Turkey's War Against the Kurds (Part 2): Power, Terrorism, and the Pretext for War

The Rejection of Peace

Turkeys war against its Kurdish population in its current iteration is as much about Erdogan and the Turkish power structures consolidating and maintaining their power as is their crackdown against journalism.  It has not been waged as a war to protect Turkish civilians from Kurdish insurgents but instead as a means to “protect” the oppressive power hierarchies that exist which seek to maintain the disparate position of the political-economic elite.  Instead of listening to the legitimate grievances of the Kurdish population, Erdogan and the AKP have chosen a strategy of violence, terrorism, and xenophobia in order to degrade the growing political power of the Kurds and to consolidate their rule and the continuation of their criminal policies.

The pro-Kurdish People’s Democracy Party (HDP) and the Kurdish military wing Kurdistan Worker’s Party (PKK) have not been demanding independence, instead they have been calling for autonomy.  This in the face of Turkey’s political establishment historically treating the Kurds as second class citizens and denying them the right to be educated using their native language.  In response they have organized societal institutions in a radically different manner than the Turkish state, prioritizing the ideal of local, non-hierarchical forms of direct democracy.  In their view, as Professor of Economics at the University of Greenwich Mehmet Ugur explains, this is because “the nation state is now considered an anachronistic institution; and local democracy (including recognition and representation of distinct identities) has been embraced as a solution not only for the Kurdish question but also for democratisation in Turkey, Iraq and Syria.”

The Turkish government was never serious about officially devolving meaningful power for the Kurds to exercise over their locality, and has balked on agreeing to any kind of political peace negotiation.  This is due in part to the ideological currents running through the political establishment that as well permeate elite sectors of business and other societal institutions. 

This very nationalistic way of thinking sees the unilateral designs of the winning electoral party as encompassing ‘the national will,’ and thus equates dissent against them with ‘treason.’ 

Professor Ugur further explains: “The national will is expressed through elections that the party wins through multi-party competitions…  All other parties and civil-society organisations critical of the majority party can be demonised as collaborators of internal and external forces bent on preventing the nation from expressing its will. That is why AKP rhetoric has been based on ‘national will’ rather than democracy. That is also why AKP practice has been geared towards removal of legal, administrative and civil-societal checks and balances that could prevent the government from exercising absolutist majority rule. That is also why the AKP elite has gradually but increasingly deployed state power to equate dissent with treason.” 

In the logic of the AKP, “institutional checks and balances are dysfunctional because they make the exercise of the ‘national will’ cumbersome.”   

This way of thinking has a historical basis, which sees Turkey’s history in the context of 3 sets of beliefs: “(i) the Turks have established sixteen states, fifteen of which collapsed and the last one (the Republic of Turkey) must not face the same fate; (ii) the state is a father figure and the first duty of its sons (daughters are excluded explicitly or implicitly) is to obey the father’s authority; and (iii) the Turkish state is surrounded by all sort of enemies who work with internal collaborators to destabilise the country and prevent it from fulfilling its full potential.” 

Because of this, a relationship of patronage between business and state has emerged in which business interests and state-subservience co-exist: “Organised interests in Turkey (business organisations, their lobby groups, bosses of co-opted trades unions, most university rectors, the religious establishment, etc.) have read this script correctly. They presented their specific interests as true reflections of the national interest, which the Turkish state served in return for continued loyalty. That is why both sides have always been in tune when it comes to suppressing any opposition that questions the de jure or de facto rules of the game.”

Not surprising then is the Turkish governments unwillingness to devolve autonomy powers to the Kurds.  Indeed, it was Turkey that withdrew from a mostly farcical peace process just after the Kurdish HDP dealt a huge blow to Erdogan’s AK Party in the June 2015 elections. 

As the pro-Kurdish HDP gained enough votes to cross the threshold to enter parliament their victory forced the AKP to form a coalition government instead of exercising majority rule.  Their success was a sign of growing political influence as well as a symbol of the growing sympathy towards the Kurdish cause that had been building within the country.  Rising Kurdish political influence coupled with a threat to Erdogan’s own power was the driving impetus for Turkey to reignite a violent conflict with the Kurds.

The attacks against the Kurds were never a necessary exercise of state power, nor were they a reaction to a legitimate security threat.  Instead, like most groups stuck under the thumb of a much stronger and oppressive power, there has been a clear consensus for peace and resolution through political negotiation among a wide range of the Kurdish population.  That is why it was the Kurds who supported the peace process and it was Turkey who rejected it. 

The Dolmabahce Agreement was a political framework for resolving the Kurdish issue that was negotiated in February 2015 between the HDP and the Turkish government.  Its aim was to create a long-term roadmap for peace, and for a short time it appeared highly promising.  On February 28^th, 2015 Turkey’s Deputy Prime Minister, the Minister of Interior, and three deputies of the HDP announced the agreement in a joint-statement at Istanbul’s Dolmabahce Palace.  However, following the HDP victory and the AKP defeat in the July elections, Erdogan backtracked and rejected the deal. 

When rejecting the Agreement, Erdogan argued that it was invalid because it did not originate in parliament, and such an agreement only has legitimacy through congressional authority.  Therefore he told reporters on July 17^th that he did not “recognize the phrase ‘Dolmabahce Agreement,’” and effectively buried the deal.  The underlying reason was thus apparent: the inroads the HDP achieved within parliament increased their prospects of being able to use their rising political influence to push for peace through official parliamentary channels.  This, combined with the agreed-upon roadmap for peace that Dolmabahce represented, made the possibility of a peaceful settlement all too probable, and Erdogan had no intentions of sharing power.

The strategy was to reject negotiations and use violence and war to both attack the Kurds militarily while as well rallying votes throughout the country by exploiting nationalistic and xenophobic sentiments, thereby regaining a parliamentary majority.  A state of fear brought on by violence and conflict, coupled with the scapegoating of the problem on Kurdish ‘terrorists’, was used to rally the public under the AKP banner of “security” and “stability.”

As Professor Ugur explains it, “The political objective was to ensure the continuity of AKP rule, preferably with a large majority required to change the constitution and institute Mr Erdogan as a president with no checks and balances… Given these liabilities and the risk of failure to win a majority in the snap elections in November, the AKP government has initiated the process of state-orchestrated violence,” against the Kurds.

The strategy proved highly successful.

Strategy of Tension, Violence, and Aftermath

When ISIS began assaulting the Kurdish town of Kobani in 2014 Kurdish militias rose up to defend it, yet Turkey and Erdogan were silent. 

When the town looked poised to be defeated, Erdogan’s position of abandonment was made clear when he simply concluded of the situation that “Kobani is about to fall.” 

It was clear that he saw the ISIS attack as an opportunity rather than a threat.  The likely chance of being barbarically subjugated by ISIS was used to leverage demands from the Kurds. 

When the leader of the Kurdish PYD came to Turkish military intelligence to plead for aid, he was told he would only receive it if the Kurds surrendered: they were told they needed to give up their claim for self-determination, give up the localities they governed, and agree to a Turkish buffer zone in Syria.

The Kurds refused.

However, it is not as if Turkey had simply been sitting on the sidelines while refusing to intervene: they had been intimately involved in supporting the Islamic State, most ostensibly by securing their free passage into Syria through the Turkish border but as well through direct contact with ISIS members, coordinating arms transports, providing them a safe haven inside Turkish territory, and by transporting their fighters across the border into the warzone.  Reports would later surface that they were hospitalizing wounded ISIS fighters, and that sarin precursors were smuggled into ISIS-held areas with the help of Turkish authorities. (See part 1)  Just days prior to these events Vice President Biden told Harvard University students that it was the Turks, Saudis, and the UAE who had “poured hundreds of millions of dollars and tens, 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.”

Turkey was using the threat posed by the terrorist proxies they had fomented to force the Kurds to capitulate, and absent that capitulation would gladly see Kurdish towns overrun by their ISIS allies. 

As the ISIS proxies assaulted the Kurdish village, Turkish aircraft used the opportunity to bomb Kurdish positions inside Turkey for the first time in two years.  Yet an ISIS victory in Kobani would have been a humiliating defeat for the newly formed “anti-ISIS” coalition, and would have routed a key potential ally in the region for the Americans.  Therefore, under heavy pressure from the US, Erdogan finally allowed a contingent of Iraqi Peshmerga fighters to cross into Kobani from Turkish territory, and with further support from the US air force the Kurds were able to repel the ISIS attack.

Yet come June 2015, directly after the AKP’s electoral defeat, car bombs exploded at the Kobani border and convoys of cars carrying up to 40 ISIS fighters again attacked the Kurdish village simultaneously from three sides.

Kurdish witnesses said that the jihadis crossed into the city from the Turkish border, “If they entered from the Syrian side, they would have first come up many more important targets related to the YPG (the Kurdish militia), such as the main headquarters building where there are tens of fighters and leaders, or the local administration HQ,” a Kurdish activist said.  He noted that it was extremely unlikely they would have been able to pass by these obstacles unnoticed, and therefore the attack must have originated from Turkey.

If not in some way orchestrated or tacitly supported by Turkey, the attacks then represent a generous gift to Erdogan from old allies.

The situation escalated in July when a suicide bombing, of which ISIS claimed responsibility for, killed 32 and wounded another 104 in the Turkish town of Suruc.  The victims were pro-Kurdish university-aged students who were holding a press conference on their planned trip to help reconstruct Kobani.  It was theorized that the attacks could have been in retaliation for increasing measures that Turkey had been taking to clamp down on the jihadis.  Yet if so, how would attacking Turkey’s main domestic enemies constitute a retaliation?  Furthermore, the clamp down was only symbolic, used to portray the image that Turkey was getting tough on ISIS while not taking any substantial steps against them.  Following the events, in an interview with a Turkish journalist an ISIS commander denied there being any conflict with Turkey. 

The Kurdish PKK for their part blamed the Turkish authorities and accused them of collusion with ISIS.  In response they claimed responsibility for the killing of two Turkish police officers they said were responsible for the attacks.  Given the fact that just a year ago secret audio recordings were leaked of Turkey’s prime minister and the head of the secret service planning a false flag attack against Turkey as a pretext to invade Syria, there is a high probability that Turkey was in some way complicit.  

Further supporting this is the fact that the attacks were then utilized as the pretext for Turkey to enter into the “anti-ISIS” coalition, a guise used to initiate a war against the Kurds.

In the days that followed Turkey agreed to a deal with the US allowing them to use their Incirlik air base to fly bombing missions against the Islamic State.  The ostensible terms of the deal were that Turkey would let the US use their base, and Turkey would itself enter the fight against ISIS.  However, the actual terms were likely that the US had agreed in some form to Turkey’s longstanding demands to set up a “no-fly zone” inside Syria, which in practice was a plan to annex Syrian land and to attack Syria’s air-defenses.  Also very likely was that the US agreed to sell out the Kurds by acquiescing to the fact that Turkey’s attacks against ISIS would in actuality just be a cover for waging a war against them.

With the deal firmly in place the Turkish air force thus “initiated the process of state-orchestrated violence” by launching airstrikes against the Kurds and ISIS, except those against ISIS were only symbolic. 

The operation began on July 24^th, yet after July 25^th airstrikes were only continued against the Kurds, including those in Iraq and Syria.  In conjunction a large-scale domestic operation billed as an “anti-terror” crackdown was initiated.  Under the guise of going after ISIS Turkish police conducted massive raids against the Kurds and arrested over 1,000 people it labelled as terrorists.  According to one HDP member, of those arrested 80% were Kurdish.

Following this Turkey continued to relentlessly and murderously attack Kurdish villages.  They have imposed arbitrary, round-the-clock curfews of entire neighborhoods which the Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights describes as a “massive restriction of some of the most fundamental human rights of a huge population” that does not “satisfy the criteria of proportionality and necessity in a democratic society.”  The assault includes artillery shelling in densely populated civilian areas, disconnection of water and electricity to entire towns, denying the victims access to medical treatment, preventing burials, and abusive and disproportionate force against any and all peaceful protests that dissent against the atrocities.  Turkish military operations “had killed hundreds of civilians, displaced hundreds of thousands and caused massive destruction in residential areas.”

The irony of all of this should not be lost: Turkey has been supporting the ISIS terror organization which has repeatedly attacked his domestic enemy, the Kurds.  Turkey has then used the terrorists as a justification to wage his own war against the Kurds, while further exploiting the terrorism and the instability as a means to gain political power for himself and his party.

On October 10, 2015 Turkey witnessed the deadliest terror attack ever in the country's modern history, carried out by two suspected Islamic State suicide bombers.  The attack effectively shepherded Erdogan and the AKP back into a parliamentary victory.  In the climate of fear that followed, couple with the violence and chaos from the war with the Kurds, Erdogan’s AKP made a resounding comeback in the elections the following month in November.

As the Wall Street Journal reports, Erdogan’s AKP “regained sole control of Parliament as millions of voters who had been disillusioned with the party returned in force.”  “Pro-Kurdish parties lost significant ground” as “the AKP’s rise drained votes from the… HDP.”  Erdogan would now have “a clear mandate to press ahead with the military campaign against Kurdish separatists.” 

The remarkable turnaround came “amid a deteriorating security situation that had made terrorism a top concern for voters. In the weeks leading up to the vote, Turkish televisions were filled with grim images of deadly attacks carried out by suspected Islamic State bombers, military crackdowns on Kurdish cities, and funerals for Turkish security officers killed by Kurdish fighters.

“The dangers culminated in a devastating Oct. 10 attack by two suspected Islamic State suicide bombers who killed more than 100 people at a peace rally in Turkey’s capital. The bombing, which some called “Turkey’s 9/11,” was the country’s deadliest terrorist attack, and it cemented fears that the increasingly polarized country was facing unchecked instability.”

Erdogan and the AKP then won voters over with "its message that one-party rule was the only way to fight a two-front war with Islamic State extremists and Kurdish militants.”  The message resonated “not only with nationalists who backed Mr. Erdogan’s decision to renew the country’s fight with the outlawed… PKK, but also with Kurdish residents rattled by renewed violence that had consumed their communities.”

Erdogan, while cynically supported the most extreme forms of terrorism in an attempt to overthrow the Syrian government, has utilized those same terrorists as a pretext to wage a full scale war against the Kurds, using the situation to degrade Kurdish influence and capitalize on a state of fear and war for political gain, championing himself as the answer to ‘Kurdish terrorism’ while it was his policies that reignited the violence.  Following a defeat in parliament at the hands of the Kurds, while simultaneously facing a peaceful resolution to the Kurdish issue, the orchestration of state-violence was commenced.  Further aided by some of the country’s deadliest terrorism, committed by a group that Erdogan supports, the desired outcome was realized.

“The election results show that the politics of fear and division worked,” said David L. Phillips, a former State Department adviser who now serves as director of the Peace-Building and Rights Program at Columbia University.”

The strategy of tension had succeeded.

Turkey's War Against the Kurds (Part 1): The Strange and Tragic Case of Turkey in Syria

Turkey’s Crimes

As Turkey has been waging a brutal and murderous campaign against its Kurdish population in the south of the country it has also illegally shelled Kurdish factions inside Syria that are threatening the remaining supply lines used by Turkey to arm various jihadi groups.  Increasingly Erdogan has become more irrational, bent on consolidating power domestically and increasing his imperial presence over his neighbors abroad.  The actions are part of a desire to reinvigorate Turkish power in the spirit of the former Ottoman Empire, and have been used in accordance with US imperial designs for the region.

Domestically Erdogan and his ruling AK Party have been pushing for constitutional amendments that would grant President Erdogan de-facto dictatorial power over policy formation, allowing him to dictate policy and bypass most congressional roadblocks.  Yet in absence of achieving this Erdogan has consolidated his rule through a plethora of actions, including litigation against any opposition, usage of the courts to stifle dissent, unprecedented attacks against journalism, and unilateral covert operations, all of which add up to a ruthless consolidation of power into the hands of the executive, allowing Erdogan to function as a unilateral actor in absence of constitutional authority to do so.

During the beginning of the uprisings in Syria Turkey was essentially contracted to carry out the US policy of regime-change by proxy.  The plans drawn up by NATO high command envisioned Turkey acting as the conduit whereby rebel fighters from across the Middle East, recruited and trained by Western intelligence agencies, would be smuggled into Syria and where their supply lines and training camps would be protected.  In December of 2011, former CIA officer Philip Giraldi reports, citing contacts within the US intelligence community, that “NATO is already clandestinely engaged in the Syrian conflict, with Turkey taking the lead as U.S. proxy… Unmarked NATO warplanes are arriving at Turkish military bases close to Iskenderum [sic] on the Syrian border, delivering weapons from the late Muammar Gaddafi’s arsenals as well as volunteers from the Libyan Transitional National Council... French and British special forces trainers are on the ground, assisting the Syrian rebels while the CIA and U.S. Spec Ops are providing communications equipment and intelligence to assist the rebel cause.”

While former Libyan rebels were funneled in, “thousands of Muslim fighters” from across the region were also to be enlisted, yet most of these turned out to be ISIS and al-Qaeda-linked terrorists.  According to a US State Department 2014 report on terrorism, “the rate of foreign terrorist fighter travel to Syria [during 2014]- totaling more than 16,000 foreign terrorist fighters from more than 90 countries as of late December – exceeded the rate of foreign terrorist fighters who traveled to Afghanistan and Pakistan, Iraq, Yemen, or Somalia at any point in the last 20 years.”  State Department officials later would admit that of the foreign fighters entering Syria, “almost all” of them cross through the Turkish border.

Though a myriad of evidence exists documenting Turkey's support for al-Qaeda and ISIS, including former Turkish intelligence (MIT) officer testimony and former ISIS member testimony, a mere look on a map is enough to reveal how the ISIS and al-Qaeda supply lines that guarantee these groups existence run directly through the Turkish border.  The lid was really blown off the operation however when it was revealed that trucks belonging to Turkish intelligence were caught supplying weapons and ammunition for al-Qaeda rebels in Syria.  The findings were corroborated by official Turkish military documents, court testimonies, and photographic and video evidence.  Further, following a US special forces raid on the compound of an Islamic State leader in May of 2015, a senior western official with access to the intelligence caches confirmed that the recovered evidence proved direct dealings between Turkish officials and ranking ISIS members was now “undeniable.” 

Also undeniable is Turkey’s connections to the ISIS oil trade.  It is known that ISIS smuggles its oil through Turkey to the global market, and given Turkish intelligence’s intimate relations with the leaders of the group it would be naïve to think the authorities don’t have a hand in the operation.  According to Ali Ediboglu, a Turkish parliamentarian, $800 million worth of oil is being smuggled and sold by ISIS inside Turkey.  Yet, as pointed out by Dr. Nafeez Ahmed, “that was over a year ago.  By now, this implies that Turkey has facilitated over $1 billion worth of black market ISIS oil sales to date.” (emphasis added) 

This represents just one of a myriad of instances of high-level Turkish officials accusing Turkey of complicity in the buying and smuggling of ISIS oil, many of which also report that Erdogan’s son-in-law is heavily involved. 

Martin Chulov of the Guardian, who reported on ISIS’ “undeniable” links to Turkish officials, is quoted in the Turkish paper Birgun as saying that Turkish security forces are responsible for protecting the illicit trade.

Thus Turkish intelligence, acting as the proxy of the US and NATO, has been clandestinely supporting the Islamic State and al-Qaeda, and now is even openly supporting al-Nusra, al-Qaeda’s Syria affiliate.  In addition to this it has also lent its support to a myriad of other jihadis, including al-Qaeda linked “Turkmen” and Uighur terrorists.

The Telegraph would report that “Around a dozen Turkmen militias have formed, some directly supported by the Turkish government,” which have been “fighting alongside other rebel groups, including the al-Qaeda affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra.”

According to a 2015 report by Christina Lin, Fellow at the Center for Transatlantic Relations at SAIS-Johns Hopkins University, “A new article reported that 3,500 Uyghurs are settling in a village near Jisr-al Shagour that was just taken from Assad, close to the stronghold of Turkistan Islamic Party (TIP) that is in the Turkey-backed Army of Conquest. They are allegedly under the supervision of Turkish intelligence that has been accused of supplying fake passports to recruit Chinese Uyghurs to wage jihad in Syria.”

These claims were corroborated by veteran journalist Seymour Hersh. 

In a recent piece Hersh quotes Imad Moustapha, Syria’s ambassador to China, as saying in regards to the Chinese position on Syria that “Many Uighur fighters now in Syria are known to be members of the East Turkestan Islamic Movement – an often violent separatist organisation that seeks to establish an Islamist Uighur state in Xinjiang. ‘The fact that they have been aided by Turkish intelligence to move from China into Syria through Turkey has caused a tremendous amount of tension between the Chinese and Turkish intelligence.’”  Hersh goes on to say that “Moustapha’s concerns were echoed by a Washington foreign affairs analyst who has closely followed the passage of jihadists through Turkey and into Syria. The analyst, whose views are routinely sought by senior government officials, told me that ‘Erdoğan has been bringing Uighurs into Syria by special transport while his government has been agitating in favour of their struggle in China.”

Erdogan Cracks Down

The Turkish newspaper Cumhuriyet, which broke the story of the MIT trucks smuggling arms to al-Qaeda, faced a heavy backlash.  As a result of litigation based upon accusations of “exposing state secrets” and “trying to topple the government” the paper’s editor Can Dundar and its Ankara bureau chief Erdem Gul now face life-sentences for reporting on the crimes of the state.  Furthermore, any news organization in the country that holds to its journalistic duty of holding a light up to power has been targeted, suppressed, vilified, and jailed.  Press freedoms in Turkey, virtually non-existent, are some of the most abysmal in the world: the recent Reporters Without Borders World Press Freedom Index ranks Turkey 149^th out of a total of 180 countries. 

As Noam Chomsky and Christophe Deloire report, “journalism is being murdered” in Turkey. 

“Four days before the Nov. 1 parliamentary elections, the police stormed Ipek Media Group headquarters and shut down its two opposition dailies and two opposition TV stations. After control of management had been secured and 71 journalists fired, these outlets resumed operations with a new editorial line verging on caricature. The dailies, Bugun and Millet, ran Erdogan’s photo on the front page along with the headlines “The president among the people” and “Turkey united.”” 

Yet after the ruling AK Party recovered an absolute parliamentary majority, the journalistic oppression only intensified: “Two days after the elections, two journalists were jailed on charges of “inciting an armed revolt against the state” in a story. Since then, some 30 other journalists have been placed under investigation for “terrorist propaganda” or “insulting the president” — the two most common charges.” 

Later Turkey launched a crackdown on a total of 14 TV channels and removed them from the state-owned Turksat Communications infrastructure.  One of those that was shut down was a television station broadcasting in Kurdish which regularly featured rational Kurdish voices promoting peace between Kurds and Turks.

Turkey as well is no stranger to censoring the internet, it is responsible for more than half of all government requests to Twitter to remove content, far in the lead of any other nation, and it consistently bans its citizens from accessing the entire YouTube platform.

However, one of the most important cases, one that is hardly every reported on, is that of the journalist Serena Shim, who very likely was murdered at the hands of Turkish intelligence or one of their rebel proxies. 

Serena was an American journalist of Lebanese descent working for PressTV (Iranian media) who had been extensively covering the war in Syria, and more importantly, the connections between Turkish intelligence and extremist rebel factions fighting against Assad.  Later confirmed through court proceedings and official documentation, Serena, from first-hand experience on the ground, was one of the first to report on evidence that ISIS and al-Qaeda militants were being smuggled into Syria through Turkey in trucks disguised as humanitarian aid vehicles bearing the symbols of NGO’s and the World Food Organization.  The reports had drawn attention to the notion that Turkish intelligence were involved in the smuggling operation.

On October 14^th, 2014, Serena was killed in a car crash in Turkey that can only be described, in the very mildest of terms, as “suspicious.”  Days before her death, Serena had very publicly expressed deep concerns that she was being targeted by Turkish intelligence.  Turkey had branded her as a “spy” and sent agents to places she had been working, asking residents about her whereabouts and telling them to turn her in if they saw her.  Serena said “I’m very surprised at this accusation – I even thought of approaching Turkish intelligence because I have nothing to hide.”  She said that she was “a bit worried, because...Turkey has been labeled by Reporters Without Borders as the largest prison for journalists…so I am frightened about what they might use against me.”  She suspected the reason they were targeting her was because of her reports: “We were some of the first people on the ground –if not the first people – to get that story of those takfiri militants going in through the Turkish border…being sent in, I’ve got images of them in World Food Organization trucks. It was very apparent that they were takfiri militants by their beards and by the clothes they wore, and they were going in there with NGO trucks.” (emphasis added)

She also made it clear that she thought she was being targeted as a means to scare other journalists from reporting on these issues: “I’ve been stopped by them before, but not necessarily to this level, just by police basically. But for the intelligence to actually look for me, that's rather odd, so I think that they're definitely trying to get the word out to journalists to be careful so much as to what they say...”

Days later she was killed when her car collided with another vehicle. 

Turkey quickly labelled the incident as a tragic “accident”, yet Serena’s family was not as satisfied with that account.  Her sister Fatmeh expressed no doubts that Turkey had in some way been involved in her sister’s death.  “I think it was planned and plotted,” she said.  The story just didn’t add up.

Given the accuracy of her reports, later confirmed, and the extraordinarily damning evidence that they contained about crimes committed by the Turkish state, it is very likely that she struck a nerve close to the heart of Turkish power and that her sister was indeed right about the extremely suspicious circumstances in which her death occurred.

When you are involved in substantially supporting international terrorism, committing what the Nuremburg Tribunal labelled as the “supreme international crime” of aggression against another state, while as well engaging in massive human rights violations against your own population, it follows that you will seek to rule absent the annoyance of criticism and being held accountable for your crimes.  Erdogan and the AKP have shown that they seek to unilaterally rule the Turkish state, and to silence any dissent against them.

In recent months however Turkish journalists and parliamentarians have bravely continued to expose state crimes, in a climate of dissent that in spite of overwhelming government oppression continues to be one of the most intrepid and honorable throughout the world.  Turkish MP Eren Erden recently cited evidence from a court investigation that, with the help of Turkish authorities, sarin gas precursors were smuggled through Turkey into ISIS camps in Syria where the sarin agent was then compounded, building on a body of evidence that shows Syrian rebels had access to sarin, and likely carried out the 2013 attacks as a false flag in order to get the Americans to invade.

He now faces charges of treason for exposing the information.

The Cumhuriyet daily which first exposed the MIT truck smuggling operation as well has recently published intercepted communications between members of the Turkish Armed Forces and ISIS fighters, in which the interlocutors continually refer to each other as “brother” as they coordinate various operations.

Such commitment to honest journalism in the face of state repression is as honorable as the repression against it is despicable.  Yet the escalation of violence against the Kurds in Turkey and the shelling of the Kurds in northern Syria must be seen within this context; they are interwoven with Erdogan’s pursuit of power consolidation domestically and with Turkey’s project to overthrow the Syrian state through support to the most extremist factions fighting in Syria.  It is the Kurds in Syria that are threatening the Turkish project through their advances upon the border corridors through which the Turkish supply lines to their terror proxies flow.

To be continued in Part 2...

The New York Times Lies Again About Syria and the Rebels

The New York Times recently ran a big front-page piece, taking up more than a full page, seeking to explain the recent developments in Syria.  Anne Bernard, the Times’ leading reporter on the Middle East, who mainly operates from Beirut and gets her information from rebel sources, unfortunately grossly fails to inform her readers on some very basic and easily accessible facts that would be journalistic commonplace if we had anything remotely resembling a free press in the US.

The piece begins with some good reporting on the ceasefire and the problems and successes of its implementation, and then goes on to note one of the main talking-points of the opposition: “One of the main concerns of beleaguered opposition forces was that the government would continue to take territory, attacking all insurgents while claiming it was battling only the two groups excluded from the truce: the Islamic State and the Nusra Front, Al Qaeda’s Syria affiliate.”

Firstly, the characterization of the rebels as “opposition” and “insurgents” is common practice in Western media reports, yet it shields the fact that the rebel opposition is, and has been for years, dominated by al-Qaeda and ISIS.(1)  In failing to report this fact, which is also available from multiple US intelligence agency reports, Bernard and the NYT in effect protect the al-Qaeda forces on the ground from the eyes of the Western public, and in doing so protect the complicity of Western governments in supporting them. 

Instead of fulfilling its journalistic function of holding accountable those in power, the NYT instead serves to propagandize for government policy.

Bernard further does this by describing the non-ISIS opposition as “a broad array that includes the Nusra Front, Islamists, and relatively secular groups led by army defectors and backed by the United States and its allies,” failing to note the prominence of the extremists and the fact that the “relatively secular groups” “only operate under license from the extreme jihadists.”  Also, describing the “moderates” as secular is entirely misleading and false, as almost all want some form of Islamic state and are almost exclusively Sunni Muslim.

Going further the intimate, longstanding, and “brotherly” working relationship between the US-backed FSA and al-Qaeda is described in the piece only as “different degrees” of “tactical alliances.” 

 

Initially after the signing of the ceasefire deal, the US-backed FSA were some of the biggest critics of the fact that their al-Qaeda ally was not included, which the US initially tried to make happen before the proposal of protecting al-Qaeda terrorists was rejected by Russia.  Main FSA leaders described al-Qaeda as their “partners”, as an “honorable” faction, and claimed that it fights on the ground with “most of the brigades that attended the Riyadh conference,” which essentially includes all the main groups except for Nusra and ISIS.

A few months before that al-Qaeda made a video showing a Nusra leader presenting a gift to an FSA commander, thanking him for using US-supplied TOW anti-tank missiles in support of al-Qaeda while claiming that al-Qaeda and the FSA “are one.”

In 2013, the US-backed FSA commander Col. Okaidi, described as one the biggest recipient of US aid, who to this day can be seen being given air time by Western media to mobilize support for the opposition, described his relationship with ISIS as “good, even brotherly” after having won a main victory while exercising a degree of operational command over ISIS.  After having admitted to fighting alongside al-Qaeda, Okaidi explains that al-Nusra does not “exhibit any abnormal behavior, which is different from that of the FSA,” admitting that the sectarian ferocity of al-Qaeda which is often pilloried by the West was no different from the actions of his FSA rebels, that the US supports.

Yet not only is this an intimate alliance that is years in the making, it is as well one that has been ordered by the US and its allies.

In the overtaking of Idlib in 2014, Charles Lister, at the time of the Brookings Doha Center, revealed from interviews with rebel commanders that they received specific instructions from US-led operations rooms to align themselves within al-Qaeda’s ranks and to use their increasing shipments of US-supplied weapons in support of al-Qaeda.

Earlier in 2014 the commander of the US-backed SRF revealed that “those who support us”, i.e. the CIA and its allies, specifically “told us” to “send weapons to [Islamist fighters in] Yabroud” and therefore “we sent a lot of weapons there.”

Anne Bernard however thought only to describe all of this as the rebels having “joined in tactical alliances to different degrees.” 

This, in turn, is said to be a “political conundrum” since “Mr. Assad and his allies argue that that makes all rebels legitimate targets.”

In the world of the NYT, the fact that the US and the CIA are supporting al-Qaeda, arming and funding fighters that fight alongside them and pass weapons to them, thus actively committing treason by providing material support to US-designated terrorists organizations, is not something of much note or something that necessitates further investigation to get to the bottom of.  Even if such collaborations were only “tactical alliances to different degrees”, this should be headline news.  Instead, Assad and Russia are made out to be the irrational ones, arguing that they have a right to strike US-backed rebels operating under license from and in support of al-Qaeda within an al-Qaeda dominated insurgency. 

Yes, of course they are the crazy ones, and not us for openly supporting rebels that make up al-Qaeda’s ranks.

And despite this ubiquitous narrative of “Russia and Assad are targeting the moderates”, the NYT informs us that in reality Russia has attempted to alleviate US concerns by “challenging Washington to provide the coordinates for the groups it supports to prevent them from being attacked.”  So far, however, the US has refused.

And it’s easy to see why, if they complied it would expose the fact that in effect the US-sponsored groups operate mainly as weapons conduits for the al-Qaeda rebels winning the battles.  This allegation is so strong in fact that it was enough for the UK courts to drop multiple cases against individuals they attempted to prosecute for aiding terrorist organizations, the defendants arguing that if they were guilty so was the UK.  In addition, classified US intelligence reports which detail how most of the CIA arms shipments were going to “hard-line Islamic jihadists” was reported by the NYT itself back in 2012.  Further, in 2014 none other than Vice President Biden said that “there was no moderate middle” that the US was supporting since “the moderate middle are made up of shopkeepers, not soldiers,” and instead “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.”(2)

This non-controversial, easily-accessible information is however spared from the informed readers of the NYT.

Furthermore, one of the biggest pieces of recent news wasn’t even reported in the NYT piece. 

Just a few days ago Kurdish forces in the district of Sheikh-Maqsood near Aleppo claimed that they were struck by chemical weapons that were launched at them from the Turkish-backed al-Qaeda rebels.  They go on to directly accuse Turkey of supplying the chemical weapons.  This claim is not at all far-fetched, as recently a Turkish MP has come out with various forms of evidence linking Turkish authorities to aiding the smuggling of sarin precursors into Syria prior to the 2013 attacks.  So while the Western media, as the former British ambassador Craig Murray notes, fakes allegations of chemical weapons attacks by Assad it specifically refuses to cover when rebels backed by the West use similar chemical weapons against the Kurds.

Lastly, the Anne Bernard report correctly notes that, “There is no clear count of [ceasefire] violations, though various parties are trying to keep track.”  However, it is interesting the note the few examples that she did include; all of the so-called government violations were within or on the borders of Idlib Province.  It just so happens that Idlib is completely dominated by al-Qaeda, and al-Qaeda is not included in the ceasefire.

Also to note is the fact that multiple instances of “insurgent” violations were shellings and sniper attacks against the besieged towns of Foua and Kafarya.  Kafarya and Foua are towns that have been under brutal siege by al-Qaeda and US-backed “moderate” rebels, and have been besieged for many months prior to the beginning of the highly publicized government siege of Madaya.  Residents there are suffering from starvation, a lack of adequate food and water supplies, a severe shortage of fuel, electricity, and badly needed medicine.  Despite some recent aid deliveries, as with Madaya it is not enough, and on top of all of it the civilian population are constantly subjected to deadly attack by the rebels in the form of unrelenting rocket shellings, suicide bombings against civilians, and murderous sniper attacks.  Apparently they are “unworthy victims”,(3) as the paper doesn’t even attempt to provide context for their plight, nor explain, let alone show outrage, over the fact that the Western-backed opposition is constantly attacking the trapped civilians, not even relenting during the ceasefire.  Instead it is just reported in passing that “Insurgent snipers attacked the besieged towns of Fouaa and Kfarya, killing at least one person and injuring several,” and “Islamist insurgents shelled a village near Fouaa.”

One wonders how different the report would look if Assad or Russia had been indiscriminately shelling and sniping off trapped civilians in Madaya.

The New York Times, and its chief Syria reporter Anne Bernard, continually fail to in their journalistic duties.  Instead they have served to mobilize support for the government and the powerful societal interests that control and finance them.(4)

If we even had a pretention of living in a society with a semblance of a free press these kinds of basic facts would be readily reported to the American public. 

Instead, the NYT continues to mislead and deceive.

Notes:

1.)    “… [2014] the Syrian military opposition is dominated by ISIS and by Jabhat al-Nusra, the official al-Qaeda representative, in addition to other extreme jihadi groups.  In reality, there is no dividing wall between them and America’s supposedly moderate opposition allies.”  Patrick Cockburn, “The Rise of ISIS”, The Rise of Islamic State: ISIS and the New Sunni Revolution (Brooklyn, NY, 2015), pg. 3. Print

2.)   Ibid.

3.)   Noam Chomsky, Edward S. Herman, “Worthy and Unworthy Victims”, Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media (New York, 2002), pg. 37-86. Print.

4.)   Ibid, pg. xi.

Protecting al-Qaeda

Report also cross-posted at AntiWar
Please Don’t Attack Al-Qaeda

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 and apocalyptic 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 were organized 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.