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Biden’s Parting Shot at America

By Ron Paul | December 2, 2024

The interim between a US presidential election and the swearing in of a new Administration has for most of our history been a non-eventful period where the outgoing Administration winds down operations and the incoming Administration ramps up new personnel before the inauguration.

The 20th Amendment to our Constitution was enacted in 1933 to reduce the “lame duck” period between election and inauguration to January 20th instead of March 4th. Increasing ease in travel and communications made such a long interim unnecessary. However long the transition period, it has been understood that with the new election came a new mandate from the American people and the “lame duck” outgoing administration was meant to quietly quack out its last few days in office without incident.

Then came Biden. In the period since the American people rejected Biden’s neocon interventionists in favor of Donald Trump’s promises to end the wars, the “lame duck” has run roughshod over the will of the American people. Whoever is running Biden – and the answer is unclear – has decided to “Trump proof” foreign policy to bring us to the literal brink of WWIII with Russia. And to top it off, Biden’s people this past week have again unleashed al-Qaeda linked rebels to wreak havoc in Syria!

After solidly opposing the neocon demand that Ukraine be given permission to fire US weapons deep into Russia, President Biden in the waning days of his presidency suddenly reversed course and granted permission. From back in 2022, when Russia first went into Ukraine, Biden had argued against sending offensive weaponry and US troops to fight on Ukraine’s behalf. “Make no mistake,” he said in March of that year, “that’s called World War III.”

Something about losing the popular and electoral vote has led Biden’s people to disregard the threat of WWIII and give the green light for attacks with US missiles deep into Russian territory. Why is this so different than providing tanks or bullets? These missile systems are highly complex and classified and can only be operated by US or NATO personnel. That means that American military officers are shooting American missiles into Russia – something unimaginable even in the depths of the Cold War!

Then, just days ago, we saw the sudden re-emergence of the US former proxies in Syria – extremists whose ties go back to al-Qaeda – sweep halfway through the country in what appears to be a return of Obama’s disastrous “Assad must go” policy. For five years the conflict in Syria had been more or less “frozen,” but Biden’s people have turned it up to a boil.

Why has the Biden Administration suddenly given a green light to these terrorists and how deeply is the CIA involved in stirring up new trouble in Syria? Make no mistake: these US-backed “rebels” would never have made their move without the approval of the Biden Administration.

The American people did not vote for an expansion of war, either in eastern Europe or the Middle East. A recent CBE News/YouGov poll has shown that a majority of Americans favor an end to all US military aid to Ukraine.

Upending the card table just because you lose the game not only shows blatant disregard for the “democracy” his party constantly preached on the campaign trail, but by pouring gasoline on these two very dangerous conflicts as he heads for the door President Biden puts each and every one of us in grave danger.

December 2, 2024 Posted by | Militarism, Progressive Hypocrite | , , , , | Leave a comment

Terrorist Offensive in Aleppo Reeks of US and Israeli Involvement – Marandi

Sputnik – 29.11.2024

The sudden escalation in Syria where anti-government groups launched a sudden offensive towards Aleppo betrays the involvement of several foreign powers, including Israel and the United States, says Seyed Mohammad Marandi, political analyst and professor at Tehran University.

“We see thousands of foreign fighters affiliated to al-Qaeda from across Central Asia,” Marandi tells Sputnik. “They’ve been mobilized and well trained to carry out this assault.”

The offensive, he points out, takes place “literally a day after Netanyahu said he needs the ceasefire in order to deal with the so-called Iranian threat,” and it appears that the goal of this offensive is “to cut off Syria from the Axis of Resistance in order to isolate Lebanon.”

“Obviously, this is being done in coordination with the United States. The whole dirty war in Syria since 2011 was led by the United States,” Marandi adds. “We know that Jake Sullivan back then, who is now the national security adviser of Biden, said in an email to Hillary Clinton on February 12th, 2012, that in Syria, al Qaeda is on our side.”

Given the long history of the US’ association with terrorist groups in the region and previous efforts by Washington to “create a Salafist entity between Syria and Iraq to isolate Syria,” there is no doubt that the United States and its allies “are a part of this conspiracy against Syria,” the analyst concludes.

That said, Marandi identifies the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as the “number one beneficiary” of the current crisis in Aleppo.

“Netanyahu needs war, and he only accepted a ceasefire under a great deal of pressure. So no one has faith in the Israelis. The Israelis have always violated commitments,” Marandi says. “After all, it is carrying out a holocaust in Gaza, a regime that carries out the Holocaust and continues to do so in front of the eyes of the world after 14 months is not a regime that can be trusted for anything.”

Syrian military expert Mahmoud Abdel Salyam offers a similar take on the subject, blaming Israel for the current crisis and claiming that Tel Aviv’s plans threaten the security situation in the region.

“Israel essentially wants to solidify its position in the region after the ceasefire in Lebanon,” he says. “So Tel Aviv has no intention of stopping – it wants to sow discord among the other players in the region and to force them to react to such challenges.”

Salyam does note, however, that other global players who are interested in “changing the power balance in the Middle East” will undoubtedly capitalize on this situation.

“Some countries, for example, may use the weakening of the Arab republic to bolster their influence by supporting radical and extremist groups that Israel tries to use in Syria,” he says. “But such dangerous actions will lead to unpredictable consequences, for these countries and for their allies.”

November 29, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Wars for Israel | , , , | Leave a comment

Ukraine in league with Al-Qaeda – Syria

RT | November 12, 2024

Ukrainian agents have been working with Al-Qaeda in Syria, offering them drone warfare training and some of their US-supplied weapons in exchange for manpower, the government in Damascus has told RT.

The terrorist group Jabhat al-Nusra, since rebranded as Hayat Tahrir-al-Sham (HTS) has been reduced to parts of Idlib province in the northwest of the country, thanks in part to Russia helping the Syrian government defeat various rebel militants, including Islamic State (formerly ISIS).

RT’s Roman Kosarev has visited Syria and saw “undeniable evidence” that Kiev has made an alliance with HTS.

“We have real confirmation of the Ukrainian instructors’ presence in Syria,” a Russian soldier, identified only by the callsign ‘Gilza’, told RT. He said Kiev’s operatives have been teaching HTS militants how to fly suicide drones, as well as supplying them with such weapons.

Video footage filmed on a ship showed a US-made Switchblade 600 drone being delivered to the Syrian militants in crates labeled as humanitarian aid. Another video showed a man, wearing a black T-shirt with a Ukrainian trident symbol, chatting with a militant somewhere in Idlib.

Mohammed Hamra, a former government official who had to flee Idlib, has his own sources about what’s going on in the province. He told RT that around 250 Ukrainian instructors have been training HTS militants to kill Syrians and Russians.

Syrian intelligence has confirmed the presence of “several” Ukrainian operatives in Idlib. One of the Syrian officials, who sought anonymity, told Kosarev that Kiev’s instructors have been preparing HTS militants for attacks on government-controlled territory, in particular the Russian base at Khmeimim.

Kiev has delivered drones and even drugs – stimulants to keep militants alert – to HTS through Turkish territory, the Syrian said. In return for advice and technology, Kiev has asked HTS to release Chechen militants from their ranks so they could fight in Ukraine.

Moscow has “reliable information” that Islamic State militants and “similar groups” have been fighting in Ukraine under the guise of Chechen and Crimean Tatar units, according to Alexander Bortnikov, head of the Russian security service FSB.

Russia has accused Ukraine of “openly supporting terrorist groups in Africa,” pointing to an incident in Mali earlier this year involving Touareg militants. Ukraine’s HUR military intelligence agency has boasted about providing the Touaregs with information and drone warfare techniques to help them kill government soldiers and Russian security contractors.

November 13, 2024 Posted by | Illegal Occupation, Militarism | , , , , | Leave a comment

Made in America: The ISIS conquest of Mosul

The Cradle | July 2, 2024

Ten years ago this month, the notorious terror group ISIS improbably conquered Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city. In only two days of fighting, a few hundred ISIS militants captured the city, forcing thousands of Iraqi soldiers and police to flee in chaos and confusion.

The western media attributed the city’s fall to the sectarian policies of then-Iraqi prime minister Nouri al-Maliki, suggesting that local Sunnis welcomed the ISIS invasion. US officials claimed they were surprised by the rapid rise of the terror organization, prompting then-US president Barack Obama to vow to “degrade and ultimately destroy” the group.

However, a close review of events surrounding the fall of Mosul and discussions with residents during The Cradle’s recent visit to the city shows the opposite.

The US and its regional allies used ISIS as a proxy to orchestrate the fall of Mosul, thereby terrorizing its Sunni Muslim inhabitants to achieve specific foreign policy goals. Says one Mosul resident speaking with The Cradle:

There was a plan to let Daesh [ISIS] take Mosul, and the USA was behind it. Everyone here knows this, but no one can say it publicly. It was a war against Sunnis.

‘Salafist principality’

As the war in Syria raged in August 2012, the US Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) authored a now well-known memo providing the broad outlines of the plan that would lead to Mosul’s fall.

The memo stated that the insurgency backed by the US and its regional allies to topple Bashar al-Assad’s government in Damascus was not led by “moderate rebels” but by extremists, including Salafists, the Muslim Brotherhood, and Al-Qaeda in Iraq (Islamic State of Iraq).

The DIA memo stated further that the US and its allies, “the western powers,” welcomed the establishment of a “Salafist principality” by these extremist forces in the Sunni majority areas of eastern Syria and western Iraq. The US goal was to isolate Syria territorially from its main regional supporter, Iran.

Two years later, in June 2014, ISIS conquered Mosul, declaring it the capital of the so-called “Caliphate.”

Though the terror group was portrayed as indigenous to Iraq, ISIS only made the “Salafist principality” predicted in the DIA memo a reality with the help of weapons, training, and funding from the US and its close allies.

US and Saudi weapons

In January 2014, Reuters reported that the US Congress “secretly” approved new weapons flows to “moderate Syrian rebels” from the so-called Free Syrian Army (FSA).

In subsequent months, the US Army military and Saudi Ministry of Defense purchased large quantities of weapons from Eastern European countries, which were then flown to Amman, Jordan, for further distribution to the FSA.

After an exhaustive three-year investigation, EU-funded Conflict Armament Research (CAR) found that the weapons funneled to Syria by the US and Saudi Arabia in 2014 were quickly passed on to ISIS, at times within just “days or weeks” of their purchase.

“As far as our evidence shows, the diverters [Saudi and the US] knew what was going on in terms of the risk of supplying weapons to groups in the region,” Damien Spleeters of CAR explained.

The US-supplied weapons and equipment quickly reaching ISIS included the iconic Toyota Hilux pickup trucks, which became synonymous with the ISIS brand.

The Kurdish role

Another way US and Saudi-supplied weapons reached ISIS was through Washington’s main Kurdish ally in Iraq, Masoud Barzani. Discussing the secret funding for weapons approved by the US Congress in January 2014, Reuters noted that “Kurdish groups” had been providing weapons and other aid financed by donors in Qatar to “religious extremist rebel factions.”

In the following months, reports emerged that Kurdish officials from Barzani’s Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) were providing weapons to ISIS, including Kornet anti-tank missiles imported from Bulgaria.

Further evidence of Barzani’s support for ISIS comes from a lawsuit currently being litigated in the US District Court for the District of Columbia on behalf of the Kurdistan Victim’s Fund.

The expansive lawsuit, led by former US Assistant Attorney James R Tate, cites testimonies from sources with “direct clandestine access” to senior ranking officials in the KDP, alleging that Barzani’s agents “purposefully made US dollar payments to terrorist intermediaries and others that were wired through the United States,” including through banks in Washington, DC. These payments “enabled ISIS to carry out terrorist attacks that killed US citizens in Syria, Iraq, and Libya.”

Further, the agents made use of “email accounts serviced by US-based email service providers to coordinate and carry out elements of their partnership with ISIS.”

It is unthinkable that Barzani regularly arranged payments to ISIS from the heart of the US capital without the knowledge and consent of US intelligence.

An explicit agreement

In the spring of 2014, reports emerged of a deal between Barzani and ISIS to divide the territory in Iraq between them.

French academic and Iraq expert Pierre-Jean Luizard of the Paris-based National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) reported there was “an explicit agreement” between Barzani and ISIS, which “aims to share a number of territories.”

According to the agreement, ISIS would take Mosul, while Barzani’s security forces, the Peshmerga, would take oil-rich Kirkuk and other “disputed territories” he desired for a future independent Kurdish state.

According to Luizard, ISIS was given the role of “routing the Iraqi army, in exchange for which the Peshmerga would not prevent ISIS from entering Mosul or capturing Tikrit.”

In an unpublished interview with prominent Lebanese security journalist and The Cradle contributor Radwan Mortada, former Iraqi prime minister Nuri al-Maliki claimed that meetings were held to plan the Mosul operation in the Iraqi Kurdistan capital, Erbil, which were attended by US military officers.

When US officials denied any involvement, Maliki responded by telling them:

These are pictures of American officers sitting in this meeting … you are partners in this operation.

The UK pipeline

A resident from Mosul speaking with The Cradle states that many of the ISIS members he encountered during the group’s three-year occupation of the city were English-speaking foreigners, in particular the ISIS commanders.

But where did these English-speaking ISIS members come from?

In 2012, UK intelligence established a pipeline to send British and Belgian citizens to fight in Syria. Young men from London and Brussels were recruited by Salafist organizations, Shariah4UK and Shariah4Belgium, established by radical preacher and UK British intelligence asset Anjam Choudary.

These recruits were then sent to Syria, where they joined an armed group, Katibat al-Muhajireen, which enjoyed support from UK intelligence. These British and Belgian fighters then joined ISIS after its official establishment in Syria in April 2013.

Among these fighters was a Londoner named Mohammed Emwazi. Later known as the infamous Jihadi John, Emwazi kidnapped US journalist James Foley in October 2012 as a member of Katibat al-Muhajireen and allegedly executed him in August 2014 as a member of ISIS.

Made in America

The commander of Katibat al-Muhajireen, Abu Omar al-Shishani, also later joined ISIS and famously led the terror group’s assault on Mosul. Before fighting in Syria and Iraq, Shishani received US training as a member of the country of Georgia’s special forces.

In August 2014, the Washington Post reported that Libyan members of ISIS had received training from French, UK, and US military and intelligence personnel while fighting in the so-called “revolution” to topple the government of Muammar al-Qaddafi in 2011.

Many of these fighters were British but of Libyan origin and traveled to Libya with the encouragement of UK intelligence to topple Qaddafi. They then traveled to Syria and soon joined ISIS or the local Al-Qaeda affiliate, the Nusra Front.

“Sometimes I joke around and say that I am a fighter made by America,” one of the fighters told the Post.

There is no indication that the relationship between these fighters and US and UK intelligence ended once they joined ISIS.

‘Maliki must go’

US support for the ISIS invasion of Mosul is evident through the actions Washington refused to take. US planners monitored the ISIS convoys traveling across the open desert from Syria to assault Mosul in June 2014 but took no action to bomb them.

As former US secretary of defense Chuck Hagel acknowledged, “It wasn’t that we were blind in that area. We had drones, we had satellites, we had intelligence monitoring these groups.”

Even after Mosul fell, and as ISIS was threatening Baghdad, Washington planners refused to help unless Maliki stepped down as prime minister.

Maliki claimed in his interview with Mortada that US officials had demanded he impose a siege on Syria to assist in toppling Assad. When Maliki refused, they accused him of sabotaging the Syria regime change operation and sought to use ISIS to topple Iraq’s government.

American sources all but confirm Maliki’s claim. The US military-funded Rand Corporation noted that the US–Iraqi relationship at this time had become strained “because of the willingness of the Maliki government to facilitate Iranian support to the Assad regime despite significant American opposition.”

As Obama’s foreign policy advisor, Philip Gordon explained:

The president was clear he didn’t want to launch that campaign [against ISIS] until there was something to defend, and that wasn’t Maliki.

New York Times journalist Michael Gordon reported that Secretary of State John Kerry traveled to Baghdad two weeks after ISIS captured Mosul to meet with Maliki. Desperate for help, Maliki asked Kerry for airstrikes against ISIS to protect Baghdad, but the latter explained that the US would not help unless the former gave up power.

In July 2014, ISIS fighters were moving captured US artillery and armored vehicles back to Syria across the open desert. Gordon reports further that the ISIS convoys were “easy pickings for American airpower.”

However, when US Major General Dana Pittard requested authorization to conduct the airstrikes to destroy the convoys, the White House refused, saying the “political prerequisites” had not been met. In other words, Maliki was still prime minister.

Geopolitical gains

While claiming to be enemies of ISIS, the US planners and their allies deliberately facilitated the terror group’s rise, including its capture of Mosul.

ISIS relied on US and UK-trained fighters, US and Saudi-purchased weapons, and Kurdish-supplied US dollars – rather than popular support from the city’s Sunni residents – to conquer Mosul.

When self-proclaimed caliph and leader of ISIS, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, announced the establishment of the so-called Caliphate at the city’s historic Nuri Mosque, he set up the very Salafist principality outlined in the DIA document by US intelligence heads.

This orchestrated rise of ISIS not only destabilized the region but also served the geopolitical interests of those who claim to be combating terrorism.

July 2, 2024 Posted by | Deception | , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Time to talk about US role in aiding terrorism

By Uriel Araujo | April 5, 2024

Peter Smith, Lucas Webber, and Colin P. Clarke, writing for The Diplomat, argue that ISIS and ISKP terrorist groups “have viewed Moscow as their enemy since the group’s inception” largely due to the Kremlin’s role in Syria. I recently wrote about the Russian role in fighting terrorism in the Levant and Central Asia, and much is being (finally) said about that in the aftermath of the violent Crocus City Hall terror attack near Moscow. It is about time, however, to talk about the hypocrisy pertaining to Washington’s role in Syria and elsewhere and in the evolution of ISIS itself and Islamic terrorism in general.

It may be a politically incorrect truth, but the fact remains that Hezbollah as well as Iranian and Russian forces have been playing a major role in fighting ISIS in Syria for over a decade as well as in guaranteeing the safety of Christians and other minorities in a region where Wahhabi extremists were beheading, enslaving and kidnapping them. Meanwhile, American military aid to insurgents in Syria is a well established fact.

It so happens the weapons provided by Washington to rebels there “ended up” in ISIS hands, according to more than one Amnesty Report. It could be just a coincidence, but, in fact, it is not far-fetched at all to say the United States played a key role in the evolution of ISIS both in Iraq and Syria – and much has been written on it. In any case, this is far from being the only instance of the world’s Atlantic superpower sponsoring terrorism – mayhem and civil war. Already in 1991, Graham H. Stuart, who was Professor of Political Science Emeritus at Stanford University, wrote on how the terrorism of the American enemies even paled in comparison to Western sponsored terror. This remains true to  this day. The case of Libya is emblematic in this regard and it is worth having a look at it.

One may recall that, after seeing reports of Gaddafi’s capture and brutal assassination on her Blackberry device in between interviews, then US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton famously said, while cheering, “We came, we saw, he died” – paraphrasing Julius Cesar’s “Veni; vidi; vici” (“I came; I saw; I conquered”). She had been in Tripoli (Libya) earlier that same week for talks with Libya’s National Transitional Council (NTC) leaders. The reporter then asked her whether the Libyan leader’s death had anything to do with Clinton’s surprise visit to the country. She firstly replied “no”, but then added with a chuckle while rolling her eyes, “I’m sure it did!”

The Roman statesman and general, according to Appian of Alexandria, used the aforementioned phrase to report to the Roman Senate his swift victory in the war against  Pharnaces II of Pontus in modern-day Turkey. Clinton’s paraphrasing of it in turn was basically a top US official cheering the obscene assassination of a sovereign country’s head of state by the hand of American proxy terrorist bandits in Libya. These rebels stripped and tortured the deposed leader and joyfully filmed it before killing him. A video appallingly shows the man being stabbed or poked in the anus with what appears to be a stick or a bayonet, which ensued a scandal throughout the country. The rotting body, later placed in an industrial freezer, was publicly displayed for days by the rebel authorities.

Both Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International called for an independent autopsy and investigation, to no avail. Whether one likes or not Gadaffi and his authoritarian rule, the hard fact is that slavery has literally made a comeback in post-Gaddafi Libya, with Black Africans being sold as slaves in open markets. The American-aided “spring” basically turned Libya into a ruined nation – Gaddafi’s Libya was no paradise, but one should keep in mind that the country for years had the highest Human Development Index in Africa before the civil war, and boasted of significant gender equality.

I’ve written before on the hydropolitics of the American intervention in Libya and the NATO bombing of the “Great Man-Made River” project. Besides dropping bombs on over 100 targets in Libya, together with France and its other NATO allies (which resulted in the deaths of civilians, including babies), Washinton provided covert military assistance to the rebels who toppled Gaddafi, despite the presence of Al-Qaeda and other terror groups amongst them. Sometimes it was not so covert: an American Predator drone took part in the airstrike in Muammar Gaddafi’s convey just moments before his death, and the whole matter was hailed by Washington and enthusiasts as a “new kind of US foreign policy success”, with an unnamed US official describing such policy as “leading from behind”. According to former CIA officer Bruce Riedel: “There is no question that al Qaeda’s Libyan franchise, Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, is a part of the opposition. It has always been Qaddafi’s biggest enemy and its stronghold is Benghazi.”

It is no wonder ISIS-Libya (ISIS-L) emerged in the aftermath of the country’s civil war and is active there to this day. One group of Liybians who had fought against Gaddafi went to Syria to join the anti-government rebels there, by forming the Battar Brigade in 2012, which later pledged its loyalty to US-aided ISIS. Many Battar Brigade veterans then returned to Libya in 2014, to create the  Islamic Youth Shura Council faction.

To sum it up, time and time again one will encounter Washington authorities directly or indirectly involved in the aiding and arming of the most vicious terrorist groups in North Africa, the Middle East, and elsewhere, as admitted by US top officials themselves. It is part of the core of its foreign policy. And it is about time to stop pretending it isn’t.

April 5, 2024 Posted by | Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Russian Intelligence Services Kept Eye on West’s Effort to Weaponize ISIS

By Ekaterina Blinova – Sputnik – 26.03.2024

Over the past two years, Moscow has collected evidence of Western involvement in training and arming jihadi terrorists to weaponize them on the Ukrainian battlefield and Russia’s rear.

The Crocus City Hall terror attack has raised questions about the West’s repeated use of jihadist elements, starting from arming Mujahideen in Afghanistan during the Cold War era to most recent reports of Islamists fighting on the side of the Kiev regime.

Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) stated on February 13, 2023, that it obtained intelligence indicating that the US military was actively recruiting militants from jihadist groups affiliated with ISIS and al-Qaeda to carry out terrorist attacks in Russia and the CIS countries. According to the SVR, particular attention is paid to attracting people from the Russian North Caucasus and Central Asia to cooperate.

The Russian intelligence service revealed that in January 2023, 60 terrorists with experience of participating in hostilities in the Middle East were recruited by the West, adding that they were undergoing training at the American base in Al-Tanf, Syria, to conduct terrorist and subversive attacks.

The SVR noted at the time that the militants would be dispatched in small groups to the territory of Russia and the CIS countries in cooperation with underground cells of international terrorist groups, including Hizb ut-Tahrir, Jamaat Ansarullah and the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan.

“We see the final loss of any moral principles in the US security forces,” the SVR summarized in its official statement, lambasting Washington’s obsession with inflicting a strategic defeat on Russia by any means possible. “Such actions put Washington on a par with the largest international terrorist groups.”

Intel data confirming the plans described by the SVR started to emerge later in the year. Russian Security Service (FSB) Director Alexander Bortnikov stated at the October 2023 meeting of heads of Russian security agencies and special services that ISIS and other terrorist groups were fighting against Russia as part of the Ichkerian and Crimean Tatar mercenary units in Ukraine. ISIS is also part of sabotage and reconnaissance groups sent to Russian territory to carry out attacks and terrorist attacks, Bortnikov emphasized.

The FSB director pointed out that Western governments were “actively facilitating the movement of militants into the Ukrainian conflict zone.” As of October 2023, the FSB had registered the participation of employees of 13 Western private military companies (PMCs) and members of nine foreign paramilitary proxy forces in the Ukraine conflict on the side of the Kiev regime.

According to Bortnikov, the US and its NATO allies have turned Ukraine into nothing short of a terrorist hotbed.

The FSB chief likewise drew special attention to the US and British intelligence services’ efforts to create a “belt of instability” in Afghanistan near the southern borders of the CIS, where al-Qaeda and the ISIS groups are becoming stronger. To that end, the Western intelligence services were recruiting militants from international terrorist organizations operating in Iraq, Syria, and a number of other Asian and African countries, and transferring them to northern Afghanistan.

“We note the increased role of al-Qaeda, which, in alliance with the IS branch Vilayat Khorasan, takes an active part in the preparation, indoctrination and logistical support of controlled groups,” Bortnikov stressed last October.

Islamic Terror Groups Flocking to Ukraine

From the very beginning of the Russian special operation in Ukraine, reports started to emerge in international media outlets and blogs, shedding light on jihadists of all stripes flocking to the combat zone in Ukraine.

In early March 2022, the BBC quoted Syria-based terrorist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) explicitly expressing solidarity with the Kiev regime. High-profile HTS member al-Shamali al-Hurr took to Telegram to cheer Ukrainian victories by sharing footage and graphic images of damaged Russian military hardware and dead soldiers.

In April 2022, reports emerged claiming that the White Helmets, a Western-backed so-called “humanitarian” Syrian group, had arrived in Ukraine. Prior to this, the group, officially known as the Syrian Civil Defense, pledged to provide “tutorials” to the Ukrainian forces. The group was accused by Syrians of being connected to al-Qaeda offshoots operating in the Middle Eastern country and staging chemical attacks.

What’s more, initial training and financial support to the White Helmets was provided by the Mayday Rescue Foundation, a non-governmental organization established by ex-British Army officer James Le Mesurier. Le Mesurier’s group was instrumental in the West’s long-standing effort to topple the government of President Bashar al-Assad in Syria, according to Grayzone investigative journalists’ account of events in 2016.

The SVR announced in May 2022, citing obtained evidence, that about 60 ISIS terrorists were released from prisons controlled by the US-backed Syrian Kurds a month earlier with the aim of dispatching them to Ukraine as sabotage units. The SVR highlighted that the US Al-Tanf base in Syria’s Homs province was turned into a terrorist hub where militants were trained to be deployed to Ukraine.

“Priority is given to natives of the states of Transcaucasia and Central Asia. The training ‘course’ in Al-Tanf includes training in the use of available types of anti-tank missile systems, reconnaissance and strike drones MQ-1C, advanced communications and surveillance equipment,” the SVR stated.

On October 22, 2022, Al-Monitor reported that it had learned that members of Ajnad al-Kavkaz, a Chechen-led Islamist group, left the Syrian province of Idlib and headed to Ukraine to fight against the Russian military.

Who Masterminded the Crocus City Hall Attack?

The Crocus City Hall terror attack was carried out by the hands of radical Islamists, but it is necessary to find the masterminds and those who benefitted from the hideous crime, Russian President Vladimir Putin stated on Monday.

“The horrific crime committed on March 22 in the capital of Russia is an act of intimidation … and the question immediately arises: who benefits?” Putin said. “This atrocity can only be an element in a whole series of attempts by those who have been fighting our country since 2014 with the hands of the neo-Nazi Kiev regime.”

In the wake of the attack four alleged perpetrators – Dalerdzhon Mirzoyev, Shamsidina Fariduni, Saidakrami Rachabalizoda and Muhammadsobir Fayzov – were caught in the Russian Bryansk region on the way to the Ukrainian border. According to the FSB, the jihadists had connections in Ukraine and sought to hide in the Eastern European country after committing the crime. The fifth suspect, Dilovar Islomov, was detained on March 25.

“We also need to answer the question of why the terrorists tried to leave for Ukraine after committing the crime and who was waiting for them there,” Putin underlined during the conversation with Russian authorities on security measures taken after the terrorist attack.

The Russian president specifically referred to the Biden administration’s effort to divert public attention from Ukraine’s possible involvement immediately after the tragedy.

“We see how the US is taking to various channels to convince its satellites and other countries that according to the data from its intelligence, there is allegedly no Ukrainian trace in the Moscow terrorist attack (…) We already know by whose hands this atrocity against Russia and its people had been carried out. Now we want to know who the mastermind is,” the Russian president emphasized.

March 26, 2024 Posted by | Deception, False Flag Terrorism, Timeless or most popular | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Abu Musab al-Zarqawi: notorious terrorist or American agent?

By William Van Wagenen | The Cradle | March 26, 2024

Ranked second only to Osama bin Laden, the US’s most notorious declared enemy during the so-called War on Terror was Jordanian jihadist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the founder of Al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI).

But a closer examination of Zarqawi’s life and his impact on events in Iraq shows that he was likely a product and tool of US intelligence.

Neoconservative strategists within the administration of George W. Bush utilized Zarqawi as a pawn to justify the illegal US invasion of Iraq in 2003 to the American public.

Moreover, he was instrumental in fomenting internal discord within Iraqi resistance groups opposing the US occupation, ultimately instigating a sectarian civil war between Iraq’s Sunni and Shia communities.

Israel’s plan unfolds in Iraq 

This deliberate strategy of tension in Iraq advanced Tel Aviv’s goal of perpetuating the country’s vulnerabilities, dividing populations along sectarian lines, and weakening its army’s ability to challenge Israel in the region.

It has long been known that the CIA created Al-Qaeda as part of its covert war on the Soviet Red Army in Afghanistan in the 1980s and supported Al-Qaeda elements in various wars, including in Bosnia, Kosovo, and Chechnya in the 1990s.

Additionally, evidence points to CIA support for Al-Qaeda-affiliated groups during the clandestine war in Syria launched in 2011 amid the so-called Arab Spring.

Despite this history, western journalists, analysts, and historians still take at face value that Zarqawi and AQI were sworn enemies of the US.

Without understanding Zarqawi’s role as a US intelligence asset, it is impossible to understand the destructive role the US (and Israel) played in the bloodshed inflicted on Iraq, not only during the initial 2003 invasion but in launching the subsequent sectarian strife as well.

It is also essential to understand the importance of current Iraqi efforts to expel US forces and rid the country of US influence moving forward.

Who was Zarqawi?

Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was born Ahmed Fadhil Nazar al-Khalaylah but later changed his name to reflect his birthplace, Zarqa, an industrial area near Amman, Jordan. In and out of prison in his youth, he would become radicalized during his time behind bars.

Zarqawi traveled to Afghanistan to fight with the CIA-backed mujahideen against the Soviets in Afghanistan in the late 1980s. Upon his return to Jordan, he helped start a local Islamic militant group called Jund al-Sham and was imprisoned in 1992.

After his release from prison following a general amnesty, Zarqawi returned to Afghanistan in 1999. The Atlantic notes that he first met Osama bin Laden at this time, who suspected that Zarqawi’s group had been infiltrated by Jordanian intelligence while in prison, which accounted for his early release.

Zarqawi then fled Afghanistan to the pro-US Kurdistan region of northern Iraq and established a training camp for his fighters in the fateful year of 2001.

The missing link

Eager to implicate Iraq in the 9/11 attacks, it wasn’t long before the Bush administration officials soon used Zarqawi’s presence to shroud Washington’s geopolitical agendas there.

In February 2003, at the UN Security Council, US Secretary of State Colin Powell claimed that Zarqawi’s presence in Iraq proved Saddam was harboring a terrorist network, necessitating a US invasion.

According to the Council on Foreign Relations, “This assertion was later disproved, but it irreversibly thrust Zarqawi’s name into the international spotlight.”

Powell made the claim even though the Kurdish region of Iraq, where Zarqawi established his base, was effectively under US control. The US air force imposed a no-fly zone on the region after the 1991 Gulf War. Israel’s foreign intelligence agency, the Mossad, was also known to have a presence there, a reality that Iran actively acknowledges and remains vigilant about.

Curiously, despite Zarqawi’s base being nestled within the confines of Iraqi Kurdistan, the Bush administration opted for inaction when presented with a golden opportunity to neutralize him.

The Wall Street Journal reported that the Pentagon drew up detailed plans in June 2002 to strike Zarqawi’s training camp but that “the raid on Mr Zarqawi didn’t take place. Months passed with no approval of the plan from the White House.”

Lawrence Di Rita, the Pentagon’s chief spokesman, justified the inaction by claiming “the camp was of interest only because it was believed to be producing chemical weapons,” even though the threat of chemical and biological weapons falling into the hands of terrorists was supposedly the most important reason for toppling Saddam Hussein’s government.

In contrast, General John M. Keane, the US Army’s vice chief of staff at the time, explained that the intelligence on Zarqawi’s presence in the camp was “sound,” the risk of collateral damage was low, and that the camp was “one of the best targets we ever had.”

The Bush administration firmly refused to approve the strikes, despite US General Tommy Franks pointing to Zarqawi’s camp as among the “examples of the terrorist ‘harbors’ that President Bush had vowed to crush.”

As soon as Zarqawi’s presence in Iraq had accomplished its initial purpose of selling the war on Iraq to the US public, and after the March 2003 invasion was already underway, the White House finally approved targeting his camp with airstrikes. But by then, the Wall Street Journal adds, Zarqawi had already fled the area.

Singling out Shiites 

Then, in January 2004, the key pillar of the Bush administration’s justification for war unraveled. David Kay, the weapons inspector tasked with finding Iraq’s WMDs, publicly declared, “I don’t think they exist,” after nine months of searching.

The Guardian reported that the failure to locate any WMDs was such a devastating blow to the rationale for invading Iraq that now “even Bush was rewriting the reasons for going to war.”

On 9 February, as the WMD embarrassment mounted, Secretary of State Powell again claimed that before the invasion, Zarqawi “was active in Iraq and doing things that should have been known to the Iraqis. And we’re still looking for those connections and to prove those connections.”

Two weeks before, US intelligence had conveniently made public a 17-page letter it claimed Zarqawi had written. Its author claimed responsibility for multiple terror attacks, argued that fighting Iraq’s Shia was more important than fighting the occupying US army, and vowed to spark a civil war between the country’s Sunni and Shia communities.

In subsequent months, US officials attributed a series of brutal bombings targeting Iraq’s Shia to Zarqawi without providing evidence of his involvement.

In March 2004, suicide attacks on Shia shrines in Karbala and the Kadhimiya district of Baghdad killed 200 worshippers commemorating Ashura. In April, car bombings in the Shia-majority city of Basra in southern Iraq killed at least 50.

Regarding the Karbala and Kadhimiya attacks, Al-Qaeda issued a statement through Al-Jazeera strongly denying any involvement, but Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) head Paul Bremer insisted Zarqawi was involved.

Zarqawi’s alleged attacks on Iraq’s Shia helped drive a wedge between the Sunni and Shia resistance to the US occupation and sowed the seeds of a future sectarian war.

This proved helpful to the US army, which was trying to prevent Sunni and Shia factions from joining forces in resistance to the occupation.

‘Dividing our enemies’

In April 2004, President Bush ordered a full-scale invasion to take control of Fallujah, a city in Anbar province that had become the epicenter of the Sunni resistance.

Vowing to “pacify” the city, Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt launched the attack using helicopter gunships, unmanned surveillance drones, and F-15 warplanes.

The attack became controversial as the Marines killed many civilians, destroyed large numbers of homes and buildings, and displaced the majority of the city’s residents.

Eventually, due to widespread public pressure, President Bush was forced to call off the assault, and Fallujah became a ‘no-go’ zone for US forces.

The failure to maintain troops on the ground in Fallujah had US planners turning back to their Zarqawi card to weaken the Sunni resistance from within. In June, a senior Pentagon official claimed that “fresh information” had come to light showing Zarqawi “may be hiding in the Sunni stronghold city of Fallujah.”

The Pentagon official “cautioned, however, that the information is not specific enough to allow a military operation to be launched to try to find al-Zarqawi.”

The sudden appearance of Zarqawi and other Jihadists in Fallujah at this time was not an accident.

In a report written for the US Special Operations Command (USSOCOM) entitled “Dividing our enemies,” Thomas Henriksen explained that the US military used Zarqawi to exploit differences among its enemies in Fallujah and elsewhere.

He writes that the US military maintained the goal of “fomenting enemy-on-enemy deadly encounters” so that America’s “enemies eliminate each other,” adding that “When divisions were absent, American operators instigated them.”

The Fallujah Case Study

Henriksen then cites events in Fallujah in the fall of 2004 as “a case study” that “showcased the clever machinations required to set insurgents battling insurgents.”

He explained that the takfiri–Salafi views of Zarqawi and his fellow jihadis caused tension with local insurgents who were nationalists and embraced a Sufi religious outlook. Local insurgents also opposed Zarqawi’s tactics, which included kidnapping foreign journalists, killing civilians through indiscriminate bombings, and sabotaging the country’s oil and electricity infrastructure.

Henriksen further explained that US psychological operations, which took “advantage of and deepened the intra-insurgent forces” in Fallujah, led to “nightly gun battles not involving coalition forces.”

These divisions soon extended to the other Sunni resistance strongholds of Ramadi in Anbar province and the Adhamiya district of Baghdad.

The divisions instigated by US intelligence through Zarqawi in Fallujah paved the way for another US invasion of the restive city in November 2004, days after Bush secured re-election.

BBC journalist Mark Urban reported that 2,000 bodies were recovered after the battle, including hundreds of civilians.

Conveniently, “Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was not among the dead,” having slipped through the US cordon around the city before the assault began, Urban added.

Domestic consumption 

US military intelligence later acknowledged using psychological operations to promote Zarqawi’s role in the Sunni insurgency fighting against the US occupation.

The Washington Post reported in April 2006 that “The US military is conducting a propaganda campaign to magnify the role of the leader of Al-Qaeda in Iraq,” which helped “the Bush administration tie the war to the organization responsible for the 11 September 2001 attacks.”

The Post quotes US Colonel Derek Harvey as explaining, “Our own focus on Zarqawi has enlarged his caricature, if you will – made him more important than he really is.”

As the Post reports further, the internal documents detailing the psychological operation campaign “explicitly list the ‘US Home Audience’ as one of the targets of a broader propaganda campaign.”

The campaign to promote Zarqawi also proved helpful to President Bush during his re-election campaign in October 2004. When Democratic challenger John Kerry called the war in Iraq a diversion from the so-called War on Terror in Afghanistan, President Bush responded by claiming:

“The case of one terrorist shows how wrong [Kerry’s] thinking is. The terrorist leader we face in Iraq today, the one responsible for planting car bombs and beheading Americans, is a man named Zarqawi.”

Who killed Nick Berg?

Nick Berg, a US contractor in Iraq, was allegedly beheaded by Zarqawi. In May 2004, western news outlets published a video showing Berg, dressed in an orange Guantanamo-style jumpsuit, being beheaded by a group of masked men.

A masked man claiming to be Zarqawi stated in the video that Berg’s killing was in response to the US torture of detainees in the notorious Abu Ghraib prison.

Berg was in Iraq trying to win reconstruction contracts and disappeared just days after he spent a month in US detention in Mosul, where he was interrogated multiple times by the FBI.

On 8 May, a month after his disappearance, the US military claimed they found his decapitated body on the side of a road near Baghdad.

But US claims that Zarqawi killed Berg are not credible. As the Sydney Morning Herald reported at the time, there is evidence the beheading video was staged and included footage from Berg’s FBI interrogation. It was uploaded to the internet not from Iraq but from London and remained online just long enough for CNN and Fox News to download it.

Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt also lied about Berg having been in US military custody, claiming instead he had only been held by the Iraqi police in Mosul.

But the video cemented in the minds of the American public that Zarqawi and Al-Qaeda were major terror threats.

Such was the impact in the US, that following the video’s release, the terms ‘Nick Berg’ and ‘Iraq war’ temporarily replaced pornography and celebrities Paris Hilton and Britney Spears as the internet’s main searches.

Sectarianism, a key US–Israeli goal

Large-scale sectarian war erupted following the February 2006 bombing of the Shia Al-Askari Shrine in the Sunni city of Samarra in central Iraq, although the full extent was mitigated thanks to religious guidance issued by the highest and most influential Shia authority in the land, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani.

Al-Qaeda did not take credit for the attack, but President Bush later claimed that “the bombing of the shrine was an Al-Qaeda plot, all intending to create sectarian violence.”

Zarqawi was finally killed in a US airstrike a few months later, on 7 June 2006. An Iraqi legislator, Wael Abdul-Latif, said Zarqawi had the phone numbers of senior Iraqi officials stored in his cell phone at the time of his death, further showing Zarqawi was being used by elements within the US-backed Iraqi government.

By the time of Zarqawi’s death, the neoconservative agenda to divide and weaken Iraq through instigating chaos and sectarian conflict had reached its pinnacle. This goal was further exacerbated by the emergence of a successor group to AQI – ISIS – which played an outsized role a few years later in destabilizing neighboring Syria, igniting sectarian tensions there, and providing the justification for the renewal of a US military mandate in Iraq.

March 26, 2024 Posted by | Deception, False Flag Terrorism, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Pentagon contradicts White House about US troop presence in Yemen

The Cradle | January 28, 2024

US defense officials claim they have no boots on the ground in Yemen, despite a recent acknowledgement that US forces are indeed present in the war-torn Gulf state, a 27 January report from The Intercept shows.

On 17 January, a journalist asked US Defense Department press secretary Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder if he could give assurances that the US had no troops on the ground in Yemen. Ryder responded, “I’m not aware of any U.S. forces on the ground.”

However, the White House reported to Congress on 7 December that “A small number of United States military personnel are deployed to Yemen to conduct operations against al-Qa’ida in the Arabian Peninsula and ISIS.”

Erik Sperling, the executive director of Just Foreign Policy, who worked on Yemen as a Capitol Hill staffer, told The Intercept it is possible Brig. Gen. Ryder “is trying to skirt the question to avoid greater scrutiny.”

Pentagon officials also deny that the US is at war with Yemen despite bombing it.

“We don’t think that we are at war,” Pentagon deputy press secretary Sabrina Singh said on 18 January. “We don’t want to see a regional war.”

One journalist in the press briefing responded, saying, “We’ve bombed them five times now … if this isn’t war, what is war?”

This month, the US began a new bombing campaign against Yemen, which is now primarily governed by the Ansarallah resistance movement. With US and UK backing, Saudi Arabia and the UAE fought a war against Ansarallah between 2015 and 2022.

This month’s US bombing campaign came after Ansarallah-led Yemeni forces began attacking Israeli-linked shipping vessels in the Red Sea. Ansarallah wishes to stop the Israeli military campaign on Gaza, which has killed over 26,000 Palestinians and is widely viewed as constituting genocide.

But as the US bombing campaign in Yemen began, “defense officials suddenly became more reticent about the American military presence in Yemen,” The Intercept noted.

Though US officials claim their forces are in Yemen to fight Al-Qaeda-linked groups, a BBC investigation released on 22 January revealed that the UAE, a close US ally, has hired Al-Qaeda militants to fight for the Southern Transitional Council (STC), the Emirati-backed government in sparsely populated eastern Yemen.

A whistleblower cited in the investigation provided the BBC with “a document with 11 names of former Al-Qaeda members now working in the STC,” among them former high-ranking operatives of the extremist group.

Nasser al-Shiba, a former high-ranking Al-Qaeda member, is now the commander of the of the STC’s armed units, several sources told the BBC.

January 28, 2024 Posted by | Deception, Wars for Israel | , , | 2 Comments

UAE enlists Al-Qaeda, US mercenaries to operate in Yemen: Report

The Cradle | January 24, 2024

A BBC investigation released on 22 January reveals that the UAE hired Al-Qaeda militants to fight for the Southern Transitional Council (STC), the Emirati-backed government in Yemen. 

A whistleblower cited in the investigation provided the BBC with “a document with 11 names of former Al-Qaeda members now working in the STC,” among them former high-ranking operatives of the extremist group. 

Nasser al-Shiba, a former high-ranking Al-Qaeda member, is now the commander of the of the STC’s armed units, several sources told the BBC. 

These militants were hired to carry out political assassinations across Yemen at the behest of Abu Dhabi, according to the investigation. 

The BBC also points to a shadowy group of US mercenaries, known as Spear Operations Group, hired by the UAE to carry out assassinations. 

Isaac Gilmore, a former US navy seal who later became Spear’s chief operating officer, is “one of several Americans who say they were hired to carry out assassinations in Yemen by the UAE.”

“He refused to talk about anyone who was on the ‘kill list’ provided to Spear by the UAE — other than the target of their first mission: Ansaf Mayo, a Yemeni MP who is the leader of Islah in the southern port city of Aden.” 

Saudi and UAE-backed mercenary groups have run rampant across Yemen since the start of the war in the country nine years ago. Aside from assassinations, these mercenaries have also been implicated in a number of crimes, including the looting and illegal trading of Yemeni cultural heritage. 

Several ancient sites and museums have been looted and stripped of valuable artifacts by UAE-backed mercenary groups in Yemen. There are also accounts of underage girls being raped by militants of such groups. 

This is not the first time that UAE-backed armed groups in Yemen have been accused of working or coordinating with Al-Qaeda and ISIS. 

According to documents obtained by Yemen’s Al-Masirah media outlet in February last year, Takfiri militants affiliated with the UAE-backed mercenary group, the Giants Brigade, looted large amounts of oil from the reserves in the energy-rich province of Shabwah, south of the country.

“We have all the evidence of the UAE’s relationship with Al-Qaeda and ISIS in Yemen,” Saleh al-Jabwani, Saleh al-Jabwani, a minister in the former Saudi-backed government of Abd Rabbuh Mansour Hadi, said in 2019. 

The BBC investigation comes one month after UAE-backed mercenaries came under the spotlight once again, following reports that the US was working to recruit members of these mercenary groups to “distract” Ansarallah from its military operations against Israel. 

“The United States is moving to activate factions loyal to the UAE in Yemen to distract Sanaa from continuing to carry out more air and sea attacks against the Israeli entity,” the Lebanese newspaper Al-Akhbar reported on 8 December. 

According to Hebrew media, the UAE-backed STC has approached Israel and offered to help protect Israeli shipping in the Red Sea from attacks by Yemen’s Ansarallah resistance movement and the armed forces of the government in Sanaa. 

Since November, Yemen’s Armed Forces and Ansarallah have seized one Israeli-linked vessel and have targeted over a dozen other ships, either owned by Israelis or Israeli firms or en route to Israeli ports. The Red Sea blockade by Yemen is in solidarity with the Palestinian resistance, which Sanaa has vowed to continue until the war and siege in Gaza ends. 

Yemeni armed forces have also launched drones and missiles towards Israel’s southern port city of Eilat. 

These attacks are garnering significant amounts of popular support for Ansarallah in Yemen. 

According to Yemeni officials and analysts who spoke with Responsible Statecraft on 24 January, elements of the Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated Islah Party – which has, for the most part, been opposed to Ansarallah throughout the Yemen war – have been providing them with material support and have praised their pro-Palestine operations. 

January 24, 2024 Posted by | Militarism, War Crimes, Wars for Israel | , , , , | Leave a comment

Why a global anti-Hamas coalition pushed by Macron is a bad idea

By Rachel Marsden | RT | November 2, 2023

Last week, standing beside Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during a visit to Jerusalem, French President Emmanuel Macron suggested recycling the global coalition of 86 nations against Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS) to focus on Hamas.

“Hamas is a terrorist group, whose objective is the destruction of the state of Israel. This is also the case of ISIS, of Al-Qaeda, of all those associated with them, either by actions or by intentions,” Macron said, betraying a short and selective memory. The stated goal of IS wasn’t to eradicate Israel – it was to establish a caliphate in Syria and Iraq, then broaden it into Arab countries. IS was first and foremost a threat to the stability of Syria – the same country whose government the US and its Western allies actively hindered in its fight against terrorism by making a failed attempt at overthrowing President Bashar Assad through Pentagon and CIA-backed training and equipping of “Syrian rebel” jihadists. As for Al-Qaeda, Israel was even reportedly at one point helping treat wounded militants from the group who were fighting their common enemy, the Iranian-backed Hezbollah, in Syria – in turn effectively hindering the fight against IS, as Syria and Hezbollah worked to destroy it.

The Global Coalition against Daesh (another name for IS), founded in 2014, explicitly excluded Russia, whose invitation by Damascus to help it eradicate the terrorist threat can be largely credited for Syria’s stabilization, and the fact that it’s rare to even hear any talk of IS anymore. Russia’s involvement in neutralizing the terrorist group, coupled with former US President Donald Trump’s refusal to continue funding Washington’s incursion into Syria, beyond hunkering down in the oil-rich Kurdish part, was the ultimate key to IS’ defeat. So with apparently little left for it to do now, Macron recommends that the coalition that mostly sat and watched – while Russia, Iran, and Syria did the heavy lifting – take on Hamas. Who does he think is going to do the work this time? Russia, which is still excluded from the coalition? Syria, which has recently taken incoming missile fire from Israel? Iran’s Hezbollah allies, who lost 1,000 men fighting IS in Syria – and whom Netanyahu has placed in the same basket as Hamas as an enemy of Israel? Good luck with that.

So with the most effective anti-IS fighters excluded from fighting Hamas, who’s left in Macron’s proposed coalition? There’s the Global South, including some African countries that just kicked out French troops for their own failed counterterrorism missions which had led to multiple coups and the flourishing of jihadism. It’s doubtful these nations will now be keen to embark on yet another counterterrorism mission alongside the same forces that they just expelled.

Then there are all those members of the international community who are quietly thinking what United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres dared to say aloud last week – that Hamas’ brutal attack on October 7, which left close to a thousand civilians and hundreds of military and security personnel dead, “did not happen in a vacuum.” He was, of course, hinting at Israel’s longstanding, UN-recognized oppression of civilians in Gaza. His statement begs yet another question: Is Hamas really a global threat? Or is it just Israel’s problem?

Anti-Israel unrest has reverberated outside of the immediate conflict zone, including in Western Europe and the US, but these protests have nothing to do with Hamas. Instead, citizens elsewhere in the world are merely reacting to perceived injustices, particularly in light of what they consider to be an overwhelmingly pro-Israel bias on the part of the Western establishment, which initially and drastically minimized concerns over the protection of Palestinian civilians. So any global action against Hamas seems futile.

The anti-IS coalition targeted the terror group’s propaganda, with its website stating that IS’ “use of social media tied to acts of terrorism is well-documented. In response, Coalition partners are working together to expose the falsehoods that lie at the heart” of its ideology. They’re free to do that, but why bother when there’s already open debate among those who have the opportunity to see reports from the ground and assess the situation for themselves? Governments can’t be trusted not to promote their own propaganda under the guise of combating it – all to secure an advantage for their preferred narrative.

Just consider the recent example of propaganda emitted by one of the self-styled gatekeepers of truth: European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. “Russia and Hamas are alike… their essence is the same,” she said. Nah, actually they aren’t the same at all. And not even Israel has been saying that, but still, “Vladimir Putin wants to wipe Ukraine from the map. Hamas, supported by Iran, wants to wipe Israel from the map,” von der Leyen explained. Besides the hot take on Putin’s intentions regarding Ukraine, that’s like saying that since Warren Buffet has a bank account, and I have a bank account, then I’m also a billionaire. This is exactly the kind of nonsense that Western anti-propaganda campaigns end up spewing.

The anti-IS coalition was made to tackle IS. If that’s no longer an issue, then just toss it in the trash. How many interventionist entities does the West need to spearhead, anyway? There are already more than enough vehicles and coordination mechanisms for intelligence sharing, propagandizing, and security operations. Besides, there’s no proof that better intelligence could have helped Israel when Egyptian and American officials have claimed that Netanyahu had warning of the impending Hamas attack. About the only thing that more useless Western-led bureaucracy would help is the West’s own hunger for more of it.

Rachel Marsden is a columnist, political strategist, and host of independently produced talk-shows in French and English.

November 2, 2023 Posted by | Deception, Islamophobia, Wars for Israel | , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

UN cross-border aid program for Syria abused by extremists: Moscow

The Cradle | April 28, 2023

Moscow’s permanent representative to the UN, Vasily Nebenzia, said on 27 April that the UN-sponsored cross-border aid mechanism for Syria has “exhausted its capabilities” and is being “used for other purposes.”

The cross-border humanitarian aid mechanism has “has long since exhausted its capabilities and is being used for other purposes, far from addressing the humanitarian situation,” Nebenzia stressed.

The cross-border aid mechanism was established by the UN in 2014 in order to provide aid to northern Syria through the Turkish-Syrian border without authorization from the government in Damascus – a contravention of international regulations.

However, extremist militants in control of large swathes of Syria’s north began taking advantage of the mechanism in order to seize humanitarian aid for themselves, at times to sell for higher prices. Northern border-crossings associated with the UN aid program have even been subject to drug smuggling by armed groups.

Groups such as the Nusra Front, the former Al-Qaeda branch now known as Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), have also been involved in kidnapping aid workers to demand large ransoms – worsening an already volatile humanitarian situation. The aid program also excludes the majority of the population who reside in government-held territory, where an economy ravaged by sanctions has created significant humanitarian concerns.

“We would like to stress that if our western colleagues in the UN Security Council continue to act as if nothing has happened, and ignore the thwarting of the implementation of the Security Council resolution by international terrorists, we will draw the required conclusions from the current situation while formulating our position on extending the aid transfer mechanism for next July,” Nebenzia added.

The last time the cross-border aid mechanism was extended was in January this year. Russia has called for an end to the program numerous times, and has vetoed its extension in the past.

“It looks like permissions to use two additional checkpoints for three months, issued by Damascus, have de-facto reduced to zero UN enthusiasm to unblock deliveries via the contact line,” the Russian official said.

This refers to the two additional border crossings opened by the Syrian government following February’s devastating earthquake. The crossings, which link government-held territory to the militant-held north, would allow aid to be dispersed conventionally through the Syrian Arab Red Crescent (SARC). However, the UN has yet to lift restrictions on the use of these crossings.

Some have said that this is to perpetuate the idea that Damascus is behind the obstruction of aid delivery across the country, when in fact, HTS and other groups are to blame.

April 29, 2023 Posted by | Illegal Occupation | , , | 1 Comment

Large quantities of US weapons lost, stolen in Iraq, Syria: Report

The Cradle – March 31 2023

Hundreds of thousands of dollars in US artillery equipment, unspecified “weapons systems,” and specialized ammunition meant for US forces in Syria and Iraq have been stolen in recent years, The Intercept reported on 30 March.

According to criminal investigations files obtained under the Freedom of Information Act by The Intercept, at least four large-scale thefts and one loss of US equipment valued at some $200,000 have occurred in Iraq and Syria between 2020 and 2022. The lost items include 40mm high-explosive grenades stolen from US Special Forces.

The losses continue a previous pattern. The Intercept notes further that a 2020 audit by the Pentagon’s inspector general found that Special Operations Joint Task Force–Operation Inherent Resolve, the main unit that partners with the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) to illegally occupy northeast Iraq, did not properly account for $715.8 million of equipment purchased for the SDF.

The recent failure to prevent the theft of, and account for, US-supplied weapons is concerning because this previously played a key role in the rise of Al-Qaeda affiliated groups, including the Nusra Front and ISIS, in Iraq and Syria.

In the spring of 2015, an extremist coalition led by the Nusra Front successfully conquered Syria’s Idlib governorate, in large part thanks to US-manufactured and supplied TOW anti-tank missiles. The missiles were originally supplied to Free Syrian Army (FSA) groups working with closely with Nusra.

When Russia intervened in the Syria conflict to prevent the fall of the government to Al-Qaeda groups – including Nusra, ISIS, and Ahrar al-Sham – a few months later, in September 2015, US officials drastically escalated TOW missile shipments to FSA units working with these groups.

When journalist Sharmine Narwani asked why US-supplied weapons allegedly meant for FSA groups were showing up in the hands of the Nusra Front, CENTCOM spokesman Lieutenant Commander Kyle Raines responded: “We don’t ‘command and control’ these forces – we only ‘train and enable’ them. Who they say they’re allying with, that’s their business.”

ISIS was also a major beneficiary of US-supplied weapons. Conflict Armament Research (CAR), a UK-based organization that tracks the supply of weapons into conflict-affected areas, reported that “Unauthorised retransfer – the violation of agreements by which a supplier government prohibits the re-export of materiel by a recipient government without its prior consent – is a significant source of [ISIS] weapons and ammunition. The US and Saudi Arabia supplied most of this material without authorization, apparently to Syrian opposition forces.”

By way of example, CAR noted that it had recovered US-supplied anti-tank missiles used by ISIS in Ramadi in February 2016. CAR confirmed that the missiles had been exported from the United States in December 2015. This indicates that the weapons were diverted to ISIS “in a matter of days or weeks after their supply.”

March 31, 2023 Posted by | Deception, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

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