Protecting al-Qaeda: Guest Analysis by Steven Chovanec

Steven Chovanec 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, find him on Twitter @stevechovanec.

by Steven Chovanec

Please Don’t Attack Al-Qaeda

In the weeks leading up to the agreed upon cessation-of-hostilities (CoH) agreement between the US and Russia, it was John Kerry’s diplomacy that was instrumental in “downgrading” the truce from a more forceful and legally binding ‘ceasefire’ agreement to the less intensive ‘cessation-of-hostilities’ now taking effect.

As described by Kerry: “So, a ceasefire has a great many legal prerogatives and requirements. A cessation of hostilities does not. A ceasefire in the minds of many of the participants in this particular moment connotes something far more permanent and far more reflective of sort of an end of conflict, if you will. And it is distinctly not that. This is a pause dependent on the process going forward.”

So why the insistence on non-permanence? Especially if, as Kerry says, the ultimate objective is to “obtain a durable, long-term ceasefire” at some point in time?

According to the 29-year career diplomat in the Indian Foreign Service, India’s former ambassador to Uzbekistan and Turkey M. K. Bhadrakumar, it is plainly because “the Russian military operations have met with devastating success lately in strengthening the Syrian regime and scattering the Syrian rebel groups,” leading “the US and its regional allies” to “stare at defeat.” Therefore, they “forthwith need an end to the Russian operations so that they can think up a Plan B. The Geneva talks will not have the desired outcome of President Bashar Al-Assad’s ouster unless the tide of war is reversed.” Therefore, “a cessation of hostilities in Syria is urgently needed.”(1)

Judging by the fact that top US officials began announcing that Russia would break the deal immediately after it was agreed upon while calling for further measures to “inflict real pain on the Russians”, Bhadrakumar’s assessment that a pause, and not a permanent halt, was sought in order to regroup and eventually reverse the tide of war seems to be quite apt. As well there has been an almost ubiquitous media campaign in the US to prime the public for accusations of a Russian infraction, from which a breakdown of the deal would follow; the narrative portrayed is filled with “doubts” and “worries” and “statements from US officials” about how Russia isn’t serious and will likely break the agreement.

Furthermore, outwardly Russia is much more optimistic and invested in the deal, President Putin hopefully promoting it while engaging in a blitz of diplomacy to support it, while on the other hand the US has been less vocal and much quicker to doubt its outcomes.

However, this downgrading from a ‘ceasefire’ to a ‘cessation of hostilities’ actually violates past agreements.

In UN Security Council Resolution 2254, in which it was articulated that member states be committed to the “sovereignty, independence, unity and territorial integrity of the Syrian Arab Republic,” while calling on them to suppress ISIS, al-Nusra, and “all other individuals, groups, undertakings, and entities associated with Al Qaeda or ISIL”, it was also agreed upon that the Security Council “expresses its support for a nationwide ceasefire in Syria.” (emphasis added)

Given the about-face, Lavrov was visibly agitated, stating that “Resolution 2254 talks about the ceasefire only. This term is not liked by some members of the International Syria Support Group. What I’m referring to is how something that has been agreed upon should be implemented rather than try to remake the consensus that has been achieved in order to get some unilateral advantages.”

The “unilateral advantages” likely are in reference to the pause-and-regroup strategy Bhadrakumar previously articulated.

Despite this Russia agreed to the downgraded CoH, however, in the week leading up to the agreement there was a major hurdle to overcome, namely whether al-Nusra, the al-Qaeda affiliate in Syria, would be protected as a party to the truce.

Long has there been a tenant of US propaganda which claims that a sort of “third force” of “moderate opposition fighters” exists, separate and distinct from the extremists and al-Qaeda affiliates. Yet when push came to shove the main stumbling-block in the way of the CoH was the oppositions demand that any truce be “conditional on the al Qaeda-linked Nusra Front no longer being targeted.” Sources close to the talks would tell Reuters that this insistence was the main “elephant in the room” preventing a settlement.

Even more telling is the fact that this opposition demand only came after the US had insisted upon it. Indeed, while relentlessly pushing the “moderate rebel” narrative it was official US policy to push for the protection of al-Qaeda.

According to The Washington Post: “Russia was said to have rejected a U.S. proposal to leave Jabhat al-Nusra off-limits to bombing as part of a cease-fire, at least temporarily, until the groups can be sorted out.” (emphasis added)

Nusra is the Rebels

Responding to arguments posited that al-Nusra should be included in the truce, given that they operate in areas where other rebels are and thus Russia can use this as an excuse to bomb them, Max Abrahms, Professor at Northeastern University and member of the Council on Foreign Relations, explains that these recent developments show that Nusra and the other rebels are one in the same.

“If you’re pro-rebel in Syria, you’re pro-al Qaeda in Syria,” Abrahms writes. “The rebels are now begging for Russia to stop bombing their al-Qaeda partner.”

Indeed, it was the “moderate” US-backed FSA factions that were the biggest advocates of their al-Qaeda partners being included in the truce.

Major Ammar al-Wawi, Secretary General of the Free Syrian Army and head of the FSA’s al-Ababil Brigade in Aleppo, said that al-Nusra was the FSA’s “partner”, and that al-Qaeda was an ally of most of the groups brought together by Saudi Arabia underneath the Higher Negotiation Committee (HNC) banner.

“Nusra has fighters on the ground with rebel brigades in most of Syria and is a partner in the fighting with most of the brigades that attended the Riyadh conference.”

And therefore, while the ceasefire is good in principle, it is not good if it does not include al-Nusra, because “if the ceasefire excludes Jabhat a-Nusra, then this means that the killing of civilians will continue since Nusra’s forces are among civilians.” Al-Wawi seems to forget that the reason Nusra is a terrorist organization is specifically because of its indiscriminate attacks and disregard for civilian lives.

According to the spokesman for Alwiyat al-Furqan, one of the largest FSA factions operating under the Southern Front umbrella, the FSA “will not accept a truce that excludes Jabhat al-Nusra.” The spokesman later goes on to call Nusra “honorable”, along with the equally honorable Salafi-Jihadists groups Ahrar al-Sham and Jaish al-Islam.

Ahrar, it should be noted, only presents itself as being different from al-Qaeda, in actuality it is not, it is a Salafi-Jihadi group which espouses a reactionary and apocalyptic Islamist ideology that has been complicit in sectarian mass murders of Alawites throughout Syria. On the other hand, Jaish al-Islam, in the words of their former leader, regards al-Nusra as their “brothers” whom they “praise” and “fight alongside.” Jaish al-Islam as well is infamous for parading caged civilians throughout warzones, using them as human shields. The current leader of the group, Mohammed Alloush, was named as the chief negotiator to represent the rebel opposition in talks with the UN.

Yet, according to the FSA, “If today we agreed to exclude Jabhat a-Nusra, then tomorrow we would agree to exclude Ahrar a-Sham, then Jaish al-Islam and so on for every honorable faction. We will not allow the threat of being classified as a terrorist organization to compromise the fundamentals of the revolution for which the Syrian people rose up and for which we have sacrificed and bled.”

One wonders, if the exclusion of al-Qaeda from the ceasefire is tantamount to “compromising the revolution”, what would choosing al-Qaeda as partners be called?

Muhammad a-Sheikh, spokesman for an FSA faction in Latakia, as well thanked Nusra for its “role in trying to lessen the pain inflicted on the Syrian people”, of all things.(2)

Yet all of this gets recycled within the US media as al-Nusra merely being “intermingled with moderate rebel groups”, as the Washington Post puts it. While the narrative purports that the FSA consists of “moderates” reluctantly forced to endure an al-Qaeda alliance for military expediency, in reality much of FSA conduct throughout the war has not been much different from that of the recognized extremists.

In the case of Aleppo, while one man describes how al-Nusra beheaded one of his brother-in-laws, ripped the other to pieces between an electricity poll and a moving car, and kidnapped the other, another man describes how “Free Syrian Army fighters burned down their house – leaving one daughter with terrible burns” after the man refused to join them. He said they attempted to abduct one of his daughters, but were unsuccessful as neighbors intervened.

Another Aleppo resident writes that “Turkish-Saudi backed ‘moderate rebels’ showered the residential neighborhoods of Aleppo with unguided rockets and gas jars.”

Indeed, FSA groups were so brutal at times that these “moderates” were feared even more than other recognized extremists.

“Pilloried in the West for their sectarian ferocity… jihadists were often welcomed by local people for restoring law and order after the looting and banditry of the Western-backed Free Syrian Army,” writes Patrick Cockburn, the leading Western journalist in the region.(3)

For people paying close attention this is unfortunately not that surprising.

According to a recent poll conducted by ORB, it was found that most Syrians more or less hold both ISIS and the FSA in equal disdain, 9% saying the FSA represents the Syrian people while 4% saying that ISIS does. The similarity in opinion is reflective of the similarity in conduct.

Jihadi ‘Wal-Mart’

The not-so-popular FSA groups are routinely described as a separate and distinct entity apart from al-Nusra and ISIS, yet in actuality the lines between the groups have always been extremely porous.

“Due to porous links between some Free Syrian Army (FSA) rebels, other Islamist groups like al-Nusra and Ahrar al-Sham, and ISIS, there have been prolific weapons transfers from ‘moderate’ to Islamist militant groups,” writes Nafeez Ahmed, Britain’s leading international security scholar.

These links were so extreme that “German journalist Jurgen Todenhofer, who spent 10 days inside the Islamic State, reported last year that ISIS is being “indirectly” armed by the west: “They buy the weapons that we give to the Free Syrian Army, so they get western weapons – they get French weapons… I saw German weapons, I saw American weapons.”

Recently the BBC’s Peter Oborne conducted an investigation into these claims and came across evidence that the “moderate” FSA were in essence being utilized as a conduit through which Western supplies were funneled to extremists.

Oborne spoke to a lawyer who represents Bherlin Gildo, a Swedish national who went to join the rebel ranks in 2012 and was subsequently arrested for terrorist offenses. Based on her clients own first-hand observations while embedded with the rebels, trucks referred to as NATO trucks were observed coming in from Turkey, which would then be unloaded by the FSA and the arms then distributed quite generally without any specificity of the exact recipient. The weapons would be distributed “to whoever was involved in particular battles.”

Similarly, in 2014 US-backed Syrian Revolutionary Front (SRF) commander Jamal Maarouf admitted that his US-handlers had instructed him to send weapons to al-Qaeda. “If the people who support us tell us to send weapons to another group, we send them. They asked us a month ago to send weapons to [Islamist fighters in] Yabroud so we sent a lot of weapons there.”

Battlefield necessity was dictating the weapons recipients, not humanitarian concern for victims of terrorism.

Eventually charges brought against Mr. Gildo were dropped. The reason was because he planned to argue that he had fought on the same side the UK government was supporting As it was explained before the court, if it is the case that the government “was actively involved in supporting armed resistance to the Assad regime at a time when the defendant was present in Syria and himself participating in such resistance it would be unconscionable”, indeed an “affront to justice”, “to allow the prosecution to continue.”

In a similar case a man named Moazzam Begg was arrested in the UK under terrorism charges after meeting with Ahrar al-Sham. However, his case too was dropped, the courts understanding that if he was guilty of supporting terrorism than so was the British state. “I was very disappointed that the trail didn’t go through,” Begg said. “I believe I would have won… what I was doing… was completely in line with British policy at the time.”

Career MI6 agent and former British diplomat Alastair Crooke extrapolates further on this phenomena of the West’s principle allies playing such a crucial role in arming the jihadis.

“The West does not actually hand the weapons to al-Qaeda, let alone ISIS,” he said, “but the system that they have constructed leads precisely to that end. The weapons conduit that the West directly has been giving to groups such as the Syrian Free Army (FSA), have been understood to be a sort of ‘Wal Mart’ from which the more radical groups would be able to take their weapons and pursue the jihad.” This constitutes a sort of ‘supermarket’ where rebels can go and receive weapons, the weapons always migrating “along the line to the more radical elements.” The idea was to “use jihadists to weaken the government in Damascus and to drive it to its knees to the negotiating table.” Exactly the same kind of policy used in Afghanistan during the 1980s, when conduits such as the Pakistani ISI were used to funnel weapons to the mujahedeen.

Yet these Western weapons were not just going to al-Qaeda and Ahrar al-Sham, ISIS too was shopping at the “moderate” “supermarket.”

In his book “The Rise of Islamic State”, Patrick Cockburn writes, “An intelligence officer from a Middle Eastern country neighboring Syria told me that ISIS members “say they are always pleased when sophisticated weapons are sent to anti-Assad groups of any kind, because they can always get the arms off them by threats of force or cash payments.”(4) (emphasis added)

The result of all of this was a deep alliance between the US-backed “moderates” and al-Qaeda, as well as a rebel opposition dominated by ISIS and al-Nusra.

Nusra’s FSA

Recently a leader of the Nusra group appeared in a video presenting an FSA commander with a gift while saying that there is no difference between the FSA, Ahrar al-Sham, and al-Qaeda. “They are all one,” he explains. The Nusra field commander goes on to thank the FSA for supplying Nusra with US-made TOW anti-tank missiles, which were given to the FSA directly, of course, from the CIA.

A month prior to these revelations reports started to surface about the unfolding situation in “rebel-held” Idlib. Despite the repressive dress codes and savage Islamist laws it became apparent that the FSA was only operating under the authority of the more powerful al-Qaeda rebels.

Jenan Moussa, a journalist for the UAE based Al Aan TV channel who recently had visited the area, reported that Nusra allows the FSA to operate in Hama and Idlib because the FSA groups there get TOW missiles from the West. The reason they are allowed to operate is that the “FSA uses these TOW in support of Nusra.”

Investigating the situation further, veteran journalist Gareth Porter concludes from a range of sources that in the provinces of Idlib and Aleppo every rebel organization is in fact part of a military structure controlled and dominated by al-Nusra.

“All of these rebel groups fight alongside the Nusra Front and coordinate their military activities with it,” Porter writes.

In the case of the rebel capture of Idlib, “Although some U.S.-supported groups participated in the campaign in March and April 2015, the “operations room” planning the campaign was run by Al Qaeda and its close ally Ahrar al Sham.” As well, before the Idlib campaign, “Nusra had forced another U.S.-supported group, Harakat Hazm, to disband and took all of its TOW anti-tank missiles.”

Clearly al-Nusra was subordinating the “moderates.”

The reality began to emerge in December of 2014 when US-backed rebels, supplied with TOW missiles, teamed up with Nusra and fought under their command in order to capture the Wadi al-Deif base. Al Qaeda was “exploiting the Obama administration’s desire to have its own Syrian Army as an instrument for influencing the course of the war.”

Andrew Cockburn reports that “A few months before the Idlib offensive, a member of one CIA-backed group had explained the true nature of its relationship to the Al Qaeda franchise. Nusra, he told the New York Times, allowed militias vetted by the United States to appear independent, so that they would continue to receive American supplies.”

“In other words,” Porter writes, “Nusra was playing Washington,” while Washington was “evidently a willing dupe.”

This all comes down to the fact that the savage and brutal al-Qaeda fighters were proving to be militarily effective, leaving a trail of torture and atrocities, and battlefield successes, in their wake.

Explaining the mindset, Ed Husain, Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, writes that the influx of Al-Qaeda and various jihadis “brings discipline, religious fervor, battle experience from Iraq, funding from Sunni sympathizers in the Gulf, and most importantly, deadly results.”

Because of this, Porter explains, “instead of breaking with the deception that the CIA’s hand-picked clients were independent of Nusra, the Obama administration continued to cling to it.” The United States basing its policy on the “moderates” was “necessary to provide a political fig leaf for the covert and indirect U.S. reliance on Al Qaeda’s Syrian franchise’s military success.”

Ever since the Russian intervention began, the US has continued to embrace this deceptive narrative, claiming that Russia is targeting the “moderate” opposition. This narrative, and the publics belief in its validity, “had become a necessary shield for the United States to continue playing a political-diplomatic game in Syria.”

Yet, as Patrick Cockburn has reported for quite some time, “The armed opposition to President Assad is dominated by Isis, the al-Qaeda affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra and the ideologically similar Ahrar al-Sham.” Of the smaller groups the CIA openly supports, they “only operate under license from the extreme jihadists.”

Several rebel groups, 5 of which belong to the FSA, have recently united under the leadership of the former emir of the al-Qaeda-linked Ahrar al-Sham. A longtime al-Qaeda member who sits on al-Nusra’s elite council explained that “The Free Syrian Army groups said they were ready for anything according to the Islamic sharia and that we are delegated to apply the rulings of the sharia on them”, essentially meaning that the FSA had subordinated themselves to al-Qaeda.

It has been further revealed that all of the Syrian groups operative in Aleppo had recently declared Ba’yaa (loyalty) to the Ahrar al-Sham emir Abu Jaber.

Ba’yaa, it should be noted, means total loyalty and submission, much like what follows from pledging loyalty to ISIS.

Official Policy

At least by as far back as August of 2012, the best US intelligence assessments were reporting that the jihadists and extremists were controlling and steering the course of the opposition. Then head of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), Michael T. Flynn, would confirm the credibility of these reports, saying that “the intelligence was very clear” and that it wasn’t the case that the administration was just turning a blind eye to these events but instead that the policies were the result of a “willful decision.”

Despite all of this, US officials still continue to maintain that “Russia’s bombing campaign in Syria, launched last fall, has infuriated the CIA in particular because the strikes have aggressively targeted relatively moderate rebels it has backed with military supplies, including antitank missiles.”

However, according to the CIA and the intelligence communities own data, this is false.

Back in October of 2012, according to classified US intelligence assessments, “Most of the arms shipped at the behest of Saudi Arabia and Qatar”, which were organized by the CIA, were
“going to hard-line Islamic jihadists.”

A year earlier, immediately after the fall of Gaddafi in October of 2011, the CIA began organizing a “rat line” from Libya to Syria. Weapons from the former Libyan stockpiles were shipped from Benghazi to Syria and into the hands of the Syrian rebels. According to information obtained by Seymour Hersh, “Many of those in Syria who ultimately received the weapons were jihadists, some of them affiliated with al-Qaida.”

In a highly classified 2013 assessment put together by the DIA and the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS), an “all-source” appraisal which draws on information from signals, satellite, and human intelligence, it was concluded that the US program to arm the rebels quickly turned into a logistical operation for the entire opposition, including al-Nusra and ISIS. The so-called moderates had evaporated, “there was no viable ‘moderate’ opposition to Assad,” and “the US was arming extremists.”

DIA chief Michael Flynn confirmed that his agency had sent a constant stream of warnings to the civilian administration between 2012 and 2014 saying that the jihadists were in control of the opposition.

“If the American public saw the intelligence we were producing daily, at the most sensitive level, they would go ballistic,” Flynn said.

Yet, as Flynn stated previously, it was a “willful decision” for the administration “to do what they’re doing.”

By summer of 2013, Seymour Hersh reported that “although many in the American intelligence community were aware that the Syrian opposition was dominated by extremists,” still “the CIA-sponsored weapons kept coming.”

According to a JCS advisor, despite heavy Pentagon objections there was simply “no way to stop the arms shipments that had been authorised by the president.”

“I felt that they did not want to hear the truth,” Flynn said.

So what Russia is bombing in actuality is an al-Qaeda, extremist dominated opposition embedded with CIA-backed rebels operating under their control. The not-so-moderates only operate under license from, and in support of, the Salafi jihadists, openly expressing their solidarity with them, labelling them as “brothers”, and begging the UN to protect them. Concurrently the US and its allies continue to support the terrorist-dominated insurgency, US officials openly planning to expand their support to al-Qaeda-laced rebels in order to “inflict pain on the Russians”, all while Turkey and Saudi Arabia openly support al-Qaeda. All of this occurring because of the United States reliance upon “Al Qaeda’s Syrian franchise’s military successes” and their “deadly results”, in order to further the policy of using “jihadists to weaken the government in Damascus” and to “drive it to its knees at the negotiating table.”

The function of the “moderates” in essence being the logistical and public relations front for the “not-so-moderate” al-Qaeda units winning the battles.

Speaking at Harvard University, Vice President Biden infamously and candidly summarized what had been going on, saying that it was our allies who were “so determined to take down Assad and essentially have a proxy Sunni-Shia war,” that they “poured hundreds of millions of dollars and tens of thousands of tons of weapons into anyone who would fight against Assad. Except that the people who were being supplied were al-Nusra and Al Qaeda and the extremist elements of jihadis coming from other parts of the world.”

When asked why the United States was powerless to stop nations like Qatar from engaging in this kind of behavior, “a former adviser to one of the Gulf States replied softly: “They didn’t want to.”

So it should be no wonder why the US tried to push through a provision including al-Nusra in the current ceasefire agreement, nor why they would seek to protect their most viable ally in pursuance of their Syria policy.

It should be no wonder that it has been, and continues to be, official US policy to protect al-Qaeda.

Notes:

1) For further analysis, see Moon of Alabama, February 20, 2016, “U.S. Ignores Own UNSC Resolution – Tells Russia “Stop Bombing Al-Qaeda!” http://www.moonofalabama.org/2016/02/us-ignores-own-unsc-resolution-tells-russia-stop-bombing-al-qaeda.html.

2) Syria Direct, “Five rebel spokesmen, commanders react to ‘cessation of hostilities’ to take effect Saturday.” February 25, 2016. http://syriadirect.org/news/five-rebel-spokesmen-commanders-react-to-cessation-of-hostilities-to-take-effect-Saturday/#.Vs-kDMO3y9U.twitter.

3) Cockburn, Patrick. “Jihadists Hijack the Syria Uprising.” The Rise of Islamic State: ISIS and the New Sunni Revolution (Brooklyn, NY, 2015), pg. 84-5. Print.

4) Cockburn, Patrick, “The Rise of ISIS”, The Rise of Islamic State: ISIS and the New Sunni Revolution (Brooklyn, NY, 2015), pg. 3. Print.

On the Effort to Exonerate Team USA for the Rise of ISIS: Guest Analysis by David Mizner

Photo: An Islamic State fighter using the US-made BGM-71 TOW in Damascus countryside in 2014. The Foundation for Defense of Democracies funded “Long War Journal” has confirmed many instances of AQ and ISIS use of the TOW.

David Mizner is a novelist and freelance journalist who writes about US foreign policy, with a focus on the Middle East. This article was first published at his blog, Rogue Nation, and is reproduced here with permission of the author. His writings can be found at Jacobin, Salon, The Nation, and other publications.

*****

ASSAD IS PRIMARILY RESPONSIBLE for the rise of ISIS. No one else is even close, with the possible exceptions of former Iraqi presidents Maliki and Hussein. That’s the predictable message of the State Department and its proxy reporters at outlets like Vox and Buzzfeed. The propaganda can be crude to the point of absurd. In Mad Max’s world, Iran bears more blame than the United States for ISIS, and George W. Bush would surely take comfort in analysis like this.

But on the question of Assad’s responsibility and the corresponding responsibility of his imperial opponents, there’s apparently a real debate to be had among thinking humans. In Jacobin and Salvage, leftists go a long way toward siding with State and the BuzzVoxxers.

While more or less holding the United States to account for its ISIS-creating actions in Iraq pre-2011, they exonerate the US and its regional allies for ISIS’s emergence as a force in Syria, which they attribute solely to Assad. In so doing they erase the war on Syria, which honest analysts would acknowledge even if they believe Assad to be a monster of Hitlerian proportions.

Both Jacobin and Salvage claim that Assad’s releasing jihadists from prison in 2011 contributed mightily to the rise of ISIS. Salvage, the magazine founded by Richard Seymour and his comrades, says Syria’s ex-prisoners are one of the three primary forces within IS, along with Iraqi Baathists and foreign fighters. It didn’t deign to provide any evidence, so I went looking for some.

This post by Kyle Orton says that, “In May and June 2011, the regime turned loose from its prisons violent jihadists.” But he links to two articles covering the Syrian’s government granting of general amnesty, which the press depicted at the time as an attempt to placate the opposition. The opposition itself received it as such. “Too little too late,” said one member of the opposition.

Nonetheless, Orton goes on to say that in 2011 the Syrian government released future jihadist leaders Abu Musab, Hassan Abboud, Zahran Alloush, and Ahmed Abu Issa. I suppose I’ll take his word for it, but these bad men didn’t join ISIS. They joined Al Qaeda, Ahrar al-Sham, Jaysh al-Sham, and Suquor a-Sham, respectively. These groups are indeed brutal and reactionary—and they are proxy forces of US client states trying to overthrow the Syrian government.

This article at Huffington Post — “There Would Be No ISIS Without Assad” — likewise promises to establish a connection between Syria’s ex-prisoners and ISIS but manages only, via a link to a Politico piece, to connect them to Al Qaeda.

I’m not saying ISIS contains no people released from prison by the Syrian government, but if they made up a significant part of its leadership or rank-and-file — if they represented, as Salvage alleges, one leg of the stool supporting ISIS — evidence would surely be easier to come by. Aron Lund, who seems to be one of the more independent-minded of the popular Syria analysts, has this to say:

This idea that Assad boosted IS by freeing salafis in 2011 seems silly. Most of those known to have been pardoned are now in IF, fighting IS

— Aron Lund (@aronlund) August 6, 2014

We know, by contrast, that all 12 of the judges who preside over ISIS’s court system in Raqqa are Saudi. They’re perhaps some of the hundreds of extremists Saudi Arabia has allowed to fly to Syria out of the Riyadh airport. (The Kingdom also reportedly sent more than a 1,000 death row inmates to go fight in Syria in exchange for commutations.) ISIS also includes many fighters from the Caucasus, Afghanistan, North Africa, and Europe, and that many, if not most, of these have entered Syria through Turkey.

Yet the ISIS-creation stories from Jacobin and Salvage include none of this. Not only do these leftist outlets pass along imperialist propaganda about Assad’s “giving” ISIS hundreds of fighters by opening his prisons; they ignore the role of US allies in funneling ISIS-bound fighters into Syria.

In fact, the words “Turkey” and “Saudi Arabia” appear nowhere in the Salvage piece. In Jacobin, Adam Hanieh, who elsewhere has written solid stuff, doesn’t mention Turkey’s role and dismisses the idea that “ISIS is a tool of the Gulf States,” because “there is little convincing evidence that ISIS is directly funded, or armed, by Saudi Arabia or any other Gulf state.” Leaving aside the fact that if Saudi Arabia directly supported ISIS, it would do so covertly (“ISIS, in fact, may have been a major part of Bandar’s covert-ops strategy in Syria,” writes Steve Clemons), there are other steps Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Turkey have taken with the encouragement of the United States to strengthen ISIS.

There is, in fact, a fairly impressive compilation of evidence pointing to the role of Turkey in the rise of ISIS. It includes video and audio evidence of a meeting of an ISIS affiliate in Istanbul and allegations from an array of sources—opposition politicians in Turkey, intelligence services of other countries, and Kurdish officials in Syria—who claim that Turkey has allowed ISIS militants and weapons to go back and forth across the border and even directly armed and trained ISIS fighters. The case is circumstantial in places, to be sure, but compared to the case against Assad, it’s a smoking gun.

And it’s a fact that, on top of the aforementioned funneling of militants into Syria, US client states allowed wealthy individuals to fund ISIS. Did the governments themselves finance ISIS? In 2014, once ISIS had become a force, General Dempsey, Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, testified that, yes, US allies had directly funded ISIS — as assessment that Lindsay Graham seconded. In any case, the funding was no secret — Kuwait was a hub for ISIS financing — and US allies didn’t little to nothing to crack down on it.

These governments also sent in weapons that ended up the hands of ISIS. Was the arming direct? Regardless, to send weapons to the opposition was to arm ISIS, both because ISIS routed groups and took their weapons and because early on opposition groups collaborated with ISIS.

Aping US government officials, who barely mentioned ISIS until mid-2014, US press accounts of the group’s rise in Syria tend to ignore its formative months (although they flashback to 2011 for the purpose of indicting Assad.) They pick up the narrative when the groups officially backed by the United States and its allies were fighting ISIS. To read the BuzzVoxxers, or some socialist outlets, you’d have no idea that ISIS ascended in Syria partly due to the collaboration and conciliation of other opposition groups. Joshua Landis’ analysis site Syria Comment details these alliances and calls them the “real” reason for ISIS’s rise in Syria:

The most prominent case-in-point is Colonel Oqaidi, who used to head the Aleppo FSA military council. Oqaidi constantly downplayed the idea that ISIS constituted a threat, describing his relations with ISIS as “excellent”…The other rebel groups that assisted ISIS in the wider conflict here included Liwa al-Tawhid, Ahrar ash-Sham, Suqur ash-Sham, and FSA-banner groups such as Liwa al-Hamza, Ibn Taymiyya (both Tel Abyad area) and Liwa Ahrar al-Jazira al-Thawri…Contrary to what ISIS members and supporters claim, there was no pre-planned ‘sahwa’ against ISIS. Till the very end of 2013, IF and its constituent groups tried to resolve problems with ISIS peacefully.

The FSA, remember, was the official American proxy so the United States was arming a group that it knew was collaborating with ISIS. In 2013, ISIS leader Abu Atheer told Al Jazeera that his group had cordial relations with the FSA and bought weapons from them.

Yet in popular ISIS creation narratives the myth of American innocence persists. The more intrepid western reporters will touch on the role of US client states yet exonerate the United States, as if Saudi Arabia and co. act wholly independently of the world’s most powerful country. And even if you believe that clients states have the desire and capacity to go rogue, there’s no evidence suggesting that US government officials tried to deter their ISIS-empowering actions during the group’s all-important early months in Syria. Biden’s tepid yet much-discussed criticism of allies for supporting ISIS came late in 2014 when ISIS was replacing the government as the primary, official rationale for US military action in Syria. As Biden was traveling around to apologize for his remarks, engaging in client management, no reporter thought to ask why no US official had said or done anything about their empowering of ISIS in the months and years prior.

The media complicity persisted despite last year’s declassification of a 2012 military intelligence memo showing that the United States had determined both that its allies sought to create a “Salafist principality in eastern Syria” and that sectarian reactionaries — “The Salafist, The Muslim Brotherhood, and AQI” — were the “driving forces” in the opposition. Apologists responded predictably to the document: they challenged the most expansive interpretations and ignored the smaller yet still-damning ones.

It’s not so much the memo itself that exposes US culpability but the memo combined with the subsequent actions (and inactions) of the United States vis a vis its allies and the Syrian opposition. More confirmation than revelation, the memo shows what was already clear: 1) that the United States was content for its allies to try to destroy Syria by fueling the most extreme elements of the opposition, including ISIS, 2) that because extreme elements dominated the opposition, to support it was to empower these elements, including ISIS, and 3) that the United States, no bystander to this effort, contributed to it.

It’s not hard to understand why the BuzzBeasters exonerate the United States, even if doing so means ignoring reports in their own publications. The motive of socialists is a little harder to discern. Or perhaps not. Their purpose, it seems, is to pin all the blame on Assad, not just for ISIS but for all of it: the hundreds of thousands of deaths, the millions of refugees, the staggering suffering. The true story of the rise of ISIS, in context, exposes the degree of aggression against Syria, and once that comes to light, it’s hard to cling to the view that this war is, at its core, a battle between a tyrant and a progressive revolution.

A Critical Examination of the 2012 DIA Document Predicting the Rise of the Islamic State

Left: U.S. Ambassador to Syria Robert Ford with FSA Col. Okaidi in 2013. Right: FSA Col. Okaidi with ISIS emir Abu Jandal — part of Omar the Chechen’s group of fighters at Menagh Airbase in 2013.

LR Editor’s Note: We are re-posting the below guest analysis by Robert Barsocchini, an internationally published researcher and writer who focuses on global force dynamics and writes professionally for the film industry. He is a regular contributor to Washington’s Blog. The below point-by-point examination of the DIA document was part of Levant Report’s early coverage and remains a relevant in-depth introduction to the contents of the declassified report (though more has since been revealed). Currently, the document is the basis for renewed discussion in the aftermath of tragic terror attacks in Paris, Beirut, and over Sinai. Yesterday, Glenn Greenwald highlighted the DIA report and former DIA Director Michael Flynn’s confirmation of its accuracy in an article for The Intercept, which is sure to spark renewed debate.

*****

For those readers only now discovering the DIA’s “salafist principality” document, here is some recommended introductory material: 1) Marcy Wheeler’s Salon.com article examined the legal basis through which the memo was declassified, establishing that it was used to brief Congress; 2) Former high ranking MI6 spy and Middle East expert Alastair Crooke analyzed the document from the perspective of a veteran intelligence official for The Huffington Post; 3) Tufts University Historian Hugh Roberts included lengthy discussion of the report in his historical narrative overview of the Syrian conflict for the London Review of Books; 4) Seamus Milne and Nafeez Ahmed wrote hugely popular articles that pushed the document into mainstream media in the UK and Germany (see here and here); 5) Levant Report questioned the Defense Intelligence Agency about the document here, and the State Department was questioned in its daily press briefing here and here. Note: Embedded tweets are not endorsements of the article, but provide broader context of events that have unfolded in Syria.

by Robert Barsocchini

Here, I wrote that these documents “may” say the US/West wanted/want a Salafist Principality in Eastern Syria, because the declassified docs 1) say “Salafist, Muslim Brotherhood, and AQI are the major forces driving the insurgency in Syria”; 2) in the next sentence, the doc defines the “The West, Gulf Countries, and Turkey” as the countries that “support the opposition”; 3) they later say the “opposition forces are trying to control the Eastern areas”, where Syria borders Iraq, and, specifically of this control of Eastern areas, say the “Western Countries, the Gulf States, and Turkey are supporting these efforts”. 4) In a section about “effects on Iraq” the docs say that “there is a possibility of establishing a declared or undeclared Salafist Principality in Eastern Syria…”, then say “this is exactly what the supporting powers to the opposition want, in order to isolate the Syrian regime, which is considered the depth of the Shia expansion (Iraq and Iran).”

However, while the document begins by stating that “The West, Gulf Countries, and Turkey support the opposition”, the document, as noted, also defines other groups, which could be considered “powers”, as either components of or supporters of the opposition: Salafists, Muslim Brotherhood, and AQI. The report states: “AQI supported the opposition from the beginning…”

While the FSA is defined as “opposition”, Salafists, Muslim Brotherhood, and AQI are initially described as “the major forces driving the insurgency”, not as “the opposition”. It could be that the document means that the FSA is “the opposition” and the West, its allies, and the Islamic groups are simply all supporting them, but with different individual goals. However, AQI is also directly described as “opposition” to Assad: “AQI declared its opposition of Assad’s government because it considered it a sectarian regime targeting Sunnis.”

Our counterterrorism strategy has been so feckless many folks around the world aren't sure if Americans are for or against the terrorists.

— Max Abrahms (@MaxAbrahms) May 25, 2015

In the section that says “there is a possibility of establishing a declared or undeclared Salafist Principality in Eastern Syria…”, then that “this is exactly what the supporting powers to the opposition want”—this section of the doc defines the opposition forces controlling the Iraq/Syria border as “Syrian Free Army”, the FSA, and says the FSA will try to take “advantage of the sympathy of the Iraqi border population”.

It then says that “If the situation [likely meaning FSA control of the border] unravels there is the possibility of establishing a declared or undeclared Salafist Principality in Eastern Syria (Hasaka and Der Zor), and this is exactly what the supporting powers to the opposition want, in order to isolate the Syrian regime, which is considered the strategic depth of the Shia expansion (Iraq and Iran).” (The US obviously opposes Iranian expansion and sides with the Sunnis, but the last part of this sentence, as it is framed in terms of Shia expansion, may suggest that here the “supporting powers to the opposition” may be referring not the sentence stating “The West, Gulf Countries, and Turkey support the opposition”, but to earlier sentences stating “AQI supported the opposition from the beginning…” and “AQI declared its opposition of Assad’s government because it considered it a sectarian regime targeting Sunnis.”

So whilst the CIA was arming "moderate" Syrian rebels in 2012, the DIA reported a possible creation of an Islamic State to isolate Assad #pt

— Hayder al-Khoei (@Hayder_alKhoei) May 21, 2015

Thus, perhaps this is simply unclear writing, or too much is censored, and what this really means is that while both AQI and “The West, Gulf Countries, and Turkey” support the “opposition” (and AQI also comprises the opposition), only the AQI part of that support for the opposition would want a “Salafist Principality” to be established. This is clearly stated regarding the effect on Iraq. However, the US/West do strongly support existing Salafist Principalities, as noted above, including the most ideologically expansionist one, Saudi Arabia. Thus, supporting a Salafist Principality, and annexation of territory (Israel, Cuba, Diego Garcia, etc.), is something the US already does currently. (International relations scholar Dr. Nafeez Ahmed notes that a RAND corp report previously advised the US “to capitalise on the Shia-Sunni conflict by taking the side of the conservative Sunni regimes in a decisive fashion and working with them against all Shiite empowerment movements in the Muslim world.”)

The doc says the above-noted “deterioration”, likely referring to the ‘unravels’ term above, “has dire consequences on the Iraq situation.” It continues that this “deterioration” would give more momentum to terrorist groups and could allow them to declare an “Islamic state”, “which will create grave danger in regards to unifying Iraq and the protection of its territory.” (A study out of British universities noted that US government/media did not report on ISIS publicly until it began to seize oil fields. Then, the study shows, the US sent drones to try to stop ISIS.)

The last uncensored sentence of the doc says that the third consequence of the “deterioration of the situation” (‘the situation’ likely meaning the FSA control of the border region) would be terrorist elements from all over the Arab world “entering into Iraqi arena.”

US Key Man in Syria Worked Closely with ISIL and Jabhat al-Nusra: http://t.co/NiEUgvsb4z via
Roy Murray @Sykes_Picot

— Joshua Landis (@joshua_landis) August 27, 2014

The rest of the document is censored, as are some sections before this.

Overall, what we can see in the document clearly states that a Salafist Principality is not desired by the West in terms of the Iraqi situation, but may or may not suggest that this principality is desired in terms of isolating Assad, which is a stated goal of the West and its allies (not just isolating, but removing). However, it is also a goal of AQI and its allies, which are defined both as supporting “the opposition” and having “declared its opposition of Assad’s government”. While this group and its affiliates could be viewed as a strategic asset for isolating Assad, they could also be viewed as a third party outside the wider global contest between West and East, which is opposed to either. However, a group in Syria opposed to both sides could be seen as preferable to having a group allied with the East and opposed to the West.

IS may attack Damascus next. If it attacks Iraqis or Kurds, U.S. will bomb it. If IS attacks Assad, gets free pass. Incentive clear.

— Joshua Landis (@joshua_landis) May 22, 2015

International security scholar Dr. Nafeez Ahmed analyzes these documents and concludes the US practices a policy of “sponsoring Islamist terrorism for dubious geopolitical purposes.”

“According to the newly declassified US document, the Pentagon foresaw the likely rise of the ‘Islamic State’ as a direct consequence of this strategy, and warned that it could destabilize Iraq. Despite anticipating that Western, Gulf state and Turkish support for the “Syrian opposition” — which included al-Qaeda in Iraq — could lead to the emergence of an ‘Islamic State’ in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), the document provides no indication of any decision to reverse the policy of support to the Syrian rebels. On the contrary, the emergence of an al-Qaeda affiliated “Salafist Principality” as a result is described as a strategic opportunity to isolate Assad.”

“The secret Pentagon document thus provides extraordinary confirmation that the US-led coalition currently fighting ISIS, had three years ago welcomed the emergence of an extremist “Salafist Principality” in the region as a way to undermine Assad, and block off the strategic expansion of Iran.”

“The establishment of such a “Salafist Principality” in eastern Syria, the DIA document asserts, is “exactly” what the “supporting powers to the [Syrian] opposition want.” Earlier on, the document repeatedly describes those “supporting powers” as “the West, Gulf countries, and Turkey.”

Charles Shoebridge, a former British Army and Metropolitan Police counter-terrorism intelligence officer, said (noted by Ahmed) that the documents “raise vitally important questions of the West’s governments and media in their support of Syria’s rebellion.”

“Throughout the early years of the Syria crisis, the US and UK governments, and almost universally the West’s mainstream media, promoted Syria’s rebels as moderate, liberal, secular, democratic, and therefore deserving of the West’s support. Given that these documents wholly undermine this assessment, it’s significant that the West’s media has now, despite their immense significance, almost entirely ignored them.”

Ahmed quotes a former US Marine: “US intelligence predicted the rise of the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL or ISIS), but instead of clearly delineating the group as an enemy, the report envisions the terror group as a US strategic asset.”

Former Ambassador to Syria Robert Ford responds to the question of whether he knowingly supported AQ and ISIS: https://t.co/8TjNZajpls

— Brad Hoff (@BradRHoff) May 24, 2015

Ahmed concludes: “The rise of a Salafist quasi-state entity that might expand into Iraq, and fracture that country, was therefore clearly foreseen by US intelligence as likely — but nevertheless strategically useful — blowback from the West’s commitment to “isolating Syria.”

What the docs establish beyond doubt is that, in 2012, when they were written, the US saw the likelihood of a “Salafist Principality” or “Islamic State” being established, and was fully aware the insurgency in Syria was mainly driven by Islamic groups, who were fighting Assad and also supporting the FSA, which itself has been shown to have Islamic tendencies. For example, an FSA commander is on video saying he would want to implement Sharia law. But the West and its allies continued their support, as FSA members openly shared their US supplies with the ISIS-related groups, and even converted to ISIS.

As Ahmed puts it, “the Pentagon continued to support the Islamist insurgency, even while anticipating the probability that doing so would establish an extremist Salafi stronghold in Syria and Iraq.”

This “entire covert strategy was sanctioned and supervised by the US, Britain, France, Israel and other Western powers.”

“As Shoebridge told me, ‘The documents show that not only did the US government at the latest by August 2012 know the true extremist nature and likely outcome of Syria’s rebellion’ — namely, the emergence of ISIS — ’but that this was considered an advantage for US foreign policy. This also suggests a decision to spend years in an effort to deliberately mislead the West’s public, via a compliant media, into believing that Syria’s rebellion was overwhelmingly ‘moderate.’”

The same week we learn for sure the Syrian rebels have been terrorist-infested since 2012 if not earlier the US reportedly offers air cover.

— Max Abrahms (@MaxAbrahms) May 25, 2015

Ahmed quotes a former MI5 officer explaining that after Libya and other such projects by the West, we see in this behavior towards Syria “part of an established pattern. And they remain indifferent to the sheer scale of human suffering that is unleashed as a result of such game-playing.”

What we already knew before these docs is that the US and West strongly support extremist Salafist states as part of their strategy of eating away at the parts of the world not under the US thumb, the “East”: Syria, Iran, Russia, and China. The US and West themselves are built on and continue to support and commit theft and annexation of territory, and support, commit, or ignore (if they are not politically helpful) all kinds of mass killings, including by groups worse than ISIS; these have included the Khmer Rouge, the Suharto Regime, and the US itself: the establishment of the USA and the building of it into a superpower was a process that involved crimes worse than anything ISIS will ever accomplish.

Further, ISIS, as pointed out by Kofi Annan and many others, arose as a consequence of the illegal US invasion of Iraq, motivated largely by Bush Jr.’s religious fanaticism, an invasion the international community tried and failed to prevent, which, the most recent and comprehensive report finds, has killed about 1 to 2 million or more people, another feat ISIS will never accomplish.

While studies and many official statements make clear, and it is obvious to any minimally non-US-brainwashed individual, that the invasion was largely about oil, even if we disregard that, ignore the rest of US history, and declare the US had/has “good intentions” regarding Iraq, that puts us at the level of of Japanese fascists, who believed in their “good intentions” regarding their invasions of China and elsewhere.

People with too much power always declare good intentions, and are often sincere, as they get god-complexes and view themselves as humanity’s benevolent saviors. But the reason war (including supporting warring proxies) is outlawed as an instrument of policy is that it has disastrous consequences, as we are seeing, even for the sincerely well-intentioned.

Additional Notes:

It should be stressed that clearly admitting the West would “want” a Salafist principality in Eastern Syria is not generally the kind of statement people in governments would make of themselves, even in private, hence makes it less likely here that the West is being referred to specifically by that statement, as does the inclusion of the phrase “if the situation unravels” (meaning FSA control of the East) an Islamic state could result. However, it is noteworthy that the West and the Islamists are so easily conflated in this document (this conflation may well be intentional as a way of discussing benefits without clearly stating that they might be desired), as they are clearly delineated as both being opposed to the Assad government, and for similar reasons – opposing Iran and the Shia, backed by Russia and China, the latter part being of greater import to the West. The doc also makes very clear that the FSA was/is being supported by AQI and its Islamist affiliates, and that those Islamists were known to be “the major forces driving the insurgency”. It has long been known that FSA shares its US/Western/Gulf/Turkish supplies with and converts to Islamist groups, and AQI, the ISIS precursor, has always been known as particularly aggressive. And as Dr. Ahmed points out, the document nowhere suggests ending aid to the opposition due to its being driven by AQI and affiliates, and only frames the potential creation of the “Islamic state” as a bad thing in relation to Iraq. In relation to Syria/Assad, it is not framed as a bad thing, but as something that would be seen to “isolate” Assad, a goal shared by the West and the Islamist groups. So, these documents may well be an example of discussing a strategy while attempting to maintain some degree of “plausible deniability”.

It must also be remembered that the US and West not only support extremist Salafi/Wahhabi/Sharia established states, but have on numerous occasions worked with, backed, aided and/or paralleled some of the goals of non-state groups such as the Mujahedin and al Qaeda (in Afghanistan – see Brzezinski, Bob Gates; Bosnia, Kosovo – on these see Fulton in scholarly journal Global Security Studies), including under Obama in relation to Libya. In US support for the Mujahedin in Afghanistan and then the Taliban, the support was not even seen as a means to an end, but a completely acceptable end in itself: the US was fine with the Taliban taking power and staying in power, as long as it cooperated with the US. That is the bottom line. As soon as it proved uncooperative, the US “discovered” the Taliban human rights violations that non-governmental US monitors had been decrying for years, while the US was supporting the Taliban (here). And, as noted, abhorrent behavior is not a deterrent to US support. The US has committed far worse crimes than ISIS and supported groups far worse than ISIS. Only those unfamiliar with history and glued to US TV can think ISIS is some new level of evil in the world, or at least one not seen for a long time. The only qualifier for US support is whether the group in question is willing to cater to US business and strategic interests.

Guest Analysis by Steven Chovanec: The Refugee Crisis Isn’t the Real Problem

Photo: Libya; from “liberation” by NATO to “terror wonderland” to refugee crisis.

Steven Chovanec is an independent geopolitical analyst and writer based in Chicago, IL. 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, find him on Twitter @stevechovanec.

by Steven Chovanec

As the gravest refugee crisis since WWII continues unabated, everyday new reports give us privileged enough not to be personally effected mere glimpses at the outright horror that is being visited upon our brothers and sisters across the world on a daily basis.

A horror that has sparked the public to advocate that “no person is illegal” in response to their governments’ shameful positions which seek to keep refugees out at all costs while avoiding the main root causes of the problem and their own complicity.(1)

Reading the Western media, heavy emphasis is put upon the criminal enterprises that are boating these refugees across the seas, editorializing the situation to justify a heavy-handed response in order to ‘prosecute the criminals.’ However, despite the moral bankruptcy of seeking to profit from such a crisis, these enterprises would have no demand had not so much death and destruction been inflicted upon refugee homelands. Moreover one could glean that refugees are less upset over the fees of those providing them an opportunity to escape than they are with Western governments who refuse them, and whom also foment instability in their countries.

Western leaders and media pundits alike are straining to blame the crisis on official enemies and Western inaction. David Cameron blames Assad in Syria along with “the butchers of ISIS and the criminal gangs that are running this terrible trade in people,” yet, as Daniel McAdams points out, “proponents of the four-year US policy of Syria destabilization and regime change are lining up to make their case that the current refugee crisis… is one hundred percent the fault of both Syrian president Assad and western non-interventionists who objected to plans in 2013 for the US and UK to begin bombing Syria.”

Other Western publications do in fact have the gall to actually criticize their own leaders’ guilt in the matter. The reasons? The West has failed because it has simply not done enough, sat lazily on the sidelines, and thus further intervention is needed.

Once again the only criticisms allowed in the ‘liberal’ western press are ones which presuppose benevolent intentions.

The sad truth however is that the alarming refugee situation was a predictable outcome of the West’s crazed militant adventurism, and the calls for the West to ‘do more’ are in actuality calls to exacerbate the crisis by increasing that which caused it, thinly veiling themselves as dissident criticisms.

The UNHCR calculates that some 366,402 Europe-bound refugees have reached Europe by sea this year alone, the majority of which (51%) are Syrians, while the next largest portions are from Afghanistan (14%), Eritrea (8%), Nigeria (4%), and Iraq (3%).(2)

A total of 12 million Syrians have been displaced, 7.6 internally and 4 million abroad. In Iraq more than 3 million have been displaced since December 2013. Poverty and destruction in Libya have also caused hundreds of thousands to flee from Africa. 137,000 refugees migrated this year while 1,800 never completed the journey and died at sea. 1.3 million are displaced inside Ukraine, nearly all of them from the southeastern regions of Donetsk, Luhansk, and Kharkiv. 867,000 have left the country, most going to Russia.(3)

Almost invariably, the major regions afflicted by this crisis are also areas of either direct or indirect US military aggression and intervention.

The invasion of Afghanistan was initially justified through the declared motive of compelling the Taliban to hand over people the US accused of having been involved in the 9/11 attacks. The Taliban agreed, requesting that first evidence be provided. The Bush administration refused to provide any. The reason? They didn’t have any.

The FBI and Justice Department have never formally charged bin Laden with involvement in 9/11. Rex Tomb, Chief of Investigative Publicity for the FBI, said that the reason why 9/11 is not mentioned on Osama’s Most Wanted page and why the DoJ never formally indicted and charged him for the offense is because “the FBI has no hard evidence connecting Bin Laden to 9/11.”(4)

The Taliban eventually agreed to hand over bin Laden for trail in a country other than the US without asking for evidence in return for a halt in the US bombing. The White House refused this offer as well, and 3 weeks into the war announced that the bombing would continue until the people of Afghanistan overthrew the Taliban, a textbook example of international terrorism according to the US’ own definition, and this would later became the official justification for the war.

The head of the FBI, after the most intense international investigation in history, told the press that the FBI believed that the plot might have been hatched in Afghanistan, but was most likely implemented and carried out in the UAE and Germany.(5)

The Afghan invasion thus had nothing to do with finding and bringing the criminals to justice, which could have been accomplished through careful investigative and police work, but instead, as was eventually admitted officially, was about regime change and thus control over Afghanistan, wrecking the country through war and destruction while sending countless fleeing for their lives.

As well, if the US’ declared ‘mission’ of going after any state that harbored terrorists were actually implemented, it follows that both Saudi Arabia and Pakistan would have been invaded as well.

According to an extensive investigation by Britain’s leading international security scholar Nafeez Ahmed, in which declassified documents, official government reports, and intelligence official’s testimony are cited, specific intelligence was available to the US that bin Laden was living in Pakistan under the protection of US allies for years before the alleged 2011 assassination raid. The US was stymied from acting due to its longstanding relations with Saudi and Pakistani intelligence.(6)

Instead the response to 9/11 did not target these 2 US allies without whom the plot never could have succeeded, but instead was aimed at countries the US sought to colonize, Iraq having no ties whatsoever to al-Qaeda and being one of the main state-deterrents to jihadi radicalism.(7)

The true intentions behind the Iraq invasion, as all official pretexts collapse instantly upon examination, were evidenced in a “Declaration of Principles” document signed by Bush and then Prime Minister Maliki in 2007. The agreement allowed for a long-term US military presence in the country, if the enormous Green Zone “embassy” wasn’t enough of an indication for the permanence of the US presence, while as well explicitly stating that Iraq’s economy (meaning its oil resources) would be open to the preferential access of US capital. One would be hard-pressed to find a more blatant pronouncement of economic imperialism.

These reasons were further underscored a year later when President Bush issued a signing statement declaring that any congressional legislation which barred military spending from being used to establish permanent US military installations in Iraq or from allowing the US to exercise control over its oil resources would be rejected.(8)

The jihadism now plaguing Iraq was a direct result of this decision to use the military to hit the country with a sledgehammer.

Former CIA officer Graham Fuller explains that although the US did not plan the formation of ISIS, it was the destructive US interventions in the Middle East and the war in Iraq which were the basic causes of its creation.(9)

Tactics used by the occupiers exacerbated the violence and sectarianism, pitting peaceful resistance movements in violent conflict with radical jihadists, fostering intra-insurgent violence despite civilians being caught within the crossfire, and supporting both Sunni, al-Qaeda linked factions as well as government-run “Salvadorian option” Shia death-squads, all part of a ‘divide and rule’ strategy that harkens back to the more brutal age of ancient empires. All of this transformed a society in which Shia and Sunni coexisted much like Protestant and Catholics do in the West into a raging sectarian bloodbath, now one of the most dangerous places in the world to live, forcing countless people to flee their homes.(10)

After Iraq came Libya.

Before 2011 Libya was a main transport hub for the Trans-Saharan migration routes that extended into southern Europe. According to 2006 estimates, between 65,000 and 120,000 entered the Maghreb region yearly, of which 70 to 80% are believed to migrate through Libya. As well, Libya was a final destination for many and housed those which failed to reach Europe, taking in around 1 to 1.5 million while helping to mitigate European immigration concerns. Going one step further, Gaddafi also made deals with European states to forcibly shut down the Libyan coast in exchange for large sums of money, dropping illegal immigration through Libya down by 75% in 2009.(11)

All of this changed in 2011.

Gaddafi expressed willingness to abdicate shortly after the beginning of the 2011 revolt, but the US ignored his calls for a truce and continued with their regime-change policy, according to an extensive study compiled by the Citizens Commission on Benghazi, a self-selected group of former top level military officers, CIA officers, and academic think-tankers.

The report details how this policy included the arming of terrorists to overthrow the Libyan state, “the U.S. was fully aware of and facilitating the delivery of weapons to the al-Qa’eda dominated rebel militias throughout the 2011 rebellion. The jihadist agenda of AQIM, the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), and other Islamic terror groups represented among the rebel forces was well known to U.S. officials responsible for Libya policy. The rebels made no secret of their al-Qa’eda affiliation, openly flying and speaking in front of the black flag of Islamic jihad, according to author John Rosenthal and multiple media reports. And yet, the White House and senior Congressional members deliberately and knowingly pursued a policy that provided material support to terrorist organizations in order to topple a ruler who had been working closely with the West actively to suppress al-Qa’eda.”(12)

According to a 2007 report by the West Point Combating Terrorism Center, the city of Benghazi was one of al-Qaeda’s main headquarters. Gaddafi was on the verge of invading Benghazi in 2011 under the pretext that it was an al-Qaeda hotbed, however NATO warplanes prevented him from doing so, protecting the city and the al-Qaeda factions stationed there that the US had allied with. Afterwards, the black flag of al-Qaeda was hoisted off government buildings in Benghazi.(13)

Following Gaddafi’s fall Libya transcended into what Senator Rand Paul calls “a jihadist wonderland.” The Obama administration also then, with the support of British intelligence and in collusion with allies Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar, created a ‘rat line’ into Syria.

Authorized in 2012, it was used to funnel weapons and ammunition from Libya through southern Turkey and across the Syrian border to the opposition. Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Seymour Hersh notes that “Many of those in Syria who ultimately received the weapons were jihadists, some of them affiliated with al-Qaida.”(14)

Obama then continued along the Libyan model by once again supporting al-Qaeda, this time to overthrow the Syrian president.

At least as far back as 2005 the US has been financing and training anti-government opposition groups in Syria with a view toward regime-change.(15)

Come 2011 United States Air Force (USAF) officers at the Lieutenant Colonel level would confirm in leaked WikiLeaks email exchanges that US Special Operations Forces were “already on the ground” in Syria prior to December of that year, whose mission it was to “commit guerrilla attacks, assassination campaigns, try to break the back of the Alawite forces” and “elicit collapse from within.”(16)

A secret US-NATO base was established in Turkey in order to organize and expand the dissident base in the country, smuggle in weapons, conduct psychological operations and information warfare, and to funnel intelligence and military operators across the border.(17)

US-led operation rooms were set up in Turkey and Qatar where the CIA and MI6, along with Jordanian, Saudi, Turkish, and Qatari intelligence commanded and coordinated support to the rebel opposition to the tune of 1 billion dollars per year from the CIA alone. The US oversaw the operation, providing intelligence and deciding on which rebels would receive the weapons shipments, which were mainly supplied by Saudi Arabia and Qatar. According to classified assessments from US intelligence, most of these shipments were going to “hard-line Islamists.”(18)

Training camps were also set up in Qatar and Jordan.

According to high-level Jordanian officials, rebels trained at the base in Jordan would later go on to join ISIS.(19) Despite this, the training continued.

At the base in Qatar, rebel commanders describe how they were trained specifically to break the Geneva Conventions and “finish off” wounded and surrendered soldiers after an ambush.(20)

Former CIA officer Phil Giraldi would note that “CIA analysts are skeptical regarding the march to war. The frequently cited United Nations report that more than 3,500 civilians have been killed by Assad’s soldiers is based largely on rebel sources and is uncorroborated. The [Central Intelligence] Agency has refused to sign off on the claims. Likewise, accounts of mass defections from the Syrian Army and pitched battles between deserters and loyal soldiers appear to be a fabrication, with few defections being confirmed independently. Syrian government claims that it is being assaulted by rebels who are armed, trained, and financed by foreign governments are more true than false.”(21)

And while US allies openly supported al-Qaeda and ISIS under US supervision, the US armed supposedly “moderate” factions who were working alongside the terrorists, committing the same kinds of atrocities while funneling US-supplied weapons to them.(22)

US intelligence as well foresaw the rise of an “Islamic State” given all of this support for an extremist dominated opposition, yet saw the development as strategically beneficial and therefore increased its level of assistant in the following years.(23)

All of this culminating in a sectarian opposition dominated by al-Qaeda and ISIS.(24)

Currently Turkey and Saudi Arabia are openly supporting al-Qaeda and various other jihadi entities, while Qatar maintains good relations with al-Nusra and Turkey as well supports the Islamic State. Saudi Arabia too shows no convincing evidence that it has stopped supporting ISIS, while the CIA still supports up to 10,000 rebels under a program which has mainly gone to aid “hard-line Islamists.” In addition, the US has been instrumental in facilitating Pentagon-supported rebels to fight alongside jihadi extremists.(25)

The anti-ISIS coalition, made up of the main states which were instrumental in supporting ISIS’ rise, has predictably been a complete failure. Turkey, although officially taking part in the coalition, continues to support ISIS, while the jihadi group has only increased in strength as a result of the illegal US bombings which have massacred hundreds of civilians.(26)

Like Libya, where US intervention created chaos and proliferated extremism, Syria is now a magnet for aspiring terrorists, a land overrun by violent extremists and foreign-manufactured war and therefore contributes the most significant number of refugees out of any country to a global displacement crisis the likes of which has never been seen since the Second World War.

Yet it doesn’t end with Syria. As NATO and its ally’s attack the Syrian state by proxy, Russia has drawn a red-line and bolstered its Middle Eastern ally, effectively preventing a repeat of what occurred in Libya.

Given this, another front was opened up by the US against Russia in Ukraine, in what Stratfor chief George Friedman calls “the most blatant coup in history.”

Partly the culmination of inertia from decades of regime-change efforts and EU/NATO expansion, and partly utilized as a way to punish Russia for defying the US policy in Syria, the violent seizure of power in Ukraine was the result of an externalization by foreign powers of internal Ukrainian political divisions.

Ukraine is divided between east and west by two contrasting visions of Ukrainian statehood. The western regions predominantly adhere to what Professor Richard Sakwa titles a “monist nationalist” vision, a form of nationalism which prioritizes the need to create an officially monolingual, unitary, and culturally specific “Ukrainian” state distinct from its neighbors, mainly Russia. This model seeks to restore an idealized vision of statehood, not to reflect the existing, pluralistic realities of the current Ukrainian society, and seeks greater relations with the EU and the West. At the extreme ends of this model are the militant ultra-nationalist neo-Nazi groups. The contrasting vision of statehood predominantly held by those in the south and east is that pluralism, which appeals to the principle of national inclusivity for all of the country’s disparate peoples, while still upholding a shared Ukrainian identity. This model thus opposes the nationalizing strain of the monists and favors strong and cooperative relations with Russia.(27)

The West’s decision to use the EU Association Agreement as a means to leverage Ukraine out of Russia’s and into its own orbit of influence, giving Yanukovych an ultimatum while ruling out calls by him and Russia for a negotiated settlement(28), saw the West ally itself with one half of the country against the other along a zero-sum, us-or-them mentality, exacerbating the internal tensions and eventually culminating in a violent seizure of power.

The US and EU provided financial, material, and political support to the opposition, whose militancy, propagandistically protected and enabled by the US, was led by far-right ultranationalist extremist the EU itself had denounced just years prior.(29)

The violent takeover of the state was endorsed by the US, although it was unconstitutional, broke an EU-brokered settlement agreed upon the day before, and saw unpopular ultra-nationalist leaders gain influential posts within the new government.(30)

A client administration was installed which immediately set out to silence any opposition to its rule. Given that the parties and politicians most supported in the east were driven out and purged as a result of the coup, the US-supported Kiev regime represented only the western regions and sought to instill its rule over a counter-coup revolt in the east that was rising up against it.(31)

Despite mirroring the exact same tactics used by the Maidan months before, Kiev and the West rejected the legitimacy of the eastern uprising and blamed it all solely on Russia, completely voiding out the humanity and legitimate grievances of the eastern Ukrainians, reducing them to nothing more than ‘terrorists’ and ‘Russian agents’ despite their shared desire for a unified Ukraine, albeit a differently envisioned unified Ukraine.(32)
Given a choice of negotiating with the differing views of the east or forcibly consolidating its rule by violently suppressing the dissent, Kiev launched a military campaign against its own citizens and their Russian backers at the behest of the United States.(33)

On its first launch, Kiev’s military was met by unarmed Ukrainian citizens. Mothers, grandmothers, and local inhabitants halted the tanks and soldiers, asking who they had come to fight, their own families and citizens?(34)

The convoy was forced to retreat, yet days after at again the behest of the US, the war machine was once again launched(35), this time succeeding in devastating and massacring the civilian populations in the east.

As the conflict has raged on, the unspoken of fact is that the Ukrainian military is targeting residential towns, villages, and buildings, causing countless civilian deaths while decimating the local infrastructure.(36)

It was because of this fateful decision of choosing to externalize all the blame on Russia for Ukraine’s internal political divisions while also launching a military operation to suppress the dissent against Kiev’s own violent seizure of power that so many families are being forced to flee from their homes.

Under the backdrop of Kiev shelling its own citizen population in the east was the Ukrainian addition to the refugee crisis born…

Much more can be said about all of this, and about many more interventions the US has embarked upon, yet the incontrovertible takeaway is the massive humanitarian toll and suffering that has been the result of all of this adventurism.

Many though are lining up to blame the West’s enemies for the humanitarian scourge of displacement that is occurring, however the common denominator in all these areas are not the presence of US enemies but of US aggression and meddling.

The same leaders and supporters of Western aggression who are attempting to use this crisis as a means to further their ignorant and militant narratives are most to blame for creating it with their prior displays of imperial aggression along the same narratives.

Any who profess concern over this inhumanity without calling for an end to the destructive interventions which are its causes are therefore only adding to the horrors they claim to seek to stop.

The imperial, exceptionalist mindset of the West which claims ownership for itself over the entirety of the world no matter how much death and destruction it causes is the true humanitarian catastrophe we now face in our times, of which this refugee crisis is unfortunately just one, inevitable symptom.

For another perspective, Afraa Dagher, an architect and political activist living in Syria, lends an insightful look at this crisis from the eyes of someone living in the country most affected by it:

“Hundreds of thousands of refugees are continuing to flee from countries of conflict, in the Middle East and Africa.

The sad point is that many of those refugees are Syrians. Syria, the country which used to welcome refugees from the war zone countries, such as Palestine, Armenia, Somalia, Iraq and Libya. Syria, the country which was one of the safer countries in the world just years ago before this global plot and global proxy war on Syria.

Syrians cross in illegal ways from Syria to Turkey, then to Greece, Macedonia and Europe.

Most of them drown in the sea because of no safer automotive is affordable to transfer them, though they pay huge amounts of money to warmonger merchants who manage to provide the transfer facilities to them.

Those merchants most of them based in Turkey, also most of those refugees are fleeing from their camps in Turkey to Europe, the question is why do they leave Turkey now?

On the other side the west handles this crisis in a bad way, forces on the border, more borders controlled, more fences. So there is no real solution, the west is really far from a solution.

At the same time the west blames Syria all the time for Palestinian refugees, accuses Syria of besiege them, which is not true at all, Palestinians in Syria have same Syrians rights, however they are also under terrorists attack as well as Syrians.

While Germany eases the rules of migration for those refugees and welcomes migrants, sets up camps, and calls for a conference to find a solution to deal better with those refugees.

Camps like these in Turkey and Jordan are not a solution, maybe Saudi and Qatar the two countries who funded the war against Syrians will send money to Europe as a help for those refugees expenses!, however these Arab gulfs countries didn’t welcome them, and didn’t help them in Jordan camps.

Did Mrs. Merkel think of lifting sanctions on Syrian people, or to stop supporting the so-called moderate rebels?

Or the west see it is better to use this crisis against the Syrians’ homeland, to help Syrians to live in peace, as they used to do before the west intervention in Syria, is a better solution if the west was really interested in helping them. Destroying Syrians’ homeland and giving them the name: refugee, is another catastrophe for Arabs, it is enough to have one catastrophe, the Palestinian one.

Actually the reason behind this crisis which is considered the biggest refugee crisis in Europe since World War Two, is the western policy towards the Middle East, the interventions in these countries, bombing countries like Libya by NATO, nurturing the radical terrorist opposition organizations like in Syria under the name of freedom seekers, creating the chaos as in Iraq.

Also destroying the economy in these countries as in Syria, when Europe and USA imposed sanction on Syrians, which increased the poverty, simultaneously when bombing the infrastructures of Syria by the so-called moderate rebels, who are backed by the west.

Some wrote the refugee crisis is promoted by civil war! while it is promoted by the west’s intervention in these countries, it is a global crisis and a global responsibility.

There is some agenda of evacuating the original people of countries like Syria, by committed massacres against them by the terrorist organizations, and to escalate the war in their countries, so they leave their countries which turned into war zone countries, and they seek human asylum.

And it will not be weird if the west used this card against our governments, to bomb Syria is a dream of some west leaders, they always want to do it under any pretext, regardless if many refugees are from Africa and countries like Libya, regardless of the Palestinian refugees since 1948, regardless of what is going on now against Yemeni people.”

For more from Afraa, follow her @syrianasoldier on Twitter, “Afraa Dagher” on Facebook, and her blog at https://syrianaafrona.wordpress.com/.

Notes:

Rick Lyman, “Treatment of Migrants Evokes Memories of Europe’s Darkest Hour.” The New York Times, 4 September 2015. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/05/world/treatment-of-migrants-evokes-memories-of-europes-darkest-hour.html?partner=rss&emc=rss; Only 0.25 million of Syria’s total 20 million refugees (less than 2% of the total) have made it to Europe. Syrian refugees are not allowed to apply for asylum in embassies of EU countries in Turkey, Lebanon, and Jordan where they mostly are accumulated, so they must travel illegally to EU countries in order to exercise their right of applying for asylum. The discussed EU quota plan to allow application before entering the EU only includes 20,000, or 0.2% of the Syrian refugees. So the EU essentially does everything it can to stop more than 99% of the Syrian refugees from applying for the asylum they are legally entitled to. “Where Are the Syrian Refugees?” Gapminder Foundation, 9 June 2015. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0_QrIapiNOw; However, Germany’s “open door” policy is helping as 8,000 refugees recently entered the country. Yet still, in 2014 only around 45% of asylum applications made to European governments were accepted, at least half were turned away. Katrin Bennhold, et al., “Germans Welcome Migrants After Long Journey Through Hungary and Austria.” The New York Times, 5 September 2015. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/06/world/europe/migrant-crisis-austria-hungary-germany.html?partner=rss&emc=rss.
“Refugees/Migrants Emergency Response – Mediterranean.” United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) The UN Refugee Agency. http://data.unhcr.org/mediterranean/regional.html. Accessed on 9/5/15.
Patrick Boehler & Sergio Peçanha, “The Global Refugee Crisis, Region by Region.” The New York Times, 26 August 2015. http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/06/09/world/migrants-global-refugee-crisis-mediterranean-ukraine-syria-rohingya-malaysia-iraq.html.
Ed Haas, “FBI says, ‘No hard evidence connecting Bin Laden to 9/11.’” Muckraker Report, 6 June 2006. https://web.archive.org/web/20070507051205/http://www.teamliberty.net/id267.html.
Rory McCarthy, “New offer on Bin Laden.” The Guardian, 17 October 2001. http://www.theguardian.com/world/2001/oct/17/afghanistan.terrorism11; “Noam Chomsky: US-led Afghan War, Criminal.” Press TV, 3 November 2010. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article26756.htm.
Nafeez Ahmed, “The bin Laden death mythology.” Medium, 3 July 2015. https://medium.com/insurge-intelligence/the-bin-laden-death-mythology-9a3776a6e3c3.
“The first moves from Washington made it clear that the anti-terror war would be waged without any confrontation with Saudi Arabia or Pakistan, two close US allies, despite the fact that without the involvement of these two countries 9/11 was unlikely to have happened.” “The ‘war on terror’ has failed because it did not target the jihadi movement as a whole and, above all, was not aimed at Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, the two countries that fostered jihadism as a creed and a movement.” Patrick Cockburn, The Rise of Islamic State: ISIS and the New Sunni Revolution (New York and London: Verso, 2015), pp. 4, 58.
The ‘Declaration of Principles’ document stipulated extensive US military influence (i.e. control) over Iraq’s security policy, never mentioning a US military withdrawal. In terms of the ‘economic sphere’ the two parties agreed upon the principle of “Facilitating and encouraging the flow of foreign investments to Iraq, especially American investments…” Text of the “Declaration of Principles” between Iraq and the United States, issued by the White House on Nov. 26, 2007. http://www.dickatlee.com/etwf/bush_maliki.html; Bill Van Auken, “Bush rejects congressional ban on permanent bases in Iraq.” World Socialist Web Site, 1 February 2008. https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2008/02/iraq-f01.html; Noam Chomsky, “It’s the Oil, Stupid!” info, 23 May 2015. http://www.chomsky.info/articles/20080708.htm.
Ezgi Basaran, “Former CIA officer says US policies helped create IS.” Al-Monitor, 2 September 2014. http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/politics/2014/09/turkey-usa-iraq-syria-isis-fuller.html#.
A 2008 US Army-commissioned RAND report outlines a ‘Divide and Rule’ strategy for US engagement in the region, noting that the strategy “focuses on exploiting fault lines between various SJ (Salafi-jihadi) groups to turn them against each other…” The report calls for the US to “capitalize on the Shia-Sunni conflict by taking the side of the conservative Sunni regimes… and working with them against all Shiite empowerment movements in the Muslim world” while as well maintaining “a strong strategic relationship with the Iraqi Shiite government.” The report confirms that the ‘Divide and Rule’ strategy was already being deployed in Iraq “to create divisions in the jihadist camp. Today in Iraq such a strategy is being used at the tactical level,” by forming “temporary alliances” with al-Qaeda affiliated “nationalist insurgent groups.” Although they have directly fought against the US for four years and “cooperated with al-Qaeda against US forces,” these groups are now being supported to exploit “the common threat that al-Qaeda now poses to both parties.” Christopher G. Pernin et al., “Unfolding the Future of the Long War.” RAND Corporation, 2008. https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/monographs/2008/RAND_MG738.pdf; Nafeez Ahmed, “Pentagon report predicted West’s support for Islamist rebels would create ISIS.” Insurge Intelligence, 22 May 2015. https://medium.com/insurge-intelligence/secret-pentagon-report-reveals-west-saw-isis-as-strategic-asset-b99ad7a29092; Early on during the invasion the US covertly supplied arms to al-Qaeda affiliated insurgents while propping up a Shia-dominated government. Pakistani defense sources confirmed to Asia Times that ‘former Ba’ath party’ loyalists were being supplied Pakistani-manufactured weapons by the US. These ‘former Ba’ath party’ loyalists were being recruited and trained by al-Qaeda in Iraq under the leadership of Abu Musab Zarqawi. The arms “could not be destined for the Iraqi security forces because US arms would be given to them”, a source told Asia Times’ Pakistan bureau chief Syed Saleem Shahzad, who was “known for his exposes of the Pakistani military” according to the New Yorker, and was murdered in 2011. Syed Saleem Shahzad, “US fights back against ‘rule by clerics.’” Asia Times, 15 February, 2005. http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/GB15Ak02.html; Nafeez Ahmed, “Caught red-handed.” The Raw Story, 23 September, 2005. http://rawstory.com/news/2005/CAUGHT_RED__0923.html; Nafeez Ahmed, “How the west created the Islamic State.” Insurge Intelligence, 11 September 2014. https://medium.com/insurge-intelligence/how-the-west-created-the-islamic-state-dbfa6f83bc1f; According to a report for the US Joint Special Operations University (JSOU) and Strategic Studies Department titled “Dividing Our Enemies”, post-invasion Iraq strategy relied upon pursuing public legitimacy through social welfare programs while simultaneously delegitimizing local enemies by escalating intra-insurgent violence, even though this would harm civilians. The report notes that Iraq post-invasion was “an interesting case study of fanning discontent among enemies, leading to ‘red-against-red’ [enemy-against-enemy] firefights,” this strategy however “involves no effort to win over those caught in the crossfire of insurgent and counterinsurgent warfare, whether by bullet or broadcast. On the contrary, this underside of the counterinsurgency coin is calculated to exploit or create divisions among adversaries for the purpose of fomenting enemy-on-enemy deadly encounters.” The ‘enemies’ included jihadis, Ba’athists, as well as peaceful Sufis. “Evidence of factional fighting between the residents came to light with nightly gun battles not involving coalition forces. These firefights between insurgent factions represented the impact of U.S. psychological operations (PSYOP), which took advantage of and deepened the intra-insurgent forces. The PSYOP contingent cleverly crafted programs to exploit Zarqawi’s murderous activities and to broadcast them countrywide, thereby diminishing his folk-hero image among Iraqis. Although the jihadis and Baathists shared hostility to the U.S. military forces surrounding Fallujah, their mutual antipathy to each other presented an opportunity to turn them against each other.” Thomas H. Henriksen, “Dividing Our Enemies.” Joint Special Operations University (JSOU), November 2005. http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/report/2005/0511_jsou-report-05-5.pdf; Nafeez Ahmed, “How the west created the Islamic State.” Insurge Intelligence, 11 September 2014. https://medium.com/insurge-intelligence/how-the-west-created-the-islamic-state-dbfa6f83bc1f; US employs the “Salvadorian Option” for Iraq utilizing Shi’ite paramilitaries to lethally quell Sunni uprisings. Michael Hirsh and John Barry, “The Salvador Option.” Newsweek, 9 January 2005. https://web.archive.org/web/20050110030928/http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6802629/site/newsweek/; Mona Mahmood et al., “Revealed: Pentagon’s link to Iraqi torture centres.” The Guardian, 6 March 2013. http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/mar/06/pentagon-iraqi-torture-centres-link; Mona Mahmood, et al., “From El Salvador to Iraq: Washington’s man behind brutal police squads.” The Guardian, 6 March 2013. http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/mar/06/el-salvador-iraq-police-squads-washington; According to the UK based monitoring group Action on Armed Violence (AOAV) Iraq topped the worlds ‘most dangerous’ places list in June of 2015. “Iraq tops ‘most dangerous’ place in world list.” RT, 22 June 2015. http://www.rt.com/uk/268810-top-ten-dangerous-countries/.
Hein de Haas, “Trans-Saharan Migration to North Africa and the EU: Historical Roots and Current Trends.” Migration Policy Institute, 1 November 2006. http://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/trans-saharan-migration-north-africa-and-eu-historical-roots-and-current-trends; Dan Murphy, “How the fall of Qaddafi gave rise to Europe’s migrant crisis.” Christian Science Monitor, 21 April 2015. http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Security-Watch/Backchannels/2015/0421/How-the-fall-of-Qaddafi-gave-rise-to-Europe-s-migrant-crisis-video.
“How America Switched Sides in the War on Terror: An Interim Report by the Citizens’ Commission on Benghazi.” Citizens’ Commission on Benghazi, 22 April 2014. http://www.aim.org/benghazi/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/CCB-Interim-Report-4-22-2014.pdf; “Abdel-Hakim al-Hasidi, the Libyan rebel leader, has said jihadists who fought against allied troops in Iraq are on the front lines of the battle against Muammar Gaddafi’s regime.” Praveen Swami, et al., “Libyan rebel commander admits his fighters have al-Qaeda links.” The Telegraph, 25 March 2011. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/libya/8407047/Libyan-rebel-commander-admits-his-fighters-have-al-Qaeda-links.html.
“Al-Qa’ida’s Foreign Fighters in Iraq: A First Look at the Sinjar Records.” Combating Terrorism center at West Point, 2007. http://www.scribd.com/doc/111001074/West-Point-CTC-s-Al-Qa-ida-s-Foreign-Fighters-in-Iraq; Rob Crilly, “Libya: Benghazi about to fall… then came the planes.” The Telegraph, 20 March 2011. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/libya/8393843/Libya-Benghazi-about-to-fall…-then-came-the-planes.html; Sam Greenhill, “Flying proudly over the birthplace of Libya’s revolution, the flag of Al Qaeda.” The Daily Mail, 2 November 2011. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2055630/Flying-proudly-birthplace-Libyas-revolution-flag-Al-Qaeda.html.
Seymour Hersh, “The Red Line and the Rat Line.” London Review of Books, 17 April 2014. http://www.lrb.co.uk/v36/n08/seymour-m-hersh/the-red-line-and-the-rat-line; A declassified Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) document dated October of 2012 confirms the existence, as well as the Obama administration awareness of, the ‘rat line,’ “Weapons from the former Libya military stockpiles were shipped from the port of Benghazi, Libya to the Port of Banias and the Port of Borj Islam, Syria. The weapons shipped during late-August 2012 were Sniper rifles, RPG’s, and 125 mm and 155mm howitzers missiles. During the immediate aftermath of, and following the uncertainty caused by, the downfall of the ((Qaddafi)) regime in October 2011 and up until early September of 2012, weapons from the former Libya military stockpiles located in Benghazi, Libya were shipped from the port of Benghazi, Libya to the ports of Banias and the Port of Borj Islam, Syria. The Syrian ports were chosen due to the small amount of cargo traffic transiting these two ports. The ships used to transport the weapons were medium-sized and able to hold 10 or less shipping containers of cargo.” Judicial Watch, 18 May 2015. https://www.judicialwatch.org/document-archive/pgs-1-3-2-3-from-jw-v-dod-and-state-14-812/.
Craig Whitlock, “U.S. secretly backed Syrian opposition groups, cables released by WikiLeaks show.” Washington Post, 17 April 2011. https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/us-secretly-backed-syrian-opposition-groups-cables-released-by-wikileaks-show/2011/04/14/AF1p9hwD_story.html; “US trains activists to evade security forces.” AFP, 8 April 2011. http://www.activistpost.com/2011/04/us-trains-activists-to-evade-security.html; Ron Nixon, “U.S. Groups Helped Nurture Arab Uprisings.” The New York Times, 14 April 2011. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/15/world/15aid.html?pagewanted=1&_r=2&emc=eta1.
The Global Intelligence Files, “INSIGHT – military intervention in Syria, post withdrawal status of forces.” WikiLeaks, 6 March 2012. https://wikileaks.org/gifiles/docs/16/1671459_insight-military-intervention-in-syria-post-withdrawal.html.
Sibel Edmonds breaks the story on the existence of a secret US-NATO base in Turkey, and further explains its operations to organize and expand the dissident base, smuggle in weapons, conduct psychological operations and information warfare, and to funnel intelligence and military operators across the border. Sibel Edmonds, “BFP Exclusive: Syria- Secret US-NATO Training & Support Camp to Oust Current Syrian President.” BoilingFrogsPost, 21 November 2011. http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/2011/11/21/bfp-exclusive-syria-secret-us-nato-training-support-camp-to-oust-current-syrian-president/; James Corbett interviews former Syrian journalist Nizar Nayouf, previously imprisoned for 10 years for speaking out against the Syrian government, who accounts how hundreds of foreign soldiers were seen moving back and forth near the Jordanian-Syrian border. James Corbett, “BREAKING: US Troops Deploying on Jordan-Syria Border.” CorbettReport, 11 December 2011. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-v1h1bUfCVc.
Greg Miller et al., “Secret CIA effort in Syria faces large funding cut.” Washington Post, 12 June 2015. https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/lawmakers-move-to-curb-1-billion-cia-program-to-train-syrian-rebels/2015/06/12/b0f45a9e-1114-11e5-adec-e82f8395c032_story.html; David E. Sanger, “Rebel Arms Flow Is Said to Benefit Jihadists in Syria.” The New York Times, 14 October 2012. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/15/world/middleeast/jihadists-receiving-most-arms-sent-to-syrian-rebels.html?pagewanted=all&_r=1&.
Aaron Klein, “Blowback! U.S. Trained Islamists Who Joined ISIS.” WND, 17 August 2014. http://www.wnd.com/2014/06/officials-u-s-trained-isis-at-secret-base-in-jordan/.
“They trained us to ambush regime or enemy vehicles and cut off the road. They also trained us on how to attack a vehicle, raid it, retrieve information or weapons and munitions, and how to finish off soldiers still alive after an ambush.” “Syria: Arming the Rebels.” Frontline, 27 May 2014. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/syria-arming-the-rebels/; The Conventions offer protections to wounded combatants, and prisoners of war must be humanely treated at all times. “Reference Guide to the Geneva Conventions.” Society of Professional Journalists. http://www.spj.org/gc-index.asp#woundedcombatants.
Philip Giraldi, “NAO vs. Syria.” The American Conservative, 19 December 2011. http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/nato-vs-syria/.
Josh Rogin, “America’s Allies Are Funding ISIS.” The Daily Beast, 14 June 2014. http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/06/14/america-s-allies-are-funding-isis.html; “Biden: Turks, Saudis, UAE funded and armed Al Nusra and Al Qaeda.” Mideast Shuffle, 4 October 2014. http://mideastshuffle.com/2014/10/04/biden-turks-saudis-uae-funded-and-armed-al-nusra-and-al-qaeda/; “General Dempsey acknowledges U.S. Arab allies funding ISIS.” C-SPAN, 20 September 2014. http://www.c-span.org/video/?c4509231/general-dempsey-acknowledges-us-arab-allies-funding-isis; All of this was coordinated out of US-led operation rooms in Turkey and Jordan, Eric Schmitt, “C.I.A. Said to Aid in Steering Arms to Syrian Opposition.” The New York Times, 21 June 2012. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/21/world/middleeast/cia-said-to-aid-in-steering-arms-to-syrian-rebels.html?_r=0; Mark Hosenball, “Exclusive: Obama authorizes secret U.S. support for Syrian rebels.” Reuters, 1 August 2012. http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/08/01/us-usa-syria-obama-order-idUSBRE8701OK20120801; Adam Entous, et al., “A Veteran Saudi Power Player Works To Build Support to Topple Assad.” The Wall Street Journal, 25 August 2013. http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424127887323423804579024452583045962; FSA commander: “We are collaborating with the Islamic State and the Nusra Front”, Elise Knutsen, “Frustration drives Arsal’s FSA into ISIS ranks.” The Daily Star, September 8, 2014. http://cached.newslookup.com/cached.php?ref_id=394&siteid=2319&id=8144452&t=1410149280; US-backed SRF commander: “If the people who support us tell us to send weapons to another group, we send them. They [Jabhat al-Nusra] asked us a month ago to send weapons to Yabroud so we sent a lot of weapons there. When they asked us to do this, we do it.” Isabel Hunter, “’I am not fighting against al-Qa’ida… it’s not our problem’, says West’s last hope in Syria.” The Independent, April 2^nd, 2015. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/i-am-not-fighting-againstalqaida-itsnot-our-problem-says-wests-last-hope-in-syria-9233424.html; US-backed commander Okaidi: “My relationship with the brothers in ISIL is good… I communicate almost daily with brothers in ISIL… the relationship is good, even brotherly… They [al-Nusra] did not exhibit any abnormal behavior, which is different from that of the FSA.” Joshua Landis, “US Key Man in Syria Worked Closely with ISIL and Jabhat al-Nusra.” https://twitter.com/joshua_landis/status/504610185952784384; Then US Ambassador to Syria Robert Ford admits US-backed rebels collaborated with ISIS and al-Qaeda, Brad Hoff. Levant Report, May 25^th, 2015. https://levantreport.com/tag/robert-ford/.
Nafeez Ahmed, “Pentagon report predicted West’s support for Islamist rebels would create ISIS: Anti-ISIS coalition knowingly sponsored violent extremists to ‘isolate’ Assad, rollback ‘Shia expansion.’” Insurge Intelligence, 22 May 2015. https://medium.com/insurge-intelligence/secret-pentagon-report-reveals-west-saw-isis-as-strategic-asset-b99ad7a29092; Nafeez Ahmed, “Ex-intel officials: Pentagon report proves US complicity in ISIS.” Insurge Intelligence, 2 June 2015. https://medium.com/insurge-intelligence/ex-intel-officials-pentagon-report-proves-us-complicity-in-isis-fabef96e20da.
“…the Syrian military opposition is dominated by ISIS and by Jabhat al-Nusra, the official al-Qaeda representative, in addition to other extreme jihadi groups. In reality, there is no dividing wall between them and America’s supposedly moderate opposition allies.” Patrick Cockburn, The Rise of Islamic State: ISIS and the New Sunni Revolution (New York and London: Verso, 2015), pp. 3.
Desmond Butler, “Turkey Officials Confirm Pact With Saudi Arabia to Help Rebels Fighting Syria’s Assad.” Huffington Post, 7 May http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/05/07/turkey-saudi-arabia-syria-rebels-pact_n_7232750.html; Kim Sengupta, “Turkey and Saudi Arabia alarm the West by backing Islamist extremists the Americans had bombed in Syria.” The Independent, 12 May 2015. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/syria-crisis-turkey-and-saudi-arabia-shock-western-countries-by-supporting-antiassad-jihadists-10242747.html; “Sources within and close to Nusra said that Qatar, which enjoys good relations with the group…” Mariam Karouny, “Syria’s Nusra Front may leave Qaeda to form new entity.” Reuters, 4 March 2015. http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/03/04/us-mideast-crisis-nusra-insight-idUSKBN0M00GE20150304; Former Turkish Intelligence Agency (MIT) officer blows the whistle on MIT organizing and coordinating “all incursions of jihadi murderers from Turkey to Syrian territory.” Heba, “Part 2: Stunning revelations from former Turkish Intelligence Agency officer.” The Arab Source, 1 March 2015. http://www.almasdarnews.com/article/part-2-stunning-revelations-former-turkish-intelligence-agency-officer/; Humeyra Pamuk et al., “Exclusive – Turkish intelligence helped ship arms to Syrian Islamist rebel areas.” Reuters, 21 May 2015. http://uk.reuters.com/article/2015/05/21/uk-mideast-crisis-turkey-arms-exclusive-idUKKBN0O61L020150521; Despite some signs of retrenchment in their ISIS-supporting policy, like crackdowns on Saudi fighters heading for Syria and the removal of Prince Bandar bin Sultan, Saudi Arabia shows no convincing evidence apart from verbal denials that it isn’t continuing to facilitate ISIS funding. The official narrative is that it is private Saudi donors that fund ISIS while the state is unable to stop them. This strains belief as the state is ruled by an iron fist. If any change has occurred it is likely to be that the Saudi state has taken steps to distance its involvement while it continues to use wealthy donors, who presumably provided the funds that were then transferred by the state all along, as its proxies; The CIA rebel train-and-equip program, separate from the Pentagons program, has aupported “nearly 10,000 fighters” over the past several years, Greg Miller et al., “Secret CIA effort in Syria faces large funding cut.” Washington Post, 12 June 2015. https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/lawmakers-move-to-curb-1-billion-cia-program-to-train-syrian-rebels/2015/06/12/b0f45a9e-1114-11e5-adec-e82f8395c032_story.html; According to US intelligence, this CIA program has from the beginning largely gone to aid “hard-line Islamists”, David E. Sanger, “Rebel Arms Flow Is Said to Benefit Jihadists in Syria.” The New York Times, 14 October 2012. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/15/world/middleeast/jihadists-receiving-most-arms-sent-to-syrian-rebels.html?pagewanted=all&_r=1&; Rebel commanders confirm that US-led operation rooms “specifically encouraged a closer cooperation with Islamists commanding frontline operations.” The US-led operations rooms were “instrumental in facilitating their [Islamists] involvement in the [Idlib] operation from early April onwards.” Charles Lister, “Why Assad Is Losing.” 5 May 2015. http://foreignpolicy.com/2015/05/05/why-assad-is-losing-syria-islamists-saudi/.
Nafeez Ahmed, “Why the war on ISIS will fail.” Middle East Eye, 16 December 2014. http://www.middleeasteye.net/columns/why-war-isis-will-fail-1513487412; Kadri Gursel, “Turkish daily exposes transfer of weapons to IS.” Al-Monitor, 1 September 2015. http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2015/09/turkey-syria-daily-exposes-transfer-weapons-supplies-to-isis.html#; Jim Michaels, “Islamic State recruiting offsets 15,000 killed by airstrikes in past year.” USA Today, 29 July 2015. http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2015/07/29/air-campaign-kills-15000-isis-militants-pentagon-iraq-syria/30750327/; “The ‘Islamic State’ is stronger than it was when it was first proclaimed on 29 June last year…” Patrick Cockburn, “Isis, a year of the caliphate: Have US tactics only helped to make Islamists more powerful?” The Independent, 26 June 2015. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/isis-a-year-of-the-caliphate-have-us-tactics-played-into-islamist-hands-10345905.html; Alice Ross, “Hundreds of civilians killed in US-led air strikes on Isis targets – report.” The Guardian, 3 August 2015. http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/aug/03/us-led-air-strikes-on-isis-targets-killed-more-than-450-civilians-report.
“Thus the monist model is one of integrated nationalism, in which the state is a nationalising one, drawing on the tradition of Ukrainism to fill the existing borders with a content sharply distinguished from Russia. It would be officially monolingual, unitary and culturally specific.” “The core of the problem is an ideological one. At the heart of the monist model… the aim is not to reflect existing realities, above all the different histories of the territories making up contemporary Ukraine, but to restore some idealised vision of that statehood.” “This brings us to the second paradigm of Ukrainian state development, which I call the pluralist to denote its appeal to broad principles of national inclusiveness. At root, this model proposes that the post-Communist Ukrainian state is home to many disparate peoples, reflecting its long history of fragmented statehood and the way that its contemporary borders include territories with very different histories, but that they all share an orientation to a civic Ukrainian identity.” “The pluralist model argues that all the peoples making up contemporary Ukraine have an equal stake in the development of the country, and thus opposes the nationalising strain…” “The monist view is obviously stronger in the western part of the country, while the pluralist approach is stronger in the east and the south.” Richard Sakwa, Frontline Ukraine: Crisis in the Borderlands (London: I.B. Tauris, 2015), pp. 15, 21, 23, 24.
The EU gives Yanukovych an ultimatum to either sign with them or sign with Russia, but rejects a joint deal amidst calls from Yanukovych and Russia for tripartite discussions to resolve the differences. “Ukraine ‘still wants to sign EU deal.’” Al Jazeera, 29 November 2013. http://www.aljazeera.com/news/europe/2013/11/ukraine-still-wants-sign-eu-deal-20131129111345619208.html; “The idea that Russia opposed Ukraine’s association with the EU needs to be modified by an understanding that the struggle prior to the planned signing of the Association Agreement sought to align Ukraine with the EEU [the Russian-led Eurasian Economic Union], but not necessarily to force Ukraine to join it. In part, the campaign was an attempt to get the EU to engage in a genuine dialogue about the conditions on which Ukraine would sign up to association with the EU, including security issues. This campaign was conducted in a typically heavy-handed and alienating manner, with bans, boycotts and the like accompanied by some ferocious rhetoric from Sergei Glazyev and others, but some genuine issues were raised. Above all, Russia repeatedly warned that it would take measures to stop poor-quality Ukrainian and relabeled EU goods flooding into the Russian market once better-quality EU goods had free access to Ukraine. The compatibility of two free-trade areas is a matter that should, and could, have been sorted out calmly by technocrats on both sides but instead became politicized.” Richard Sakwa, Frontline Ukraine: Crisis in the Borderlands (London: I.B. Tauris, 2015), pp. 206; For more on this, see my “The Mistaken Analysis on Ukraine.” Reports from Underground, 6 September 2014. http://undergroundreports.blogspot.fr/2014/09/follies-of-western-hubris-mistaken.html.
Assistant Secretary of State for Europe and Eurasian Affairs Victoria Nuland confirms that the US has invested $5 billion in Ukraine since 1991 to “support the Ukrainians.” “Regime Change in Kiev.” Information Clearing House, 9 February 2014. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article37599.htm; However, in terms of these ‘democracy promotion’ programs, International Relations scholar John J. Mearsheimer notes that “and when you talk about promoting democracy, what you’re really talking about is putting in power leaders who are pro-Western and anti-Russian… promoting democracy, which was all about putting in power pro-Western leaders.” Mearsheimer quoted in Labor Beat YouTube recording, 26 January 2015. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fhILmIvBe6o&feature=youtu.be; “it is clear that Washington backed the coup. Nuland and Republican Senator John McCain participated in antigovernment demonstrations, and Geoffrey Pyatt, the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, proclaimed after Yanukovych’s toppling that it was “a day for the history books.” As a leaked telephone recording revealed, Nuland had advocated regime change and wanted the Ukrainian politician Arseniy Yatsenyuk to become prime minister in the new government, which he did.” John J. Mearsheimer, “Why the Ukraine Crisis Is the West’s Fault.” Foreign Affairs, September/October 2014. https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/russia-fsu/2014-08-18/why-ukraine-crisis-west-s-fault; The militancy of the EuroMaidan was led by ultranationalist groups Svoboda and Right Sector. The violence was protected by Obama in his repeated public references to the protests as being wholly “nonviolent”, giving them the green light to continue the violence without fears of reprisals from the West; In 2012 the EU condemned the Svoboda party, whose members gained top ministerial positions and seats on the parliament following the February coup. “European Parliament resolution of 13 December 2012 on the situation in Ukraine,” Section 8. http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?pubRef=-//EP//TEXT+TA+P7-TA-2012-0507+0+DOC+XML+V0//EN.
Richard Sakwa, Frontline Ukraine: Crisis in the Borderlands (London: I.B. Tauris, 2015), pp. 93, 94, 95.
Richard Sakwa, Chapter 6 “When History Comes Calling”, “Purging the State”, Frontline Ukraine: Crisis in the Borderlands (London: I.B. Tauris, 2015), pp. 135-140; “Only two ministers from the entire south and east, covering half the country, joined the 21-person cabinet [of the government following the February coup]… No posts were given to PoR [Party of Regions, the party the south and east most predominantly supported]…” Richard Sakwa, Frontline Ukraine: Crisis in the Borderlands (London: I.B. Tauris, 2015), pp. 95; “…but in fact the objective has been to put down and humiliate Ukraine’s Russian-speaking population. The radical nationalists of western Ukraine, for whom the rejection of Russia and its culture is an article of faith, intend to force the rest of the country to fit their narrow vision.” Vladimir Golstein, “Why everything you’ve read about Ukraine is wrong.” Forbes, 19 May 2014. http://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesleadershipforum/2014/05/19/why-everything-youve-read-about-ukraine-is-wrong/.
“The storming of government offices in the west of the country in the final months of Yanukovych’s rule was considered something entirely different – part of the revolutionary surge in support of monist nationalism – whereas now the ‘anti-Maidan’ insurgency using the same tactics in support of pluralism was called a terrorist movement.” “The fundamental inability of Kiev and its Western allies to understand that this was not simply an ‘invasion’ but a genuine revolt against a particular type of statehood that had long been unpopular in the south-east, and that the Ukrainian revolution only intensified, meant that they could not recognize the political subjectivity of the rebellion as a force with which there should be dialogue. Instead, labelling the insurgents ‘terrorists’ meant not only that their political identity was negated but also that their very humanity was dismissed, allowing untold cruelties to be inflicted upon the region.” Richard Sakwa, Frontline Ukraine: Crisis in the Borderlands (London: I.B. Tauris, 2015), pp. 151, 181.
Just hours after CIA Director John Brennan ‘secretly’ travelled to Ukraine and held consultation with the new Kiev authorities, Kiev announced the first launch of its military crackdown of the protests in the east. Daria Chernyshova, RIA Novosti, 18 April 2014. http://www.globalresearch.ca/hidden-agenda-of-cia-director-brennans-trip-to-kiev-initiate-the-use-of-force-in-eastern-ukraine/5378263.
“Dozens of Ukrainian troops surrender APCs in Slavyansk, refuse to ‘shoot at own people.’” RT, 16 April 2014. http://www.rt.com/news/ukraine-troops-withdraw-slavyansk-940/.
Again only hours after a high-level US official travels to consult with the Kiev authorities, this time by Vice President Joe Biden, Kiev re-launches its ‘Anti-Terror Operation’ against rebels in the east. “Ukraine relaunches anti-rebel operation after Biden departure.” Agence France-Presse, 23 April 2014. http://www.scmp.com/news/world/article/1494970/ukraine-relaunches-anti-rebel-operation-after-biden-departure.
Vladimir Ruban, retired Colonel-General of the officer corps of Ukraine, admits in an interview on Hromadske TV that the Ukrainian military has been shelling civilians: “I want to offer the Ukrainian artillerists medals, to those who shell the city [Donetsk], the houses and the civilian population… For they have deserved it. Both because of the accuracy and inaccuracy… The shelling there is done as intimidation. It has a different purpose: not just object destruction, but intimidation. The civilian population is intimidated by a chaotic bombardment of different objects. There are many shells that plug directly into the streets or vegetable gardens.” YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l17KfjtaqpA; Also, journalists from the Russian RenTV news agency have allegedly recovered documents left after battle by Ukrainian soldiers which show residential areas and civilian buildings being specifically targeted. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?x-yt-cl=85114404&x-yt-ts=1422579428&v=MCcl60gND7g#t=25; “Ukrainian soldiers confess to murder of mother and daughter: prosecutor.” Reuters, 17 June 2015. https://news.yahoo.com/ukrainian-soldiers-confess-murder-mother-daughter-prosecutor-152927752.html; “Ukraine: Unguided Rockets Killing Civilians.” Human Rights Watch, 24 July 2014. https://www.hrw.org/news/2014/07/24/ukraine-unguided-rockets-killing-civilians.

Former DIA Chief Michael Flynn Says Rise of Islamic State was “a willful decision” and Defends Accuracy of 2012 Memo

Lengthy discussion of the DIA memo begins at the 8:50 mark.

In Al Jazeera’s latest Head to Head episode, former director of the Defense Intelligence Agency Michael Flynn confirms to Mehdi Hasan that not only had he studied the DIA memo predicting the West’s backing of an Islamic State in Syria when it came across his desk in 2012, but even asserts that the White House’s sponsoring of radical jihadists (that would emerge as ISIL and Nusra) against the Syrian regime was “a willful decision.”

Amazingly, Flynn actually took issue with the way interviewer Mehdi Hasan posed the question—Flynn seemed to want to make it clear that the policies that led to the rise of ISIL were not merely the result of ignorance or looking the other way, but the result of conscious decision making:

Hasan: You are basically saying that even in government at the time you knew these groups were around, you saw this analysis, and you were arguing against it, but who wasn’t listening?
Flynn: I think the administration.
Hasan: So the administration turned a blind eye to your analysis?
Flynn: I don’t know that they turned a blind eye, I think it was a decision. I think it was a willful decision.
Hasan: A willful decision to support an insurgency that had Salafists, Al Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood?
Flynn: It was a willful decision to do what they’re doing.

Hasan himself expresses surprise at Flynn’s frankness during this portion of the interview. While holding up a paper copy of the 2012 DIA report declassified through FOIA, Hasan reads aloud key passages such as, “there is the possibility of establishing a declared or undeclared Salafist principality in Eastern Syria, and this is exactly what the supporting powers to the opposition want, in order to isolate the Syrian regime.”

Rather than downplay the importance of the document and these startling passages, as did the State Department soon after its release, Flynn does the opposite: he confirms that while acting DIA chief he “paid very close attention” to this report in particular and later adds that “the intelligence was very clear.”

Lt. Gen. Flynn, speaking safely from retirement, is the highest ranking intelligence official to go on record saying the United States and other state sponsors of rebels in Syria knowingly gave political backing and shipped weapons to Al-Qaeda in order to put pressure on the Syrian regime:

Hasan: In 2012 the U.S. was helping coordinate arms transfers to those same groups [Salafists, Muslim Brotherhood, Al Qaeda in Iraq], why did you not stop that if you’re worried about the rise of quote-unquote Islamic extremists?

Flynn: I hate to say it’s not my job…but that…my job was to…was to to ensure that the accuracy of our intelligence that was being presented was as good as it could be.

The early reporting that treated the DIA memo as newsworthy and hugely revelatory was criticized and even mocked by some experts, as well as outlets like The Daily Beast. Yet the very DIA director at the time the memo was drafted and circulated widely now unambiguously confirms the document to be of high value, and indicates that it served as source material in his own discussions over Syria policy with the White House.

As Michael Flynn also previously served as director of intelligence for Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) during a time when its prime global mission was dismantling Al-Qaeda, his honest admission that the White House was in fact arming and bolstering Al-Qaeda linked groups in Syria is especially shocking given his stature.

Consider further the dissonance that comes with viewing the Pentagon’s former highest ranking intelligence officer in charge of the hunt for Osama bin Laden now calmly and coolly confessing that the United States directly aided the foot soldiers of Ayman al-Zawahiri beginning in at least 2012 in Syria.

This confirmation is significant to my own coverage of the DIA report, as I was contacted by a number of individuals who attempted to assure me that the true experts and “insiders” knew the document was unimportant and therefore irrelevant within the intelligence community and broader Syria policy.

This began after a Daily Beast article entitled The ISIS Conspiracy That Ate the Web cited former NSA officer John Schindler as an expert source. Schindler concluded of the DIA document: “it’s difficult to say much meaningful about it… Nothing special here, not one bit.”

To my surprise, only hours after I published a rebuttal of Schindler and the Daily Beast article, I was contacted by a current high level CIA official who is also a personal friend from my time living in the D.C. area.

This official, who spent most of his career with CIA Public Affairs, made a personal appeal urging me to drop my comments attacking John Schindler’s credibility, as I had noted that Schindler is a highly ideological and scandal-laden commentator who consistently claims special insider knowledge in support of his arguments. This CIA official further attempted to convince me of Schindler’s credibility as an insider and expert, assuring me that “he has written insightfully.”

Mehdi Hasan’s historic interview with General Flynn should put the issue to rest—the declassified DIA report is now confirmed to be a central and vital source that sheds light on the origins of ISIS, and must inform a candid national debate on American policy in Syria and Iraq.

As it is now already becoming part of the official record on conflict in Syria among respected international historians, knowledge of the declassified document must make it into every American household.

Guest Analysis by Steven Chovanec: Why We Must Not Arm Even One More Syrian Rebel

by Steven Chovanec

THE FACT THAT THE US can find only 60 Syrian rebels to train is quite telling.

It means that out of nearly 18 million Syrians (reduced by 4 million since the start of the conflict) the US could only find 60 that were willing to fight against the Syrian Army, only 60.(1)

In other words, only an increase of ~0.000333% of the Syrian population is deemed “moderate” by the US and willing to fight. The military is currently in the process of vetting 7,000 volunteers, so if we assume that all of them will pass inspection, that will amount to a mere ~0.039222% of the population. A far cry from 0.1%, let alone 1% of the total inhabitants.

The fact that only 60 can be deemed “moderate” is also quite telling. This coming from a government who deemed the Free Syrian Army, among others, as “moderates.”

Anti-tank missiles for "moderate" rebels—now in ISIS and AQ hands. — Anti-tank missiles for “moderate” rebels—now in ISIS and AQ hands.

In September of 2014, FSA “moderate” commander and recipient of US aid Bassel Idriss admitted that “We are collaborating with the Islamic State and the Nusra Front,” the reason for this being “We have reached a point where we have to collaborate with anyone against unfairness and injustice.”(2)

Back in April of the same year, the leader of the US-backed “moderate” Syrian Revolutionary Front Jamal Maarouf admitted that al-Qaeda was “not our problem” and that his fighters conducted joint operations with al-Nusra. “If the people who support us tell us to send weapons to another group, we send them. They [Jabhat al-Nusra] asked us a month ago to send weapons to Yabroud so we sent a lot of weapons there. When they asked us to do this, we do it.”(3)

One of the most senior “moderate” rebel commanders to be backed by the US and main recipient of Western aid, Col. Okaidi, is seen in a video, which has been authenticated by Joshua Landis of the University of Oklahoma, speaking during interviews saying “My relationship with the brothers in ISIL is good… I communicate almost daily with brothers in ISIL… the relationship is good, even brotherly.”

Okaidi admits al-Qaeda is not any different from the FSA “They [al-Nusra] did not exhibit any abnormal behavior, which is different from that of the FSA.” The video shows Okaidi with ISIS Emir Abu Jandal (right frame below: standing right of Okaidi) celebrating a victory, an ally ISIS fighter shouts “I swear to Allah, O Alawites, we came to slaughter you. Await what you deserve!”(4)

US Ambassador to Syria Robert Ford (left frame above, standing by FSA Col. Okaidi), who worked closely with Okaidi, himself admitted to giving material support to ISIS and al-Nusra, stating that he “absolutely does not deny” knowing that most of the rebels he backed fought alongside ISIS and Nusra.(5)

The reason for all of this is simply that, as pointed out by the leading Western journalist in the region, Patrick Cockburn, “In reality, there is no dividing wall between them [ISIS and Nusra] and America’s supposedly moderate opposition allies.” According to Vice President Biden, “there was no moderate middle because the moderate middle are made up of shopkeepers, not soldiers.”(6)

This means that apart from a plethora of substantially foreign terrorist jihadi lunatics, there is no other force willing to fight against the government.

2014 photo posted on ISIS media account: experts say the weapon is a Croatian RBG-6 grenade launcher, a weapon supplied to the Syrian rebels through the Saudi and CIA effort to transfer Balkan weapons to Syrian jihadists.

The reasons for this were further articulated by Obama himself, who stated that it was a “fantasy” to think that the US could arm and equip “farmers, dentists, and folks who never fought before” and have them be an effective force against Assad.(7) What is implied here is that ordinary Syrians, actually moderate individuals, have no desire for military action nor are they capable of effectively harnessing it, hence the need to support the extremists, who are. And therefore, as Biden points out, the Wests’ allies “poured hundreds of millions of dollars and tens of thousands of tons of weapons to… al-Nusra and al-Qaeda and the extremist elements of jihadis coming from other parts of the world.” What Biden leaves out is that this was all coordinated under a covert US-led operation.

In reality, these moderates were the peaceful opposition that did not want the destruction of the state but instead desired democratic change, who were then displaced by foreign-backers and terrorist who hijacked their uprising, as is conceded by prominent opposition leaders.(8)

This hijacking was the result of US leaders realizing that the actual moderates only wanted peaceful change, while the West desired the overthrow of the state through any means necessary, including violent takeover, and so therefore “Jihadi groups ideologically close to al-Qaeda have been relabeled as moderate if their actions are deemed supportive of US policy aims,” as Patrick Cockburn rightly points out. The result of this is that “Washington thus allowed advanced weaponry to be handed to its deadliest enemy.”(9)

The recent training of 60 “moderates” is nothing different.

To illustrate this, it’s important to see that this narrative of a moderate opposition stays constant, while the group this label is applied to constantly changes.

Right now this label is being applied to the Southern Front, hailed as the new moderate force America can morally support. However, this group is financed and supported by the Military Operations Centre (MOC) in Amman that is staffed by agents from the US, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, UAE, as well as other anti-Assad governments, and according to Syrian expert Aron Lund, “adoption of MOC-provided talking points” of moderation by members of this alliance are likely “to be more opportunistic than heartfelt.”(10)

The reason the US is now training 60 rebels is because every single other rebel group that the US trained, equipped, funded, and marked as “moderate” has gone on to join either al-Qaeda or ISIS. FSA brigades, the Syrian Revolutionary Front, Harakat Hazm, all of them have now defected to al-Qaeda and ISIS.(11)

Image: Moderate Rebels Mock a Christian Soldier—This photo was originally posted online by a Swedish based terror group in Syria after the Summer 2013 rebel offensive against a govt. airbase near Aleppo. A rebel fighter mocks a captured Christian government soldier’s cross. Another photo posted in the original set reveals that the soldier was later tortured by being crushed with a large rock on his chest as he lay on his back.

At every point along the way while receiving US-aid they were branded as “moderates.” After they went on to join ISIS or it became too hard to keep up their “moderate” image, the torch was passed on to a new group, as now it is passed onto the Southern Front, yet “in reality” there was never any “moderate middle” nor is there “a dividing wall between [the extremists] and America’s supposedly moderate opposition allies.”

Therefore we should not be fooled when new rebels “ideologically close to al-Qaeda” are “relabeled as moderate” all because “their actions are deemed supportive of US policy aims”, whether they be the Southern Front, the new 60-trainees, or the next group that is sure to emerge in the future, especially given that from the beginning, according to US intelligence, the opposition has taken “a clear sectarian direction”, and according to leading Western journalists has been dominated from the start by “ISIS and Jabhat al-Nusra… in addition to other extreme jihadi groups.”(12)

There is nothing moderate about voluntarily taking up arms and agreeing to be a proxy force for foreign powers. Furthermore, there is nothing moderate about attacking and overtaking towns and villages, which is the expressed aim of this new US-backed force, when the majority of the population isn’t calling for it and doesn’t desire it. As Zbigniew Brzezinski has stated, Assad has more support than any group opposing him, and surely he has more support than a US-backed militia, as polls consistently show world opinion sees the US as the major threat to peace, and since most Syrians are aware of the dirty war being perpetrated on them by the West.(13)

UK-based Conflict Armament Research investigators found this expended ammunition at ISIS firing positions in northern Iraq. The bullets were manufactured at the Lake City Army Ammunition Plant in Independence, Missouri. (Source: Conflict Armament Research)

The presence of ISIS is not an argument for the training of more rebels, it is instead an argument against this, as quite possibly the single biggest factor in the creation and rise of ISIS was the US sponsoring of the insurgency in Syria which they knew to be sectarian and extremist, coupled with the training of rebels who were either themselves extremist terrorist or affiliated with such parties, flooding them with arms and funds to the tune of $1 billion per year and $2.91 billion since 2014.(14)

It must be remembered what former Scotland Yard detective and UK counterterrorism intelligence officer Charles Shoebridge rightly pointed out, that “the ‘moderate’ rebels the US and UK support themselves openly welcomed the arrival of such extremists. Indeed, the Free Syria Army backed by the West was allied with ISIS, until ISIS attacked them at the end of 2013.”(15)

This May 2014 report by Jenan Moussa of Al-Aan News featured U.S.-backed and armed Syrian Revolutionaries Front (SRF) commander Jamal Maroof. McClatchy News later reported Maroof's SRF to be a recipient of TOW anti-tank missiles. Watch full news clip w/translation here. — This May 2014 report by Jenan Moussa of Al-Aan News featured U.S.-backed and armed Syrian Revolutionaries Front (SRF) commander Jamal Maarouf. McClatchy News reported Maroof’s SRF to be a recipient of TOW anti-tank missiles. Watch full news clip w/translations here.

For the first 3 years of the crisis the rebels the West openly backed were allies of ISIS, committing the exact same kind of atrocities and terroristic acts. And according to Patrick Cockburn, the US-backed FSA were at times despised even more than the other terrorist organizations as they would terrorize and ransack the civilian populations, “Pilloried in the West for their sectarian ferocity, these jihadists were often welcomed by local people for restoring law and order after the looting and banditry of the Western-backed Free Syrian Army.”(16)

If you train rebels one time and they commit these atrocities and fight alongside fanatical terrorists you can at least plead ignorance and good intentions, however if you continue these actions when this has been the outcome every single time, let alone doing it over, and over, and over, and over again, then that is premeditated complicity in the sponsoring of terrorism, an act by the West that Syria’s Christian leaders are also demanding an end to.(17)

This recent attempt to train “moderate” rebels is no different. There is nothing moderate about the entire process, and these fighters will go on to commit the exact same kinds of atrocities and ally with the exact same terrorist entities that all of our other rebels have done in the past.

Furthermore, just the mere action of pumping in more bullets, guns, weaponry, and fighters will inevitably lead to further bloodshed and civilian casualties caught within the crossfire, exacerbating the situation and increasing pain and suffering. As Charles Shoebridge notes, the notion that “pouring sophisticated weaponry into a war zone already awash with weapons” will somehow “save civilian lives” is a deeply “flawed assumption.” “Syria’s rebels must be assessed as they are, not as they once were, or as we’d romantically like them to be,” and therefore on that basis, noting the extensively documented history of rebel atrocities, “we should not be backing them.”(18)

In his book “The Rise of Islamic State” Patrick Cockburn writes, “An intelligence officer from a Middle Eastern country neighboring Syria told me that ISIS members “say they are always pleased when sophisticated weapons are sent to anti-Assad groups of any kind, because they can always get the arms off them by threats of force or cash payments.”” (19) (emphasis mine)

I think it’s about time we stop fueling the spilling of blood and the arming of terrorists inside Syria. If we actually wanted to stop ISIS, that’s the first place we would start.

Notes:

1.) Rizzo, Jennifer, “Carter: U.S. trains only 60 Syrian rebels.” CNN, July 7^th, 2015. http://www.cnn.com/2015/07/07/politics/united-states-training-syrian-rebels-ashton-carter/; CIA World Factbook, Syria. https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/sy.html; Syria Regional Refugee Response, United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. Last Updated 09 Jul 2015, accessed July 15^th, 2015. http://data.unhcr.org/syrianrefugees/regional.php.

2.) Knutsen, Elise. “Frustration drives Arsal’s FSA into ISIS ranks.” The Daily Star, September 8, 2014. http://cached.newslookup.com/cached.php?ref_id=394&siteid=2319&id=8144452&t=1410149280.

3.) Hunter, Isabel. “’I am not fighting against al-Qa’ida… it’s not our problem’, says West’s last hope in Syria.” The Independent, April 2^nd, 2015.http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/i-am-not-fighting-againstalqaida-itsnot-our-problem-says-wests-last-hope-in-syria-9233424.html.

4.) Joshua Landis, “US Key Man in Syria Worked Closely with ISIL and Jabhat al-Nusra.” https://twitter.com/joshua_landis/status/504610185952784384.

5.) “In February 2015, he [Robert Ford] openly confessed to having given support to ISIS and Al-Nusra terrorists after being questioned by Al-Monitor News journalist Edward Dark. THE TWITTER HANDLE, @fordrs58 is indeed Ambassador Robert Ford’s account, as was confirmed to me in a personal email by Dr. Joshua Landis, Director of Middle East Studies at the University of Oklahoma and the most well-known Syria scholar in the United States.” Hoff, Brad. Levant Report, May 25^th, 2015. https://levantreport.com/tag/robert-ford/.

6.) Cockburn, Patrick, “Preface” & “The Rise of ISIS”, The Rise of Islamic State: ISIS and the New Sunni Revolution (Brooklyn, NY, 2015). Pg. xx, 3. Print.

7.) “Obama: Notion that Syrian opposition could have overthrown Assad with U.S. arms a “fantasy.” CBS News, June 20^th, 2014.http://www.cbsnews.com/news/obama-notion-that-syrian-opposition-could-overthrow-assad-a-fantasy/.

8.) In the beginning of the uprisings, Syrians did not desire the destruction of the pluralistic and socially inclusive albeit authoritarian state given the popular support for the president and the country’s religious diversity and tolerance. They supported the country’s protection of minorities, as well as the status of women and free education and health care yet opposed corruption, the security-intelligence apparatus, and the feared political police. Wikstrom, Cajsa. “Syria: ‘A kingdom of silence’”. Al Jazeera, February 9^th, 2011. http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2011/02/201129103121562395.html; Muhanna, Elias. “No Revolution in Syria: An Interview with Camille Otrakji.” http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2011/otrakji030511.html; Otrakji, Camille. “The Real Bashar Al-Assad.”Conflict Forum, February 4^th, 2012. http://www.conflictsforum.org/2012/the-real-bashar-al-assad/; For further on this, see Tim Anderson, “Washington’s ‘New Middle East’ Stalls, the Resistance Rises.” Global Research, July 12^th, 2015. http://www.globalresearch.ca/washingtons-new-middle-east-stalls-the-resistance-rises/5462101; The fact that the peaceful protests were hijacked and displaced by foreign-backed extremists is also explored in Andersons piece, as well as being conceded by leading opposition figures like Dr. Haytham Manna, who states that “the pumping of arms to Syria, supported by Saudi Arabia and Qatar, the phenomenon of the Free Syrian Army, and the entry of more than 200 jihadi foreigners into Syria in the past six months have all led to a decline in the mobilisation of large segments of the population… and in the activists’ peaceful civil movement. The political discourse has become sectarian; there has been a Salafisation of religiously conservative sectors”, Haytham Manna, The Guardian, “Syria’s opposition has been led astray by violence.” June 22, 2012.http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/jun/22/syria-opposition-led-astray-by-violence; This point is as well articulated by leading Western journalists. According to Patrick Cockburn “Come the uprisings of 2011, it was the jihadi and Sunni-sectarian, militarized wing of rebel movements that received massive injections of money from the kings and emirs of the Gulf. The secular, non-sectarian opponents of the long-established police states were soon marginalized, reduced to silence, or killed.” As well, “Saudi involvement, along with that of Qatar and Turkey, de-emphasized secular democratic change as the ideology of the uprising, which then turned into a Sunni bid for power using Salafi jihadist brigades as the cutting edge of the revolt.” Cockburn, Patrick. “The Rise of ISIS” & “Saudi Arabia Tries to Pull Back.” The Rise of Islamic State: ISIS and the New Sunni Revolution (Brooklyn, NY, 2015), pg. 8, 103-4. Print; What Cockburn leaves out in these passages is that this was all coordinated under a covert US/CIA operation out of US-led operation rooms in Turkey and Jordan, where the US was giving intelligence to Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Qatar on which rebels to support, which ended up going “largely to hard-line Islamists.” Schmitt, Eric. New York Times, “C.I.A. Said to Aid in Steering Arms to Syrian Opposition.” June 21, 2015.http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/21/world/middleeast/cia-said-to-aid-in-steering-arms-to-syrian-rebels.html?_r=0; Sanger, David E. New York Times, “Rebel Arms Flow Is Said to Benefit Jihadists in Syria.” October 14, 2012. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/15/world/middleeast/jihadists-receiving-most-arms-sent-to-syrian-rebels.html?pagewanted=all&_r=2&.

9.) Cockburn, Patrick. “Jihadis on the March.” The Rise of Islamic State: ISIS and the New Sunni Revolution (Brooklyn, NY, 2015), pg. 52-3. Print.

10.) A prominent example of the Southern Front dubiously being labelled as moderate comes from a recent piece by the director of the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut. Khatib, Lina. “Syria’s Last Best Hope: The Southern Front.” The National Interest, July 6^th, 2015; Cockburn, Patrick. “Isis in Syria: We can’t win a war without taking sides.” The Independent, July 4^th, 2015. http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/isis-in-syria-we-cant-win-a-war-without-taking-sides-10366142.html.

11.) Zaman Alwasl, “FSA brigades pledge allegiance to ISIS in Al Bukamal, east Syria.” July 7^th, 2014. https://en.zamanalwsl.net/readNews.php?id=5696; In September 2014 Abu Fidaa, a retired Colonel in the Syrian army who headed the Revolutionary Council in Qalamoun stated that “A very large number of FSA members [in Arsal] have joined ISIS and Nusra,” while FSA Commander Bassel Idriss said that “After the fall of Yabroud and the FSA’s retreat into the hills [around Arsal], many units pledged allegiance.” Knutsen, Elise. “Frustration drives Arsal’s FSA into ISIS ranks.” The Daily Star, September 8, 2014.http://cached.newslookup.com/cached.php?ref_id=394&siteid=2319&id=8144452&t=1410149280; Fadel, Leith. “3,000 FSA Fighters Defect to ISIS in the Qalamoun Mountains.” The Arab Source, January 9^th, 2015. http://www.almasdarnews.com/article/3000-fsa-fighters-defect-isis-qalamoun-mountains/; “Moderate rebels who had been armed and trained by the United States either surrendered or defected to the extremists as the Jabhat al-Nusra group, affiliated with al-Qaeda… Among the groups whose bases were overrun in the assault was Harakat Hazm, the biggest recipient of U.S. assistance offered under a small-scale, covert CIA program launched this year, including the first deliveries of U.S.-made TOW antitank missiles… rebel fighters there surrendered their weapons and fled without a fight.” Sly, Liz. “U.S.-backed Syria rebels routed by fighters linked to al-Qaeda.” The Washington Post, November 2^nd, 2014.https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/us-backed-syria-rebels-routed-by-fighters-linked-to-al-qaeda/2014/11/02/7a8b1351-8fb7-4f7e-a477-66ec0a0aaf34_story.html; “The Syrian rebel group Harakat al-Hazm, one of the White House’s most trusted militias fighting President Bashar al-Assad, collapsed Sunday, with activists posting a statement online from frontline commanders saying they are disbanding their units and folding them into brigades aligned with a larger Islamist insurgent alliance.” Dettmer, Jamie. “Main U.S.-Backed Syrian Rebel Group Disbanding, Joining Islamists.” The Daily Beast, March 1^st, 2015. http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/03/01/main-u-s-backed-syrian-rebel-group-disbanding-joining-islamists.html; “Islamic fighters with Jabhat al-Nusra… routed US-backed groups the Syrian Revolutionary Front (SFR) and Harakat Hazm… [Washington] has thus been supplying them with heavy weapons, including TOW anti-tank missiles… ‘Some of the rebels swore allegiance to al-Nusra, others fled.’” Bacchi, Umberto. “Syria: Al-Nusra Jihadists ‘Capture US TOW Anti-Tank Missiles’ from Moderate Rebels.” International Business Times, November 3^rd, 2014. http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/syria-al-nusra-jihadists-capture-us-weaponry-moderate-rebels-1472864; “Fighters under the Obama-backed SRF commander Jamal Maarouf… have apparently been joining al-Qaeda in droves. “Dozens of his fighters defected and joined Nusra, that is why the group won,” Rami Abdulrahman with the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights was quoted as saying by Reuters. Nusra fighters also confirmed the defections of U.S.-equipped fighters to al-Qaeda. According to sources on the ground cited in media reports, Nusra obtained tanks and other heavy weapons as large numbers of SRF fighters swore allegiance to al-Qaeda.” Newman, Alex. ““Moderate” Rebels Armed by Obama Join al-Qaeda, ISIS.” New American, November 21, 2014. http://www.thenewamerican.com/world-news/asia/item/19583-moderate-rebels-armed-by-obama-join-al-qaeda-isis; “Abu Majid, another rebel leader, who has been receiving western support for six months, said it had not prevented his recent defeat by Jabhat al-Nusra… More than 1,000 men, half his brigade’s strength, had left in despair, many defecting to Isil… Defection to the jihadists has now been going on for years. Mahmoud, a former prisoner of the regime who used to work for the FSA, now runs safe houses in Turkey for foreign fighters looking to join Jabhat al-Nusra and Isil.” Sherlock, Ruth. “Fears that US weapons will fall into al-Qaeda’s hands as Syrian rebels defect.” The Telegraph, November 11^th, 2014. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/islamic-state/11224488/Fears-that-US-weapons-will-fall-into-al-Qaedas-hands-as-Syrian-rebels-defect.html.

12.) Declassified Defense Intelligence Agency documents from August 2012 state that “Internally, events are taking a clear sectarian direction… The Salafist, the Muslim Brotherhood, and AQI [Al-Qaeda in Iraq] are the major forces driving the insurgency in Syria… AQI supported the opposition from the beginning… The West, Gulf countries, and Turkey support the opposition.” Judicial Watch. http://www.judicialwatch.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/Pg.-291-Pgs.-287-293-JW-v-DOD-and-State-14-812-DOD-Release-2015-04-10-final-version11.pdf; Patrick Cockburn, “The Rise of ISIS”, The Rise of Islamic State: ISIS and the New Sunni Revolution (Brooklyn, NY, 2015), pg. 3. Print.

13.) USA Today reports Defense Secretary Carter explaining that the 60 rebel fighters primary mission will be “to protect their towns and villages from ISIL fighters.” The word “protect” here is a euphemism for “control”, as these rebel groups “protect” villages by taking them over, thus insuring that others, like ISIL, do not. Vanden Brook, Tom, “Pentagon pays Syrians $400 per month to fight ISIL.” USA Today, June 22^nd, 2015. http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2015/06/22/pentagon-syria-isis/29113251/; The problem with this kind of “protection” is that the Syrians aren’t calling for it, and don’t desire it, especially from a US-proxy, as Zbigniew Brzezinski has stated “whether we like it or not, Assad does have some significant support in Syrian society. And probably more than any one of the several groups that are opposing him… he has a better standing than any one of them.” “Brzezinski: Assad has more support than any group opposing him,” C-SPAN, January 26^th, 2015. http://www.c-span.org/video/?c4525103/brzezinski-assad-support-group-opposing; Polls consistently show that, according to world opinion, the US is the greatest threat to world peace. Gallup International’s annual global End of Year survey 2013, Gallup International. http://www.wingia.com/web/files/services/33/file/33.pdf?1437015589.

14.) Covert CIA Syrian rebel training program costs $1 billion per year. Miller, Greg et al, “Secret CIA effort in Syria faces large funding cut.” The Washington Post, June 12^th, 2015. https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/lawmakers-move-to-curb-1-billion-cia-program-to-train-syrian-rebels/2015/06/12/b0f45a9e-1114-11e5-adec-e82f8395c032_story.html; “As of June 18, 2015, the total cost of operations related to ISIL since kinetic operations started on Aug. 8, 2014, is $2.91 billion.” US Department of Defense. http://www.defense.gov/home/features/2014/0814_iraq/.

15.) Ahmed, Nafeez. “How the Pentagon Exploits ISIS to Kill Surveillance Reform and Re-Occupy Iraq,” Counterpunch, September 26^th, 2014.http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/09/26/how-the-pentagon-exploits-isis-to-kill-surveillance-reform-and-re-occupy-iraq/.

16.) Cockburn, Patrick. “Jihadists Hijack the Syria Uprising.” The Rise of Islamic State: ISIS and the New Sunni Revolution (Brooklyn, NY, 2015), pg. 84-5. Print.

17.) Gledhill, Ruth, “Syrian Christian leader tells West: ‘Stop arming terror groups who are massacring our people.’” Christian Today, July 1^st, 2015.http://www.christiantoday.com/article/syrian.christian.leader.tells.west.stop.arming.terror.groups.who.are.massacring.our.people/57747.htm.

18.) Shoebridge, Charles. “Why We Shouldn’t Be Arming Syria’s Rebels.” Huffington Post, March 14^th, 2003. http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/charles-shoebridge/syria-rebels-uk_b_2873880.html; Shoebridge, Charles. “The West Should Not Support Syrian Rebels.” Huffington Post, July 31^st, 2012.http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/charles-shoebridge/post_3720_b_1722772.html.

19.) Cockburn, Patrick, “The Rise of ISIS”, The Rise of Islamic State: ISIS and the New Sunni Revolution (Brooklyn, NY, 2015), pg. 3. Print.

Ex-CIA No.2 Mike Morell Acknowledges Israeli-Qaeda Relationship Along the Golan

JERUSALEM POST (6/20/15)—From his vantage point of 33 years as a professional intelligence officer, Michael Morell has snap advice to Israel. “Don’t make deals with them. Pressure them. Fight them. Turn against them, otherwise they will turn against you.”

The former deputy director of the CIA’s comments were made in response to a question regarding reports in the Arab and international media – in order to maintain peace and tranquility along its border with Syria, Israel has reached tacit understandings with the Nusra Front, the Syrian branch of al-Qaida, which controls the border along the Golan Heights. “From my experience following al-Qaida I think and believe that you must not try to cut deals with them. Pakistan tried to do it with these guys telling them: We won’t attack you if you don’t attack us. But it is a dangerous game. Even if you cut a deal with them, they won’t honor it.”

Read the full article here…