APPENDIX 3, Media Evidentiary Extracts (chronological)
Aggressive War: Supreme International Crime International Clearing House, by Marjorie Cohn 11 September 2004 http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article7249.htm · Associate United States Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson was the chief prosecutor at the Nuremberg Tribunal. In his report to the State Department, Justice Jackson wrote: "No political or economic situation can justify" the crime of aggression. He also said: "If certain acts in violation of treaties are crimes they are crimes whether the United States does them or whether Germany does them, and we are not prepared to lay down a rule of criminal conduct against others which we would not be willing to have invoked against us." · Bush's war on Iraq is a war of aggression. "Aggression is the use of armed force by a state against the sovereignty, territorial integrity or political independence of another state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Charter of the United Nations, as set out in this definition," according to General Assembly Resolution 3314, passed in the wake of Vietnam.
· The only two situations where the UN Charter permits the use of armed force against another state is in self-defense, or when authorized by the Security Council. · Virtually every Western democracy has ratified the treaty of the International Criminal Court, except the United States. · Bush knows that the Court will also punish war crimes. · Following the Holocaust, the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg called the waging of aggressive war "essentially an evil thing . . . to initiate a war of aggression . . . is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole." · Nuremberg prosecutor Justice Jackson labeled the crime of aggression "the greatest menace of our times." More than 50 years later, his words still ring true.
· Marjorie Cohn, a contributing editor to t r u t h o u t, is a professor at Thomas Jefferson School of Law, executive vice president of the National Lawyers Guild, and the U.S. representative to the executive committee of the American Association of Jurists.
A senior official of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency, or ISI, told The Associated Press that there are believed to be "several dozen" people with European citizenship - many of Pakistani origin - among the Islamic extremists operating in the lawless border area.
Britain's communications monitoring agency, the Government Communications Headquarters or GCHQ, estimates there are as many as 20 British-born militants in the border area,
70 people have traveled from Germany to Pakistan and Afghanistan for paramilitary training, and that about a third of them have returned to Germany
The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not supposed to talk about classified information to the media, said foreigners in the area also include Chechens, Uzbeks, Arabs and Turks, one of whom was a former F-16 pilot in the Turkish air force. "That shows you that some of the people who are coming are very well educated," he said.
Erdogan said countries of the region could not turn their back to each other, and they could not remain indifferent to each other's problems.
Turkey's prime minister said that Turkey was objecting to injustice and violence all around the world just for the sake of humanity.
Erdogan said Turkey would never turn a blind eye to massacre of innocent people, particularly children, with modern weapons, and Turkey would not remain silent and indifferent to violence in the world.
Erdogan said Turkey would continue to defend rights of people who faced injustice, violence and invasion in the Middle East and the world.
Erdogan also said Turkey wanted peace and justice in its region and the world, and if there was peace, compromise, stability and welfare, in the region, everybody would benefit from them.
The Al-Gaddafi International Prize for Human Rights is an annual prize founded by and named after Libyan leader Muammar al-Gaddafi.
· The mercenaries had been in action, repeatedly opened fire without warning on what he said were peaceful civilian protesters, when Mr Ibrahim and his allies got news that reinforcements were travelling into the city. The aircraft landed at the nearby Abruk military airport bringing with it a fresh cargo of mercenaries.
Arms embargo, 9. Decides that all Member States shall immediately take the necessary measures to prevent the direct or indirect supply, sale or transfer to the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya, from or through their territories or by their nationals, or using their flag vessels or aircraft, of arms and related materiel of all types, including weapons and ammunition, military vehicles and equipment, paramilitary equipment, and spare parts for the aforementioned, and technical assistance, training, financial or other assistance, related to military activities or the provision, maintenance or use of any arms and related materiel, including the provision of armed mercenary personnel whether or not originating in their territories…
PM Recep Tayyip Erdoğan on Monday firmly ruled out any NATO intervention in the Libyan crisis, while he strongly criticized European countries due to their “double-standard” approach towards developments in North Africa.
“What has NATO to do in Libya? NATO's intervention in Libya is out of the question. We are against such a thing,” Erdoğan said in a speech delivered at a meeting organized by the Turkish-German Chamber of Commerce and Industry (TD-IHK) in Hanover.
“We are not one of those who see oil when looking at the Middle East,” Erdoğan said.
The absurdity of embattled Libyan leader Mommar Gadaffi’s reign has many dimensions, one which is the “Al-Gaddafi International Prize for Human Rights,” which last November was awarded to none other than his closer friend and ally, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
Not surprisingly, Erdogan was a holdout in international efforts and concerns regarding the Libyan uprising against Gaddafi.
Acting under Chapter VII of the Charter of the United Nations, Demands the immediate establishment of a cease-fire and a complete end to violence and all attacks against, and abuses of, civilians;
Protection of civilians 4. Authorizes Member States that have notified the Secretary-General, acting nationally or through regional organizations or arrangements, and acting in cooperation with the Secretary-General, to take all necessary measures, notwithstanding paragraph 9 of resolution 1970 (2011), to protect civilians and civilian populated areas under threat of attack…
Note: Paragraph 9 of resolution 1970, shown earlier, imposed an arms embargo. This was rescinded in resolution 1973 for the “Protection of Civilians.”
Turkey's parliament has authorized the government to participate in military operations in Libya, including enforcing the no-fly zone.
Libya: Nato to control no-fly zone after France gives way to Turkey The Guardian, by Ian Traynorin Brussels and Nicholas Watt 24 March 2011 http://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/mar/24/france-turkey-nato-libya · Rasmussen said that the 28 member nations have agreed to act in order to protect Libyan civilians from attacks by forces loyal to Gaddafi.
Nato "assets" will be used to co-ordinate all aspects of the military campaign against Libya, including enforcement of the no-fly zone, protecting civilians through air strikes and enforcing a UN arms embargo.
From the start, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan dismissed the idea of a no-fly-zone as “such nonsense. What does NATO have to do with Libya?”
US Ambassador to Turkey Francis Ricciardone said the US and Turkey share almost the same views on military action in Libya, agreeing that the most important thing was to protect the people of Libya, and that Turkey had a unique role in the region and a special expertise because of historical and cultural reasons.
He [Erdogan] warned that a drawn-out conflict risked turning the country into a “second Iraq” or “another Afghanistan” with devastating repercussions both for Libya and the NATO states leading the intervention.
Libyan rebels in their eastern capital of Benghazi said they had begun receiving arms from abroad…
· The rebel military leader, Gen. Abdel Fattah Younes, said Saturday in an interview with Al Arabiya, a satellite news channel, that his forces had received weapons supplies from unidentified nations that supported their uprising.
· On Thursday, however, the emir of Qatar, Sheik Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, told CNN that his country would provide weapons to the rebels and that deliveries of antitank weapons might already have reached them. Qatar, along with Italy and France, has already recognized the rebels as the legitimate government of Libya.
CIA Başkanı'ndan 'çok gizli' ziyaret (A Top Secret Visit from the Director of the CIA) Sabah Gazete , by Yahya Bostan April 26, 2011 http://www.sabah.com.tr/Gundem/2011/04/26/cia-baskanindan-cok-gizli-ziyaret · Buna göre ABD Merkezi Haberalma Teşkilatı (CIA) Başkanı Leon Panetta Mart ayı sonunda Türkiye'ye sürpriz bir ziyaret gerçekleştirdi. Panetta'nın 5 gün süren Ankara ziyareti kamuoyundan sır gibi saklandı. "Gizli Gizli" koduyla yapılan görüşmelerde CIA Başkanı ve heyeti kayıtlara "Çok Önemli Konuk" olarak geçti. · CIA Başkanı Panetta'nın Ankara temaslarında Arap isyanları konusu ilk sırada yer aldı. Libya'ya "kriz", Suriye'ye "kritik eşik" tanımlaması yapıldı. · Türkiye tarafından Suriye'ye ilişkin "Gizli Kod" olarak tanımlanan ayrıntılar da ele alındı. "Gizli Kod"un Suriye'deki rejim değişikliğini ve Esad ailesinin can güvenliğinin sağlanmasını içerdiği belirtiliyor. · MİT Müsteşarı Hakan Fidan Eylül 2010 tarihinde Washington'a kritik bir ziyaret gerçekleştirdi.
Turkish Leader Says Qaddafi Must Step Down Immediately May 3, 2011 New York Times, BySEBNEM ARSUandKAREEM FAHIM May 3, 2011 http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/04/world/africa/04libya.html?pagewanted=all · In his harshest comments to date on the situation in Libya, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, a regional power broker, told reporters here on Tuesday that Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi had chosen “blood, tears, oppression” and that he must “immediately step down.” · The two countries began a visa agreement last year, allowing Libyan citizens to stay in Turkey for at least three months without a visa and signaling a turn in diplomatic and business relations.
There is no suggestion whatsoever that anyone would consider military intervention in Syria but the US and Europe, their hands full in Libya, are wary even of a purely diplomatic quagmire.
While the West decided it could never work with Col Gaddafi again, there would still be a willingness to work with Mr Assad if he suddenly made concrete, genuine efforts towards dialogue and democracy.
"If we want to address Syria, we have to deal with Libya first," said the diplomat.
Constatant, au début du mois de mai, le risque d'impasse militaire, la France a décidé de procéder directement à des parachutages d'armes dans le Djebel Nefousa : lance-roquettes, fusils d'assaut, mitrailleuses et surtout missiles antichars Milan. Jusque-là, les armes acheminées aux rebelles provenaient du Qatar et d'autres émirats du Golfe. Elles étaient convoyées par avion à Benghazi, siège du Conseil national de transition (CNT) à l'Est, puis par bateau jusqu'au port de Misrata, ville côtière prise en étau par les forces loyales au régime.
· Turkey further bolstered the standing of Libyan opposition leaders by recognizing them as rightful representatives of the war-torn nation, according to the Associated Press.
· Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said yesterday that his country gave Libya’s Transitional National Council, a rebel group engaged in armed conflict with the ruling regime of Muammar Qaddafi, $100 million and promised an additional $200 million, according to the AP.
Belgium is one of Europe’s busiest exporters of small arms and light weapons. As late as 2010, the last year for which publicly released data is available, 32 percent of the small-arms exports from the European Union to the Middle East and North Africa originated in the small NATO state.
“A lot of Belgian weapons are now in circulation in Libya and probably elsewhere in West and East Africa, exacerbating tensions and conflicts.”
That, in turn, has heightened concerns that Belgian weapons could factor significantly in another Arab uprising: the intensifying conflict in Syria, where some nearby countries have expressed an interest in actively arming the opposition.
As might be expected, the report was not positive about the general situation in Libya and suggested that a weapons deal could breach criterion 2 (“the respect of human rights in the country of final destination”) and criterion 7 (“the existence of a risk that the equipment will be diverted within the buyer country or re-exported under undesirable conditions”) of the European Common Position on Arms Sales.
· Belgium promised 225,000 euros (about $300,000) to an international program led by the United States that is intended to secure the loose stock of heat-seeking anti-aircraft missiles in Libya. These weapons were provided to Libya not by Belgium but by former Eastern bloc states. · But Belgium could be confronted with another problem in terms of small arms. Many Libyans say that Qatar, France, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates provided Libyan rebels with weapons during the recent war. Some of these countries are FN Herstal customers, raising the question of whether Belgian small arms, exported to countries that agreed not to re-export them, were nonetheless re-exported. · On Feb. 26, 2011, the United Nations voted the Resolution 1970, imposing an arms embargo in Libya. Nevertheless, in the spring and summer of 2011, Qatar started shipping military material to the rebels in Benghazi. Some of the weapons shipped by Qatar could well have been FN FAL assault rifles produced in Belgium, according to anti-Qaddafi fighters who received them.
· Several fighters said in interviews that their FN FALs were supplied by Qatar. Also, a Libyan operator who worked at the Benina airport in Benghazi in April 2011 said he remembered crates from Qatar full of Belgian FALs. · Switzerland, upon seeing military material it sold to Qatar in 2009 reappear in Libya in 2011, suspended its arms-export licenses to Qatar from July to December 2011 · The European Common Position on Arms Sales, adopted in 2008, stipulates that the selling country has to assess “the existence of a risk that the equipment will be diverted within the buyer country or re-exported under undesirable conditions.” Qatar, according to the Libyan fighters’ accounts, presents such a risk, as it re-exported military goods to third parties without authorization.
A small number of C.I.A. officers are operating secretly in southern Turkey, helping allies decide which Syrian opposition fighters across the border will receive arms to fight the Syrian government, according to American officials and Arab intelligence officers.
The weapons, including automatic rifles, rocket-propelled grenades, ammunition and some antitank weapons, are being funneled mostly across the Turkish border by way of a shadowy network of intermediaries including Syria’s Muslim Brotherhood and paid for by Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar, the officials said.
Last month, these activists said, Turkish Army vehicles delivered antitank weaponry to the border, where it was then smuggled into Syria.
Syrian rebels are smuggling small arms into Syria through a network of land and sea routes involving cargo ships and trucks moving through Turkey, Lebanon and Iraq, maritime intelligence and Free Syrian Army (FSA) officers say.
"There are three gateways from where we are getting weapons and they are not secret - Lebanon, Turkey and Iraq," an FSA officer in Syria said. "The weapons entering Turkey are by sea and in containers."
"Certainly they are being sourced from the Black Sea area and are coming in by ship," a maritime intelligence source said.
"Because of Bulgaria's gradual decrease of armed forces, the sell-off of arms equipment and the deposition of ammunition, relatively smooth supplies for such deals can be ensured," the former official said
Maritime security sources said consignments were most likely to be transported in ships to Turkey for onward dispatch to rebels inside Syria. Ship containers are hard to track and seen throughout the world as a security concern.
President Barack Obama has signed a secret order authorizing U.S. support for rebels seeking to depose Syrian
President Bashar al-Assad and his government, U.S. sources familiar with the matter said. Obama's order, approved earlier this year and known as an intelligence "finding," broadly permits the CIA and other U.S. agencies to provide support that could help the rebels oust Assad.
· A U.S. government source acknowledged that under provisions of the presidential finding, the United States was collaborating with a secret command center operated by Turkey and its allies.
· Last week, Reuters reported that, along with Saudi Arabia and Qatar, Turkey had established a secret base near the Syrian border to help direct vital military and communications support to Assad's opponents.
· This "nerve center" is in Adana, a city in southern Turkey about 60 miles from the Syrian border, which is also home to Incirlik, a U.S. air base where U.S. military and intelligence agencies maintain a substantial presence.
· Last week, the U.S. Treasury Department approved a license allowing the Washington Syrian Support Group to provide direct financial assistance to the Free Syrian Army. The Washington-based representative of the Free Syrian Army is allowed to conduct financial transactions on the rebel group's behalf but is not allowed to send military equipment. During the war in Libya, Obama signed a similar directive authorizing covert assistance for rebels in the battle against Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi.
President Obama struck out with Turkey this week after the White House released a photo showing the leader of the free world holding a baseball bat while talking on the phone with the Turkish prime minister.
When asked about possible hidden meanings in the photo, White House secretary Jay Carney said that the president was an avid baseball fan and long-time supporter of the Chicago White Sox.
White House spokeswoman Caitlin Hayden said in a brief written statement on Friday that her department had seen the commentary and speculation about the photo in the Turkish media.
‘We released the photo with only one purpose in mind, to highlight the President's continuing close relationship with Prime Minister Erdogan and draw attention to the important conversation they had about the worsening situation in Syria,’ she said.
Türkiye’deki Suriyeli teröristleri yöneten ABD Başkonsolosu Daria Darnell’in görev yeri değişti. Aydınlık, Suriyeli töreristlerin İncirlik Üssü’ndeki Kozmik Kriz Merkezi’nden idare edildiği bu merkezinde Darnell tarafından yönetildiğini yazmıştı.
Aydınılık’ın “Suriyeli teröristler İncirlik’te eğitiliyor” haberini dünyaya duyurdu. “Suriye’yi Türkiye’nin karıştırdığı imajının arkasından ABD çıktı.. ABD bütün kumpasların baş aktörü.. ABD Türkiye’yi diğer İslam ülkeleri nezdinde bitiriyor..” ifadelerinini kullanıldığı haberde şöyle denildi:
Suriye’de iç karışıklar başlatıldıktan sonra İncirlik Üssü’nde, 5000 muhalif önder ve militan ile diğer Suriyeliler’e askeri eğitim verildi.
Süreci, ABD’nin Adana Başkonsolosu Daria Darnell Yönetiyor... Aydınlık’ta yer alan habere göre “Suriyeli muhalifler, İncirlik Üssü’ndeki Kozmik Kriz Merkezi’nden sevk ve idare ediliyor. Suriye’deki terör olaylarının başlamasından bu yana süreci bizzat ABD’nin Adana Başkonsolosu Daria Darnell yönetiyor.
ANTALYA, Turkey — Military commanders of the main Free Syrian Army units from all over Syria agreed Friday to a unified command structure, bowing to intense pressure from Qatar and Saudi Arabia, who the fighters said promised more advanced weapons once a central military council was in place.
fierce arguments from the meeting occasionally overflowed into the marble lobby of a luxury hotel here, where the rebel commanders with their beards, leather jackets and track suits made a sharp contrast to golfers and other guests.
Rebel commanders said that three representatives from the Central Intelligence Agency — one from headquarters, one from Turkey and another from Jordan — attended their discussions here but did not comment.
…there is a growing sense that extremist jihadist forces are beginning to eclipse the rest of the opposition with better weapons and fighters.
The pivotal countries present were Qatar — which provides most of the financing for coalition efforts — Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Jordan and Turkey, commanders said.
The US Is Openly Sending Heavy Weapons From Libya To Syrian Rebels Business Insider, GEOFFREY INGERSOLL AND MICHAEL B KELLEY December 9, 2012
The Obama administration has decided to launch a covert operation to send heavy weapons to Syrian rebels, Christina Lamb of The Sunday Times of London reports. Diplomatic sources told the Sunday Times that the U.S. "bought weapons from the stockpiles of Libya's former dictator Muammar Gaddafi." The heavy arms include mortars, rocket propelled grenades, anti-tank missiles and the controversial anti-aircraft heat-seeking SA-7 missiles, which are integral to countering Bashar Al-Assad's bombing campaign.
The administration has said that the previously hidden CIA operation in Benghazi involved finding, repurchasing and destroying heavy weaponry looted from Libyan government arsenals, but in October we reported evidence indicating that U.S. agents — particularly murdered ambassador Chris Stevens — were at least aware of heavy weapons moving from Libya to jihadist Syrian rebels.
On Sept. 6 a Libyan ship carrying 400 tons of weapons for Syrian rebels docked in southern Turkey. The ship's captain was "a Libyan from Benghazi" who worked for the new Libyan government.
Saudi Arabia has financed a large purchase of infantry weapons from Croatia and quietly funneled them to antigovernment fighters in Syria
The weapons began reaching rebels in December via shipments shuttled through Jordan, officials said,
· Officials said multiple planeloads of weapons have left Croatia since December, when many Yugoslav weapons, previously unseen in the Syrian civil war, began to appear in videos posted by rebels on YouTube.
· Officials familiar with the transfers said the arms were part of an undeclared surplus in Croatia remaining from the 1990s Balkan wars. One Western official said the shipments included “thousands of rifles and hundreds of machine guns” and an unknown quantity of ammunition.
“I can’t imagine bigger quantities of weapons being moved without state sanctioning,” he said. “It is not impossible, but it is just very improbable.”
An official in Washington said the possibility of the transfers from the Balkans was broached last summer, when a senior Croatian official visited Washington and suggested to American officials that Croatia had many weapons available should anyone be interested in moving them to Syria’s rebels
· Both Ukrainian-made rifle cartridges that had been purchased by Saudi Arabia and Swiss-made hand grenades that had been provided to the United Arab Emirates were found by journalists to be in rebel possession.
· And Belgian-made rifles of a type not known to have been purchased by Syria’s military have been repeatedly seen in rebel hands, suggesting that one of Belgium’s previous rifle customers had transferred the popular weapons to the rebels.
The newspaper said the United States, Croatia’s main political and military ally, was possibly the intermediary, and mentioned four sightings at Pleso Airport of Ilyushin 76 aircraft owned by Jordan International Air Cargo. It said such aircraft had been seen on Dec. 14 and 23, Jan. 6 and Feb. 18.
Arab League has stepped up its support for the opposition Syrian National Coalition and given the go-ahead for member nations to arm the rebel forces fighting President Bashar al-Assad’s regime.
· Americans are training Syrian anti-government fighters in Jordan, the German weekly Der Spiegel said on Sunday, quoting what it said were participants and organizers.
Britain's Guardian newspaper also reported that US trainers were assisting Syrian rebels in Jordan. British and French instructors were also participating in the US-led effort, the Guardian said on Saturday, citing Jordanian security sources.
Jordanian intelligence services are involved in the program
Saudi Arabia and Qatar are widely believed to be providing weapons to the rebels, and Arab League ministers decided on Wednesday to let member nations arm them.
According to US officials, the CIA has started gathering intelligence on Islamist extremists in preparation for potential drone strikes, the LA Times reported Saturday.
As part of the CIA's efforts, agency officials have met with Syrian rebels in Turkey and Jordan.
Report: CIA provides intelligence to Syrian rebels AFP, Yitzhak Benhorin March 23, 2013
· The US Central Intelligence Agency has been feeding information to select rebel fighters in Syria to try to make them more effective against government troops, The Wall Street Journal reported on Saturday.
· The CIA has sent officers to Turkey to help vet rebels who receive arms shipments from Gulf allies, the report said.
In Iraq, the CIA has been directed by the White House to work with elite counterterrorism units
Syrian opposition commanders said the CIA had been working with British, French and Jordanian intelligence services to train rebels in the use of various kinds of weapons, the paper said.
The move comes as the al Nusra Front, the main al-Qaeda-linked group operating in Syria, is deepening its ties to the terrorist organization's central leadership in Pakistan, The Journal said.
With help from the C.I.A., Arab governments and Turkey have sharply increased their military aid to Syria’s opposition fighters in recent months, expanding a secret airlift of arms and equipment for the uprising against President Bashar al-Assad, according to air traffic data, interviews with officials in several countries and the accounts of rebel commanders.
It has grown to include more than 160 military cargo flights by Jordanian, Saudi and Qatari military-style cargo planes landing at Esenboga Airport near Ankara, and, to a lesser degree, at other Turkish and Jordanian airports.
From offices at secret locations, American intelligence officers have helped the Arab governments shop for weapons, including a large procurement from Croatia
· The Turkish government has had oversight over much of the program, down to affixing transponders to trucks ferrying the military goods through Turkey so it might monitor shipments as they move by land into Syria, officials said.
“The intensity and frequency of these flights,” he added, are “suggestive of a well-planned and coordinated clandestine military logistics operation.”
On a string of nights from April 26 through May 4, a Qatari Air Force C-17 — a huge American-made cargo plane — made six landings in Turkey, at Esenboga Airport. By Aug. 8 the Qataris had made 14 more cargo flights. All came from Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar, a hub for American military logistics in the Middle East.
· Qatar has been an active arms supplier — so much so that the United States became concerned about some of the Islamist groups that Qatar has armed. · David H. Petraeus, the C.I.A. director until November, had been instrumental in helping to get this aviation network moving and had prodded various countries to work together on it. · White House officials were regularly briefed on the shipments. · Through the fall, the Qatari Air Force cargo fleet became even more busy, running flights almost every other day in October. · In November, three Royal Jordanian Air Force C-130s landed in Esenboga, in a hint at what would become a stepped-up Jordanian and Saudi role. · …two other Jordanian cargo planes began making a round-trip run between Amman, the capital of Jordan, and Zagreb, the capital of Croatia, where, officials from several countries said, the aircraft were picking up a large Saudi purchase of infantry arms from a Croatian-controlled stockpile.
… records show that two Jordanian Ilyushins bearing the logo of the Jordanian International Air Cargo firm but flying under Jordanian military call signs made a combined 36 round-trip flights between Amman and Croatia from December through February. The same two planes made five flights between Amman and Turkey this January.
Qatari flights continued and the Royal Saudi Air Force began a busy schedule, too — making at least 30 C-130 flights into Esenboga from mid-February to early March this year…
The director of cargo for Jordanian International Air Cargo, Muhammad Jubour, insisted on March 7 that his firm had no knowledge of any flights to or from Croatia. “This is all lies,” he said. “We never did any such thing.”
However, while Saudi Arabia and Qatar are both known to be channeling arms to the rebels, there was no indication that the United States, Britain or other western allies might follow suit.
“Jordanian International Air Cargo,” the official said, “is a front company for Jordan’s air force.”
Asked why his employer’s Web site still displayed images of two Ilyushin-76MFs and text claiming they were part of the company fleet, Mr. Jubour had no immediate reply. That night the company’s Web site was taken down.
· Qatar has led appeals to provide rebel fighters more heavy weapons
Elaraby denied that recent Arab League decisions are hindering Brahimi’s work. “Since the government receives weapons, the opposition receives weapons. I don’t think that’s a hurdle,” he said. “The government is not controlling the country, it is a reality. Some 40 percent of the country is not under the government’s control.”
· Syria's main armed opposition group, the Free Syrian Army (FSA), is losing fighters and capabilities to Jabhat al-Nusra, an Islamist organisation with links to al-Qaida that is emerging as the best-equipped, financed and motivated force fighting Bashar al-Assad's regime. Evidence of the growing strength of al-Nusra, gathered from Guardian interviews with FSA commanders across Syria, underlines the dilemma for the US, Britain and other governments as they ponder the question of arming anti-Assad rebels.
FSA men have joined al-Nusra in the last few months, mainly because of a lack of weapons and ammunition.
· Al-Nusra has members serving undercover with FSA units so they can spot potential recruits, according to Abu Hassan of the FSA's al-Tawhid Lions brigade.
The US, which has outlawed al-Nusra as a terrorist group, has hesitated to arm the FSA, while the western and Gulf-backed Syrian Opposition Coalition has tried to assuage concerns by promising strict control over weapons. "
· Western governments say they are aware of the al-Nusra problem, which is being monitored by intelligence agencies, but they are uncertain about its extent.
"If you join al-Nusra, there is always a gun for you but many of the FSA brigades can't even provide bullets for their fighters," complained Abu Tamim, an FSA man who joined Jabhat al-Nusra in Idlib province.
· AFP reports that extortion by rebel groups "has become rampant" (2 Nov. 2012). · Reuters reports that businessmen and industrialists in Aleppo have been subject to extortion by rebel groups (24Oct. 2012). · According to Voice of America (VOA), a news broadcaster funded by the US government (n.d.), the Farouq battalions in the north have a reputation for extortion, among other crimes (28 Mar. 2013). This rebel group reportedly controls the "lucrative" border crossings to Turkey at Tal Abyad and Bab al Hawa (VOA 28 Mar. 2013).
· Several sources indicate that civilian supporters of the government have been victims of kidnapping (GCR2P 15Mar. 2013, 2; AFP 4 Apr. 2013). · According to a Human Rights Watch researcher, as reported by AFP, religious minorities are more vulnerable to kidnappings, because they are viewed as being government supporters (4 Apr. 2013).
· Evidence gathered in Syria, along with flight-control data and interviews with militia members, smugglers, rebels, analysts and officials in several countries, offers a profile of a complex and active multinational effort, financed largely by Qatar…
· Extremist fighters, some of them aligned with Al Qaeda, have the money to buy the newly arrived stock, and many rebels are willing to sell.
· …sent on ships or Qatar Emiri Air Force flights to a network of intelligence agencies and Syrian opposition leaders in Turkey.
· Qatari C-17 cargo aircraft have made at least three stops in Libya this year — including flights from Mitiga airport in Tripoli on Jan. 15 and Feb. 1, and another that departed Benghazi on April 16, according to flight data provided by an aviation official in the region. The planes returned to Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar. The cargo was then flown to Ankara, Turkey..
· The movements from Libya complement the airlift that has variously used Saudi, Jordanian and Qatari military cargo planes to funnel military equipment and weapons, including from Croatia…
· The Central Intelligence Agency has already played at least a supporting role, the officials say.
· But the Libyan influx appears to account for at least a portion of the antitank weapons seen in the conflict this spring, including Belgian-made projectiles for M40 recoilless rifles
· Syrian rebels, working with Qatari backers and the Turkish government, have developed a system for acquiring and distributing Libya’s excess stock, Syrian activists and rebels said.
· Orders are placed and shipments arranged through the staff of the Supreme Military Council of the Free Syrian Army, a Western-backed opposition committee that was formed in Turkey late last year.
· “Any fighting group in Syria that wants weapons from Libya will go to the staff asking for the approval from the Turkish authorities involved in the transfer, then gets it, the weapons arrive in Syria, and everyone gets his due share,”
· The CIA could begin shipping arms to Syria in the coming weeks, after two US congressional panels cleared the way for the controversial transfer of weapons.
CIA ramping up covert training program for moderate Syrian rebelsWashington Post, by Greg Miller October 2, 2013
The latest setback came last month, when 11 of the largest armed factions in Syria, including some backed by the United States, announced the formation of an alliance with a goal of creating an Islamic state. The alliance is led by Jabhat al-Nusra, a group that has sworn allegiance to the al-Qaeda leadership in Pakistan.
· The agency’s training effort is centered in Jordan.
Officials said the main CIA training effort does not involve instruction on using high- powered weapons such as rockets and antitank munitions, which are being supplied by countries such as Qatar and Saudi Arabia, although the agency is involved in tracking those arms flows and vetting recipients.
· Former deputy CIA director Michael J. Morell said in a recent CBS interview that the most effective organizations on the battlefield in Syria are the Islamist factions… · A spokesman for the ISIS said the group had added 2,000 Syrian recruits and 1,500 foreign fighters over the past two months.
There are also legal impediments, including a measure known as the Leahy Law that would require a determination that no recipients of U.S. military assistance had committed human rights abuses.
The Washington Post informs that US officials spoke on the condition of anonymity and said the agency has sent additional paramilitary teams to secret bases in Jordan in recent weeks in a push to double the number of rebel fighters getting CIA instruction and weapons before being sent back to Syria.
Mr. Obama indicated that a covert effort by the United States to arm and train Syrian rebels was beginning to yield results: the first 50-man cell of fighters, who have been trained by the C.I.A., was beginning to sneak into Syria».
CIA-trained rebels crossed the Syrian border from Jordan. They had been trained for several months in a training camp on the Jordanian-Syrian border by CIA operatives, as well as Jordanian and Israeli commandos…
The CIA training effort is centered in Jordan.
The unification of radicals has become a clear trend.
· All of these groups formally commit themselves to sharia as the «sole source of legislation». Bottom line, they were all Islamist from the start. Something Russia had many times warned the West about.
The US-led Western myope policy in Syria has resulted in radical Islam gaining the upper hand inside the Syria opposition to endanger Europe and the entire Mideast.
The goal is a Sunni emirate on the Mediterranean shore and Turkish border.
And this is the time the CIA is involved in activities aimed at making Syria an al-Qaeda safe haven and base camp.
…the government of President Assad now is the only force capable of standing up to the radicals offensive in Syria.
Turkey’s government has used the "state secret" shield to conceal the cargo of a truck suspected of transporting arms to Syria and banished the prosecutor who attempted to search the vehicle.
The men in the truck presented themselves as MIT personnel and did not allow the vehicle to be searched, saying that the cargo was a state secret.
The truck that carried the “state secret” was supposed to enter Syria through the Oncupinar border crossing, which opens on a region controlled partly by the Salafist-dominated Islamic Front and partly by the al-Qaeda-linked Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS). The route fuelled suspicions over possible links between those groups and the Turkish government.
Due to MIT’s direct involvement in the truck, the government was caught red-handed this time. Previously, it had managed to censor footage from security cameras after the Feb. 11 explosion at the Cilvegozu border crossing, manipulated the May 11 bombing in Reyhanli although prior intelligence was available and al-Qaeda claimed responsibility, protracted the court case over the chemicals seized in Adana on May 27 and sought to cover up the court case over the truck loaded with weapons seized again in Adana on Nov. 7. To conceal something whose exposure it fears, the government has now resorted to the “state secret” cover, reducing itself to an administration exporting its “state secrets” to the rebels in Syria.
Adana'da MİT TIR'larına yönelik arama için flaş iddia! O iddiaya göre, TIR'lar Özel Harekat ve Jandarma'yı çatışma noktasına getirdi.
Adana ve Hatay'da, Milli İstihbarat Teşkilatı'na (MİT) ait TIR'lara yapılan operasyonla ilgili soruşturmaya ilişkin çok çarpıcı bir iddia ortaya atıldı.
Kelepçelenen MİT personeli yere yatırıldı. Başbakanlık ve Adana Valisi'nin müdahalesi sonucu serbest kalan MİT mensupları, darp raporu alarak ilgililer hakkında şikayetçi oldu.
US-run training camp for FSA fighters in the vast Jordanian desert
· “The Americans who taught us wore military uniforms I did not recognise. We called them by their first names and they spoke English to us.”
· Experts suggest that this isn’t the only Jordan-based programme training moderate Syrians to fight the American way.
The Red Line and the Rat Line London Review of Books, by Seymour M. Hersh 17 April 2014 http://www.lrb.co.uk/v36/n08/seymour-m-hersh/the-red-line-and-the-rat-line · In 2011 Barack Obama led an allied military intervention in Libya without consulting the US Congress. · Prime Minister Recep Erdoğan was known to be supporting the al-Nusra Front, a jihadist faction among the rebel opposition, as well as other Islamist rebel groups. · The joint chiefs also knew that the Obama administration’s public claims that only the Syrian army had access to sarin were wrong. · ‘Turkey and Saudi-based chemical facilitators,’ it said, ‘were attempting to obtain sarin precursors in bulk, tens of kilograms, likely for the anticipated large scale production effort in Syria.’ · Last May, more than ten members of the al-Nusra Front were arrested in southern Turkey with what local police told the press were two kilograms of sarin. · Erdoğan administration has been covering up the extent of its involvement with the rebels. · ‘There was no way they thought Syria would use nerve gas at that stage, because Assad was winning the war,’ the former intelligence official said. · The full extent of US co-operation with Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar in assisting the rebel opposition in Syria has yet to come to light. · The rat line, authorised in early 2012, was used to funnel weapons and ammunition from Libya via southern Turkey and across the Syrian border to the opposition. Many of those in Syria who ultimately received the weapons were jihadists, some of them affiliated with al-Qaida. · A highly classified annex to the report, not made public, described a secret agreement reached in early 2012 between the Obama and Erdoğan administrations. It pertained to the rat line. By the terms of the agreement, funding came from Turkey, as well as Saudi Arabia and Qatar; the CIA, with the support of MI6, was responsible for getting arms from Gaddafi’s arsenals into Syria. · The operation was run by David Petraeus, the CIA director who would soon resign when it became known he was having an affair with his biographer. · The involvement of MI6 enabled the CIA to evade the law by classifying the mission as a liaison operation. · Washington abruptly ended the CIA’s role in the transfer of arms from Libya after the attack on the consulate, but the rat line kept going. · ‘The United States was no longer in control of what the Turks were relaying to the jihadists,’ the former intelligence official said. · ‘The MIT was running the political liaison with the rebels, and the Gendarmerie handled military logistics, on-the-scene advice and training – including training in chemical warfare,’ the former intelligence official said. · Erdoğan knew that if he stopped his support of the jihadists it would be all over. · Erdoğan’s hope was to instigate an event that would force the US to cross the red line. · Fidan is known to be fiercely loyal to Erdoğan, and has been seen as a consistent backer of the radical rebel opposition in Syria. · ‘One of the issues at that May summit was the fact that Turkey is the only avenue to supply the rebels in Syria,
When Syria wins the war, he knows the rebels are just as likely to turn on him – where else can they go? So now he will have thousands of radicals in his backyard.’
Advanced U.S. Weapons Flow to Syrian Rebels The Wall Street Journal by ELLEN KNICKMEYER, MARIA ABI-HABIB and ADAM ENTOUS April 18, 2014 http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304626304579509401865454762
The U.S. and Saudi Arabia have supplied Syrian rebel groups with a small number of advanced American antitank missiles for the first time in a pilot program that could lead to larger flows of sophisticated weaponry
This shift is seen as a test of whether the U.S. can find a trustworthy rebel partner able to keep sophisticated weapons out of the hands of extremists
the two countries oversaw the delivery through neighboring Jordan and Turkey to vetted rebels inside Syria.
Earlier this year, Saudi Arabia offered to give the opposition Manpads for the first time. But the weapons are still stored in warehouses in Jordan and Turkey.
Akcakale crossing of Sanliurfa, has been under ISIS control since January 2014
While armed groups received logistics support from the Turkish border, smuggling reached incredible dimensions. Oil once smuggled out by hundreds — even thousands — of people in barrels is now smuggled out via plastic pipelines laid across the border.
Another absurdity along the border is the smuggling of cars stolen in Turkey to Syria.
It would be impossible for this activity to continue without the involvement of the organizations controlling the crossings.
The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) militants fighting against the Iraqi government in the city of Fallujah in Anbar Province in Western Iraq receive a monthly salary of USD 700 from the governments of Riyadh and Doha, the Iraq Al-Qanoun news website quoted member of Fallujah Liberation Council Maki Al-Issawi as saying.
· Five captured oilfields provide up to £1.8 million per day in revenue, with much of the oil smuggled across the border into Turkey and Iran.
· Isil is thought to have between 7-12,000 fighters, of whom 3,000 are foreign. A quarter of those are estimated to be British, although Belgium is the largest per-capita European "source" of fighters.
Salaries reportedly range from $300 to $2000 per month depending on the job post.
While increasingly apocalyptic administration comments and media headlines declare ISIS to be a deadly threat to the United States, there has been virtually no acknowledgement that the crisis in the Middle East is the direct product of the repeated US interventions.
Through war, occupation and CIA-backed regime-change operations, the American ruling class has created a social and political catastrophe, while stoking sectarian conflict and civil war. More immediately, the US directly aided, armed and trained Syrian “rebel” fighters who went on to form the core of ISIS, seeking to deploy them to overthrow the Assad government there.
The administration’s own claims to be horrified by the beheading of the journalist do not hold water. Its closest ally among the Arab states, Saudi Arabia, beheads people with great regularity—19 in just the month of August—including immigrant nannies fleeing slave-like conditions, and Saudi citizens “guilty” of religious offenses against the Wahabi version of Islam. There have been no condemnations of Saudi savagery from Washington, let alone demands for regime-change in Riyadh.
Saudi Arabia has beheaded at least 19 people since the beginning of August in a surge of executions, the Human Rights Watch (HRW) has said. According to HRW, international standards require that capital punishment should only be reserved for the “most serious crimes” in countries that still use it. Offences that resulted in the Saudi Arabian death penalties in August ranged from drug smuggling and sorcery.
The United States, the officials said, was caught by surprise: Egypt and the Emirates, both close allies and military partners, acted without informing Washington, leaving the Obama administration on the sidelines.
· Arrayed against them and backing the Islamists are the rival states of Turkey and Qatar.
· “In every arena — in Syria, Iraq, Gaza, Libya, even what happened in Egypt — this regional polarization, with Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, or U.A.E., on one side and Qatar and Turkey on the other, has proved to be a gigantic impediment to international efforts to resolve any of these crisis,” said Michele Dunne, a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and a former Middle East specialist at the State Department.
They bombed the country and opened the door for the different militias to now compete against each other. So the day Gaddafi was killed, from then onwards, the militias have basically been at each other’s throats.
There are two reasons why I was principally opposed to the use of American and NATO force. The first reason was I had a very clear sense of who was going to benefit from this. You know, countries take time to develop alternative leaderships. They take time to develop, you know, new forms of political power. If NATO was going to come in, bomb Tripoli, destroy the Libyan state immediately and allow these different archipelago militias to take power, it was going to lead to chaos.
In Syria, the military has very high morale. You know, it has often been amazing to me. I keep wondering, why did the Turks and others believe that the Syrian regime was going to fall like the Libyan regime? They have completely different military structures, and the morale is completely different.
Administration officials said the United States did not intend to notify the Assad government of the planned flights.
On Monday, Syria warned the White House that it needed to coordinate airstrikes against ISIS or it would view them as a breach of its sovereignty and an “act of aggression.”
· Some experts noted that the administration had another strong incentive not to do anything to help Mr. Assad. A central element of its strategy is to assemble a coalition in the region against ISIS, enlisting partners like Jordan, Turkey and Saudi Arabia.
Thousands of foreign fighters from countries including Turkey, Britain, parts of Europe and the United States are believed to have joined the Islamist militants in their self-proclaimed caliphate, carved out of eastern Syria and western Iraq, according to diplomats and Turkish officials
Some of the foreign fighters in their midst reached Syria via Turkey, entering the region on flights to Istanbul or Turkey's Mediterranean resorts, their Western passports giving them cover among the millions of tourists arriving each month in one of the world's most visited countries
"Thousands of Europeans have entered Turkey en route to Syria, and a large number of them we believe have joined extremist groups," said one European diplomat in Ankara, describing Turkey as a "top security priority" for the EU.
"If Turkey had not opened its border with Syria ... to Islamic State (IS), if so many fighters had not crossed the border into Syria with their guns and equipment, and if this group had not used Turkey as a base, IS could not have amassed its current strength in Syria," wrote columnist Kadri Gursel on Al-Monitor, a news website focused on the Middle East.
President François Hollande confirmed in a Le Monde interview on August 19 that France has been directly supplying arms to the “rebels” of the Free Syrian Army (FSA) in its proxy war to remove the regime of President Bashar al-Assad. This came ahead of the recent US decision to intervene militarily in Syria, ostensibly to crush the Islamic State (IS) opposition militia operating in Iraq and Syria.
Indeed, President Hollande and the US bear a “heavy responsibility”, but it is for fomenting the civil war, using reactionary jihadist forces such as the FSA and IS as proxies.
The growth of the jihadist forces in Syria is the direct result of the arming and financing by the CIA, France and the Gulf monarchies as proxy forces to overthrow Assad. Substantial sections of the FSA, which Hollande cynically called “democratic,” have defected to the Al Qaeda-linked Al Nusra Front.
Laws do not prevent the US from attacking sovereign countries or from conducting military operations within the borders of sovereign countries.
In Syria has every right to be nervous. The reason ISIS is operating on Syrian territory is that Washington armed them and sent them to Syria. Washington’s air strikes on ISIS could very well be cover for air strikes on Syrian armed forces.
Washington coercion has supplanted the rule of law.
As in Libya, the Obama regime set jihadists lose on Syria, pretending that they were fighting for democracy against a dictator. But Washington lost control over its monster which has gobbled up large parts of Syria and Iraq and is forming them into a new country hostile both to the West and to the Muslim vassals of the West.
And when it comes to Syria, Washington avers that there are punishable malefactors virtually everywhere within its borders.
So Obama has already unleashed the drones and surveillance apparatus to identify targets of attack that will help bring down a regime in northern and eastern Syria—the so-called Islamic State—which did not even exist a year ago. And a regime that is now armed to the teeth with America’s own latest and greatest weaponry as previously supplied to the disintegrated Iraqi army and the Syrian rebels trained by the CIA in Jordan.
Adding to this blinding farce is the warning of Syria’s Foreign Affairs minister that Obama should please to request permission before he rains destruction from the sky on the Opposition—-that is, the opposition to the very same Damascus regime which the White House has vowed to eradicate.
Even if Doha, Riyadh, and Kuwait – the acknowledged centre of private donor funding for the conflict in Syria – were to decide to stop turning a blind eye this would be unlikely to disrupt ISIS significantly.
· Islamic State fighters appear to be using captured US military issue arms and weapons supplied to moderate rebels in Syria by Saudi Arabia, according to a report published on Monday.
· "We come in and out," he said at the time. "The Turkish they are closing eyes, when we cross." · Many militants have been treated in Turkish hospitals, and set up safe houses in Turkish border towns.
· But Hursit Gunes, a member of Turkey's opposition, claims his government has allowed ISIS to flourish because it prefers the group to the Syrian regime. He even accuses the Turkish authorities of ignoring the militants' lucrative oil smuggling business on Turkey's border.
Anti-tank weapons that appear to be from stocks transferred to moderate Syrian rebels have landed in the hands of Islamic State militants, according to a newly released field investigation conducted in both northern Iraq and Syria.
The new research suggests they have also amassed arms after overrunning the moderate Syrian rebels being supplied by the United States and other allied nations.
In March, the United States authorized the delivery of anti-tank guided missiles to moderate rebels, after long resisting such deliveries out of fears that advanced weaponry would fall into the hands of extremist factions in Syria. Long before then, however, U.S. allies including Saudi Arabia and Qatar were funneling weaponry to various rebel factions in the conflict.
And the group widely known by the acronyms ISIS or ISIL is filling its war chest with millions of dollars earned by smuggling thousands of tons of of this black gold into neighboring Turkey, according to independent analysts and Turkish opposition leaders.
The Turkish government of former prime minister and now President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has long offered at least tacit support to Syrian rebels fighting against President Bashar Assad. Many of the international volunteers who joined that fight passed through Turkish territory virtually unhindered.
The diesel smuggling is documented in official figures released by the Turkish military just days before U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel’s arrival in Ankara on Monday.
At a minimum it could boost the number of troops it has patrolling the 900-kilometer frontier,
Mahmut Tanal, a lawmaker from the opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), told The Daily Beast he was trying to get an official government comment on reports saying that ISIS was exporting up to 4,000 tons of fuel to Turkey every day and earning $15 million every month from the trade. “I am expecting some answers here,” he said.
According to Turkish media reports, smuggled diesel sells for around $0.70 a liter (or $2.65 a gallon), while the official price in Turkey is more than $1.85 a liter ($7.00 a gallon).
Erdogan and his new prime minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, refused to call ISIS a terrorist organization.
· The report said the jihadists disposed of "significant quantities" of US-made small arms including M16 assault rifles and included photos showing the markings "Property of US Govt".
· Turkey, supportive of the anti-Assad rebellion, has come under fire for allowing jihadists to flood across its border into Syria, although the State Department says the U.S. has been working with Turkey and other neighboring countries to clamp down on the flow.
· It was only after he buried a man alive that he was told he had become a full ISIS fighter.
But one of the biggest source of recruits is neighboring Turkey, a NATO member with an undercurrent of Islamist discontent.
· “There are now seven mosques in the vicinity, but not one school,” Mr. Arabaci said. “The lives of children here are so vacant that they find any excuse to be sucked into action.”
“There are clearly recruitment centers being set up in Ankara and elsewhere in Turkey, but the government doesn’t seem to care,”
Shortly after NATO carried out successful “regime change” in Libya in 2011 under the false pretext of a “humanitarian intervention,” sectarian-driven mercenaries it armed, funded, and provided air cover for in Libya began steadily streaming into Syria via its northern border with NATO-member Turkey.
I went to the border where Akçakale is without protection from public officials because they said they could not provide any. The border there is like a colander. You can buy and sell anything you like in the region, be it in Urfa, Hatay, Nizip or Ceylanpınar. We have to look at the properties owned by government ministers and deputies before they became ministers and deputies. Furthermore, I can safely say that they had not been to any five-star hotels before becoming deputies! Now, they are richer than ever -- they have new luxury cars, ships, apartments, houses and so forth. To have clean politics and a healthy society, we first have to confiscate all of their property! How do they not know about what ISIL does in the region? It is unbelievable. The government is responsible for the growth of ISIL. How is it possible that the government cannot call ISIL -- an organization that barbarically beheads people and degrades women -- a terrorist organization?
· The attacks on ISIS are the pretext for stepping up the US-backed regime-change operation against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and mark the expansion of a reckless and illegal war that will have catastrophic consequences for the Middle East and beyond.
it is allied with autocratic Middle Eastern monarchies that are among the most despotic in the world.
The air strikes are an illegal act of war against a country that has never posed a threat to the United States. The Obama administration launched the bombing without even the fig leaf of a UN Security Council resolution and against the expressed opposition of the Syrian government…
· …the reactionary ISIS Islamists are a direct product of US imperialism’s previous criminal wars, including the CIA’s covert war in Afghanistan in the 1980s, the 2003 invasion of Iraq and regime-change operations in Libya and Syria from 2011. In fact, the very allies that joined in today’s bombing—Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States—have been funding, training and arming ISIS and other Islamist militias inside Syria for the past three years to topple Assad.
The Obama administration has initiated the attacks on Syria without the semblance of Congressional authorisation or any explanation to the American people. It is a war being waged on behalf of a tiny bloated financial aristocracy, for which US hegemony is essential to its criminal looting operations.
Harold Pinter's 2005 Nobel Prize in Literature acceptance speech continues to resonate nearly ten years later. "It never happened. Nothing ever happened. Even while it was happening it wasn't happening. It didn't matter. It was of no interest", Pinter explained about the death and destruction caused by the United States across the globe. He went on: "The crimes of the United States have been systematic, constant, vicious, remorseless, but very few people have actually talked about them."
By refusing to inform their readers that the US has been arming the rebels in Syria since 2012 the mainstream liberal media have done exactly what best suits the US and UK governments. And by so closely following the US and UK Governments' preferred narrative, the media continues to minimise the US's responsibility for the on-going carnage in Syria and the rise of Islamic State.
The security council’s decision directly concerns Turkey from two angles. First, given the high number of fighters who continue to go to Iraq and Syria through Turkey, the Turkish government may well come under UN pressure in the next phase. Second, Turkey is the main route traveled by individuals going to fight with the Islamic State (IS) and in the ranks of many other Islamic jihad organizations.
About a year ago, international human rights organizations based along the border reported that Islamist Turkish nongovernmental organizations were transferring humanitarian assistance that was actually combat materiel. The Turkish state itself was caught secretly transporting to Syria three truckloads of ammunition — swept under the carpet as humanitarian assistance — so there is no reason for state supported nongovernmental organizations not to do the same.
If the Turkish government does not undertake a serious policy change and adopt appropriate measures, our NATO and UN memberships won’t protect us. This Security Council decision gives any country the right to issue a complaint regarding Turkey’s negligence, intentional or not.
Thirteen years of war, and the rise of enemies we did not expect, have transformed Hezbollah fighters inside Syria, along with Iran, into our tacit allies. We are intervening in the Syrian civil war to assist a regime we sought to overthrow. We promised to save Iraq and now help to dismember it.
More violence is not going to rectify the damage. Indeed, it will make it worse. But violence is all we know. Violence is the habitual response by the state to every dilemma.
Endless war, which results in endless terror, leaves the arms manufacturers and generals giddy with joy. It is a boon to the state, which is possessed of an excuse to extinguish what few liberties we have left.
Violence as a primary form of communication has become normalized. It is not politics by other means. It is politics.
In endless war it does not matter whom we fight. Endless war is not about winning battles or promoting a cause. It is an end in itself. In George Orwell’s novel “Nineteen Eighty-Four” Oceania is at war with Eurasia and allied with Eastasia. The alliance then suddenly is reversed.
But endless war is not sustainable. States that wage endless war inevitably collapse. They drain their treasuries, are hated by the wretched of the earth, and militarize and strangle their political, social and cultural life while impoverishing and repressing their populations.
The squabbling factions that make up the Syrian “moderate opposition” should get their act together. But so should the foreign nations — such as the United States, Turkey, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Jordan — that have been funding the chaotic melange of fighters inside Syria. These foreign machinations helped open the door for the terrorist Islamic State group to threaten the region.
Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar all wanted to topple Assad, but they competed with each other as regional rivals, too. At various points, all three nations provided Sunni rebel groups with money and weapons that ended up in the hands of extremists.
The United States, Saudi Arabia and Jordan joined forces in 2013 to train and arm moderate rebels at a CIA-backed camp in Jordan.
But the chaos was worsened by foreign powers that treated Syria as a playground for their intelligence services. This cynical intervention recalled similar meddling that helped ravage Lebanon, Afghanistan, Yemen, Iraq and Libya during their civil wars.
The story of how Syria became a cockpit for rival intelligence services was explained to me by sources here and in Reyhanli, a rebel staging area on the Turkey-Syria border. Outside efforts to arm and train the Syrian rebels began more than two years ago in Istanbul, where a “military operations center” was created, first in a hotel near the airport.
A leading figure was a Qatari operative who had helped arm the Libyan rebels who deposed Moammar Gaddafi. Working with the Qataris were senior figures representing Turkish and Saudi intelligence.
But unity within the Istanbul operations room frayed when the Turks and Qataris began to support Islamist fighters they thought would be more aggressive.
But weapons and money sent to more moderate Islamist brigades made their way to these terrorist groups, and the Turks and Qataris turned a blind eye.
The Saudi effort was run until late 2013 by Prince Bandar bin Sultan, at that time head of Saudi intelligence. Bandar was enthusiastic but undisciplined, adding to the chaos. Pushed by the United States, the Saudis in February replaced Bandar and gave oversight of the Syria effort to Interior Minister Mohammed bin Nayef.
· Asked about US policy in Syria, Biden touched on the dirty secret of the current US-led war against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. ISIS (or ISIL as the Obama administration terms it) is essentially the creation of the United States and its allies who fomented civil war in Syria against the government of President Bashar al-Assad.
· Referring to Turkey, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, Biden said, “They were so determined to take down Assad and essentially have a proxy Sunni-Shia war, what did they do? They poured hundreds of millions of dollars and tens, thousands of tons of weapons into anyone who would fight against Assad—except It is testament to the degeneracy of the American political system that the circumstances behind ISIS’s rise, alluded to in Biden’s remarks, have not been the subject of any investigation. 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.”
It is testament to the degeneracy of the American political system that the circumstances behind ISIS’s rise, alluded to in Biden’s remarks, have not been the subject of any investigation.
Whatever the level of “intentionality” involved, ISIS was the recipient of the US-supported arms aid to the Syrian rebels, routed by the CIA through Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Turkey and other Mideast client states.
· In other words, as Biden admits, ISIS was created by the methods pursued by the US government and its allied reactionary regimes, both the Islamist government of Erdogan in Turkey and the Gulf monarchies like Saudi Arabia and the UAE.
· Another confirmation of this relationship came in the form of a Washington Post report Sunday on the supposedly contradictory role of the sheikdom of Qatar, another of the Persian Gulf despotisms that is a client state of American imperialism. Qatar hosts the huge Al-Udeid Air Base, headquarters for US air operations in the region and the directing center of the air war in Syria and Iraq.
· …there is nothing surprising in Qatar hosting the US Air Force and raising money for al-Qaeda militants in Syria.
· The main target of American imperialism remains the Syrian government, which is also the reason why Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey and other countries that fostered ISIS and are hostile to the Assad regime are now supporting the operation.