Syria: Imperialism sinks deeper into the quagmire
Frustrated again and again
in its efforts to topple the Syrian leadership and replace it with a puppet
government, US imperialism is looking increasingly rudderless. Everything short
of open and direct military intervention has already been tried and found
wanting: funding the rebels, imposing devastating sanctions, inflicting proxy
war on the country (both covert and open), seeking (in vain) a UNSC resolution
to sanitise blitzkrieg, trying to undermine every genuine attempt to secure a
diplomatic solution to the crisis which imperialism engineered in the first
place, and (last but not least) turning every media outlet in the West into a
vehicle for a black propaganda exercise of such vaulting mendacity as would
bring a blush even to Goebbels’ cheek.
All of this has so far proved of no avail. The
traitors, mercenaries and imported jihadis of the misnamed Free Syrian Army are
discovering to their cost that it is one thing to inflict atrocities, but quite
another to secure a decisive victory in this war of subversion. Whilst these
heroes are in their element when it comes to kidnapping Iranian pilgrims,
murdering POWs in cold blood, blowing up the innocent citizens of Damascus and
Aleppo as they go about their business and trashing irreplaceable World
Heritage sites like the Aleppo Souk, they are proving incapable of making any
appreciable dent in the national resistance forces under the authority of
President Assad and the progressive national coalition over which he presides.
Like the rats in Benghazi, these rebels would long since have scattered like
chaff in the wind were it not for outside assistance.
The destructive thuggery of the rebels, stinking so
badly now that some of the worst outrages are creeping into the media and
drawing muted UN criticism, is proving counter-productive. The sectarian hatred
of these fanatics is not alone directed against those holding to the Alawite
faith, but is no less fervent against other religious and ethnic minorities. Mother
Agnes-Mariam de la Croix, mother superior of an ancient Carmelite monastery in Syria, was forced to flee to Lebanon under threat of abduction by foreign Islamist mercenaries. She
had attracted their hatred by speaking out about the fate of some 80,000 Christians
who had been forced out of Homs. It is perhaps significant that her own father
had himself been forced from his home in Palestine by the Zionists in 1948. Now
in exile herself, she recounted how both Alawites and Christians living in Homs were herded into a building and dynamited, in an act which was then falsely
attributed to the regular army. As the rebellion got under way, she reported
having noticed growing numbers of “aggressive, armed gangs which wished to
paralyse community life, abducting people, beheading, bringing terror even to
schools.” Some were al-Qaeda, some Muslim Brotherhood, and only one in
twenty was actually Syrian. As she put it, “Now their cause is being
recycled to kill Syrians.” (Rowan Callick, ‘Christians emptied from Middle
East’, The Australian, 6 October)
An Asia Times report notes that “other
communities beyond the Kurds and the Alawites … are coming under increasing
pressure to pick sides in the escalating civil war. The Druze (another minority
offshoot of Islam) are reportedly some of the latest to feel the heat in places
such as Damascus and Idlib province, while the Christians are waiting nervously
at the sidelines.” (Victor Kotsev, ‘New offensive escalates Syrian civil
war’, Asia Times, 3 October)
And if they had not already manufactured enemies
enough, these fanatics are also succeeding in alienating another rather large
minority, the Kurds, seeking to win Ottoman approval by subjecting them to
threats and attacks, including a bombing in Qamishli which killed eight.
Reuters quoted a rebel leader in Aleppo as warning Kurds: “Whoever carries
arms in the face of the opposition battalions will find themselves under fire.”
(ibid)
Given such a talent for winning hearts and minds,
it is not surprising that the rebellion is haemorrhaging support within Syria and is itself riven with ever more demoralising splits.
Erdogan dances to Uncle
Sam’s tune
Ankara, clearly acting at Washington’s prompting,
has now raised the stakes. Having long provided aid, succour and sanctuary to
the armed rebellion against the Syrian leadership, turning the common border
into a rat run for the export of terror, the Turkish government has not only
violated the sovereignty of its neighbour but has also routinely exposed its
own citizens to the perils of living in what has effectively become a battle
zone. Unsurprisingly, this results in injury and death, including the tragic
loss of a Turkish family of five in the border town of Akcakale. According to
the Turkish newspaper Yurt (‘Misfire: NATO mortar ‘gift’ from Turkey to Syrian rebels’, RT, 9 October) the mortar shell in question was fired by the rebels,
presumably in the hope of bouncing Turkey into open war. Either way, however,
it is clear that the responsibility for all such tragic loss of life lies
exclusively at the door of Turkey and its US imperialist masters. It is
imperialism which has pitchforked Syria into civil war and set former close
neighbours at odds one with the other.
NATO was quick to vow to “defend” Turkey, and Washington used the occasion to try yet again a resolution that would stand up as a
mandate for Western intervention and regime change. As it turned out, all that
could get past Russian and Chinese objections was a UNSC statement noting that
the mortar incident “highlighted the grave impact the crisis in Syria has on the security of its neighbours and on regional peace and stability. The
members of the Council demanded that such violations of international law stop
immediately and are not repeated. The members of the Security Council
called on the Syrian Government to fully respect the sovereignty and
territorial integrity of its neighbours”. Whilst shamefully “even-handed”
(as between aggressor and victim), this diluted statement lacks any credibility
as an excuse for intervention, thus failing in its purpose. Worse for
imperialism, at the request of the Syria’s ambassador to the UN the Security
Council issued a statement condemning “in the strongest terms” four
suicide bombing attacks in the city of Aleppo, thought to be carried out by a
group called al-Nusra, a jihadist faction with ties to al-Qaeda. (It will be
remembered what similar dirty services were earlier rendered to imperialism by
the similarly al-Qaeda affiliated Libyan Islamic Fighting Group.) The fact that
even this tiny fraction of the rebels’ war crimes saw the light of day at the
UN shows how badly Washington, London, Paris and Tel Aviv are faring, both in
their proxy wars and in their diplomatic credibility. The West’s discomfiture
on both fronts is well documented by Global Research contributor Thierry
Meyssan. (http://www.globalresearch.ca/towards-a-western-retreat-from-syria/)
On the military front,
imperialism is on the back foot:
“On July 18th, an explosion killed the
leadership of the Council of National Security, signalling the beginning of a
vast offensive during which tens of thousands of mercenaries descended on the
Syrian capital from Jordan, Lebanon, Turkey and Iraq. After several days of
pitched battles, Damascus was saved when the fraction of the population hostile
to the government chose out of patriotism to assist the National Army rather
than bid welcome to the forces of the FSA.
“On September 26, al-Qaeda jihadists were able
to penetrate the interior of the Defence Ministry, disguised as Syrian soldiers
and carrying false papers. They intended to detonate their explosive vests in
the office of the joint chiefs of the military but did not get close enough to
their target and were killed. A second team attempted to take over the national
TV station to broadcast an ultimatum to the President but were not able to
reach the building as access was blocked moments after the first attack. A
third team targeted government headquarters and a fourth was aimed at the
airport.
“In both cases, NATO coordinated the operations
from its Turkish base in Incirlik, seeking to provoke a schism at the core of
the Syrian Arab Army and rely on certain generals for the purpose of
overthrowing the regime. But the generals in question had long been identified
as traitors and marginalized from effective command. In the aftermath of the
two failed attacks, Syrian power was reinforced, giving it the internal
legitimacy necessary to go on the offensive and crush the FSA.”
And as on the battlefield, so too in the field of
diplomacy imperialism is losing the initiative. Russia has “obtained the
creation of a Syrian Ministry of National Reconciliation; supervised and
protected the meeting in Damascus of national opposition parties; organized
contacts between the U.S. and Syrian general staff; and prepared the deployment
of a peace force.” Wrong footing Washington’s pretence that its troops are
on the Jordan border purely in order to keep chemical weapons out of “the
wrong hands” (!), Russia has “verified that these were stored in locations
sufficiently secure not to fall into the hands of the FSA, be seized by
jihadists and used by them indiscriminately.” Most ominous of all for
Washington’s diplomatic prestige, the Collective Security Treaty Organization
(CSTO), which unites Russia with Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kirghizstan and
Tajikistan, has signed an agreement with the UN Peacekeeping Department under
which CSTO troops, projected to number 50,000, would be available to serve in
conflict zones under UNSC mandate.
No sooner had the hue and cry over the missile
incident been raised than Ankara took the opportunity to push through a law
authorizing cross-border operations into Syria. So unpopular was this step that
some 5,000 protestors joined an anti-war rally in Istanbul, chanting “No to
war! Peace now! We won’t be soldiers of imperialists!”
Egged on by the avowal from NATO chief Anders
Rasmussen “We have all the necessary plans in place to protect and defend
Turkey if necessary,” Erdogan ploughed on with the next provocation, first
sending 25 more F16 fighter planes to the border and then employing them to
buzz a civilian airliner en route from Moscow to Damascus, risking the lives of
all on board and forcing it to land in Ankara. Syria’s transport minister
pointed out that these actions “amounted to air piracy which contradicts
civil aviation treaties”.
Ankara’s attempt to justify this brigandage on the pretence that the
Syrian Airlines passenger jet was carrying rockets or missile parts was a plain
lie which Erdogan did not even try to back up with evidence, content to hide
behind the skirts of the US State Department whose spokesperson Victoria Nuland
announced “We strongly
support the government of Turkey’s decision to inspect the plane”. Responding
to the criminal seizure of part of the plane’s cargo, Syria’s Information Ministry asked Erdogan to offer any shred of proof that it included
missile parts, pointing out that “The plane did not carry ammunition or
military equipment and Erdogan’s comments lack credibility and he must show the
equipment and ammunition at least to his people.”
Turkish workers will not need much prompting to
recall another act of piracy, the Zionist slaughter of nine peace activists on
board the Turkish ship Mavi Marmara when she was intercepted on her courageous
mission to break the criminal Israeli blockade of Gaza. What shame Erdogan now
brings upon Turkey when he puts his nation’s armed forces at the disposal of
the best friends of Israel!
As the plane was plunged into darkness and waited
for hours on the tarmac, long after permission to depart had ostensibly been
granted, panic spread amongst both crew and passengers. A stewardess on board
the plane told Russia Today (11 October, ‘Turks force Syrian crew to
sign ’emergency landing, no F-16s’ statement’) that “Four people onboard
have been beaten up, two crew and two passengers, as they tried to force them
to sign documents. We don’t know what these papers are about. We are scared
for the fate of the captain. He was taken away and threatened with arrest if he
does not sign an emergency landing paper.” One passenger, a mother of
three, said on the phone that the captain was being forced to sign a release
stating that military planes were not involved and the plane just made an
emergency landing! She added that “If we do not agree to these terms, they
will take the captain kind of hostage. They are threatening us. The captain
has now returned and said that ‘either I sign the document that I made an
emergency landing or they are taking me hostage.’”
The fact that this provocation is not a one-off
Erdogan blunder, but rather fits a blueprint concocted by imperialism, was
confirmed by a further act of air piracy which followed a few days later, this
time against an Armenian plane en route for Aleppo but forced to land in
Erzurum on a similarly flimsy pretext.
Imperialism: Damned if
they do, damned if they don’t
Whilst the puppets dance more or less to order, the
masters stumble one step closer to direct intervention, with the revelation by
US defence officials that over the past six months about 150 US military
personnel have been quietly posted to Jordan, supposedly to plan for “when”
President Assad is removed. The White House press secretary insisted that “it’s
not an escalation” (Julian Barnes, Stephen Fidler, Joe Parkinson:
‘Syrian Conflict Grows on Two Fronts’, Wall Street Journal, 11 October).
Echoing him nervously, an army spokesman walked on eggshells: “These guys
are not door-kickers or shooters. They are planners.” How reassuring.
Western
qualms about emerging from the shadows and supplementing the efforts of its
hired proxies with its own open military involvement are well-founded. One
commentator neatly sums up the quandary facing imperialism should it decide to
press on with its war plans: “The military situation in Syria is turning against those in Washington and Brussels who hoped to change the regime there by
force. Two successive attempts to take Damascus have failed and it has become
clear that that objective cannot be achieved… The question is no longer how
much time the ‘Assad regime’ will hold out but whether it costs the U.S. more to continue the war than to stop it. Continuing it would entail the collapse of
the Jordanian economy, losing allies in Lebanon, risking civil war in Turkey, in addition to having to protect Israel from the chaos. Stopping the war would mean allowing
the Russians to regain foothold in the Middle East and strengthening the Axis
of Resistance to the detriment of the expansionist dreams of the Likud”.
(Thierry Meyssan, ‘Towards a Western Retreat from Syria’, Global Research,
9 October) In a nutshell, imperialism is damned if it does and damned if it
doesn’t.
Victory
to Assad!
Death to imperialism!