A well-written tribute to late Enayetullah Khan

A mesmerising writing by Taj Hashmi to his idol ...

STRANGER THAN FICTION
TRIBUTE - MINTU BHAI
As I knew him

Enayetullah Khan (1939-2005)
Taj Hashmi

Time flies. This November 10th was the tenth death anniversary of Enayetullah Khan ("Mintu Bhai" to his younger friends and admirers), the founding editor of weekly Holiday and daily New Age. I knew Mintu Bhai quite well, even before I met him face to face about a decade after my first exposure to his powerful writing in the mid-1960s. I am from that generation, who as teenagers used to admire good prose and poetry, movies and fiction in the turbulent 1960s. I came to Dhaka College from Sirajganj, a sleepy North Bengal town. As I did relish reading Mintu Bhai's editorials and articles in his weekly Holiday in the Common Room of the South Hostel (of Dhaka College), so did several other friends.

What I personally liked about his writing most was his style, his lucid prose albeit (quite often) garnished with "unheard of" English words. I personally learnt some new expressions from his editorials. Now, fifty years after my first exposure to his writing, I realise he was a post-modern man, a unique blend of boldness and courage, uncompromising attitude and integrity. He questioned every move and challenged every assertion made by some of the most powerful men in the world, from the American President to his Pakistani counterpart, Ayub Khan.

To be honest, I mostly disliked his stand against America and Ayub Khan, because I admired both Johnson and the "tall and handsome" Field Marshal of Pakistan. I also did not like Mintu Bhai's love and devotion for Maulana Bhashani and Leftism. Nevertheless, I admired his courage, loved his prose, and envied his style of writing.

However, I re-discovered Mintu Bhai as a great man after reading one of his best editorials that he wrote in 1972, not long after the Liberation of Bangladesh. He boldly defended our renowned radio-TV artists (singers and actors) who had to sing and act for the Pakistani military controlled media during the Liberation War. His famous editorial, "Sixty-five Million Collaborators", was simply a slap in the face of all those hyper-and ultra-patriotic politicians, officials, and artists, who crossed the border and stayed in India during the Pakistani occupation period. Since around ten million Bangladeshis out of the total population of 75 million fled to India after 25 March 1971 - and most became "freedom fighters" by default - Mintu Bhai's editorial was very sarcastic and convincing, at the same time. As if there were only ten million patriots and the rest 65 millions were nothing but Pakistani collaborators and traitors to Bangladesh!

I first saw him (can't say "met him") at a rally at the open space in front of the South Gate of the Baitul Mukarram (which dictator Ershad fenced up for the "obvious reason") in 1974. I was then a young lecturer at Dhaka University, and was a big fan and admirer of the late Professor Ahmed Sharif, Professors Serajul Islam Chowdhury, Muniruzzaman Miah and other left-leaning colleagues at the University. During the 1974 Famine, progressive writers, academics, journalists and intellectuals and students organised a protest rally in front of Baitul Mukarram. They were protesting the mismanagement, corruption and failure of the Government to give adequate support to the famine-stricken millions. Tens of thousands of hungry and malnourished men, women and children came to Dhaka from the interior of Bangladesh, and hundreds of them were dying everyday around Baitul Mukarram, Dhaka Stadium, Gulistan, Motijheel and Kamlapur Railway Station.

I remember, among others Ahmed Sharif, Poet Sikandar Abu Zafar, and (possibly) Badruddin Umar besides Mintu Bhai who addressed the rally. I saw Mintu Bhai for the first time in front of Baitul Mukarram on a hot and humid afternoon in 1974. My first and lasting impression about him was that he was extremely good looking, and a brilliant speaker. His Bengali was as good as his English. He was simply enchanting. I still remember him saying: "I wish I could convert the words I write in my paper into bullets and missiles!" A fiery speech indeed!

Meanwhile, I continued reading Holiday - his articles and editorials remained the main attractions. Soon after watching him speak very sensible things, with the zeal of a high school debater, eloquence of a literature or history professor, and confidence of a popular leader, I started admiring him as one of my heroes. He still is a hero to me. I miss the bold and brave, outspoken and witty, intelligent and well-read, humourous and sincere, helpful and humble Mintu Bhai. Soon afterwards, Mintu Bhai was in the forefront of the Anti-Farakka Dam Long March, under the leadership of the Great Maulana Bhashani. Some of his best articles and editorials were on the evil effects of the Farakka Dam on Bangladesh's ecology, economy and agriculture. I personally learnt a lot from Mintu Bhai about India's vicious hegemonic policy towards Bangladesh and its other smaller neighbours in the Subcontinent.

I first met him in 1995. I was visiting Dhaka from Singapore, where I was a teacher at the National University. My very good friend Luthfur Rahman Choudhury took me to Dhaka Club, and introduced me to Mintu Bhai. Since I used to write op-eds for the Straits Times (Singapore daily), Mintu Bhai asked me within five minutes of our first meeting: "Why don't you write for Holiday"? And the rest is history. He never ever edited a single expression or title of my articles, and never declined to publish whatever I used to send him almost on a regular basis. While others were hesitant to publish my critique of the Grameen Bank, in early 1997, Mintu Bhai published it in his weekly. He was one who would disagree with you, and would be still friends with you. Despite our age difference, he was always very respectful to me, and to others too. He was simply an exceptionally civil, urbane and tolerant person.

I was fortunate enough to be in Toronto while Mintu Bhai was there during the last year of his life. Despite his suffering, he always looked cheerful, and never ever complained about his pain and suffering. Whenever we met socially in Toronto at Shuchi-Arshad's (his daughter and son-in-law) house or elsewhere, Mintu Bhai would always talk about Bangladesh politics, society, corruption/plunder, misrule and most of the time he would be optimistic. He would always say, the next generation of leaders would be very different, in the positive sense of the expression.

Now, I believe Bangladesh needs scores of bold and brave, honest and patriotic people like Mintu Bhai. One renowned editor of an English daily in Bangladesh aptly said after his passing: "He was the best among us". I could not agree more with the assertion. Had he lived for another ten years - one of the worst periods in the history of modern Bangladesh - I know how he would have reacted to the bizarre, brutal, and barbaric things that have taken place since 2006. His editorials and bold statements in favour of democracy, the rule of law and accountability would have emboldened many others to speak the truth. I can visualise what would have been his reaction to the ridiculous role the BNP-Jamaat Government played during 2006 and 2007, and the illegitimate takeover of the country by the Muinuddin-Fakhruddin gang in 2007.

I, however, cannot visualize as to how he would have reacted to the 2008 Elections; the brutal BDR Massacre of February 2009; total unaccountability, stupid and partisan behaviour of responsible people; the Padma-Bridge Scandal; Hallmark, mega share scams, land grabbing, and systematic plunder of banks by politicians, businessmen and bureaucrats; the Rana Plaza tragedy; the hasty amendments of the Constitution; mass arrests of politicians, journalists and intellectuals; mass "disappearances" of people; the farcical elections of January 2014; and last but not least, the ongoing mysterious killing of ordinary people and freethinking bloggers and writers.

The overpowering and unprecedented state of terror and anarchy by both state and non-state actors would have simply turned Mintu Bhai mad. He would have possibly become religious for the first time in his adult life, and would have possibly asked God Almighty to end his life! May God give him eternal bliss, which he deserves most for his extra-ordinary service to his nation!

The writer teaches security studies at Austin Peay State University. Sage has recently published his latest book, Global Jihad and America: The Hundred-Year War Beyond Iraq and Afghanistan.

The Daily Star, November 14, 2015

A review of garden variety of rebels in Syria

Lavrov termed a terrorist as : someone who looks like a terrorist, walks like a terrorist and talks like a terrorist is a terrorist indeed...

Please Don’t Attack Al-Qaeda… Protect the “Moderate Terrorists”…

By Steve Chovanec

Global Research, March 23, 2016

Reports from Underground 27 February 2016

 

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

As described by Kerry:

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

So why the insistence on non-permanence? Especially if, as Kerry says, the ultimate objective is to “obtain a durable, long-term ceasefire” at some point in time?
According to the 29-year career diplomat in the Indian Foreign Service, India’s former ambassador to Uzbekistan and Turkey M. K. Bhadrakumar, it is plainly because

“the Russian military operations have met with devastating success lately in strengthening the Syrian regime and scattering the Syrian rebel groups,” leading “the US and its regional allies” to “stare at defeat.” Therefore, they “forthwith need an end to the Russian operations so that they can think up a Plan B. The Geneva talks will not have the desired outcome of President Bashar Al-Assad’s ouster unless the tide of war is reversed.” Therefore, “a cessation of hostilities in Syria is urgently needed.”(1)

Judging by the fact that top US officials began announcing that Russia would break the deal immediately after it was agreed upon while calling for further measures to “inflict real pain on the Russians”, Bhadrakumar’s assessment that a pause, and not a permanent halt, was sought in order to regroup and eventually reverse the tide of war seems to be quite apt. As well there has been an almost ubiquitous media campaign in the US to prime the public for accusations of a Russian infraction, from which a breakdown of the deal would follow; the narrative portrayed is filled with “doubts” and “worries” and “statements from US officials” about how Russia isn’t serious and will likely break the agreement.
Furthermore, outwardly Russia is much more optimistic and invested in the deal, President Putin hopefully promoting it while engaging in a blitz of diplomacy to support it, while on the other hand the US has been less vocal and much quicker to doubt its outcomes.
However, this downgrading from a ‘ceasefire’ to a ‘cessation of hostilities’ actually violates past agreements.
In UN Security Council Resolution 2254, in which it was articulated that member states be committed to the “sovereignty, independence, unity and territorial integrity of the Syrian Arab Republic,” while calling on them to suppress ISIS, al-Nusra, and “all other individuals, groups, undertakings, and entities associated with Al Qaeda or ISIL”, it was also agreed upon that the Security Council “expresses its support for a nationwide ceasefire in Syria.” (emphasis added)
Given the about-face, Lavrov was visibly agitated, stating that “Resolution 2254 talks about the ceasefire only. This term is not liked by some members of the International Syria Support Group. What I’m referring to is how something that has been agreed upon should be implemented rather than try to remake the consensus that has been achieved in order to get some unilateral advantages.”
The “unilateral advantages” likely are in reference to the pause-and-regroup strategy Bhadrakumar previously articulated.
Despite this Russia agreed to the downgraded CoH, however, in the week leading up to the agreement there was a major hurdle to overcome, namely whether al-Nusra, the al-Qaeda affiliate in Syria, would be protected as a party to the truce.
Long has there been a tenant of US propaganda which claims that a sort of “third force” of “moderate opposition fighters” exists, separate and distinct from the extremists and al-Qaeda affiliates. Yet when push came to shove the main stumbling-block in the way of the CoH was the oppositions demand that any truce be “conditional on the al Qaeda-linked Nusra Front no longer being targeted.” Sources close to the talks would tell Reuters that this insistence was the main “elephant in the room” preventing a settlement.
Even more telling is the fact that this opposition demand only came after the US had insisted upon it. Indeed, while relentlessly pushing the “moderate rebel” narrative it was official US policy to push for the protection of al-Qaeda.
According to The Washington Post: “Russia was said to have rejected a U.S. proposal to leave Jabhat al-Nusra off-limits to bombing as part of a cease-fire, at least temporarily, until the groups can be sorted out.” (emphasis added)
Nusra is the Rebels
Responding to arguments posited that al-Nusra should be included in the truce, given that they operate in areas where other rebels are and thus Russia can use this as an excuse to bomb them, Max Abrahms, Professor at Northeastern University and member of the Council on Foreign Relations, explains that these recent developments show that Nusra and the other rebels are one in the same.
“If you’re pro-rebel in Syria, you’re pro-al Qaeda in Syria,” Abrahms writes. “The rebels are now begging for Russia to stop bombing their al-Qaeda partner.”
Indeed, it was the “moderate” US-backed FSA factions that were the biggest advocates of their al-Qaeda partners being included in the truce.
Major Ammar al-Wawi, Secretary General of the Free Syrian Army and head of the FSA’s al-Ababil Brigade in Aleppo, said that al-Nusra was the FSA’s “partner”, and that al-Qaeda was an ally of most of the groups brought together by Saudi Arabia underneath the Higher Negotiation Committee (HNC) banner.

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

And therefore, while the ceasefire is good in principle, it is not good if it does not include al-Nusra, because “if the ceasefire excludes Jabhat a-Nusra, then this means that the killing of civilians will continue since Nusra’s forces are among civilians.” Al-Wawi seems to forget that the reason Nusra is a terrorist organization is specifically because of its indiscriminate attacks and disregard for civilian lives.
According to the spokesman for Alwiyat al-Furqan, one of the largest FSA factions operating under the Southern Front umbrella, the FSA “will not accept a truce that excludes Jabhat al-Nusra.” The spokesman later goes on to call Nusra “honorable”, along with the equally honorable Salafi-Jihadists groups Ahrar al-Sham and Jaish al-Islam.
Ahrar, it should be noted, only presents itself as being different from al-Qaeda, in actuality it is not, it is a Salafi-Jihadi group which espouses a reactionary andapocalyptic Islamist ideology that has been complicit in sectarian mass murders of Alawites throughout Syria. On the other hand, Jaish al-Islam, in the words of their former leader, regards al-Nusra as their “brothers” whom they “praise” and “fight alongside.” Jaish al-Islam as well is infamous for parading caged civilians throughout warzones, using them as human shields. The current leader of the group, Mohammed Alloush, was named as the chief negotiator to represent the rebel opposition in talks with the UN.
Yet, according to the FSA, “If today we agreed to exclude Jabhat a-Nusra, then tomorrow we would agree to exclude Ahrar a-Sham, then Jaish al-Islam and so on for every honorable faction. We will not allow the threat of being classified as a terrorist organization to compromise the fundamentals of the revolution for which the Syrian people rose up and for which we have sacrificed and bled.”
One wonders, if the exclusion of al-Qaeda from the ceasefire is tantamount to “compromising the revolution”, what would choosing al-Qaeda as partners be called?
Muhammad a-Sheikh, spokesman for an FSA faction in Latakia, as well thanked Nusra for its “role in trying to lessen the pain inflicted on the Syrian people”, of all things.(2)
Yet all of this gets recycled within the US media as al-Nusra merely being “intermingled with moderate rebel groups”, as the Washington Post puts it. While the narrative purports that the FSA consists of “moderates” reluctantly forced to endure an al-Qaeda alliance for military expediency, in reality much of FSA conduct throughout the war has not been much different from that of the recognized extremists.
In the case of Aleppo, while one man describes how al-Nusra beheaded one of his brother-in-laws, ripped the other to pieces between an electricity poll and a moving car, and kidnapped the other, another man describes how “Free Syrian Army fighters burned down their house – leaving one daughter with terrible burns” after the man refused to join them. He said they attempted to abduct one of his daughters, but were unsuccessful as neighbors intervened.
Another Aleppo resident writes that “Turkish-Saudi backed ‘moderate rebels’ showered the residential neighborhoods of Aleppo with unguided rockets and gas jars.”
Indeed, FSA groups were so brutal at times that these “moderates” were feared even more than other recognized extremists.
“Pilloried in the West for their sectarian ferocity… jihadists were often welcomed by local people for restoring law and order after the looting and banditry of the Western-backed Free Syrian Army,” writes Patrick Cockburn, the leading Western journalist in the region.(3)
For people paying close attention this is unfortunately not that surprising.
According to a recent poll conducted by ORB, it was found that most Syrians more or less hold both ISIS and the FSA in equal disdain, 9% saying the FSA represents the Syrian people while 4% saying that ISIS does. The similarity in opinion is reflective of the similarity in conduct.
Jihadi ‘Wal-Mart’
The not-so-popular FSA groups are routinely described as a separate and distinct entity apart from al-Nusra and ISIS, yet in actuality the lines between the groups have always been extremely porous.
“Due to porous links between some Free Syrian Army (FSA) rebels, other Islamist groups like al-Nusra and Ahrar al-Sham, and ISIS, there have been prolific weapons transfers from ‘moderate’ to Islamist militant groups,” writes Nafeez Ahmed, Britain’s leading international security scholar.
These links were so extreme that “German journalist Jurgen Todenhofer, who spent 10 days inside the Islamic State, reported last year that ISIS is being “indirectly” armed by the west: “They buy the weapons that we give to the Free Syrian Army, so they get western weapons – they get French weapons… I saw German weapons, I saw American weapons.”
Recently the BBC’s Peter Oborne conducted an investigation into these claims and came across evidence that the “moderate” FSA were in essence being utilized as a conduit through which Western supplies were funneled to extremists.
Oborne spoke to a lawyer who represents Bherlin Gildo, a Swedish national who went to join the rebel ranks in 2012 and was subsequently arrested for terrorist offenses. Based on her clients own first-hand observations while embedded with the rebels, trucks referred to as NATO trucks were observed coming in from Turkey, which would then be unloaded by the FSA and the arms then distributed quite generally without any specificity of the exact recipient. The weapons would be distributed “to whoever was involved in particular battles.”
Similarly, in 2014 US-backed Syrian Revolutionary Front (SRF) commander Jamal Maarouf admitted that his US-handlers had instructed him to send weapons to al-Qaeda. “If the people who support us tell us to send weapons to another group, we send them. They asked us a month ago to send weapons to [Islamist fighters in] Yabroud so we sent a lot of weapons there.”
Battlefield necessity was dictating the weapons recipients, not humanitarian concern for victims of terrorism.
Eventually charges brought against Mr. Gildo were dropped. The reason was because he planned to argue that he had fought on the same side the UK government was supporting As it was explained before the court, if it is the case that the government “was actively involved in supporting armed resistance to the Assad regime at a time when the defendant was present in Syria and himself participating in such resistance it would be unconscionable”, indeed an “affront to justice”, “to allow the prosecution to continue.”
In a similar case a man named Moazzam Begg was arrested in the UK under terrorism charges after meeting with Ahrar al-Sham. However, his case too was dropped, the courts understanding that if he was guilty of supporting terrorism than so was the British state. “I was very disappointed that the trail didn’t go through,” Begg said. “I believe I would have won… what I was doing… was completely in line with British policy at the time.”
Career MI6 agent and former British diplomat Alastair Crooke extrapolates further on this phenomena of the West’s principle allies playing such a crucial role in arming the jihadis.
“The West does not actually hand the weapons to al-Qaeda, let alone ISIS,” he said, “but the system that they have constructed leads precisely to that end. The weapons conduit that the West directly has been giving to groups such as the Syrian Free Army (FSA), have been understood to be a sort of ‘Wal Mart’ from which the more radical groups would be able to take their weapons and pursue the jihad.” This constitutes a sort of ‘supermarket’ where rebels can go and receive weapons, the weapons always migrating “along the line to the more radical elements.” The idea was to “use jihadists to weaken the government in Damascus and to drive it to its knees to the negotiating table.” Exactly the same kind of policy used in Afghanistan during the 1980s, when conduits such as the Pakistani ISI were used to funnel weapons to the mujahedeen.
Yet these Western weapons were not just going to al-Qaeda and Ahrar al-Sham, ISIS too was shopping at the “moderate” “supermarket.”
In his book “The Rise of Islamic State”, Patrick Cockburn writes,

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

The result of all of this was a deep alliance between the US-backed “moderates” and al-Qaeda, as well as a rebel opposition dominated by ISIS and al-Nusra.
Nusra’s FSA
Recently a leader of the Nusra group appeared in a video presenting an FSA commander with a gift while saying that there is no difference between the FSA, Ahrar al-Sham, and al-Qaeda. “They are all one,” he explains. The Nusra field commander goes on to thank the FSA for supplying Nusra with US-made TOW anti-tank missiles, which were given to the FSA directly, of course, from the CIA.
A month prior to these revelations reports started to surface about the unfolding situation in “rebel-held” Idlib. Despite the repressive dress codes and savage Islamist laws it became apparent that the FSA was only operating under the authority of the more powerful al-Qaeda rebels.
Jenan Moussa, a journalist for the UAE based Al Aan TV channel who recently had visited the area, reported that Nusra allows the FSA to operate in Hama and Idlib because the FSA groups there get TOW missiles from the West. The reason they are allowed to operate is that the “FSA uses these TOW in support of Nusra.”
Investigating the situation further, veteran journalist Gareth Porter concludes from a range of sources that in the provinces of Idlib and Aleppo every rebel organization is in fact part of a military structure controlled and dominated by al-Nusra.
“All of these rebel groups fight alongside the Nusra Front and coordinate their military activities with it,” Porter writes.
In the case of the rebel capture of Idlib, “Although some U.S.-supported groups participated in the campaign in March and April 2015, the “operations room” planning the campaign was run by Al Qaeda and its close ally Ahrar al Sham.” As well, before the Idlib campaign, “Nusra had forced another U.S.-supported group, Harakat Hazm, to disband and took all of its TOW anti-tank missiles.”
Clearly al-Nusra was subordinating the “moderates.”
The reality began to emerge in December of 2014 when US-backed rebels, supplied with TOW missiles, teamed up with Nusra and fought under their command in order to capture the Wadi al-Deif base. Al Qaeda was “exploiting the Obama administration’s desire to have its own Syrian Army as an instrument for influencing the course of the war.”
Andrew Cockburn reports that “A few months before the Idlib offensive, a member of one CIA-backed group had explained the true nature of its relationship to the Al Qaeda franchise. Nusra, he told the New York Times, allowed militias vetted by the United States to appear independent, so that they would continue to receive American supplies.”
“In other words,” Porter writes, “Nusra was playing Washington,” while Washington was “evidently a willing dupe.”
This all comes down to the fact that the savage and brutal al-Qaeda fighters were proving to be militarily effective, leaving a trail of torture and atrocities, and battlefield successes, in their wake.
Explaining the mindset, Ed Husain, Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, writes that the influx of Al-Qaeda and various jihadis “brings discipline, religious fervor, battle experience from Iraq, funding from Sunni sympathizers in the Gulf, and most importantly, deadly results.”
Because of this, Porter explains, “instead of breaking with the deception that the CIA’s hand-picked clients were independent of Nusra, the Obama administration continued to cling to it.” The United States basing its policy on the “moderates” was “necessary to provide a political fig leaf for the covert and indirect U.S. reliance on Al Qaeda’s Syrian franchise’s military success.”
Ever since the Russian intervention began, the US has continued to embrace this deceptive narrative, claiming that Russia is targeting the “moderate” opposition. This narrative, and the publics belief in its validity, “had become a necessary shield for the United States to continue playing a political-diplomatic game in Syria.”
Yet, as Patrick Cockburn has reported for quite some time, “The armed opposition to President Assad is dominated by Isis, the al-Qaeda affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra and the ideologically similar Ahrar al-Sham.” Of the smaller groups the CIA openly supports, they “only operate under license from the extreme jihadists.”
Several rebel groups, 5 of which belong to the FSA, have recently united under the leadership of the former emir of the al-Qaeda-linked Ahrar al-Sham. A longtime al-Qaeda member who sits on al-Nusra’s elite council explained that “The Free Syrian Army groups said they were ready for anything according to the Islamic sharia and that we are delegated to apply the rulings of the sharia on them”, essentially meaning that the FSA had subordinated themselves to al-Qaeda.
It has been further revealed that all of the Syrian groups operative in Aleppo had recently declared Ba’yaa (loyalty) to the Ahrar al-Sham emir Abu Jaber.
Ba’yaa, it should be noted, means total loyalty and submission, much like what follows from pledging loyalty to ISIS.
Official Policy
At least by as far back as August of 2012, the best US intelligence assessments were reporting that the jihadists and extremists were controlling and steering the course of the opposition. Then head of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), Michael T. Flynn, would confirm the credibility of these reports, saying that “the intelligence was very clear” and that it wasn’t the case that the administration was just turning a blind eye to these events but instead that the policies were the result of a “willful decision.”
Despite all of this, US officials still continue to maintain that “Russia’s bombing campaign in Syria, launched last fall, has infuriated the CIA in particular because the strikes have aggressively targeted relatively moderate rebels it has backed with military supplies, including antitank missiles.”
However, according to the CIA and the intelligence communities own data, this is false.
Back in October of 2012, according to classified US intelligence assessments, “Most of the arms shipped at the behest of Saudi Arabia and Qatar”, which wereorganized by the CIA, were
“going to hard-line Islamic jihadists.”
A year earlier, immediately after the fall of Gaddafi in October of 2011, the CIA began organizing a “rat line” from Libya to Syria. Weapons from the former Libyan stockpiles were shipped from Benghazi to Syria and into the hands of the Syrian rebels. According to information obtained by Seymour Hersh, “Many of those in Syria who ultimately received the weapons were jihadists, some of them affiliated with al-Qaida.”
In a highly classified 2013 assessment put together by the DIA and the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS), an “all-source” appraisal which draws on information from signals, satellite, and human intelligence, it was concluded that the US program to arm the rebels quickly turned into a logistical operation for the entire opposition, including al-Nusra and ISIS. The so-called moderates had evaporated, “there was no viable ‘moderate’ opposition to Assad,” and “the US was arming extremists.”
DIA chief Michael Flynn confirmed that his agency had sent a constant stream of warnings to the civilian administration between 2012 and 2014 saying that the jihadists were in control of the opposition.
“If the American public saw the intelligence we were producing daily, at the most sensitive level, they would go ballistic,” Flynn said.
Yet, as Flynn stated previously, it was a “willful decision” for the administration “to do what they’re doing.”
By summer of 2013, Seymour Hersh reported that “although many in the American intelligence community were aware that the Syrian opposition was dominated by extremists,” still “the CIA-sponsored weapons kept coming.”
According to a JCS advisor, despite heavy Pentagon objections there was simply “no way to stop the arms shipments that had been authorised by the president.”
“I felt that they did not want to hear the truth,” Flynn said.
So what Russia is bombing in actuality is an al-Qaeda, extremist dominated opposition embedded with CIA-backed rebels operating under their control. The not-so-moderates only operate under license from, and in support of, the Salafi jihadists, openly expressing their solidarity with them, labelling them as “brothers”, and begging the UN to protect them. Concurrently the US and its allies continue to support the terrorist-dominated insurgency, US officials openly planning to expand their support to al-Qaeda-laced rebels in order to “inflict pain on the Russians”, all while Turkey and Saudi Arabia openly support al-Qaeda. All of this occurring because of the United States reliance upon “Al Qaeda’s Syrian franchise’s military successes” and their “deadly results”, in order to further the policy of using “jihadists to weaken the government in Damascus” and to “drive it to its knees at the negotiating table.”
The function of the “moderates” in essence being the logistical and public relations front for the “not-so-moderate” al-Qaeda units winning the battles.
Speaking at Harvard University, Vice President Biden infamously and candidly summarized what had been going on, saying that it was our allies who were “so determined to take down Assad and essentially have a proxy Sunni-Shia war,” that they “poured hundreds of millions of dollars and tens of thousands of tons of weapons into anyone who would fight against Assad. Except that the people who were being supplied were al-Nusra and Al Qaeda and the extremist elements of jihadis coming from other parts of the world.”
When asked why the United States was powerless to stop nations like Qatar from engaging in this kind of behavior, “a former adviser to one of the Gulf States replied softly: “They didn’t want to.”
So it should be no wonder why the US tried to push through a provision including al-Nusra in the current ceasefire agreement, nor why they would seek to protect their most viable ally in pursuance of their Syria policy.
It should be no wonder that it has been, and continues to be, official US policy to protect al-Qaeda.

Notes:

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

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

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

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

The original source of this article is Reports from Underground

Copyright © Steve Chovanec, Reports from Underground , 2016

US Presidential Candidates compete in worshipping Israel

Every year, it’s the same beat-up story. The pro-Israel Zionist lobby AIPAC (American Israeli Public Affairs Committee) invites  to its annual convention and all the top knobs in Washington show up.
This year, President Obama had more important things to do and made a historical visit to Cuba. Eighty-eight years ago, the last sitting US President, Calvin Coolidge, paid a visit to this island nation that is still embargoed by the US because it didn’t give way to US pressure.

Adulation of the State of Israel. US Presidential Candidates Bow before AIPAC

By Dr. Ludwig Watzal

Global Research, March 23, 2016

This year, it was the turn of the American presidential candidates to go on the AIPAC pilgrimage, except for Bernie Sanders. Trump, Clinton, Cruz and Kasich were all thrilled to bits about Israel. They outbid each other in their subservience to Israel. Sanders, the only Jew in the race, did not show up and scathingly criticized the Israeli government for its occupation and  its “disproportionate responses to being attacked”. He criticized the bombing of hospitals, schools and refugee camps in the 2014 war with Hamas and demanded an end of the blockade on Gaza. He, at least, was honest and did not pay rhetorical lip service to an occupation regime that apparently shares the same values as the US.
Donald Trump, the front-runner of the Republican Party, welcomed without any marked enthusiasm by 18 000 Israel fans, turned to upstage Hillary Clinton, Ted Cruz, not to speak of John Kasich. Trump got standing ovations even when he castigated Hillary Clinton “as a total disaster, by the way”. The audience was thrilled by Trump when he called US President Barack Obama “the worst thing that ever happened to Israel”. Obama and Clinton “treated Israel very badly”.
Trump also wants to cancel the Iran deal. Although Trump’s appearance lasted only 25 minutes, he won the audience over by his simple pro-Israel rhetoric. The following statement opened the hearts of the crowd; “I speak to you today as a lifelong supporter and true friend of Israel. I’m a newcomer to politics but not to backing the Jewish state.” Suddenly, all his racist and xenophobic ramblings seemed forgotten, although the leadership of AIPAC had a sore head about Trump’s appearance.
Hillary Clinton spoke before Trump and she did everything to outdo him by not only lambasting him but also by calling to elevate the US-Israel alliance to “the next level”. That she wants to see Benyamin Netanyahu right away after becoming President does not speak in her favor. She supports a memorandum that would boost military aid to Israel. She reiterated her tough stance on Iran, calling for sanctioning any Iranian violation of the nuclear deal not excluding military force. Years ago, Clinton threatened Iran with total annihilation if the country would attack Israel. No Iranian leader has ever called for an attack on Israel. She appealed to the emotions by mentioning the wave of stabbings by Palestinians and blamed the Palestinian leadership for inciting violence, celebrating terrorists and rewarding the families of murderers. She denounced again the BDS campaign.
Ted Cruz and John Kasich tried even to outdo Hillary Clinton. Cruz wants to rip-up the Iran deal and block federal funding to BDS supporters. Cruz announced not to be “neutral” but stand “unapologetically with Israel”. He wasn’t even ashamed of drawing an analogy between the nuclear agreement with Iran and the Munich Agreement of 1938. Before him, Netanyahu has also drawn such an absurd analogy.
Ohio’s governor, John Kasich, promised to defend Israel from an imagined Iranian nuclear threat, and said the US should suspend the deal. He also called for the US to recognize Jerusalem as the “eternal capital of Israel”.
From this adulation of the State of Israel, one might get the impression that the candidates are competing for the highest office in Israel and not in the US. It seems as if the presidential candidates do not care about their own country and the American people.

The original source of this article is Global Research

Copyright © Dr. Ludwig Watzal, Global Research, 2016

Time to break our silence !

This is an edited version of an address by John Pilger at the University of Sydney, entitled A World War Has Begun:

A World War Has Begun. Break the Silence

By John Pilger

Global Research, March 22, 2016

I have been filming in the Marshall Islands, which lie north of Australia, in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Whenever I tell people where I have been, they ask, “Where is that?” If I offer a clue by referring to “Bikini”, they say, “You mean the swimsuit.”

Few seem aware that the bikini swimsuit was named to celebrate the nuclear explosions that destroyed Bikini island.

Sixty-six nuclear devices were exploded by the United States in the Marshall Islands between 1946 and 1958 — the equivalent of 1.6 Hiroshima bombs every day for twelve years.

Bikini is silent today, mutated and contaminated.  Palm trees grow in a strange grid formation. Nothing moves. There are no birds. The headstones in the old cemetery are alive with radiation. My shoes registered “unsafe” on a Geiger counter.

Standing on the beach, I watched the emerald green of the Pacific fall away into a vast black hole. This was the crater left by the hydrogen bomb they called “Bravo”. The explosion poisoned people and their environment for hundreds of miles, perhaps forever.

On my return journey, I stopped at Honolulu airport and noticed an American magazine called Women’s Health. On the cover was a smiling woman in a bikini swimsuit, and the headline: “You, too, can have a bikini body.”  A few days earlier, in the Marshall Islands, I had interviewed women who had very different “bikini bodies”; each had suffered thyroid cancer and other life-threatening cancers.

Unlike the smiling woman in the magazine, all of them were impoverished: the victims and guinea pigs of a rapacious  superpower that is today more dangerous than ever.

I relate this experience as a warning and to interrupt a distraction that has consumed so many of us.  The founder of modern propaganda, Edward Bernays, described this phenomenon as “the conscious and intelligent manipulation of the habits and opinions” of democratic societies. He called it an “invisible government”.

How many people are aware that a world war has begun? At present, it is a war of propaganda, of lies and distraction, but this can change instantaneously with the first mistaken order, the first missile.

In 2009, President Obama stood before an adoring crowd in the centre of Prague, in the heart of Europe. He pledged himself to make “the world free from nuclear weapons”. People cheered and some cried. A torrent of platitudes flowed from the media. Obama was subsequently awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

It was all fake. He was lying.

The Obama administration has built more nuclear weapons, more nuclear warheads, more nuclear delivery systems, more nuclear factories.  Nuclear warhead spending alone rose higher under Obama than under any American president. The cost over thirty years is more than $1 trillion.

A new mini nuclear bomb is planned. It is known as the B61 Model 12. There has never been anything like it. General James Cartwright, a former Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has said, “Going smaller [makes using this nuclear] weapon more thinkable.”

In the last eighteen months, the greatest build-up of military forces since World War Two — led by the United States — is taking place along Russia’s western frontier.  Not since Hitler invaded the Soviet Union have foreign troops presented such a demonstrable threat to Russia.

Ukraine – once part of the Soviet Union –  has become a CIA theme park. Having orchestrated a coup in Kiev, Washington effectively controls a regime that is next door and hostile to Russia: a regime rotten with Nazis, literally. Prominent parliamentary figures in Ukraine are the political descendants of the notorious OUN and UPA fascists. They openly praise Hitler and call for the persecution and expulsion of the Russian speaking minority.

This is seldom news in the West, or it is inverted to suppress the truth.

In Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia — next door to Russia – the US military is deploying combat troops, tanks, heavy weapons. This extreme provocation of the world’s second nuclear power is met with silence in the West.

What makes the prospect of nuclear war even more dangerous is a parallel campaign against China.

Seldom a day passes when China is not elevated to the status of a “threat”.  According to Admiral Harry Harris, the US Pacific commander, China is “building a great wall of sand in the South China Sea”.

What he is referring to is China building airstrips in the Spratly Islands, which are the subject of a dispute with the Philippines – a dispute without priority until Washington pressured and bribed the government in Manila and the Pentagon launched a propaganda campaign called “freedom of navigation”.

What does this really mean?  It means freedom for American warships to patrol and dominate the coastal waters of China.  Try to imagine the American reaction if Chinese warships did the same off the coast of California.

I made a film called The War You Don’t See, in which I interviewed distinguished journalists in America and Britain: reporters such as Dan Rather of CBS, Rageh Omar of the BBC, David Rose of the Observer.

All of them said that had journalists and broadcasters done their job and questioned the propaganda that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction; had the lies of George W. Bush and Tony Blair not been amplified and echoed by journalists, the 2003 invasion of Iraq might not have happened, and  hundreds of thousands of men, women and children would be alive today.

The propaganda laying the ground for a war against Russia and/or  China is no different in principle. To my knowledge, no journalist in the Western “mainstream” — a Dan Rather equivalent, say –asks why China is building airstrips in the South China Sea.

The answer ought to be glaringly obvious. The United States is encircling China with a network of bases, with ballistic missiles, battle groups, nuclear -armed bombers.

This lethal arc extends from Australia to the islands of the Pacific, the Marianas and the Marshalls and Guam, to the Philippines, Thailand, Okinawa, Korea and  across Eurasia to Afghanistan and India. America has hung a noose around the neck of China. This is not news. Silence by media; war by media.

In 2015, in high secrecy, the US and Australia staged the biggest single air-sea military exercise in recent history, known as Talisman Sabre. Its aim was to rehearse an Air-Sea Battle Plan, blocking sea lanes, such as the Straits of Malacca and the Lombok Straits, that cut off China’s access to oil, gas and other vital raw materials from the Middle East and Africa.

In the circus known as the American presidential campaign, Donald Trump is being presented as a lunatic, a fascist.  He is certainly odious; but he is also a media hate figure.  That alone should arouse our scepticism.

Trump’s views on migration are grotesque, but no more grotesque than those of David Cameron. It is not Trump who is the Great Deporter from the United States, but the Nobel Peace Prize winner, Barack Obama.

According to one prodigious liberal commentator, Trump is “unleashing the dark forces of violence” in the United States. Unleashing them?

This is the country where toddlers shoot their mothers and the police wage a murderous war against black Americans. This is the country that has attacked and sought to overthrow more than 50 governments, many of them democracies, and bombed from Asia to the Middle East, causing the deaths and dispossession of millions of people.

No country can equal this systemic record of violence. Most of America’s wars (almost all of them against defenceless countries) have been launched not by Republican presidents but by liberal Democrats: Truman, Kennedy, Johnson, Carter, Clinton, Obama.

In 1947, a series of National Security Council directives described the paramount aim of American foreign policy as “a world substantially made over in [America's] own image”.  The ideology was messianic Americanism. We were all Americans. Or else. Heretics would be converted, subverted, bribed, smeared or crushed.

Donald Trump is a symptom of this, but he is also a maverick. He says the invasion of Iraq was a crime; he doesn’t want to go to war with Russia and China. The danger to the rest of us is not Trump, but Hillary Clinton. She is no maverick. She embodies the resilience and violence of a system whose vaunted “exceptionalism” is totalitarian with an occasional liberal face.

As presidential  election day draws near, Clinton will be hailed as the first female president, regardless of her crimes and lies – just as Barack Obama was lauded as the first black president and liberals swallowed his nonsense about “hope”. And the drool goes on.

Described by the Guardian columnist Owen Jones as “funny, charming, with a coolness that eludes practically every other politician”, Obama the other day sent drones to slaughter 150 people in Somalia.  He kills people usually on Tuesdays, according to the New York Times, when he is handed a list of candidates for death by drone. So cool.

In the 2008 presidential campaign, Hillary Clinton threatened to “totally obliterate” Iran with nuclear weapons.  As Secretary of State under Obama, she participated in the overthrow of the democratic government of Honduras. Her contribution to the destruction of Libya in 2011 was almost gleeful. When the Libyan leader, Colonel Gaddafi, was publicly sodomised with a knife – a murder made possible by American logistics – Clinton gloated over his death: “we came, we saw, he died.”

One of Clinton’s closest allies is Madeleine Albright, the former secretary of State, who has attacked young women for not supporting “Hillary”. This is the same Madeleine Albright  who infamously celebrated on TV the death of half a million Iraqi children as “worth it”.

Among Clinton’s biggest backers are the Israel lobby and the arms companies that fuel the violence in the Middle East.  She and her husband have received a fortune from Wall Street. And yet, she is about to be ordained the women’s candidate, to see off the evil Trump, the official demon. Her supporters include distinguished feminists: the likes of Gloria Steinem in the US and Anne Summers in Australia.

A generation ago, a post-modern cult now known as “identity politics” stopped many intelligent, liberal-minded people examining the causes and individuals they supported — such as the fakery of Obama and Clinton;  such as bogus progressive movements like Syriza in Greece, which betrayed the people of that country and allied with their enemies.

Self absorption, a kind of “me-ism”, became the new zeitgeist in privileged western societies and signaled the demise of great collective movements against war, social injustice, inequality,  racism and sexism.

Today, the long sleep may be over. The young are stirring again. Gradually. The thousands in Britain who supported Jeremy Corbyn as Labour leader are part of this awakening – as are those who rallied to support Senator Bernie Sanders.

In Britain last week, Jeremy Corbyn’s closest ally, his shadow treasurer John McDonnell, committed a Labour government to pay off the debts of piratical banks and, in effect, to continue so-called austerity.

In the US, Bernie Sanders has promised to support Clinton if or when she’s nominated. He, too, has voted for America’s use of violence against countries when he thinks it’s “right”. He says Obama has done “a great job”.

In Australia, there is a kind of mortuary politics, in which tedious parliamentary games are played out in the media while refugees and Indigenous people are persecuted and inequality grows, along with the danger of war. The government of Malcolm Turnbull has just announced a so-called defence budget of $195 billion that is a drive to war.  There was no debate. Silence.

What has happened to the great tradition of popular direct action, unfettered to parties? Where is the courage, imagination and commitment required to begin the long journey to a better, just and peaceful world? Where are the dissidents in art, film, the theatre, literature?

Where are those who will shatter the silence? Or do we wait until the first nuclear missile is fired?

The original source of this article is Global Research

Copyright © John Pilger, Global Research, 2016

ISIS creasted as a Weapon of Geopolitical Coercion

excerpts from

Brussels Attack: The True Implications of ISIS Links

By Tony Cartalucci

Global Research, March 22, 2016

New Eastern Outlook 22 March 2016

- - -

The West Created ISIS as a Weapon of Geopolitical Coercion

ISIS’ own alleged agenda of transforming the world into a “caliphate” is cartoonishly absurd. In reality, it is clear that ISIS shows up and exercises force in regions of the world the US and its allies cannot intervene in directly. This includes North Africa, the Middle East, and even as far as Asia.

Far from a “conspiracy theory,” it would be the US’ own Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) that would admit as much in a leaked 2012 report (.pdf) which stated:

If the situation unravels there is the possibility of establishing a declared or undeclared Salafist principality in eastern Syria (Hasaka and Der Zor), and this is exactly what the supporting powers to the opposition want, in order to isolate the Syrian regime, which is considered the strategic depth of the Shia expansion (Iraq and Iran).

To clarify just who these “supporting powers” were that sought the creation of a “Salafist” (Islamic) principality” (State), the DIA report explains:

The West, Gulf countries, and Turkey support the opposition; while Russia, China, and Iran support the regime.

Between this admission, and an earlier exposé in 2007 by veteran journalist Seymour Hersh in his New Yorker piece titled, “The Redirection” where US and Saudi plans to use Al Qaeda to wage proxy war on Syria and Iran were revealed, it is clear that both Al Qaeda and ISIS are being used by the West to wage war on Damascus, Baghdad, Tehran, and even Moscow.

ISIS supply lines clearly, even admittedly run from NATO territory in Turkey where the US and its regional allies have categorically failed to interdict them and even appear to be aiding and abetting the flow of men and materiel into ISIS-held territory in Syria and Iraq. These supply lines are what has allowed pressure to be continuously placed upon Damascus and its allies over the past 5 years in ways nonexistent “moderate rebels” couldn’t.

In Indonesia, as Jakarta clearly began re-balancing toward Beijing, ISIS carried out its first deadly attack on the Southeast Asian nation. Thailand’s similar re-balancing also prompted threats from the US that an “ISIS attack” was imminent.

In Europe, where the flames of a “clash of civilizations” are being furiously and intentionally fanned, ISIS serves as a constant implement to empower extremists on both sides, while drowning out the voices of unity, moderation, and peace in the middle. It allows for a growing police state and xenophobic tendencies to flourish at home, while justifying further war abroad.

While some Western newspapers are already trying to frame the Belgium attack as “incompetence” by European security agencies, there must be a better explanation as to why this “war with ISIS” continues to drag on, when the source of ISIS’ fighting capacity appears to be within rather than beyond the West – and aiding rather than opposing Western special interests.

Tony Cartalucci is a Bangkok-based geopolitical researcher and writer, especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

The original source of this article is New Eastern Outlook

Copyright © Tony Cartalucci, New Eastern Outlook, 2016

 

= = =

Is the ISIS Behind the Brussels Attacks? Who is Behind the ISIS?

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky

Global Research, March 22, 2016

 

Dramatic loss of life in the terror attacks in Brussels: 34 killed and more than 180 wounded according to the latest reports. 
Prior to the conduct of a police investigation, in the hours following the attacks, the Western media went into overdrive, intimating without evidence that the Islamic State (ISIS) operating out of Raqqa, Northern Syria was responsible for the attacks. 
According to the Independent “Isis supporters have been celebrating the Brussels attacks online [social media] as speculation mounts that the group is behind a wave of deadly attacks in the Belgian capital.”

The report is based on information emanating from social media, which does not constitute a  reliable source of information.
An unkown self-proclaimed news agency (Amaq Agency) allegedly representing the ISIS provided the following report:

This mysterious agency was then immediately quoted by Reuters in an authoritiative report.
In turn, alleged supporters of ISIS on twitter were quoted. According to the Jerusalem Post (March 21, 2016):

The “tears of joy” that were shed by ISIS supporters on Twitter are also related to the fact that the terrorists succeeded in paralyzing the activity in the airport attacked. One of ISIS’ main declared goals is to devastate the Western economy and replace the dollar with its own coin as the only international legal tender.

Who Controls the ISIS social media and twitter accounts?  

Police and intelligence are often aware of the identity of  ISIS social media, IP addresses, geographic location.
According to London’s Mirror (December 16, 2015):

Hackers have claimed that a number of Islamic State supporters’ social media accounts are being run from internet addresses linked to the [UK  government] Department of Work and Pensions.
A group of four young computer experts who call themselves VandaSec have unearthed evidence indicating that at least three ISIS-supporting accounts can be traced back to the DWP.
Every computer and mobile phone logs onto the internet using an IP address, which is a type of identification number.
The hacking collective showed Mirror Online details of the IP addresses used by a trio of separate digital jihadis to access Twitter accounts, which have been used to spread extremist propaganda.
At first glance, the IP addresses seem to be based in Saudi Arabia, but upon further inspection using specialist tools they appeared to link back to the DWP.  ..
[T]he British government sold on a large number of IP addresses to two Saudi Arabian firms.
After the sale completed in October of this year, they were used by extremists to spread their message of hate.
Jamie Turner, an expert from a firm called PCA Predict, discovered a record of the sale of IP addresses, and found a large number were transferred to Saudi Arabia in October of this year.
He told us it was likely the IP addresses could still be traced back to the DWP because records of the addresses had not yet been fully updated.

What the Daily Mirror report suggests (as well as other reports) is that the IP addresses of the ISIS are indirectly linked to the British government, i.e. 1) the identity of the ISIS social media is  invariable known to police authorities, and 2) The ISIS social media are sponsored by Saudi Arabia, which is also involved in the recruitment and training of terrorists in liaison with US-NATO.
It is worth noting that the British government has acknowledged its responsibility:

The Cabinet Office has now admitted to selling the IP addresses on to Saudi Telecom and the Saudi-based Mobile Telecommunications Company earlier this year as part of a wider drive to get rid of a large number of the DWP’s IP addresses. (Mirror, op cit cit, emphasis added)

The State Sponsors of Terrorism
The events in Brussels raises the broader question: who is behind the ISIS?
Israel intelligence sources (DEBKA) in a 2011 report confirmed the role of NATO operating out of its Brussels headquarters and Turkey’s high command in the training and recruitment of terrorists:

NATO headquarters in Brussels and the Turkish high command are meanwhile drawing up plans for their first military step in Syria, which is to arm the rebels with weapons for combating the tanks and helicopters spearheading the Assad regime’s crackdown on dissent. … NATO strategists are thinking more in terms of pouring large quantities of anti-tank and anti-air rockets, mortars and heavy machine guns into the protest centers for beating back the government armored forces. (DEBKAfile, NATO to give rebels anti-tank weapons, August 14, 2011)

This initiative, which was also supported by Saudi Arabia and Qatar, involved a process of organized recruitment of thousands of jihadist “freedom fighters”, reminiscent of  the enlistment of  Mujahideen to wage the CIA’s jihad (holy war) in the heyday of the Soviet-Afghan war:

Also discussed in Brussels and Ankara, our sources report, is a campaign to enlist thousands of Muslim volunteers in Middle East countries and the Muslim world to fight alongside the Syrian rebels. The Turkish army would house these volunteers, train them and secure their passage into Syria. (Ibid, emphasis added)

These mercenaries were subsequently integrated into US and allied sponsored terrorist organizations including Al Nusrah and ISIS.
And then in August 2014, Obama launched his counter-terrorism campaign. Yet the evidence confirms that instead of destroying the ISIS, the US and its allies including Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Israel were in fact protecting the ISIS.
Again according to the Daily Mirror in a 2015 report, the counterterrorism campaign was conducive to ISIS doubling the territory under its control, until the launching of the Russian intervention in late September 2015.

Sheer Incompetence of  the US Air Force (doubtful) or Washington’s complicity in protecting the terrorists?
Recently the release of the Hillary Clinton email archive as well as leaked Pentagon documents confirm that the US and its allies were supportive of ISIS, which are according to press reports, the alleged architects of the Brussels attacks.
The 7-page Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) document dated August of 2012, points to US complicity in supporting the creation of an Islamic State:

Copyright © Prof Michel Chossudovsky, Global Research, 2016

 

West’s Fake War on ISIS Grinds On

All of these are done to maintain West's (not just American) imperialist hegemony in the middle-east for a number of reasons...

America’s Fake War on ISIS Grinds On

By Tony Cartalucci

Global Research, March 22, 2016

New Eastern Outlook 21 March 2016

A recent US Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC) hearing considering the nominations of General Joseph Votel and Lieutenant General Raymond Thomas for command of US Central Command and US Special Operations Command respectively, exposed the absurdity of America’s war on the so-called “Islamic State” (ISIS).

While the Syrian Arab Army backed by Russian airpower successfully cuts off entire armies of terrorists from their supplies abroad, while encircling and eradicating them within Syrian territory, the US appears instead to be attempting to stretch out ISIS’ existence while maintaining the illusion of fighting the terrorist organization for as long as possible.

During the hearing, several times US senators including US Senator John McCain (R-AZ) would credit US operations for the recent setbacks faced by ISIS, including pressure recently placed directly on Al Raqqa – the defacto capital of ISIS in eastern Syria.

In reality, all of these setbacks are instead a result of Syrian and Russian efforts to interdict supplies flowing into Syria primarily from NATO-member Turkey, US-ally Jordan, and back and forth from Iraq. Beyond allegedly high-profile targeted killings, little to nothing has been done by the US to actually degrade ISIS’ fighting capacity.

Russian warplanes have in particular, mercilessly bombed ISIS and Al Qaeda logistical networks to the point of drawing out from the geopolitical shadows their foreign sponsors, including Turkey which went as far as downing a Russian jet as it operated along the Syrian-Turkish border.

As Syrian and Russian forces choke off supplies crossing Syria’s borders bound for ISIS and Al Qaeda positions, the West and its regional partners have become increasingly desperate and transparent in their efforts to reverse what is the inevitable end of the conflict.

Senators and Generals Show No Interest in Stopping ISIS 

The SASC hearing was particularly telling, because while ISIS was regularly brought up, it was clear from listening to the senators and the two generals providing testimony, that the real goal was still overthrowing the Syrian government and rolling back the influence of Russia and Iran in order to maintain American hegemony in the region and around the world. ISIS is merely an excuse to remain in the region to continue pursuing these goals.

Despite US participation in the recent Syrian ceasefire and upcoming peace talks, both the senators and the generals talked about removing Syrian President Bashar al Assad, as well as the next iteration of America’s train and equip program for fighters being sent into Syria to perpetuate the violence.

And even as the entire committee plotted the overthrow of the Syrian government, they continuously acknowledged not only ISIS’ presence in the country, but its expansion into other nations, including Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya – three nations the US has destroyed – with Libya being the latest and regarded several times during the hearing as “ungovernable.”

Libya’s “ungovernable” present state was cited as the primary reason for ISIS’ “sudden” appearance in the North African nation. None of the senators nor the two generals, however, mentioned just how Libya became ungovernable in the first place – not even Senator McCain who literally walked, hand-in-hand, with the future rank and file of ISIS in Libya as they took over the country after the overthrow of the government in Tripoli.

The failure of the US military for 16 months to target and destroy ISIS’ oil infrastructure in Syria was also mentioned, though the rest of their logistical network in Syria or beyond, or their foreign sponsors, were never brought up.

What the hearing illustrated once again was that it is the US plowing the fields – turning nations into failed-states – and then sowing the seeds of perpetual chaos with heavily armed, well-funded, and well backed mercenary forces to transform entire regions of the world into divided, weak, and perpetually fighting, perpetually shifting conflict zones from which the West’s enemies can be removed, and regimes more to their liking can be installed.

In the one hour plus hearing, nothing resembling a tangible strategy for confronting and defeating ISIS was discussed.

Generals who have spent their lives in the military, from military families talked about the impotence of airstrikes alone in Syria to degrade ISIS’ fighting capacity – never once mentioning the fact that they have standing armies both in Turkey and Jordan more than capable of strangling completely ISIS’ logistical lifelines and preventing the torrent of foreign fighters repeatedly referenced during the hearing from reinforcing ISIS positions in Syria.

Instead of holding accountable US’ allies who are clearly underwriting ISIS’ continued and formidable fighting capacity as well as its expansion beyond Syria’s borders, several times the committee agreed to work even closer with these allies in what is clearly a disingenuous war on ISIS.

It is unlikely General Votel or Lieutenant General Thomas do not know how to identify the source of an enemy’s fighting capacity or how to effectively cut it off. Indeed, they know precisely how to defeat ISIS, but anyone can still watch the hearing – archived online on the US government’s own website for all to see – and understand that the goal is not to fight and defeat ISIS – it is to reorder the region in such a manner as to maintain US influence and protect US “interests” across it.

Fighting ISIS is but a pretext to remain involved in Syria, Iraq, and now Libya and Afghanistan. Both the senators of the committee and the two generals present all agreed that Nigeria, Somalia, and perhaps nations beyond would also see ISIS gaining footholds within their borders giving the US a free hand to pursue them in what they called “transregional” operations.

While nations like Russia and China are building economic relationships with the nations of the Middle East and North Africa region (MENA), giving them footholds and influence throughout it, the US seems to be predicating their continued presence in MENA upon addressing perpetual chaos.

However, it is becoming increasingly clear that this chaos they are “addressing,” is chaos of their own intentional creation. It is difficult to imagine that this sort of foreign policy is sustainable, and in a way, the committee acknowledged that too. When asked by the committee if they also believed that it looked like Russia was going to achieve its goals in Syria, both generals without hesitation agreed.

Tony Cartalucci is a Bangkok-based geopolitical researcher and writer, especially for the online magazine“New Eastern Outlook”.

The original source of this article is New Eastern Outlook

Copyright © Tony Cartalucci, New Eastern Outlook, 2016