Authority. Ultimately, as a result of heavy fighting and a terrible siege, a political agreement had led to "freeze" the camp where 18 000 people remained. Yesterday’s ceremony should have marked the reconciliation between firstly the Syrian Arab Republic, the PFLP and Fatah and the other branch of Hamas and the al-Nosra elements.
For two years, Palestinian groups opposed to the Syrian Arab Republic attacked any food supply convoys entering the camp, confiscated the goods and then sold them at 3.5 times their price to the other inhabitants of the camp. To feed itself the population is thus forced to join these groups which then pay them a salary in dollars.
The Gulf press has launched a propaganda campaign accusing the Syrian Arab Army of starving and bombing the Palestinians, as Israel does in Gaza.
Syria is the only Arab state to provide absolute legal equality for Palestinians and free access to its schools, its universities and its social services. Several generals of the Syrian Arab Army are Palestinians.
The battle that raged starting December 9 in the Yarmouk Palestinian refugee camp (south of Damascus) has revealed new alliances.
The strategic objective was to involve Palestinians in the war in Syria, mobilizing them on a sectarian basis (they are mostly Sunni) against the secular regime. But the refugees did not allow themselves to be manipulated, no more than in Lebanon in 2007, when the mercenaries of Fatah al-Islam tried to mobilize the Palestinians of Nahr el-Bared against Hezbollah.
Elements of Hamas loyal to Meshaal allowed fighters of the Al-Nousra Front (Levantine branch of Al-Qaeda) to enter the camp where they mainly clashed with men of the PFLP (nationalists and Marxists).
It now appears that the al-Qaeda fighters were not only made up of Muslim extremists, but also included Israeli Mossad agents. They had specific plans to corner the leaders of other Palestinian factions and eliminate them. Not finding them, they allowed the other members of Al-Qaida to systematically loot the empty apartments of these leaders.
After a week of heavy fighting, elements of al-Qaida, Mossad-included, retreated and the camp was declared a "neutral zone." Of the 180 000 inhabitants, about 120,000 had fled the camp at the request of the Syrian authorities and were relocated by them to Damascus.
Video and transcript inside: Three days ago I heard a casual report, lasting maybe two lines, on SBS or ABC news, that ISIS militants had taken over a suburb of Damascus six kilometers from the Presidential Palace. Although this sounded really awful, the lack of detail was suspicious. One could imagine the United States using such a half-baked report as an excuse to attack the area from the air and kill the Syrian president, so I tried to find out more by going outside Australian and US/NATO news sources. The Syrian government has since driven ISIS out of the area. [1] Below this introduction is a video interview with Alaa Ibrahim, and my transcript of it. From Voltaire.net [1] I learned were that Yamouk refugee 'camp' is not a camp with tents but a fully fledged built-up suburb of Damascus, mostly inhabited by Palestinian refugees, to whom Syria grants full rights to housing, free education and health, like ordinary citizens. Palestine, as readers would be aware, no longer exists on the map, but it used to be next door to Syria, on its southern border, in the area now occupied by Israel. Syria is the only Arab state that provides legal equality to Palestinians and it administers their areas in conjunction with Palestinian leaders. Something like seven million of Syria's population before the current war were refugees from, as well as Palestine, the nearby war-torn states, notably Iraq. (It is amazing that the Australian refugee advocate movement and our anti-war movement - such as it is - does not appear to have realised this.)
On 2 April 2015, political analyst Alaa Ibrahim was interviewed by RT news about how Islamic State fighters seized Yarmouk Refugee area in South Damascus, 6.4km from the city center.
Alaa Ibrahim: "We now have an effective ISIS presence in that area. The camp has been under rebel control since 2012 and it has been under the control of two rebel factions, ... ? and Moktus. Two of these groups have very radical Islamic ideology, but nonetheless, the presence of ISIL has a political significance because it is the first time we have seen a stronghold of ISIL (or ISIS) so close to the Syrian capital.
Yarmouk has been the closest point the rebels have ever got to the Syrian capital, Damascus. If you have a look at the geography of the place, areas around the Yarmouk camp which were all under the control of rebels, have recently in the past few months had signed settlements - which the Syrian government calls a 'national reconciliation agreement' - between the Syrian Government and the local rebel factions in these areas and, as a result the Syrian government has fortified its presence south of Damascus and further secured the perimeter of the capital.
The only real chance to achieve a breach in this perimeter of Damascus is through the Yarmouk area. The Syrian government has been avoiding attacking the Yarmouk camp because it knows many - estimates say between 15 and 20,000 - Palestinian refugees live in that area, so it would be a political embarassment for the Syrian government if it carries attacks there and surely civilians would die as a result of these attacks so I think they [Syrian Government] decided to avoid the camp, which created a weak point in their parameter around the capital, Damascus.
Also, there's another development that comes into play: the fact that the Nusra Front, which is very strong in the camp, wanted to fortify its position against the other rebel factions, so it brought in ISIL in a rear alliance between the two organisations, hoping to prevent any local rebel factions from signing any agreement or agreeing with the Syrian government to surrender or give the camp back to the control of the Syrian government."
Interviewer: " The logistics of what has happened aside, what is it going to mean for these many thousands - as you've just been saying - of the refugees inside this camp? What's it going to mean for their safety and security? "
Alaa Ibrahim: "Well, they don't have a very good situation to begin with. The camp is completely dependent on humanitarian aid delivered to the camp on a monthly basis by the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees ... and by the Syrian government. The situation in the camp was very bad to begin with. There is an infestation of diseases ..."
Interviewer interrupting: "Are they safe from ISIS?"
Alaa Ibrahim: "No, they're not safe from ISIS/ISIL. They were not safe in the first place, when they lived under battling rebel factions, including al Queida and Syrian Muslim Front."
Originally published under the title of "Iran's deputy FM: Yemen's president uses terrorists to fight rebels," this is the transcript, with links to the video, of Sophie Shevardnadze's interview with Iran Deputy Foreign Minister, Hossein Amir-Abdollahian. The beginning of the video is particularly instructive, as Hossein Amir-Abdollahian gives a run-down on what is happening from Iran's very close perspective. Among other things, it becomes clear that Iran does not believe that the United States is trying to stop IS. Saudi Arabia has said that it is going to develop nuclear weapons. Iran says it will not let this happen. It also says that it will not let Syria fall. The Minister says that the reason the United States wants to wreck Syria is that then it will have destroyed the main Russian foothold in the Middle East and that will allow the United States to dominate the region and maintain world hegemony. See also this Crosstalk episode where US realpolitik intentions and consequences and rhetoric are discussed in a very informed manner, particularly in relation to Yemen.
Iran's deputy FM: Yemen's president uses terrorists to fight rebels
Yemen has turned into another battlefield, raging across the region. ISIS is prospering on the ruins of state. The flames of war grow brighter with Saudi Arabia and its allies joining the combat on the side of the Yemen’s government forces. But is that a solution? Hasn’t the method of intervention discredited itself - just inspiring more violence? We look at the issue with Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian on Sophie&Co.
Sophie Shevardnadze: Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian,thank you for joining us again, we’re very happy to have you here. I’d like to start with the recent events. As you know, Yemen is on the verge of a civil war. Saudi Arabia and its allies have launched air strikes in Yemen against the Shia rebels who seized power. What is your opinion on this and what is Iran’s stance?
Hossein Amir-Abdollahian: In the name of Allah, the compassionate, the merciful. We believe that the situation in Yemen should be resolved through political means only. We are very – let’s put it this way – surprised that foreign countries launched a military operation in Yemen. We believe that foreign interference will not only fail to solve the problem, but also exacerbate it. It’s easy to start a war, but it’s extremely hard to finish one. The countries interfering in the situation in Yemen are putting themselves in a very difficult position, they will just sink into this mire. All the sides seeking power in Yemen should take part in a political process to determine the future of the country. The Houthi rebels who seized power in Yemen, that is, the Ansar Allah movement, are a very influential group. Their main objective is to fight terrorism. They seized certain territories to clear them of terrorists. Unfortunately, recently the ISIS forces, the Nigerian Boko Haram and Somalian Al-Shabaab started operating in the country. They cooperate with some intelligence services from other states to create chaos in Yemen. Ansar Allah took preventive steps against terrorist forces. We believe that a national dialogue should take place in Yemen to reach an agreement based on peace and cooperation. The countries of this region, including Saudi Arabia, shouldn’t hamper this process.
SS: That’s a lot of ‘shoulds’... In any case, the airstrikes have begun and what we have here is a direct military intervention. Do I understand correctly from what you just said that in this situation when Saudi Arabia and a coalition of Arab states are bombing Yemen, Iran will stay an observer rather than start actively interfering?
HA-A: We will keep supporting the fight against terrorism in the region, including in Yemen. In this respect we welcome the actions of Ansar Allah aimed at combating terrorism. We will support the dialogue in Yemen to the best of our abilities and we are willing to aid the start of the political process in this country. We don’t believe that the conflict in Yemen can be solved through military means. We don’t believe the Ansar Allah forces need to receive military aid. We will not facilitate military action in Yemen.We are in favor of national dialogue, and in this respect our stance is the same as Russia’s. During negotiations with my Russian counterpart we agreed to facilitate the start of a peace process in Yemen.
SS: You’ve said before that the Yemeni President should resign. Does it mean that you support the Houthis and not the legitimate president of Yemen?
HA-A: Indeed, we have criticized the Yemeni President and urged him to resign. Abd Rabbuh Mansour Hadimade a number of mistakes as president. His first obvious mistake was the initial decision to resign, and his second was to flee the capital and move to Aden. Using terrorist groups to fight Ansar Allah was his third mistake. Announcing that Aden is the new capital was another strategic mistake on his part. Why? Because some countries supported the decision to make Aden a temporary capital, which triggered further divisions in Yemen, pushing the country closer to war. Even before Saudi Arabia’s military intervention in Yemen we have very clearly stated that all Yemeni political forces, including the President, should gather in Sanaa and launch a dialogue based on peace and partnership in order to break the current deadlock. But instead Hadi tried to politically boycott Ansar Allah. We maintain contact with all the groups and movements in Yemen, including the interim government and Ansar Allah. But we believe that Yemen belongs to all the Yemeni people and a single movement cannot dominate the political arena.Yemeni leaders should make their own decision regarding the country’s future.
SS: But right now it’s ultimately about supporting either the Houthis that seized power or the rest. As for the Houthis, is there a guarantee that they will be able to unite the people, consolidate the power and prevent bloodshed?
HA-A: The Houthis are strongly supported by the population. The actions of President Hadi backed by some foreign states resulted in terrorists infiltrating Yemen. Ansar Allah had to respond. The Houthis honored their commitments, they were willing to take part in a dialogue, but the other side changed the rules. In this situation, when the war in Yemen has already begun, Ansar Allah is protecting itself and the country. They are still in favor of peace and political dialogue. People support Ansar Allah and respect its members. The only way to resolve the situation in Yemen is for all the political groups to cooperate and come to an agreement.
SS: Let’s talk about another military operation in the region, conducted by the US and the coalition of Arab states against ISIS. In your interview to Reuters you said that the United States is not acting to eliminate ISIS, it’s only interested in managing it. Did you mean that the US is controlling the Islamic State? How is that possible?
HA-A: In the beginning the Americans declared that they wanted to destroy ISIS. But then it became clear that in reality they were just weakening ISIS. Now it’s apparent that all they want is to control, to manage the Islamic State. The US built a coalition to fight ISIS in Iraq and Syria, but the action plansfor the two countries are different. The US is coordinating its actions with the government in Iraq, but this is not the case in Syria. The US simply informed the Syrian President of its intentions. It is not coordinating its actions with the Syrian military.We have proof that the Americans use double standards when it comes to combating terrorism. They have no unified strategy, and in some cases we see a connection between U.S. intelligence services and terrorist groups. We’ve expressed our concern about this to our American counterparts through diplomatic channels, but the U.S. maintains they are committed to fighting terrorism.
SS: You say direct military action is needed against ISIS.Would Iran support a U.S. on-the-ground military intervention into Iraq and Syria?
HA-A: We haven’t supported the US-led coalition against ISIS because we have serious doubts about America’s true objectives. One of the reasons for our doubts is that after Mosul fell, we saw that the U.S. are not taking any serious steps. It seems like they were waiting for some political changes to take place. There is a lot of controversy over the way the US has been fighting terrorism in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria in the recent years. If the Americans are combating terrorism, why are they now willing to negotiate with the Taliban after so many years of fighting it?
SS: Now you’ve brought up the issue -U.S. actions in Iraq have led to the chaos we’re seeing today with the Islamic State, U.S actions in Afghanistan failed to end the Taliban… Is it time forregionalpowers to step in and clear the mess?
HA-A: The Americans started fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan, but did they manage to get rid of it? Did the US succeed in eradicating the roots of terrorism in Afghanistan? We believe that ISIS is the result of the US military intervention in Iraq. The US created the conditions for the growth of terrorism in Iraq, and it won’t be eradicated until the U.S. stops behaving in such an ambiguous way.
SS:I’m not disputing that. My question was whether it was time for regional powers such as Iran and its neighbors to interfere and sort out this mess.
HA-A: When it comes to fighting terrorism, Iran was the first country that rushed to Iraq’s aid and the first country to help Syria. We will support any country in the region that is threatened by terrorism and help them within the framework of international law. Upon request from the Iraqi and Syrian governments we sent our military advisers there to fight terrorism. Some of them died as martyrs. We are closely cooperating with some countries of the region in order to create a joint mechanism to combat terror.
SS: The Iraqi Defense Minister recently praised Iran for its role in fighting the Islamic State. And you say Iran sent military advisers to Iraq.What role do military advisors play exactly? Are they Iranians who fight the Islamic State directly? I’ll explain why I’m asking. Just recentlythe leader of Iraq’s shiite militia has thanked Iran and an Iranian general - General Soleimani – for saving Baghdad from Isis.So does that mean the Iranian army is directly fighting ISIS in Iraq?
HA-A: When it comes to Iraq, it’s the Iraqi people and the Iraqi army that plays the most important role there. They are undertaking tremendous efforts to fight ISIS. Ayatollah al-Sistani’s fatwa which declared fighting ISIS a sacred duty greatly contributed to the mobilization of the Iraqi population. When we say that Iran’s military advisers are in Iraq, we mean people who offer advice to the Iraqi and Syrian armed forces. We share our experience in fighting terrorism. In no way does it mean that we send our soldiers there. Iraq and Syria have enough armed forces to fight terrorism.
SS: So you reaffirm that at the moment there are no Iranian soldiers directly involved in fighting Iraqi militants on the ground?
HA-A: No Iranian armed forces or militants are currently present in Iraq or Syria.
SS: Let me ask you this: whyaren’tyou fighting? Wouldn’t Iranian help be extremely useful in the current situation?
HA-A: We can help our partners organize the process and make military decisions. But Both countries have enough armed forces, there’s no need to send Iranian soldiers to Iraq or Syria.
SS: Okay, so both Iranian military advisers and American military advisers are currently in Iraq.Does that mean that Iranian military advisers are working side by side with the Americans and their allies? Is that right?
HA-A: We don’t have an agreement with the US regarding joint efforts to fight terrorism in Iraq.We don’t have direct military cooperation. But the Iraqi government is coordinating the work of the military advisors - In some parts of Iraq American military advisors consult the Iraqi forces, in other parts it’s the Iranian military advisers.We are very committed to combating terrorism and we’ve made considerable progress in Iraq. There’s no doubt that Baghdad was on the brink of falling into the hands of ISIS, but right now it’s under no danger. Other parts of the country should have been freed of ISIS with the help of the Americans, but we don’t see the U.S. taking any major steps. So we constantly criticize them for not being decisive and serious enough in fighting terrorism.
SS:I understand, but if the Iranian and American military advisers were to coordinate their work, wouldn’t it be more effective than offering different strategies to fight ISIS in different parts of the country? Right now it seems that both Iran and the US share the same interests in this region, that is, to defeat ISIS.
HA-A: We are committed to fighting terrorism, and we take planning and implementing concrete measures very seriously. We don’t agree with the steps the US is taking, so we see no point in coordinating our work. If the US proves its commitment to fight ISIS, we will of course welcome it.
SS: U.S. former commander in Iraq, Gen. David Petraeus has said that the Shiite militias confronting ISIS, “aided and guided by Iran”, are a bigger threat to Iraq than ISIS itself - should Baghdad refuse their help then?
HA-A: What Petraeus said indicates that he doesn’t have a good understanding of what is going on, even though he was the commander of the US forces in Iraq for years. The US has on a number of occasions expressed its concern over militias formed in Iraq.But I’ll have to state very clearly that volunteer militias were formed under the guidance of the Iraqi government and Iraqi military command. Iraqi militias are not independent. They operate within the framework of Iraq’s Constitution, under the command of the Defense Minister and work towards the same objective as the Iraqi army.
SS:If not the Shia forces, who should be fighting ISIS? Both the Iraqi army and the Sunni armed groupshaven’t been showing much progress before the militias stepped in...
HA-A: You see, people say that we help only the Shia in Iraq, but that’s not the case. Our military advisors are engaged together with the Iraqi army in operations in Tikrit, in Sunni areas. If Iran had not responded to a plea for help from the leader of Iraqi Kurds Mr. Masoud Barzani, ISIS would have been in Erbil by now. Mr. Barzani stated very clearly that they are thankful to the Islamic Republic of Iran for assistance in fighting ISIS. In other words, we have offered help in Shia-dominated areas, Kurdish areas, and now we are helping Iraqi Sunnis in Tikrit to fight terror. So saying that Shiite militias are the only ones fighting in Iraq is not exactly correct.
SS: With the nuclear negotiations between Iran and the Western powers showing signs of progress, why is there still such mistrust about Iran’s aid in the fight against the IS?
HA-A: First of all, we have even less trust in the West than they have in us. I don’t think they have any reasons for suspicion, because our counter-terrorist efforts have proved worthwhile. If you don’t believe me, ask the people of Iraq, Afghanistan or Syria.Why is the West apprehensive about this? That’s their problem.
SS: While Western allies focus their attention on Iraq, Syria remains a stronghold for the Islamic State…Your interior minister told me in a recent interview that you offer organizational, advisory assistance to Syria in the fight against the Islamic State. Are you planning to offer wider support?
HA-A: We will continue to provide assistance to Syria.We will not allow Syria to turn into another Libya or another Somalia. In spite of the chaos created by terrorists, in spite of the misguided international actions in the region, we always have and always will stand by the Syrian people. Iran backed the political process in Syria, government reforms, the demands of the moderate Syrian opposition. We support the inter-Syrian dialogue in Moscow. Iran will continue helping Syria combat terrorism and we will also continue providing economic assistance to Syria.
SS:Is Iran the only country helping Syria fight ISIS?
HA-A: Iran is the only country that officially helps Syria fight terrorism and coordinates its efforts with Syrian authorities. We provide them with military advice. Hezbollah has also been very effective in the fight against ISIS, it’s ensuring the security of Lebanon. Lately, many countries, some European and American politicians have acknowledged the issue of terrorism in Syria, and are emphasizing the need for a political settlement inside the country. We proudly declare that Tehran has prevented terrorists from overthrowing the political regime in Syria, even though some foreign intelligence agencies supported armed groups in Syria. Besides, some foreign governments contributed to the strengthening of ISIS in Syria.
SS:ISIS is strengthening its presence across the entire region, spreading beyond Syria and Iraq into Afghanistan, Egypt, Libya, and Yemen; they even have supporters in Nigeria.How has Iran, neighbored by Iraq and Afghanistan, managed to keep extremism out?
HA-A: The reason why we offer effective assistance to our neighbors is that our security services have a lot of experience in managing the situation and combatting terrorism. Even though we’re in between two of the world’s biggest terror hubs - Afghanistan and Iraq, Iran remains the most secure and stable country in the region. This is thanks to our security services and other units that specialize in fighting terrorism.
SS: That’s clear, but what exactly do you do? Each country uses its army and security forces for protection. But the countries targeted by ISIS also have their own security forces. So what makes you better at it?
HA-A: First, there must be no distinction between good terrorism and bad terrorism. You cannot use terrorism in your own interests. Second, you need to have adequate security forces to act against terror. Third, you need to enforce border control. And most importantly, you need to address the social and ideological roots of terror in the region. Every government must track the roots of terrorism to work out a solution. As for the measures we take, the specifics are up to security forces. This is not my domain. Russia, too, is taking very productive steps and building effective tools to ensure its own security. We see terror strikes in France and in the US; Russia is not immune, either. But why does Russia stay stable and secure? I think it’s all about running the country well and the counter-terrorist experience Russia has.
SS: In other words, countries are better at ensuring their security under the pressure of sanctions! All right – let’s move on to another topic. I’d like to touch upon falling oil prices. You are saying this is happening due to well-planned actions of some governments in the region. Which ones do you mean – beside Saudi Arabia?
HA-A: There are a handful of factors contributing to the falling oil prices. One of them is the law of supply and demand. The second one is the production of shale oil in the US. We know now for sure about the recent concerted effort by some of the countries in the region…
SS:Which ones?
HA-A: I’d rather not name them. Anyway, that was a concerted effort by some of the oil producers in the region and the US. One of their goals was to lean on Tehran and Moscow. Their idea was that the drop in the oil prices would increase economic pressure on Tehran and Moscow, so that Tehran would concede on its nuclear program, and Moscow on the Ukrainian crisis. But it is a two-way street: even the countries that expanded their oil production and are reducing oil prices will suffer from this policy very soon.
I believe that the region and the international community in general are being affected by strategic errors.The biggest error in the realm of security consists in the instrumental use of terror in some of the regional countries, like Syria and IraqThe biggest error in the realm of economy is keeping the oil prices at a low level. All of this breeds instability, undermines security and builds up extremism.The only stakeholders who benefit from it are the enemies of the region.
SS: Saudi Arabia has recently declared it is ready to start designing its own nuclear weapons. What will Iran do if Saudi Arabia makes a nuclear bomb?
HA-A: Our spiritual leader has banned production and use of nuclear weapons at the highest political and religious level. We seek to build a nuclear weapon-free zone. If Saudi Arabia wants to develop nuclear energy for peaceful purposes, we will be happy to see that Iran’s persistence in this issue has finally yielded fruit. Moreover, we are ready to share our experience with other countries in the region. But we strongly oppose building nuclear weapons, and we will not allow Saudi Arabia to make a nuclear bomb.
SS:I get it, but unfortunately Saudi Arabia has openly said they are talking about nuclear weapons, not nuclear research, and that they’re doing it in response to Iran’s nuclear program that has research purposes.
HA-A: Iran continues to talk with its partners on its nuclear program. So far the talks have confirmed that Iran is not engaged in developing nuclear weapons. So there is no need for Saudi Arabia to do this either.
SS: You are evading my question in a true diplomatic fashion. To make it clear, Saudi Arabia has announced its intentions to work on nuclear weapons. What is Iran’s stance on this?
HA-A: We do not make nuclear weapons, and we forcefully condemn other regional countries’ intent to acquire a nuclear bomb. All countries in the region, including Israel, must destroy their nuclear warheads.
SS: Thank you very much for this interview. I hope to see you again someday.
HA-A: I’d also like to thank you and wish your esteemed audience the best of success.
In this unedited 57 minute interview, much of the lying narrative which has been fed to the public in recent years as a pretext for the United States' proxy terrorist war and planned military aggression against Syria was put to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad by the CBS's Charlie Rose. Examples of this narrative include How Will Syria's Assad Be Held Accountable For Crimes Against Humanity? (28/3/15) by the supposedly liberal, progressive Huffington Post and Thousands in Syria face death as Assad regime prevents aid distribution (28/3/15) republished in the Melbourne Age from the UK Telegraph. Each of the fabrications, such as are to be found in these two articles, which was put to the Syrian President by Charlie Rose, was torn to shreds – a feat even more remarkable, given that English is not even Bashar al-Assad's native tongue.
This interview shows the Syrian President to be a moral and intellectual giant. Nonetheless, even a people so resilient and resourceful as the Syrians, cannot indefinitely defend themselves against hordes of killer sociopaths from every corner of the globe. If Syria is to survive, the people of the United States, Australia and their allies must hold their leaders to account for their shameful actions. Then Australian Foreign Minister Bob Carr, for his part, imposed additional sanctions against Syria and expelled the Syrian ambassador in June 2012 using the fraudulent claim that the Syrian government had massacred its own citizens at Houla in May 2012 as a pretext.
Damascus, SANA – President Bashar al-Assad made an interview with Charlie Rose of the U.S. CBS News. Following is the full text, which was not made available by CBS The YouTube video Syrian President Bashar al-Assad on 60 Minutes, which presumably, is what 60 Minutes broadcast on 29 March 2015 is only 13:34 minutes long. The following is copied from the Syrian Arab News Agency. It has also bee published on the Free Syrian Free Press and the embedded YouTube video is the full interview of length 56:43 minutes.
Question 1: Mr. President, thank you for allowing us to come here. We asked for this interview because your country's been at war for four years. It is a humanitarian crisis, perhaps the worst on the planet right now. 200,000 Syrians have died, four million refugees, ten million have left their homes, life expectancy is down, 50% of your country is occupied by hostile forces. It's become a battleground for outside forces. What's next? Because we have seen since I last visited you the rise of ISIS, we have seen Hezbollah in here, we have seen the United States becoming increasingly concerned about ISIS, so much so that the President, and especially the Secretary of State, have said that there's a need for a negotiated settlement.
President Assad: Actually, the beginning of your question is exaggerating the number a little bit, but that's not the issue. I always invite the media and the West and the officials to deal with those numbers not as spreadsheets and numbers and counter; actually it's bereaved families who lost their dear ones. It's a tragedy that's been going through, every Syrian family lost someone, lost their livelihood, and so on. Whether it's a few thousands or hundreds of thousands, it's a tragedy. What's next? Actually, every conflict should end up with dialogue, with a political solution between the different parties, and that's what we have been doing in Syria for the last two years; dealing directly with the militants, and we succeeded in making some reconciliations.
Regarding the rise of ISIS, in the context of events in Syria during the last four years, ISIS didn't rise suddenly. It's impossible for such – bigger than what we call an organization and smaller than a state – to appear suddenly with all these resources, financial resources, human resources, without support from the outside and without being prepared gradually or incrementally for a long time before the sudden rise during last summer. So, the rise of ISIS is not a precise word because it didn't happen suddenly; it was a result of events that happened at the beginning of the conflict that we mentioned in our statements many times, but no-one in the West has listened to. If we want to mention the statement of Kerry regarding the dialogue, I would say that we have in Syria so far is only a statement, nothing concrete yet, no facts, no new reality regarding the political approach of the United States towards our situation, our problem, our conflict in Syria. But as a principle, in Syria we could say that every dialogue is a positive thing, and we're going to be open to any dialogue with anyone including the United States regarding anything based on mutual respect, and without breaching the sovereignty of Syria, and as a principle I would say that this approach, the new approach of the United States towards not only Syria, towards anyone, to make dialogue regarding any issue, is a positive thing, but we have to wait for the reality.
Question 2: What kind of communication is there between your government and the American government?
President Assad: There's no direct communication.
Question 3: None at all?
President Assad: No, no.
Question 4: No kind of conversation about what kind of settlement might take place, no conversations about how to fight ISIS?
President Assad: Nothing yet. That's why the United States-
Question 5: Nothing yet?
President Assad: Nothing yet. Till this moment, no.
Question 6: Would you like to have that happen?
President Assad: Any dialogue is positive, as I said, in principle, of course. Without breaching the sovereignty of Syria, especially regarding the fighting of terrorism. The way we defeat terrorism, that's an important issue for us at this moment.
Question 7: But the question is what are you prepared to do? It is your country that is suffering. What are you prepared to do in terms of negotiations? If part of that is to see a transition government, of which you would give up power, would you be willing to do that?
President Assad: Anything regarding the Syrian internal politics should be related to the Syrian people, not to anyone else. We're not going to discuss with the Americans or anyone what are we going to do regarding our political system, our constitution, or our laws, or our procedures. We can cooperate with them regarding fighting the terrorism and making pressure on different countries like Turkey and Saudi Arabia and Qatar and some of their allies in Europe that support the terrorists politically and financially and by military means.
Question 8: This cannot end militarily. Do you agree with that?
President Assad: Yeah, definitely. Every conflict, even if it's a war, should end with a political solution.
Question 9: But then draw me a roadmap that you have for a political solution. What does it look like?
President Assad: You have different levels. You have the internal levels, you have the regional, you have the international, and you have different means at the same time. The most important part is the local. The local part should have two things: a dialogue between the Syrians about everything; the political system, and any other details that could be beyond this, about the future of the country, of course. Second, make direct dialogue with the militants as we did during the last two years in order to give them amnesty and to give up their armaments and go back to their normal lives.
Question 10: When you say militants, who do you mean?
President Assad: Some of them are terrorists, some of them are people who were implicated by the events for different reasons, so, whoever carries a gun and tries to destroy the public infrastructure or attack the people or cause any harm or breach the law in Syria. That's the militant.
Question 11: But so much of the power is in your hands to engage in the process. I mean, if they demand that you step down before they negotiate, that's unacceptable to you.
President Assad: By the militants, you mean?
Question 12: No, I mean by the United States, and Russia, and parties to the conversation.
President Assad: No external party has anything to do with the future of Syria, with the constitution or president or anything like this. We're not going to discuss it with them. This is a Syrian issue. Whenever the Syrian people want to change their president, it should be changed right away, in the same day… even if we exaggerate, it should be through a political process, through a constitutional process. That's how we change presidents, not through terrorism and external intervention.
Question 13: Some say that ISIS was the best thing that happened to you, and that even some of the things that you have done have benefitted ISIS, that because of what ISIS has done and because of your fight against the moderates in your country who, in terms of the Arab spring, wanted to see more democracy here. That you, in the effort to crush them, allowed ISIS to grow.
President Assad: Let's go back to what President Obama said in one of his interviews recently; when he said that the moderate opposition in Syria is illusive. That's very clear by President Obama, and we always said there's no moderate opposition. So, the rise of ISIS wasn't sudden, again. The evisceration, the amputation, eating the hearts of the victims started from the very beginning, and even beheading started from the very beginning of the conflicts. It started with what they called moderate opposition, then it continued with al-Nusra, then with ISIS. So, what happened with those three, including ISIS, they attacked military bases, they killed our soldiers, and they destroyed our economy. According to this logic, how could that be the best thing that happened to me? In what logic? To lose? To destroy the country? To kill your supporters and to kill others, and to kill civilians? In what sense could that be the best thing that happened to me or to the government? That's illogical, that's unrealistic, that's unpalatable.
Question 14: Again, I come back to the idea of how, now, with the new reality of ISIS, how it's changed the circumstances. As they have gained in strength, what new changes do you see in attitude towards you and staying and the Syrian government?
President Assad: Regarding the West, you mean?
Question 15: Yes.
President Assad: I think the West has changed its calculations after the rise of ISIS, but that doesn't mean that they changed their approach to the conflicts in Syria, in Iraq, and in our region. I don't think they've learned the lesson well, and that, as a result, will not change the course of events, because, the very beginning of the problem, from the Western perspective, is to change the system or the president or the government that they don't like, and they're still moving in the same direction. That's why nothing concrete has changed yet; only the appearance and the priority. Their priority is to fight ISIS, but that doesn't mean that their priority is to get rid of ISIS.
Question 16: How can you see the United States cooperate with Syria regarding ISIS?
President Assad: There's no direct cooperation.
Question 17: But how do you see the future?
President Assad: The future, you mean. In the future, there must direct dialogue to fight terrorism, because the terrorism is on our ground, on our soil, they cannot defeat it without our cooperation, without having our information, because we lived with this and we know the reality and how to defeat it.
Question 18: Most people believe there is cooperation unofficially, and it goes through Iraq, and that somehow Syria knows when airstrikes are taking place by the United States, because they get that information from Iraq.
President Assad: From another third party, not only Iraq. More than one country told us that they're going to start this campaign.
Question 19: How does that work?
President Assad: What do you mean?
Question 20: You do you get information?
President Assad: In the campaign?
Question 21: Yes.
President Assad: How does it work on the ground regarding ISIS?
Question 22: Yes. How do you get information, about American airstrikes, so that it can coordinate with what you're doing, so that they're not bombing Syrian troops.
President Assad: Through a third party, and it was very clear that their aim is to attack ISIS, not the Syrian Army, and that is what happened so far.
Question 23: A third party means Iraq, and who else?
President Assad: Iraq, another country, Russian officials.
Question 24: Russian officials, Iraqi officials?
President Assad: Iraqi officials.
Question 25: Communicate to you the American intentions?
President Assad: Exactly. In the details that I mentioned now.
Question 26: What's the level of that information? Is it just about airstrikes, is it about other activities on the ground that are taking place?
President Assad: No, no details, only the headlines, and the principle that they're going to attack ISIS in Syria and Iraq during the next few days. That is what we have heard, nothing else.
Question 27: When you shot down an American drone, did you know it was an American drone?
President Assad: No, because any drone, any airplane, any aircraft, will not tell you that “I'm American.” So, when you have a foreign aircraft, you shoot it. These are the rules, the military rules.
Question 28: How much of benefit are you getting from American airstrikes in Syria, reducing the power of ISIS?
President Assad: Sometimes it could have local benefits, but in general if you want to talk in terms of ISIS, actually ISIS has expanded since the beginning of the strikes, not like some Americans want to sugarcoat the situation as to say that it's getting better, ISIS has been defeated, and so on. Actually, no, they have more recruits. Some estimate that they have 1,000 recruits every month, in Syria and Iraq, they are expanding in Libya, and many other Al Qaeda-affiliated organizations have announced their allegiance to ISIS. So, that's the situation.
Question 29: How much territory do they control in Syria? ISIS controls how much territory, 50%?
President Assad: It's not a regular war, you don't have criteria. It's not an army that makes incursions. They try to infiltrate any area when there's no army, and when you have inhabitants. The question is how much incubator they have, that is the question; how much hearts and minds they won so far.
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Question 30: How do you measure that?
President Assad: You can't measure it, but you can tell that the majority of the people who suffered from ISIS, they are supporting the government, and of course the rest of the Syrian people are afraid from ISIS. I don't think they win; I think they lost a lot of hearts and minds.
Question 31: They've lost a lot?
President Assad: They have lost, except the very ideological people who have Wahhabi states of mind and ideology.
Question 32: Explain to me why are people fleeing to go to refugee camps in Jordan and Turkey. What are they fleeing from? The Syrian Army?
President Assad: No, those camps started being built before there was any real conflicts in Syria, so it was premeditated to be used as a humanitarian headline and title, to be used against Syria to be a pretext a military intervention. That's how it started. Later, they started giving incentives to people to flee there. Now, the majority of those, they fled because of the terrorism, and I'll give you an example. In the elections, the presidential elections, most of the refugees in Lebanon, for example, and even in Jordan, they voted for the president, not against the president. That's a concrete indicator, you cannot ignore it. So, they did not flee the Syrian Army; if they fled from the Syrian Army, they will be in the other-
Question 33: I have interviewed some of them in the Jordanian refugee camps, and they were fearful of the Syrian Army. And they were fearful of repercussions if people knew they were being interviewed, so they were reluctant to give their name and where they were from, but they had fled in fear of the Syrian Army.
President Assad: That could happen. Of course, you have different kinds of people, you have different perceptions, you have that perception. We don't say that everybody fled just because of the terrorists. Some people fled just because of the situation, not from the Syrian Army not from the terrorists, they want to go to a safer place. So, they have different reasons for the refugees.
Question 34: There is another number that is alarming to me. It is that 90% of the civilian casualties, 90%, come from the Syrian Army.
President Assad: How did you get that result?
Question 35: There was a report that was issued in the last six months.
President Assad: Okay, as I said earlier, the war is not a traditional war, it's not about capturing land and gaining land; it's about winning the hearts and minds of the Syrians. We cannot win the hearts of the Syrians while we are killing Syrians. We cannot sustain four years in that position as a government, and me as a president, while the rest of the world, most of the world, the great powers, the regional powers, are against me, and my people are against me. That's impossible. I mean, this logic has no legs to stand on. This is not realistic, and this is against our interest, as a government, to kill the people. What do we get? What is the benefit of killing the people?
Question 36: Well, the argument is that you… there are weapons of war that have been used that most people look down on. One is chlorine gas. They believe that it has been used here. They said that there is evidence of that and they would like to have the right to inspect, to see where it's coming from. As you know, barrel bombs have been used, and they come from helicopters. The only people that have helicopters are the Syrian Army. And so, those two acts of war, which society looks down on, as-
President Assad: Let me fully answer this, this is very important. This is part of the malicious propaganda against Syria. First of all, the chlorine gas is not a military gas, you can buy it anywhere.
Question 37: But it can be weaponized.
President Assad: No, because it's not very effective, it's not used as a military gas. That's self evident. Traditional arms are more important than chlorine, and if it was very effective, the terrorists would have used it on a larger scale. Because it's not very effective, it's not used very much.
Question 38: Then why not let somebody come in and inspect and see whether it was used or not?
President Assad: We allowed.
Question 39: You'd be happy for that?
President Assad: Of course. We always ask that a delegation, an impartial delegation, to come and investigate, but I mean logically and realistically, it cannot be used as a military. This is part of the propaganda, because, as you know, in the media, when it bleeds, it leads, and they always look for something that bleeds, which is the chlorine gas and the barrel bombs. This is very important, the barrel bombs, what are barrel bombs? They say barrel bomb as a bomb that kills people indiscriminately, because it doesn't aim. This is not realistic for one reason: because no army uses a bomb that doesn't aim, and the proof to what I'm saying is that, you don't talk about the shape of the bomb to call it a barrel or cylindrical or whatever. The state-of-the-art drones, American drones, in Pakistan, Afghanistan, in Yemen, with state-of-the-art precision missiles have killed more civilians and innocents than killing terrorists. So, it's not about this bomb that doesn't aim, that kills people indiscriminately; it's about the way you use it.
Question 40: But you're acknowledging then that you do use it? You do use barrel bombs?
President Assad: No, no. There's no such thing called barrel bombs. You have bombs, and any bomb is about killing, it's not about tingling people.
Question 41: Most people understand what a barrel bomb is. I mean, they understand how it's put together, what's put inside of the barrel, and they understand how it's dropped from helicopters.
President Assad: No, we have had a very good military industry for years, for decades, in Syria. We don't have to make bombs, very primitive ones, very malicious ones. This bomb, this term, was used only to demonize the Syrian Army. That's it. This is part of the propaganda.
Question 42: If barrel bombs were used by the Syrian Army, would you order the Syrian Army to stop using barrel bombs?
President Assad: Again, what is this term, what is the barrel bomb? I mean do you describe the missile that you have by-
Question 43: It's a bomb that inflicts terrible civilian casualties.
President Assad: Any bomb and missile and even bullet is made to make casualties, but not civilian. There's no military means made in order not to kill. But how you use, it's again about the way you use it, it's not about the bomb. I mean, if you want to talk about casualties, that's another issue. Every war is malignant, every war is bad. You don't have benign war. That's wars are bad because you always have casualties. That is not related to certain kinds of bombs or bullets or whatever. This is completely another issue.
Question 44: So in fact, are you denying that barrel bombs are being and inflicting great casualties.
President Assad: Again, I always say, we use a bomb, we use missiles, we use everything, we use bullets. You don't describe what we use by the shape, whether it called barrel, spherical, cylindrical missile, you don't describe it this way. You use armaments, if you have casualties, it's a mistake that could happen in every war, but you aim always to kill terrorists, not to kill your people, because you have support by your people, you can't kill them.
Question 45: But you acknowledge that they come from helicopters, barrel bombs.
President Assad: This is a technical issue, a military issue. How to throw-
Question 46: But only one-
President Assad: No, no. You can throw bombs by any airplane. You can throw them by missile. You don't have to use helicopters, you can use them anyway you want.
Question 47: But, if I hear you correctly, you acknowledge that barrel bombs are being used, but they're like other bombs in your judgment, and they are not necessarily any different than other weapons. That is what you seem to be saying.
President Assad: We don't have a bomb that is called barrel bomb. This came from the media, we don't have it. What you call our bombs, that is related to the media. And that is used by the militants, then adopted by the West, in order to demonize the Syrian Army. We don't have something barrel bombs that kill indiscriminately. If you have a strong bomb or weak bomb, or whatever, I mean you could call it whatever you want. I mean, we have regular bombs, traditional armaments. That's what we have.
Question 48: What do most people consider barrel bombs more brutal than others?
President Assad: You have to ask the one who created that term, as I said, for the media, for the propaganda. This is part of the propaganda. If you want to refute the propaganda that's been going on for four years, you have many things to refute.
Question 49: You have often spoken about the danger of a wider war in the Middle East. Let me talk about the parties involved, and characterize how you see them. Let me begin with Saudi Arabia.
President Assad: Saudi Arabia is an archaic autocracy, medieval system that is based on the Wahhabi dark ideology. Actually, I say it's a marriage between the Wahhabi and the political system for 200 years now. That is how we look at it.
Question 50: And what is their connection to ISIS?
President Assad: The same ideology, the same background.
Question 51: So ISIS and Saudi Arabia are one and the same?
President Assad: The same ideology, yes.
Question 52: The same ideology.
President Assad: It's the Wahhabi ideology. Their ideology is based on the books of the Wahhabis in Saudi Arabia.
Question 53: So you believe that all Wahhabis have the same ideology as ISIS.
President Assad: Exactly, definitely. And that's not just by ISIS; by al-Qaeda, by al-Nusra. It's not something we discovered or we try to promote. I mean, they use the same books to indoctrinate the people.
Question 54: What about Turkey?
President Assad: Turkey, let's say, it's about Erdogan. He's a Muslim Brotherhood fanatic. That doesn't mean that he's a member, but he's a fanatic.
Question 55: President Erdogan is…?
President Assad: A Muslim Brotherhood fanatic. And he's somebody who's suffering from political megalomania, and you think that he is becoming the sultan of the new era, of the 21st century.
Question 56: You think he could stop the border if he wanted to?
President Assad: Yes, of course, definitely. He doesn't only ignore the terrorists coming to Syria; he supports them logistically and militarily, directly, on daily basis, and if you take the example of Kobani, what you call Kobani, we call it Ayn al-Arab, the city where the Kurds were fighting ISIS and where the campaign started, the American military campaign started there. It took them four months to liberate that small city, not only because the airstrikes were cosmetic as we said, but because of the direct support of the Turks to ISIS.
Question 57: They were supporting them directly?
President Assad: Directly.
Question 58: You were quoted as saying that the Syrian Army could have eliminated ISIS in Kobani in three weeks.
President Assad: Actually, similar cities with the same terrain and the same size were liberated in a few weeks, without even using the airstrikes.
Question 59: Why have you spent more time attacking Aleppo than Raqqa?
President Assad: We didn't attack Aleppo. We try to get rid of the terrorists everywhere.
Question 60: Were they terrorists in Aleppo, or were they moderates?
President Assad: In Aleppo? No, you don't have any moderate militants in Syria.
Question 61: No moderate militants in Syria? So the definition of a terrorist is what?
President Assad: Of terrorism? Whenever you hold a gun, and kill people, and destroy public buildings, destroy private properties, that's terrorism.
Question 62: So, anyone who opposed your government in Syria, and used military tactics, was a terrorist.
President Assad: With military tactics, or without?
Question 63: Using weapons to-
President Assad: The word opposition, everywhere in the world, including your country, is a political opposition. Do you have military opposition in the United States? Would you accept it? You wouldn't, and we wouldn't. No-one accepts military opposition.
Question 64: It's one thing to say to say there's military opposition. It's another thing to call them terrorists.
President Assad: Military opposition is terrorism. Whenever you hold a gun, a machinegun, and you try to destroy and kill and threaten, this is terrorism, by every definition in the world. It's not my definition. Whenever you want to make opposition, it's going to be political opposition, like your country, you have the same criteria, we don't have different criteria from the one you have in the United States or in Europe or anywhere else.
Question 65: If there's a negotiation, would you accept as part of the negotiation and share power in Syria with anyone who is in opposition to you now, whether they are moderates, whether they are terrorists, but if in fact they lay down their arms and say we want to be part of a future government, a transitional government, in Syria?
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President Assad: Whenever they lay down their arms, they're not terrorists anymore.
Question 66: Even ISIS?
President Assad: ISIS will not. This, how to say, virtual. For ISIS to lay down their arms, this is virtual, because their ideology is they want to fight and to be killed and to go to heaven, to go to paradise. That's how we look at it. They won't negotiate anyway. So, we don't have to answer something which is virtual, not realistic. The realistic one is that many of the militants laid down their arms and are working with the government now. This is reality. I'm not talking about what is going to happen in the future. That is happening, and that is part of the reconciliations. Some people are interested in politics, they can take that track, and some people are interested only to going back to their normal lives and work any job, not being part of the politics. Of course we are open. Whenever there is political opposition, we are fully open to deal with them.
Question 67: As you know, Secretary Kerry has called you a brutal dictator. Secretary Kerry! Other people have said worse. Does that bother you? Is that an accurate description of you?
President Assad: You want the rest of the world to know the reality, of course you won't be happy to hear something that is a far cry from the reality, but at the end, this kind of description to an official wouldn't be really important unless the Syrian citizens said this word. And because the Syrian people still support you, it's a dictator, killing your people, and have the support of the people. It's a contradiction.
Question 68: It's interesting to have that conversation, but with respect, it is said that there was a time, several years ago, in which you were in a very difficult place, and some people thought the government might fall, even suggestions that you were planning to leave, and then the Iranians came in, and Hezbollah came in, and the tide began to turn. Is that a fair appraisal of the circumstances? Because if it's true, it means that the Syrian people were not supporting you, because before foreign forces came in, you were about to lose.
President Assad: First of all, the Iranians never came in during the conflict. Never.
Question 69: General Suleimani was here, in Damascus.
President Assad: He's always here, for decades. This kind of cooperation, like you say, no we have-
Question 70: He was here for the same reason that he is in Iraq right now. He was advising Hezbollah and-
President Assad: You have cooperation, as America, with different countries. You send experts, you have a kind of cooperation. That's different from sending troops. Is that correct? Different, sending troops is different from having cooperation on higher levels.
Question 71: It doesn't matter where they came from. If they are under your command, so to speak, I mean if you are giving direction to Hezbollah… but the central point I want to-
President Assad: No, what you mentioned, I mean your question implied that Iranians are fighting in Syria. That's completely incorrect. Not correct, definitely. If they come here, we would announce, we don't have a problem. We have the right to bring allies to fight with us. At the same time, we announced that Hezbollah is in Syria, we didn't deny this. So, why deny Iran and not deny Hezbollah? We don't.
Question 72: But my argument with you, and you are an artful debater, my argument is, and I'm asking questions, I have no position here, my question is: if the Syrian people supported you, why when the so-called Arab spring came, were you almost about to lose power until outside forces came in. It's self evident that the Syrian people were not supporting you if you were facing that kind of-
President Assad: If you have a real Arab spring today, neither Iran nor Russia, not even Hezbollah can help you. The difference in the situation that you mentioned earlier, between the beginning of the crisis and today, is that we are more gaining support by the Syrian people, because they discovered the truth. At the very beginning, many people weren't… I mean the vision wasn't clear for many Syrians. Now, it's very clear, and we have support even from many people in the opposition against terrorism. So, the main factor, why the situation has changed, is not Iran or Hezbollah; it's the Syrian incubator, the Syrian population. That was the difference. Hezbollah is not a big army. It cannot play that role all over Syria.
Question 73: But the game on the ground didn't change until they came here.
President Assad: No, that's not true.
Question 74: So you didn't need them?
President Assad: No, we needed them, of course. That's alliance, we need them. They play an important part. But what has changed, the balance that you mentioned, when you talk about 23 millions in Syria, when you have Arab spring, let's say a few thousand fighters from Hezbollah wouldn't change the balance. What has changed the balance is the incubator that moved toward the government. That is what has happened.
Question 75: Here is what is also clear, that even though Secretary Kerry has suggested you are part of the problem or part of the solution, and they want you to be part of the solution, but they have not yet changed their mind that you have to agree to share power or give up power. They don't want you in power.
President Assad: First of all, they didn't try to make negotiations or dialogue with us, so they don't know what we want.
Question 76: That's why I'm here. See, that's why I'm here, to have you tell me what you want, that's exactly why I'm here. Tell me what you want.
President Assad: What we want is whatever the Syrian people want. As I said, as a president, to stay or not to stay-
Question 77: But the Syrian people supporting you, you have a relationship with them, you know what they want. So what do you want?
President Assad: Now, we want, in such circumstances, we always ask for two things: first of all, dialogue. Second, sharing, sharing of power, by any political entity that represents Syrian people, not a political entity that has been forged in the United States, the CIA, or in France, or in Qatar. By patriotic Syrian opposition that represents the Syrians. And we have it, we have in Syria-
Question 78: So what do you mean by sharing power?
President Assad: I mean if you want to go back to constitutional procedures, they should go to elections, they can share in the parliament, in the local administration, in the government, in everything, and to be part of the decision in the government, like any country.
Question 79: You, and your father, have held power in Syria, for how many years? The combination, of you and your father, how many years?
President Assad: Is it a calculation of years, or public support? There's a big difference. Years, it doesn't matter how many years, the question is-
Question 80: Well, it does matter.
President Assad: No, what matters for us is do the Syrians support these two presidents? Doesn't matter if they are father and son. We don't say George W. Bush is the son of George Bush. It's different. He's president, I'm president, he had support from that generation, I have support from these generations now. That is the question. It doesn't matter how many… it's not the family rule, as you want to imply.
Question 81: It's not?
President Assad: No, it's not. It's not a family rule. It has nothing to do with me being president. When he died, I was nothing. I was just in the army. I wasn't, let's say, a high-ranking official.
Question 82: You know your family much better than I do, but conventional wisdom is after your older brother died, your father wanted you to come back, because he wanted you to be able to assume power when he left.
President Assad: Actually, the reality is the opposite; he wanted me to stay as a doctor and go back to London and I refused. That's the reality.
Question 83: He didn't want you to come back?
President Assad: No, never. He didn't want me to be part of the politics.
Question 84: Then why did you become part of the political process when you were a doctor?
President Assad: We live in a political family, we live in a political environment, and in the army, I'm a doctor in the army, and the army during the history of Syria has made the history and the reality in this country.
Question 85: Because he was such a significant political figure in the Middle East, would he have done things differently, if he was President of Syria today?
President Assad: That's a virtual question, I cannot answer on his behalf. That's a virtual question, nobody knows.
Question 86: You think he would agree with what you have done?
President Assad: Definitely. He wouldn't allow the terrorists to take over, wouldn't obey or submit to external intervention. And he would have defended his country like he did during the Muslim Brotherhood. The same happened on a smaller scale in the eighties, late seventies, early eighties, when the Muslim Brotherhood started assassinating, killing, and destroying, and burning, and he fought them. That is his mission as a president. That's what you have to do. To leave terrorists killing your people, that's your mission?
Question 87: Is it a fair appraisal of what you believe, that everything must be done, and the ends justify the means to stop terrorism in Syria, as you define it?
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President Assad: No, it's not the ends justify the means, this is a Machiavellian principle. You should have values and principles. You have constitutions, and you have interests. So according to your values, you have to defend your people, the population, the Syrian citizens, you have to defend your country. For your interests, you have to get rid of terrorists. So, that's how we think, not only in a Machiavellian way.
Question 88: Tell us what the Russians want. They are a strong ally of you. What do they want?
President Assad: Definitely, they want to have balance in the world. It's not only about Syria; it's a small country. It's not about having huge interests in Syria, they could have it anywhere else. So, it's about the future of the world. They want to be a great power that has its own say in the future of the world.
Question 89: And what do they want for Syria?
President Assad: Stability. They want stability and a political solution.
Question 90: And what does Iran want.
President Assad: The same. Syria and Iran and Russia see eye-to-eye regarding this conflict.
Question 91: And what is your obligation to both of them?
President Assad: What do you mean, obligation?
Question 92: What you owe them.
President Assad: Yes, I know, but they didn't ask for anything. Nothing at all. That's why I said they don't do that for Syria; they do it for the region and for the world, because stability is very important for them, because if you have conflicts here, it will burn somebody else there. If you want to talk about terrorism, terrorism has no boundaries. It sees no borders, no political borders. It's much more difficult to take any procedure to face it due to the internet, which is difficult to control. When you have ideology, it could cross everywhere, it could reach Russia, it could Turkey, anywhere. So, they have the same interest. Russia, and Iran, and many other countries that support Syria, not because they support the president, not because they support the government, but because they want to have stability in the region.
Question 93: Let me present an alternative argument which the Untied States may very well believe, that they support you because they had a longstanding relationship. They support you because they want access to Lebanon. They support you because it's part of the larger conflict between Sunni and Shi'a.
President Assad: You mean the Iranians or the Russians?
Question 94: The Iranians, and because they've supported you militarily and financially.
President Assad: No. The way the Iranians look at the Shi'a-Sunni issue or conflict, is that this is the most detrimental thing that could happen to Iran.
Question 95: To Iran? This conflict is the most detrimental thing?
President Assad: Anything related to Sunni-Shi'a conflict is detrimental to Iran. That's their point of view, and that's how we see it. We agree with them. So, actually they are going the other way. They want always to have reconciliation, unification between the Muslims, because that's very good for Iran. They don't want to be part… they don't look at the issue in Syria as a part. They know that Saudi Arabia, the Wahhabis, they want to instigate this conflict, in order to bring more of the Muslims to their side.
Question 96: As you know, there are many people who look at the Middle East today beyond Israel, and say within the Islamic world, it's all about the conflict between Saudi Arabia and Iran, and choose your sides.
President Assad: That's what the Israelis want to promote.
Question 97: No, some analysts look at the Middle East today and say, it is a competition between Iran on the one hand, Shi'a nation, Iraq, Shi'a, you here, Sunni majority, and Saudi Arabia. These two are mortal enemies, fighting for influence in the Middle East.
President Assad: That's not precise for one reason, because it looks like Iran wants to attack the Sunni and Saudi Arabia wants to attack the Shi'a. It actually started with Saudi Arabia after the revolution in Iran in 79. So, it didn't start from Iran. Iran never interfered in any other nation's internal issues, including Syria. We have good relations with them, they never tried to interfere. Actually, it's Saudi propaganda. I mean the whole issue of Sunni-Shi'a conflict is a Saudi initiative and propaganda. It's reality, but because of the Saudis, not because of the Iranians.
Question 98: But in Syria, they are on opposite sides, Saudi Arabia and Iran are on different sides.
President Assad: That's what Saudi Arabia wants to promote, and that's what ISIS wants to promote, and that's what al-Nusra wants to promote. In their political discourse, they always mention the sectarian issues.
Question 99: I'm now talking about how you see, here, the region and what is happening now. One, is the rise of ISIS here, the rise of ISIS and affiliated groups in Iraq. When you look at Iraq, Iranians are supporting Shi'a militia in Iraq, and they've been a very effective fighting force. The United States is engaged in airstrikes. They just had an airstrike yesterday in Tekrit which the Iranian militias have captured, correct.
President Assad: Not everything is correct. It's not only Shi'a militia who are fighting. Many others joined, so it's a mixture now.
Question 100: What's the possibility of Iranian-American cooperation?
President Assad: Regarding fighting ISIS?
Question 101: Yes.
President Assad: I don't think anyone trusts or believes that the American administration wants to really fight this kind of terrorism, because, I mean if you look at the airstrikes in Syria and Iraq, the whole 60 countries launch much less airstrikes than only the Syrian Army does on the daily, much less, so they're not serious. Second, they only attack the northern part of Iraq. I mean, they attack the terrorists in the northern part of Iraq, not the rest of Iraq. Why did they join now? They want to get part of the cake, if there's a victory against the terrorists, just to say that we fought terrorists and we defeated ISIS? Where were they during the last few months? They suddenly wanted to attack?
Question 102: So what do you think Iran wants in Iraq?
President Assad: They want to get rid of the terrorists, definitely, and to have stability.
Question 103: How long do you think that will take?
President Assad: Nobody has any idea, because you know, you have support from the outside, you have the support of the petrodollar, of ISIS, and many extremists in Iraq, and in Syria. So, how long that support will continue, we cannot tell.
Question 104: When you look at the future, and you look at the battle ahead, what the end result to Syria? How much of this can Syria take? How much of the conflict that is here today can the Syrian government withstand? How much, the Syrian country, the civilian loss? Will there be anything left in Syria?
President Assad: Of course, Syria is still here. It's not the first kind of crisis that we've been facing here in history.
Question 105: But nothing like this.
President Assad: No, during the history, you have many similar crises. Damascus and Aleppo have been destroyed many times, but, I mean, it's about the population. The Syrian population are determined to survive and to protect their country, and to rebuild it. How much do we tolerate? That is about the potent power that every population has, and the Syrian people proved that they have strong potential in that regard. Anyway, we don't have any other option. What option do we have? Whether we suffer, whether we pay a high price or a lesser price, what options do we have but to defend our country, but to fight terrorism. We don't have any other option.
Question 106: I asked the question because many asked it; what's the cost to Syria, what it's going through, and how to put the pieces together? Whenever there is finally, an end this, how will you put the pieces back together, and who will put the pieces back together?
President Assad: There's a misconception in the West that what's happening in Syria is a civil war. This is where you can ask that question. What is happening in Syria is not a civil war. When you have civil war, you should have, how to say, clear lines separated between different sects or ethnicities or different components. That's not what we have. What we have are terrorist-infiltrated areas, and people are suffering from the fighting and from the terrorism of those terrorists. So, you don't have division in the society now. You don't have the sectarian issue now. Actually, you'd be surprised if I tell you that the sectarian situation in Syria today is better than the sectarian situation, let's say, before the crisis. People are more unified now regarding the conflict, regarding the unity of the sects, religions, and so on. So, we cannot talk about how can you rebuild, let's say, the society. The society is suffering from the humanitarian aspect of the problem, but it's not divided anymore, and that's very important, and that's why we're assured, that, I mean, even this conflict, which is a very bad conflict, as you say, every cloud must have a silver lining, and this is the silver lining in this crisis, that the population is more unified now. So we don't have a problem as long as the society is unified and homogenous, regardless of some dark part of this society, ideological corners in our society that support the Wahhabis, support ISIS, and support the extremists, but this is not the general situation in our society.
Question 107: Why do you think that they, people in the West, question your legitimacy?
President Assad: This is intervention in Syrian matters. I don't care about to be frank, I never care about it as long as I have the public support of the Syrian people, that's my legitimacy. Legitimacy comes from the inside. But why? I will tell you why, because the West is used to have puppets, not independent leaders or officials in any other country, and that's the problem with Putin. They demonize Putin because he can say no, and he wants to be independent, and because the West, and especially the United States, don't accept partners. They even accept followers. Even Europe is not a partner with the United States. Best to be very frank with you. So, this is their problem with Syria. They need somebody to keeping saying yes, yes, and a puppet, a marionette, and so on, somebody they can control by remote control.
Question 108: There are those who argue that you feel now that you're militarily stronger, that the advent of Hezbollah and Iranian advisors and American airstrikes and coalition airstrikes, that you feel militarily stronger, and therefore you're less willing to negotiate.
President Assad: Any war can deplete the strongest power, even the United States. When you go to war, you will be depleted in every sense of the world, and we are a small country, we'll be depleted more than a great country. So, you cannot say that you are militarily powerful, this is again the reality, but you can say that you are politically powerful, because when you win the hearts and minds of the people, more support from the population, this is where you become more powerful. So, what we achieved militarily, not because we are stronger militarily; because we have more support.
Question 109: And how much do you believe you may have some opportunity to win the minds and hearts of the Syrian people because they fear ISIS more than anybody?
President Assad: We cannot ignore this reason.
Question 110: Then ISIS has changed the circumstances?
President Assad: We cannot ignore that factor, we cannot ignore it. We don't say no, this is a factor, but there are other factors. When you're transparent with the citizens, with the people, when you're patriotic, you work for their interests, they will support you even if they disagree with you politically. So, we don't have support now from the traditional supporters. We don't have support because they don't oppose us. We have opposition who oppose our government in many aspects; economy, politics, political systems, and so on. But they know that we are working for this country, and when you have a war, it's time for unity, not time for division for recriminations and so on. That's why I said we can have more support, and we already had it recently.
Question 111: What circumstances would cause you to give up power?
President Assad: When I don't have the public support, when I don't represent the Syrian interests and values.
Question 112: And how do you determine that?
President Assad: I have direct contact with the people.
Question 113: So, you determine whether they support you?
President Assad: No, I don't determine; I sense, I feel, I'm in contact with them, I'm a human. How can a human make a direct relation with the population? I mean, the war was a very important “lab” for this support. I mean, if they don't support me, they could go and support the other side. They didn't. Why? And that's very clear, that's very concrete.
Question 114: Some have argued to me that the majority of Syrians support neither the government nor ISIS.
President Assad: Some that don't support either? If you don't, I mean this is like saying that ISIS is like the government. I don't think that this is realistic. Even people who oppose the government, they oppose ISIS, that's how we look at it.
Question 115: That's the question, isn't it? Even those who oppose the government oppose ISIS, and the question is, how do you bring those two together, and what are you prepared to do, and what are they prepared to do, and how will you get those people that have a vested interest here, like the Russians and the Iranians and the Americans, to-
President Assad: Because very simply, they cannot put the government and ISIS on the same level, so it's not difficult for them to choose. They didn't choose… I mean, not to support the government doesn't to support ISIS. It means automatically they're going to be with the government against ISIS, but not with the government in other issues. It's opposition, I mean, you have points of view, but as I said, it's not time for division. Now, you support the government. When you get rid of ISIS, then you oppose the government in your own way, you use political means. But you cannot compare a government with the terrorists.
Question 116: Which raises the question: can you destroy ISIS without coming together with a united plan, a common purpose?
President Assad: On the local level, you are correct. You cannot destroy terrorists, not only ISIS, you have al-Nusra Front, which is as dangerous as ISIS. You cannot destroy them unless you are unified as a society. But, again, ISIS now is not the Syrian case. ISIS is in Syria, Iraq, and Libya. So, it's not enough to be unified on the local level; it's on the regional level and on the international level, something we don't have yet. That's why defeating terrorism is going very difficult because of that situation.
Question 117: Something we don't have yet. So, that's the question: you don't have it yet, and how do you get it? Because that's the future.
President Assad: You are talking about more than one party. You are talking about the international parties, first of all the United States, regional parties, first of all Turkey which is our neighbor and plays a very negative role, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar, and the local parties. We would like to see this cohesion in fighting terrorism, but how can we convince them? We tried, maybe not directly, because we don't have any direct channels with them, but that's how it should be. If they could see the reality and the future in clearer vision, they would make dialogue with every country including Syria, not because they support the Syrian President or the Syrian Army, we don't need their support internally; it's about only fighting terrorism. You need to make dialogue. You cannot kill them and defeat them from the air. That's a foregone conclusions.
Question 118: That's true in Iraq or here, you can't do it from the air.
President Assad: Anywhere, no you cannot.
Question 119: Do you want to see another conference, like the Geneva conference that failed?
President Assad: Yes, that's the aim of Moscow conference. The next one.
Question 120: That's it?
President Assad: Yes.
Question 121: And what might happen there?
President Assad: that depends on different parties. I mean, I cannot talk on behalf of every party. For us as Syria, you should have principles, to agree about, let's say, some principles like unification of Syria, denouncing terrorism, something like this, and then-
Question 122: Sharing power?
President Assad: Sharing power, that's in the constitution anyway. I mean, sharing power is about how much grassroots you have, how much of the Syrians you represent. You don't come and share power just because you want to share power. You should have public support.
Question 123: You have to be a forced to share power.
President Assad: Exactly, exactly, you have to represent them. So, maybe if we reach a conclusion and we reach agreement in Moscow, it could be as preparation to go to Geneva 3, for example, but it's still early to tell.
Question 124: I came here after Secretary Kerry made his remarks. My impression once I got here is that when you heard those remarks, you were optimistic. The State Department backed a little bit, and said we still think there needs to be a new government, but you were optimistic after you heard that. You believe there is a way for your government and the American government to cooperate and coordinate?
President Assad: That's not the main point. I mean, regarding that statement. I think the main point, we could have a feeling, and we hope that we are right, that the American administration started to abandon this policy of isolation, which is very harmful to them and to us, because if you isolate a country, you isolate yourself as the United States from being influential and effective in the course of events, unless you are talking about the negative influence, like making the embargo that could kill the people slowly, or launching a war and supporting terrorists that could kill them in a faster way. So, our impression, let's say, we are optimistic, more optimistic. I wouldn't exaggerate. That at least when they're thinking about dialogue, doesn't matter what kind of dialogue, and what the content of the dialogue is, and even doesn't matter what their real intentions are, but the word “dialogue” is something we haven't heard from the United States on the global level for a long time.
Question 125: But you just did, from the Secretary of State: we need to negotiate. That's dialogue.
President Assad: Exactly, that's what I said. I mean, that's why I said it's positive. That's why I said we're more optimistic. I mean, when they abandon this policy of isolation, things should be better. I mean, when you start dialogue, things will be better.
Question 126: Why don't you reach out to Secretary Kerry and say, let's talk.
President Assad: Are they ready to talk? We are always open. We never closed our doors. They should be ready for the talks, they should be ready for the negotiations. We didn't make the embargo on the United States. We didn't attack the American population. We didn't support terrorists who did anything to the United States. Actually, the United States did. We always wanted to have good relations with the United States. We never thought in the other direction. It's a great power. Nobody, not a wise person would think of having bad relations with the United States.
Question 127: But can you have a good relationship with a country that thinks you shouldn't be in power?
President Assad: No, that's not going to be part of the dialogue as I mentioned earlier. This is not their business. We have Syrian citizens who can decide this, no-one else. Whether they want to talk about it or not, this is not something we are going to discuss with anyone.
"Today, the world's greatest single campaign of terror entails the execution of entire families, guests at weddings, mourners at funerals. These are Obama's victims. According to the New York Times, Obama makes his selection from a CIA "kill list" presented to him every Tuesday in the White House Situation Room. He then decides, without a shred of legal justification, who will live and who will die. His execution weapon is the Hellfire missile carried by a pilotless aircraft known as a drone; these roast their victims and festoon the area with their remains. Each "hit" is registered on a faraway console screen as a "bugsplat"." (John Pilger). Article republished with permission from author. First published 26 February 2015 at http://johnpilger.com/articles/why-the-rise-of-fascism-is-again-the-issue
The recent 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz was a reminder of the great crime of fascism, whose Nazi iconography is embedded in our consciousness. Fascism is preserved as history, as flickering footage of goose-stepping blackshirts, their criminality terrible and clear. Yet in the same liberal societies, whose war-making elites urge us never to forget, the accelerating danger of a modern kind of fascism is suppressed; for it is their fascism.
"To initiate a war of aggression...," said the Nuremberg Tribunal judges in 1946, "is not only an international crime, it is the supreme international crime, differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole."
Had the Nazis not invaded Europe, Auschwitz and the Holocaust would not have happened. Had the United States and its satellites not initiated their war of aggression in Iraq in 2003, almost a million people would be alive today; and Islamic State, or ISIS, would not have us in thrall to its savagery. They are the progeny of modern fascism, weaned by the bombs, bloodbaths and lies that are the surreal theatre known as news.
Like the fascism of the 1930s and 1940s, big lies are delivered with the precision of a metronome: thanks to an omnipresent, repetitive media and its virulent censorship by omission. Take the catastrophe in Libya.
In 2011, Nato launched 9,700 "strike sorties" against Libya, of which more than a third were aimed at civilian targets. Uranium warheads were used; the cities of Misurata and Sirte were carpet-bombed. The Red Cross identified mass graves, and Unicef reported that "most [of the children killed] were under the age of ten".
The public sodomising of the Libyan president Muammar Gaddafi with a "rebel" bayonet was greeted by the then US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, with the words: "We came, we saw, he died." His murder, like the destruction of his country, was justified with a familiar big lie; he was planning "genocide" against his own people. "We knew... that if we waited one more day," said President Obama, "Benghazi, a city the size of Charlotte, could suffer a massacre that would have reverberated across the region and stained the conscience of the world."
This was the fabrication of Islamist militias facing defeat by Libyan government forces. They told Reuters there would be "a real bloodbath, a massacre like we saw in Rwanda". Reported on March 14, 2011, the lie provided the first spark for Nato's inferno, described by David Cameron as a "humanitarian intervention".
Secretly supplied and trained by Britain's SAS, many of the "rebels" would become ISIS, whose latest video offering shows the beheading of 21 Coptic Christian workers seized in Sirte, the city destroyed on their behalf by Nato bombers.
For Obama, David Cameron and then French President Nicolas Sarkozy, Gaddafi's true crime was Libya's economic independence and his declared intention to stop selling Africa's greatest oil reserves in US dollars. The petrodollar is a pillar of American imperial power. Gaddafi audaciously planned to underwrite a common African currency backed by gold, establish an all-Africa bank and promote economic union among poor countries with prized resources. Whether or not this would happen, the very notion was intolerable to the US as it prepared to "enter" Africa and bribe African governments with military "partnerships".
Following Nato's attack under cover of a Security Council resolution, Obama, wrote Garikai Chengu, "confiscated $30 billion from Libya's Central Bank, which Gaddafi had earmarked for the establishment of an African Central Bank and the African gold backed dinar currency".
The "humanitarian war" against Libya drew on a model close to western liberal hearts, especially in the media. In 1999, Bill Clinton and Tony Blair sent Nato to bomb Serbia, because, they lied, the Serbs were committing "genocide" against ethnic Albanians in the secessionist province of Kosovo. David Scheffer, US ambassador-at-large for war crimes [sic], claimed that as many as "225,000 ethnic Albanian men aged between 14 and 59" might have been murdered. Both Clinton and Blair evoked the Holocaust and "the spirit of the Second World War". The West's heroic allies were the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), whose criminal record was set aside. The British Foreign Secretary, Robin Cook, told them to call him any time on his mobile phone.
With the Nato bombing over, and much of Serbia's infrastructure in ruins, along with schools, hospitals, monasteries and the national TV station, international forensic teams descended upon Kosovo to exhume evidence of the "holocaust". The FBI failed to find a single mass grave and went home. The Spanish forensic team did the same, its leader angrily denouncing "a semantic pirouette by the war propaganda machines". A year later, a United Nations tribunal on Yugoslavia announced the final count of the dead in Kosovo: 2,788. This included combatants on both sides and Serbs and Roma murdered by the KLA. There was no genocide. The "holocaust" was a lie. The Nato attack had been fraudulent.
Behind the lie, there was serious purpose. Yugoslavia was a uniquely independent, multi-ethnic federation that had stood as a political and economic bridge in the Cold War. Most of its utilities and major manufacturing was publicly owned. This was not acceptable to the expanding European Community, especially newly united Germany, which had begun a drive east to capture its "natural market" in the Yugoslav provinces of Croatia and Slovenia. By the time the Europeans met at Maastricht in 1991 to lay their plans for the disastrous eurozone, a secret deal had been struck; Germany would recognise Croatia. Yugoslavia was doomed.
In Washington, the US saw that the struggling Yugoslav economy was denied World Bank loans. Nato, then an almost defunct Cold War relic, was reinvented as imperial enforcer. At a 1999 Kosovo "peace" conference in Rambouillet, in France, the Serbs were subjected to the enforcer's duplicitous tactics. The Rambouillet accord included a secret Annex B, which the US delegation inserted on the last day. This demanded the military occupation of the whole of Yugoslavia - a country with bitter memories of the Nazi occupation - and the implementation of a "free-market economy" and the privatisation of all government assets. No sovereign state could sign this. Punishment followed swiftly; Nato bombs fell on a defenceless country. It was the precursor to the catastrophes in Afghanistan and Iraq, Syria and Libya, and Ukraine.
Since 1945, more than a third of the membership of the United Nations - 69 countries - have suffered some or all of the following at the hands of America's modern fascism. They have been invaded, their governments overthrown, their popular movements suppressed, their elections subverted, their people bombed and their economies stripped of all protection, their societies subjected to a crippling siege known as "sanctions". The British historian Mark Curtis estimates the death toll in the millions. In every case, a big lie was deployed.
"Tonight, for the first time since 9/11, our combat mission in Afghanistan is over." These were opening words of Obama's 2015 State of the Union address. In fact, some 10,000 troops and 20,000 military contractors (mercenaries) remain in Afghanistan on indefinite assignment. "The longest war in American history is coming to a responsible conclusion," said Obama. In fact, more civilians were killed in Afghanistan in 2014 than in any year since the UN took records. The majority have been killed - civilians and soldiers - during Obama's time as president.
The tragedy of Afghanistan rivals the epic crime in Indochina. In his lauded and much quoted book 'The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geostrategic Imperatives', Zbigniew Brzezinski, the godfather of US policies from Afghanistan to the present day, writes that if America is to control Eurasia and dominate the world, it cannot sustain a popular democracy, because "the pursuit of power is not a goal that commands popular passion... Democracy is inimical to imperial mobilisation." He is right. As WikiLeaks and Edward Snowden have revealed, a surveillance and police state is usurping democracy. In 1976, Brzezinski, then President Carter's National Security Advisor, demonstrated his point by dealing a death blow to Afghanistan's first and only democracy. Who knows this vital history?
In the 1960s, a popular revolution swept Afghanistan, the poorest country on earth, eventually overthrowing the vestiges of the aristocratic regime in 1978. The People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) formed a government and declared a reform programme that included the abolition of feudalism, freedom for all religions, equal rights for women and social justice for the ethnic minorities. More than 13,000 political prisoners were freed and police files publicly burned.
The new government introduced free medical care for the poorest; peonage was abolished, a mass literacy programme was launched. For women, the gains were unheard of. By the late 1980s, half the university students were women, and women made up almost half of Afghanistan's doctors, a third of civil servants and the majority of teachers. "Every girl," recalled Saira Noorani, a female surgeon, "could go to high school and university. We could go where we wanted and wear what we liked. We used to go to cafes and the cinema to see the latest Indian film on a Friday and listen to the latest music. It all started to go wrong when the mujaheddin started winning. They used to kill teachers and burn schools. We were terrified. It was funny and sad to think these were the people the West supported."
The PDPA government was backed by the Soviet Union, even though, as former Secretary of State Cyrus Vance later admitted, "there was no evidence of any Soviet complicity [in the revolution]". Alarmed by the growing confidence of liberation movements throughout the world, Brzezinski decided that if Afghanistan was to succeed under the PDPA, its independence and progress would offer the "threat of a promising example".
On July 3, 1979, the White House secretly authorised support for tribal "fundamentalist" groups known as the mujaheddin, a program that grew to over $500 million a year in U.S. arms and other assistance. The aim was the overthrow of Afghanistan's first secular, reformist government. In August 1979, the US embassy in Kabul reported that "the United States' larger interests... would be served by the demise of [the PDPA government], despite whatever setbacks this might mean for future social and economic reforms in Afghanistan." The italics are mine.
The mujaheddin were the forebears of al-Qaeda and Islamic State. They included Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, who received tens of millions of dollars in cash from the CIA. Hekmatyar's specialty was trafficking in opium and throwing acid in the faces of women who refused to wear the veil. Invited to London, he was lauded by Prime Minister Thatcher as a "freedom fighter".
Such fanatics might have remained in their tribal world had Brzezinski not launched an international movement to promote Islamic fundamentalism in Central Asia and so undermine secular political liberation and "destabilise" the Soviet Union, creating, as he wrote in his autobiography, "a few stirred up Muslims". His grand plan coincided with the ambitions of the Pakistani dictator, General Zia ul-Haq, to dominate the region. In 1986, the CIA and Pakistan's intelligence agency, the ISI, began to recruit people from around the world to join the Afghan jihad. The Saudi multi-millionaire Osama bin Laden was one of them. Operatives who would eventually join the Taliban and al-Qaeda, were recruited at an Islamic college in Brooklyn, New York, and given paramilitary training at a CIA camp in Virginia. This was called "Operation Cyclone". Its success was celebrated in 1996 when the last PDPA president of Afghanistan, Mohammed Najibullah - who had gone before the UN General Assembly to plead for help - was hanged from a streetlight by the Taliban.
The "blowback" of Operation Cyclone and its "few stirred up Muslims" was September 11, 2001. Operation Cyclone became the "war on terror", in which countless men, women and children would lose their lives across the Muslim world, from Afghanistan to Iraq, Yemen, Somalia and Syria. The enforcer's message was and remains: "You are with us or against us."
The common thread in fascism, past and present, is mass murder. The American invasion of Vietnam had its "free fire zones", "body counts" and "collateral damage". In the province of Quang Ngai, where I reported from, many thousands of civilians ("gooks") were murdered by the US; yet only one massacre, at My Lai, is remembered. In Laos and Cambodia, the greatest aerial bombardment in history produced an epoch of terror marked today by the spectacle of joined-up bomb craters which, from the air, resemble monstrous necklaces. The bombing gave Cambodia its own ISIS, led by Pol Pot.
Today, the world's greatest single campaign of terror entails the execution of entire families, guests at weddings, mourners at funerals. These are Obama's victims. According to the New York Times, Obama makes his selection from a CIA "kill list" presented to him every Tuesday in the White House Situation Room. He then decides, without a shred of legal justification, who will live and who will die. His execution weapon is the Hellfire missile carried by a pilotless aircraft known as a drone; these roast their victims and festoon the area with their remains. Each "hit" is registered on a faraway console screen as a "bugsplat".
"For goose-steppers," wrote the historian Norman Pollack, "substitute the seemingly more innocuous militarisation of the total culture. And for the bombastic leader, we have the reformer manque, blithely at work, planning and executing assassination, smiling all the while."
Uniting fascism old and new is the cult of superiority. "I believe in American exceptionalism with every fibre of my being," said Obama, evoking declarations of national fetishism from the 1930s. As the historian Alfred W. McCoy has pointed out, it was the Hitler devotee, Carl Schmitt, who said, "The sovereign is he who decides the exception." This sums up Americanism, the world's dominant ideology. That it remains unrecognised as a predatory ideology is the achievement of an equally unrecognised brainwashing. Insidious, undeclared, presented wittily as enlightenment on the march, its conceit insinuates western culture. I grew up on a cinematic diet of American glory, almost all of it a distortion. I had no idea that it was the Red Army that had destroyed most of the Nazi war machine, at a cost of as many as 13 million soldiers. By contrast, US losses, including in the Pacific, were 400,000. Hollywood reversed this.
The difference now is that cinema audiences are invited to wring their hands at the "tragedy" of American psychopaths having to kill people in distant places - just as the President himself kills them. The embodiment of Hollywood's violence, the actor and director Clint Eastwood, was nominated for an Oscar this year for his movie, 'American Sniper', which is about a licensed murderer and nutcase. The New York Times described it as a "patriotic, pro-family picture which broke all attendance records in its opening days".
There are no heroic movies about America's embrace of fascism. During the Second World War, America (and Britain) went to war against Greeks who had fought heroically against Nazism and were resisting the rise of Greek fascism. In 1967, the CIA helped bring to power a fascist military junta in Athens - as it did in Brazil and most of Latin America. Germans and east Europeans who had colluded with Nazi aggression and crimes against humanity were given safe haven in the US; many were pampered and their talents rewarded. Wernher von Braun was the "father" of both the Nazi V-2 terror bomb and the US space programme.
In the 1990s, as former Soviet republics, eastern Europe and the Balkans became military outposts of Nato, the heirs to a Nazi movement in Ukraine were given their opportunity. Responsible for the deaths of thousands of Jews, Poles and Russians during the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union, Ukrainian fascism was rehabilitated and its "new wave" hailed by the enforcer as "nationalists".
This reached its apogee in 2014 when the Obama administration splashed out $5 billion on a coup against the elected government. The shock troops were neo-Nazis known as the Right Sector and Svoboda. Their leaders include Oleh Tyahnybok, who has called for a purge of the "Moscow-Jewish mafia" and "other scum", including gays, feminists and those on the political left.
These fascists are now integrated into the Kiev coup government. The first deputy speaker of the Ukrainian parliament, Andriy Parubiy, a leader of the governing party, is co-founder of Svoboda. On February 14, Parubiy announced he was flying to Washington get "the USA to give us highly precise modern weaponry". If he succeeds, it will be seen as an act of war by Russia.
No western leader has spoken up about the revival of fascism in the heart of Europe - with the exception of Vladimir Putin, whose people lost 22 million to a Nazi invasion that came through the borderland of Ukraine. At the recent Munich Security Conference, Obama's Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs, Victoria Nuland, ranted abuse about European leaders for opposing the US arming of the Kiev regime. She referred to the German Defence Minister as "the minister for defeatism". It was Nuland who masterminded the coup in Kiev. The wife of Robert D. Kagan, a leading "neo-con" luminary and co-founder of the extreme right wing Project for a New American Century, she was foreign policy advisor to Dick Cheney.
Nuland's coup did not go to plan. Nato was prevented from seizing Russia's historic, legitimate, warm-water naval base in Crimea. The mostly Russian population of Crimea - illegally annexed to Ukraine by Nikita Krushchev in 1954 - voted overwhelmingly to return to Russia, as they had done in the 1990s. The referendum was voluntary, popular and internationally observed. There was no invasion.
At the same time, the Kiev regime turned on the ethnic Russian population in the east with the ferocity of ethnic cleansing. Deploying neo-Nazi militias in the manner of the Waffen-SS, they bombed and laid to siege cities and towns. They used mass starvation as a weapon, cutting off electricity, freezing bank accounts, stopping social security and pensions. More than a million refugees fled across the border into Russia. In the western media, they became unpeople escaping "the violence" caused by the "Russian invasion". The Nato commander, General Breedlove - whose name and actions might have been inspired by Stanley Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove - announced that 40,000 Russian troops were "massing". In the age of forensic satellite evidence, he offered none.
These Russian-speaking and bilingual people of Ukraine - a third of the population - have long sought a federation that reflects the country's ethnic diversity and is both autonomous and independent of Moscow. Most are not "separatists" but citizens who want to live securely in their homeland and oppose the power grab in Kiev. Their revolt and establishment of autonomous "states" are a reaction to Kiev's attacks on them. Little of this has been explained to western audiences.
On May 2, 2014, in Odessa, 41 ethnic Russians were burned alive in the trade union headquarters with police standing by. The Right Sector leader Dmytro Yarosh hailed the massacre as "another bright day in our national history". In the American and British media, this was reported as a "murky tragedy" resulting from "clashes" between "nationalists" (neo-Nazis) and "separatists" (people collecting signatures for a referendum on a federal Ukraine).
The New York Times buried the story, having dismissed as Russian propaganda warnings about the fascist and anti-Semitic policies of Washington's new clients. The Wall Street Journal damned the victims - "Deadly Ukraine Fire Likely Sparked by Rebels, Government Says". Obama congratulated the junta for its "restraint".
If Putin can be provoked into coming to their aid, his pre-ordained "pariah" role in the West will justify the lie that Russia is invading Ukraine. On January 29, Ukraine's top military commander, General Viktor Muzhemko, almost inadvertently dismissed the very basis for US and EU sanctions on Russia when he told a news conference emphatically: "The Ukrainian army is not fighting with the regular units of the Russian Army". There were "individual citizens" who were members of "illegal armed groups", but there was no Russian invasion. This was not news. Vadym Prystaiko, Kiev's Deputy Foreign Minister, has called for "full scale war" with nuclear-armed Russia.
On February 21, US Senator James Inhofe, a Republican from Oklahoma, introduced a bill that would authorise American arms for the Kiev regime. In his Senate presentation, Inhofe used photographs he claimed were of Russian troops crossing into Ukraine, which have long been exposed as fakes. It was reminiscent of Ronald Reagan's fake pictures of a Soviet installation in Nicaragua, and Colin Powell's fake evidence to the UN of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
The intensity of the smear campaign against Russia and the portrayal of its president as a pantomime villain is unlike anything I have known as a reporter. Robert Parry, one of America's most distinguished investigative journalists, who revealed the Iran-Contra scandal, wrote recently, "No European government, since Adolf Hitler's Germany, has seen fit to dispatch Nazi storm troopers to wage war on a domestic population, but the Kiev regime has and has done so knowingly. Yet across the West's media/political spectrum, there has been a studious effort to cover up this reality even to the point of ignoring facts that have been well established... If you wonder how the world could stumble into world war three - much as it did into world war one a century ago - all you need to do is look at the madness over Ukraine that has proved impervious to facts or reason."
In 1946, the Nuremberg Tribunal prosecutor said of the German media: "The use made by Nazi conspirators of psychological warfare is well known. Before each major aggression, with some few exceptions based on expediency, they initiated a press campaign calculated to weaken their victims and to prepare the German people psychologically for the attack... In the propaganda system of the Hitler State it was the daily press and the radio that were the most important weapons." In the Guardian on February 2, Timothy Garton-Ash called, in effect, for a world war. "Putin must be stopped," said the headline. "And sometimes only guns can stop guns." He conceded that the threat of war might "nourish a Russian paranoia of encirclement"; but that was fine. He name-checked the military equipment needed for the job and advised his readers that "America has the best kit".
In 2003, Garton-Ash, an Oxford professor, repeated the propaganda that led to the slaughter in Iraq. Saddam Hussein, he wrote, "has, as [Colin] Powell documented, stockpiled large quantities of horrifying chemical and biological weapons, and is hiding what remains of them. He is still trying to get nuclear ones." He lauded Blair as a "Gladstonian, Christian liberal interventionist". In 2006, he wrote, "Now we face the next big test of the West after Iraq: Iran."
The outbursts - or as Garton-Ash prefers, his "tortured liberal ambivalence" - are not untypical of those in the transatlantic liberal elite who have struck a Faustian deal. The war criminal Blair is their lost leader. The Guardian, in which Garton-Ash's piece appeared, published a full-page advertisement for an American Stealth bomber. On a menacing image of the Lockheed Martin monster were the words: "The F-35. GREAT For Britain". This American "kit" will cost British taxpayers £1.3 billion, its F-model predecessors having slaughtered across the world. In tune with its advertiser, a Guardian editorial has demanded an increase in military spending.
Once again, there is serious purpose. The rulers of the world want Ukraine not only as a missile base; they want its economy. Kiev's new Finance Minister, Nataliwe Jaresko, is a former senior US State Department official in charge of US overseas "investment". She was hurriedly given Ukrainian citizenship. They want Ukraine for its abundant gas; Vice President Joe Biden's son is on the board of Ukraine's biggest oil, gas and fracking company. The manufacturers of GM seeds, companies such as the infamous Monsanto, want Ukraine's rich farming soil.
Above all, they want Ukraine's mighty neighbour, Russia. They want to Balkanise or dismember Russia and exploit the greatest source of natural gas on earth. As the Arctic ice melts, they want control of the Arctic Ocean and its energy riches, and Russia's long Arctic land border. Their man in Moscow used to be Boris Yeltsin, a drunk, who handed his country's economy to the West. His successor, Putin, has re-established Russia as a sovereign nation; that is his crime.
The responsibility of the rest of us is clear. It is to identify and expose the reckless lies of warmongers and never to collude with them. It is to re-awaken the great popular movements that brought a fragile civilisation to modern imperial states. Most important, it is to prevent the conquest of ourselves: our minds, our humanity, our self respect. If we remain silent, victory over us is assured, and a holocaust beckons.
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad: "I hope the first thing, which is very simple, just for the officials to tell their people the truth, the unbiased truth, without any preconceptions. Just tell your people the truth, and they’ll be able to analyze it." President Bashar al-Assad gave an interview to Portuguese State Television, RTP, which displayed a good range of bias in its questions. The full text of the interview forms the article inside.Article first published on Global Research, March 06, 2015. Portuguese State Television, RTP and SANA Region: Middle East & North Africa Theme: US NATO War Agenda In-depth Report: Syria: NATO's next war? See http://www.globalresearch.ca/syrias-president-bashar-al-assad-the-west-has-no-desire-to-combat-terrorism-west-channels-money-and-armaments-to-isis/5434929
Question 1: In a few days, it will be 4 years since the protests began in Syria against the government of Bashar al-Assad. From then on it has been a massacre. More than 220 thousand people have died, and there are 4 million displaced people. The arrival of Daesh (Islamic State) has made the situation more grim. For this reasons, it’s important to speak to a key figure in all this process. Today, he gives his first interview ever to a Portuguese media outlet. The Syrian President, Bashar Al Assad. How do you describe your country today, Mr. President?
President Assad: Let me start by commenting on the number that you mentioned in your introduction, about the number of victims in Syria, which is 200,000, that’s been mentioned in the Western media recently, 220,000. That number is exaggerated. Always the West has exaggerated the numbers in Syria. Actually, it is not about whether they are hundreds of thousands or tens of thousands. Victims are victims, killing is killing, and terrorism is terrorism. Actually, it’s not about being a mere number represented on a graph, on a chart, like a spreadsheet. It’s about families that lost members, lost dear ones, lost relatives. It’s a human disaster we have in Syria.
This crisis has affected every part of Syria, every Syrian citizen regardless of his affiliation or allegiance. It affected his livelihood, food, medicaments, medical care, basic requirements like education. Hundreds of hospitals were destroyed, thousands of schools were destroyed, tens of thousands or maybe hundreds of thousands of students don’t go to school. All that will create the fertile habitat and good incubator for terrorism and extremism to grow. But despite all this hardship, the Syrians are determined to continue fighting terrorism, defending their country, and defying hegemony.
Question 2: Syria is not much of a country nowadays. The Syrian Army does not control all the borders, you have international coalition flying in your skies. On the grounds there are different entities. Is Syria as we have known it lost or finished?
President Assad: You cannot talk about a finished Syria when the people are unified behind their government and their army and fighting terrorism and still have institutions working. We still have subsidies, we still pay salaries, we pay the salaries even in some areas under the control of the terrorists themselves. We still have the-
Question 3: You send money to…?
President Assad: Exactly, we send salaries. Because they are employees, and have their own salaries. We send vaccines to those areas for the children.
Question 4: So you cooperate with the Islamic State?
President Assad: No, no. We don’t. We send them, and we deal with the civilians who are the mediators with the terrorists, or the militants.
But at the end, all these basic requirements reach those areas. So, we don’t have “Syria is finished” and we don’t have a failed state, actually. But if you want to talk about something different you mentioned in your question, which is the breaching of our airspace illegally by the alliance airplanes and by terrorists supported or working as proxy to regional countries-
Question 5: And borders.
President Assad: This is a failure of the international system, this international system that’s been represented by the United Nations and the Security Council, and that is supposed to solve the problems and protect the sovereignty of different countries and prevent war.
Actually, it has failed in doing so. So, what we have now is a failed United Nations; failed to protect international citizens including in Syria, Libya, Yemen, and in other countries.
Question 6: But you also failed. The Syrian Army also fails, because a lot of Christians have been abducted recently in the north.
The role of the Syrian Army, like any national army, is to protect every single citizen
President Assad: Actually, the role of the Syrian Army, like any national army, is to protect every single citizen, regardless of his affiliation, religion, sect, ethnicities, and so on. If you have mentioned this, I would say yes, we would like to and we wish that the Syrian Army would be able to help every Syrian since the beginning of the crisis. But the main obstacle why the Syrian army couldn’t do so, and as part of this couldn’t help the Christians a few days ago that have been kidnapped by ISIS, is the unlimited support that’s been offered to those terrorists by the Western and regional countries.
Question 7: What we have seen until now is several attempts to have a peace conference that all have failed. What we have until now, it’s talks about talks. What can break this deadlock, Mr. President?
President Assad: Do you mean in Geneva?
Question 8: Geneva 1, Geneva 2, the Russian initiative was a fiasco.
President Assad: The solution is political, but if you want to sit with someone or a party that doesn’t influence the situation on the ground, it’s going to be talk for the sake of talk, that’s correct. We didn’t choose the other party in Geneva. It was chosen by the West, by Turkey, by Saudi Arabia, by Qatar. It wasn’t a Syrian opposition that we made dialogue with. You’re right; if you want to make dialogue, you have to make it with Syrian opposition, Syrian partner, Syrian people who represents Syrians in Syria, not who represent other countries.
So, what happened in Geneva wasn’t the model that we have to follow.
Question 9: But, what you are saying, is that an acceptable opposition for you, or…?
President Assad: Of course, any opposition that works for the Syrian, to defend its country, represents Syrians or part of the Syrian population…
Question 10: Within the framework of the Syrian state?
President Assad: No, no. Any opposition who works for the Syrian people. It’s not related to the state, it’s not related to the government.
Question 11: So, you’re excluding the Syrian National Coalition?
President Assad: I don’t exclude anyone as long as he’s Syrian. I’m talking about criteria. Anyone, or any party, who meet with these criteria, we can consider him as opposition. If the coalition is formed in the West or any other country, it’s not considered Syrian.
It doesn’t represent the Syrian people. The Syrian people won’t accept him.
Question 12: But are you able to discuss with them or not?
President Assad: Actually, what we have followed since the beginning of the crisis, we didn’t leave any stone unturned. We tried every possible solution in order not to allow anyone to say “if they didn’t do this, that would have happened.” So, we discussed even with the coalition, although we know in advance that it doesn’t represent Syrians, it represents the countries that formed it. And second, it doesn’t have any influence on the ground in Syria, even with the militants, even with the terrorists, even with anyone who is involved in the problem within Syria.
Question 13: So you’re saying that the “Free Syrian Army” doesn’t have influence on the ground? That only al-Nusra and Islamic State have influence on the ground?
President Assad: Even Obama said that, he said that the moderate opposition is a fantasy. Most of the world now knows, what they called moderate opposition, they called it “Free Syrian Army,” they have so many other names, all of them are fantasy. Actually, who is controlling the terrorism arena in Syria are either ISIS or al-Nusra, mainly, and some other smaller factions.
Question 14: So, in the end, the solution for Syria is a military solution, and not a negotiated peace?
President Assad: No, actually, what we have been doing recently, as long as we don’t have a party to make negotiations with who can influence the militants on the ground, we went to make reconciliation with the militants in some areas, and that worked, and this is a very realistic political solution. Actually, that is how you exclude the military solution, by discussing with them making a safe area.
Question 15: About the discussions, you have Geneva 1, Geneva 2, the Russian initiative, in all of that there are not, how shall I say, things in common. Is there anything, any issue that you know it is possible, why not start with them? Is there anything in common between you and them?
President Assad: If you want to talk about what happened in Moscow, it’s different from what happened in Geneva, because they invited some of the opposition, because we can’t talk about one opposition; we have many different oppositions. You don’t put them in one basket. You have some of them represent Syrians, some of them they don’t represent anyone, and so on. So, we have common things with some of the opposition that were invited to Moscow, so this is just the beginning of the dialogue. The dialogue may take a long time. But at the end, if you want to not talk about dialogue, talk about the end results on the ground, the question is, who of those parties that we call opposition, who of them represent Syrian people and can influence the militants on the ground in order to save Syrian blood? That is the question. We don’t have an answer yet, because they have to prove, we don’t have to prove. We know we have our army, the army will obey the government, if the government gives an order, it will follow the order. But what about the others? Who is going to control the terrorists? That is the question.
Question 16: You pointed out that some countries, like France, don’t want a peace conference to succeed. Why is that?
President Assad: Actually, you have two points, or two reasons, let’s say. First one is not related only to the French; it’s related to every official who is complicit and involved in the propaganda and the aggression against Syria during the last four years. It’s about the end of this war will unmask those officials in front of their public opinion, in a country where there is public opinion. I don’t mean Saudi Arabia and Qatar, where there is no public opinion anyway. But generally, they will be unmasked about the question “what is the revolution that you mentioned, that you talked about? How could a revolution collapse or fail if you have the support of the West, the support of regional countries, all this money and armaments and so on, and you supposed that he’s a dictator who is killing his good people, so the people are against him, regional countries are against him, and the West is against him, and he succeeded.It’s one of two options you’re either lying to us, or you’re talking about a superman. Because you don’t a superman, he’s a regular president, it means he could withstand for four years only because he has the public support. It doesn’t mean full public support, one hundred percent, or absolute public support, but definitely have support from a part, a large amount of the Syrian people.” So, this is a lie that the public opinion in the West and in other countries will ask the officials about. What about the Arab spring that turned out to be – instead of budding flowers – blood and killing and destruction? Is that the spring that you talked about? This is one reason.
The other reason is more specific towards France. Not limited, but more specific, let’s say. It’s about the financial relation between France and the Gulf states. Maybe because they have financial difficulties, I don’t know why. But this financial relations, and I don’t have any proof whether this is about the vested interest of some officials in France or if it’s about public interest, I don’t have any proof, but at the end, these financial interests push those officials in France to exchange their values of liberty and fraternity and democracy, all the things that they used to preach, the exchange those values for petrodollars. So now those French officials and some others in the West, they don’t practice what they preach anymore.
Question 17: But the tide seems to change a little bit. You had French MPs here. It was an organized visit, or it came as a surprise to you?
President Assad: No, no. It wasn’t a surprise, because it wasn’t the first delegation to come to Syria.
Question 18: French delegation?
President Assad: French and from other countries. Different kinds of delegations, activists, mediators, some officials came to deal with us under the table, not-
Question 19: This was organized with your government and…?
President Assad: Yes, it was officially organized, and they had a schedule when they came. It was weeks before, it wasn’t a surprise.
Question 20: With French diplomats as well or not?
President Assad: We had the impression, and it’s a strong impression, that most of the government, the main officials in the government, they know about it in advance, and they didn’t oppose.
Question 21: So, did they send you any message?
President Assad: No, there wasn’t a message, and they came to see the reality on the ground, and I think that’s the reflection – not just this delegation; the delegations that came to Syria recently from different countries, especially from the West, is a reflection of not believing, not taking in with the narrative, the insidious narrative about Syria in the West by their officials. They want to know the truth, I mean it’s a kind of suspicion about the whole propaganda in the West.
Question 22: So, in a sense, the tide is changing because probably there are some people thinking that even though it’s a bad solution, it’s better to deal with Bashar al-Assad than to deal with the worse solution which is going to be the Islamic State.
President Assad: I don’t think the general public thinks about the second part, it’s about the first part, about what’s happening and how everything we said in Syria at the beginning of the crisis they say later. They said it’s peaceful, we said it’s not peaceful, they’ve killing – these demonstrators, that they called them peaceful demonstrators – have killed policemen. Then it became militants. They said yes, it’s militants. We said it’s militants, it’s terrorism. They said no, it’s not terrorism. Then when they say it’s terrorism, we say it’s Al Qaeda, they say no, it’s not Al Qaeda. So, whatever we said, they say later. That created a lot of suspicion in the West. They want to come to understand this part. Why are you saying whatever Syria was saying in the beginning? Of course, in the West, the propagandists, whether officials or media, the added something only to the real story; that ISIS and al-Nusra was created of Assad, or it’s because of his policy, and so on.
Question 23: But you freed a lot of jihadists from the prisons that went to ISIS, to the Islamic State.
President Assad: No, that’s before the crisis. They were sentenced for a few years, and when the sentence ended, they left prison. We didn’t.
We never did. So no, we have institutions, we have a judicial system in Syria.
Question 24: Anyway, Europe is facing more and more threats of terrorism linked to jihadist movements, some of them with connections here in Syria, I mean Al Qaeda or the Islamic State. And the question here: is Syria able to help the European countries in fighting these threats of terrorism?
President Assad: This is like a building; you cannot build a building without having the foundation, so what is the foundation that you need in this this case? First, you need officials in Europe to have the will to fight terrorism. This is something that we don’t have to this moment. Second thing, to have prudent policies. We cannot have arrogant, stubborn officials that only adopted egotistical policies.
Third, which is very important, fighting terrorism should be a value, should become a value. It cannot be a sort of opportunism, like because now you are suffering in Europe from terrorism, you’re scared, you want to fight terrorism in this region. What about a few years ago? You didn’t suffer.
Question 25: But can you help the…?
President Assad: If they don’t help themselves first, we cannot. If they help themselves, we are ready to help. If you build this foundation, if you have this foundation, you can go to the building.
This is where you can talk about how to integrate the community in your country, how to have exchange of information with intelligence, you have many ways. Of course we can, but you need to have the foundation in order to succeed.
Question 26: Mr. President, let me quote, “the Syrian people aspire more freedom, justice, human rights. They aspire to more plurality and democracy.” Your Foreign Minister said this in the Geneva conference.
However, the state of Syria is perceived differently in the West. Till now, it’s perceived as brutal, ruthless, dictatorial, and it’s not just a question of image, so how is it possible to convince the people that…?
President Assad: This is illogical and unrealistic, because how can somebody who kills his people and oppresses his people be supported by the same people? How? Tell me about this contradiction. Look at it from the outside. Is it palatable, can you understand? It doesn’t.
Question 27: But, Mr. President, the reality is that if you allow me to go backwards, and try to-
President Assad: Before the crisis.
Question 28: Let me just try to… you started four years ago with peaceful demonstrators that were repressed, then you are blamed, your government is blamed, for a lot of allegations of human rights violations in your own ranks, repression. You have the Cesar reported, defected from the army, with photos of massacres, of torture of the opposition. You have allegations that you have used chemical weapons.
You have allegations of using the barrel bombs till now, and so, the human rights reports watcher about Syria, they are not very good for you, your government, and the Syrian Army.
President Assad: You are talking about massive propaganda for four years. We cannot answer every one in one interview, but I will say the demonstrations never were peaceful, because in the first week, we lost many of our policemen. How? How could a peaceful demonstration kill a policeman? It wasn’t peaceful, so, this is the beginning of the lies, it’s the beginning of the propaganda.
Question 29: All lies, all the time? Four years of lies, Mr. President?
President Assad: Exactly, that’s what happened. Because, how do you have ISIS? Suddenly? You don’t have ISIS suddenly, you don’t have armaments suddenly, you don’t have al-Nusra Front suddenly. It’s a long process, you can’t have it just in few weeks. Suddenly, everybody is talking about ISIS. Go back to our statements from the very beginning, and you can see that the evolution of the events was going in that regard from the very beginning, and we said that. They didn’t want to listen; they wanted to listen to their statements.That’s what I say. It’s impossible to only tell lies in the West. How can you tell the truth if you don’t have an embassy in this country? How can you tell the truth if you listen to Qatar and Al-Jazeera that were paying the money to those terrorists?
Question 30: So you blame Turkey, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia for being the backbone of the jihadists? You have the proof?
President Assad: Very simple; what is the ideology of ISIS? What is the ideology? It’s the Wahhabi ideology. Do we have it in Syria? Do we have it in Morocco? In the western Arab world? Actually, it existed in Saudi Arabia.
Question 31: It’s the same as in Saudi Arabia.
President Assad: Saudi Arabia and Qatar. This is the Wahhabi ideology.
Second, Erdogan is Muslim Brotherhood. He’s a very staunch advocate of the Muslim Brotherhood ideology which was the first organization in the history of Islam, in the beginning of the last century, who promoted violence in implementing political agenda. So, you have those, and that’s enough. Going back to the Western media, in the Western media, and the American media in particular, they say 80% of the terrorists are coming from Turkey. You have another realistic one, what you called in your media Kobani which is called Ayn al-Arab. It took four months to be liberated, in spite of the attack of the alliance. Why? Actually, a similar city, the same size, and the same terrain, it took the Syrian Army two to three weeks. Why? Because it was supported logistically through Turkey on the border. They send them everything, armaments, all kinds of support. The recent event when Turkey-
Question 32: Did you support the Kurds? Did the Syrian Army support the Kurds?
President Assad: Of course.
Question 33: Because they are also fighting the Syrian Army.
President Assad: Before the issue of Kobani. Before that, we did.
Before Kobani, we supported the Kurds, because it didn’t start there.
It started before, and before the alliance started supporting the Kurds, we did. We sent them armaments. Of course, they’re going to say no, because the Americans said “say no, and we will help you.” If they say yes, the Americans will be angry, just to be cautious, to take precautions about any statement they may say now that we didn’t, we have all the documents about the armaments that’s been sent to them, beside the air raids and so on and the bombardments and everything else.
Question 34: New Syrian troops are being trained in the framework of the “Free Syrian Army” supported by the Americans to fight against the Islamic State. Do you think you will have to fight them as well?
President Assad: You know, and I know, and everybody knows that those 5,000 were announced by the Americans, and this this is my proof that the Western officials don’t have the will to fight terrorism. That is the proof. I told you, the base, the foundation, is to have the will.
It means they don’t have the will. If Obama said the moderate opposition is fantasy, so who do you send the money and armaments to?
Reality. You don’t send to the fantasy, you send it to the reality, and the reality are the extremists. And those 5,000 are going to be another support to those terrorists, because the same grassroots of the organization that’s been supported by the West, by money and armaments, they joined ISIS with their armaments and with themselves.
Question 35: Two questions to finish this interview. This is your first interview with a journalist from a Portuguese-speaking country.
Do you expect anything from these countries?
President Assad: I don’t expect; I hope. I hope the first thing, which is very simple, just for the officials to tell their people the truth, the unbiased truth, without any preconceptions. Just tell your people the truth, and they’ll be able to analyze it. Second, we hope from Portugal as part of the EU to look at the Czech Republic. A small country, ten millions, but it was very wise in dealing with the crisis in Syria. They have their embassy, they can tell what’s going on on the ground, because isolationism is not a policy. When you isolate yourself, when you try to isolate a country by removing your ambassadors or closing your embassies, you isolate yourself from the reality. You shouldn’t isolate yourself, as Europe, from reality. We hope can play that role in the EU to shift this trend that started with the American administration of Bush; when they have a problem with somebody or some area, instead of being more involved, they cut their relation with it. This is not policy.
Question 36: Just one last question, Mr. President. You’re a key player for any possible peace deal. Don’t you feel sometimes doubts, anguish, with this tremendous responsibility? Don’t you feel what history might say about you?
President Assad: Of course, this is the most important thing that any politician or leader must think about, and it’s about, first of all, about having good will and good intention to help your country.
Whether you do mistakes or you do right, you do wrong; this is not the issue. People will judge you by your will, by how much you were related to your country, related to your country, how much you are a patriot, not a puppet or a marionette that’s being moved from the outside. This is the most important thing; how much you do, what’s the best you can do to protect your country and protect your people.
Question 37: Thank you, Mr. President, for this interview, and thank you for being with RTP.
Reports that US and British aircraft carrying arms to ISIS have been shot down by Iraqi forces have been met with shock and denial in western countries. Few in the Middle East doubt that Washington is playing a 'double game' with its proxy armies in Syria, but some key myths remain important amongst the significantly more ignorant western audiences.
A central myth is that Washington now arms 'moderate Syrian rebels', to both overthrow the Syrian Government and supposedly defeat the 'extremist rebels'. This claim became more important in 2014, when the rationale of US aggression against Syria shifted from 'humanitarian intervention' to a renewal of Bush's 'war on terror'.
A distinct controversy is whether the al Qaeda styled groups (especially Jabhat al Nusra and ISIS) have been generated as a sort of organic reaction to the repeated US interventions, or whether they are actually paid agents of Washington.
Certainly, prominent ISIS leaders were held in US prisons. ISIS leader, Ibrahim al-Badri (aka Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi) is said to have been held for between one and two years at Camp Bucca in Iraq. In 2006, as al-Baghdadi and others were released, the Bush administration announced its plan for a 'New Middle East', a plan which would employ sectarian violence as part of a process of 'creative destruction' in the region.
According to Seymour Hersh's 2007 article, 'The Redirection', the US would make use of 'moderate Sunni states', not least the Saudis, to 'contain' the Shia gains in Iraq brought about by the 2003 US invasion. These 'moderate Sunni' forces would carry out clandestine operations to weaken Iran and Hezbollah, key enemies of Israel. This brought the Saudis and Israel closer, as both fear Iran.
While there have been claims that the ISIS 'caliph' al-Baghdadi is a CIA or Mossad trained agent, these have not yet been well backed up. There are certainly grounds for suspicion, but independent evidence is important, in the context of a supposed US 'war' against ISIS . So what is the broader evidence on Washington's covert links with ISIS?
Not least are the admissions by senior US officials that key allies support the extremist group. In September 2014 General Martin Dempsey, head of the US military, told a Congressional hearing 'I know major Arab allies who fund [ ISIS ]'. Senator Lindsey Graham, of Armed Services Committee, responded with a justification, 'They fund them because the Free Syrian Army couldn't fight [Syrian President] Assad, they were trying to beat Assad'.
The next month, US Vice President Joe Biden went a step further, explaining that Turkey, Qatar, the UAE and Saudi Arabia 'were so determined to take down Assad ... they poured hundreds of millions of dollars and tens, thousands of tons of weapons into anyone who would fight against Assad ... [including] al Nusra and al Qaeda and extremist elements of jihadis coming from other parts of the world ... [and then] this outfit called ISIL'. Biden's admissions sought to exempt the US from this operation, as though Washington were innocent of sustained operations carried out by its key allies. That is simply not credible.
Washington's relationship with the Saudis, as a divisive sectarian force in the region, in particular against Arab nationalism, goes back to the 1950s, when Winston Churchill introduced the Saudi King to President Eisenhower. At that time Washington wanted to set up the Saudi King as a rival to President Nasser of Egypt. More recently, British General Jonathan Shaw has acknowledged the contribution of Saudi Arabia's extremist ideology: 'This is a time bomb that, under the guise of education. Wahhabi Salafism is igniting under the world really. And it is funded by Saudi and Qatari money', Shaw said.
Other evidence undermines western attempts to maintain a distinction between the 'moderate rebels', now openly armed and trained by the US, and the extremist groups Jabhat al Nusra and ISIS. While there has indeed been some rivalry (emphasised by the London-based, Muslim Brotherhood-aligned, Syrian Observatory of Human Rights), the absence of real ideological difference is best shown by the cooperation and mergers of groups.
As ISIS came from Iraq in 2013, its Syrian bases have generally remained in the far eastern part of Syria. However Jabhat al Nusra (the official al Qaeda branch in Syria, from which ISIS split) has collaborated with Syrian Islamist groups in western Syria for several years. The genocidal slogan of the Syrian Islamists, 'Christians to Beirut and Alawis to the Grave', reported many times in 2011 from the Farouk Brigade, sat well with the al Qaeda groups. Farouk (once the largest 'Free Syrian Army' group) indeed killed and ethnically cleansed many Christians and Alawis.
Long term cooperation between these 'moderate rebels' and the foreign-led Jabhat al-Nusra has been seen around Daraa in the south, in Homs-Idlib, along the Turkish border and in and around Aleppo. The words Jabhat al Nusra actually mean 'support front', that is, support for the Syrian Islamists. Back in December 2012, as Jabhat al Nusra was banned in various countries, 29 of these groups reciprocated the solidarity in their declaration: 'We are all Jabhat al-Nusra'.
After the collapse of the 'Free Syrian Army' groups, cooperation between al Nusra and the newer US and Saudi backed groups (Dawud, the Islamic Front, the Syrian Revolutionary Front and Harakat Hazm) helped draw attention to Israel's support for al Nusra, around the occupied Golan Heights. Since 2013 there have been many reports of 'rebel' fighters, including those from al Nusra, being treated in Israeli hospitals. Prime Minister Netanyahu even publicised his visit to wounded 'rebels' in early 2014. That led to a public 'thank you' from a Turkey-based 'rebel' leader, Mohammed Badie (February 2014).
The UN peacekeeping force based in the occupied Golan has reported its observations of Israel's Defence Forces 'interacting with' al Nusra fighters at the border. At the same time, Israeli arms have been found with the extremist groups, in both Syria and Iraq. In November 2014 members of the Druze minority in the Golan protested against Israel's hospital support for al Nusra and ISIS fighters. This in turn led to questions by the Israeli media, as to whether ' Israel does, in fact, hospitalize members of al-Nusra and Daesh [ISIS]'. A military spokesman's reply was hardly a denial: 'In the past two years the Israel Defence Forces have been engaged in humanitarian, life-saving aid to wounded Syrians, irrespective of their identity.'
The artificial distinction between 'rebel' and 'extremist' groups is mocked by multiple reports of large scale defections and transfer of weapons. In July 2014 one thousand armed men in the Dawud Brigade defected to ISIS in Raqqa. In November defections to Jabhat al Nusra from the Syrian Revolutionary Front were reported. In December, Adib Al-Shishakli, representative at the Gulf Cooperation Council of the exile ' Syrian National Coalition', said 'opposition fighters' were 'increasingly joining' ISIS 'for financial reasons'. In that same month, 'rebels' in the Israel-backed Golan area were reported as defecting to ISIS, which had by this time began to establish a presence in Syria's far south. Then, in early 2015, three thousand 'moderate rebels' from the US-backed 'Harakat Hazzm' collapsed into Jabhat al Nusra, taking a large stock of US arms including anti-tank weapons with them.
ISIS already had US weapons by other means, in both Iraq and Syria , as reported in July, September and October 2014. At that time a 'non aggression pact' was reported in the southern area of Hajar al-Aswad between 'moderate rebels' and ISIS, as both recognised a common enemy in Syria: 'the Nussayri regime', a sectarian way of referring to supposedly apostate Muslims. Some reported ISIS had bought weapons from the 'rebels'.
In December 2014 there were western media reports of the US covert supply of heavy weapons to 'Syrian rebels' from Libya, and of Jabhat al-Nusra getting anti-tank weapons which had been supplied to Harakat Hazm. Video posted by al-Nusra showed these weapons being used to take over the Syrian military bases, Wadi Deif and Hamidiyeh, in Idlib province.
With 'major Arab allies' backing ISIS and substantial collaboration between US-armed 'moderate rebels' and ISIS, it is not such a logical stretch to suppose that the US and 'coalition' flights to ISIS areas (supposedly to 'degrade' the extremists) might have become covert supply lines. That is precisely what senior Iraqi sources began saying, in late 2014 and early 2015.
For example, as reported by both Iraqi and Iranian media, Iraqi MP Majid al-Ghraoui said in January that 'an American aircraft dropped a load of weapons and equipment to the ISIS group militants at the area of al-Dour in the province of Salahuddin'. Photos were published of ISIS retrieving the weapons. The US admitted the seizure but said this was a 'mistake'. In February Iraqi MP Hakem al-Zameli said the Iraqi army had shot down two British planes which were carrying weapons to ISIS in al-Anbar province. Again, photos were published of the wrecked planes. 'We have discovered weapons made in the US , European countries and Israel from the areas liberated from ISIL's control in Al-Baqdadi region', al-Zameli said.
The Al-Ahad news website quoted Head of Al-Anbar Provincial Council Khalaf Tarmouz saying that a US plane supplied the ISIL terrorist organization with arms and ammunition in Salahuddin province. Also in February an Iraqi militia called Al-Hashad Al-Shabi said they had shot down a US Army helicopter carrying weapons for the ISIL in the western parts of Al-Baqdadi region in Al-Anbar province. Again, photos were published. After that, Iraqi counter-terrorism forces were reported as having arrested 'four foreigners who were employed as military advisors to the ISIL fighters', three of whom were American and Israeli. So far the western media has avoided these stories altogether; they are very damaging to the broader western narrative.
In Libya, a key US collaborator in the overthrow of the Gaddafi government has announced himself the newly declared head of the 'Islamic State' in North Africa. Abdel Hakim Belhaj was held in US prisons for several years, then 'rendered' to Gaddafi's Libya, where he was wanted for terrorist acts. As former head of the al-Qaeda-linked Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, then the Tripoli-based 'Libyan Dawn' group, Belhaj has been defended by Washington and praised by US Congressmen John McCain and Lindsey Graham.
Some image softening of the al Qaeda groups is underway. Jabhat al-Nusra is reported to be considering cutting ties to al Qaeda, to help sponsor Qatar boost their funding. Washington's Foreign Affairs magazine even published a survey claiming that ISIS fighters were 'surprisingly supportive of democracy'. After all the well published massacres that lacks credibility.
The Syrian Army is gradually reclaiming Aleppo, despite the hostile supply lines from Turkey, and southern Syria, in face of support for the sectarian groups from Jordan and Israel. The border with Lebanon is largely under Syrian Army and Hezbollah control. In the east, the Syrian Army and its local allies control most of Hasaka and Deir e-Zour, with a final campaign against Raqqa yet to come. The NATO-GCC attempt to overthrow the Syrian Government has failed.
Yet violent destabilisation persists. Evidence of the covert relationship between Washington and ISIS is substantial and helps explain what Syria's Deputy Foreign Minister Fayssal Mikdad calls Washington's 'cosmetic war' on ISIS. The extremist group is a foothold Washington keeps in the region, weakening both Syria and Iraq . Their 'war' on ISIS is ineffective. Studies by Jane's Terrorism and Insurgent database show that ISIS attacks and killings in Iraq increased strongly after US air attacks began. The main on the ground fighting has been carried out by the Syrian Army and, more recently, the Iraqi armed forces with Iranian backing.
All this has been reported perversely in the western media. The same channels that celebrate the ISIS killing of Syrian soldiers also claim the Syrian Army is 'not fighting ISIS'. This alleged 'unwillingness' was part of the justification for US bombing inside Syria. While it is certainly the case that Syrian priorities have remained in the heavily populated west, local media reports make it clear that, since at least the beginning of 2014, the Syrian Arab Army has been the major force engaged with ISIS in Hasaka, Raqqa and Deir eZour. A March 2015 Reuters report does concede that the Syrian Army recently killed two ISIS commanders (including Deeb Hedjian al-Otaibi) along with 24 fighters, at Hamadi Omar.
Closer cooperation between Iran, Iraq, Syria and Lebanon's Hezbollah is anathema to Israel, the Saudis and Washington, yet it is happening. This is not a sectarian divide but rather based on some clear mutual interests, not least putting an end to sectarian (takfiri) terrorism.
It was only logical that, in the Iraqi military's recent offensive on ISIS-held Tikrit, the Iranian military emerged as Iraq's main partner. Washington has been sidelined, causing consternation in the US media. General Qasem Suleimani, head of Iran's Quds Force is a leading player in the Tikrit operation. A decade after Washington's 'creative destruction' plans, designed to reduce Iranian influence in Iraq, an article in Foreign Policy magazine complains that Iran's influence is 'at its highest point in almost four centuries'.
The U.S. military is causing devastation to the environment. Joseph Nevins writes in 2010 that "The U.S. military is the world’s single biggest consumer of fossil fuels, and the single entity most responsible for destabilizing the Earth’s climate." The article states ". . . the Pentagon devours about 330,000 barrels of oil per day (a barrel has 42 gallons), more than the vast majority of the world’s countries." The amount of oil used by your military machine is beyond belief, and each military vehicle also releases pollutants through the exhaust. Tanks, trucks, Humvees and other vehicles are not known for their fuel economy. Other fuel guzzlers are submarines, helicopters and fighter jets. Each military flight, whether involved in the transport of soldiers or in a combat mission, contributes more carbon into the atmosphere. Candobetter.net editor: Unfortunately the Australian government supports this US war machine. Earth Day is Wednesday April 22, 2015. These letters will be sent for that occasion but they seek to involve the public earlier in this campaign against war.
We are writing as representatives of the National Campaign for Nonviolent Resistance. We are a group of citizens dedicated to working for an end to the illegal wars and occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan, and the illegal bombings in Pakistan, Syria and Yemen. We would appreciate meeting with you or a representative as soon as possible to discuss what we perceive to be ecocide being committed by the Pentagon.
Please see the letter below which we have sent to Ashton Carter about the Pentagon’s scathing abuse of the environment. We are puzzled by the fact that the Environmental Protection Agency is not taking any action against the Pentagon’s willful destruction of Mother Earth. At this meeting we will outline what measures the EPA should take against the Pentagon to slow down Climate Chaos.
We look forward to your response to our request for a meeting, as we believe citizen activists have the right and obligation to be involved in matters of such great importance. Your response will be shared with others concerned with the issues raised above. Thank you for considering our request.
In peace,
Max Obuszewski
Malachy Kilbride
Joy First
Members of National Campaign for Nonviolent Resistance
We are writing as representatives of the National Campaign for Nonviolent Resistance. We are a group of citizens dedicated to working for an end to the illegal wars and occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan, and the illegal bombing, since July of 2008, of Pakistan, Syria, and Yemen. It is our opinion that the use of drones is a violation of international law.
The use of drones causes incredible human suffering, growing distrust of the United States around the world, and is diverting our resources which could be better used to ease human suffering. We follow the principles of Gandhi, King, Day and others, working nonviolently for a peaceful world.
As people of conscience, we are very concerned about the devastation that the U.S. military is causing to the environment. According to Joseph Nevins, in an article published on June 14, 2010 by CommonDreams.org, Greenwashing the Pentagon, "The U.S. military is the world’s single biggest consumer of fossil fuels, and the single entity most responsible for destabilizing the Earth’s climate." The article states ". . . the Pentagon devours about 330,000 barrels of oil per day (a barrel has 42 gallons), more than the vast majority of the world’s countries." Visit http://www.commondreams.org/views/2010/06/14/greenwashing-pentagon.
The amount of oil used by your military machine is beyond belief, and each military vehicle also releases pollutants through the exhaust. Tanks, trucks, Humvees and other vehicles are not known for their fuel economy. Other fuel guzzlers are submarines, helicopters and fighter jets. Each military flight, whether involved in the transport of soldiers or in a combat mission, contributes more carbon into the atmosphere.
The U.S. military’s environmental record is dismal. Any war can bring about ecocide in the area of fighting. One example was the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The New York Timesreported in September 2014 that the Obama administration plans to spend more than $1 trillion over the next three decades to upgrade the nuclear weapons arsenal. Wasting such an enormous amount of tax dollars on such weapons makes no sense. And the environmental damage caused by the nuclear weapons industrial complex is incalculable.
More recently, Mother Earth is suffering because the Pentagon continues to use depleted uranium ammunition. It seems the Pentagon first used DU weaponry during Persian Gulf War 1 and in other wars, including during the aerial attack of Libya.
Because the United States has hundreds of military bases here and abroad, the Pentagon is exacerbating a growing environmental crisis on a global scale. For example, the construction of a US Naval base on Jeju Island, South Korea threatens the UNESCO Biosphere Reserve. According to an article in The Nation "On the island of Jeju, the consequences of the Pacific Pivot are cataclysmic. The UNESCO Biosphere Reserve, adjacent to the proposed military port, would be traversed by aircraft carriers and contaminated by other military ships. Base activity would wipe out one of the most spectacular remaining soft-coral forests in the world. It would kill Korea’s last pod of Indo-Pacific bottlenose dolphins and contaminate some of the purest, most abundant spring water on the planet. It would also destroy the habitats of thousands of species of plants and animals—many of which, such as the narrow-mouthed frog and the red-footed crab, are gravely endangered already. Indigenous, sustainable livelihoods—including oyster diving and local farming methods that have thrived for thousands of years—would cease to exist, and many fear that traditional village life would be sacrificed to bars, restaurants and brothels for military personnel." http://www.thenation.com/article/171767/front-lines-new-pacific-war
Though these examples provide sufficient evidence to show the ways in which the Department of War is destroying the planet, we have grave concerns about the U.S. military for other reasons as well. The recent revelations of rampant U.S. torture leaves a terrible stain on the U.S. fabric. Continuing the Pentagon’s policy of unlimited warfare is also detrimental to the USA’s world-wide image. A recent leaked CIA report confirmed that killer drone strikes have only been successful in creating more terrorists.
We would like to meet with you or your representative to discuss the Pentagon’s role in the destruction of the environment. We will urge you, as first measures, to bring all troops home from these awful wars and occupations, to end all drone warfare, and to close down the nuclear weapons complex. At this meeting, we would appreciate if you could provide a detailed breakdown of the military’s greenhouse gas emissions, including carbon dioxide.
As citizen activists and members of the National Campaign for Nonviolent Resistance, we adhere to the Nuremberg protocols. These principles, established during the trials of Nazi war criminals, call on people of conscience to challenge their government when it is engaged in criminal activity. As part of our Nuremberg responsibility, we are reminding you that you swore to uphold the Constitution. In a dialogue, we will present data to demonstrate how the Pentagon abuses the Constitution and the ecosystem.
Please get back to us, so that a meeting can be scheduled as soon as possible. The current situation is urgent. Cities and states are starving, while tax dollars are wasted on wars and occupations. Innocents are dying because of U.S. military policies. And the environmental damage caused by the Pentagon must be halted.
Most observers have noticed that weather patterns are severely changing. In turn the weather has greatly affected the farmers of the world, resulting in food shortages in many countries. Droughts are occurring in Australia, Brazil and California. The Northeast is victimized by major storms as we write. So let us meet and discuss how we can work together in order to save Mother Earth.
We look forward to your response to our request for a meeting, as we believe citizen activists have the right and obligation to be involved in matters of such great importance. Your response will be shared with others concerned with the issues raised above. Thank you for considering our request.
In peace,
Max Obuszewski
Malachy Kilbride
Joy First
Members of National Campaign for Nonviolent Resistance
People are becoming more aware of the contradictions in the dominant (official) rhetoric about Syria and foreign intervention on behalf of the rebels. People hope to find out the truth from women and ordinary people, because they know they cannot really trust the mainstream media or, unfortunately, various NGOs and political organisations. Inside, find a link to an interview with Agnes Mariam about about how Syrian women feel about Islamic fundamentalism, and about the very doubtful role of the UN, NGOs and Al Jazeera in this expanding conflict.
Mother Agnes Mariam in Oct 2012
I would also like to draw your attention again to the Skype interview recorded with Mother Agnes in early January 2014. http://socratesandsyria.com/mother-agnes-mariam/ The link is to a page which contains other videos on the same subject.
We should aim to be pro-peace, pro- the interests of the people of Syria as a whole, pro- the survival of secular Syria and at the same time scrupulous in our chase for the truth, but not a slanted 'truth' which inevitably would lead to ongoing war and the ultimate destruction of the Syrian army and secular society.
In regards to being pro-regime or pro-Assad, they are accusations used to intimidate and stifle dissenting voices. The current government of Syria and its current president are not Syria and not the people, though they represent them in a political capacity at this time.
If their staying in power for some time aids the general public and the society as a whole, then may they stay in power.
It is the future of the Syrian state and the 23 million Syrians that we must be concerned about, the future of generations.
Unfortunately, with the stigmatising of the Syrian government and president all positive efforts made on their part to support the people and society are ignored outside Syria.
Apparently the government has recently introduced laws which will give more opportunity for people who work on the land to have a fairer stake in that land, so the rich absentee land owners will have to give a significant percentage of their land to poorer, working families. Regrettably, the media in Gulf states or western countries won't bother to report on such laws, both because they represent Bashar al-Assad in a positive light and because the democratic local repartition of land runs counter to their globalism values, which are for power and assets in a few international corporate and dynastic hands.
However, in regards to peace activism, it is still amazing how much good work the 'ordinary person' - people like you and me - is able to achieve. I'm referring to people with no other agenda except a search for the truth and a fervent desire for peace and harmony, so children in Palestine, Syria and the region can be sent off to school with joy and dreams in their hearts, rather than grief and fear.
In May 2013, an international peace delegation visited a camp in Lebanon with refugees from Yarmouk, one lady very discreetly told Marinella and me to work hard to get the truth because it was the truth that could save them.
This is an oft-heard remark but it is a powerful one when the continued prosecution of a war is dependent on dissembling and fabrications.
Women will persistently seek the truth in these times perhaps more often than men, given the chance. Unfortunately women's voices are less sought than men's, so the pro-war message gets magnified. Mother Agnes Mariam is a leader among women and her persistence and her bravery in speaking out against war and terror have given her an audience. May we be open to her message and not discredit it because of ignorance and because of a reliance on less informed, but familiar, faces.
Historically, this latest eruption of American militarism at the start of the 21st Century is akin to that of America opening the 20th Century by means of the U.S.-instigated Spanish-American War in 1898. Then the Republican administration of President William McKinley stole their colonial empire from Spain in Cuba, Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines; inflicted a near genocidal war against the Filipino people; while at the same time illegally annexing the Kingdom of Hawaii and subjecting the Native Hawaiian people (who call themselves the Kanaka Maoli) to near genocidal conditions. Additionally, McKinley’s military and colonial expansion into the Pacific was also designed to secure America’s economic exploitation of China pursuant to the euphemistic rubric of the “open door” policy. But over the next four decades America’s aggressive presence, policies, and practices in the “Pacific” would ineluctably pave the way for Japan’s attack at Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 194l, and thus America’s precipitation into the ongoing Second World War. Today a century later the serial imperial aggressions launched and menaced by the Republican Bush Jr. administration and now the Democratic Obama administration are threatening to set off World War III.
By shamelessly exploiting the terrible tragedy of 11 September 2001, the Bush Jr. administration set forth to steal a hydrocarbon empire from the Muslim states and peoples living in Central Asia and the Persian Gulf and Africa under the bogus pretexts of (1) fighting a war against international terrorism; and/or (2) eliminating weapons of mass destruction; and/or (3) the promotion of democracy; and/or (4) self-styled “humanitarian intervention”/responsibility to protect. Only this time the geopolitical stakes are infinitely greater than they were a century ago: control and domination of two-thirds of the world’s hydrocarbon resources and thus the very fundament and energizer of the global economic system – oil and gas. The Bush Jr./ Obama administrations have already targeted the remaining hydrocarbon reserves of Africa, Latin America, and Southeast Asia for further conquest or domination, together with the strategic choke-points at sea and on land required for their transportation. In this regard, the Bush Jr. administration announced the establishment of the U.S. Pentagon’s Africa Command (AFRICOM) in order to better control, dominate, and exploit both the natural resources and the variegated peoples of the continent of Africa, the very cradle of our human species. Libya and the Libyans became the first victims to succumb to AFRICOM under the Obama administration. They will not be the last.
This current bout of U.S. imperialism is what my teacher, mentor and friend Hans Morgenthau denominated “unlimited imperialism” in his seminal work Politics Among Nations (4th ed. 1968, at 52-53):
“The outstanding historic examples of unlimited imperialism are the expansionist policies of Alexander the Great, Rome, the Arabs in the seventh and eighth centuries, Napoleon I, and Hitler. They all have in common an urge toward expansion which knows no rational limits, feeds on its own successes and, if not stopped by a superior force, will go on to the confines of the political world. This urge will not be satisfied so long as there remains anywhere a possible object of domination–a politically organized group of men which by its very independence challenges the conqueror’s lust for power. It is, as we shall see, exactly the lack of moderation, the aspiration to conquer all that lends itself to conquest, characteristic of unlimited imperialism, which in the past has been the undoing of the imperialistic policies of this kind… “
It is the Unlimited Imperialists along the lines of Alexander, Rome, Napoleon and Hitler who are now in charge of conducting American foreign policy. The factual circumstances surrounding the outbreaks of both the First World War and the Second World War currently hover like twin Swords of Damocles over the heads of all humanity.
About the Author:
Francis A. Boyle is is a leading American expert in international law. He was responsible for drafting the Biological Weapons Anti-Terrorism Act of 1989, the American implementing legislation for the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention. He served on the Board of Directors of Amnesty International (1988-1992), and represented Bosnia-Herzegovina at the World Court. He served as legal adviser to the Palestinian Delegation to the Middle East peace negotiations from 1991 to 1993.
In 2007, he delivered the Bertrand Russell Peace Lectures. Professor Boyle teaches international law at the University of Illinois, Champaign and is author of, inter alia, The Future of International Law and American Foreign Policy, Foundations of World Order, The Criminality of Nuclear Deterrence, Palestine, Palestinians and International Law, Destroying World Order, Biowarfare and Terrorism, Tackling America's Toughest Problems, and The Tamil Genocide by Sri Lanka.
He holds a Doctor of Law Magna Cum Laude as well as a Ph.D. in Political Science, both from Harvard University.
He is the author of several books including Destroying Libya and World Order: The Three-Decade U.S. Campaign to Terminate the Qaddafi Revolution, Clarity Press, 2013, where he relates his experiences as Libya's legal advisor in several international affairs.
The US-Empire's present preeminent position of brutal global thug is a self-evident truth based on hard facts regarding the magnitudes of death and destruction; counted in millions of lives, millions of refugees, and nation-wide obliterations of civil infrastructure, not to mention annihilations of national and civil institutions. US crimes do not diminish the importance of injustices perpetrated by non-aligned regimes, but there is an obvious asymmetry of magnitudes that simply cannot be denied. (Article originally published here:
http://activistteacher.blogspot.ca/2014/09/obamas-isis-project-is-nothing-but.html
The US military-finance-corporate empire (US-Empire) is characterized by (LINK):
global military projection using over 1000 military bases
control over the global finance instruments (and the money supply)
corporate exploitation of labour and resources on the scale of entire continents
dominant influence on World organizations such as the United Nations
a demonstrated willingness to annihilate entire populations and societies -- directly or by proxy -- in order to ensure complete compliance
The nations entirely destroyed recently by the US-Empire include: Haiti, El Salvador, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Palestine, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and so on. These actions are outright crimes of mass aggression viciously targeting entire peoples, using combinations of military devastation, political overthrows, and brutal economic blockades.
No other regime in today's world is responsible for such premeditated and repeated acts of mass murder against entire modern societies. The US with its military allies, most notably Israel, is presently by far the greatest threat to peace and the greatest purveyor of terror on the planet.
This is not debatable by reasonable people. The US-Empire's present preeminent position of brutal global thug is a self-evident truth based on hard facts regarding the magnitudes of death and destruction; counted in millions of lives, millions of refugees, and nation-wide obliterations of civil infrastructure, not to mention annihilations of national and civil institutions. US crimes do not diminish the importance of injustices perpetrated by non-aligned regimes, but there is an obvious asymmetry of magnitudes that simply cannot be denied.
It is also apparent that the US-Empire's projects of nation destruction are strategic and premeditated. Having built an instrument for annihilating nations, it appears difficult for the US-Empire to not use it, irrespective of any moral or legal considerations. US "diplomacy" has become strictly an exercise in promoting its wars for geopolitical design.
It is in this realistic context of a ferocious, rogue and barely-constrained superpower that we must understand Obama's emanations about ISIS as nothing but a pretext to "remove Assad". And "removing Assad" can only mean destroying the Syrian nation and its people because the Syrian army and the Syrian people stand together and overwhelmingly support Assad against the foreign invaders.
The legitimate political dissidence in Syria was used as a front and a pretext to inject massive numbers of externally-funded foreign rebels into a proxy war for the US-Empire and its regional partners-in-crime. This is established by every credible researcher. (And, of course actively masked by the US-Empire's propaganda.)
And now an element (ISIS) of the injected foreign rebels is used as a pretext for all-out war US-style. For Syria, this means complete annihilation of the national defence forces, and total destruction of civilian infrastructure to bring the population to its knees and lay siege to any resistance. Straight-up crimes against humanity as the modus operandi for "regime change", a la USA, followed by US corporation predation, territorial control, etc.
Obama's ISIS project is nothing but a pretext to murder and destroy Syrian society.
Obama's ISIS project is nothing but a pretext to murder and destroy Syrian society.
Obama's ISIS project is nothing but a pretext to murder and destroy Syrian society.
The interview inside between a BBC journalist, Jeremy Bowen BBC, and President Bashar al-Assad of Syria, is wonderfully calm, logical and informative despite the interviewer's many tendentious questions. Assad's analytical answers invite the viewer and journalist to logically evaluate reports which Australians are used to having presented emotively by anti-Assad forces. Assad's English syntax is sometimes unusual and the journalist at times fails to follow his statements and arguments. For instance, towards the end of the interview, Assad is asked if it is true that his government denied aid convoys access to areas held by the enemy. Assad's answer is that if they could stop aid convoys they would presumably be able to stop arms convoys. Since the areas are being bombed by 'rebels' continually, obviously they are unable to stop those arms. If his government were to stop any convoy, military interests would suggest it would be one bearing arms, not one bearing aid. Conversely, if the enemy fighters are able to import arms, then they should be able to import food. If so-called humanitarian organisations report that food is not arriving, but acknowledge that arms are, then the enemy is responsible for lack of food in a situation of well-armed violence.
Bashar al-Assad's performance seems so superior to that of Australian leaders that I could not help taking the comparison further.
Judging the Syrian leader by Australian leadership standards
During the Syrian conflicts President Bashar al-Assad has made himself available to journalists in a manner far freer than any Australian, US, British, French or German political leader. It is hard to imagine Australia's Prime Minster or its opposition leader being able to survive such a detailed interview about their conduct and policy rationale in Australia, say on democratic and humanitarian grounds. They simply are not morally, intellectually or educationally up to scratch and they expect journalists to stick to a narrow and predictable field.
The reader might exclaim that Australia is not currently in a condition of civil war and question the relevance of such comparisons. On the other hand, we are constantly told by the popular press that we are in danger of terrorist attacks. The much anticipated prospect of such attacks has been used to make fundamental changes to requirements of evidence, proof, right to know of what one is accused - requirements famed as having brought our legal system forward from medieval times. (See, for instance, "Action on inept anti-terror laws must get priority") So, if we are not at war, we are still treated as if we are in some kind of quasi-war state of emergency.
Why Syria is at war with terrorists and Australia only legislates against terrorism
Unlike the Syrian government, Australian politicians - government and opposition - toe the United States and NATO line, which many consider to be dictated by global financial institutions. (See, for instance, Sharon Beder, "Neoliberalism and the global financial crisis" (pdf)). This line is most unpopular amongst the general public who retain less and less of the available wealth or political power in this country, as suggested by high unemployment, housing unaffordability, foreign ownership deregulation, industrial conditions deregulation, privatisation and population growth engineering. Australia's farmers and its middle classes have lost almost all effective right to object to having their homes, livelihoods and environments torn up - by gas and coal-seam frackers and by state roads authorities and corporations to make way for state engineered population growth.[1]
So, what (apart from laws against secondary boycotts) keeps Australians from holding general strikes and standing up to their false leaders? Two things mainly:
1. Political disorganisation following on from social and geographical disorganisation carried out by successive governments and corporations, supported by a mainstream press and state press which have feudal-like tenure [2]
2. the well-known fact that people can now be arrested and detained without explanation in this country, a situation brought about by skilful use of the threat of terrorism to make us agree to the loss of our basic rights at law.[3]
In Syria, however, terrorism has been turned from isolated threats into brutal armies backed by the US-NATO alliance of which Australia and Saudi Arabia are both sort of client-states, and supported by aligned media propaganda. (See for instance, "Syria whom to support whom to trust?"
Here is a probable reason why Syria is at war on its own territory but Australia is not. Syria has or had until recently, a well-functioning dirigist economy and strong national identification by its people. Syrian law, based on French civil code and some local and sharia law supported this situation. The global financial forces do not like national solidarity. They don't like people's banks, free education and free hospital and medical care. If they cannot corrupt a state (as they appear to have done with Australia) they arm dissonant forces within it and send in mercenaries to back them up.
We have seen this in Libya, Iraq, Bahrain, Ukraine and Syria.
So, why isn't Australia torn by civil war? Because, despite the rising alarm of its people (whose current only option is to try to elect independents), Australia is doing the bidding of globalising finance, supporting illegal wars and turning its own polity into a feudal regime with a commodity economy overseen by foreign oligarchs and monarchs of a distinctly fascist outlook. Even our Prime Minister, Tony Abbott, has reinstituted knights and dames and recently even knighted British Prince Phillip in a move which, whilst decoratively redundant, could not go ignored and was probably not meant to.
Remember, Australia has no code of civil rights, subscribes to a bill of very vague 'human' rights,[4] and is sacrificing ordinary people's homes and farms to higher financial turnover uses - freeways for highrise rentals and quick and dirty coal mines and gas fracks.[5] The corporates and dynasties are taking over. Now we have a leader who takes knighthood seriously. The reaction is that he is ridiculous. But the reality is that he has formally, legally resurrected a major feudal institution, to bestow knighthoods on public figureheads of power. How far is Australia from a feudal state? What rights and obligations do knights have to the Australian PM and what obligations, if any, do Australians have towards them?
This exhibition is part of a movement asking for no foreign intervention in Syria. Australia backs foreign intervention in Syria, which means we subsidise the provision of weapons for the overthrow of a democratically elected government which most Syrians want to keep. Here is an extract from the article inside: “We have a well in our house, and since there’s no water—because the ‘rebels’ broke the pipes—my father was giving water to neighbours. He was in his house when a sniper entered the garden and shot him, killed him. Those ‘rebels’ don’t represent the Syrian people. Syrian soldiers aren’t fighting against normal people, they’re fighting against people equipped with the most advanced weapons and trained just to come to Syria. They destroy our homes, churches, mosques. But what makes me happy, our people, because they love Syria so much, decided not to leave. Even my dad, he knew he lived in a very dangerous area, but he decided not to leave, and he paid for it with his life.” This article by Eva Bartlett is republished from her blog at https://ingaza.wordpress.com/2015/01/22/aleppo-photographer-brings-syrian-reality-to-the-united-nations/(Broken link fixed. - Ed, 1:53pm 24/1/14)
Hagop Vanesian’s exhibition, “My Homeland,” ran at the United Nations Headquarters from January 8-16.
by Eva Bartlett
Twenty-six distinct photos, in black and white. Scenes of a ravaged city and the human beings within struggling to exist, let alone to find hope for the future. Gravestones of rubble. Homes looted, trashed. Civilians defending their country. Children aged beyond their years by the horrors they’ve lived.
Hagop Vanesian, a 44 year old Syrian-Armenian photographer from Syria’s second-largest city, Aleppo (Halab), was meticulous in his choice of photographs for the exhibition, “My Homeland,” which opened at the United Nations Headquarters on January 8 and runs until January 16.
“I chose the photographs showing the destruction, and children. I have many photographs of children, maybe 25-30 percent are of children, these little angels suffering. They are innocent, they don’t understand about politics, they suffer a lot.”
Vanesian, a silversmith by trade, started taking photos twelve years ago, and very early on started documenting his city, building by building.
“Before the war, I was doing documentary photography all over Aleppo. Everyday, I took my camera and photographed people, how they were living,” Vanesian said. “When the war started, I decided to document it. It was very hard at first. For the first couple of days, I couldn’t take a single photograph. This was my birth place, where I grew up. I have memories there, but even my memories were destroyed, especially in Old Aleppo.”
Iman Tahan, from Aleppo, spoke of her feelings after seeing the photos. “These photos, I wish they weren’t real, I wish nothing like this had happened to my country. I remember every street in these photos. I feel so sad, a lot of memories there.”
One of the memories she spoke of was the murder of her father, in his home, by terrorists.
“We have a well in our house, and since there’s no water—because the ‘rebels’ broke the pipes—my father was giving water to neighbours. He was in his house when a sniper entered the garden and shot him, killed him. Those ‘rebels’ don’t represent the Syrian people. Syrian soldiers aren’t fighting against normal people, they’re fighting against people equipped with the most advanced weapons and trained just to come to Syria. They destroy our homes, churches, mosques. But what makes me happy, our people, because they love Syria so much, decided not to leave. Even my dad, he knew he lived in a very dangerous area, but he decided not to leave, and he paid for it with his life.”
Syrian photographer, Hagop Vanesian, explaining the human stories behind the photos.
Narrating to those around him, Vanesian explained the significance of and story behind each photo. Of one photo, a smiling woman holding a photo of a young man, he said: “When she saw me photographing, she started to cry. She said, ‘please, don’t photograph this, let us remember Aleppo as it was.’ Then she asked me to photograph she and her son. From her purse she took a photograph of her son, with a big, proud smile. Her son was martyred. Brave woman, Syrian woman.”
For Vanesian, the stories behind the photos need to be told. “Some photographers have come and taken photos, stayed one week, two weeks… They photographed the camps, photographed the war from the other side. Maybe they got more powerful photographs than me. But what I got, I got the stories of the people. Because I lived there, I suffered like them. As they were living, I was living. Without water, without electricity.”
Until about eight months ago, Vanesian was living the life of an average Syrian in Aleppo, except that he was also documenting it.
“One day, I was walking in the Old City, drinking sahlab (made of milk, with cinnamon),” he said. “After I finished, I threw my cup on the ground… there was no trash can. I saw a child, maybe four years old, pick up the cup and start licking the remainders of the sahlab. I couldn’t bring myself to photograph him. When I saw this child licking my cup, I thought, ‘where is the humanity?’ I can’t forget him.”
Pointing at his photographs, he noted two “residential graveyard” photos: one, a group of children and women sitting amongst the gravestones, and the second, a young girl standing near a tombstone.
“Residential areas in Aleppo, and children’s playgrounds, have turned into graveyards. The tombstones of these graves are made from stones from collapsed buildings. I asked the girl in the second photo, ‘What are you doing?’ It was a snowy day. She said she wanted to know where they were going to put the body of her aunt, she wanted to see the place.”
Regarding the photo of a sombre-faced boy, dressed in a suit jacket for ‘Eid holiday, he commented: “That boy, his father is kidnapped, his mother killed. He’s living with his aunt, near the front line of the fighting. Did you see his eyes? I didn’t find any children smiling. They’ve lost their smiles.”
Syrian children, psychologically-scarred, rendered older than their years by the difficulties they’ve facced. Photo by Hagop Vanesian
Other photographs show the expected bullet-ridden walls and bullet-shredded metal doors, including one photo with two children, likewise sombre-faced, standing next to a warped metal door.
“If you look closely at the children’s eyes, you see the anger. They’re not smiling, they’re like adults. They grew up, they saw what adults see. They’re around 10 and 13 years old. Before, children in Syria were smiling, but these last few years, you don’t see that. They will need psychological treatment in the future. The psychological damage is worse than the physical damage.”
One particularly poignant photograph—a man with one leg missing, on crutches, gun slung over shoulder—shows the determination of the man, reflects the determination of Syria, to fight back and survive.
“He’s defending his neighbourhood in Aleppo, but actually he was displaced from Nubool, the village where he lost his leg during fighting. He is still fighting, even with one leg. He will fight to the end,” said Vanesian.
Two photos of homes looted and destroyed, one Christian, one Muslim, speak of Syria’s multi-religious fabric, that most Syrians I’ve spoken with maintain was never sectarian.
“I intentionally put these photos side-by-side. It’s not only Muslim houses that are looted, Christian homes are too. They don’t differentiate, doesn’t matter whose house, they’re going to loot it.”
Unsurprisingly, the anti-Syrian group, the so-called “National Syrian Coalition” issued a letter accusing the exhibition as being propaganda, and calling for the display to be shut down.
Syrians attending the exhibition felt otherwise.
Rana Nasrallah, a Syrian from the predominantly Druze city of Sweida, now living in New Jersey, was among Syrian expats attending the exhibition.
“Each picture talks, speaks of the different problems in Syria. These photos show the truth exactly as it is in Syria. I was in Syria a month and a half ago, I saw with my eyes. I had a good life there. I feel broken for what has happened to my country.”
Fadi, from Midan, what he describes as a mixed Armenian-Muslim area of Aleppo near the front line of the fighting, agreed that the exhibition was representative of the reality.
“One hundred percent, the photos tell the truth. I’m Muslim. We never had any sectarian problems. We lived together, doesn’t matter what you believe, who you pray to. Now…”
Al-Akhbar and al-Mayadeen correspondent Nizar Abboud attended, reporting on the exhibition but also pointing out the need for such an exhibition. “The world is hearing one point of view on Syria, and this is not by coincidence. I think this is premeditated. Also, there is self-censorship in the media, including my colleagues who work at the United Nations. They like to play the tunes those who pay them would like to hear. “
Earlier, in a private interview, the Syrian Ambassador to the UN, Dr. Bashar al-Ja’afari—who organized and attended the exhibition—told me: “For four years I have been trying very hard to do something inside the UN. Every time we attempted to do something, we were confronted by a huge amount of bureaucracy and excuses.” He, too, said the intent of the exhibition was not political. “It’s about Syria and the Syrian people. It’s about what happened in Aleppo, through undeniable photos. Any honest, objective Syrian who loves his homeland should have a great interest in showing what is going on in Syria. All Syrians should push for organizing more exhibitions, not only at the United Nations but all over the world.”
One of the accusations thrown at Vanesian is that he had photographed only from areas where the Syrian army was present.
“I photograph the front lines, so I need protection, like most photojournalists in areas of war. Transportation is no longer safe in Syria. Some of my friends and relatives have been kidnapped and we haven’t heard about them for over a year.”
That said, Vanesian took risks with many of his photos, including one shot from the side of the terrorists, unbeknownst to their snipers.
“Most front line lanes are covered with fabric, to block the view of snipers and prevent them from shooting the other side. When I took this photo, my back was to the snipers, but I was hiding behind a stone. The other side of the fabric is the safe area, but I came to this side to take the photo. If I had moved my head, I would have gotten shot. If you put your finger up, they’ll shoot right away.”
While the photographs and the issue of Syria under war from the NATO-Gulf-Turkish-Zionist alliance are inherently political, Vanesian maintains that his objective is solely humanitarian.
“I’m not doing this for political reasons, I just take the photos to let people see what is happening. With my photographs, I just want one thing: for people to remember there are people suffering in Syria. Just let them think, for a moment, about the suffering. I can’t bring back Aleppo as it was. I lost it, as I lost friends, relatives… I can’t bring my city back. The market in Aleppo was the longest enclosed market (in the world). It is burned completely. The destruction of Aleppo is a shame for humanity. The heritage has been destroyed; it belongs to all the world.
All those people in my photos, I didn’t just click the shutter, didn’t just take their photographs, I got their stories. I didn’t make money from their photos. I wanted to show these photos for humanitarian reasons, nothing else.”
Eva Bartlett is a Canadian freelance journalist and activist who has lived in and written from the Gaza Strip, Syria, and Lebanon. Her blog is https://ingaza.wordpress.com/
Inside you may view the execution of a so far nameless woman in a town in Idlib province, Syria, which was taken over by 'rebels' about one year ago. She pleads to see her children before she is executed, but to no avail. She is told to kneel, while a bunch of unpleasant looking and frighteningly stupid and arrogant-sounding men discuss matters loudly - for minutes on end - before she is suddenly dispatched. Obviously this is not an isolated act, but we ask women to make themselves aware of this act of political brutality against all of us and to unite against US/NATO foreign intervention in Syria, which is making it much harder for the Bashar al-Assad Government (which does not execute women for adultery) to combat these evil forces. The overwhelming message from Syrian people is please stop foreign intervention in Syria. Please let the Syrian army fight these 'rebels'. See Friends of Syria and Australians for Mussahala (Reconciliation) in Syria, and Socrates and Syria.
"The sign on the wall reads ‘Jabhat al Nusra’ in red letters. One doubts that there is much distinction between Jabhat al Nusra and ISIS. Certainly not in terms of brutality or mindless devotion to some blinding fundamentalist belief. That the ‘imam’ who presides over the execution gives a sermon to an assembly of men with guns and smart phones, rather than a crowd of residents and citizens who are meant to learn from the punishment gives it a ridiculous and farcical atmosphere, except the poor woman really dies." David Macilwain.
Below is an edition of the Syrian government's news with the President's statement about terrorism and Charlie Hebdo. President al-Assad says that he understands terrorism very well because the Syrian Government has been fighting it now for four years and it is responsible for thousands of deaths in Syria.
The Australian government is supporting the activities of such terrorists, which it identifies as 'moderate rebels', in order to topple the government for its NATO friends, who want to get control of the general area and its petroleum resources. Bashar al-Assad is frequently described as the leader of a 'brutal regime', but he was overwhelmingly elected last year in free elections to which Syrians travelled from all over the world to participate in, and received votes from Syrians in other countries when they were able to vote - which was not the case in Australia.
This article argues that you could probably get away with some nasty cartoons in a truly free press because such a press would freely report all sides to a dispute and not leave whole regions and classes of people with no expression in an international argument mediatized by the very same bunch of pillaging and plundering power elites, corporate and government, who profit from their silence. The article also wonders (but does not profess to know) whether the cold blooded assassinations at Charlie Hebdo were really an act of Islamic terrorism, or another false flag, on the principle of cui bono.
I remember thinking that Charlie Hebdo was overdoing rather unfunny cartoons to demonstrate defiance without seeming to give any thought to how wronged people in the Middle East have a right to feel, due to the effects of continuing colonialism – corporate and national – under the auspices of a US-led NATO. My observations in this 2012 article, “Anti-Islamic film - not so funny,” earned me capitalized insults as a leftist apologist for Islamic terrorism, anti-feminism and censorship. There was so much sound and fury in this correspondence that it left no room for any alternative explanation or dialogue. And that is the dynamic that false flags exploit.
Western treatment of Middle East and Media support for this
It’s all very well to celebrate a free press, but, since when is the Western mainstream newsmedia actually independent and free? Not only is it heavily biased in its reporting on the Middle East – when so much is at stake – but their barracking for the destruction of US/NATO targets seems actually to incite hatred and thereby encourage some people to join jihads. Let me put it this way, the mainstream newsmedia has a way of presenting the powers it wants to split and topple in the Middle East (and the East) as if they were all variations on Vlad the Impaler, imbuing its reports with quivering outrage and bathos, so that it must seem to many that the only honorable thing to do is to go and fight with the ‘rebels’ whom the press and NATO champion. Hence, it appears, the influx of foreign ‘rebel’ fighters from Australia, France, Britain and elsewhere and the widespread ignorance of the other side.
Charlie Hebdo might have a reputation for being outspoken, but to me it seemed to toe the US/NATO establishment line on illegal wars in the Middle East. For instance it didn’t question virtually baseless Western allegations that Bashar al-Assad is a ‘brutal dictator’, but casually exploited the propaganda in a cartoon showing the Syrian president standing triumphantly in front of a mountain of human bones like a hunter. If Charlie’s objective was largely to lampoon religion of all kinds, then there was another reason not to lampoon Bashar al-Assad, who presides over the last secular Arab state. [1] In other words, modern Charlie Hebdo was not politically subtle, critical, inquiring or a champion of Truth. Perhaps if it had been, it could have built bridges.
It seems to me that if the mainstream news and traditional alternative media really reported fairly, both, all sides of what is happening in the Middle East, then maybe people would not get so bothered about cartoons. Also maybe the cartoons would be a bit funnier and more informed. If the mainstream newsmedia did not constantly support and whitewash the Western military financial and industrial machine, this kind of violent response from the Middle East would have far less support. If the mainstream Western media interviewed, not just ‘rebels’ but government and a wide variety of citizens in Saudi Arabia or in Syria, for instance, those countries would have real voices and we would have ears to hear them. If it had done so in Iraq and Libya those countries might today be intact.
At candobetter.net we have often carried copies of letters to our media, especially SBS and ABC, the Australian state television channels, asking them to report more accurately on Middle Eastern and Eastern affairs because of the danger to peace that reporting propaganda carries. See http://candobetter.net/taxonomy/term/5364 Only on one occasion have we recorded a retraction. See ABC Australia apologises for bias against Russia in reporting MH17 crash. However this was a private apology, not a public statement on television.
False flag?
I have so far written with the assumption that the Charlie Hebdo assassinations were not a false flag. Because false flags are the other side of the history of aggressive capitalist interference in the Middle East and other oil producing countries of the ‘undeveloped world’, and they are fundamental to the history of war. How else do you get peoples who hardly know each other to try to kill each other? You have to give them a reason that they believe is true.
A truly free Western newsmedia would make false flags a lot harder to fly, but today’s newsmedia actively conveys state propaganda designed to terrify the public into supporting wars and bad laws, whilst presenting it as news and entertainment.
False flags have also been used by the US as methods to goad other countries into supporting it. Europe is too close to comfort to the Middle East to be gung ho about starting wars there. Its support for the US in NATO recently has been bizarre. On one interpretation [3], it could be that, like Russia, it chooses to appease the United States, in the hope of preventing all-out war. The terrorist attacks could have been a warning to Hollande not to take an independent stand vis a vis Russia. Just five days ago he was upbeat about the sanctions being lifted if talks went well. How long is that going to last after this series of terrorist attacks?
One cannot help but ask, if this horrible Charlie Hebdo massacre was really an act of terrorism by Muslims, why would they attack cartoonists and lone journalists, instead of the big media owners and NATO policy-supporting politicians? After all, the US has had no qualms in planning and carrying out or supporting assassinations of leaders, such as of Fidel Castro, Sadadm Husein, Muammar Gaddaffi, and, still in the firing line: Bashar al-Assad. One might say it could be too hard for a bunch of poor Muslims to get to anyone rich and powerful, but poor Muslims are supposed to have flown planes into the World Trade Center and to have carried out numerous other sophisticated acts of terror. In the case of false flags though, the power elite is not going to target its own. That would better explain to me the targeting of politically lesser citizens.
I won’t go into the nuts and bolts of the reporting of the Charlie Hebdo massacre and its sequel, but some aspects immediately seem odd. One is the shooting of a policeman in the head without blood appearing, censored by France2 News because of its graphic nature – except that the real footage, whilst tragic, was strangely ungraphic. See http://www.conspiracyclub.co/2015/01/07/paris-fake-terrorism/. Then there was the identity card left in a vehicle by one of the terrorists, reminiscent of the passport found in the wreckage of the 9-11 towers. After that there was the police chase of two suspected terrorists which culminated in a shoot-out where the terrorists lost their lives, leaving no-one to tell their story. And then there was the second in command detective who shot himself at Lieges, the night of the Charlie Hebdo assassinations. http://www.lepopulaire.fr/limousin/actualite/2015/01/08/un-commissaire-de-police-de-limoges-se-suicide-dans-son-bureau_11283307.htmlHe was deeply involved in the investigation of the Charlie Hebdo cases of Muslim protest, which had been ongoing for years and was the second detective to apparently suicide in the same team in slightly over one year.
The mainstream Western press has a tendency to report the US-NATO view and which ever so-called revolutionary group they support. It does not canvas the opinions of people who do not identify with Western supported revolutionaries; it does not ask government opinion. If the press reporting on the Middle East, notably on Syria, Iran, Iraq and Libya (as well as Russia and Ukraine in Eastern Europe) actually got reports from many sides, then the people in those countries and those who identify with them would be less likely to see the Western Press as an enemy.
The West has been instrumental in bringing down leaders and governments and sowing chaos to an extent in the Middle East that most Western citizens have no inkling of because this chaotic war and looting machine called ‘capitalism and democracy’ is marketed by the Western Press as a positive force, whilst the people it is trampling are portrayed as irrational, bloodthirsty religious maniacs and international terrorists. The mainstream press generally does not make overt fun of Islam and Mohammed, but a wing of the press that identifies itself as revolutionary free press and critical of the status quo, does, purportedly to dramatise and ridicule Islam’s apparent contempt for free speech.
Charlie Hebdooriginally became a fatwa target in 2 November 2011when it published an edition on Islam, with a cover of a a cartoon Muslim saying, “100 lashes if you don’t die laughing!”. In 2012 it followed with a large number of insulting cartoons about Mohammed as a gesture of indignation against moves to censor media critical of Islam.
The context was a film called Innocence of Muslims which parts of which available on you-tube portrayed the founder of Islam in a very bad personal and political light and Muslims as aggressively anti-Christian. Publicity about this film was accompanied by widespread riots by Muslims against foreign embassies, particularly US embassies, including riots in Sydney on 15 September 2012, with police injured. At the same time warships from more than 25 countries, including the United States, Britain, France, Saudi Arabia and the UAE, were together launching a military exercise in the Straits of Hormuz, in response to threats to close it off. There was plenty of reason for Muslims to be angry with and frightened by the West apart from that film. Today the stakes are even higher and the misery of war-torn and subdivided Middle East is even greater than it was.
Maybe therefore Westerners should hold their own governments and media proprietors to greater account if we are to avoid World War Three.
Yes, we do need a really free press in the West. That is worth fighting for. Then maybe we can have cartoons and the truth in all its aspects, with a voice for everyone.
NOTES
[1]President Bashar al-Assad, although the butt of so much mediatized professionally politicized opprobrium, totally fails to bluster and threaten, but continues doggedly to present Syria’s case.
[2] International and human rights professor of law, Francis Boyle’s Destroying Libya and World Order: The Three-Decade US Campaign to Terminate the Qaddafi Revolution , (Kindle Locations 1787-1841), have suggested this view to me.
How could we allow America, NATO, Israel or other Arab states to destroy something so ancient and valuable for all humanity as Syria - the last secular Arab state? Australian peace activist, Susan Dirgham, taught English for years in Syria and got to know the country and its people very well. She argues that, without deception and our complicity through ignorance, there could be no war in Syria. But how do we work out for ourselves what is really happening in Syria and who to help? We need to understand more of Syria's history and its geopolitical position, to which she provides insight here. Just as we need to severely question the notion of US-NATO presenting a 'majority' opinion, we also need to very carefully assess what NGOs are doing in Syria. Susan is the national co-ordinator of “Australians for Mussalaha (Reconciliation) in Syria" (AMRIS). She has travelled very widely and even lived in China before it was opened to the West. When she speaks she provides testable facts and does not talk down to her audience or ask for money. Please consider asking her to speak. You may contact her at susan.dirgham51[AT[gmail.com. There is a question and answer session at the end of this video.
First Part of two part transcription of the above video.
The reality of war is complex. Fiction is often needed to make sense of it.
Inspiration:
Graham Greene’s “Our Man in Havana” is the story of a somewhat ordinary Englishman in Cuba in the 1950s, Jim Wormold, a vacuum-cleaner salesman, whose failing business and acquisitive daughter induce him to be recruited by MI6. His heart isn’t in espionage, but he has a flair for invention and his bogus reports are taken seriously by London HQ.
”He had no accomplice, except the credulity of other men.”
Tragedy results from Wormold’s deception, and it brings knowing.
”I don’t give a damn about men who are loyal to the people who pay them, to organizations… I don’t think even my country means that much. There are many countries in our blood, aren’t there, but only one person. Would the world be in the mess it is if we were loyal to love and not to countries?” Graham Greene, Our Man in Havana ”
Without deception, there would be no war in Syria.
Faith in Secular Syria
I taught at the British Council in Damascus for two years and met hundreds of Syrian people. It is those Syrian people that I met and the peaceful, secular Syria that I explored that is in my heart and that motivates me to be a peace activist. I was also a peace activist during the Vietnam War and I realized then how important it was to investigate, to research, to understand what was really going on and to expose the lies and to know that there were a lot of ‘men from Havana’, a lot of people working for war, otherwise you would have no war.
The Syria I know is a secular country, a country where you could find faith; Syrian people of all faiths are very devout. The impression I got was that their faith was genuine. And in the Syria I knew there was love and hope, so supporting their country was supporting love, supporting secularism. In the Syria I knew, it was taboo to ask people about their religion. If you did speak about religion, you spoke with sensitivity and respect. I believe this gave the people of Syria one of the most precious freedoms that anyone can have. That is the freedom to approach others in your society, no matter what their religious or ethnic background, with an open heart.
But that has been destroyed by those people who wish to destroy Syria.
I have a faith in secular Syria, the Syria I know, and there are good reasons for that faith. One is the position of women. In 1949, Syrian women were the first women in the Middle East to be granted the right to vote. They have the same basic rights as women in Australia in regards to the freedom to dress as they choose. On a visit to Syria in 2010, I heard from former students at the British Council that the talk among young educated people at that time concerned women having the same social and sexual freedoms as men.
Syrian women have the freedom to seek an education, to further their career. One of my students at the British Council, a single mother who drove a VW Beetle, worked for the Health Ministry. Her ambition was to become the Minister of Health, not a foolish dream for a highly intelligent Syrian woman as one of the most respected ministers in Syria today is a woman, Dr Kinda al-Shammat, the Minister for Social Affairs, a minister who works at the grass-roots level, with the people.
In secular Syria there was freedom of religion, which meant that Christmas, Easter and the Eid Festivals were all national holidays, so everybody stopped for each other’s holy days. I felt the magic of this on my first Christmas in Damascus. There was a huge Christmas tree in Bab Touma, the Christian quarter of the city, and the main street was closed for the festival – Christian and Muslim families mingled, and a man dressed up as Father Christmas played the saxophone. These days, you are more likely to see solemnity in Bab Touma.
Islam and Christianity, as they are practiced in Syria, are inclusive, so in recent years it is not uncommon to see imams in churches and priests in mosques for funeral services.
Humanity, Faith, Diversity – Who Describes it? Who Seeks the Truth?
Damascus is the oldest continuously inhabited city in the world. It is part of everyone’s history, of everyone’s humanity. Syria is basically a bridge between the different religious faiths. You can feel this in the air in Syria. The humanity of Damascus, as well as its beauty, has been extolled by many foreigners that have lived there.
For example, in 2010, British writer, Malika Browne, who once lived in the Old City of Damascus, celebrated Syria’s history, miracles and beauty. Two years later, Browne returned to the same theme in an article in The Guardian. A car bomb in the Christian quarter of Damascus prompted Browne to reflect on the Damascus she knew and loved – the Damascus I knew. However, Browne’s one sentence conclusion is partisan and glib: this harmony is precisely what one man, Bashar al-Assad and a handful of family members, is bent on trying to destroy. Few general readers would question such an unsubstantiated claim because hatred for ‘Assad’ has become a tacit truth, it has seeped into so much of our culture – political cartoons, travel writing, and movie reviews. But as someone who looks deeper for truths, I want to know what motivates Malika Browne to include flippant, but lethal propaganda in such a beautiful piece of writing about Damascus. What motivates her to ignore the points of view of Christians in Syria, many of them victims? Syrian Christian leaders have spoken out against ‘militants’ and proposed western military action. My conclusion: as Browne is married to a former Damascus-based diplomat, she has divided loyalties. Her spouse was someone’s ‘man in Damascus’. Malika Browne’s willingness to adhere to a western war narrative on Syria overrides her allegiance to the people of Syria.
Labels Quash Discussion
I believe there is good reason to support Syria, particularly the people of Syria. But if I try to get a gig on a radio station, I am told I am an ‘Assad supporter’. Labels are being used to quash discussion, to quash debate and peace activism, and they have been effective. Although Syria has a population of 23 million people, the crisis in Syria has been reduced to slogans; it’s ‘Assad versus the rebels’. This slogan has been very effective because it has intimidated people. People have been too afraid to stand up. To be told you are a supporter of Assad is almost like being told you are a supporter of Hitler. Few dare go there.
And those lined up against Syria are basically the whole world, except for some notable exceptions, which include Russia, China, Central America, Latin America, India, Oman, and South Africa. We rarely hear about the notable exceptions because the ‘international community’ is said to be against Assad, but actually the international community is basically just America and its allies.
Partisan Stand of NGOs
What can deter people from standing up for Syria is that you have NGOs, such as Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International as well as the U.N., taking very partisan stands against Syria and making use of emotive language rather than objective and sober analysis. These bodies are viewed as trustworthy, dependable, and their blessed aura and global presence are being exploited in today’s modern so-called information and humanitarian wars.
This year, two Nobel Peace Laureates, a former UN Assistant Secretary General, UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in the Palestinian Territories and over 100 scholars wrote a letter to Human Rights Watch, critical of its close ties with the U.S. government. They questioned HRW’s independence.
In regards to Amnesty International, there are many people working for it who have integrity and good intentions, but it is not the Amnesty of 40 years ago, when it was a grass-roots organization. Today, it is a corporation, with security doors, executive salaries, gate-keepers and merchandize. It has a HQ. No doubt there is dedication, but Amnesty International also provides a career path.
At the end of 2011, I accompanied members of the Syrian community to the Amnesty office in Melbourne to report on the killings of innocent civilians by armed men early on in the crisis in Syria.
One young Syrian Australian reported to Amnesty that armed men had killed his uncle, a farmer, and two of his friends when they were on the highway to Damascus. And I reported the deaths of three young teenage boys. They were killed in Homs on 17 April 2011, Independence Day, so a public holiday in Syria. They had been in a car with army numberplates because the father of two of them was an army officer. (There is reference to their deaths in an article titled Questioning the Syrian “Casualty List” by Sharmine Narwani, an analyst based in Beirut.)
The Amnesty officials in Melbourne and Sydney who took official note of these reports were very respectful and receptive. However, the reports were sent to Amnesty’s head office in London (or perhaps New York), and stories of these killings were never reported by Amnesty.
Amnesty International, like Human Rights Watch, has close and inappropriate ties with the US Administration. For example, its US director in 2012 was Suzanne Nossel, author of the 2004 paper ‘Smart Power’ which explores ways America can remain the number one global power without being overly militaristic and unpopular. Nossel has worked with top US State Department officials, and since leaving Amnesty, she has moved on smartly to become executive director of PEN American Centre, which belongs to “International PEN, the worldwide association of writers that defends those who are harassed, imprisoned, and killed for their views,” Wikipedia.
But for an outsider, a non-Syrian, to comprehend the scale of the deception and intrigue needed to prosecute a war against Syria requires a great deal of scepticism and many dedicated hours of research. The mainstream narrative, together with the support it gets from NGOs, can overwhelm and bewilder us. To challenge people in authority - men and women in grey suits – and a distorted narrative that has slipped subliminally into our culture is a truly daunting task.
What requires support?
• The Syrian people and their secular society and state
• Diplomacy
• The non-violent struggle for political reforms
Lobbyists for War vs Lobbyists for Peace
There have been many lobbyists for a war in Syria and few lobbyists for peace. People who lobby for war are more often than not employed directly or indirectly to do so. Generally, you don’t get paid to lobby for peace.
For some years now, my peace activism has led me to email politicians and people in the media. One prominent politician on my email list was Senator Bob Brown, the Greens leader who was highly regarded for his anti-war stand in the past. However, I had reason to be disturbed by the Greens’ position on Syria. Senator Brown was vocal in his support for sanctions against Syria, for the closure of the Syrian embassy, and for the Australian Senate to call on President Assad to resign. Such a political stand in a country very distant from Syria ignored the views and circumstances of 23 million people in Syria. They were a response to the lobbyists for war.
In March 2012, Bob Brown’s office responded to me directly, giving me an opportunity to lobby for peace. In an email reply to Senator Brown’s office, I made several points. They included the following:
• A well-meaning Victorian Greens politician, Ms Collen Hartland, had been befriended by two or three Syrian Australians. Seeing them as trusted sources, Ms Hartland felt qualified to inform others on events in Syria. (The claims of two or three men in Australia helped determine Greens’ policies on a conflict impacting the lives of 23 million people in Syria.)
• Robert Fisk’s reports on Syria may have determined many Australians’ views, but Fisk doesn’t represent the views of millions of peace-loving Syrians. He writes for western readers. If his often cryptic reports on Syria represent anyone’s views in the Middle East, they might be those of Lebanese political figure and former Druze ‘warlord’, Walid Jumblatt, a close friend of Fisk and someone who is often ridiculed for his fickle political alliances. (NB: Some truth can be found in Fisk’s reports, but he should be read with a critical eye.)
About three weeks after I sent my email to Senator Brown’s office, the senator resigned from politics. Bob Brown may have realized he had been wrong on Syria and it was all too dreadful and complicated, so he resigned. However, reasons for his resignation were probably much more prosaic than that, of course. However, what would have happened if Bob Brown had stood up and declared that he had been wrong about Syria and he now supported diplomacy and would work hard to expose war propaganda? Would he have taken the Greens’ Party with him? Would the wider community and the media have reassessed their stands on Syria? I think not. At that time, before we became aware of IS and the depth of the brutality of armed groups, few Australians were in a position to see beyond the slogans for war. Few were prepared to run the risk of being labelled an “Assad apologist”. (Labour politician Anthony Albanese was one exception.)
It should be noted that there are two prominent U.S. politicians who have taken consistently strong stands against the propaganda that feeds the war in Syria, both have stood for presidential nominations. One is former Republican Congressman Ron Paul, and the other is former Democratic Congressman Denis Kucinich, who visited Syria in 2013 to interview President Assad for Fox News. A US senator who has also defied the mainstream narrative has been Republican Senator Richard Black, who famously sent a letter to President Assad to thank him for the Syrian army’s protection of Syrian Christians. This predictably led to the headline, “Assad-loving Va. Pol defends views”.
The Syrian Perspective – An Historic One
While the Australian perspective of Syria is being shaped largely by our media, that of people in Syria is shaped by local events and an understanding of Syria’s history and its place in the world.
There are over 300 graves of Australian soldiers in a well-tended cemetery in Damascus, but the Syrian view of the contributions of ANZACs to their history may differ considerably to ours. For us, the role of Australian soldiers looms large in the lands they have fought in, and the locals are almost inconsequential extras.
My grandfather was in the 3rd Light Horse Brigade that entered Damascus on 1 October 1918, some hours before Lawrence of Arabia’s more ‘epic’ entry. After the expulsion of the generally oppressive Turkish forces in Greater Syria, Britain and France divided up Syria between them. France sent troops into Damascus in 1920, and in 1925, in response to the local opposition to their rule, bombed and destroyed a section of the historic old city of Damascus.
Australian soldiers were again in Syria in World War 2, this time to join the fight against the Vichy French, who they feared were collaborating with the Nazis in the region. The win against these French forces allowed De Galle’s Free French forces to control Syria. France after the war was reluctant to give up its strategic hold in Syria. In 1945, it attacked the Syrian parliament building in Damascus to crush any fight for independence. Finally, Syria achieved independence with the exit of the last French troops on 17 April 1946.
The French departure enabled American interference in Syrian affairs.
A CIA agent behind the coup, Miles Copeland Jr, was someone with a respectable, even glamorous, background, being the son of a doctor, the husband of an archaeologist, and having been a trumpet player with the Glen Millar Orchestra before the war. From the perspective of many westerners, Copeland was a guy to respect. From the perspective of a Syrian, he was a man to distrust: he was employed to destabilize their country.
From that first successful US-backed military coup in 1949, there is a succession of coups and counter-coups up until 1970. There were 14 different presidents in just over 20 years.
But US plans for the overthrow of an independent Syrian government may have got nastier in recent years than they were in the 1950s. In 2001, after 9/11, American General Wesley Clark was told by a general in the Pentagon that the Secretary of Defence’s office had plans to ‘take out’ seven countries, these included Syria, Iran, Iraq and Libya. Clark explained that the United States underwent a ‘policy coup’ after 9/11.
Syria’s neighbours involved in supporting unrest and violence
The last time Syria experienced terror anything like it is experiencing now was in the late 70s and early 80s. The then president, Hafiz al-Asad, publicly accused the CIA of “encouraging ‘sabotage and subversion’ in Syria so as to bring ‘the entire Arab world under joint US-Israeli domination’” (“Asad: The Struggle for the Middle East”, by Patrick Seale, page335)
Ironically perhaps, this subversion involved support from Arab leaders as in a 1982 speech, President Assad said this about Saddam Hussien,
The hangman of Iraq was not content to kill tens of thousands of his own people. He came to Syria to carry out his favourite hobbies of killing, assassination and sabotage. That man has been sending arms to the criminals in Syria ever since he took power.
(Quoted from, “Asad: The Struggle for the Middle East”, by Patrick Seale, page 336)
Israel and Syria
Books could be written about tensions and conflict between Israel and Syria. The Israeli state is situated on land that used to be part of Greater Syria under the Ottoman Empire, and it has occupied the Golan Heights, Syrian territory, since 1967. ‘Greater Israel’, or what is known as the Yinon Plan formulated in 1982, calls for the balkanization of Arab states; Israel could dominate while Muslims killed each other in endless sectarian wars.
With the wars brought about by the establishment of the State of Israel, come espionage, intrigue, tightening security, and death. Every country suffers. In 1965, Eli Cohen, an Israeli spy in Syria who ingratiated himself among top officials in Syria to become an advisor to the Syria Minister of Defence, was hanged. Two years later, in 1967, 34 American sailors on the USS Liberty, which was an intelligence gathering ship, were killed when Israeli air and naval forces attacked the Liberty.
From a Syrian perspective, Israel’s support for the insurgency is a continuation of Israel’s efforts to dominate the Middle East by weakening, even destroying, its neighbours.
From an Israeli perspective, tiny warring Sunni, Shi’a, Alawi, Kurdish, and Druze states in the region might be seen as the best option for Israel - a Jewish state in everything but name. A strong united pluralist Syrian republic which challenges Israel’s divisive and aggressive policies on the world stage would not be welcome.
Chants heard at the first violent anti-government protests in Syria in March 2011 and repeated over the coming years were “Christians to Beirut; Alawites to their graves” and “No to Hezbollah. No to Iran. Syria for Muslims.” They are chants that signal the sectarian violence that has taken place in Syria as enemies of Syria attempt to break up the nation.
Renown Middle East expert, Patrick Seale wrote in the conclusion of his book "Asad: the Struggle for the Middle East" (the book is on the father of the current president),
”Asad’s Syria represents the rejection of an Israeli-dominated Middle East order, offering instead one based on the supremacy of neither Arabs nor Israelis but on a balance of power between an Arab Levant centred on Damascus and an Israel within its 1948-9 boundaries. …”
Seale pointed out that Israel would have to give up its ambition to dominate and substitute it for a will to co-exist.
The Second Part of the text to the video will be transcribed as soon as possible.
Watch an old reporter turned politician do a few rounds in the ring with skilled Russian interviewer, Oksana Boyko of RT. Oksana gives him his head initially and he struts predictably, but things get interesting later, particularly on the issue of Australia's role and responsibility for the mess in the Middle East and Syria. (Bob Carr was a recent foreign affairs minister for Australia.) For me, it was fascinating listening to Carr's 'justifications'. Could a grown-up really believe this stuff? Who knows when Western leaders may really be called to account for their removal of order and warmongering in the Middle East. I wonder if this troubles them, if they lie awake at night going over their stories.
"Yarmouk is only a few kilometres south of Damascus. It was once a thriving centre of colour and life with a vibrant market that made it much more than just a Palestinian enclave. Over the last four years though it has been the centre of so much violence and death that it is now the most festering wound on the ailing Syrian body. And perhaps the most tragic dimension of Yarmouk at the moment is the way the suffering of these people is being manipulated to provide a new rationale for Western military intervention."
A delegation of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Mediterranean arrived in Damascus on Tuesday 28 April 2015 to discuss ending the crisis in Syria. Participants discussed the role of Western-backed armed groups in destabilizing the country. They also discussed ways in which the Mediterranean Parliament can support a peaceful solution in Syria. The Parliamentary Assembly is working on a UN resolution to condemn all violent extremism and prevent funding for groups that perpetrate it. Members consider the prolongation of the crisis as very dangerous for the region. This sounds like a concerted approach from an organisation that is able to name some of the problems out loud.
Damascus, SANA – President Bashar al-Assad described in an interview with the Swedish Expressen Newspaper the outcomes of Moscow talks as a breakthrough and said that the UN envoy’s Aleppo plan, which is supported by the government, was spoiled by external intervention, renewing his warning that the terrorism imported to Syria will "bite" its backers whenever it has the chance. He also called on Sweden to influence the EU to lift the economic sanctions imposed on the Syrian people. President Assad also answers (yet again) re-posed questions about chemical weapons and talks about contradictions in US policy and treatment of terrorism since 9-11. The following is part of the full text of the interview, which was first published by 
Many refugee advocates seem to be entirely unaware that Syria - constantly damned by the mainstream media - is the only country which has given permanent status to the Palestinians who lost their country to Israel. Knowing this gives us a perspective on why US/Israel/NATO is so keen to destroy Syria: their chief target is to destroy any chance of Palestine reestablising itself from Syria. In this article the author, a former resident of Aleppo, with relatives still in Syria, describes some of the history of Palestine-Syrian cooperation and how recently foreign 'Arab Spring' money has religiously radicalised resistance movements in Palestinian refuges in Syria to turn against the secular Syrian Government, to the great satisfaction of Palestine's enemies. Author's name updated 12-4-2015
This article is based on a press release dated 9 April 2015 from Ahmed Majdalani of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), published by the 
Terrorists, mostly from the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), in cahoots with Jabhat al-Nusra, entered the neighborhood recently and have been committing terror acts against its inhabitants, which include Palestinian refugees and Syrian citizens.
I am writing today to make three comments on your e-mail message to me, entitled “New Democrats on War in Iraq and Syria.”
Why do Medecins Sans Frontieres (MFS), Avaaz and the Electronic Frontier Foundation push the claims of insurgents and their supporters?
On 19 March 2015, 
On Wednesday April 1, 2015 at Yarmouk Palestinian camp in the outskirts of Damascus, a ceremony was held, organized by the Syrian Ministry of Reconciliation. However, the camp was attacked by elements from the nearby village of Hajar al-Aswad, allied with some ex-militants of Hamas who first joined the Al-Nusra Front (al-Qaeda) and who have now joined Daesh. [ISIS.]
Video and transcript inside: Three days ago I heard a casual report, lasting maybe two lines, on SBS or ABC news, that ISIS militants had taken over a suburb of Damascus six kilometers from the Presidential Palace. Although this sounded really awful, the lack of detail was suspicious. One could imagine the United States using such a half-baked report as an excuse to attack the area from the air and kill the Syrian president, so I tried to find out more by going outside Australian and US/NATO news sources. The Syrian government has since driven ISIS out of the area. [1] Below this introduction is a video interview with Alaa Ibrahim, and my transcript of it. From Voltaire.net [1] I learned were that Yamouk refugee 'camp' is not a camp with tents but a fully fledged built-up suburb of Damascus, mostly inhabited by Palestinian refugees, to whom Syria grants full rights to housing, free education and health, like ordinary citizens. Palestine, as readers would be aware, no longer exists on the map, but it used to be next door to Syria, on its southern border, in the area now occupied by Israel. Syria is the only Arab state that provides legal equality to Palestinians and it administers their areas in conjunction with Palestinian leaders. Something like seven million of Syria's population before the current war were refugees from, as well as Palestine, the nearby war-torn states, notably Iraq. (It is amazing that the Australian refugee advocate movement and our anti-war movement - such as it is - does not appear to have realised this.)
Originally published under the title of "Iran's deputy FM: Yemen's president uses terrorists to fight rebels," this is the transcript, with links to the video, of Sophie Shevardnadze's interview with Iran Deputy Foreign Minister, Hossein Amir-Abdollahian. The beginning of the video is particularly instructive, as Hossein Amir-Abdollahian gives a run-down on what is happening from Iran's very close perspective. Among other things, it becomes clear that Iran does not believe that the United States is trying to stop IS. Saudi Arabia has said that it is going to develop nuclear weapons. Iran says it will not let this happen. It also says that it will not let Syria fall. The Minister says that the reason the United States wants to wreck Syria is that then it will have destroyed the main Russian foothold in the Middle East and that will allow the United States to dominate the region and maintain world hegemony. See also 
"Today, the world's greatest single campaign of terror entails the execution of entire families, guests at weddings, mourners at funerals. These are Obama's victims. According to the New York Times, Obama makes his selection from a CIA "kill list" presented to him every Tuesday in the White House Situation Room. He then decides, without a shred of legal justification, who will live and who will die. His execution weapon is the Hellfire missile carried by a pilotless aircraft known as a drone; these roast their victims and festoon the area with their remains. Each "hit" is registered on a faraway console screen as a "bugsplat"." (John Pilger). Article republished with permission from author. First published 26 February 2015 at 
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad: "I hope the first thing, which is very simple, just for the officials to tell their people the truth, the unbiased truth, without any preconceptions. Just tell your people the truth, and they’ll be able to analyze it." President Bashar al-Assad gave an interview to Portuguese State Television, RTP, which displayed a good range of bias in its questions. The full text of the interview forms the article inside.Article first published on Global Research, March 06, 2015. Portuguese State Television, RTP and SANA Region: Middle East & North Africa Theme: US NATO War Agenda In-depth Report: Syria: NATO's next war? See 
Question 1: In a few days, it will be 4 years since the protests began in Syria against the government of Bashar al-Assad. From then on it has been a massacre. More than 220 thousand people have died, and there are 4 million displaced people. The arrival of Daesh (Islamic State) has made the situation more grim. For this reasons, it’s important to speak to a key figure in all this process. Today, he gives his first interview ever to a Portuguese media outlet. The Syrian President, Bashar Al Assad. How do you describe your country today, Mr. President?
The U.S. military is causing devastation to the environment. Joseph Nevins writes in 2010 that "The U.S. military is the world’s single biggest consumer of fossil fuels, and the single entity most responsible for destabilizing the Earth’s climate." The article states ". . . the Pentagon devours about 330,000 barrels of oil per day (a barrel has 42 gallons), more than the vast majority of the world’s countries." The amount of oil used by your military machine is beyond belief, and each military vehicle also releases pollutants through the exhaust. Tanks, trucks, Humvees and other vehicles are not known for their fuel economy. Other fuel guzzlers are submarines, helicopters and fighter jets. Each military flight, whether involved in the transport of soldiers or in a combat mission, contributes more carbon into the atmosphere. Candobetter.net editor: Unfortunately the Australian government supports this US war machine. Earth Day is Wednesday April 22, 2015. These letters will be sent for that occasion but they seek to involve the public earlier in this campaign against war.
People are becoming more aware of the contradictions in the dominant (official) rhetoric about Syria and foreign intervention on behalf of the rebels. People hope to find out the truth from women and ordinary people, because they know they cannot really trust the mainstream media or, unfortunately, various NGOs and political organisations. Inside, find a link to an interview with Agnes Mariam about about how Syrian women feel about Islamic fundamentalism, and about the very doubtful role of the UN, NGOs and Al Jazeera in this expanding conflict.
Historically, this latest eruption of American militarism at the start of the 21st Century is akin to that of America opening the 20th Century by means of the U.S.-instigated Spanish-American War in 1898. Then the Republican administration of President William McKinley stole their colonial empire from Spain in Cuba, Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines; inflicted a near genocidal war against the Filipino people; while at the same time illegally annexing the Kingdom of Hawaii and subjecting the Native Hawaiian people (who call themselves the Kanaka Maoli) to near genocidal conditions. Additionally, McKinley’s military and colonial expansion into the Pacific was also designed to secure America’s economic exploitation of China pursuant to the euphemistic rubric of the “open door” policy. But over the next four decades America’s aggressive presence, policies, and practices in the “Pacific” would ineluctably pave the way for Japan’s attack at Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 194l, and thus America’s precipitation into the ongoing Second World War. Today a century later the serial imperial aggressions launched and menaced by the Republican Bush Jr. administration and now the Democratic Obama administration are threatening to set off World War III.
By shamelessly exploiting the terrible tragedy of 11 September 2001, the Bush Jr. administration set forth to steal a hydrocarbon empire from the Muslim states and peoples living in Central Asia and the Persian Gulf and Africa under the bogus pretexts of (1) fighting a war against international terrorism; and/or (2) eliminating weapons of mass destruction; and/or (3) the promotion of democracy; and/or (4) self-styled “humanitarian intervention”/responsibility to protect. Only this time the geopolitical stakes are infinitely greater than they were a century ago: control and domination of two-thirds of the world’s hydrocarbon resources and thus the very fundament and energizer of the global economic system – oil and gas. The Bush Jr./ Obama administrations have already targeted the remaining hydrocarbon reserves of Africa, Latin America, and Southeast Asia for further conquest or domination, together with the strategic choke-points at sea and on land required for their transportation. In this regard, the Bush Jr. administration announced the establishment of the U.S. Pentagon’s Africa Command (AFRICOM) in order to better control, dominate, and exploit both the natural resources and the variegated peoples of the continent of Africa, the very cradle of our human species. Libya and the Libyans became the first victims to succumb to AFRICOM under the Obama administration. They will not be the last.
The US-Empire's present preeminent position of brutal global thug is a self-evident truth based on hard facts regarding the magnitudes of death and destruction; counted in millions of lives, millions of refugees, and nation-wide obliterations of civil infrastructure, not to mention annihilations of national and civil institutions. US crimes do not diminish the importance of injustices perpetrated by non-aligned regimes, but there is an obvious asymmetry of magnitudes that simply cannot be denied. (Article originally published here: 
This exhibition is part of a movement asking for no foreign intervention in Syria. Australia backs foreign intervention in Syria, which means we subsidise the provision of weapons for the overthrow of a democratically elected government which most Syrians want to keep. Here is an extract from the article inside: “We have a well in our house, and since there’s no water—because the ‘rebels’ broke the pipes—my father was giving water to neighbours. He was in his house when a sniper entered the garden and shot him, killed him. Those ‘rebels’ don’t represent the Syrian people. Syrian soldiers aren’t fighting against normal people, they’re fighting against people equipped with the most advanced weapons and trained just to come to Syria. They destroy our homes, churches, mosques. But what makes me happy, our people, because they love Syria so much, decided not to leave. Even my dad, he knew he lived in a very dangerous area, but he decided not to leave, and he paid for it with his life.” This article by Eva Bartlett is republished from her blog at 
Inside you may view the execution of a so far nameless woman in a town in Idlib province, Syria, which was taken over by 'rebels' about one year ago. She pleads to see her children before she is executed, but to no avail. She is told to kneel, while a bunch of unpleasant looking and frighteningly stupid and arrogant-sounding men discuss matters loudly - for minutes on end - before she is suddenly dispatched. Obviously this is not an isolated act, but we ask women to make themselves aware of this act of political brutality against all of us and to unite against US/NATO foreign intervention in Syria, which is making it much harder for the Bashar al-Assad Government (which does not execute women for adultery) to combat these evil forces. The overwhelming message from Syrian people is please stop foreign intervention in Syria. Please let the Syrian army fight these 'rebels'. See 
This article argues that you could probably get away with some nasty cartoons in a truly free press because such a press would freely report all sides to a dispute and not leave whole regions and classes of people with no expression in an international argument mediatized by the very same bunch of pillaging and plundering power elites, corporate and government, who profit from their silence. The article also wonders (but does not profess to know) whether the cold blooded assassinations at Charlie Hebdo were really an act of Islamic terrorism, or another false flag, on the principle of cui bono.
I remember thinking that Charlie Hebdo was overdoing rather unfunny cartoons to demonstrate defiance without seeming to give any thought to how wronged people in the Middle East have a right to feel, due to the effects of continuing colonialism – corporate and national – under the auspices of a US-led NATO. My observations in this 2012 article, 
How could we allow America, NATO, Israel or other Arab states to destroy something so ancient and valuable for all humanity as Syria - the last secular Arab state? Australian peace activist, Susan Dirgham, taught English for years in Syria and got to know the country and its people very well. She argues that, without deception and our complicity through ignorance, there could be no war in Syria. But how do we work out for ourselves what is really happening in Syria and who to help? We need to understand more of Syria's history and its geopolitical position, to which she provides insight here. Just as we need to severely question the notion of US-NATO presenting a 'majority' opinion, we also need to very carefully assess what NGOs are doing in Syria. Susan is the national co-ordinator of “Australians for Mussalaha (Reconciliation) in Syria" (AMRIS). She has travelled very widely and even lived in China before it was opened to the West. When she speaks she provides testable facts and does not talk down to her audience or ask for money. Please consider asking her to speak. You may contact her at susan.dirgham51[AT[gmail.com. There is a question and answer session at the end of this video.
Watch an old reporter turned politician do a few rounds in the ring with skilled Russian interviewer, 
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