Syria

Once upon a time, there was a terrible tyrant who lived in an ancient castle with his family in the land of Sham. They lived in decadent luxury, feasting it was said on the young and succulent progeny of the land they ruled over. The people living below slaved to scratch a living and keep some food for themselves, suffering constant fear of the tyrant's soldiers and their terrible weapons.

But one day the benevolent rulers of the neighbouring lands got together and agreed to help the poor peasants of the land of Sham fight for their rights, and even overthrow the wretched tyrant. The royal leaders of these lands, who followed a faith of tolerance and peace and love, opened their gold purses for the people of Sham, and bought them gleaming swords to protect themselves from the tyrant's raiders, as well as new tunics of black goat hair and supplies of grain and oil and incense for their homes. But they also gave them wonderful books full of sacred words and prayers that the people could recite, and shout out to curse the wicked tyrant and his dreadful men.

But the people of Sham still struggled, as the tyrant found new ways to steal their food and to terrorise them, so the kings got together again and hatched a plan. They would send some of their own honoured knights and courtiers to the land of Sham and lay siege to the castle, cutting the vital supplies of oil and of fuel and food to the tyrant and his family by kidnapping his men with their cargoes. The oil which came from the land of Sham was very valuable, so the benevolent kings of Krisis - which was the name of their lands, traded the special oil they had captured for tools and weapons for the peasants of Sham. Then the kings sent instructions to their knights and courtiers on how to strike at the castle when the tyrant had been so weakened by the siege that he could no longer resist the swords and curses of the knights of Krisis and the armies of 'Free Sham'...

This is an ancient story, and the ending we can only guess at now, because the land of Sham, which is now known as 'Syria', looks very different. In fact it is almost the mirror image of the old fable, as Syria's ruler is anything but an evil tyrant and lives in a small palace far from his family's home and lands. He doesn't need to protect himself from his people with walls and weapons, because they will protect him, while he keeps them safe from the evils of the world. And those evils are now all around, as the lands of Krisis are now occupied by kings and princes who know nothing of justice and humanity and occupy themselves in counting their gold and polishing their swords and guns, and plotting on how to attack their neighbours to steal their property and drive out their people....

- and thus begins the story of St George and the Dragon of Da'esh...

The Reverend Andrew Ashdown has been visiting Syria since 2005 – several visits before the conflict, and three in the last two years. On this occasion he was a member of a diverse peace delegation which was allowed freedom of movement by the Syrian Government. Ashdown writes: During the visit we met with hundreds of people - local and national political leaders, both government and internal opposition figures; with local and national Muslim and Christian leaders and members of reconciliation committees; with internally displaced refugees; and with numerous people on the streets of towns and cities – Sunni, Shi’a, Christian, Alawite; most of whom feel their voices are unheard, ignored and misrepresented.

Candobetter.net Editor: Emphasis and headings that are not place-names have been inserted by the editor.

Revd Andrew Ashdown is an Anglican Priest in the Diocese of Winchester, England. He has been visiting, leading groups to the Middle East, and engaging with faith leaders in the region for 30 years. He also works in the field of Inter-faith. Andrew visited Syria several times prior to the conflict, and has visited the country three times in the last 20 months. He is currently undertaking a PhD exploring Christian/Muslim relations in Syria in recent years. - Editor.

Delegation to Syria

I was in Syria as part of an international delegation in Syria, led by Mairead Maguire, Nobel Peace laureate; at the invitation of the Greek Melkite Syrian Patriarch Gregorius Laham; and at our own expense. This was my third visit to Syria since April 2014, and I have visited Syria on several occasions prior to the conflict.

Voices of Syrians themselves are largely ignored in polarised narrative

In this report, I seek to convey the key messages from my latest visit to Syria. The context is highly complex. The country has long been a rich mosaic of cultures and faiths. It is a birthplace of civilisations and of the Abrahamic faiths, which have lived predominantly in harmony for hundreds of years. In the context of the war, there are many narratives, and the West’s tends to be skewed, biased and misleading. Of course there are truths in all narratives, but those that pretend that Syria’s problems are ‘black and white’ or a case of ‘good vs evil’ are profoundly misguided. In all of it, the voices of Syrians have been largely ignored. And as I have travelled in the country in the past couple of years, I have found a remarkable consistency to the cries and wishes of the people – cries and wishes that fly in the face of the violent prejudices and narratives of those outside the country.

Government provided delegation with armed guard but did not prevent our freedom of movement

For the visit, the Church arranged with the Government to provide us with armed security for protection for which we are very grateful, as the risk of attack or kidnap anywhere is real, but we had no government representative with us, and were free to move as we wish.

During the visit we met with hundreds of people - local and national political leaders, both government and internal opposition figures; with local and national Muslim and Christian leaders and members of reconciliation committees; with internally displaced refugees; and with numerous people on the streets of towns and cities – Sunni, Shi’a, Christian, Alawite; all of whom feel their voices are unheard, ignored and misrepresented.

Itinerary

We travelled to Damascus, Homs, Maaloula and Tartous, and stayed 3 nights in a 6th Century monastery just 8 km from ‘IS’ lines. Sadly we had to flee Maaloula when we were informed that terrorists in the surrounding area (belonging to a western-backed ‘moderate’ faction) had heard of our visit and intended to try to ambush us.

We had hoped to visit Aleppo, but our safety both on the route and in the city could not be guaranteed. In Lebanon we also met with General Michel Aoun, a leading Christian politician, and with the Vice-president of Hezbollah, Sheikh Naim Qassem.

Damascus

The centre of Damascus – the historic and commercial areas of the city – remains beautiful, despite the ravages of frequent shelling from ‘rebel’ held suburbs. But the presence of numerous army checkpoints throughout the city, and the economic effects of the war – closed hotels and shops – are evident. Yet life goes on. People try to live with a degree of ‘normality’, but the economic situation is increasingly harsh.

Talking to friends and people on the street in Damascus and elsewhere is deeply moving. The economic crisis is biting deep. Vast numbers of people have no or little income and are struggling to survive. One friend told me he knew several friends who had had good jobs before the conflict, who are now reduced to begging on the streets. In some areas of Damascus, formerly a proud, dynamic, prosperous city, there are lines of impromptu stalls selling second hand clothes - not from charities as in Africa - but from ordinary citizens selling clothes and belongings in order to eat, or heat their houses in the winter. Again and again, we have been told this is the primary reason now for many emigrating - not (as Western politicians or media would have us believe) for fear of the government; but simply the need to survive. One person said: "We can survive the war, but we cannot survive without food". This is a heart-rending situation especially for those of us who knew Syria before the conflict. Certainly, I detect a change even since my last visit in April this year - a shift from fear (there is a sense that Russia has helped shift the balance in the war) - to a sense of real sadness and depression. Everyone is affected and exhausted by the war and longs for its end. The actions of the western allies are only prolonging it and deepening the suffering.

It was a joy to spend a few hours with Greek Melkite Patriarch of Syria, His Excellency Gregorius III Laham, and to be invited to lunch with him. It is often forgotten that Christianity in Syria dates from the time of St. Paul, and there have been Christians in the land ever since. Syria remains the only country in the world where Aramaic, the language of Jesus, is still spoken.

The Patriarch’s message? : Syria is the cradle of civilisation and of faiths which have for centuries lived in harmony together. The world should cease arming and supporting people of violence, and bring all parties together in a shared political process. Outsiders have no right to dictate who is or isn't a part of that process. Who leads the country should be chosen by Syrians, not by external powers. For the sake of Christianity, and for Christian-Muslim relations worldwide, the Church should be listening to the people of faith from the lands of their birth. Sadly, that call is ignored.

In Damascus we also met with the Grand Mufti, His Excellency Dr. Ahmad Badr Al Din Hassoun. An impressive figure and a highly respected Muslim theologian in his own right, Dr. Hassoun is passionate about the plurality of Syrian society and the equal place that Muslims, Christians and Jews have always had, and should continue to have, within it. Dr. Hassoun must be one of the most ‘moderate’ and inclusive Muslim leaders in the world , and yet countries in the west, because he is a President’s appointee, refuse to meet him. There are indeed those of an Islamist persuasion in Syria who hate him because he represents an approach to Islam that some Islamist interpretations do not allow. Yet, he represents hope for the continuance of inter-religious respect and sectarian stability in Syrian society, and is certainly someone with whom our leaders should be speaking, but he is refused a visa to visit Britain.

Qara

Our Base for three nights was the remarkable Monastery of St. James the Mutilated, near the Sunni/Christian village of Qara, in the desert 60 miles north of Damascus. Here, we were surrounded by fighters of the so-called 'IS' about 25km to the east, and about 8 km to the west. The village was occupied by them briefly in November 2013, and the monastery was untouched due to the protection of the Muslim residents of the village who smuggled food to them.

The monastery was built in the 6th Century. Its Church was built on both a previous Roman one and a pagan temple before that, a symbol of the ancient rootedness of Christianity in the land of Syria. Its ruins were restored by the amazing indomitable Mother Agnes, who has worked untiringly with local Christian and Muslim leaders to undertake reconciliation processes in village communities; to rehabilitate fighters and negotiate truces. There is an inspiring community of nuns and monks here living out a Christian ministry and witness. Mother Agnes is much loved and respected here and the criticism she has received in the west I believe is grossly unfair. Nights were punctured with the regular sound of not so distant gunfire and shelling. And yet despite the proximity of terrorists, each service is preceded with the ringing of a loud bell that echoes across the valley. A profound symbol of witness, courage and presence.

Qara village is a majority Sunni village with a minority Christian population. The two communities have lived together with mutual respect for centuries. The Mosque is actually an ancient Christian Church, and the Churches in the town were badly vandalised by Daesh when they occupied the town in 2013, including ancient and rare frescos . Muslims and Christians protected each other during the occupation and both communities have helped to restore the local Churches. The mayor and faith leaders spoke with pride of the harmony in the town, but fear of what may be if the 'rebels' are allowed to win.

Homs

Homs is a poignant city. Half of it (that half that was occupied by the extremists) is completely destroyed, whilst the government-controlled side has a degree of normality. In 2014, I had visited the city when shelling and car-bombs from rebel positions in the city were a daily reoccurrence. In the town we spoke to citizens, who are delighted that the city has been liberated from the 'rebels'. A young Christian woman showed me a photograph of her bombed out home. I asked her who had bombed her home. She said that the Government had bombed her home after her family had fled the rebel occupation. Her words?

“If it takes the Government to bomb my house to get rid of the terrorists, I accept that.”

Meeting with the Governor of Homs Province, he told us that plans for the rebuilding of Homs have already been drawn up by wealthy Syrians in the Gulf. Over 1000 citizens who had fled have returned to the city and more are returning each month.

Christian and Muslim leaders in Homs worked together for liberation truce

Local Christian and Muslim leaders in the city had been instrumental in agreeing the reconciliation truce that led to the liberation of the city.

The government had declared an amnesty for fighters who chose to lay down their arms, and several hundred have been reintegrated into the community. Those who didn't were allowed to leave with one weapon – many of these are now fighting in Idlib province.

People in Homs asked why western government support terrorists

There are still tensions however and not everyone supports the government. Indeed, some armed fighters remain in one part of the city. But the city feels like one that is on a path towards healing. One evening, we went walking in the streets of the city. People were coming up spontaneously and welcoming us to Homs. They were all saying how glad they are that the city has been liberated, and asking why western governments are supporting ‘terrorists’ (the rebels). One young man came up to us and said he had been a tourist guide prior to the conflict and was moved to tears to see us as foreigners visiting the city. They urged us to tell our governments to work with the people of Syria to bring peace.

Fr Franz Van den Lugt said that foreign militants started the violence in the Homs uprising

It was deeply moving to visit the Jesuit Centre in Homs where Fr Franz Van den Lugt, a much loved Dutch priest who worked in Homs for 40 years, was shot through the head last year whilst sitting in the garden. The chair on which he was assassinated is still in place. He had declared that the violence in the uprising in Homs had been started by foreign militants, (he was there) but had refused to leave the monastery when militants took over the area. His school is still running and the children, in the heart of this devastated part of the city, are a sign of hope.

One evening was spent in the heart of the Old City of Homs to meet some of the most remarkable people of faith in the world - the Ministry for Reconciliation led by Fr Michel Naaman and the local Sheikh in the city. Throughout the occupation of the city by militants, the faith leaders have worked tirelessly to bring peace and reconciliation between communities, and their work has had some amazing success. They oversaw the evacuation of the rebels from the city, during which the priest told us, the Syrian army were distributing food and cigarettes to the rebels. Those rebels who laid down their arms have been reintegrated into the city. During their work, several of the Reconciliation Committee have been injured or killed by people they were trying to help. Their work continues to bring together the different factions in Homs, and they believe that only peace and love will transform situations of conflict.

Shock at Archbishop of Canterbury support for British bombing campaign

I told Fr Michel that the Archbishop of Canterbury had that day lent his support to the British Government’s desire to bomb 'IS'. Everyone in the room - Christian and Muslim -were visibly shocked. I asked what his message was....it is this:

"Syria was always a diverse people in unity with each other. People should unite to defeat terrorism, but should respect national sovereignty. The West says they want to destroy Daesh but Syrian people will be killed and towns will be destroyed... They really want to defeat Syria. It is likely there will be terrible consequences. Have the West not learnt from the past? Instead, stop fuelling 'IS' with weapons and support to people of violence, and help all Syrians to come together to find a political solution and have a national dialogue. Give the money that will be spent on destruction to Syria to help in reconstruction. And If not, leave us alone and let Syrians choose their own future... "

Internal opposition

In my three visits to Syria since April 2014, I have met most of the internal opposition figures in the country. There are some good people amongst them. Along with many eyewitnesses during the initial demonstrations in 2011, some of them have spoken of the presence of non-Syrian armed militants who helped stoke the flames of violence during those early months. The Opposition leaders speak openly and very critically of the political shortcomings of the regime, especially the issues of political imprisonment, disappearance, and corruption. But they maintain that Assad himself is the only leader capable of holding the sectarian balance. They admit that there are both good and bad people in the government, and that Assad has been held back in his desire for reform from members of the ‘old guard’.

Western ‘peace’ processes bar Syrian internal opposition politicians

We spent a remarkable three hour journey in the company of one of Syria's leading internal opposition leaders, Samir Hawash, an impressive man who has joined recent discussions in Moscow, Kazakhstan and Istanbul, but like all internal Syrian politicians, is refused inclusion in the western 'peace processes'. He was involved in early demonstrations, but early on was informed that militant groups were planning an armed uprising with assistance from outside. He begged the leaders of the militants not to take up weapons.

In 2010 he had been informed “there is going to be a war in Syria. It has all been planned.” He told us that when the demonstrations began, most people had wanted change, but he says now maybe 60-70% of Syrians in the country support Assad as the only person who can hold the country together. He has become a symbol of unity.
This has been the consistent impression from everyone whom we’ve met – Sunni, Shia, Alwaite, Christian.

Samir Hawash says armed militants fired first in demonstration

We asked him if the government had fired first on the demonstrators. He said that he was there. And no, it was armed militants who fired first.

Over 80 soldiers were killed in the early days of the ‘peaceful’ demonstrations – and the names and dates are documented. (I’ve heard the same from people who participated in the demonstrations in Homs, Latakkia, Damascus, and Aleppo.)

He said all militant opposition groups want to see a Muslim State and the division of the country (a position that all the Parliamentary and political meetings I have attended in Britain seem to approve); whilst the unarmed parties who seek a secular, pluralistic State are not given credence or a voice in the international arena.
He said that Turkey will support any opposition as long as regime change is the goal. The only goal on the part of the international community from the very beginning has been regime change, and they have been willing to allow the destruction of a country to achieve it.

Tartous

Our visit to Tartous was to receive a mobile medical centre that has been donated by a Dutch company for use amongst internally-displaced refugees in the coastal area, and also as a distribution centre for aid to refugees. It was deeply moving to meet those who had come to receive aid.

Some of the women told us (the monks who were with us translated for us) how their husbands and sons had been murdered by rebel groups (that the West is supporting and regards as 'moderate'). Notice the picture of Assad and Putin on the side of the distribution centre...everywhere we went, the Russians are regarded as heroes!

It is very hard to describe however the emotion of what we stumbled across by chance when we visited a local hospital. We could not have known that our visit would coincide with the return of the bodies of 22 soldiers killed in a battle in Aleppo, to their families.

Hundreds had gathered, and there was intense emotion as the coffins were loaded off a lorry, to the piercing cries of grieving relatives. We joined the crowds giving condolences to families who seemed to genuinely appreciate our presence.

Suddenly a young boy of about 10 whose fathers body was being returned, and was standing next to his crying mother and a sheikh, stood to attention in front of me, saluted and with tears flowing gave a deeply moving speech.
One of the monks with me told me that in what he said there was not one word of anger, hatred or violence, but that his words were roughly this:

"My father is a blessing to this country. He has given his life so that we may live in peace. But he is not dead. He is a martyr. And I honour him. He will live, and because of him syria will have peace."

I stood to attention looking straight at him with the crowds around looking on and letting him finish. I then saluted him before going to hold him and give e him a blessing. I could not stop the tears. The sheikh hugged me with tears in his eyes too. It is an experience I will remember as long as I Live… It was far too intense a moment to photograph.
The crowds dispersed with sirens and loud gunfire...

Maaloula

We had a fairly dramatic visit to Maaloula, the most famous Christian village in Syria, where the residents say they have lived for 5000 years, and where Aramaic, the language of Jesus is still spoken.

We were due to spend half the day there with the people of the town, but shortly after our arrival the Mayor received a message that terrorists in the surrounding hills had heard about our visit, and were going to attempt to ambush us. So with huge disappointment we had to make a high speed departure to Damascus.

I was therefore very pleased that I had visited Maaloula in April 2015, and visited both the ancient shrines of St. Thecla and of St. Sergius, both of which have been very badly damaged and defaced by the rebels. Most of the precious icons for which Maaloula is famous have also disappeared. The town was occupied by the rebels for three months, during which time there was huge tension between the Muslim and Christian residents of the town, though some of the Muslim residents had sheltered Christians. A number of Christian villagers were murdered by the rebels for refusing to convert to Islam. There is a concerted effort, with Government help, to restore the shrines and rebuild the town, and some of the residents who fled have returned.

Lebanon: Meeting with Sheikh Naim Qassem, Vice-President of Hezbollah.

Essential to finding paths to peace is talking to all parties. So it was interesting to meet with Hezbollah MPs and Sheikh Naim Qassem, Vice-president and a founder of Hezbollah in Lebanon. Hezbollah are a deeply religious Shia group, and one which respects other faiths. (One of the monks in Syria told me he had learned more about the Virgin Mary from a Hezbollah young man, than anyone else!) And my encounters with Hezbollah individuals have been of a primarily dignified and respectful people. I certainly did not agree with everything Sheikh Qassem said, but there was wisdom and truth in much of what he said.

I asked him what he would say to the British Government if they were ever to listen to him. His reply was:

"The issue for the British Government is discernment between Truth and falseness. Who are they really against and what do they really stand for? We don't want you to be our supporters.. We want you to support truth..and you cannot be selective about international law."

(See picture in this article of the author with Sheikh Qassem, another Hezbollah MP (also a local doctor), the Greek Orthodox Bishop of Bekaa.

Lebanon. Bourj Al Burajneh

In Beirut we visited the site of the bombing in Burj Al Burajneh that killed over 40 people and injured over 100 the day before the Paris bombing. We laid flowers and placed candles there.

One young man had prevented further killings by tackling a suicide bomber and covering him with his own body before the vest exploded.

Our visit, in the heart of a Hezbollah district, was clearly appreciated by everyone around. We were then taken to the local hospital to meet some of the wounded. The little lad, aged about 10, pictured in hospital with his mother, was riding past on his father's motorbike. His father was killed. The doctor said he was very close to his father and is deeply psychologically scarred.

The families and victims (Shia Muslim) wanted to receive our prayers and blessings, and one little boy even asked for my cross. I told them at the location: every soul killed and family bereaved in Beirut is equally as important as each soul and bereaved family in Paris, Syria or Russia.

General Michel Aoun

We spent nearly two hours with General Michel Aoun, Chairman of one of Lebanon’s most important Christian parties. He spoke of the recent history of Christianity in the Levant, and suggested to us that with the Christian populations in Iraq and Palestine so severely depleted, Lebanon and Syria are now the most important Christian centres in the Levant. He said we have a responsibility in the West to protect the Christians of the east – in the birthplace of Christianity. He spoke of the danger to Christians in the region now, and that their presence as part of the fabric of society in the region is essential to the stability and p lurality of the fabric of the region as a whole.

Key points from the visit:

Despite enormous suffering and a devastating economic situation, there is enormous resilience. Those who live in or have fled to the comparative safety of the government-controlled areas (perhaps 60% of the population), whether Christian, Sunni, Shi’a, Alawite, Druze, and of different political persuasions, where life goes on with a degree of ‘normality’ amidst great hardship, and there is some small degree of rebuilding and State infrastructure, (the destruction is not total) have a remarkably consistent message:

• Stop supporting armed groups. There are very few so-called ‘moderate’ rebels and those that do exist are divided – they have become channels for weapons to the extremists who are by far the majority and whose sole goal is an Islamic State.

• Work together to defeat Daesh. Bombing is not the answer… civilians will be killed and towns and villages will be destroyed. The consequences of simply bombing Daesh could be disastrous in the long term… the creation of more jihadis and hatred. Cut them off at source – their funding and arms, and support those who fight them on the ground.

• Bring all parties together in a national dialogue. You cannot exclude the government that is managing the State institutions and structures.

People are very suspicious (and probably justifiably) of the motives the Western alliance. They believe they are political pawns in a much bigger political ‘game’.

• You cannot exclude the people of Syria from a political solution.

• Realities in Syria are profoundly misrepresented in the west.

• There are multiple narratives. It is not ‘black’ and ‘white’ (or ‘good’ vs ‘evil’) as appears to be the primary presentation in the media.

• An externally imposed solution is only like to lead to further sectarianism and chaos

• Follow international law in your dealings with Syria.

Listen to the faith communities. Much can be learned and foundations have been laid from the work of the reconciliation committees ‘on the ground’ in towns and cities across the country.

Come and visit Syria. Meet and listen to the people for yourselves.

We were met with enormous kindness and hospitality. The people are exhausted and emotionally traumatised. Christians and Muslims continue to work together to bring peace and reconciliation in local towns and cities with some remarkable successes. Those involved are absolutely opposed to violence. Everyone wants to see the war end.
Our government’s position and ignorance of the realities on the ground and the wishes of the people of Syria is profoundly disturbing.

Revd Andrew Ashdown
3 December 2015

Western media are reporting headline claims that “new evidence supports claims about Syrian state detention deaths”, saying that “a leading rights group has released new evidence that up to 7,000 Syrians who died in state detention centres were tortured, mistreated, or executed”, noting that this information is a moral wakeup call and demanding that officials being held to account should be “central to peace efforts.”

The Caesar Photos and Impunity in Syria

[Editor's comment: 'Caesar' is allegedly the code name of a forensic photographer who smuggled the pictures out.]

However, as is usually so, not everything is quite as it seems.  So let’s take a look at the
facts.

First the timing. 

As has been commonplace the timing of the reports like these have almost always coincided with important diplomatic meetings or just after important UN resolutions are passed.

For example, beginning in mid-March claims began to pour in that Assad had been using chlorine bombs against his opponents.  Media reports would cite the fact that only 2 months later the government had already been accused of using chlorine 35 times.  What they failed to mention however was that no claims were made for an
entire 7 months before this.  So what changed after these 7 months?

Well, a UN resolution was passed condemning the use of chlorine, that’s what.

The governments alleged chlorine campaign “began just over a week after the UN security council passed a resolution under chapter 7 of the UN charter condemning its use,” the Guardian would report. For more than half of a year no claims are made and then a week after a UN resolution is passed, all of a sudden a total of 35 are made in just under 2 months.

If Assad was really using chlorine, why would he wait a full 7 months only to use it at the exact time that it would prove to be the most disastrous for him? 

This, coupled with the fact that former OPCW (Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons) inspectors admit that there was insufficient
evidence to prove the use of chlorine, let alone assign blame for who did it. 

Notorious White Helmets civil defense group

And further troubling still is that the claims came from the “White Helmets” “civil defense group”, who have been notorious for producing false claims against the Syrian government.  In actuality the White Helmets are part of a slick propaganda campaign aimed at mobilizing
support for foreign intervention and calling for a “no-fly zone” to oust the president.  They have financial links to Western-backed NGOs who relentlessly work towards furthering the US agenda in the region, and are themselves embedded with al-Qaeda and ISIS.  Their primary function is to demonize the
Syrian government while acting as al-Qaeda’s clean-up crew, both literally and in terms of propaganda, as one video shows them waiting to clean up dead bodies moments after al-Qaeda commits summary executions against unarmed civilians.  They have produced numerous fake videos, fake photos, and fake narratives in order to manipulate public opinion towards their bias.[1]

Needless to say, their words aren’t credible.

Human Rights Watch admits only 27 of Caesar photos significantly documented; not 7000

In terms of the the Caesar photos, they too are published days before an important Syrian peace conference between the US and Russia, further raising questions as to whether the timing has anything to do with helping Syrian detainees or everything to do with political impact.

As noted by Human Rights Investigations, a previous report of the photos was done by
Carter-Ruck and Co. Solicitors of London and published through CNN and the Guardian in January of 2014.  The Carter-Ruck report claims that the 55,000 images available show 11,000 dead detainees.  However, according to the recent HRW report only 28,707 of the photos are ones that they have “understood to have died in government custody” while the remaining 24,568 are of dead soldiers killed in battle.  That is, half of the alleged “torture victims” are actually dead soldiers.

Of the remaining half (6,786), HRW maintains that they “understand” the photos are of dead detainees, this is where the media is getting the “7,000” figure from, yet they themselves admit later on that they were only “able to verify 27 cases of detainees whose family members’ statements regarding their arrest and physical characteristics matched the
photographic evidence.”

So, in other words, half of the original batch of photos aren’t torture victims, while of the other half only 27 can be verified by HRW.

Doubts about the 27 'documented' photos

There is also reason to doubt the reliability of these 27 cases.

Previous reports of the photos also coincided with important diplomatic events like the 2014 Geneva II conferences.  However, at that time, UN Human Rights Chief Navi Pillay admitted that the reports were unverified: “the report… if verified, is truly horrifying.”  While it was admitted by outlets like Reuters that they were unable “to determine the authenticity of Caesar’s photographs or to contact Caesar”
while Amnesty International notes that they too “cannot authenticate the images.”

One wonders what happened during this time that allowed HRW to do what these others could not just a year prior.

Leaving that aside however, let’s say that they are true, that they do prove that the Syrian government tortured 27
individuals, and that holding the officials “to account should be central to any peace efforts.”

It follows then that the major offenders should be held to account.  Namely the United
States.

United States contracts out torture program to foreign aid recipients

Of the top 10 recipients of US foreign aid programs in 2014, all of them practice torture while at least half of them are reportedly doing so on a massive scale, according to leading human rights organizations.

Afghanistan

For example, according to the UN torture in Afghanistan’s prisons continues to be widespread, while according to Human Rights Watch in Kenya police “tortured,
raped, and otherwise abused and arbitrarily detained at least 1,000 refugees between mid-November 2012 and late January 2013.”

Nigeria

The worst abuses
of torture in government detention centers however were in Nigeria, which received $693 million of US taxpayer money. . There, according to Amnesty, nearly 1,000 people died in military custody in only the first 6 months of 2013.  This means that “Nigeria’s military has killed more civilians than (Boko Haram) militants did” within the same timeframe.  Recently, the Nigerian army, instead of fighting Boko Haram has massacredupwards of 1,000 Muslims belonging to a peaceful movement opposed to extremism.

Israel

In terms of Israel, by far the leading recipient with $3.1 billion, the Public Committee against Torture in Israel accused the government of torturing and sexually assaulting Palestinian children suspected of minor crimes, while also keeping detainees in cages outside during winter.  “The majority of Palestinian child detainees are charged with throwing stones, and 74 per cent experience physical violence during arrest, transfer or interrogation.”

United States

Not to mention our own [meaning the US; The writer lives in the United States - Candobetter.net] widely publicized torture program.

According to the official narrative, the CIA’s extraordinary rendition programs [2] began under Bush after 9/11 and were considered “rogue elements” and “aberrations” to normal CIA practice, they were approved at the highest levels of government, but were eventually ended under Obama in 2009. 

Yet as leading international security scholar Dr. Nafeez Ahmed found in a recent and thorough investigation “Obama did not ban torture in 2009, and has not rescinded it now. He instead rehabilitated torture with a carefully crafted Executive Order that has received little scrutiny.” 

It demanded interrogation techniques be brought in line with the US Army Field Manual, which is in compliance with the Geneva Convention.  However, the manual was revised in 2006 to include 19 forms of interrogation and the practice of extraordinary rendition.  “A new UN Committee Against Torture (UNCAT) review of the manual shows that a wide-range of torture techniques continue to be deployed by the US government,” Ahmed notes, “including isolation, sensory deprivation, stress positions, chemically-induced psychosis, adjustments of environmental and dietary rules, among others.”

In his book “Torture and Impunity: The U.S. Doctrine of Coercive Interrogation” the highly renowned Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Alfred McCoy shows that from the 1950s onward the CIA spent billions “improving” interrogation techniques. 

At the start, the emphasis was on electroshock, hypnosis, psychosurgery, and drugs, including the infamous use of LSD on unsuspecting soldiers, yet they proved ineffective.  It was later found that sensory disorientation and "self-inflicted pain", such as forcing a subject to stand for many hours with arms outstretched, were far more effective means of breaking individuals; the exact torture techniques it has been shown the US still
employs to this day.[3] 

The CIA found that by using only the deprivation of the senses, a state akin to psychosis can be induced in just 48 hours.

They found that the KGB’s most devastating torture technique of all was not crude physical beatings, but simply forcing victims to stand for days on end.  “The legs swelled, the skin erupted spreading lesions, the kidneys shut down, and hallucinations began” explains McCoy, “all incredibly painful.”

Refined through decades of practice, “the CIA’s use of sensory deprivation relies on seemingly banal procedures: heat and cold, light and dark, noise and silence, feast and famine,” yet this combines to form “a systematic attack on the sensory pathways of the human mind” for devastating effect.

These are not “aberrations”, but instead the fruition of over half a century’s work in the experimentation of the science of cracking the code of the human mind, of the perfection of psychological torture into its most sophisticated forms.

“With the election and re-election of President Barak Obama, the problem of torture has not, as many of us have once hoped, simply disappeared, wiped away by sweeping executive orders,” McCoy explains, “Instead it is now well into a particularly sordid second phase, called impunity.”

Legalising torture

Simply put, impunity is the political process of legalizing illegal acts.

“In this case, torture.”[4])

Instead of ending, US torture “continues to be deployed by the US government” in its most destructive forms.

It has been re-packaged and rehabilitated, codifying into law, and vanished from the general public consciousness.

Furthermore, not only does the US engage in torture on a mass scale, it and its allies as well “outsource” their torture to various regimes, utilizing their intelligence and security services to do their dirty work for them.

UK and Libya

It was recently reported by numerous Libyan dissidents that the UK government had entangled itself in a deep and sordid relationship with Muammar Gaddafi that amounted to “a
criminal conspiracy”, as heard before the UK high court.

A conspiracy where the UK had become “enmeshed in illegality” and involved in “rendition, unlawful detention and torture.”

The victims claim that British intelligence routinely blackmailed them, threatened their families with unlawful
imprisonment and abuse if they did not cooperate.  Information was extracted through torture in
prisons in Tripoli and fed into the British court systems as secret evidence that could not be challenged.

Yet this merely represents a wider trend whereby Western governments commit horrendous crimes in collusion with foreign states, and then use those same acts as justification for aggression against them.

Iraq

The United States attempted to justify the invasion of Iraq on non-existent WMD’s after it had supplied the same weapons to the country decades prior to wage war on Iran.

As well it was Gaddafi's alleged brutality and use of torture that was invoked to justify the devastating attack on Libya that has left the country in shambles and overrun with suffering and terrorism.

And so too with Syria.

Not only is the United States by degrees of magnitude more culpable for the crime of torture, it also was intimately involved in offshoring its crimes to Syrian jails.

A key participant in the CIA’s covert rendition program, Syria was one of the “most common destinations for rendered subjects.”

So while torture in Syria was all too real, what is commonly left out is 3 little words: “with our support.”

First we utilize, exploit, and propagate the atrocities, and then proceed to bask in our own moral righteousness as we
denounce others for the crimes that we helped commit, utilizing them to justify further atrocities and aggressions for shortsighted geopolitical aims.

If “officials being held to account” are really “central to any peace effort” in regards to torture, we know exactly where to find them: right here at home in Washington and London.

            Notes:

[1]   
For more on this, see Vanessa Beeley’s great reports, “‘White Helmets’: New Breed of Mercenaries and Propagandists, Disguised as ‘Humanitarians’ in Syria”, 21^st
Century Wire, Pt. 1: http://21stcenturywire.com/2015/09/01/white-helmets-new-breed-of-mercenaries-and-propagandists-disguised-as-humanitarians-in-syria/, Pt. 2: http://21stcenturywire.com/2015/09/01/white-helmets-new-breed-of-mercenaries-and-propagandists-disguised-as-humanitarians-in-syria/, & overview with interview: http://www.mintpressnews.com/us-propaganda-war-in-syria-report-ties-white-helmets-to-foreign-intervention/209435/.
 

[2] See Editors' notes lower down.

[3]   Alfred McCoy, Torture and Impunity: The U.S. Doctrine of Coercive Interrogation.

[4] Alfred McCoy giving a lecture on his book “Torture and Impunity” at Madison’s Overture Center, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xgazW9sRrW4.

This article was originally entitled, "The Caesar Photos and Impunity in Syria". Author Steven Chovanec is an independent geopolitical analyst and writer based in Chicago, Illinois. He is a student of International Studies and Sociology at Roosevelt University and conducts independent, open-source research into geopolitics and social issues.  His writings can be found at undergroundreports.blogspot.com. You may find him on Twitter @stevechovanec.

EDITOR'S NOTES

[2] What is 'extraordinary rendition'? From Wikipedia:
Extraordinary rendition, also called irregular rendition, is the government-sponsored abduction and extrajudicial transfer of a person from one country to another.^[1]

In the United States, the first well-known rendition case was that of an airline hijacker abducted in Italy and brought to the U.S. for trial, authorized by President Ronald Reagan.^[2] President Bill Clinton authorized extraordinary rendition to nations known to practice torture, called torture by proxy.^[3] The administration of President George W. Bush "renditioned" hundreds of so-called "illegal combatants" (often never charged with any crime) for torture by proxy, and to US controlled sites for an extensive, advanced interrogation operation program under the euphemism enhanced interrogation.^[4] Extraordinary rendition continued with reduced frequency in the Obama administration: instead of subjecting them to advanced interrogation methods, most of those abducted have been conventionally interrogated and subsequently taken to the US for trial.^[5]

Extraordinary rendition remains a clear violation of international law.^[6] The United Nations considers one nation abducting the citizens of another a crime against humanity.^[7] Abduction has also been a recognized casus belli (justification for war) in the Western tradition since Helen of Troy. In July 2014 the European Court of Human Rights condemned the government of Poland for participating in CIA extraordinary rendition, ordering Poland to pay restitution to men who had been abducted, taken to a CIA black site in Poland, and tortured.^[8][9][10] Overall, 54 countries are known to have been involved with US extraordinary renditions.^[1]

See also this review of the film, Extraordinary Rendition. This film has never been released in big commercial venues.

Video & transcript: Bruce Petty interviews Dr Jeremy Salt, Middle Eastern scholar. Bruce Petty is a highly regarded political satirist and cartoonist as well as an award-winning film maker.

"There always has to be a 'madman' in the Middle East," explains Jeremy Salt, when asked why we constantly hear that 'Bashar al-Assad has to go'? Of course Bashar al-Assad is not really mad. Jeremy explains how the west, in its long exploitation of the Middle East, has invented crises that it then pretends to help with, and these tend to feature a 'madman' whom the people have to be saved from. In reaction Middle Eastern governments tend to be defensive and authoritarian, in order to survive constant foreign interference. Even if Bashar went, the Syrian state would remain the same. Salt gives a fluent history of how the west has used the Middle East, and how western politicians expected to knock Syria over easily, but underestimated it. All they have done is weaken it and assorted armed and dangerous groups including ISIS have risen up through the cracks they have created. But many Syrians really like Bashar al-Assad and think he is their best chance for reform. (See the third part in this series, "Has the Syrian president killed more than ISIS and other questions," to hear about how al-Assad is actually legally elected and had brought in reforms prior to the current crisis.) Petty asks about beheading and the role of religion and Islam in today's crisis. Salt agrees that Islam has been taken over by conservatives and extremists, but precises that this is a political ideological take-over that has little to do with Islamic religious base.

Dr Jeremy Salt is a former journalist, turned academic and is the author of The Unmaking of the Middle East. A History of Western Disorder in Arab Lands, (University of California Press, 2008). Until recently, Dr Salt was based in the Department of Political Science and Public Administration, Bilkent University, Ankara, Turkey, where he ran courses in the history of the modern Middle East, in politics and in politics, propaganda and the media.

The story behind these dialogues: On 16 November 2015 a small group of concerned Australian citizens got together to talk about the problems of getting real information out to Australians and other US-NATO allies about war in Syria, in spite of mainstream press efforts to confuse the public. Bruce Petty and Jeremy Salt were part of that group. Inside is the transcript of the embedded video. (There are two other videos in this series. The first is: "Cartoonist Bruce Petty asks Dr Jeremy Salt: Has Bashar al-Assad killed more people than ISIS? and similar questions". The second is: "Cartoonist Bruce Petty and Dr Jeremy Salt: Where news comes from: reporting on the Middle East."). The third is "Does Bashar al-Assad really have to go? Cartoonist Bruce Petty talks to Dr Jeremy Salt.")

INTRODUCTION BY EDITING TRANSCRIBER: This is the third of three dialogues. In these dialogues, Bruce Petty often agrees with a nod or a murmur, but I have not recorded these comments unless they have been part of a significant change in the dialogue. Petty’s eyes and face are worth watching as he considers what he is hearing. The transcriptions are as accurate as the transcriber could make them, but could contain small errors. Hopefully no errors that would affect the points that Dr Salt and Mr Petty seek to raise and explain.

BRUCE PETTY: The issue is the Middle East and the issue is Syria. And we’re given the idea that Assad has to go. Now, I want to know why he ‘has to go’? And I hear he tortures and he’s got too many people in prison and … now he’s bombing… and there’s gas involved … the whole scenario is there. And, I don’t know the origins of these stories.

JEREMY SALT: Well, you know this thing – if there is an objective truth about it - the Syrian government.

There always has to be a madman in the Middle East

JEREMY SALT: This is such a complex subject to go into. In any case, one point to make is that there always has to be a madman in the Middle East. Or a dictator. There always has been. You go all the way back to the 19th century. Like in [the] 1890s there was a gentleman they called ‘The Mad Mullah’ of Somaliland. Well, Somaliland didn’t have any mullahs. But it was a nice kind of alliterative title that went well with the British media.
And in fact the ‘mad mullah of Somaliland’ was a sheik. He belonged to an Islamic order and what you might call – you might call him a ‘proto-nationalist’. And then, you looked at Sudan in the same period of time - a bit earlier, actually – same period of time – when you had the dervishes, ‘savages’, ‘barbarians’ and so forth and so on.

And you ask, what was the problem there? Well the problem was that their territory, their land, had been invaded by the British. And naturally they were resisting.

And you can follow this all the way back, all the way back to the 19th century.

In the 20th century they portrayed Nasser as a dictator. In fact Nasser was actually a moderate person who wanted to get on with Americans. In particular. And the problem was that Israel - he had problems with Israel. And, you know, that was the reason why he had to be brought down. So he was a ‘dictator’.

You look at Musaddiq in Iran. They couldn’t pretend he was a dictator, because he wasn’t. But they had to find out some other kind of reason for making him look either nasty or stupid. And the fact is, he used to wear for interviews thing that, clothes that the British media laughed at and said, ‘Wearing pyjamas.” And he tended to cry. Because he was an emotional man. So you had many good reasons to laugh at Musaddiq. And get him out of the way.

So, this process, whenever there is a situation, which offends them and they want to sort out, they like to personalise. They like to pick out one person, “Oh, here’s the madman, here’s the dictator.” And that’s the key to the whole situation. Once we establish that in the public mind, well, we can go ahead and destroy them.

And, you know, this whole business about Syria… I mean if you actually look at the Middle East and North Africa, go back to the first time in modern history that a western army …[ inaudible] in 1798, when Napoleon landed in Egypt and tried to conquer Egypt. And the British got wind of it and sent a fleet out and destroyed the French fleet. And that was the end of Napoleon’s mission. But from that time onwards, if you look at the whole of North Africa, all the way across the Middle East to the Gulf, you will hardly find a country that has not been attacked. You’d be hard pressed to find one that has not been attacked. Many of them [have been] attacked many, many times. And, in many cases those attacks served many purposes. Like, for example, Egypt, when the British occupied Egypt in 1882 to get their hands on Egyptian cotton, tobacco, sugar. Also their hands on the canal. And also, it was a testing ground for new weaponry.

Now here’s the relevance of this when we think back to the attack on Iraq in 1991. Or that kind of hushed talk on the news broadcasts. You know, we’ve got these smart missiles, they don’t need telling what to do, they can turn corners and do all kinds of things. Well, in the 1880s, it was the warships: reinforced steel plating, hydraulic gun platforms. I mean, they’d never had them before. If you wanted to change targets before that, the whole ship had to turn around. So they had hydraulic platforms; it meant you only had to just turn the gun. And they had massive kind of cannons and they had shells that could go almost 2000 yards.

So, in London, all the military people were kind of like really excited about this. How’s this all going to work? Because what the Egyptians had on shore were like popguns. They couldn’t even reach these ships. So it was kind of like a done deal. They were going to win there. They were going to win. But so you follow that all the way through from the 19th century and there are always reasons for attacking these countries. Always justified. In the 19th century called them ‘civilisation’. ‘We’ll bring civilisation to these people.’

BRUCE PETTY: And Christianising.

JEREMY SALT: Well, I wouldn’t use that so much. Not really. Muslims might try that, but generally it was what we were doing ‘for’ these people, not what we were doing strong>to them. And always there would be a lot of violence. Like the British –

BRUCE PETTY: The religious factor didn’t come into it? Their religion, I mean?

JEREMY SALT: Well, always the missionaries followed the flag. You know, they went in there and they would do their bit. But if you look at Egypt, for example, when the British bombarded Alexandria. You know, blew it to bits. Before the army landed. Well then, of course, the moment they did that, well the local people reacted. They were very upset. And then Britain said, ‘Well, we have to restore order!’ Gangs were out and destroying things and setting fire to our property and so forth and so on.

That’s what goes back to the print media. It’s what the public believes. ‘Our people are being attacked in Egypt by these savages.’

And that tends to be what happens. It’s been repeated time after time. Down to the present day.

And, if you look at Syria, well, right, people say, ‘Well it’s an authoritarian, oppressive regime.’

I can accept that. It is. But you look at Syria’s history. Going back to the First World War, there was this piece of land on the map, called Syria. So, when they got their hands on it, they cut it up. That’s the first thing they did. They butchered it. The British got – the British took – southern Syria, which is Palestine. The French cut one part off – the coastal region – called Lebanon. In the 1930s, the French gave Iskanderun to Turkey. Now that’s the province of Hattay, with more than a 50 per cent Alawi population. And people who still actually believe in Bashar al-Assad. And then we move forward to the modern period, the post war period when Syria became independent, finally, independent in 1946.

1949 they had their first coup. Who organised the coup? The Americans. Why? Because the elected Syrian government won’t grant rights to the Tapline to Aramco, the Arabian-American oil company, to build a pipeline from Saudi Arabia across to the Mediterranean across Syrian territory. The government says, ‘No, we don’t want this.’

So the Americans intervene with a bit of help from the CIA . They put a colonel in power. And then, in 1956, the same time that the British planned to attack Egypt, the Americans are planning to overthrow the government of Syria. Again! And you move that through – all the way through to the modern period.

So Syria has continuously been under attack, under threat. Targeted assassinations, coups, dirty work of some kind or another. So what do you get out of this? You’re not going to get a democracy. You’re going to get a state that’s permanently on its guard; that’s watchful. Alright? And then people turn around and say, ‘Look at this, this system.’ And the fact is, you know, people point the finger at Bashar? Well Bashar could go tomorrow and the system wouldn’t change. But Bashar, many Syrians believe, is popular – one thing that the people in Washington or Britain don’t want to believe. Bashar is liked by the Syrian people. They might be critical of the system, but they like Bashar. And many of them believe that he is the best hope they have of actually changing the system.

Mass migration from Syria

BRUCE PETTY: Okay. Now the explanation for this: There’s a couple of million on the move; don’t want to be in Syria. And we see pictures of them. They look middle class and young kids. What’s a parallel to that? What’s it like? Is that like –

JEREMY SALT: I’ve never been in that situation. I don’t want to be in that situation. It’s been going on in the Middle East since 1948. And the big exodus of 1948 of the Palestinians from their land –

BRUCE PETTY: The Palestinians, yes.

JEREMY SALT: Eight hundred thousand people. Iraq –

BRUCE PETTY: They’re still there on the borders, wanting to go back.

JEREMY SALT: Of course. Well, it’s their land –

BRUCE PETTY: Are these people going to go back? Or do they want to go to Germany? Do you think [Inaudible].

JEREMY SALT: Well I couldn’t speak for them, Bruce, but I think many of them want to go back to their homeland.

BRUCE PETTY: I would think so, yes.

JEREMY SALT: Of course they do. But they can’t because it’s in complete turmoil.

BRUCE PETTY: Yeah. Well, they’re the issues that puzzle people and –

How the mass media presents what is happening

JEREMY SALT: But things also Bruce, I think, you know, people, what the media, doesn’t really want to show is that we were told from the beginning that all this was about repression of the protests by the Syrian government.

BRUCE PETTY: Yes. That’s right.

JEREMY SALT: And alternative evidence which the media - the mainstream media - will not present, is that the attack on Syria was actually well-prepared.

BRUCE PETTY: Yes.

JEREMY SALT: Right? And they wanted to hit Syria and they waited for the moment and this, once again, there’s a template for this in Latin America.

BRUCE PETTY: Yes.

JEREMY SALT: I mean, how did the United States carry out [inaudible ]coups in Guatamala? What you do, you wait for this, for people to kind of demonstrate over some economic issue, then you move in behind them. And that’s more or less what happened in Syria.

And people say, ‘Oh, no, no. It started as a peaceful protest and only much, much later did it become violent. Which is not true. Because they were violent from the beginning. And that’s what the media would not tell its readers [inaudible].

What do we know of the groups fighting the Syrian Government?

BRUCE PETTY: And do we know much about the fragmentation of what was called ‘the rebellion’, you know. Like there are apparently there are tribal elements, there are militias – independent militias – under various autocrats. And there’s ISIS, and there’s a bit of Al Qaeda left, I imagine. All these elements, I mean, are they… Do we know who – Do we know the quantities and the passions? Is it just passion?

JEREMY SALT: Well, the tribal … the tribes are part of it because [inaudible] in Iraq we know there are terrible kinds of conflicts between Islamic State and the tribes. And the Islamic State [? butchered] lots of [? tribesmen] in Iraq. But the position is that those countries, all of them – that is Libya, or Syria, or Iraq, who didn’t have these Takfiri jihadi elements before.

Destruction of countries has created cracks from which jihadi elements have come out

So, it’s the destruction of those countries that has created the cracks in the landscapes from which these people have managed to come out. I mean, if you look at what they did to Syria. Okay, they wanted to destroy the Syrian central government. They didn’t succeed in doing it. Now, it was very clear from the start that Syria was not Yemen; Syria was not Libya; Syria was not Tunisia or Egypt. Syria was Syria. And what would happen in Syria was very different from what would happen elsewhere.

Now, those people: the Americans, the British, the French, Turks, the Qataris, the Saudis – they all thought, ‘Oh look, we’re going to push very hard, and we will bring the government down.’

They didn’t succeed in doing it. All they succeeded in doing was weakening it. Now, we know that – and what they therefore created was – in northern Syria in particular, but also in other parts – was a kind of a vacuum . Now, in some respects, that vacuum was filled by people they were supporting. The armed groups. In some cases it was filled by people they didn’t want to be there. Like the Kurds in northern Syria. Erdogan, the Turkish president, is very angry because the Kurds took their opportunity and kind of established some kind of autonomy over the Kurdish region in northern Iraq, just over the Kurdish border.

So, in some ways, it’s the law of unintended consequences.

BRUCE PETTY: The other element that is different, I think, is things like beheadings. We haven’t sort of seen that before. Is that connected somehow to these generations of frustration? I mean, can you explain that from anything we did?

JEREMY SALT: They would. No. They would go back to Islamic history to justify beheading people. Alright? But, I mean, this doesn’t - what the Islamic state is doing cannot be called Islamic.

JEREMY SALT: It cannot be called Islamic, not just because of the absolute brutality and sadism of what they’re doing, but they’re destroying Christian churches. Now this doesn’t fit with Islam at all –

BRUCE PETTY: And antiquities.

JEREMY SALT: But the antiquities have been there for 2000 years without one Muslim government touching them. But, when it comes to Christian churches being destroyed, there’s no place for this in Islam. This is actually against Islam. This is a violation of Islamic principles, to destroy churches. Because Christians, Jews, are protected.

BRUCE PETTY: So you’d have to go back –

JEREMY SALT: No, you wouldn’t have to go back at all. There’s no place for [it].

BRUCE PETTY: But it has happened though, hasn’t it?

JEREMY SALT: No. At the beginning –

BRUCE PETTY: Way back [inaudible]-

JEREMY SALT: Oh, right at the beginning, right at the beginning –

BRUCE PETTY: Four hundred –

JEREMY SALT: No, right at the beginning, right at the beginning of the 7th century.

BRUCE PETTY: And the religious, even the religious purges and crusades, for one. We did it.

JEREMY SALT: We did it. Yeah, we did it. But when, in terms of minority, religious minorities, like within Islam right at the beginning when the Jews of what we now call Saudi Arabia would not accept the Islamic message, they were attacked and many of them were killed. But, once Islam was consolidated, as a state religion, you go back and there’s nothing, there’s nothing there. You’re hard pressed to find any kind of way in which religious communities were touched.

BRUCE PETTY: Well, that is one that made you think. And you still wonder, is there a Martin Luther Muslim?

JEREMY SALT: [Indecipherable] I didn‘t like Martin Luther.

BRUCE PETTY: - start something a bit different.

JEREMY SALT: Martin Luther was a terrible person.

BRUCE PETTY: Was he? Oh well, somebody –

JEREMY SALT: He was anti-semetic –

BRUCE PETTY: Oh, that’s right, he was –

JEREMY SALT: Who was the Nuremburg [inaudible]. I can’t remember whether it was Goering or Goebels – someone – stood up and said, ‘Well, actually, don’t blame us, blame Luther.’ That’s where it came from. And also, he was on the side of the princes. ‘Go out and slay the peasants!’

BRUCE PETTY: Oh okay. Well, whatever he did –

JEREMY SALT: Whatever it is, right –

BRUCE PETTY: He did nail a few things on the door and it would be nice if they nailed a few things on -.

JEREMY SALT: I agree.

BRUCE PETTY: But –

JEREMY SALT: I agree. I agree. I totally agree that Islam has been taken over by arch conservatives, reactionaries, and these are people who interpret their own religion in a very selective way. And, if you actually go back to the earliest stages of Islam: You take up women’s rights, for example, women’s rights, the greatest scholars of the age, back in the western 13th or 12th century, took up these questions and what they had to say about women’s rights was extraordinary.

BRUCE PETTY: Really. That’s interesting.

JEREMY SALT: You know, they allowed contraception. One of the schools of law would allow abortion if the family was too big and they couldn’t deal with another child. They regarded the woman as a sexual creature, not just a chattel of man. Entitled to sexual satisfaction. And where do you get this in today’s Islam?

BRUCE PETTY: Exactly.

JEREMY SALT: Now these were the greatest figures of the age. The greatest thinkers of the age – the philosophers. That’s all kind of been whitewashed from their history.

BRUCE PETTY: [Inaudible]

JEREMY SALT: If you were going to draw a cartoon of the Caliph, sitting in Mosul – have you seen him?

BRUCE PETTY: No, I haven’t. I’ve seen a few.

JEREMY SALT: He was photographed kind of hectoring the crowds, wearing a very flash watch

BRUCE PETTY: Okay. Oh yeah, I remember that bit, yeah.

JEREMY SALT: I think it’s what I’d home in on, if I were a cartoonist.

BRUCE PETTY: Well, we’ve got a bit of a problem there about… because then you suddenly… got to be careful you’re not putting a case for the beheaders.

JEREMY SALT: Right.

BRUCE PETTY: You know.

JEREMY SALT: Mocking them is –

BRUCE PETTY: Mocking them if you can. But then, you have to watch your own head a little bit. Hebdo and all that stuff.

JEREMY SALT: Yeah.

BRUCE PETTY: But basically, I don’t know how you treat religion. I mean you sort of hope it would all modify a bit.

JEREMY SALT: Would you? I mean, I’ve got funny things – I’m not religious in the slightest bit – but I would not, myself, choose to insult Mohammed or Christ.

BRUCE PETTY: No.

JEREMY SALT: I wouldn’t see any point.

BRUCE PETTY: No.

JEREMY SALT: I’d go for the priests. I’d go for the Imams.

BRUCE PETTY: Yes.

JEREMY SALT: I’d go for the ayatollahs. They’re all fair game. Why would you want to go back to a foundational figure? And dump on that person? I mean that’s just a personal view of mine.

BRUCE PETTY: No, I agree with that one. I’d go along with it.

JEREMY SALT: I don’t quite get it.

BRUCE PETTY: No.

JEREMY SALT: They’re too far back in history.

BRUCE PETTY: And I quite like the hymns too, and the music.

JEREMY SALT: Ah, right.

BRUCE PETTY: The old cantatas.

JEREMY SALT: This must go back to your school days.

BRUCE PETTY: Probably does, yeah.

Tanya Plibersek's article is Australia deserves a seat at the table in Syria negotiations, (15/12/15) | the Guardian

We must ask whether the Turnbull government acknowledges Turkey’s support for the Islamic State, and what action it intends to take against the Erdogan regime’s aggressive and destabilising behaviour. We must also ask whether the Australian airforce will continue to conduct bombing runs in coordination with the US coalition. Not only have Turkish actions put us in conflict with that coalition, operating out of Incirlik, but there is another danger. Russia has stated that there no further threats to Russian servicemen and assets will be tolerated, from unauthorised foreign parties.

Dear Ms Plibersek,

This is a follow up email to a brief conversation I had with a staffer in your office, and is a response to the article you had published in the Guardian yesterday.

I have previously made representations to you on the question of Australia’s policy on Syria and that of the Federal Labor Party, in particular through a media release on behalf of Australians for Reconciliation in Syria (AMRIS), for which I am a spokesman.

I have also presented ‘my case’ – which is Syria’s case – to the Foreign Minister Julie Bishop, in correspondence over the last two years. My main concerns expressed in that correspondence have been regarding the false allegations over the Syrian government’s use of chemical weapons, the improper recognition of external Opposition groups known as the ‘Syrian National Council’ as the ‘legitimate representatives of the Syrian people’, and Australia’s refusal to acknowledge the legitimacy and sovereign rights of the current Syrian government and its President Bashar al Assad, freely elected by a majority of the whole Syrian population in June 2014.

These concerns remain unchanged, as the position of the government and the Australian Labor Party remains the same, and lie at the heart of the current crisis.

There is however a reason why this problematic position must be challenged again, resulting from recent developments, and in particular Turkey’s provocation of shooting down the Russian bomber on November 24th, which Russia rightly regards as an act of war.
I would draw your attention here to a very detailed analysis by an aviation expert which proves to any sensible person that Turkey’s act was preplanned.(*1)

Following this strike, Russia responded in several ways, all of which must now be considered in relation to Australian involvement in the campaign ‘against Da’esh/IS’.

Firstly it deployed S400 missile systems in Syria, which enables Russia to shoot down any foreign aircraft which operate in Syrian airspace without authorisation from the Syrian government. Secondly Russia took immediate action over trade and relations with Turkey, including over the vital issue of gas supply contracts. And thirdly, President Putin very publicly revealed to an international audience in Paris the extent of the Turkish government’s involvement with the Islamic State, both in the export and marketing of Syrian and Iraqi oil with a tanker pipeline through Turkey to the Mediterranean port of Ceyhan, and with the purchasing and supply of shipments of arms over the border into Syria.

These startling revelations from Moscow, which were backed up with multiple sources of evidence of the illegal Oil trade, were vigorously denied by President Erdogan, who also refused to apologise for the downing of the Russian plane and killing of Russian servicemen by Turkish insurgents in Syria. While this was unsurprising given that Russia’s allegations were directly against Erdogan’s son Bilal, as well as against the Turkish intelligence service MIT, which has been exposed assisting with arms shipments as well as chemical weapons into Syria, the failure of Western leaders or Western media to react and respond appropriately to Turkey’s blatant support for IS and other terrorist armies in Syria was shocking.

It is however also bemusing, to find that the position of Western governments, particularly those of the US, UK and Australia, has become so contradictory, and still essentially unchanged. While we call for a global campaign against Islamic State, and prepare to send more military resources into Syria and Iraq to destroy it, we are effectively allied with Turkey, who has been supporting Da’esh and other terrorist groups – Jabhat al Nusra and Ahrar al Sham, for the last four years in Turkey’s campaign against the Syrian state. Meanwhile Russia, which operates legitimately in Syria at the invitation of the government, and in coordination with the Syrian army, has made huge gains in pushing back both the Turkish/Saudi backed ‘Army of Conquest’, and in destroying the Oil refineries and tanker pipelines of Da’esh.

The effectiveness of Russia’s bombing and cruise missile strikes on the Islamic State’s dirty trade not only raised the ire of its benefactor – Erdogan’s family business – but raises questions about the US ‘campaign against IS’ of which we are nominally a part.

There has however been another significant development, which raises particular questions about Australia’s current military deployment in Iraq. Apparently in cooperation with the Iraqi Kurdistan ‘regional government’, and its leader Barzani, Turkey moved 1200 troops and tanks and other assets into Mosul. This drew an immediate demand from the Baghdad government’s Haidar al Abadi that Turkey withdraw its forces, or face military action. Shiite militias who are operating in coordination with the Iraqi Army out of Baghdad, were particularly vocal in their protests against Turkey, as well as against the US. The Iraqi government was vigorously supported with mass public protests in the south of the country, and calls for direct action against Turkey’s invasion. Erdogan however not only refuses to withdraw his troops, which he claims are there to ‘train peshmerga forces to fight IS’, but has threatened to cut Iraq’s water supply through the Euphrates and Tigris rivers unless Iraq changes its position on support for Syria and Russia.

The Foreign Minister Julie Bishop has repeatedly made clear that our commitment in Iraq and in Syria is strictly ‘in defence of Iraq’ but is also operating with the consent and at the behest of the Baghdad government. As the development outlined above now effectively puts Australia at odds with the ‘US coalition against Da’esh’ there is an urgent need for a clarification of Australia’s position, both on Turkey and on the Russian campaign supporting the Syrian army against ALL the terrorist groups fighting the Syrian government.

We must ask whether the Turnbull government acknowledges Turkey’s support for the Islamic State, and what action it intends to take against the Erdogan regime’s aggressive and destabilising behaviour. We must also ask whether the Australian airforce will continue to conduct bombing runs in coordination with the US coalition. Not only have Turkish actions put us in conflict with that coalition, operating out of Incirlik, but there is another danger. Russia has stated that there no further threats to Russian servicemen and assets will be tolerated, from unauthorised foreign parties.

Even if Australia limits its activities to strikes on Islamic State targets in Eastern Syria, this may bring us into the line of legitimate Russian fire. Other unidentified coalition partners last week struck a Syrian army base near Deir al Zour, in an act which enabled IS forces to overrun a long-protected village. As with Turkey’s illegal incursions, this attack on the SAA , which killed three men and injured a dozen, drew an immediate protest to the UN, but no action has been taken to identify the country or countries responsible. Neither has there been any explanation of why a member of the US coalition launched a strike on the SAA base which facilitated the operations of the IS terrorist group in the area where its Oil assets are located.

I trust that you will consider the case that I have made, and in the light of it perhaps reconsider the apparent support of the Labor party for the US led campaign, which quite evidently aims to replace Syria’s legitimately elected government with some group of Sunni officials approved by the very countries supporting the terrorist groups in Syria – Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Qatar.

I also urge you to give this matter urgent attention, despite the imminent Christmas break.

I have copied Julie Bishop into this letter, and would welcome a further response from her.

kind regards,

David Macilwain,

Sandy Creek, Victoria

*1 http://harpers.org/blog/2015/12/mountain-ambush/

I also recommend this article from Mike Whitney on today’s meeting between Kerry and Putin in Moscow, stating it as it is:
http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/12/15/putin-gives-kerry-a-chance-to-pull-back-from-the-brink/

When I visited Syria a year and a half ago, the Syrian city of Homs was largely under government control. A few days ago the government began evacuating the last of the militants from their enclave in Homs under a truce agreement brokered by the United Nations and Red Cross.   The victory parade of the Syrian Arab Army was in distinct contrast to any victory parade of ISIS.

Article written by Judith Bello. Initially published at http://deconstructedglobe.com/wordpress/celebration-in-homs/

A Victory Parade

Here is the response of the people of Homs to their liberation by the Syria Arab Army. More will soon be able to return to their homes and begin the long journey of rebuilding.

ISIS

This is the victory parade of ISIS occupiers returning from Mosul, Iraq to their headquarters in Raqqa on June 25, 2014.

Homs

Homs was one of the early centers of the uprising in Syria.  At the moment I won’t go into all the misinformation that has been presented in the Western media, but here is a quote from IRIN (Integrated Regional Information Networks), an NGO that reports on humanitarian crises about Homs in December 2011

Homs, a major transportation node that forms a crossroads between the main regions of the country, used to be a microcosm of the national mosaic – made up of a mix of ethnic and religious groups, including Sunni Muslims, Christians, and Alawis, members of a minority offshoot of Shia Islam to which al-Assad belongs.

But activists say neighbours of different sects who used to live side by side peacefully have increasingly turned against one another.

Initially, the LCC accused government-allied militia of kidnapping protesters, with the number of kidnappings rising in November, it said.

But increasingly, residents say, civilians have been behind sectarian-coloured counter-kidnappings of government forces, but also of Alawi and Christian civilians, as well as Sunnis considered to be spies for the government. The LCC maintains that some counter-kidnappings are conducted only to secure the release of captured civilians.

“There should not be any doubt of the regime’s entire responsibility for the sectarian turn of events in Homs,” opposition figure and author Yassin Haj Saleh said in the LCC statement. The regime “starved [the people] and incited hate between the people of different neighbourhoods,” he said.

But other well-placed sources said they had received reports that opposition groups were behind much of the violence in Homs. The resident quoted earlier said the kidnappings seemed to be conducted mostly by Sunnis, and said he knew of three Christians who had been kidnapped in two days this week.

The Gradual, Hard Won, Recovery of Syria

The western press often denigrates victories of the Syrian Arab Army in recovering control of their country.   This is not the first victory in Homs, but a significant step on the road to restoration.  The Syrian government largely controlled the area in June 2014 when I was there as an election observer.   Surprisingly (to me), people walked out of the rebel held areas to vote.  Men danced in the street in Homs when the high tally for Bashar Assad was announced.  In 2012, enough of the city was liberated for President Assad to walk down the street with his entourage and greet the people.

This month a truce was negotiated allowing the last of the militants in Homs and their families to be resettled outside the area.   According to NBC:

Talal Barazi, governor of Homs, told Syria’s Sana news agency that some 720 people would be allowed to leave Waer district — 300 of them militants — during the first stage of the agreement brokered by the U.N. and the Red Cross.

During a second stage, some 2,000 militants who wished to lay down their weapons and go back to their “normal lives” would be resettled, Sana reported. Some 70,000 civilians are believed to still live in Waer, which has been under siege since 2013.

Amnesty and a Celebration of Peaceful Futures

The Syrian government has made a number of truces with indigenous militants, either relocating them to areas still in conflict or allowing them amnesty if they will join the government forces. This truce, arranged between provincial officials and representatives of Al Nusra Front (Al Qaeda in Syria) requires the fighters to hand over their weapons to the Syrian Arab Army. However, the will be resettled in Idlib where the SAA and the Al Nusra Front remain in conflict. 

But, that is a problem for tomorrow. Today, the city of Homs is will be free of weapons and war. People are already returning to their homes.

Video inside:Syrian students and teachers of one of the country's biggest universities gathered in the centre of Homs, Wednesday, to thank Russia for its role in the Syrian conflict. You can hear them chanting Bashar al-Assad and they are carrying banners featuring Assad and Putin's faces. The Australian and US press mislead us all into endorsing a war that Syrians do not want. The latest is Tanya Plibersek's pathetic complaint that Australian should be included in the NATO war-party on Syria. " Tanya Plibersek: Australia deserves a seat at the table in Syria negotiations." As aufinm remarked in the discussion under the Guardian article, "'Deserve' is a very weird word to use. This is a war, not a bloody christmas party planning committee." Check out the comments under Plibersek's ignorant article. They are unusually perceptive and well-informed on Syria.

The photograph to the left is of a young Syrian boy at his father's funeral. He saluted those present and gave a defiant and hope-filled speech in memory of his father, a soldier in the Syrian Arab Army. This article is composed of reports from two members of an international peace delegation led by Mairead McGuire, and hosted by Mother Agnes Mariam. This article is written by Shrikant Ramdas, one of the members of the delegation.

Andrew Ashdown, an Anglican priest who was also on the delegation to Syria, wrote about a soldier's funeral he attended in Tartous.

It is hard to describe the emotion of what happened in Tartous. We had planned to visit a hospital. We learned that 22 bodies of soldiers were being returned home. The corpses were those of [Syrian Arab Army] soldiers that died in the siege of the Kuwairis Airport, Eastern Aleppo, and were buried there because of the siege. Some volunteers were able to finally bring the bodies back to their families, which coincided with the time of our visit. Hundreds had gathered. There was intense emotion as the coffins were loaded off a lorry, to the piercing cries of grieving relatives. We joined the crowds giving condolences to families who seemed to genuinely appreciate our presence.

Suddenly a young boy of about 10, whose father's body was being returned, and was standing next to his crying mother and a Sheikh, stood to attention in front of us, saluted and with tears flowing, gave a deeply moving speech.

One of the monks with me told us that in what he said there was not one word of anger, hatred or violence. His words :

"My father is a blessing to this country. He has given his life so that we may live in peace. But he is not dead. He is a martyr. And I honour him. Mabrouk! Mabrouk! ! [1] He will live, and because of him Syria will have peace."

I stood to attention looking straight at him with the crowds around looking on and letting him finish. I then saluted him before giving him a short blessing, and a few moments later, a hug. The Sheikh next to him hugged me also. None of us could hold back our tears. It was an experience we shall never forget. The sheer courage, determination, hope and cry for peace in the midst of grief puts all those who bang the drums of war to shame…

Shrikant Ramdas's report of his visit to Syria last month (November 2015)

It was by chance that I joined the international peace delegation led by Mairead McGuire, and hosted by Mother Agnes, to go to Syria in November 2015 during a most testing period for its people. As someone who is neither a journalist nor an activist, but rather an 'observer' with a deep desire for peace, it was saddening to see another country plunged into war by outside forces. We have seen this pattern repeatedly: Iraq, Afghanistan, Ukraine, Yemen even now, and countless other places, and I often felt helpless as a concerned and proud citizen of another country as to why this happens and what anyone can do. One option, a difficult one for most, is to see for oneself, and what I observed during my visit was too many emotions to adequately and justly describe what the people of Syria have been and are going through.

The people we met were across different faiths and walks of life. Few were under the illusion that their popularly elected and, indeed, generally popular leader, was perfect, yet most admired him. But even a smaller section of society who at one time may have opposed with genuine concerns had understood - this was a time to unite and defend their land and for this, they did come together to defend their little towns and cities, guarding their churches, their mosques, their schools, their children, their heritage. I developed a deep respect for them very quickly; I was sure if there was a Hindu or Buddhist or Jain temple or a Sikh Gurudwara, they would guard that too with their lives, such is their respect for humanity, such is their character.

During our visit, one of the many striking things even in their hardship and grief was how appreciative the average Syrian man, woman and child were for our presence. As a Hindu from India, I was touched by the sheer hospitality and the kind words they had for my land, even in these most trying of times. I too conveyed my deep appreciation and told them the world was awakening slowly, and hopefully more will, to their plight, their bravery, and this injustice. It is hard to pick a story among many worthy stories, but certainly "The Boy who said Mabrouk" [See at the beginning of this article] to his martyred father upon receipt of his remains, a father who may have prepared his child for this sad outcome, will never leave any of us.

I remember meeting young men and women not yet out of their teens, and telling them that I will return soon, just to check if they are ok, and that I expect they will have fulfilling lives and that they must keep the faith. The people of Syria are proud and beautiful representatives of the forces of good, and I will pray that they overcome the dark forces from outside and the few misled within who have turned yet another proud nation and people into a war-ground in the geo-political landscape controlled by the western global elite and their allies in the Middle East. To be overrun and to valiantly fight back, one can only salute not just the bravery but the resilience of the Syrian people. My biggest hope is that this ends soon, that the people of Syria survive and live in a way that many of us take for granted: a life of family, of love, of cooperation, in a society and land that had and hopefully will go back to what it was, a beautiful nation of many cultures living together in happiness and mutual respect. In my language, Syria or Sooriya as it is pronounced in Arabic, sounds similar to Surya, which means the sun, and my hope is this land will shine brightly, soon.

Shrikant Ramdas, Bangalore, India

14 Dec 2015

NOTES

[1] "Mabrouk" is an arab term meaning, "Congratulations" or "Blessed".

Suppose a respectable opinion poll found that Bashar al-Assad has more support than the Western-backed opposition. Would that not be major news? Here are results of surveys that tried to find out what Syrians actually want in terms of government, rather than what foreign forces wish to impose on them.

Suppose a respectable opinion poll found that Bashar al-Assad has more support than the Western-backed opposition. Would that not be major news?

(Article by Steven Gowans first published on December 11, 2015 at https://gowans.wordpress.com/2015/12/12/suppose-a-respectable-opinion-poll-found-that-bashar-al-assad-has-more-support-than-the-western-backed-opposition-would-that-not-be-major-news/)

In the view of Syrians, the country’s president, Bashar al Assad, and his ally, Iran, have more support than do the forces arrayed against him, according to a public opinion poll taken last summer by a research firm that is working with the US and British governments. [1]

The poll’s findings challenge the idea that Assad has lost legitimacy and that the opposition has broad support.

The survey, conducted by ORB International, a company which specializes in public opinion research in fragile and conflict environments, [2] found that 47 percent of Syrians believe that Assad has a positive influence in Syria, compared to only 35 percent for the Free Syrian Army (FSA) and 26 percent for the Syrian Opposition Coalition.

At the same time, more see Assad’s ally, Iran, as having a favorable influence (43%) than view the Arab Gulf States—which back the external opposition, including Al Nusra and ISIS—as affecting Syria favorably (37%).

The two Arab Gulf State-backed Al-Qaeda linked organizations command some degree of support in Syria, according to the poll. One-third believe Al-Nusra is having a positive influence, compared to one-fifth for ISIS, lower than the proportion of Syrians who see Assad’s influence in a positive light.

According to the poll, Assad has majority support in seven of 14 Syrian regions, and has approximately as much support in one, Aleppo, as do Al-Nusra and the FSA. ISIS has majority support in only one region, Al Raqua, the capital of its caliphate. Al-Nusra, the Al-Qaeda franchise in Syria, has majority support in Idlip and Al Quneitra as well as in Al Raqua. Support for the FSA is strong in Idlip, Al Quneitra and Daraa.

An in-country face-to-face ORB poll conducted in May 2014 arrived at similar conclusions. That poll found that more Syrians believe the Assad government best represents their interests and aspirations than believe the same about any of the opposition groups. [3]

The poll found that 35 percent of Syrians saw the Assad government as best representing them (20% chose the current government and 15% chose Bashar al-Assad). By comparison, the level of the support for the opposition forces was substantially weaker:

• Al-Nusra, 9%
• FSA, 9%
• “Genuine” rebels, 6%
• ISIS, 4%
• National Coalition/transitional government, 3%

The sum of support for the opposition forces, 31 percent, was less than the total support for Assad and his government.

Of significance is the weak support for the FSA and the “genuine” rebels, the alleged “moderates” of which British prime minister David Cameron has improbably claimed number as many 70,000 militants. Veteran Middle East correspondent Robert Fisk has pointed out that if the ranks of the moderates were this large, the Syrian Arab Army, which has lost 60,000 soldiers, mainly to ISIS and Al-Nusra, could hardly survive. Fisk estimates generously that “there are 700 active ‘moderate’ foot soldiers in Syria,” and concludes that “the figure may be nearer 70,” closer to their low level of popular support. [4]

Sixteen percent of Syrians polled said that Moaz Al Khateeb best represented their aspirations and interests, a level of support on par with that for Assad. Khateeb, a former president of the National Coalition for Syrian and Revolutionary Forces—which some Western powers unilaterally designated as the legitimate government of Syria—called on Western powers to arm the FSA and opposed the designation of Al-Nusra as a terrorist group. The so-called “moderate” Islamist, who favors the replacement of secular rule with Sharia law, is no longer active in the Coalition or a force in Syrian politics.

Neither is the FSA a significant force in the country’s politics, despite its inclusion in the ORB survey. According to veteran Middle East correspondent Patrick Cockburn, the FSA “largely collapsed at the end of 2013.” [5] Fisk says that the FSA is “virtually non-existent.” [6]

Assad has repeatedly challenged the notion that he lacks popular support, pointing to the fact that his government has survived nearly five years of war against forces backed by the most powerful states on the planet. It’s impossible to realistically conceive of the government’s survival under these challenging circumstances, he argues, without its having the support of a sizeable part of its population.

In a 11 December 2015 interview with Spanish media, Assad observed:

[I]f…the majority of…Syrians (oppose me) and you have…national and regional countries…against me, and the West, most of the West, the United States, their allies, the strongest countries and the richest countries in the world against me, and…the Syrian people (are opposed to me) how can I be president? It’s not logical. I’m…here after five years—nearly five years—of war, because I have the support of the majority of Syrians. [7]

Assad’s view of his level of support appears to be largely corroborated by the ORB poll.

The persistence of the myth that Assad lacks support calls to mind an article written by Jonathan Steele in the British newspaper the Guardian on 17 January 2012, less than one year into the war. Under a lead titled, “Most Syrians back President Assad, but you’d never know it from western media,” Steele wrote:

Suppose a respectable opinion poll found that most Syrians are in favor of Bashar al-Assad remaining as president, would that not be major news? Especially as the finding would go against the dominant narrative about the Syrian crisis, and the media consider the unexpected more newsworthy than the obvious.

Alas, not in every case. When coverage of an unfolding drama ceases to be fair and turns into a propaganda weapon, inconvenient facts get suppressed. So it is with the results of a recent YouGov Siraj poll…ignored by almost all media outlets in every western country whose government has called for Assad to go.

Steele reminds us that Assad has had substantial popular support from the beginning of the war, but that this truth, being politically inconvenient, is brushed aside, indeed, suppressed, in favor of falsehoods from US, British and French officials about Assad lacking legitimacy.

Steele’s observation that inconvenient facts about Assad’s level of support have been “ignored by almost all media outlets in every western country whose government has called for Assad to go,” raises obvious questions about the independence of the Western media. Private broadcasters and newspapers are, to be sure, formally independent of Western governments, but they embrace the same ideology as espoused by key figures in Western governments, a state of affairs that arises from the domination of both media and governments by significant corporate and financial interests. Major media themselves are major corporations, with a big business point of view, and Western governments are made up of, if not always “in-and-outers” from the corporate world, by those who are sympathetic to big business.

Wall Street and the corporate world manifestly have substantial interests in the Middle East, from securing investment opportunities in the region’s vast energy resources sector, the construction of pipelines to carry natural gas to European markets (cutting out Russia), access to the region’s markets, and the sale of military hardware to its governments. Saudi Arabia, for example, a country of only 31 million, has the world’s third largest military budget, ahead of Russia [8], much of its spent buying expensive military equipment from Western arms manufacturers. Is it any wonder that Western governments indulge the Riyadh regime, despite its fondness for beheadings and amputations, official misogyny, intolerance of democracy, propagation of the violently sectarian Islamist Wahhabi ideology that inspires Al-Qaeda, Al-Nusra and ISIS, military intervention in Bahrain to crush a pro-democracy uprising, and a war of aggression on Yemen?

The research firm also conducted a broadly similar poll in Iraq in July [9]. Of particular interest were the survey’s findings regarding the view of Iraqis on the possible partitioning of their country into ethno-sectarian autonomous regions. A number of US politicians, including in 2006 then US senator and now US vice-president Joseph Biden, have floated the idea of carving Iraq into Sunni, Shiite and Kurdish states. Indeed, US foreign policy has long fostered the deepening of ethno-sectarian cleavages in Iraq, and US government officials have long labored to shape public opinion in the West to the view that Iraqis self-identify on tribal, sectarian, and ethnic grounds, to a far greater degree than they identify as Iraqis. If US government officials are to be believed, Iraqis themselves are eager to see their country split into ethno-sectarian mini-states.

But the ORB poll strongly rejects this view. According to the survey, three of four Iraqis oppose the partition of their country into autonomous regions, including majorities in both Sunni and Shiite communities. Only in the north of Iraq, where the Kurds already have an autonomous regional government, is there any degree of support for the proposal, and even there, only a slim majority (54%) is in favor.

Robert F. Worth, in a 26 June 2014 New York Times article [10], pointed to earlier public opinion polling that anticipated these findings. Worth wrote, “For the most part, Iraqis (with the exception of the Kurds) reject the idea of partition, according to recent interviews and opinion polls taken several years ago.”

US foreign policy favors the promotion of centrifugal forces in the Middle East, to split the Arab world into ever smaller—and squabbling—mini-states, as a method of preventing its coalescence into a single powerful Arab union strong enough to take control of its own resources, markets and destiny. It is in this goal that the origin of US hostility to the Syrian government, which is Arab nationalist, and to Iraqi unity, can be found. US support for Israel—a settler outpost dividing the Asian and African sections of the Arab nation—is also related to the same US foreign policy objective of fostering divisions in the Middle East to facilitate US economic domination of the region.

1. http://www.opinion.co.uk/perch/resources/syriadata.pdf

2. http://www.opinion.co.uk/whoweare.php

3. http://www.opinion.co.uk/perch/resources/syriadatatablesjuly2014.pdf

4. Robert Fisk, “David Cameron, there aren’t 70,000 moderate fighters in Syria—and whosever heard of a moderate with a Kalashnikov anyway?”, The Independent, November 29, 2015

5. Patrick Cockburn, “Syria and Iraq: Why US policy is fraught with danger ,“ The Independent, September 9, 2014

6. Robert Fisk, “Saudi Arabia’s unity summit will only highlight Arab disunity,” The Independent, December 4, 2015

7. “President al-Assad: Russia’s policy towards Syria is based on values and interests, the West is not serious in fighting terrorists,” Syrian Arab News Agency, December 11, 2015, http://sana.sy/en/?p=63857

8. Source is The Military Balance, cited in The Globe and Mail, Report on Business, November 25, 2015

9. http://www.opinion.co.uk/perch/resources/iraqdata.pdf

10. Robert F. Worth, “Redrawn lines seen as no cure in Iraq conflict,” The New York Times, June 26, 2014

Bruce Petty is a highly regarded political satirist and cartoonist as well as an award-winning film maker. He went to Syria in 2009 (before the war) on a project to interview Syrian intellectuals and university students about their political views. Dr Jeremy Salt is a former journalist, turned academic and is the author of The Unmaking of the Middle East. A History of Western Disorder in Arab Lands, (University of California Press, 2008). Until recently, Dr Salt was based in the Department of Political Science and Public Administration, Bilkent University, Ankara, Turkey, where he ran courses in the history of the modern Middle East, in politics and in politics, propaganda and the media. The story behind this series: On 16 November 2015 a small group of concerned Australian citizens got together to talk about the problems of getting real information out to Australians and other US-NATO allies about war in Syria, in spite of mainstream press efforts to confuse the public. Bruce Petty and Jeremy Salt were part of that group. Inside is the transcript of the embedded video. (There are two other videos in this series: "Cartoonist Bruce Petty and Dr Jeremy Salt: Where news comes from: reporting on the Middle East." and "Does Bashar al-Assad really have to go? Cartoonist Bruce Petty talks to Dr Jeremy Salt")

Transcript below with headings inserted by candobetter.net editor

JEREMY SALT: One of the claims is that Bashar al-Assad has killed in his political position more people than have been killed by Islamic state.

Well, who's saying these things? Bashar al-Assad hasn't killed anyone in his life as far as I know. He himself. But that's the way the media loves to do this.

BRUCE PETTY: He's representing the army.

JEREMY SALT: But how do they actually work out their calculus? Who is killing who and the numbers that are being killed by each person involved in this. There's no way they can do it. And so it becomes just a simple propaganda statement.

And the fact is that Syria has been targeted in what is the most extraordinary attempt in modern history to destroy an Arab state. That's it. It's worse than Iraq, worse than Lebanon, worse than anything that's happened before. Go all the way back to Algeria and 1830 with the French. It is the most relentless, remorse[less] attack on an Arab country in modern history.

And the fact is that Bashar, is the president - right - and he has a functioning government. I don't know what these people who use these expressions like 'dictator' are thinking. He has a foreign minister, he has an interior minister, he has a defence minister. He listens to them. He takes their advice. They're the ones who know. And they formulate strategies to try to fight off this attack. And they've been doing this for four years.

Civilian casualties

Now, of course, of course people are going to be killed. And civilians are going to be killed too. If you've got armed men who've infiltrated towns and cities, how can you get them out without civilians being killed? And there's a big difference between killing civilians, when you're trying to drive these people out, than what ISIS does, which is to pick them all up, round them up, and kill them by the hundreds. Because they don't like them - because they're Alawis, or because they're Christians, or whatever ... So, this is a war.

Is Syria an Alawite state?

Proportion of Sunni muslims in army and government

One point to make, first, is the Gulf Arabs, Saudi Arabia in particular, and Sheikh Qaradawi and his cell mates or soul mates, perpetually say that this [Syria] is an Alawite state.

Well, excuse me, the Syrian government is multi-ethnic; it includes Christians, Sunni Muslims, Alawis, across the range. Who's got the talent gets into the ministry.

The Syrian army is more than 80 per cent Sunni Muslim. More than 80 per cent of foot soldiers are Sunni Muslim. The Alawis constitute about 10 per cent of the population of the country. So, what are these Sunni Muslims doing holding together? Because the army has held together. The media tried to drum up defections in the early stages - 'Oh, all these people are defecting!' There were hardly any. The army has just been rock-solid through this whole attack.
So, what are the Sunni Muslims doing? Well, they're not acting as Sunni Muslims, of course, they're acting as Syrians. And they're defending their country. And large numbers of them have died. Roughly about 60,000. Probably more. Out of the 200,000 or so we are told - who have been killed. So, that's one of the things that the media doesn't like to talk about.

Unelected, hated dictator?

Bashar al-Assad is popular and elected.

The second thing is that Bashar is popular. People like him. They might be critical of the system. They might not like the system. They might think the system should be replaced. They like Bashar. And this has been the case from the very very beginning. Something else that the media very rarely acknowledges.

Electoral reforms under Bashar al-Assad

Bashar al-Assad is popular and legally elected.

Third thing is that Bashar, over the last few years, has made very important steps in reforming Syria's constitution. Okay? They had a constitutional referendum. They changed the constitution. They took the Ba'ath party, removed it as a central pillar of state, they introduced a multi-party system, they had multi-party elections, they had observers from ... thirty countries observing those elections. They all said they were perfectly fair, perfectly free, and an overwhelming majority - this is for the presidential elections (they had parliamentary plus presidential) - voted for Bashar.

Mainstream media facilitates war by hiding the facts from the public

Now, all these things Syria has done, are completely ignored or dismissed out of hand in the western media. Because it doesn't suit them. It doesn't suit them. The main point here, of course, this whole rhetoric about, you know,' we have to give the Syrians democracy, and we have to kind of give Syrians a transition to democracy' - was all nonsense. Because it was not the point at all. The whole point was to destroy Syria, and to divide destroyed Syria up, in particular. And to destroy Syria, that's what you have to do.

So, you know, the readers of the media, the print media, the viewers of television, are gulled and being played upon. And this is what happens in every war. This is what governments do, you know. They dehumanise, they invalidate; they set people up as worthy of being destroyed.

BRUCE PETTY: We don't want complicated issues. We don't want complicated events.

JEREMY SALT: Of course, if Australia ever got to the point where they were going to send troops to Syria, it's all set up. 'Oh, we have to - our boys have to go and fight and get rid of the dictator. And give the Syrian people democracy. They just fall into it.

What about the chemical weapons?

’Red lines’.

BRUCE PETTY: The other claim is he had used chemical weapons on his own people. Is that true?

JEREMY SALT: Well, as far as I'm concerned, no. [inaudible] And before the big chemical weapons attack, apparently, round Damascus in 2013, there had been many many smaller episodes of chemical weapons being used. And one - where was it? In northern Syria - and I forget the person who it was - UN person - who concluded that, no, this wasn't the Syrian government.

VOICE OFF-SCENE: "Carlo Ponti."

JEREMY SALT: Was it Carlo Ponti? Right. And, when you come to the big one, round Damascus, well, we know what was behind that. Barack Obama has said that the use of chemical weapons - implicitly by the Syrian government - is a 'red line'.

Now, if chemical weapons had been used by someone else, probably there wouldn't have been a red line, but, implicitly, the use of chemical weapons by the Syrian government is a red line; [if] that red line's crossed, we'll be in there. That is a signal to outside elements. All we have to do is set it up to get him across the red line. So some of these earlier attacks had been set up for that reason.

And they didn't work. 'Okay, we have to try harder.'

So you get the big chemical weapons attack around Damascus - apparently - in August 2013, where sarin gas was used and there have been many many allegations that this came from Turkey and a large number of people killed - 1300 we were told by the media. Are those figures correct? We don't know what the truth is behind these chemical weapons attacks. We don't know much about it at all, because the media picked it up, used it - 'Look what he's done! This beast, this monster, this tyrant, is now using chemical weapons against his own people.' And they used it as propaganda, then they dropped the whole thing.

Then we saw pictures of children who had been killed. Who were those children? They were just kind of 'faces'. In a photograph. On television or in the media. And they were used for a few days and then dismissed. We never heard about them again.

Mainstream media did not try to identify the children in the photos, but a Syrian nun did

So ... and... a lot of people go into this, like Mother Agnes, the Syrian nun. I mean, she did the work the journalists should have done. She looked at the photographs and said, "Hang on, wait a moment, that photograph's taken here; and that photograph is taken there: and they've got the same people in it. And allegations that some of those children we saw actually come from Latakia, which is a heavily Alawi population. And the Takfiri [...inaudible] would have no hesitation in killing Alawi children. It might seem a terribly harsh thing to say, but that's them. That's what they're like. So, there are all kinds of questions to be asked about that chemical weapons attack which the media didn't even look at.

MIT scientific study of purported gas attack

And then we had more thoughtful studies, like scientists in America at MIT. They studied the trajectory of the rocket - where they would have had to have come from. No way, they couldn't have come from Syrian military positions. We had one person who came on television, a victim of a sarin gas attack, and whose report was that - I forget who got involved in all of this, but there was no sarin anywhere else in the environment. There was nothing on the grass, nothing on the [inaudible]; just this man saying, 'I've been a victim of a sarin gas attack.' And so the whole thing unraveled.

Mainstream media refused to publish contrary evidence

And Seymour Hirsh, the gun American reporter since Vietnam, he weighed in with his report, which the New Yorker would not publish, London Review of Books published. And he pulled a lot of this together.

And the conclusion that he came to was that Obama nearly fell into this trap and retreated just at the last moment because he'd been told by his own people, 'Actually, there's something about this that is not right. We're being set up. don't get involved here.'

Gas attack – if real - came from outside, not from Syrian military

And what Seymour Hirsch - the only conclusion in his article was that this had nothing to do with the Syrian military or the Syrian government. It was an attack by armed groups - if it was a real attack - with the support of outside governments.

video inside:In a huge stunning announcement yesterday by the Russian Foreign Minister, Russia presented direct evidence of Turkey buying illegal oil from the black market supporting terrorists. In this video change.org goes over the important revelations by the Russians, their consequences and the shift of the geopolitical field. The western mainstream media is simply not reporting this because it runs totally counter to their spin. If the western media were to properly bring this news to their readers, they would have to explain the torrent of lies they have issued forth so far in order to justify war. The western media is historically pro-war and Australians, Americans, British and Europeans who rely on the mainstream media alone never hear both sides.

Video inside:One of NATO imperialism's greatest chroniclers, Australian award-winning journalist and filmmaker, John Pilger, tells us how Washington, London and Paris gave birth to ISIS.

One dramatic impact of the Paris terror attack and the contradictions within the NATO camp and vis a vis the GCC-Turkish Camp, is that all of Putin's worst detractors are queuing up to meet him and seek his words of wisdom ....

The photos of Putin, Obama with their 2 advisors sitting around a table for just 4 has gone all across the world

Cameron who was a anti-Putin Hawk was today getting himself photographed with Putin ensuring all cooperation ....

Hollande will be dashing, or should I say - Da-eshing off :) :) off to Moscow and DC to iron out all details for future coordination ...

Even Erdogan is behaving himself ...

Putin has emerged as the central figure in this Global war against ISIS and terror in general ... the most popular leader across the world ...

It was just last year, at the G20, were Obama, Merkel, Cameron, Hollande were not even willing to look at Putin, leave along even shake hands with him .... now its all dramatically turned around ...

The question here for all of us to consider is that why has the PARIS False Flag boomeranged so fast?? They expected the NFZ-SZ strategy, but the contradictions to Up the Ante in Syria, were too strong to be resolved.

Which of the EU nations are the strong dissenting voices ...?? Led by Germany, Czech Republic, Italy, Austria, Hungary, Romania ?? more ??...

Also in the US its not taken the NFZ-SZ route despite immediate statements to that effect by Jeb Bush, Lindsey Graham and Chertoff

Need our European & American friends to enlighten us here ....

Code Pink is a prominent anti-war US based organization. Very high profile. After the Paris attacks they published a webpage that ignorantly cast the Syrian Government on the same footing as Daesh. This prompted me to write the following letter, asking them to re-look at their understanding and analysis of Syria and their position on President Bashar al Assad:

Dear Code Pink,

Greetings,

Its really high time that you re-looked your understanding and your analysis of Syria and your position on President Bashar al Assad.

By all indicators, Bashar al Assad has the support of between 70-80% of the Syrian nation.

Thus by constantly buying into the Western-imperialist narrative of Assad the Dictator and the Assad Regime, you are doing a lot of damage to the global peace and anti-war movement.

[The open letter is a response to this statement on a code pink page:

"Recently they issued a At the end of last week, we witnessed horrific attacks that left scores dead and hundreds wounded in Beirut, Baghdad and Paris. These brutal and unconscionable strikes against civilians have been attributed to members of The Islamic State (ISIS), or Daesh (Da’ish). People in Syria are also being slaughtered every day by Daesh and the murderous Assad regime." Code Pink, http://www.codepink.org/send_condolences_to_the_lebanon_france_and_iraq]

You are also insulting the Syrian People who have accepted a new Constitution in 2012, after a national referendum, all 56% of the population that voted. Syria is evolving into a multi-party democracy. That is the way that nations need to evolve and Syria responded to the voices that emanated from Tunisia and was negotiating the process, till the Saudi-Qatari-Turkish-Nato backed Islamists decided to wreck mayhem and chaos.

Kindly run through a copy of the Syrian Constitution if you still haven't. Even that of Tunisia. Whilst Tunisia was allowed to evolve, Syria was not given that chance at all. There are both strategic and economic reasons here as you well know.

You are also insulting the intelligence of the Syrian People, where again in June 2014, more than 73% of the Syrian nation went to the polls, despite the threats from terrorists, despite being warned not to vote, with suicide bombers and shoot-outs promised, yet the people voted in droves.

They voted to say, give a message to the world that Syria will not be divided, that Syria will remain secular, that Syria is a multi-religious plural society, that Syria rejects theocracy and stand for a modern secular democracy.

You would at least agree that it is finally for the Syrian people to decide who their elected leader would be.

For now that is President Bashar al Assad. Both his worst detractors have given him numbers that cannot be discounted - Al Jazeera stated 56% for Assad way back in 2012, whilst Nato itself says that Assad has 70% ....

Then how can these Western Morons keep on saying "Assad Must Go"...??

This is the result of pompous impetuosity that goes with a colonial mindset. We know better, we will decide your leaders for you. Someone that Riaydh, Doha, Tel Aviv and Ankara love ...

Thus here the only solution is that after once the scourge of terror is contained and defeated (and not merely degraded .... for perpetual controlled chaos), as the Russians have demonstrated in less than 45 days, the way ahead is very simple.

The political solution that is being discussed must be supported.

Finally after a new secular constitution is negotiated, as agreed in Vienna, let the Elections be held under the auspices of UN Monitors and observers from the UNSC, G20 and BRICS, Arab League, African Union, Shanghai cooperation Organization, ASEAN, the Bolivarian Nations.

In short, let the whole world come and observe, monitor, place CCTV cameras at each polling booth, have CNN-FOX-BBC-Al Jazeera at every street corner asking people if the elections were free and fair.

And after the elections results are out, we shall know.

In short, let the Syrian people decide.

In solidarity with the Global Resistance, the Global Intifada
Feroze Mithiborwala
India

Who doesn't like a good game show?  Me!  I don't like them at all. 
"Deal or No Deal" leaves me cold.  Vanna White offers no appeal.  Steve
Harvey?  Forget it.  And if I really wanted to watch any kind of "Family
Feud," I'd simply reenact my own childhood -- or else watch our very
own American mainstream media outlets fighting to out-do each other to
see who can tell us the biggest lies about Syria.  https://consortiumnews.com/2015/07/20/hidden-origins-of-syrias-civil-war/

PS: 
I just got my Notary Public certificate renewed, so if anyone in the
American MSM wants to come to Berkeley (or pay my airfare to go to them)
in order to swear a Jurat that they are telling the truth, I will take
their sworn statements for free -- just so there will be a record of
their perjury should they all, hopefully, go to trial.

By Jane Stillwater  http://jpstillwater.blogspot.com/2015/11/deadly-game-show-playing-family-feud.html

The Middle East conflict - war in Syria and Iraq - has already spilled over. No one is safe from the terrorist attacks, neither East, nor West. Islamic State claims it is still strong, and its ideas are attracting new recruits to replace those killed on the field. Islamic State says the horrors it perpetrates are done in the name Allah - spurring resentment against Muslims all across the globe. Today, we speak to an Islamic scholar, a Grand Mufti of Syria, Ahmad Badreddin Hassoun, to see how the jihadists have twisted the idea of Islam. And does their agenda have anything to do with Islam at all? Republished from

Follow @SophieCo_RT

Sophie Shevardnadze:Thank you very much for being with us today. This is a great honor. We are delighted to have you, because there are so many things we want to discuss. You said that there is no such thing as a religious war, there are only political interests. But ISIL fighters want to conquer the whole world, they use Islam as their banner and call this fight a religious war. Are they guided by political interests?

Ahmad Badreddin Hassoun: First of all, I want to express my gratitude to the Russian Federation, because it sided with the truth. It did not separate Syrians by their Shia or Sunni background. It decided to support the Syrian people as a whole.

Syria is a secular, democratic society where different religious groups coexist – Christians, the Druze, Sunni and Shia Muslims. Those who call their wars religious, do so in order to provoke radicalism among Muslims. This of course goes against the true Islamic culture, because a person with values will never commit the atrocities ISIL is known for. They use religion as a pretext for conflict and bloodshed. I think there are two kinds of Islamic State fighters – those who know nothing about true Islam and those who have some religious background, but they use religion to promote their own agenda and kill others. 

SS: How are ISIL leaders able to make so many young people follow them? They make them participate in violent acts, in combat – how do they do it?

ABH: What ISIL is doing is not new. This organization has existed before – under different names. They convince their followers that they are guided by religious convictions, spread their ideology, spending a lot of money on that work. We must remember it.

SS: Right! But they don’t buy these young people – they come from Europe, Russia, the U.S. young people from good families for some reason go to Syria and begin to fight for ISIL. How do Islamic State leaders achieve that? It does not matter how they name themselves. How do they do this? What goes on in people’s heads?

ABH: We met with some guys who came from the UK, France. Many of them were Syrians. They come here to build some sort of Islamic caliphate. They think that they will promote Islam and spread it to the whole world.

But we know that religion should not be preached with weapons – rather with love and solidarity. ISIL uses ideology to lead young people astray. But they do it for their own political purposes. Most of the people being killed in Syria today are Muslims. The majority of ISIL victims are Muslims! 

SS: But why do these young men join ISIL? Why do young, healthy people that have good lives at home, go to fight for Islamic State?

ABH: Many young people go abroad, because they want to follow a new ideological trend – radical Islam. They are lost, and leading them back on the right path will take some serious effort. They end up with the wrong people, believing they can wage war in the name of religion.
Now, after Russia began to bomb ISIL targets in Syria, many young Islamic State fighters ran off. What happened to their convictions? They fled. 

If you want to create a true state, you need to build it on the basis of political values and democracy. We don’t impose any religion in Syria; we don’t say that there must be a Christian state, a Jewish state or a Muslim State. These ideas come from outside. The West is instigating such ideologies. The West is playing a big part in the process. 
I think a state should be founded on strong political and cultural elite. 
What we see in Syria today is similar to what happened in Yugoslavia - Croatia, Bosnia. There were major cultural elites there. But the West began to provoke different political and religious groups in order to start a civil war, which resulted in manslaughter. 
So in Syria we have to build a society that will have room for all religious and ethnic groups. We see this kind of order in Russia. Religion is distorted by those who want to start new conflicts, wars…

SS: We will talk more about religion. But first I wanted to ask you about extremists. Pope Francis warned about ISIL fighters entering Europe as refugees. Do you think Europeans should look at every refugee as a suspect?

ABH: Are all refugees Syrians? Of course not! These are people from different countries turned into conflict zones. We see people from Afghanistan, Iraq, Chechnya, Tajikistan and Libya. They are all running to Europe. And many of them have radical convictions. That’s true.

Europeans allowed this ideological trend to develop freely, they let radical Islam spiral out of control. I have seen this in France, the UK and the U.S.. There are Islamic centers financed by Saudi Arabia. These centers became magnets for new extremists, who later travel to the Middle East and start wars there. You reap what you sow. Now we are seeing the results of this policy.

SS: So today terrorism is a trend?

ABH: Terrorism is a dangerous political trend. It is also a cultural trend. And we have to study it in order to fight it. 
ISIL is trying to promote its political agenda through violence, using weapons. They tell their followers that they will go to paradise, “If you murder people, you will end up in paradise.” But this goes against the Prophet’s teachings, because, of course, nobody gets to paradise using these methods. We need to preach the idea that a person gets to paradise through cultural enlightening, education and solidarity.

SS: You’ve said many times that what is happening in Syria now has nothing to do with religion. Why is it that those who fight for the opposition, for ISIL, don’t hear you? Why are they not listening to you?

ABH: Most of those who are now fighting for ISIL came from other countries. They are not Syrians. They come from China, Russia, Europe… And the organizers of this movement indoctrinated them. So the fighters are not listening to us. Many of them don’t even know anything about me.  
Syria has always been a place where different religions co-existed in a civilized manner within one country. We’ve had different eras – Christian and Muslim conquests. But in the end there was always peace. For two thousand years we did not have people murdered for religious reasons in our land. Syria has never had a strict religious government system, unlike Lebanon, for example, where the president must be a Christian, and the Prime Minister – a Sunni Muslim. We could never imagine something like that in Syria. The current conflict is not about religion. Syria is an ancient country. I think what is happening in Syria today is a result of a conspiracy.

SS: But, conspiracy or not, people will always be people. There are good people and bad people everywhere. For example, I remember how Islamists in Egypt were burning Coptic churches, and Muslims created a human shield around the churches, so that Christians could worship in peace. What is the situation in Syria like in this respect? Do Syrians help Christians, the Druze?

ABH: In Egypt it was different. It was all internal. There was not much external interference there, no Blackwater personnel, for example. Egypt changed its political regime on its own, whereas in Syria the attempt to overthrow the government was orchestrated from abroad, by other countries. Syrians were provoked. But we are still there, despite the conspiracy. 

SS: I am also asking about regular Syrians. Do they help Christians to survive, Christians who are also being attacked by ISIL extremists? Do they help each other in Syria?

ABH: Of course, we are afraid for our Christians. But, to be honest, we don’t divide our people into Christians and Muslims, we protect all Syrians. There are many Christian politicians in our country. Our former defense minister is one of them. We don’t make a distinction between Christians and Muslims… We live as one family and protect each other. We don’t divide people into the Druze, Sunni or Shia Muslims, and Christians. So, we are very concerned about the fact that so many Christians are now leaving the region. We will never let the situation get to the point where there are no more Christians in Syria, because this country also belongs to Christians.
Of course, Islam recognizes Jesus Christ, as we all know. We don’t reject Mother Mary, don’t reject Jesus. Whereas ISIL doesn’t think about Christians, they just follow their own agenda. And fighters from different countries help them. That’s why we are now standing alongside Russia and believe that our strong friends will help us, because together we are strong. 
As for religion, today it is used to divide countries, to create so-called Islamic states, which would basically be weak states under Western control.

SS: Thank you again for being with us today. I want to talk more about ISIL. ISIL is not just fighting against everybody, right? They are also trying to create a state, with certain social institutions - education, etc. They pay salaries, give money to the poor. It may even seem that at times they are doing it better than the actual state – at least judging by the number of their followers. 

ABH: I can’t quite agree with you. We see what is really going on there. They just steal the money. They steal the money, their business is contraband. They steal oil from Syrian and Iraqi fields and smuggle it out. They sell it at a low price to whoever is willing to buy it. So they are not just terrorists – they are also thieves and murderers.  
There is also money coming in from Qatar, Saudi Arabia – through so-called charities. They use the money to destroy our country, to destroy Syria. And the vicious cycle continues. 
Now ISIL fighters flee when they hear that Russian jets are coming. They left many Syrian oil fields where they used to steal oil and then sell it. So it is not a state, it is a criminal group. They are not trying to create anything. Look at what they’ve done in Palmyra. What state would do something like that? A true state will not destroy or sell historic treasures. Of course, they think that they are a state. But they are thieves, murderers and criminals.

SS: Why do they destroy historic landmarks? What is their goal? They also destroy mosques. What do they get from that? Of course, they have ideological differences with people from other religious groups. But destroying landmarks and mosques – what’s the point?

ABH: You tell me! Why did they vandalize the Iraqi museum? Nobody had ever done that. ISIL began its conquest in Iraq by ransacking the Mosul Museum. What for? ISIL wants to erase the history of our region, our legacy.
The colonizers tried to do the same in South America, when they invaded the continent and tried to bring the locals to their knees, in order to tap the territories for resources. They also tried to erase the history.
It is an attempt to rewrite history. This is how they plan to weaken the countries – rob people of their history. It is basically neocolonialism, but it is done through third parties. And of course they have some interests too. 
So they might use religious convictions as a pretext, but it leads to enslavement of people and nothing else. That’s what they’ve done.

SS: Let’s get back to one perennial issue. I hope nobody will get offended, but it is very important for us to get an understanding of this. You always emphasize that radical ideologies have nothing to do with real Islam. And most Muslim spiritual leaders agree with you. But could you please explain to me: with Muslim clergy almost unanimously condemning extremism, why is extremism still so explicit in Islam? 

ABH: First of all, this is reaction. All this radicalization comes as a reaction to the enormous tragedies and frustrations that we’ve had throughout our history. For example, when the government doesn’t care about its citizens, when it doesn’t care about upholding religion, it certainly leads to the emergence of people who accuse the government of defying the foundations of religion. So extremism originally comes as a reaction to poor governance.
Secular states, secular democratic nations, should undoubtedly support religion and their country's’ cultural heritage. They shouldn’t forget that religious and cultural heritage also plays an important role. And if you start destroying it, this may indeed lead to the rise of radicals as a kind of backlash. 
Religion and religious organizations must be present in society, because they are good for people. They provide not only for religious institutions or Islam as such, but for the entire public. They must be an indispensable part of the social fabric. 
But those people seek to set specific parts of society against the powers that be. In fact, much of what I’m talking about is evident in Europe. Do you remember the name of Germany’s major political party? It’s the Christian Democratic Union. That is to say that Europeans follow those principles themselves, even though religion must indeed be isolated from politics, and should primarily remain a social and cultural institution. Therefore, I believe the government must reserve a role for religion to play. But we must be very careful in drawing the line between state and religion. Religion is first and foremost a path of spiritual development for people. Our children may belong to different religions, but we should not divide the country because of religion. It is the same in Russia. As far as I know, you have secular laws – the criminal code and other regulations. And they have no reference to religion, because all citizens must be treated equally. The bottom line is that we must distinguish between religious ideas and government policies. A number of states see themselves as religious states: Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. President Erdogan aspires to do the same in Turkey. But in Syria, we do not use religion for political purposes, because religion must bring people together and teach them to love each other. We don’t want to use religion to oppress people. First and foremost, we need to approach religion globally, realizing that religion is one thing, and the state is something different.

SS: Let’s talk about the current situation. Regional countries together with big powers are trying to reach a consensus on Syria’s future. They’re even talking about a dialogue between the government and the opposition. But who should President Assad talk to if most of his opponents are religious fanatics?

ABH: The war has been going on for four years. All these years we’ve been inviting them to start a dialogue. Since the first day of the tragedy we started calling the opposition to come to the negotiation table. Russia encouraged the Syrian opposition to engage in talks three years ago. They refused. Today, their representatives visit Moscow. They agreed to participate in Geneva talks. So Russia has been calling for a dialogue for about 3 years. The Syrian government also sent 3 delegations to Moscow. We hold talks regularly.
But we see that the so-called opposition is in no way a united organization. There are many groups fighting each other, fighting ISIL, fighting us. The Syrian opposition wants to recognize nothing – not talks, not Assad. When Russia launched an anti-ISIL military campaign, the initial response of the so-called moderate opposition was negative. Presently some commanders of the so-called Free Syrian Army say that they are ready to cooperate with the Russian Federation against ISIL. But we offer them to do more than that. What we want them to do is to act together against terrorists unconditionally.
We see Western countries having a hidden agenda, and international players calling for compromise finding them under pressure. But Russia keeps urging the opposition to engage in a dialogue. But Russia’s calls often remain unheeded.
Today a lot depends on the opposition sponsors. It’s them who make decisions, not the opposition itself. It has no independent opinion of its own.
They say there should be a new government in Syria. But the government they want will be essentially a neocolonial government. We changed the Constitution for them; we held elections. Basically, we have a different government today. But they reject everything. The only language they understand is the language of weapons. That’s how they talk – with weapons. They destroy churches and mosques in the name of the so-called revolution. What kind of a revolution is this? You destroy your own country. You steal the country’s resources, destroy hospitals.

SS: Still, President Assad is a controversial figure. Do you think it will be easier to achieve peace if he steps down?

ABH: It’s not for me to decide. It is not up to me; it is not up to Bashar Assad. It’s up to the Syrian people to decide.

SS: But what do you think personally? It’s important.

ABH: I think if Assad steps down, this will result in a breakup of Syria. The reason they want President Assad to go is not to restore democracy. They just want to divide Syria into a number of small countries.
We will only accept a decision made by the Syrian people. Let’s allow the Syrian people to speak. We have been hearing a lot of President Hollande, but the Syrian people aren’t allowed to express their opinion for some reason. Let’s stop listening to people from the U.S., the White House, the Élysée Palace, let’s hear what the ordinary Syrian people have to say. We have to let them talk. Just like it’s not up to Washington to decide who should be president of Russia, it’s not up to Washington to decide who should be president in Damascus. We will recognize the results of a fair independent election. It can be monitored by the UN or Russia.
But they refuse, saying, ‘No, we won’t stop fighting until Assad is gone.’ But what is the alternative? Let’s say Assad steps down. What next? What is the alternative for the Syrian people? Let the Syrian people finally say something on the matter.

SS: I remember when the Syrian conflict just began you said that if we didn’t stop the war immediately, it would drag on for another 10-15 years. What’s your prognosis now? Will this terrible conflict drag on until 2025, or is it possible to end it sooner?  

ABH: I hope it will end in 2016, that’s what I hope for, because we’ve begun making joint efforts in order to resolve this crisis. We can now see significant military success achieved on the Syrian-Lebanese border, with the army advancing towards the Syrian-Turkish border.
Syria’s problem is external, not internal. Our problem is our so-called “friends and neighbors” that extend a helping hand to these terrorists. So when we clear the Syrian-Turkish border of terrorists there will be a dramatic improvement.   The presence of the Russian air force coupled with the efforts of the Syrian army led to considerable success. Now a lot of territory along the Syrian-Turkish border has been cleared of terrorists. As for Idlib and Raqqa, we’ll continue operations there in the days to come. So I hope all the terrorists will simply scatter. I also hope your brave Russian pilots will come back home once peace is restored. 

SS: I want to ask you a very personal question. When terrorists killed your son, you forgave them and asked the judge to forgive them, too. How is that possible? How did you overcome the burning desire for revenge? Are there many people like you in Syria? 

ABH: It’s not the men that blew up his car that should be punished, it’s the people who finance them, the people who come to our country from abroad to do all of this.
Of course I won’t forgive the radicals who urge people to kill, who put themselves above others, who say they’ve created some ‘Islamic state’, mutilating the very tenets of Islam. I condemn those people and I’m never going to forgive them because they are playing games with people’s lives at stake.

It’s the leaders of the Gulf countries, Turkey and the America that should stand trial, because they supplied the arms. The weapons that killed my son came from them. To me, all the people who were killed at their hands are like my son. Every Syrian that died in this war is my son.

SS: Mr. Mufti, thank you so much for the interview. I hope your voice will be heard by those who need it. I really hope that this war will end in the near future, because it has lasted for far too long. Thank you very much.

Confused about what the US and NATO are doing about Syria? Not satisfied with explanations in the mainstream press? Worried that we are promoting more refugees instead of peace in the region? This article gives a very good simple overview of the history and society in Syria, regional religious pressures, recent events and politics, including water theft, background to ISIS, and Turkey's role in opening the refugee floodgates towards Europe. This article represents the text of a talk at a panel on Syrian refugees given by the author in the United States. You can read more of Judy's work on The Deconstructed Globe.

An Ancient Center of Civilization

Syria is a very old ‘country’. Al Sham has been a self-identified and cohesive region for millennia. Damascus was the second center of the Islamic Caliphate [1] after Mohammad’s death (Mecca was first). The Caliphate, in many ways, had more in common with the Syrian Republic than with the Islamic State. There was religious and ethnic diversity, tolerance and respect for the history of the local peoples.

After WWI, Syria rejected a foreign king and instituted an elected parliament and president. It was a French Mandate until after WWII when it became an independent republic, with a secular and socialist government. The Baath party has been privileged in the constitution since the brief period when Syria was bonded to Egypt in a single socialist republic from 1958-1961 This was changed in a 2012 when the constitution was rewritten by a committee commissioned by Bashar Assad with representation from any opposition group willing to come forward and participate.

Syria has many Christians, and diverse sects of Islam are represented there beyond Sunni and Alawite. There were many Jews in Syria as well before the conflict with Israel caused them to leave. Syrians have lived in peace together for a very long time. Greater Syria includes the ancient lands of the Jews and the birthplace of Christ as well as the center of the first Caliphate after the death of Mohammad.

Syria is a Socialist Republic and the Government Still Supports the Majority of the Population

Sunnis are not closed out of the Syrian government or slighted by it. Although the Assads are Alawite, the Parliament of Syria, the massive bureaucracy that handles the day to day affairs of government and the Syrian Arab Army reflect the demographics of the society at large, meaning that they are mostly Sunni. There are many wealthy Sunnis in Damascus and Aleppo and many of them have government ties.

Despite the war, the President and his cabinet, the parliament, the bureaucracy and the army continue to govern the central areas of the country

At least 2/3 of displaced people from Syria are in the government controlled area of Syria where they receive government assistance and remain a part of Syrian society.

Economic Background of Protests in Early 2011 and Foreign Meddling

Drought had caused the destruction of many small farms. Yes, Global warming played a part. But there was a political aspect to the problem as well. Turkey had a built a new dam upstream on the Euphrates and was retaining their full portion of the diminished water supply.[2] Also, Israel had turned the streams from the Golan that once nourished Syrian lands back into Israel.[3]

Bashar Assad was attempting to reintegrate the economy with the US run ‘global economy’, which had a directly negative effect on the welfare of poor people. Like other developing nations, Syria faced a choice between isolation and sanctions, or austerity and essentially pillage by corporate vultures. Like many of his generation, Bashar Assad felt that in the long run, it was best to end isolation. He modernized Syria’s education system (which is free) and started promoting classes in Arabic for foreigners. While some of the elite became very rich, the poorest people suffered with diminished state subsidies for bread and gasoline.

There was bad blood between the Assad family and the Muslim Brotherhood due to past incidents. However, the MB in Syria are hostile not only to Alawites but to secularism. In 2011, when an insurrection seemed imminent, Qatar began paying disaffected members of the Brotherhood to take up arms against their country. Turkey opened training camps for militants and Saudi Arabia opened the pipeline for foreign fighters into the country.

The US had been working to incite trouble as they could not accept the Syrian governments loyalties to Iran and support for various Palestinian factions and Hezbollah, and their uncompromising demand that the Golan, Syrian land occupied by Israel during the 1967 war, be restored to Syria. When the US reopened its embassy in Syria in 2008, the ambassador immediately began meeting with dissidents and dissatisfied members of the powerful class.

A report on Al Qaeda in Iraq published by West Point in 2008 [4] talks about the ways in which they could support themselves and the networks the foreign fighters used to move through Syria, The report says that these trafficking networks were criminal rather than political and recommends that their usefulness be explored. A recently leaked intelligence report from 2012 [5] says that the United States was aware that one of the Al Qaeda factions was likely to take over a large area including parts of Syria and Iraq, but this was not a matter of concern.

The War in Syria isn't about Democracy or Human Rights

You have heard many terrible things about Bashar Assad, yet he does not govern alone, though he is more powerful now than he was before the war. He doesn’t ‘own’ the army or the bureaucracy that runs the daily affairs of the county. However, he has always been generally well liked by the people to the point where he often drove his own car and was able to walk among them before the war, something American presidents haven’t done since Kennedy.

The Assads have not co-opted the financial resources of the country for themselves and their families, though some of their Sunni allies have become very rich since Bashar’s attempt at cooperating with the neoliberal western economies. [6]

The Syrian government has made some serious mistakes, over-reacted to threats, and regional insecurities. Desperate for international acceptance, Hafez Assad allowed himself to be manipulated by the global powers into some heavy handed actions in Lebanon which he later regretted.

Even so, compare the Syrian government under the Assad family with Arabia under the house of Saud, the US closest ally in the Middle East other than Israel. Compare the incomparably wealthy Saudi ruling clan who govern an impoverished majority though brutal means with the Syrian Socialist Republic. Compare the Syrian secular government commitment to inter-ethnic and inter-religious tolerance to the Saudi demand that all belong to a single fundamentalist sect of Sunni Islam. Compare Syria’s modern, if flawed justice system with Saudi Arabia’s sharia law where hose convicted of crimes like infidelity, blasphemy and witchcraft are lashed, beheaded or merely relieved of other limbs, or stoned to death.

In Syria, women dress as they please, attend college if they like and hold jobs with substantial responsibilities. In Saudi Arabia, women must cover their faces outside their homes and need a man’s permission to travel, receive medical care or own property. They are not allowed to drive. While Syria insists on sovereignty despite horrific international pressure, the Saudis have infiltrated numerous countries with paid mercenary terrorists and are currently conducting a horrific bombing campaign against neighboring Yemen.

You will have to agree that bad governance, democracy and freedom are not the issues that underlie this war. And yet, we have western politicians standing behind the Saudi Foreign Minister as he demands that Assad step down before he is willing to stop arming and financing a foreign army against the people of Syria.

Syrian Refugees

Syria, over the last half century, has taken in more refugees from the region and treated them better than any other country in the region. They have a couple of million Palestinians living there and took in at least 1.5 million Iraqis. The children were welcomed in schools and basic medical care was provided. Sadly, it is now the source of refugees.

The majority of Syrian refugees outside the country are in Turkey with Jordan and Lebanon also hosting numerous refugees. In Turkey, many refugees are housed in fenced in ‘refugee camps’. You can see photos of them. Some families have been there since 2011 when the men trained to join the Free Syrian Army and their wives were relocated to camps in Turkey for security reasons. Most don’t speak Turkish. Many of the women have complained of being mistreated by the guards. Kurds are subject to many forms of abuse in Turkey.

When Turkish President Erdogan recently found himself in trouble, he lost the last election, he turned on the Kurds. US apparent ambivalence about the war since ISIS invaded Iraq irked him. Obama didn’t back his no fly zone. He has many dangerous ISIS and Al Qaeda fighters in Turkey because the US and Qatari training camps are there. He started feeling like he was being used. So, he opened the gates on the refugee camps and allowed the inhabitants leave. And many did leave. This is the root of the refugee crisis in Europe. In fact, the Germans immediately went over to talk to Erdogan and negotiate some kind of deal so he would restrain them and restore order.

In the end, most Syrians don’t want to go to Europe. They want to go home. The best gift we can give them is a swift end to the war and a just political solution that leaves the country intact. The best way to get rid of ISIS and al Nusra is to stop taking care of them, close the training camps and the Syrian borders with Turkey and Jordan; cut off their ability to sell oil. Stop giving arms to any group in the region as they all end up in the hands of ISIS and al Nusra. Let the Syrian army and their allies drive them out. This is the requirement of International law.

That done, it will be possible to implement a just political solution in Syria. The Syrian people are capable of making these decisions without interference. They may choose a new president, but it must be a political choice without foreign intervention.

Footnotes:

1. The Second Islamic Caliphate was formed shortly after Mohammad's death. It eventually spread into northern Africa and Spain, and was followed by another caliphate based in Baghdad, which spread through Iran and eventually into India and other parts of Asia. Technically, a caliphate was a region governed by a successor (Sunni and Shia differ on what this might mean) of Mohammad. In essence, these caliphates were huge expanding empires governed by imperial dynasties. The rules of Islam, however, supported an equitable and just governance which was ethnically and religiously tolerant, and supported art, science and education.There were battles of conquest and power struggles, but generally the people were not targeted. They paid a tax of some kind and often contributed excess sons to the military. Those that survived, often became wealthy and led urban lifestyles around the court. Obviously the Syrian Arab Republic is not an empire, but as I said, it is tolerant and focused on the welfare of the people
2. Is a Lack of Water to Blame for the Conflict in Syria?, Smithsonian, June 2015
3. BBC: Golan Heights profile - Overview, 2/2015, Notice they don't mention that before Israel occupied the Golan water from the Golan went into Syria.
4. Bombers, Bank Accounts and Bleedout, West Point CTC's Al-Qa'ida's Foreign Fighters in Iraq
5. 2012 Intelligence Report
6. I couldn't find a sourced accounting of Bashar Assad's wealth. The ones I did find talk about the wealth of Bashar Assad's uncle Rifaat Assad and his cousin Rami Makhlouf. Both are traitors to Syria who instigated coups and are now in exile. Rifaat was responsible for the Muslim Brotherhood 'massacre' in Dara'a in response to a violent insurrection there during the 80s and Makhlouf made a fortune in the communications industry when Syria agreed to do business with the west on corporate and World Bank terms. Both have been identified as possible successors to Bashar though no one in Syria respects them.My assertion was based on the Assad's lifestyle in Syria and lack of flamboyant vacations. Unlike these men, Bashar is directly targeted by western sanctions. Also, the money in Syria's coffers must be depleted by the war going on. Slim pickins, I'd imagine.

One point we’ve been particularly keen on driving home since the beginning of Russian airstrikes in Syria is that The Kremlin’s move to step in on behalf of Bashar al-Assad along with Vladimir Putin’s open “invitation” to Washington with regard to joining forces in the fight against terrorism effectively let the cat out of the proverbial bag. That is, it simply wasn’t possible for the US to explain why the Pentagon refused to partner with the Russians without admitting that i) the government views Assad, Russia, and Iran as a greater threat than ISIS, and ii) Washington and its regional allies don’t necessarily want to see Sunni extremism wiped out in Syria and Iraq. Article by Tyler Durden dated 31 October 2015 republished from Zero Hedge http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-10-31/congresswoman-calls-us-effort-oust-assad-illegal-accuses-cia-backing-terroists

Admitting either one of those points would be devastating from a PR perspective. No amount of Russophobic propaganda and/or looped video clips of the Ayatollah ranting against the US would be enough to convince the public that Moscow and Tehran are a greater threat than the black flag-waving jihadists beheading Westerners and burning Jordanian pilots alive in Hollywood-esque video clips, and so, The White House has been forced to scramble around in a desperate attempt to salvage the narrative. 

Well, it hasn’t worked.

With each passing week, more and more people are beginning to ask the kinds of questions the Pentagon and CIA most assuredly do not want to answer and now,  US Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard is out calling Washington’s effort to oust Assad both “counterproductive” and “illegal.” In the following priceless video clip, Gabbard accuses the CIA of arming the very same terrorists who The White House insists are "our sworn enemy" and all but tells the American public that the government is lying to them and may end up inadvertently starting “World War III.” 

For more on how Russia and Iran's efforts in Syria have cornered the US from a foreign policy perspective, see "ISIS In 'Retreat' As Russia Destroys 32 Targets While Putin Trolls Obama As 'Weak With No Strategy'"

During the last days a large attack on the Syrian government supply line to Aleppo city was carried out by Jabhat al-Nusra (aka al-Qaeda in Syria) and the Islamic State seemingly in coordination with the U.S. military.

During September the U.S. anti-IS coalition carried out an average of 4.2 airstrikes on IS in predominately east Syria. This after an average of 6.8 per day in August. The rate in October was about the same as in September until Thursday October 22. Then, according to the U.S. Military Times, the strike rate decreased markedly:

See original article here: http://www.moonofalabama.org/2015/10/us-stopped-syria-air-strikes-while-nusra-and-is-prepared-attack-on-government-supply-route.html

~4 strikes per day up to Oct 20
4 - Oct 20 Tuesday
8 - Oct 21 Wednesday
1 - Oct 22 Thursday
0 - Oct 23 Friday
0 - Oct 24 Saturday
0 - Oct 26 Sunday
1 - Oct 27 Monday
0 - Oct 28 Tuesday
0 - Oct 29 Wednesday

The Islamic State used the lull in airstrikes in east Syria to move hundreds of fighters and heavy equipment towards the supply line that connects Damascus with the government held areas (green) of Aleppo.

bigger

After two days of no U.S. airstrikes in east Syria the Islamic State (purple) attacked the government supply corridor from the east while at the same time and at the same main point Jabhat al-Nusra (orange) attacked the supply corridor from the west. The attacks started with suicide car bombs against Syrian army checkpoints which suddenly had to defend themselves to the front and the rear.

On Saturday October 24 Almasdar news reported:

For the first time in three months, the Syrian Arab Army’s (SAA) main supply route along the Khanasser Highway was closed due to an obstruction by the Islamic State of Iraq and Al-Sham (ISIS); this chaotic situation forced the pro-government forces to call on hundreds of reinforcements from the Aleppo Governorate to help push back the encroaching terrorists.

Initially, the Syrian Armed Forces were successful in repelling both ISIS and the Syrian Al-Qaeda group “Jabhat Al-Nusra” after they attacked from different axes in the Hama Governorate; however, ISIS regrouped near the Al-Raqqa Governorate border in order to launch another massive assault on the Khanasser Highway.

ISIS’ second assault on the Syrian Armed Forces’ defensive positions proved successful, as they cutoff the Khanasser Highway and pushed further west towards the strategic city of Ithriyah in east Hama.

The Islamic State fighters killed about a dozen government troops and captured several armed vehicles (gruesome photos here).

The Syrian army send reinforcements from the Palestinian resistance militia Liwaa Al-Quds to help clear the road. This was only somewhat successful as bad weather and a sandstrom on the 25th prevented air support.

The operations room in Damascus was not too unhappy with the situation even though the road was still cut. The thought was that having IS and Nusra fighters concentrated in an otherwise wide open rural area would help to eliminate them. On the 26th and 27the Russian and Syrian air forces flew some 90 attacks within 24 hours against the enemy held parts of the road.

These attacks cleared the IS held parts of the road but the Islamic State concentrated more forces on another part of the road further north and on October 27 it suicide-bombed another government checkpoint and again blocked the road. Additional support from Hizbullah arrived during the next days and the road is now mostly cleared though still endangered.

The closed supply route led to hardship for the nearly two million people in the government held parts of Aleppo as prices for produce and gasoline exploded.

The operations room in Damascus where Syria, Iran, Russia and Hizbullah coordinate the intelligence and operations in Syria suspects that the attack on the supply corridor was coordinated at a higher level than just between Nusra and the Islamic State.

The total cessation of U.S. air attacks on east Syria allowed the Islamic State to move hundreds of fighters and heavy equipment like tanks and cannons from its stronghold in Raqqa city to the west of Syria. At the same time Jabhat al-Nusra brought hundreds of fighters from other fronts south-eastward for its part of the attack. It is difficult to believe that these were just unrelated coincidences.

Posted by b on October 30, 2015 at 05:51 AM | Permalink

The flooding of Europe by countless waves of refugees may be the result of the “strategic depopulation” of Syria carried out by opponents of the country’s government, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has suggested.

Transparency organization WikiLeaks has looked through its diplomatic cables and unearthed “an interesting speculation about the refugee movement,” Assange said in an interview with Geek news site, ThePressProject.“So, the speculation was this: Occasionally opponents of a country would engage in strategic depopulation, which is to decrease the fighting capacity of a government,” he explained.

Article originally published at https://www.rt.com/news/319797-syria-depopulation-refugees-assange/ on 27 Oct, 2015 02:13.

LISTEN MORE:

The whistleblower pointed out that “it’s predominantly the middle class that is fleeing” Syria on account of having “language skills, money, some connections.” Engineers, managers and civil servants are “precisely, the classes that ...[are] needed to keep the government functioning,” he said.

Syrian people are encouraged to flee their country “by Germany saying they’ll accept many-many refugees, and by Turkey taking nearly three million refugees, thus significantly weakening the Syrian government,” Assange stressed.

Syria isn’t the only case of migration being used as a weapon in recent history; during the Iraq War, Sweden told the US that “the acceptance of Iraqi refugees was part of its contribution,” according to cables.

The WikiLeaks founder said that it’s a “disgrace” that the US refuses to take in Syrian refuges because it’s Washington who should be held accountable for the hundreds of thousands of people arriving in Europe and making EU states close its borders with one other.

“The situation comes about as a result of the US, UK and French policy in the Middle East together with the behavior of US regional allies in the Middle East – Qatar, Turkey, Jordan and Israel… and Saudi Arabia,” he said.
The intercepted documents, already published by WikiLeaks, revealed that the US had been plotting to overthrow the Syrian government since around 2006, Assange stressed.

“It was trying to make the Syrian government ‘paranoid’ trying to get it to ‘overreact’ by instilling that fear and paranoia; trying to make it worried about coups; trying to stir up sectarian tensions between Sunnis and Shias … trying to stop foreign investment in Syria and secretly funding a variety of NGOs in Syria also to make trouble, using the Saudis and Egypt to help push that along,” he said.

Meanwhile any of Assad’s attempts to battle terrorism and the expansion of Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS) strength were presented as a demonstration of weakness and “an example of [the] Syrian government not having full control over its territory to encourage the government overthrow,” the whistleblower added.

A recent article speculating that the U.S. and Russia may be trying to form five new states in the Middle-East relies on some inaccurate assumptions that could be quite dangerous if they were really to become the basis for policy:

1) "Sunni Syria" as a separate entity from "Baathist/Allawite Syria." Most of the Syrian Arab Army that has been fighting foreign-backed rebels in Syria for 4 years are in fact Sunni Arabs. Despite immense bounties (by Syrian standards) offered to officers and soldiers to defect, there have been few takers. While about 70% of the population may be Sunni Arabs, 55% of Syrians told a Qatari-funded YouGov poll in December 2011 that they did not want President Assad to resign, even as the U.S. and its allies were launching a proxy war with that objective. So dividing the country on this kind of quasi-sectarian basis could be as dangerous and destabilizing as it has been in Iraq.

2) "The US doesn't trust anyone but the Kurds." The U.S. only trusts some of the Kurds: the KDP and PUK (barely) in Iraq, not the PKK in Turkey nor the newly autonomous Rojava in Syria. It is unlikely that the Kurds the U.S. "trusts" could dominate the others, and a U.S.-backed effort to establish them as the dominant party in a Kurdish state could lead to yet another bloody and intractable conflict - one reason it has not been tried by previous U.S. interventionists!

3) "Sunni Iraq and Shi'a Iraq". The demonstrations taking place in many parts of government-controlled Iraq are directed at the sectarianism as well as the corruption of the Abadi government. The sectarian division of Iraq was the result not of long-standing divisions in Iraqi society but of U.S. divide-and-rule policy. The conversion of a majority of Iraqis to Shiism took place in the 19th century, not earlier, as formerly nomadic tribes settled down to an agricultural way of life in newly fertile areas around the Shiite shrines of Najaf and Karbala, after the completion of the Hindiyya Canal in 1803. In the 20th century, urbanization brought millions of Shiites to Baghdad and other cities, but many tribes had members of both sects and intermarriage of Kurds, Sunni Arabs and Shiites was common. After the 1958 revolution, many urban Iraqis became atheists and many grew up without ever knowing which sect their parents or grandparents had belonged to. After the US invasion, a survey by Oxford Research International in February 2004 found that only 14% of Iraqis preferred sectarian politicians and parties to secular ones. While the U.S. policy of sectarian and ethnic division has to some extent been self-fulfilling, it would be a travesty to formally divide the country on that basis without giving the people of Iraq a real choice in the matter.

In Iraq and Syria, imposing policies based on self-serving, simplistic, foreign projections of these complex societies is as dangerous as it has ever been. The goal must be negotiated ceasefires followed by political transitions through which the people of Iraq and Syria can determine their own future.

About the author

Nicolas J S Davies is the author of Blood On Our Hands: the American Invasion and Destruction of Iraq. He also wrote the chapter on “Obama at War” in Grading the 44th President: a Report Card on Barack Obama’s First Term as a Progressive Leader. He is also the author of this 2012 article about the crisis in Syria : http://www.alternet.org/world/armed-rebels-and-middle-eastern-power-plays-how-us-helping-kill-peace-syria

This important article, republished from Counterpunch documents new evidence indicating that Turkey, (Australia's ally), was probably responsible for the war-crime of using sarin gas against Syrians, an act which the western press has repeatedly accused the Syrian Government and used to justify the west's support for war against it. In Turkey, two deputies from the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) have claimed that the Turkish government is against investigating Turkey’s role in sending toxic sarin gas which was used in an attack on civilians in Syria in 2013 and in which over 1,300 Syrians were killed. CHP deputy Seker spoke after Erdem, pointing out that the government misled the public on the issue by asserting that sarin was provided by Russia. The purpose was to create the perception that, according to ?eker, “Assad killed his people with sarin and that requires a US military intervention in Syria.” He also underlined that all of the files and evidence from the investigation show a war crime was committed within the borders of the Turkish Republic. “The investigation clearly indicates that those people who smuggled the chemicals required to procure sarin faced no difficulties, proving that Turkish intelligence was aware of their activities. While these people had to be in prison for their illegal acts, not a single person is in jail. Former prime ministers and the interior minister should be held accountable for their negligence in the incident,” Seker further commented. Full article inside. - This introduction by candobetter.net editor.

by Peter Lee

This is quite the bombshell delivered by two CHP deputies in the Turkish parliament and reported by Today’s Zaman, one of the top dailies in Turkey.

It supports Seymour Hersh’s reporting that the notorious sarin gas attack at Ghouta was a false flag orchestrated by Turkish intelligence in order to cross President Obama’s chemical weapons “red line” and draw the United States into the Syria war to topple Assad.

If so, President Obama deserves credit for “holding the line” against the attack despite the grumbling and incitement of the Syria hawks at home and abroad.

And it also presents the unsavory picture of an al-Qaeda operatives colluding with ISIL in a war crime that killed 1300 civilians.

I find the report credible, taking into full account the fact that the CHP (Erdogan’s center-left Kemalist rivals) and Today’s Zaman (whose editor-in-chief, Bulent Kenes was recently detained on live TV for insulting Erdogan in a tweet) are on the outs with Erdogan.

Considering the furious reaction it can be expected to elicit from Erdogan and the Turkish government, the temerity of CHP and Today’s Zaman in running with this story is a sign of how desperate their struggle against Erdogan has become.  Note that the author is shown only as “Columnist: Today’s Zaman”.

I expect the anti-Erodgan forces hope this will be a game changer in terms of U.S.and European support for Erdogan.

It will be very interesting to see if and how the media in the U.S. covers this story.  In case it doesn’t acquire enough “legs” to make into US media, I attach the full Zaman piece below:

CHP deputies: Gov’t rejects probe into Turkey’s role in Syrian chemical attack

Two deputies from the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) have claimed that the government is against investigating Turkey’s role in sending toxic sarin gas which was used in an attack on civilians in Syria in 2013 and in which over 1,300 Syrians were killed.

CHP deputies Eren Erdem and Ali ?eker held a press conference in ?stanbul on Wednesday in which they claimed the investigation into allegations regarding Turkey’s involvement in the procurement of sarin gas which was used in the chemical attack on a civil population and delivered to the terrorist Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) to enable the attack was derailed.

Taking the floor first, Erdem stated that the Adana Chief Prosecutor’s Office launched an investigation into allegations that sarin was sent to Syria from Turkey via several businessmen. An indictment followed regarding the accusations targeting the government.

“The MKE [Turkish Mechanical and Chemical Industry Corporation] is also an actor that is mentioned in the investigation file. Here is the indictment. All the details about how sarin was procured in Turkey and delivered to the terrorists, along with audio recordings, are inside the file,” Erdem said while waving the file.

Erdem also noted that the prosecutor’s office conducted detailed technical surveillance and found that an al-Qaeda militant, Hayyam Kasap, acquired sarin, adding: “Wiretapped phone conversations reveal the process of procuring the gas at specific addresses as well as the process of procuring the rockets that would fire the capsules containing the toxic gas. However, despite such solid evidence there has been no arrest in the case. Thirteen individuals were arrested during the first stage of the investigation but were later released, refuting government claims that it is fighting terrorism,” Erdem noted.

Over 1,300 people were killed in the sarin gas attack in Ghouta and several other neighborhoods near the Syrian capital of Damascus, with the West quickly blaming the regime of Bashar al-Assad and Russia claiming it was a “false flag” operation aimed at making US military intervention in Syria possible.

Suburbs near Damascus were struck by rockets containing the toxic sarin gas in August 2013.

The purpose of the attack was allegedly to provoke a US military operation in Syria which would topple the Assad regime in line with the political agenda of then-Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdo?an and his government.

CHP deputy Seker spoke after Erdem, pointing out that the government misled the public on the issue by asserting that sarin was provided by Russia. The purpose was to create the perception that, according to ?eker, “Assad killed his people with sarin and that requires a US military intervention in Syria.”

He also underlined that all of the files and evidence from the investigation show a war crime was committed within the borders of the Turkish Republic.

“The investigation clearly indicates that those people who smuggled the chemicals required to procure sarin faced no difficulties, proving that Turkish intelligence was aware of their activities. While these people had to be in prison for their illegal acts, not a single person is in jail. Former prime ministers and the interior minister should be held accountable for their negligence in the incident,” ?eker further commented.

Erdem also added that he will launch a criminal complaint against those responsible, including those who issued a verdict of non-prosecution in the case, those who did not prevent the transfer of chemicals and those who first ordered the arrest of the suspects who were later released.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon announced in late August that an inquiry had been launched into the gas attacks allegedly perpetuated by both Assad’s Syrian regime and rebel groups fighting in Syria since the civil war erupted in 2011.

However, Erdem is not the only figure who has accused Turkey of possible involvement in the gas attack. Pulitzer Prize winner and journalist, Seymour M. Hersh, argued in an article published in 2014 that M?T was involved with extremist Syrian groups fighting against the Assad regime.

In his article, Hersh said Assad was not behind the attack, as claimed by the US and Europe, but that Turkish-Syrian opposition collaboration was trying to provoke a US intervention in Syria in order to bring down the Assad regime.

The comments of the Russian Ambassador to the UK are worth noting. On the sidelines of the Valdai Club conference, Russia’s ambassador to the UK, Alexander Yakovenko, said the “only logical way” to explain Britain’s behaviour in Iraq and Syria was a desire that Isis would depose Assad.

“The idea was to remove Assad using force, and to use force to seize Damascus. I don’t believe in conspiracy theories, but this is the only way to explain why de facto neither Britain nor the US has ever properly fought against Isis,” Yakovenko said.

He said with the number of airstrikes Britain had carried out in Iraq, “you could have destroyed the whole region”, but instead Isis had only grown in strength.

An analysis by Reuters of Russian defence ministry data *claimed* to show this week that almost 80% of Russia’s declared targets in Syria have been in areas not held by Isis. Perhaps responding to these claims, subsequently, Yakovenko said he had a meeting at the Foreign Office in London last week in which he asked for intelligence to be shared on the location of Isis targets in Syria, but was rejected. He also asked for information on the Free Syrian Army.

“We are looking closely at the Syrian Free Army. We understand there is not a single command centre, and that some of these divisions have different goals. But if among the FSA there are divisions that are really ready to fight with Isis, who is our main enemy in Syria, and if you think there are people or commanders or other contacts which could be useful and to cooperate with them, we would be grateful for such information,” he said. “We were again rejected.”

This of course was the same message as was shared around the Western media yesterday as ‘Putin says ready to work with Free Syrian Army’ – but stripped of its essential details such as Putin asking the West to ‘tell us where we can find this ‘free syrian army’...

Shaun Walker’s pathological Russophobia means that things are often in quotes, because Walker can’t be seen to be endorsing such things as ‘Playing with words’ and ‘double game’. Surely we all know what a double game is, so that it doesn’t need to be in quotes? – but then we might think that what Putin said was actually true, and that there IS a double game, and we hadn’t been told!

Of course this ‘working with the FSA’ [Free Syrian Army] won’t go anywhere, because there is no such thing as a ‘patriotic’ FSA – all the men who were in the ‘FSA’ but who were patriots have taken amnesty and are maybe now fighting with the SAA anyway, or just keeping quiet.

It doesn’t matter how many times or how loudly Putin or Lavrov talk about the non-existence of the ‘moderate opposition fighters’ or that such a concept itself is ridiculous – what can be moderate about someone who shoots to kill the soldiers of his own country? – but one statement from a Western leader about ‘discussing with FSA leaders’ or some such just reconfirms the lies we have been told by our own media so many times...

The mainstream media have created a chasm here at everyone's peril and we badly need a bridge across it.

This is a letter written to the Second secretary at the Russian Embassy in Canberra, Alexander Odoevsky, subsequent to his interview on ABC Insiders, about the biased representation of the Syrian Government and related matters by Australia's ABC.

Dear Alexander Odevsky,

I recently contacted the embassy as the spokesperson for AMRIS – Australians for Reconciliation in Syria, which has been working for the last three years to try to spread correct information on the Syrian conflict and on the nature and intentions of Syria's allies, particularly Russia.

In June 2013 Mother Agnes Mariam visited Australia at the invitation of AMRIS ( for which she is ‘patron’ as we are linked to the reconciliation movement in Syria). During her visit she met with several government representatives, including Julie Bishop who was shadow FM at that time, and spoke to media including the ABC. She was interviewed by James Carleton at length, but the interview was not broadcast despite its importance and relevance for nearly two months. It was impossible [for me] not to conclude that Carleton’s personal friendships with members of the Australian Syrian community who supported the ‘Free Syrian Army’ didn’t play a role in this delay. Listening to Carleton this morning it is clear that he has learnt nothing about the true nature of the fight in Syria in two years, but rather had his prejudices confirmed by the weight of Western propaganda.

I have personally put the case to Carleton on the legitimacy of the Syrian government, before last year’s election, and I have also made a number of lengthy submissions to Julie Bishop both on this question and on the alleged Chemical Weapons attack on Ghouta. She has repeatedly denied the validity of my viewpoint – Syrians’ viewpoint – despite the weight of evidence I presented to support it.

Following the interview on the ABC’s Insiders programme last Sunday, I wrote an article for ‘Russia Insider’ which presents the situation; I hope you will appreciate reading it:

Australia FM Is Pushing Long-Refuted Syria Lies (6/10/15) | Russia Insider – also published on cabdobetter

My most recent letter to Julie Bishop, conveyed through my local MP Cathy McGowan, was a call for an enquiry into the presentation by both government and state media of the Syrian conflict, and particularly concerning the legitimacy of the Assad government. As Russia has repeatedly observed, the choice of who governs Syria is only for the Syrian people to make, and currently they overwhelmingly chose Bashar al Assad. It defies understanding that the Australian government continues to hold to its ridiculous stand on this – that the SNC somehow is Syrian’s legitimate representative – so we continue to try to make them see sense!

If there is any way I can be of further assistance please contact me,

with many thanks for your solid support for Syrians,

David Macilwain,

Sandy Creek, Victoria 3695

See also: Countering the dangerous MSM (mis)perceptions of Syrian conflict (10 Oct 2015) | RT Op-Edge

The Australian Foreign Minister, Julie Bishop, is pushing long-refuted lies about Syria as she speculates where she and her colleagues might find a replacement for Assad, without the slightest suggestion of irony or 'elections'. Article first published in Russian Insider at http://russia-insider.com/en/politics/australia-fm-pushing-long-refuted-syria-lies/ri10271, October 6, 2015.

In an interview with Australia's state broadcaster on Sunday, foreign minister Julie Bishop stated that there must be a 'political solution' to the Syrian crisis, and that this would have to involve Syria's President Bashar al Assad during a 'transitional period'.

Although this position is being portrayed as 'going soft on Assad', it is actually not a new position for Australia, which has privately conceded to the Russian proposals in the 2012 Geneva agreement. What was striking about Bishop's statement was that it elicited such consternation in the interviewer, who clearly saw 'working with the Assad government' as being similar to helping the head-choppers of ISIS.

Up to this point in the interview Bishop's answers to his questions - like 'what is Russia doing?', and 'why is Russia doing this now?' were properly diplomatic, and displayed the effects of conversations she has had with Russian and Iranian ministers. We shouldn't doubt that they 'put her in the picture' on Russia's viewpoint and red lines over Syria.

But this experienced ABC commentator, who frequently interviews government representatives on important issues, displayed shocking bias against both Russian and Syrian leaders with a series of heavily loaded questions, pushing Bishop to make some surprisingly ill-judged statements. She was forced to 'concede' that 'the Assad regime is truly odious', and that 'Assad cannot remain - as he has used chemical weapons against his own people… this is how it all began'.

The well mis-informed interviewer was reassured by this embellishment of the familiar old story (the 'Chemical Weapons attack' - or 'Ghouta false flag' - happened two and a half years after 'it all began'), and displayed his own evident outrage at Russia for 'targeting the moderate opposition forces fighting against the brutal tyrant Assad'. The two then speculated on where we might find a replacement for Assad, without the slightest suggestion of irony, or mention of 'elections' or of Syrians' democratic choice.

To say I am exasperated at this renewed barrage of anti-Syrian and anti-Russian propaganda is insufficient; it is becoming both intolerable and dangerous, and with every new development in the war being misrepresented by Western leaders and media, the real war is more than ever an information war. Of course it always has been, with the covert use of snipers to incite violence in the first protests.

But after four and a half years of fighting this battle for the truth, and the feeling that some progress was being made, it is infuriating to see the same old stories resurrected with added vigour. I had entertained the ridiculous idea that sooner or later the Australian government would 'admit' to understanding two essential truths about the Syrian government - that it was legitimately elected, and that it did NOT use chemical weapons in 2013.

Sadly quite the opposite is happening, and Russia's intervention is evidently 'the cause' of it. Russia has called the West's bluff, that it is fighting terrorism in Syria, so we might expect a certain amount of squealing from those who were just pretending to do so, accompanied by some muffled denials. What is a little unexpected is the resurrection of some long-dead myths instead, like the 'moderate rebels' and the 'Free Syrian Army' ( whose  resurrection was remarkably rapid and involved many new converts!)

Some other myths have been exposed too - the myth of the CIA trained forces from Jordan has been exposed as true! With remarkable cunning, the US and its complicit media have devised a cover story for this revelation - of 10,000 fighters trained over the last several years; 'we trained 54 'moderates', but only 4 or 5 survived an assault by Al Nusra' - says US defence secretary Ashton 

Carter. Some of those thousands of US trained and armed insurgents were discovered by Russian bombs, when the CIA shamefacedly dared to complain that their 'moderate forces' in Western Syria had been hit. In as strange twist for the chronically misinformed ABC, another senior presenter then revealed her apparent ignorance of the main terrorist group the Syrian Army is fighting in this area - the so-called 'Army of Conquest', which Saudi Arabia and Turkey launched into Syria back in March in a last ditch attempt to impose their own 'political solution' on Syria.

The Army of Conquest is purportedly mostly Al Nusra fighters of Chechen and Turkmen origin, but given the advice of the CIA's David Petraeus recently that 'we should work with Al Nusra in Syria', - well one might conclude that 'we' already are!

So when Julie Bishop and other Western officials say that 'there must be a political solution in Syria' they are missing the rest of the sentence - 'for our goals to be achieved'. And because it was long intended by the US coalition to achieve those goals by military means, no amount of careful Russian diplomacy would ever have succeeded in countering them.

Let's hope now that Russia is delivering a message to the West in the only language it seems to understand, that the 'military solution' to Syria's battle will be swift and effective - with a little information back-up…