Ten years on, Syria is almost destroyed. Who’s to blame?
Syria in ruins after ten years of conflict (File photo)
BY M. K. BHADRAKUMAR | INDIAN PUNCHLINE | MARCH 20, 2021
In George Orwell’s novel Animal Farm, the ruling pigs led by Napoleon constantly rewrote history in order to justify and reinforce their own continuing power. The rewriting by the western powers of the history of the ongoing conflict in Syria leaps out of Orwell.
The joint statement issued by the foreign ministers of the US, UK, France, Germany and Italy last week to mark the tenth anniversary of the Syrian conflict begins with an outright falsehood by holding President Bashar al-Assad and “his backers” responsible for the horrific events in that country. It asserts that the five western powers “will not abandon” the Syrian people — till death do us part.
The historical reality is that Syria has been a theatre of the CIA’s activities ever since the inception of that agency in 1947. There is a whole history of CIA-sponsored “regime change” projects in Syria ranging from coup attempts and assassination plots to paramilitary strikes and funding and military training of anti-government forces.
It all began with the bloodless military coup in 1949 against then Syrian president Shukri al-Quwatli which was engineered by the CIA. As per the memoirs of Miles Copeland Jr, the CIA station chief in Damascus at that time — who later actually went on to write a fine book of high literary quality on the subject — the coup aimed at safeguarding Syria from the communist party and other radicals!
However, the CIA-installed colonel in power, Adib Shaishakli, was a bad choice. As Copeland put it, he was a “likeable rogue” alright who had not “to my certain knowledge, ever bowed down to a graven image. He had, however, committed sacrilege, blasphemy, murder, adultery and theft” to earn American support. He lasted for four years before overthrown by the Ba’ath Party and military officers. By 1955, CIA estimated that Syria was ripe for another military coup. By April 1956, a joint CIA-SIS (British Secret Intelligence Service) plot was implemented to mobilise right-wing Syrian military officers. But then, the Suez fiasco interrupted the project.
The CIA revived the project and plotted a second coup in 1957 under the codename Operation Wappen — again, to save Syria from communism — and even spent $3 million to bribe Syrian military officers. Tim Weiner, in his masterly 2008 book Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA, writes:
“The president (Dwight Eisenhower) said he wanted to promote the idea of an Islamic jihad against godless communism. “We should do everything possible to stress the ‘holy war’ aspect,” he said at a 1957 White House meeting… (Secretary of state) Foster Dulles proposed a “secret task force,” under whose auspices the CIA would deliver American guns, money, and intelligence to King Saud of Saudi Arabia, King Hussein of Jordan, President Camille Chamoun of Lebanon, and President Nuri Said of Iraq.”
“These four mongrels were supposed to be our defence against communism and the extremes of Arab nationalism in the Middle East… If arms could not buy loyalty in the Middle East, the almighty dollar was still the CIA’s secret weapon. Cash for political warfare and power plays was always welcome. It could help an American imperium in Arab and Asian lands.”
But, as it happened, some of those “right-wing” officers instead turned in the bribe money and revealed the CIA plot to the Syrian intelligence. Whereupon, 3 CIA officers were kicked out of the American embassy in Damascus, forcing Washington to withdraw its ambassador in Damascus. With egg on its face, Washington promptly branded Syria as a “Soviet satellite”, deployed a fleet to the Mediterranean and incited Turkey to amass troops on the Syrian border. Dulles even contemplated a military strike under the so-called “Eisenhower Doctrine” as retaliation against Syria’s “provocations”. By the way, Britain’s MI6 was also working with the CIA in the failed coup attempt; the details came to light accidentally in 2003 among the papers of British Defence Minister Duncan Sandys many years after his death.
Now, coming down to current history, suffice to say that according to the WikiLeaks, since 2006, the US had been funding London-based Syrian dissidents, and the CIA unit responsible for covert operations was deployed to Syria to mobilise rebel groups and ascertain potential supply routes. The US is known to have trained at least 10,000 rebel fighters at a cost of $1 billion annually since 2012. President Barack Obama reportedly admitted to a group of senators the operation to insert these CIA-trained rebel fighters into Syria.
The well-known American investigative journalist and political writer Seymour Hersh has written, based on inputs from intelligence officers, that the CIA was already transferring arms from its Benghazi station (Libya) to Syria around that time. Make no mistake, Obama was the first world leader to openly call for the removal of Assad. That was in August 2011. Then CIA chief David Petraeus paid two unannounced visits to Turkey (in March and September 2012) to persuade Erdogan to step in as the flag carrier of the US’ regime change project in Syria (under the rubric of “anti-terror fight”.)
In fact, the US’ key allies in the Persian Gulf — Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the UAE — took the cue from Obama to loosen their purse strings to recruit, finance and equip thousands of jihadi fighters to be deployed to Syria. Equally, from the early stages of the conflict in Syria, major western intelligence agencies provided political, military and logistic support to the Syrian opposition and its associated rebel groups in Syria.
Curiously, the Russian intervention in Syria in September 2015 was in response to an emergent imminent defeat of the Syrian government forces at the hands of the jihadi fighters backed by the US’ regional allies. Saudi Arabia withdrew from the arena only in 2017 after the tide of the war turned, thanks to the Russian intervention.
The joint statement issued last week by the US and its NATO allies belongs to the world of fiction. In reality, there is Syrian blood in the hands of these NATO countries (including Turkey) and the US’ Gulf allies. Look at the colossal destruction that the US has caused: in the World Bank’s estimation, a cumulative total of $226 billion in gross domestic product was lost to Syria due to the war from 2011 to 2016 alone.
The Syrian conflict has been among the most tragic and destructive conflicts of our time. Hundreds of thousands of Syrians have died, half a nation has been displaced, and millions have been forced into desperate poverty and hunger. In the UNHRC estimation, after ten years of conflict, half of the Syrian population has been forced to flee home, 70% are living in poverty, 6.7 million Syrians have been internally displaced, over 13 million people need humanitarian assistance and protection, 12.4 million people suffer from lack of food (or 60% of the entire population), 5.9 million people are experiencing a housing emergency and nearly nine in 10 Syrians are living below the poverty threshold.
And, come to think of it, Syria used to have one of the highest levels of social formation in the entire Muslim Middle East. It used to be a middle income country until the US decided to destabilise Syria. Ever since the late 1940s, the US’ successive regime change projects were driven by geopolitical considerations. The agenda is unmistakeable: the US has systematically destroyed the heart, soul and mind of “Arabism” — Iraq, Syria and Egypt — with a view to perpetuate the western [Zionist] domination of the Middle East.
Former President Donald Trump intended to withdraw the US troops from Syria and end the war. He tried twice, but Pentagon commanders sabotaged his plans. What Joe Biden proposes to do is anybody’s guess. Biden doesn’t seem to be in any rush to withdraw the US troops.
The most disturbing aspect is that the US is methodically facilitating a Balkanisation of Syria by helping the Kurdish groups aligned with it to carve out a semiautonomous enclave in the country’s northeast. In fact, the the Arab population in northeastern Syria resents being under the Kurds’ governance, and this may eventually turn into a new source of recruits for Islamic State. Meanwhile, Turkey seized the US-Kurdish axis as alibi to occupy vast territories in northern Syria.
The sad part of the joint statement by the US and its European allies is not only that it is rewriting history and spreading falsehood but conveys a sense of despair that there is no hope for light at the end of the tunnel in the Syrian conflict in a conceivable future.
The US policy in Syria is opaque. It has oscillated between aiming to prevent a resurgence of IS, confronting Iran, pushing back against Russia, providing humanitarian aid, and even protecting Israel, while the crux of the matter is that successive US administrations have failed to articulate a clear strategy and rationale for the US military presence in Syria.
The Syrian government has been blamed for the 2018 Saraqib chemical attack, but this time around India isn’t buying it
By Kit Klarenberg | RT | April 23, 2021
Damascus again finds itself the subject of international opprobrium after being found guilty of a chemical attack, and ostracised from the OPCW. However, New Delhi’s rejection of the report suggests the West’s influence is waning.
On April 21, the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) announced it would remove Syria’s “rights and privileges” within the association with immediate effect.
The move was precipitated by 87 OPCW member states voting in favor of a proposal by 46 countries – led by London, Paris, and Washington – to strip Damascus of its voting powers in the assembly, and bar the country’s representatives from holding any offices within the organisation.
It’s the first time a member state has been sanctioned in such a manner in its 24-year history, and follows just over a week after the OPCW released the findings of its second Investigation and Identification Team (IIT) probe of an alleged chemical attack in Saraqib, Syria in February 2018. The team concluded that a Syrian Air Force helicopter had dropped “at least” one cylinder containing chlorine over the city, dispersing the contents over a wide area.
The report’s headline claims were dutifully amplified without critique by the mainstream media, but this time not all were convinced. At an informal meeting of United Nations Security Council members, convened by Moscow and Beijing on April 16, four days after the IIT findings were released, India’s deputy permanent representative K. Nagaraj Naidu had some stern words for the OPCW.
He stated that New Delhi had always stressed the necessity of “impartial, credible and objective” investigations into the use of chemical weapons, which “scrupulously” follow Chemical Weapons Convention procedures and provisions to reach “evidence-based conclusions,” scathingly adding, “the current report falls short of these expectations.”
The veteran diplomat didn’t articulate India’s specific reservations about the findings, but said it was necessary to “draw lessons” from events such as Colin Powell’s infamous February 2003 UNSC speech, when he claimed Washington possessed “irrefutable and undeniable” evidence Iraq had weapons of mass destruction capable of targeting the West.
In any event, one doesn’t require a degree in chemistry to see the IIT report is far from “impartial, credible and objective” on its own terms.
First and foremost, the OPCW claims IIT findings were derived from a “comprehensive review” of a mountain of evidence, including eyewitness and victim interviews, analysis of samples collected at the site, and even examination of satellite imagery. But it simultaneously concedes the probe “relied” on a May 2018 OPCW Fact-Finding Mission (FFM) investigation of the incident, which reached the same conclusions as the IIT.
Relying on the FFM report is inherently problematic, given mission investigators didn’t actually visit the site of the attack, and all the samples reviewed were provided by the highly controversial White Helmets. This means there was no chain of custody for this vital physical evidence, in breach of long-standing OPCW protocol, which states such a paper trail is “100% critical.”
“The OPCW would never get involved in testing samples that our own inspectors don’t gather in the field, because we need to maintain chain of custody of samples from the field to the lab to ensure their integrity,” an OPCW spokesperson said in April 2013.
Interestingly, a table in the FFM report comparing samples taken from two cylinders said to have delivered the chlorine payload, indicated chlorine-related chemicals were found by investigators but also showed many chemicals detected were related to the nerve agent sarin, which jihadist forces in Syria are known to have used.
The FFM report and its IIT successor nonetheless both conclude there are “reasonable grounds” to believe the chemical used in the attack was chlorine, the latter claiming “sarin-related compounds” represented a negligible part of the “chemical signature” identified in the samples. However, they also note that specialists the team consulted “agreed that it would be difficult to fill a cylinder to be used as a weapon with both sarin and chlorine.”
The IIT is said to have explored “the possibility of cross-contamination during the sampling process, or at a later stage in the handling of the samples themselves,” their findings “leaving the possibility that contamination occurred before sampling or after the samples were taken, but before they were secured by the OPCW in sealed packaging.”
“The latter scenario would still not fully explain why only by-products and one degradation product of sarin, rather than sarin itself, were identified,” the particularly incongruous passage notes. “In any event, since the FFM did not make findings related to the use of sarin in Saraqib…the IIT refrained from pursuing this aspect of the incident further. Some uncertainties in respect of the possible use of sarin in the same area remain.”
No doubt due to recent allegations of rebel forces having staged “false flag” chemical attacks in Syria in order to precipitate Western intervention, the IIT report specifically explored this scenario. Investigators obtained and analyzed “various household chlorine-based products commonly used in the Syrian Arab Republic and readily available on the market,” which identified six specific chemicals, “the presence of which in samples from the Saraqib incident could be indicative of intentional – or even accidental – dispersal of these chlorine-based products in the area in question.”
No trace of the six chemicals could be found in the samples, which the IIT contends entirely refutes suggestions of staging. However, which six chemicals were found by the team isn’t stated, nor is how and why their absence rules out a “false flag” operation explained.
The White Helmets were even more fundamental to the FFM investigation than merely providing the samples. They also put investigators in touch with witnesses who reinforced the chlorine attack narrative, several of whom conspicuously stated that the smell around the affected area was a “pungent odour” similar to “household cleaning products, though stronger.”
The White Helmets were likewise central to the OPCW’s investigation of several other alleged chemical strikes in Syria, including an April 2018 incident in Douma. Leaked internal OPCW documents reveal that two FFM teams were sent to investigate the incident, with one heading to the site itself, and the other to Turkey.
Witness interviews conducted in the separate countries diverged so sharply that a 116-page draft interim report prepared in June 2018 specifically referred to “two broad and distinct narratives” – one in which a chemical attack happened, one in which no such event occurred.
Yet the report released to the public was trimmed to just 34 pages, with all ballistic, forensic and witness evidence gathered by the Douma FFM, which completely dispelled the notion of a chemical attack, and pointed directly or indirectly to a staged incident, removed. Instead, based on the White Helmets-provided evidence alone, the OPCW claimed there was “sufficient evidence” to conclude chlorine had been unleashed on the rebel-occupied city from cylinders dropped from a government helicopter. An eerie echo of its Saraqib probe indeed.
This selective editing was quite so misleading, it prompted an OPCW investigator who’d visited Douma to write privately to the organisation’s director general, expressing their “gravest concern” at the degree to which the findings “misrepresents the facts.” It wasn’t until November 2019, 18 months after the report was released, that their chilling words were leaked online.
It’s anyone’s guess whether similarly grave concerns have been expressed internally about the evidently equally suspect Saraqib FFM probe, although in this case no investigator actually went to the city to conduct an “impartial, credible and objective” on-the-ground inspection. The very countries that proposed Syria’s OPCW censure are no doubt relieved – and the OPCW itself is extremely unlikely to make such an egregious mistake ever again.
Kit Klarenberg is an investigative journalist exploring the role of intelligence services in shaping politics and perceptions.
Anti-Syrian OPCW Resolution Adopted After Pressure on Some Countries, Russian Envoy Says
Sputnik – 22.04.2021
The 25th Session of the Conference of the States Parties to the OPCW was held in the Hague on 20-22 April. During this session, France presented a draft resolution, which provides for the suspension of the rights and privileges of Syria in the organisation due to the alleged violation of the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) by Damascus. Members of the organisation adopted the resolution by a majority vote.
“At the 25th conference of the participating States that ended in The Hague, an anti-Syrian resolution on the deprivation of Syria of its rights and privileges was adopted. This means that Damascus is deprived of the right to vote at sessions of the highest governing body, the conference; it cannot be elected to the executive board of the organization, and also to any of its other subsidiary bodies, the Syrians will be denied access to posts in the technical secretariat,” Russia’s Permanent Representative to the OPCW Alexander Shulgin said.
He noted that this was the first such precedent on The Hague site when a state party was declared a persistent violator of the CWC and sanctions were applied against it.
“And this is done by falsifying facts, massive propaganda, blackmail and twisting arms of some countries to ensure the necessary voting results on the relevant documents. To our great regret, this is what the OPCW is turning into. All this is done by the efforts of the United States, France, the United Kingdom and others. countries that do not cease to nurture plans to remove the government of Bashar Assad, which they hate, from the political arena,” the permanent representative emphasized.
Opponents of official Damascus, by their actions to advance geopolitical interests, are destroying the OPCW and leading it to collapse, he added.
OPCW ignores critics of its cover-up, imposes sanctions on Syria
By Robert Inlakesh – Press TV – April 22, 2021
The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) has revoked Syria’s privileges at the agency, accusing it of repeatedly using chemical weapons during the civil war, yet refuses to properly address complaints of a cover-up by the organization over their sole on-the-ground investigation of any such attack.
On April 7, 2018, an alleged chemical weapons attack was reported from inside Douma, Syria, according to reports on the ground. Days later, the US, the UK, and France bombarded Syria in “response,” without any clarification that any such attack had taken place.
The significance of the alleged Douma attack was not only that it led to Western airstrikes on Syria, but also that it was the first alleged chemical attack that the OPCW had sent an on-the-ground team to investigate.
Despite the OPCW now concluding that there was a chemical attack that took place, the leaked ‘original report’ put together on the incident reveals that the studies conducted had found no evidence of a chemical attack using chlorine gas.
Two whistleblowers also spoke out from inside the OPCW, creating greater doubt about the credibility of the OPCW’s publicly stated conclusions. A leaked engineering assessment, conducted by the OPCW, on the two gas cylinders found at the site of the alleged Douma attack interestingly found that the evidence had been tampered with.
The first head of the OPCW, Jose Bustani, has also applied pressure and challenged the way the organization has handled the reporting, along with experts in the field such as Theodore Postol, an award-winning professor of Science, Technology and National Security Policy at MIT.
Recently, award-winning investigative journalist Aaron Mate addressed a United Nations Security Council panel, laying out a detailed analysis — which he says casts doubts over the OPCW’s current position — on whether there was a chlorine gas attack in Douma. When, at the end of the meeting, it came time for the representatives from both the US and UK to answer a direct question posed to them by Mate, they had already left the meeting.
An EU lawmaker, Mick Wallace, was also attacked as having repeated “fake news” when he questioned the OPCW Director-General Fernando Arias and said the following: “Why will you not heed calls from renowned international figures… to meet with all the investigators?” He went on to state, “This problem is not going away. Are you going to investigate all aspects in a transparent manner?”
It’s safe to say that there are large question marks surrounding the OPCW’s findings, but what of those “moderate rebels” in Syria claiming to have witnessed a massacre of Syrian civilians with chlorine gas?
The allegations of a Douma chemical weapons attack came from within territory held by a Saudi-backed extremist group, Jaish al-Islam. The terrorist organization, described as “moderate rebels” by Western media outlets, had a track record of placing Syrian civilians — men women and children — in cages outside of areas where militants were stationed in order to deter airstrikes from the Syrian government and its allies. The group also had been accused of starving and brutally executing Syrian civilians, on top of shelling civilian neighborhoods under Syrian government control and filming themselves opening fire upon civilian airliners.
At the time of the reported chlorine gas attack, it was clear that the Syrian government and their allies were on the verge of taking the rest of “rebel”-held Eastern Ghouta. The claims of a chemical weapons attack directly caused Western airstrikes, as happened just a year prior when a supposed chemical weapons attack also occurred in an area known as Khan Sheikhoun.
There was clearly a motive for the extremist organization, Jaish al-Islam, to claim that such an attack occurred in Douma, especially as they were losing the battle against government forces. In the case of the Syrian government, there would be no reason to risk committing such an atrocious crime when they were days away from complete victory, inviting Western airstrikes. This was simple to see, with the most elementary-level understanding of the Syrian war, yet these types of common sense arguments weren’t even taken into consideration by the international community.
Now, after ignoring all the credible critics, from journalists to EU lawmakers and whistleblowers to the ex-director general of the OPCW itself, the organization sees fit to impose sanctions on Syria for committing chemical attacks. Interestingly enough, they note multiple attacks as their justification and not just the Douma attack, and when pushed on it, the director general pointed to human rights reports to support his argument.
It is clear that the OPCW has taken a serious blow to its credibility and has decided to back Western imperialism over the truth, a shameful decision that serves as part of the justifications provided for the West applying its murderous sanctions on Syria.
Robert Inlakesh is a journalist, writer, and political analyst. He has lived in and reported from the occupied West Bank. He has written for publications such as Mint Press, Mondoweiss, MEMO, and various other outlets. He specializes in analysis of the Middle East, in particular Palestine-Israel matters. He also works for Press TV as a Europe correspondent.
As chemical weapons watchdog’s credibility crumbles, OPCW member states strip Syria’s voting rights
RT | April 21, 2021
Syria has been stripped of most of its rights at the global chemical weapons watchdog for alleged breaches. The OPCW stands accused of suppressing facts reported by its own inspectors in Syria for political purposes.
The vote to penalize Syria took place on Wednesday at the conference of the states that are parties to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) in The Hague. Syria was punished for allegedly violating the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC), of which the OCPW is the guardian, based on reports by the special Investigation and Identification Team (IIT).
The penalties were imposed at the proposal of France and backed by Western nations who helped pass it overwhelmingly by 87 to 15, with 34 abstentions out of 136 countries taking part.
The mechanism was created last year and was authorized to name perpetrators of chemical weapons attacks. It has on several occasions accused Syria of CWC infractions. Damascus sees the IIT as a “propaganda tool” used by countries seeking to topple its government, and says its reports cannot be considered scientific, as a Syrian representative said at the conference prior to the vote.
The concern is shared by some other countries, including Russia and China. The Chinese representative reminded on Wednesday that the IIT has remarkably less rigorous standards for collecting evidence than the OPCW-UN Joint Investigative Mechanism (JIM) did. The JIM was tasked with investigating incidents of alleged use of chemical weapons in Syria before the ITT.
“The IIT, instead of conducting on-site investigations, gave credence to samples provided by the so-called ‘non-government organizations,’ heeded the opinions of the so-called ‘external experts’ and interviewed the so-called ‘witnesses in third countries’,” Ambassador Jian Tan said, stressing that the work of the IIT went beyond the mandate under the CWC and couldn’t guarantee impartiality of the results.
Skepticism about the IIT and the OPCW in general has been growing among member states since 2019, when the organization was accused of covering up evidence discovered by its own inspectors after an incident in the Damascus suburb of Douma, which happened in April 2018. The US, the UK and France swiftly responded to the highly-publicized incident with retaliatory missile attacks against Syria.
The watchdog’s final report in 2019 all but accused Damascus of dropping chlorine gas canisters on the area as part of its effort to capture it from jihadist forces. But several whistleblowers came up after the report’s release with documents and testimonies indicating a different scenario.
They said the evidence collected by a JIM mission on the ground pointed to possible staging of the scene to blame the Syrian army. The OPCW allegedly suppressed the contradictory evidence and brought in external experts, who helped it arrive at the conclusions favorable to the three countries, which launched the strikes at Syria.
The OPCW leadership responded to the allegations by painting the whistleblowers as rogue elements disgruntled at the organization and ignoring calls for a rigorous scientific examination of how the final report on Douma was penned. Western governments and media treat their testimonies as a conspiracy theory peddled by Russia.
However this attempt to brush aside the dissenting voices seems to be hurting OPCW’s credibility. Earlier this month, members of the UN Security Council held an informal meeting to discuss the issue, and during the events India for the first time openly criticized the watchdog’s recent Syria reporting issued under the IIT mechanism.
As an OPCW state party, India expects the organization to conduct “impartial, credible and objective investigation into any use of chemical weapons,” in line with the convention principles, Indian envoy K. Nagaraj Naidu said. “The current report falls short of these expectations”.
The report in question details three alleged chemical weapons attacks in the town of Ltamenah in March 2017, which the IIT attributed to the Syrian Air Force. It updates an earlier version explaining OPCW’s findings, which was released last year and which New Delhi didn’t publicly comment on.
India was among the countries that voted against the creation of the IIT, citing its concerns over ‘mandate creep’. It abstained in July 2020, when the OPCW Executive Council voted to condemn Syria for IIT-reported use of chemical weapons.
Syria joined the OPCW in 2013 and declared massive stockpiles of chemical weapons, which were subsequently destroyed. The move was taken after Washington said it was considering military action against Syria after an alleged chemical weapons attack. The OPCW received the 2013 Nobel Peace Prize for bringing Syria into the CWC fold.
Bipartisan Murder
By Richard Medhurst | April 11, 2021
Syria is the key to the Middle East. Bordering Turkey, Iraq, Lebanon, Jordan and Palestine, and with access to the Mediterranean Sea, for millennia Syria has held unique geopolitical and strategic importance in the region. The war taking place there since 2011 has been sold by virtually every news outlet in the West as being strictly a civil war, part of the popular uprisings of the ‘Arab Spring’. The reality couldn’t be more different.
As General Wesley Clarke points out in 2007 there had been an agenda to take out “seven countries in five years” among them Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Iran; to replace their governments with ones favorable to Washington DC.
Five years already before the “Arab Spring”, a 2006 cable from the United States embassy in Damascus published by WikiLeaks shows how the US was looking at various threats, both real and exaggerated, that it could exploit in order to destabilize the Syrian government.
The US and its allies Britain, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar began funding and arming various militias inside Syria, funneling weapons and supplies to them in order to overthrow the Syrian government. Efraim Halevy, former head of israel’s intelligence service the Mossad, even admitted in an interview that Israel had provided aid to Al Qaeda fighters just because it was advantageous for Israel to see the Syrian government fall.
PBS recently did an interview with Abu Mohammad al Jolani, a terrorist leader in Syria’s north-western Idlib during which he expressed no intent to fight with the US, despite having a $10 million bounty on his head. The article goes on to mention how former Ambassador James Jeffrey, the US’ former Special Envoy to Syria, confirms that al Jolani’s organization Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), a rebrand of Al Qaeda, was a “an asset” to America’s strategy in Idlib.
To cover up the undeniable role played by foreign governments, to this day the mainstream media portrays the war on Syria as a grassroots uprising by “moderate rebels”— the overwhelming majority of whom just so happen to be rebrands or affiliated with Al Qaeda and other jihadist elements.
Despite the efforts of the entire Western propaganda machine and a dozen nations ganging up against Syria, their gamble for regime change has failed thus far: Syria has taken back most of its territory from ISIS and other foreign-backed terrorists, and now boasts even stronger ties with its allies than before. Take for example Russia’s naval port in Tartus, established in Syria in 1971 as part of an accord with the Syrian government, providing it access to the Mediterranean Sea. A decade ago, at the start of the war, the port was practically crumbling, Ten years later in 2021, it’s been completely renovated, upgraded and fitted with state of the art ships.
While some argue the main goal behind the war in Syria was to build the Qatar-Turkey pipeline which would deliver gas through Syria to Europe, undercutting Russia’s market share, I think the larger objective for the United States has mostly been regime change and to remove the “thorn” in israel’s side. Syria refuses to recognize israel and has no official ties with the Zionist occupation. The two have been at odds with each other for the last 73 years; not just since the start of the occupation of Palestine in 1948, but also the capture of the Syrian Golan Heights in 1967 and consequent illegal annexation. Syria is also allied with Russia, Iran and supports the various liberation movements of its neighbors including the Palestinian resistance, Hezbollah and the Popular Mobilization Forces in Iraq, collectively dubbed the “Axis of Resistance”– a twist on George Bush’s “Axis of Evil“.
Seeing how the regime change strategy through various terrorist and armed groups has failed in Syria, the United States is now occupying Syria’s vital breadbasket region, where most of its crops are grown, as well as the oil fields in Deir Ezzor and Hassakeh provinces in East and North-Eastern Syria.
After Trump openly admitted “we’re keeping the oil”, we also saw in August, 2020 then Secretary of State Pompeo admit to Senator Lindsay Graham during a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing that a US firm would be “modernizing Syria’s oil fields”, which is a nice way to say “plundering”.
Graham can be heard gloating about the brutal Caesar Act sanctions imposed by the Trump administration. Indeed, in addition to stealing Syria’s resources, the United States is also starving the Syrian population with siege warfare. These Caesar sanctions announced by Trump and kept by Biden serve no purpose other than to tighten the noose on the Syria’s population. Syria’s economy has collapsed, its currency in free-fall and nearly 60 percent of the population is now food insecure in a country which used to be self-sufficient and a net exporter of wheat. The US shamelessly states that its goal is to deprive the Syrian government, and by extension the Syrian people, of one of their most valuable resources (oil accounts for around 25% of government revenue) desperately needed to fund public infrastructure and social programs, with 90% of Syrians now living in poverty. They pretend that sanctions only affect the politicians but it’s the civilians who are suffering.
The West doesn’t care if Syrians die. This scorched-earth policy is advantageous to US and Western interests because it keeps Syria in a constant state of chaos and helps israel create a buffer beyond just the occupied Golan Heights, but also more generally as Syria is now unable to defend itself, defend its neighbors, and subject to regular airstrikes which the world lets israel carry out with impunity.
While Secretary of State Blinken uses his own kids in some deranged comparison to pretend he cares about Syrian children he and Biden are completely fine keeping Donald Trump’s “Maximum Pressure Campaign” of sanctions going. According to Syria’s oil minister around 90% of Syria’s crude is now under control of the US. Syrians wait in massive queues as they experience fuel shortages and are lining up for bread. Sanctions are a modern adaptation of siege warfare, just as ruthless and deadly.
Both Democrats and Republicans are on the same page when it comes to imperialism and their fealty to corporations. There is no difference among them in that regard except in decorum. After Trump bombed Syria in April 2018, over an alleged chemical gas attack in Douma later revealed to have been staged, then Senator Kamala Harris questioned the “legal rationale” behind the strikes. Some Democrats criticized Trump saying it was a breach of constitutional powers– but none of them fundamentally questioned whether these alleged chemical attacks had even taken place to begin with. The team of scientists sent by the Organization for the Prohibition for Chemical Weapons hadn’t even arrived in Syria yet to determine what had happened. Democrats only issued mild statements of rebuke while simultaneously cheering on Assad was being “punished”– which goes to show their objectives fundamentally remain the same, no matter who is in power.
Biden’s bombing of Syria
After Joe Biden became president his first military action was to bomb Syria. Naturally, bombings takes priority over campaign promises like the $15 minimum wage or $2,000 checks he lied about. Biden’s supposed “justification” for bombing Syria on February 25th, 2021 was that he was acting in self-defense to protect the United States. This is of course an absurdity; Syria is not a threat to the United States nor has it attacked the United States– if anything it’s the other way around. Nevertheless, it doesn’t matter that Biden blatantly lies in his letter to Congress, everyone knows this is merely a cover story in order to comply with the War Powers Resolution (notifying Congress of military action and citing defensive measures if no prior Authorization for Use of Military Force exists).
When Biden bombed Syria he claimed to have targeted “Iranian backed militias”- the same excuse that Israel gives when illegally bombing Syria almost on a weekly basis. When I spoke to Professor Max Abrahms on my television The Communiqué he said the bombing was likely more about sending a message to Israel rather than Iran; a show of support from Biden that the Zionist occupation could still count on the new administration’s support.
When corporate media and Western politicians say “Iranian backed militias” they’re referring to the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF / PMU) or Hashed al Shaabi in Arabic. The PMU is made up mostly of various Iraqi brigades, consisting of different religious and ethnic groups, despite claims that they’re exclusively Shiah– although even then I struggle to understand how that would give the US or Israel the right to kill them. The popular forces are united under one banner to fight terrorism and occupation. Of course the United States can’t have you realizing they’re a resistance movement because then people would rightfully ask “resisting what?” and that’s of course the United States, illegally occupying Iraq since 2003. The PMU also celebrated major victories in defeated ISIS and Al Qaeda, taking back the major city of Mosul in 2016. Although the US and its illegal occupation like to take credit for that (so they can justify their presence) that victory is not theirs. As a matter of fact, the United States not only helped create Al Qaeda and ISIS but Trump’s assassination of General Soleimani and PMU commander Abu Mahdi was celebrated by the very terrorists who had come to fear them. While the US claims to fight terrorism it’s actively helping terrorists by killing their biggest enemies. And now of course Biden follows in Trump’s footsteps, proceeding to bomb the PMU. I wonder how many will break the situation down like that for you on the evening nows? Let’s be clear on something: I don’t care if the target was an empty barn in Syria – he has no right to bomb anything there nor in any other country.
Shortly after Biden’s bombing of Syria, Tim Kaine (D-VA) and Todd Young (R-IN) introduced legislation calling for the repeal of the 1991 and 2002 AUMFs. Note that the 2001 AUMF is missing – unsurprising as it’s the template Congress has used for two decades to invade, bomb and ransack the planet in the name of “the War on Terror”. Of course they wouldn’t repeal that AUMF. Biden is now on track to violate the Afghanistan peace deal signed under Trump, after drawing down the number of US troops in Afghanistan to 2,500, with a complete withdrawal set for a deadline of May 1st. Right on cue, the US claims that the Taliban aren’t holding up their end of the deal- hence why the US can’t leave just yet, continuing to impose conditions on their departure as if Afghanistan belongs to them. Naturally, the media provides cover for the longest war in US history, repeating without question or scrutiny Biden’s claims that a withdrawal “can’t be rushed” after occupying Afghanistan for almost 20 years. CNN also made the case that this is now about women’s rights– as if the United States cared about women when it displaced millions of them in Afghanistan, Libya, Iraq, Syria. We’re now made to believe that occupation is emancipation. The poor white man’s burden, freeing the world through bombs, sanctions and occupation.
Unsurprisingly, Democrats have largely chosen to side with him on the issue while others, including so called “progressives” like Alexandria-Ocasio Cortez have remained completely silent despite criticizing Trump for bombing Syria in 2018, calling him a ‘mad king’. This really shows you where their allegiances lie and how far their “progressivism” extends. The so called “left-wing” of the Democratic Party is about as “progressive” as you can get when you stay silent about Biden bombing Syria, ballooning the war machine to an outrageous $753 billion, and violating the Afghan peace deal in order to maintain a 20-year occupation. War pigs. All of them.
A template for war
The Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) of 2001 and 2002 passed by Congress formed the legal basis with which Bush invaded Afghanistan and Iraq. Specifically, the AUMF of 2001 broadly authorizes force against those who “planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons.”. This ambiguous language essentially gives the president a blank check to conduct military strikes anywhere and has been distorted and manipulated by every president since in order to expand the “War on Terror” into 19 countries. Trump in his usual absurdity even cited the 2002 AUMF to try and justify his assassination of General Soleimani in January, 2020. Of course, Congress won’t ever go after him for that, despite all this talk of how Trump posed a unique danger to US democracy, let alone any other sitting or former president. Never forget, Nancy Pelosi refused to impeach George W. Bush and admits as late as 2019 that she knew George Bush had lied about weapons of mass destruction and still chose to ignore calls to impeach him over a war that displaced and killed millions of Iraqis.
The constitution clearly says that the president is the commander-in-chief of the United States’ Armed Forces, however, that the power to declare war resides with Congress. Although the president can respond to imminent threats, the War Powers Resolution of 1973 stipulates that the president must notify Congress in absence of a declaration of war or prior statutory authorization. Consultation and follow ups with the Legislative branch are a must and the entire point of the resolution is to limit the Executive’s reach in matters of war.
If Congress has already issued an Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF), presidents will operate within that framework and cite it to justify any action they take. What presidents have often done is to abuse this and distort its legal interpretation e.g. Bush’s crimes in Iraq, Obama’s drone strikes in Pakistan, Trump’s assassination of General Soleimani. On the other hand, if Congress hasn’t issued an AUMF, like in the case of Biden’s bombing of Syria, then the president will simply cite self-defense as the justification– which is exactly what Biden did– even if it isn’t true. In either case, whether an AUMF has been issued or not, it seems Congress allows presidents to proceed unchecked– because Congress agrees with their imperialist agenda.
One mustn’t forget that even in the case when Congress issues an AUMF and agrees with the president’s military action: US law does not supersede international law. For example, just because the US Congress voted to invade Iraq does not mean that this invasion was morally or legally justifiable.
While Biden cites Article 51 under the United Nations as the United States’ right to self-defense, one has to wonder how Article 51 would even begin to apply in this context. Syria has not attacked the United States, nor are the two nations (at least officially) at war. Moreover, if the targets were so called “Iranian-backed militias”, the same rationale still applies. These bombings also violate Article 2.4 of the United Nations Charter which asserts Syria’s sovereignty and prohibits use of force against other member states. Some legal scholars might go on to argue that self-defense under Article 51 only applies against other states, not “militias”. Some might also question how the United States can argue self-defense when its very presence in Iraq is illegal to begin with; the result of an illegal invasion in 2003? At best Biden’s pretext for bombing Syria is dubious, and at worst downright illegal and outrageous. I think most rational people can clearly see it’s the latter.
Indeed, no matter who is in charge, the warmongering remains the same. Obama, Trump, Biden have all maintained George Bush’s neoconservative wars, his creation and expansion of the electronic surveillance start, his Department of Homeland Security and the post-9/11 world crafted by the Bush-Cheney regime. You won’t see many Democrats or Republicans voicing support to repeal the AUMF anytime soon. War is a racket, and the United States excels at it. It’s no accident you have a revolving door between Washington D.C. and the private sector, and that the new Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin is a former board member of the weapons manufacturer Raytheon. At least there’s diversity right? Now that the Treasury and Office of Foreign Assets Control, whose sanctions kill millions, is being run by Janet Yellen, its first woman ever, everything is fine. That’s what counts, right? Or that Alejandro Mayaorkas, the first Latino man to head the Department of Homeland Security, continuing to separate children, placing them in the same camps and appalling conditions as Trump and maintaining construction on Trump’s racist border wall (which all of a sudden Democrats have no issue with). What a diverse brand of imperialism: Uncle Joe’s Rainbow Coalition Death Cult®.
‘US, allies have turned OPCW into a tool to pursue anti-Syria objectives’
Press TV – April 16, 2021
Syrian Minister of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates Faisal Mekdad has categorically dismissed the new report by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), stating that the United States and its allies have turned the international watchdog into a tool to pursue their political goals against Damascus.
“Despite the difficult situation that Syria is going through, we have stood committed to our membership in the Chemical Weapons Convention,” Syria’s official news agency SANA quoted Mekdad as saying in a meeting with ambassadors and heads of diplomatic missions in Damascus on Thursday evening.
He added, “Syria and many other countries have acknowledged that the states which supported and funded armed terrorist groups in Syria, particularly the United States, France, Germany and Britain, will use the Syrian chemical file and the OPCW to achieve their hostile goals against Syria.”
Mekdad noted that Syrian government forces continue to score remarkable victories in their battles against the Takfiri terrorist groups, emphasizing that the troops have never used chemical warfare even in toughest operations against the foreign-sponsored militants.
He went on to say that certain Western countries have established the OPCW’s so-called Investigation and Identification Team (IIT) in order to produce reports, which best suit their anti-Syria agenda.
“The French-Western draft resolution, which is to be presented at the 25th meeting of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons later this year, is a new chapter in the series of conspiracies against Syria,” Mekdad pointed out.
The top Syrian diplomat finally called on the OPCW member states to support Damascus and counter the politicization of the organization’s activities by some Western countries.
A report by the OPCW’s so-called investigative arm claimed on Monday that Syria’s air force had dropped a chlorine bomb on a residential neighborhood in the terrorist-controlled Idlib region.
The report further asserted no one was killed when the cylinder of chlorine gas, delivered in a barrel bomb, hit the al-Talil neighborhood in the city of Saraqib in February 2018.
The Syrian foreign ministry, in a statement published on Wednesday, said the OPCW’s “misleading report,” written by “an illegitimate and incredible team,” fabricates “facts” to incriminate the Damascus government.
“This report has included false and fabricated conclusion which represents another scandal for the OPCW and the inquiry teams that will be added to the scandal of the reports of Douma incident in 2018, and Ltamenah in 2017,” it said.
Moscow and Damascus have on many occasions said members of the so-called White Helmets civil defense group stage gas attacks in a bid to falsely incriminate Syrian government forces and fabricate pretexts for military strikes by the US-led military coalition.
The group claims to be a humanitarian NGO but has long been accused of collaborating with anti-Damascus militants.
On April 14, 2018, the US, Britain and France carried out a string of airstrikes against Syria over a suspected chemical weapons attack on the city of Douma, located about 10 kilometers northeast of the capital Damascus.
Washington and its allies blamed Damascus for the Douma attack, a charge the Syrian government rejected.
Western governments and their allies have never stopped pointing the finger at Damascus whenever an apparent chemical attack takes place.
This is while Syria surrendered its stockpile of chemical weapons in 2014 to a joint mission led by the United States and the OPCW, which oversaw the destruction of the weaponry. It has consistently denied using chemical weapons.
US-Led Western/Israeli Aggression Against Syria
By Stephen Lendman | March 25, 2021
A decade of war on Syria and its long-suffering people isn’t enough for US hardliners.
Perhaps they intend forever war they’re losing but won’t end.
Former French diplomat Michele Rimbaud slammed a decade of US-led war on Syria, using terrorists as proxy fighters, along with waging economic war on its people — aiming to suffocate them into submission.
Like Afghan and Yemeni civilians, Syrians suffered more greatly than what their counterparts endured in two world wars — with no end of their ordeal in prospect.
“Should we wait 30 years in order to discover the outcome of the war in Syria, whether it is a military or economic war,” Rimbaud asked?
“When time comes for settling accounts and justice, it will be appropriate to remind the governments that have participated until today in this aggression of the seriousness of their criminal project, and we in the first place will condemn the three Western member states at the Security Council (the US, UK and France) who demand the implementation of the international law and claim to be its guardians, while they are the first to violate it.”
“The political or military officials, the intellectuals and media outlets who decided, organized, supported, or justified the crime of the international aggression against Syria and other countries must know that they will remain responsible for this crime regardless of what they did or didn’t do, and they must be held accountable.”
Where has the UN been for the last decade on Syria, for the last two decades on endless US war in Afghanistan and Yemen, for aggression against Libya in 2011 — for wars by other means against nations free from its control?
The world body consistently fails to denounce US wars of aggression, time and again blaming victimized nations for high crimes committed against them.
With rare exceptions, UN secretaries general serve US-led Western interests, supporting aggression by failing to denounce it, disgracing the office they hold, breaching UN Charter principles.
Since installed as UN secretary general by Washington in January 2017, Antonio Guterres was silent about US-led aggression in Syria and elsewhere — supporting the imperial state instead of denouncing its criminality and demanding accountability.
In mid-March, the UN noted the “grim 10-year anniversary of” war in Syria.
Its special envoy Geir Pedersen said the following without laying blame where it belongs, as follows:
“I want to commemorate Syrian victims and remember Syrian suffering and resilience in the face of unimaginable violence and indignities that (they) have faced over ten long years, including unspeakable horrors of chemical weapons.”
“Syrians had been injured, maimed and killed in every way imaginable – their corpses even desecrated.”
They’ve been “denied humanitarian assistance, sometimes under sieges in which perpetrators deliberately starved the population.”
They’ve “faced human rights violations on an enormous and systematic scale.”
“Those responsible for actions that may amount to crimes against humanity or war crimes enjoy near-total impunity, which not only undermines a peace agreement but perpetuates the living nightmare that has been life in Syria.”
The US, NATO, Israel, and their imperial partners bear full responsibility for the highest of high crimes against Syria and its people.
Yet in his above remarks and more of the same, Pedersen was silent about US-led aggression.
What Obama/Biden launched in March 2011, Trump continued, Biden/Harris going the same way — with no resolution in prospect because US dark forces reject it.
On Wednesday, Russia reported that US-supported jihadists launched 25 terrorist attacks in the past 24 hours, much the same going on daily against Syrian forces seeking to liberate the country and civilians caught in harm’s way.
When CW incidents occur, Damascus is always blamed for what it had nothing to do with — high crimes committed by US-supported jihadists.
While most Syrian territory was liberated by its armed forces — greatly aided by Russian airpower — US-supported terrorists control most of Idlib province.
They’re active elsewhere in the country — heavily armed with US, Western, and Israeli weapons.
Pentagon forces illegally occupy northern and southern parts of Syria with no intention of leaving.
Turkish forces illegally occupy northern Syrian territory. Allied with jihadist fighters, they’re at war with Damascus like the US, NATO and Israel.
The Pentagon and CIA continue to deploy ISIS jihadists to parts of Syria where they attack government forces and civilians.
Russian airpower is key — the difference between US dark forces gaining control over Syria or handing them an embarrassing defeat.
On Wednesday, Southfront reported the following:
In response to Russian airstrikes on Turkish-supported jihadists and sites they control in northern Syria, Ankara “summoned Russian ambassador Alexei Yerkhov to express its concerns…”
Ignoring its repeated breaches of the deescalation agreement reached with Moscow, Turkey falsely accused Russia of violations.
“At the same time, Ankara has no concerns regarding funding and supporting Al-Qaeda-styled groups in the region to promote its own interests,” Southfront reported.
The Erdogan regime is also concerned about Russian airstrikes disrupting its smuggling of stolen Syrian oil and gas.
Separately on Tuesday, rockets struck an illegal US base near a Conico oil field in Deir Ezzor, Syria.
Reportedly, US forces guarding and facilitating the theft of Syrian oil suffered casualties.
Southfront reported on what it called impunity in Syria being punished, saying:
“Turkish-backed militants in Greater Idlib, and in northeastern Syria in general are being given no quarter” by Russian airstrikes.”
The headquarters of Turkish-backed al-Sham Corps terrorists was struck.
So was Saramada in northern Syria near Turkey’s border. A factory operated by Hayat Tahir al-Sham terrorists was targeted.
So were other terrorist targets, elements backed by Turkey’s Erdogan in defiance of the deescalation zone agreement with Moscow.
Southfront called the latest Russian operation “one of the most severe since the ceasefire agreement was implemented.”
“It is likely an attempt to deter the Turkish-backed factions, as well as HTS from carrying out any more expansive operations.”
Despite Syrian army advances and the latest Russian aerial operations, Erdogan is highly unlikely to cease his cross-border aggression.
The same goes for Biden regime hardliners. US aggression continues with no signs of cessation.
Western media quick to accuse Syria of ‘bombing hospitals’ – but when terrorists really destroy hospitals, they are silent
By Eva Bartlett | RT | March 24, 2021
As legacy media again bleat the unsubstantiated “Syria is bombing hospitals” chorus of its war propaganda songbook, let’s pause to review the relatively unknown (but verifiable) reality of terrorists bombing hospitals in Syria.
Following recent allegations of a hospital being targeted Al Atarib, western Aleppo, the US State Department repeated the claim, in spite of any clear evidence to back it up.
Instead, reports rely on highly questionable sources like the White Helmets, the USAID-funded Syrian American Medical Society and the usual unnamed “witnesses” and (clearly impartial!) “rebel sources,” as per a Reuters’ report on the recent claims.
In fact, Reuters even acknowledges being unable to verify the authenticity of videos purporting to show “a ward damaged and civil defence rescuers carrying bloodstained patients outside.”
Let’s recall that Idlib is occupied by Al-Qaeda in Syria – a fact emphasized (as I wrote) by the US’ own former special envoy, Brett McGurk, who deemed the northwestern Syrian province the “largest Al-Qaeda safe-haven since 9/11.”
The presence of Al-Qaeda and affiliated terrorist groups makes it impossible for independent, neutral bodies to assess what is going on.
Facts matter, they say. But really, not so much when it comes to war propaganda.
In Sarmada, Idlib countryside, one of the targets was a Tahrir al-Sham (Al-Qaeda in Syria) fuel market, the smuggled fuel tankers obliterated.
A White Helmets video supposedly filmed in Al-Atarib alleges a hospital was bombed there. It indeed shows what looks like a medical facility covered in dust, and a lot of bulky men of fighting age. Glaringly absent are women or normal looking civilians.
Given the White Helmets’ penchant for working only in areas controlled by terrorist factions, working with them and even numbering among them, dabbling in organ trade, and having lied many times in the past, the video proves nothing.
There is, on the other hand, a precedent for “hospitals” or medical centres being weaponized by terrorists. And not just once or twice, but repeatedly in terrorist-occupied areas throughout Syria.
I’ve seen them in Aleppo and eastern Ghouta.
The Eye and Childrens’ Hospitals, a large complex in eastern Aleppo, was militarized and occupied by terrorists including the Tawhid Brigade, Al-Qaeda and even IS (Islamic State, formerly ISIS). Prisoners were held, and tortured, in nightmarish prisons and solitary confinement cells deep below.
As journalist Vanessa Beeley noted, in eastern Ghouta, medical centres, “provided treatment almost exclusively to extremist armed factions.” They were also built underground, “linked by a vast maze of tunnels that snaked below most of the districts controlled by the armed groups, providing cover for the fighters during SAA [Syrian Arab Army] military campaigns.” (An aside, see one of these massive tunnels in Douma, at the location of the underground “hospital.”)
In Idlib, a “hospital” that the New York Times claimed Russian warplanes bombed in May 2019 was a cave used as a terrorist headquarters. Another fortified cave in Khan Sheikhoun was well-stocked with weapons, medical supplies and gas masks, and a prison with solitary confinement cells.
In areas liberated from terrorists, the Syrian Army routinely finds such caves, with tunnels connecting terrorist bases so they can avoid moving above ground.
In the past, Russia has provided satellite imagery when the question of a building allegedly being bombed arose. Until we have conclusive evidence either way, it is a question of he said, she said, although common sense (and the history of such lies) points to more media fabrications.
Hospitals bombed, media yawns
Since the media and pundits clearly care so much about Syrian hospitals being bombed, and even destroyed, it’s worth reviewing some of the major hospitals damaged or destroyed by terrorist factions.
However, unsurprisingly, not a lot of information is available. The following is a partial list, with me filling in details from attacked hospitals that I have gone to.
- The September 2012 Free Syrian Army (FSA) bombing of and complete destruction of Al-Watani Hospital in Qusayr, Homs province.
- The September 2012 FSA bombing and complete destruction of two hospitals in Aleppo.
- The December 2013 FSA & Al-Qaeda bombing and complete destruction of Aleppo’s Al-Kindi hospital, one of the largest and best cancer hospitals in the Middle East.
- The April 2015 FSA bombing and siege of the National Hospital in Jisr al-Shughour, Idlib.
- The May 2016 IS horrific multiple suicide bombings in Jableh (and also in Tartous the same day), including inside Jableh’s National Hospital.
- The May 2016 attack outside Aleppo’s Dabeet maternity hospital, a missile hit a car parked outside, which then exploded, killing three women at the hospital and injuring many more.
I went to Aleppo in July 2016 and spoke with the director, who confirmed his hospital was gutted in the blast, and noted that a week later terrorists’ mortars hit the roof of the hospital, destroying the roof and injuring construction workers.
In May 2018, before Daraa was fully liberated, I went to areas which were under fire from terrorists (including the day I went), and took a perilous high speed ride in the taxi I had hired in Damascus to the state hospital, down a road exposed to terrorist sniping from less than 100 metres away.
The hospital was battered and partially destroyed from terrorists’ mortars, and mostly empty of patients. The director showed me destroyed wards (dialysis and laboratory), and off-limits areas due to high risk of sniping (gynecology, operations, blood bank, nursing school, children’s hospital).
When I returned to Daraa in September, after the region was liberated, the hospital was full of patients, since it was finally possible to access without risk.
Behind the hospital, roughly 50 metres away, I saw a building which I was told had been occupied by terrorists. Hence the extreme risk of being sniped while inside the hospital.
I never saw any Western outlet speak of this hospital, although it serviced civilians and was quite visibly partially destroyed.
In November 2016, I met Dr. Ibrahim Hadid, former Director of Kindi Hospital, who said that he wanted medical colleagues and institutions to exert some of the concern they have for “hospitals” allegedly bombed in terrorist areas.
They, and Western corporate media, have done the opposite, of course.
Another chemical song and dance routine?
Meanwhile, Russia is warning of a possible new staged chemical provocation by Tahrir al-Sham in Idlib.
The Russian Center for Reconciliation says, “militants are plotting to stage a fake chemical attack near the settlement of Qitian,” to again accuse the Syrian government of using chemicals on the people.
As anyone following the war on Syria knows, although the West desperately wants to prove Syria committed one or more chemical attacks, it has failed, to the point where even OPCW experts spoke out, contradicting the claims.
As I wrote last week, in spite of incessantly lying about Syria for ten years, Western (and Gulf) media, pundits and politicians steam ahead with more lies – recycled accusations and war propaganda.
So, it is likely the “hospitals bombed” theme will surge anew, and then the “chemical attacks” theme. And then maybe we’ll have another new Bana al-Abed to ask Biden to bomb Syria or “holocaust” Idlib…
On and on it goes, ceaseless war propaganda.
The irony is of course, as I feel the need to make clear nearly every time I write, those script-readers claiming that Syria (and Russia) are bombing hospitals, or using chemicals, or whatever lie is next recycled, don’t actually care about the lives of Syrians.
If they did, they would stop whitewashing terrorism in Syria, aid the country and its allies in liberating Idlib and the Aleppo countryside, stop pillaging its oil, leave Syria, and lift the sanctions.
Eva Bartlett is a Canadian independent journalist and activist. She has spent years on the ground covering conflict zones in the Middle East, especially in Syria and Palestine (where she lived for nearly four years).
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