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Digest #4473
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Sun Aug 26, 2012 7:24 am (PDT) . Posted by:
"Rick Rozoff" rwrozoff
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Global Research
Press TV
August 26, 2012
The NAM Summit, Iran, and Syria: A Coup against the West?
Can the NAM Summit bridge the Iran-Egypt Gap?
By Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya
The upcoming summit of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) will be held in Tehran from August 26 to 31, 2012. The NAM and its summit are mostly ignored in the Atlanticist world of the United States and NATO, but this year’s gathering has gotten the attention of the Atlanticists and their press. The reason is that the NAM summit’s venue has upset the political establishment in Washington, DC.
The US government has gotten its feathers ruffled and even gone out of its way to berate NAM leaders for gathering in Iran. US State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland - the spouse of neo-con Project for the New American Century (PNAC) co-founder and arch-imperialist Robert Kagan - has asked Egypt’s new president, Mohamed Morsi, and even UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, Washington’s own steward at the UN, not to travel to Tehran. Nuland and the US State Department have bitterly declared that Iran is not deserving of such “high-level presences.” The US, however, is forced to grin and bear the gathering of world leaders in Tehran.
What will take place is an international extravaganza, minus NATO and its key de facto members - Australia, Japan, New Zealand, and South Korea - in the Asia-Pacific and Israel. African, Asian, Caribbean, and Latin America officials will be there in full strength. The Chinese, who have the status of observers in the NAM, will be there. The Russians, who are not part of the NAM, have been invited as Iran’s special guests and will be represented by Konstantin Shuvalov, Russian ambassador-at-
members or observers. Aside from the Chinese and Russians, the other three members of the BRICS grouping - Brazil, India, and South Africa - that is becoming the new engine shaping the world will also be in attendance.
The NAM Summit, Iran, and Syria: A Coup against the West?
The gathering of NAM leaders will doubtlessly be an important event for Iran’s international prestige and status. For almost a week Tehran will be a key center of the world alongside the offices of the UN in New York City and Geneva. Not only will Iran be the venue for one of the largest international get-togethers of world leaders, but it will also be handed over the organization’s chairmanship from Arab powerhouse Egypt. Iran will retain this position as the leader of the NAM for the next few years and will be able to speak on behalf of the international organization. Up to a certain degree this position will allow Tehran to have more influence in world affairs. At least this is the view in Tehran where none of the significance of the NAM summit has been lost on Iranian politicians and officials who one after another are pointing out the importance of the NAM summit for their country.
The NAM is the second largest international organization and body in the world after the United Nations. With 120 full members and 17 observer members it includes most the countries and governments of the world. About two-thirds of the UN’s member states are full NAM members. The African Union (AU), Afro-Asian People’s Solidarity Organization, Commonwealth of Nations, Hostosian National Independence Movement, Kanak Socialist National Liberation Front, Arab League, Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), South Center, United Nations, and World Peace Council are all observers too.
The US and NATO which very generously and misleadingly throw around the term “international community” when they are referring to themselves are really a global minority that pale in comparison to the international grouping formed by the NAM. Any agreements or consensuses drilled out by the NAM represent not only the bulk of the international community, but also the non-imperialist international majority or those countries that have traditionally been viewed as the “have-nots.” Unlike at the UN, the “silent majority” will have its voice heard with little adulteration and perversion from the confederates of NATOistan.
The NAM gathering in Tehran signifies an important event. It demonstrates that Iran is genuinely not internationally isolated like the images that the United States and major European Union powers, such as the UK and France, like to continuously project. Atlanticist media are scrambling to explain this situation and the Israelis are clearly upset.
Undoubtedly, Iran will use the international gathering to its advantage and make use of the NAM to garnish support for its international positions and to help try to end the crisis in Syria. The US-supported siege of Syria will be denounced at the NAM conference and diplomatic blows will be dealt against the US and its clients and satellites. Already the hurried ministerial conference about the fighting in Syria organized by the Iranian Foreign Ministry in Tehran before the emergency summit held by the OIC in Mecca was a prelude to the diplomatic support that Iran will give the Syrian Arab Republic at the 2012 NAM summit.
Despite Algerian and Iranian opposition, Syria was expelled from the OIC at the behest of Saudi Arabia and the petro-monarchies. While the OIC emergency summit in Mecca may have been a political and diplomatic blow to Damascus, the situation is expected to be much difference at the NAM summit in Tehran. The Syrians will also be present in Tehran and able to face their Arab antagonists from the petro-monarchies of the Persian Gulf.
The Genesis of the Non-Aligned Movement and Third World
The Non-Aligned Movement and concept of a “Third World” have their roots in the period of de-colonization after the Second World War when the empires of Western Europe began to crumble and formally end. This superficially represented an end to the domination of the weak by the strong. In reality, colonialism was merely substituted with foreign aid and loans by the declining empires. In this context, the British would offer aid to their former colonies while the French and Dutch would do the same with their former colonies to maintain control over them. Thus, the exploitation never truly ended and the world was maintained in a state of disequilibrium. The United Nations was also hostage to the big powers and ignored many important issues concerning places like Africa and Latin America.
What brought the formation of the NAM about was firstly the rejection of domination and interference by the countries of the “Global North” - a term that will be defined shortly - and the concept of co-existence that India and China carved out in 1954 when New Delhi recognized Tibet as a part of China.
The NAM started as an Asian initiative, which sought to address the tense relations between China and the US on one hand and China’s relations with other Asian powers on the other hand. The newly independent Asian states wanted to avoid any ratcheting up of the Cold War in their continent, especially after the disastrous US-led military intervention in Korea, or the manipulation of India and Indonesia as buffer states against the People’s Republic of China. This Asian initiative quickly broadened and gained the support of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, Egypt, and the various leaders of the nationalist independence movements in Africa that were fighting for their liberation against NATO countries like Britain, France, and Portugal.
Yugoslavian President Josip Broz Tito, Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, and Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser were the three main forces behind the organization’s creation. Kwame Nkrumah, the Marxist pan-African leader of Ghana, and Ahmed Sukarno, the leader of Indonesia, would also put their weight behind the NAM and join Tito, Nehru, and Nasser. These leaders and their countries did not view the Cold War as an ideological struggle. This was a smokescreen. The Cold War was a power struggle from their perspectives and ideology was merely used as a justification.
The Different Worlds of the Cold War
The word “non-alignment” was first used on the world stage by Vengalil Krishnan Krishna Menon, India’s ambassador to the United Nations, while the term “Third World” was first used by the French scholar Alfred Sauvy. Third World is a debated political term and some find it both deregulatory and ethnocentric. To the point of confusion the phrase Third World is inextricably intertwined with concept of non-alignment and the NAM.
Both the NAM and, especially, Third World are wrongly and carelessly used as synonyms for the Developing and Under-Developed Worlds or as economic indicators. Most Third World countries were underprivileged former colonies or less affluent states in places like Africa and Latin America that were the victims of imperialism and exploitation. This has led to the general identification or misidentification of the NAM countries and the Third World with concepts of poverty. This is wrong and not what either of the terms means.
Third World was a concept that developed during the Cold War period to distinguish those countries that were not formally a part of the First World that was formed by the Western Bloc and either the Eastern/Soviet Bloc and Communist World that formed the Second World. In theory most of these Third Worlders were neutral and joining the NAM was a formal expression of this position of non-alignment.
Aside from being considered Second Worlders, communist states like the People’s Republic of China and Cuba have widely been classified as parts of the Third World and have considered themselves as parts of the third global force. Chairman Mao’s views defined through his concept of Three Worlds also supported the classification of communist states like Angola, China, Cuba, and Mozambique as Third Worlders, because they did not belong to the Soviet Bloc like Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Poland.
In the most orthodox of interpretations of the political meaning of Third World, the communist state of Yugoslavia was a part of the Third World. In the same context, Iran due to its ties to NATO and its membership in the US-controlled Central Treaty Organization (CENTO) was politically a part of the First World until the Iranian Revolution in 1979. Thus, reference to Yugoslavia as a Second World country and Iran as a Third World country prior to 1979 are incorrect.
The term Third World has also given rise to the phrase “Global South.” This name is based on the geographically southward situation of the Third World on the map as opposed to the geographically northward situation of the First and Second Worlds, which both began to collectively be called the “Global North.” The names Global North and Global South came to slowly replace the terms First, Second, and Third World, especially since the Cold War ended and the Soviet Union collapsed.
Bandung, Belgrade, and Non-Aligned Institution Building
The NAM formed when the Third Worlders who were caught between the Atlanticists and the Soviets during the Cold War tried to formalize their third way or force. The NAM would be born after the Bandung Conference in 1955, which infuriated the US and Western Bloc who saw it as a sin against their global interests.
Contrarily to Western Bloc views, the Soviet Union was much more predisposed to accepting the NAM. Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev even proposed in 1960 that the UN be managed by a “troika” composed of the First, Second, and Third Worlds instead of its Western-influenced secretariat in New York City that was colluding with the US to remove Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba from power in the Democratic Republic of Congo, as well as other independent world leaders.
Fidel Castro and Cuba, which hosted the NAM’s summit in 1979 when Iran joined as its eighty-eighth member, would actually argue that the Second World and communist movements were the “natural allies” of the Third World and the NAM. The favorable attitudes of Nasser and Nehru towards the Soviet Union and the Soviet Bloc’s support for various national liberation movements also lends credence towards the Cuban argument about the Second and Third World alliance against the capitalist exploitation and imperialist policies of the First World.
The first NAM summit would be held in the Yugoslavian capital of Belgrade in 1961 under the chairmanship of Marshall Tito. The summit in Belgrade would call for an end to all empires and colonization. Tito, Nehru, Nasser, Nkrumah, Sukarno and other NAM leaders would demand that Western Europeans end their colonial roles in Africa and let African peoples decide their own fates.
A preparatory conference was also held a few months earlier in Cairo by Gamal Abdel Nasser. At the preparatory meetings non-alignment was defined by five points:
(1) Non-aligned countries must follow an independent policy of co-existence of nations with varied political and social systems;
(2) Non-aligned countries must be consistent in their support for national independence;
(3) Non-aligned countries must not belong to a multilateral alliance concluded in the context of superpower or big power politics;
(4) If non-aligned countries have bilateral agreement with big powers or belonged to a regional defense pact, these agreements should not have been concluded in context of the Cold War;
(5) If non-aligned states cede military bases to a big power, these bases should not be granted in the context of the Cold War.
All the NAM conferences to follow would cover vital issues in the years to come that ranged from the inclusion of the People’s Republic of China in the UN, the fighting in the Democratic Republic of Congo, African wars of independence against Western European countries, opposition to apartheid and racism, and nuclear disarmament. Furthermore, the NAM has traditionally been hostile to Zionism and condemned the occupation of Palestinian, Lebanese, Syrian, and Egyptian territories by Israel, which has earned it the seamlessly never-ending aversion of Tel Aviv.
Making NAM Relevant Again
Many people ask what relevance the Non-Aligned Movement has today. Since the end of the Cold War the NAM’s strength has been eroded as the US, neoliberal economic reforms, the IMF, and the World Bank have gained more and more control over NAM members. In many cases NAM members have reverted back to de facto colonies in all but name. Many members of NAM, such as Belarus, Colombia, Ethiopia, and Saudi Arabia, are actually fully aligned states.
There is no question about it that Iran wants to make NAM relevant again to use it fight off the expansionist Atlanticist world. So do the Russians and the Chinese. The NAM after all has provided Iran important diplomatic support in its politicized nuclear dispute with the Atlanticists. The NAM is also the closest alternative to the Atlanticist-
The NAM summit will be capitalized on by Iran and its allies to try and develop some sort of strategy to fight and circumvent the unilateral US and European Union sanctions against the Iranian economy and to show the Atlanticists in the US and the EU that their powers in the world are limited and declining. One small step in this direction is that Iran will begin negotiations with 60 NAM countries to drop bilateral visa requirements with Iran. A universal statement may also be released asking for the anti-Iranian sanctions to be dropped or modified. Other steps would include proposals for a new and alternative financial global structure, which would evade the Atlanticist chokehold on international financial transactions.
An important event at the NAM summit will be the arrival of Morsi in Tehran as a sign of warming relations. Ties between Cairo and Tehran will not be restored overnight either, because there are restrictions on Morsi. Whatever happens between Egypt and Iran at the NAM summit in Tehran will be just steps in an unrushed process. The Egyptians are taking pains not to antagonize their Western and Arab paymasters and the Iranians have opted to be patient. Morsi’s presence in Iran, however, is still symbolically very important. Tehran indeed has reason to be very optimistic as all its stars are aligning at its NAM gala.
Diplomatic circles are looking at Egypt on the eve of the NAM summit. Before it was announced that Morsi would go to Iran, it was expected that Egyptian Vice-President Mahmoud Mekki would represent Egypt at the NAM summit as a demonstration of Egypt’s estrangement from Iran.
Cairo’s relationship with Tehran and what develops from Morsi’s trip to Iran is what all Arabdom, Israel, and the US will be watching carefully.
Some analysts are asserting that Egypt’s stance could “make or break” the project to isolate Iran, especially in sectarian terms involving a Shiite-Sunni divide. This is actually wrong, because there is nothing specifically significant that Egypt can do to break or isolate Iran. After all, Cairo and Tehran have essentially had no ties since 1980 and Mubarak was a staunch ally of the US who put Egypt to work with Saudi Arabia and Israel to curb Iranian influence.
In the worst case scenario the relationship between the two countries will stay as it was during the Mubarak era. This is not a losing situation for Iran, albeit the situation in Syria has catalyzed the Iranian desire for faster rapprochement. Egyptian-Iranian relations have nowhere to go except upward.
The Tahrir (Liberation) Square protests that dethroned Mubarak and helped bring about the elections that brought the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood into power are part of what Iranian officials call an “Islamic Awakening” in contrast to an “Arab Spring.” Iran did not hide its belief either that Egypt and it could eventually form a new regional axis after dictator-for-
On August 8, Iran sent Hamid Baqaei to deliver Morsi’s invitation to attend the NAM summit in Tehran. Along the way the international press and pundits gave higher attribution to Baqaei’s governmental rank, because they failed to realize or mention that he was the most senior of eleven junior or assistant vice-presidents and essentially the cabinet minister responsible for the Iranian presidency’s executive affairs.
First Vice-President Mohammed-Reza Rahimi, the former governor of the Iranian province of Kurdistan and himself a former junior vice-president, is Iran’s senior vice-president. Regardless, Baqaei’s visit to Cairo as both a presidential envoy and a close presidential aide was important. Iran could have delivered the invitation letter through its interest section in the Swiss Embassy to Egypt or other diplomatic channels, but made a significant gesture by sending Baqaei directly to Egypt. The move made all the countries conspiring against Iran and Syria very anxious. For these anxious countries the NAM get-together in Tehran will be all about Egypt, Iran, and Syria.
Are Saudi, Qatari, and IMF moves in Egypt tied to the NAM Summit in Tehran?
Both Saudi Arabia and Qatar have offered Egypt their financial aid before Morsi’s visits to Beijing, where he is expected to ask for Chinese help. Aside from the use of Saudi and Qatari aid to shape the way that the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood interacts with Iran, the offers of aid from the petro-despots of Doha and Riyadh are part of the Arab competition over influence in Cairo.
Morsi is widely seen as Qatar’s man and relations between Riyadh and Cairo have been uneasy for some time. The Saudi Embassy in Cairo was even temporarily closed after Egyptian protests against Saudi Arabia flared up. More importantly, the House of Saud opposed Morsi in support of longstanding Mubarak henchman Ahmed Shafik during the Egyptian presidential elections. In addition, the House of Saud has propped up its own political clients inside Egypt against the Muslim Brotherhood. The House of Saud’s Egyptian clients, the Nour Party and the their parliamentary coalition called the Alliance for Egypt (Islamic Bloc), trailed in second place behind the Muslim Brotherhood’s parliamentary coalition, the Democratic Alliance.
Despite the fact that Doha and Riyadh are both serving US interests, the two sheikhdoms have a rivalry with one another. This Qatari-Saudi rivalry picked up again after a brief pause that saw both sides invade the island-kingdom of Bahrain to support the Khalifa regime and to work together against the governments of Libya and Syria.
The Saud and Al-Thani rivalry has seen both sides supporting different armed groups in Libya and competing anti-government forces during the so-called Arab Spring (or Islamic Awakening in Tehran). The elections in Egypt, where Doha and Riyadh supported different sides, just added fuel to the Qatari-Saudi fire.
Qatar’s Emir Hamad bin Khalifa Al-Thani has made it a point to support the Muslim Brotherhood almost wherever they are as a means of expanding Qatari influence. Just days after the ousting of Mubarak, Qatar’s Al Jazeera showed great foresight when it launched Al Jazeera Mubasher Misr, a news channel dedicated exclusively to Egypt. While Qatar and its media have put their weight behind the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, Saudi Arabia and its media have not.
This has also been the reason that the Saudi-controlled media, like Al Arabiya, have continued to level criticisms against President Morsi even after the elections in Egypt. To alleviate the House of Saud’s tensions with Egypt, Morsi made his first foreign trip as president to Saudi Arabia.
Aside from favorable news coverage, it is also widely believed that Qatar helped finance the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt during elections. In addition, Qatari investments in Egypt grew by 74% according to figures released by the Egyptian Central Bank in July 2012. On August 11, Emir Al-Thani and a Qatari delegation also travelled to Egypt for a one-day visit with Morsi. The next day, on August 12, Morsi politely dismissed or “retired” Field Marshal Tantawi, the head of the Egyptian Armed Forces, and Sami Anan, the Egyptian Armed Forces chief of staff and Tantawi’s number two. After Al-Thani’s visit, rumors also began to circulate in Egypt that the Muslim Brotherhood was planning to lease the Suez Canal to Emir Al-Thani, which was denied by Morsi and his presidential staff.
An outcome of Emir Al-Thani’s Egyptian visit was that it was announced that Qatar gave Cairo two billion dollars (US). In reality, the Qataris only gave Egypt 500 million dollars (US) and said that the remainder will be given in installments, which will start after the NAM summit in Tehran. Does the payment schedule say anything?
The timing of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) visit to Cairo to negotiate a loan on the eve of the NAM summit in Tehran is also suspicious. After a year of uncertainty and begging, Qatar and the IMF have opened their pockets to the Egyptians (although Qatar sent some money earlier). The Libyan Transitional Council government has even offered to pitch in financially, even when its own coffers are in disarray as a result of the NATO war on Libya and the looting of Libya’s treasury and assets by the Atlanticists with the help of US neoliberal economist turned Libyan “minister of oil and finance” Ali Tarhouni. As for the House of Saud everyone understands that their terms for financial aid to Egypt include the continuation of anti-Iranian policies in Cairo.
Everyone will be Watching Morsi in Tehran
Readings on Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood, which govern under the banner of the Freedom and Justice Party, vary. On the one hand the Egyptian government has maintained the closure of the borders with the Palestinians in Gaza. It has also pledged to honor its international treaties, a sly reference to its peace treaty with Israel that seeks to avoid mentioning Israel and prevent a media fuss. On the other hand, Morsi made positive gestures to Tehran at Mecca’s emergency Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) summit about forming an Ankara-Cairo-
Like most politicians, Morsi has watered-down his election promises. He has had to walk a fine line surrounded by enemies and competitors alike while he has worked to slowly accumulate power. When he was elected there was a delay in announcing the outcome of the Egyptian election. Field Marshal Tantawi and the Egyptian military junta were taking their time to think over on deciding whether to keep Morsi as a president or to impose a new round of martial law while forcibly installing their fellow general Ahmed Shafik as the country’s civilian president.
Morsi is at odds with Egypt’s military commanders who are the longstanding allies of Israel and the US, as well as allies of the House of Saud. Aside from retiring the two most important members of the Egyptian military junta, Morsi has also reversed the Egyptian military’s decisions to subordinate his presidency and amend the post-Mubarak constitution of Egypt. This power play has been widely described as a pre-emptive counter-coup against the Egyptian military junta. Doha may have supported the move to make sure that its Muslim Brotherhood racehorse stays in power, as opposed to the Saudi’s Egyptian military and Nour Party racehorses. Whether the counter-coup was a move made in the context of Qatari-Saudi rivalries or strictly a move to attain political freedom for Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood is a ten million Qatari riyal question.
Looking East Policy Shift in Cairo?
Where Morsi’s foreign policy is going after the NAM conference in Tehran is the other important question. Where he stands will begin to crystallize from the NAM meeting onwards. The fear of rapprochement between Iran and Egypt certainly keeps a lot of people up at night in Riyadh, Tel Aviv, London, and Washington, DC. Everyone is waiting to see what Cairo and Tehran will do and for many the expectations of rapprochement are running high, but the leverage and restrictions that exist over Morsi should not be forgotten either.
Although there is far less fanfare and attention being paid to Morsi’s trip to China, what he does there will also be very important. Some say he plans on slowly shifting Cairo’s foreign policy away from the Atlanticist camp, with Washington as its capital, towards the Eurasianist camp that includes China and Iran. Certainly Chinese foreign aid will reduce Egyptian dependency on the Atlanticists and their Arab petro-monarch partners. What we are dealing with here is an intricate web of multiple relations between different groups who are interacting with one another in different ways and through changing relationships.
Addendum - August 25, 2012
The unelected Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas threatened to boycott the NAM summit after the Iranian media and Hamas both announced that Prime Minister Haniyeh, the democratically-
An award-winning author and geopolitical analyst, Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya is the author of The Globalization of NATO (Clarity Press) and a forthcoming book The War on Libya and the Re-Colonization of Africa. He has also contributed to several other books ranging from cultural critique to international relations. He is a Sociologist and Research Associate at the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG), a contributor at the Strategic Culture Foundation (SCF), Moscow, and a member of the Scientific Committee of Geopolitica, Italy. He has also addressed the Middle East and international relations issues on various news networks including Al Jazeera, teleSUR, and Russia Today. His writings have been translated into more than twenty languages. In 2011 he was awarded the First National Prize of the Mexican Press Club for his work in international investigative journalism. The above article is from his Press TV column.
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Global Research
Press TV
August 26, 2012
The NAM Summit, Iran, and Syria: A Coup against the West?
Can the NAM Summit bridge the Iran-Egypt Gap?
By Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya
The upcoming summit of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) will be held in Tehran from August 26 to 31, 2012. The NAM and its summit are mostly ignored in the Atlanticist world of the United States and NATO, but this year’s gathering has gotten the attention of the Atlanticists and their press. The reason is that the NAM summit’s venue has upset the political establishment in Washington, DC.
The US government has gotten its feathers ruffled and even gone out of its way to berate NAM leaders for gathering in Iran. US State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland - the spouse of neo-con Project for the New American Century (PNAC) co-founder and arch-imperialist Robert Kagan - has asked Egypt’s new president, Mohamed Morsi, and even UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, Washington’s own steward at the UN, not to travel to Tehran. Nuland and the US State Department have bitterly declared that Iran is not deserving of such “high-level presences.” The US, however, is forced to grin and bear the gathering of world leaders in Tehran.
What will take place is an international extravaganza, minus NATO and its key de facto members - Australia, Japan, New Zealand, and South Korea - in the Asia-Pacific and Israel. African, Asian, Caribbean, and Latin America officials will be there in full strength. The Chinese, who have the status of observers in the NAM, will be there. The Russians, who are not part of the NAM, have been invited as Iran’s special guests and will be represented by Konstantin Shuvalov, Russian ambassador-at-
members or observers. Aside from the Chinese and Russians, the other three members of the BRICS grouping - Brazil, India, and South Africa - that is becoming the new engine shaping the world will also be in attendance.
The NAM Summit, Iran, and Syria: A Coup against the West?
The gathering of NAM leaders will doubtlessly be an important event for Iran’s international prestige and status. For almost a week Tehran will be a key center of the world alongside the offices of the UN in New York City and Geneva. Not only will Iran be the venue for one of the largest international get-togethers of world leaders, but it will also be handed over the organization’s chairmanship from Arab powerhouse Egypt. Iran will retain this position as the leader of the NAM for the next few years and will be able to speak on behalf of the international organization. Up to a certain degree this position will allow Tehran to have more influence in world affairs. At least this is the view in Tehran where none of the significance of the NAM summit has been lost on Iranian politicians and officials who one after another are pointing out the importance of the NAM summit for their country.
The NAM is the second largest international organization and body in the world after the United Nations. With 120 full members and 17 observer members it includes most the countries and governments of the world. About two-thirds of the UN’s member states are full NAM members. The African Union (AU), Afro-Asian People’s Solidarity Organization, Commonwealth of Nations, Hostosian National Independence Movement, Kanak Socialist National Liberation Front, Arab League, Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), South Center, United Nations, and World Peace Council are all observers too.
The US and NATO which very generously and misleadingly throw around the term “international community” when they are referring to themselves are really a global minority that pale in comparison to the international grouping formed by the NAM. Any agreements or consensuses drilled out by the NAM represent not only the bulk of the international community, but also the non-imperialist international majority or those countries that have traditionally been viewed as the “have-nots.” Unlike at the UN, the “silent majority” will have its voice heard with little adulteration and perversion from the confederates of NATOistan.
The NAM gathering in Tehran signifies an important event. It demonstrates that Iran is genuinely not internationally isolated like the images that the United States and major European Union powers, such as the UK and France, like to continuously project. Atlanticist media are scrambling to explain this situation and the Israelis are clearly upset.
Undoubtedly, Iran will use the international gathering to its advantage and make use of the NAM to garnish support for its international positions and to help try to end the crisis in Syria. The US-supported siege of Syria will be denounced at the NAM conference and diplomatic blows will be dealt against the US and its clients and satellites. Already the hurried ministerial conference about the fighting in Syria organized by the Iranian Foreign Ministry in Tehran before the emergency summit held by the OIC in Mecca was a prelude to the diplomatic support that Iran will give the Syrian Arab Republic at the 2012 NAM summit.
Despite Algerian and Iranian opposition, Syria was expelled from the OIC at the behest of Saudi Arabia and the petro-monarchies. While the OIC emergency summit in Mecca may have been a political and diplomatic blow to Damascus, the situation is expected to be much difference at the NAM summit in Tehran. The Syrians will also be present in Tehran and able to face their Arab antagonists from the petro-monarchies of the Persian Gulf.
The Genesis of the Non-Aligned Movement and Third World
The Non-Aligned Movement and concept of a “Third World” have their roots in the period of de-colonization after the Second World War when the empires of Western Europe began to crumble and formally end. This superficially represented an end to the domination of the weak by the strong. In reality, colonialism was merely substituted with foreign aid and loans by the declining empires. In this context, the British would offer aid to their former colonies while the French and Dutch would do the same with their former colonies to maintain control over them. Thus, the exploitation never truly ended and the world was maintained in a state of disequilibrium. The United Nations was also hostage to the big powers and ignored many important issues concerning places like Africa and Latin America.
What brought the formation of the NAM about was firstly the rejection of domination and interference by the countries of the “Global North” - a term that will be defined shortly - and the concept of co-existence that India and China carved out in 1954 when New Delhi recognized Tibet as a part of China.
The NAM started as an Asian initiative, which sought to address the tense relations between China and the US on one hand and China’s relations with other Asian powers on the other hand. The newly independent Asian states wanted to avoid any ratcheting up of the Cold War in their continent, especially after the disastrous US-led military intervention in Korea, or the manipulation of India and Indonesia as buffer states against the People’s Republic of China. This Asian initiative quickly broadened and gained the support of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, Egypt, and the various leaders of the nationalist independence movements in Africa that were fighting for their liberation against NATO countries like Britain, France, and Portugal.
Yugoslavian President Josip Broz Tito, Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, and Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser were the three main forces behind the organization’s creation. Kwame Nkrumah, the Marxist pan-African leader of Ghana, and Ahmed Sukarno, the leader of Indonesia, would also put their weight behind the NAM and join Tito, Nehru, and Nasser. These leaders and their countries did not view the Cold War as an ideological struggle. This was a smokescreen. The Cold War was a power struggle from their perspectives and ideology was merely used as a justification.
The Different Worlds of the Cold War
The word “non-alignment” was first used on the world stage by Vengalil Krishnan Krishna Menon, India’s ambassador to the United Nations, while the term “Third World” was first used by the French scholar Alfred Sauvy. Third World is a debated political term and some find it both deregulatory and ethnocentric. To the point of confusion the phrase Third World is inextricably intertwined with concept of non-alignment and the NAM.
Both the NAM and, especially, Third World are wrongly and carelessly used as synonyms for the Developing and Under-Developed Worlds or as economic indicators. Most Third World countries were underprivileged former colonies or less affluent states in places like Africa and Latin America that were the victims of imperialism and exploitation. This has led to the general identification or misidentification of the NAM countries and the Third World with concepts of poverty. This is wrong and not what either of the terms means.
Third World was a concept that developed during the Cold War period to distinguish those countries that were not formally a part of the First World that was formed by the Western Bloc and either the Eastern/Soviet Bloc and Communist World that formed the Second World. In theory most of these Third Worlders were neutral and joining the NAM was a formal expression of this position of non-alignment.
Aside from being considered Second Worlders, communist states like the People’s Republic of China and Cuba have widely been classified as parts of the Third World and have considered themselves as parts of the third global force. Chairman Mao’s views defined through his concept of Three Worlds also supported the classification of communist states like Angola, China, Cuba, and Mozambique as Third Worlders, because they did not belong to the Soviet Bloc like Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Poland.
In the most orthodox of interpretations of the political meaning of Third World, the communist state of Yugoslavia was a part of the Third World. In the same context, Iran due to its ties to NATO and its membership in the US-controlled Central Treaty Organization (CENTO) was politically a part of the First World until the Iranian Revolution in 1979. Thus, reference to Yugoslavia as a Second World country and Iran as a Third World country prior to 1979 are incorrect.
The term Third World has also given rise to the phrase “Global South.” This name is based on the geographically southward situation of the Third World on the map as opposed to the geographically northward situation of the First and Second Worlds, which both began to collectively be called the “Global North.” The names Global North and Global South came to slowly replace the terms First, Second, and Third World, especially since the Cold War ended and the Soviet Union collapsed.
Bandung, Belgrade, and Non-Aligned Institution Building
The NAM formed when the Third Worlders who were caught between the Atlanticists and the Soviets during the Cold War tried to formalize their third way or force. The NAM would be born after the Bandung Conference in 1955, which infuriated the US and Western Bloc who saw it as a sin against their global interests.
Contrarily to Western Bloc views, the Soviet Union was much more predisposed to accepting the NAM. Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev even proposed in 1960 that the UN be managed by a “troika” composed of the First, Second, and Third Worlds instead of its Western-influenced secretariat in New York City that was colluding with the US to remove Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba from power in the Democratic Republic of Congo, as well as other independent world leaders.
Fidel Castro and Cuba, which hosted the NAM’s summit in 1979 when Iran joined as its eighty-eighth member, would actually argue that the Second World and communist movements were the “natural allies” of the Third World and the NAM. The favorable attitudes of Nasser and Nehru towards the Soviet Union and the Soviet Bloc’s support for various national liberation movements also lends credence towards the Cuban argument about the Second and Third World alliance against the capitalist exploitation and imperialist policies of the First World.
The first NAM summit would be held in the Yugoslavian capital of Belgrade in 1961 under the chairmanship of Marshall Tito. The summit in Belgrade would call for an end to all empires and colonization. Tito, Nehru, Nasser, Nkrumah, Sukarno and other NAM leaders would demand that Western Europeans end their colonial roles in Africa and let African peoples decide their own fates.
A preparatory conference was also held a few months earlier in Cairo by Gamal Abdel Nasser. At the preparatory meetings non-alignment was defined by five points:
(1) Non-aligned countries must follow an independent policy of co-existence of nations with varied political and social systems;
(2) Non-aligned countries must be consistent in their support for national independence;
(3) Non-aligned countries must not belong to a multilateral alliance concluded in the context of superpower or big power politics;
(4) If non-aligned countries have bilateral agreement with big powers or belonged to a regional defense pact, these agreements should not have been concluded in context of the Cold War;
(5) If non-aligned states cede military bases to a big power, these bases should not be granted in the context of the Cold War.
All the NAM conferences to follow would cover vital issues in the years to come that ranged from the inclusion of the People’s Republic of China in the UN, the fighting in the Democratic Republic of Congo, African wars of independence against Western European countries, opposition to apartheid and racism, and nuclear disarmament. Furthermore, the NAM has traditionally been hostile to Zionism and condemned the occupation of Palestinian, Lebanese, Syrian, and Egyptian territories by Israel, which has earned it the seamlessly never-ending aversion of Tel Aviv.
Making NAM Relevant Again
Many people ask what relevance the Non-Aligned Movement has today. Since the end of the Cold War the NAM’s strength has been eroded as the US, neoliberal economic reforms, the IMF, and the World Bank have gained more and more control over NAM members. In many cases NAM members have reverted back to de facto colonies in all but name. Many members of NAM, such as Belarus, Colombia, Ethiopia, and Saudi Arabia, are actually fully aligned states.
There is no question about it that Iran wants to make NAM relevant again to use it fight off the expansionist Atlanticist world. So do the Russians and the Chinese. The NAM after all has provided Iran important diplomatic support in its politicized nuclear dispute with the Atlanticists. The NAM is also the closest alternative to the Atlanticist-
The NAM summit will be capitalized on by Iran and its allies to try and develop some sort of strategy to fight and circumvent the unilateral US and European Union sanctions against the Iranian economy and to show the Atlanticists in the US and the EU that their powers in the world are limited and declining. One small step in this direction is that Iran will begin negotiations with 60 NAM countries to drop bilateral visa requirements with Iran. A universal statement may also be released asking for the anti-Iranian sanctions to be dropped or modified. Other steps would include proposals for a new and alternative financial global structure, which would evade the Atlanticist chokehold on international financial transactions.
An important event at the NAM summit will be the arrival of Morsi in Tehran as a sign of warming relations. Ties between Cairo and Tehran will not be restored overnight either, because there are restrictions on Morsi. Whatever happens between Egypt and Iran at the NAM summit in Tehran will be just steps in an unrushed process. The Egyptians are taking pains not to antagonize their Western and Arab paymasters and the Iranians have opted to be patient. Morsi’s presence in Iran, however, is still symbolically very important. Tehran indeed has reason to be very optimistic as all its stars are aligning at its NAM gala.
Diplomatic circles are looking at Egypt on the eve of the NAM summit. Before it was announced that Morsi would go to Iran, it was expected that Egyptian Vice-President Mahmoud Mekki would represent Egypt at the NAM summit as a demonstration of Egypt’s estrangement from Iran.
Cairo’s relationship with Tehran and what develops from Morsi’s trip to Iran is what all Arabdom, Israel, and the US will be watching carefully.
Some analysts are asserting that Egypt’s stance could “make or break” the project to isolate Iran, especially in sectarian terms involving a Shiite-Sunni divide. This is actually wrong, because there is nothing specifically significant that Egypt can do to break or isolate Iran. After all, Cairo and Tehran have essentially had no ties since 1980 and Mubarak was a staunch ally of the US who put Egypt to work with Saudi Arabia and Israel to curb Iranian influence.
In the worst case scenario the relationship between the two countries will stay as it was during the Mubarak era. This is not a losing situation for Iran, albeit the situation in Syria has catalyzed the Iranian desire for faster rapprochement. Egyptian-Iranian relations have nowhere to go except upward.
The Tahrir (Liberation) Square protests that dethroned Mubarak and helped bring about the elections that brought the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood into power are part of what Iranian officials call an “Islamic Awakening” in contrast to an “Arab Spring.” Iran did not hide its belief either that Egypt and it could eventually form a new regional axis after dictator-for-
On August 8, Iran sent Hamid Baqaei to deliver Morsi’s invitation to attend the NAM summit in Tehran. Along the way the international press and pundits gave higher attribution to Baqaei’s governmental rank, because they failed to realize or mention that he was the most senior of eleven junior or assistant vice-presidents and essentially the cabinet minister responsible for the Iranian presidency’s executive affairs.
First Vice-President Mohammed-Reza Rahimi, the former governor of the Iranian province of Kurdistan and himself a former junior vice-president, is Iran’s senior vice-president. Regardless, Baqaei’s visit to Cairo as both a presidential envoy and a close presidential aide was important. Iran could have delivered the invitation letter through its interest section in the Swiss Embassy to Egypt or other diplomatic channels, but made a significant gesture by sending Baqaei directly to Egypt. The move made all the countries conspiring against Iran and Syria very anxious. For these anxious countries the NAM get-together in Tehran will be all about Egypt, Iran, and Syria.
Are Saudi, Qatari, and IMF moves in Egypt tied to the NAM Summit in Tehran?
Both Saudi Arabia and Qatar have offered Egypt their financial aid before Morsi’s visits to Beijing, where he is expected to ask for Chinese help. Aside from the use of Saudi and Qatari aid to shape the way that the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood interacts with Iran, the offers of aid from the petro-despots of Doha and Riyadh are part of the Arab competition over influence in Cairo.
Morsi is widely seen as Qatar’s man and relations between Riyadh and Cairo have been uneasy for some time. The Saudi Embassy in Cairo was even temporarily closed after Egyptian protests against Saudi Arabia flared up. More importantly, the House of Saud opposed Morsi in support of longstanding Mubarak henchman Ahmed Shafik during the Egyptian presidential elections. In addition, the House of Saud has propped up its own political clients inside Egypt against the Muslim Brotherhood. The House of Saud’s Egyptian clients, the Nour Party and the their parliamentary coalition called the Alliance for Egypt (Islamic Bloc), trailed in second place behind the Muslim Brotherhood’s parliamentary coalition, the Democratic Alliance.
Despite the fact that Doha and Riyadh are both serving US interests, the two sheikhdoms have a rivalry with one another. This Qatari-Saudi rivalry picked up again after a brief pause that saw both sides invade the island-kingdom of Bahrain to support the Khalifa regime and to work together against the governments of Libya and Syria.
The Saud and Al-Thani rivalry has seen both sides supporting different armed groups in Libya and competing anti-government forces during the so-called Arab Spring (or Islamic Awakening in Tehran). The elections in Egypt, where Doha and Riyadh supported different sides, just added fuel to the Qatari-Saudi fire.
Qatar’s Emir Hamad bin Khalifa Al-Thani has made it a point to support the Muslim Brotherhood almost wherever they are as a means of expanding Qatari influence. Just days after the ousting of Mubarak, Qatar’s Al Jazeera showed great foresight when it launched Al Jazeera Mubasher Misr, a news channel dedicated exclusively to Egypt. While Qatar and its media have put their weight behind the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, Saudi Arabia and its media have not.
This has also been the reason that the Saudi-controlled media, like Al Arabiya, have continued to level criticisms against President Morsi even after the elections in Egypt. To alleviate the House of Saud’s tensions with Egypt, Morsi made his first foreign trip as president to Saudi Arabia.
Aside from favorable news coverage, it is also widely believed that Qatar helped finance the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt during elections. In addition, Qatari investments in Egypt grew by 74% according to figures released by the Egyptian Central Bank in July 2012. On August 11, Emir Al-Thani and a Qatari delegation also travelled to Egypt for a one-day visit with Morsi. The next day, on August 12, Morsi politely dismissed or “retired” Field Marshal Tantawi, the head of the Egyptian Armed Forces, and Sami Anan, the Egyptian Armed Forces chief of staff and Tantawi’s number two. After Al-Thani’s visit, rumors also began to circulate in Egypt that the Muslim Brotherhood was planning to lease the Suez Canal to Emir Al-Thani, which was denied by Morsi and his presidential staff.
An outcome of Emir Al-Thani’s Egyptian visit was that it was announced that Qatar gave Cairo two billion dollars (US). In reality, the Qataris only gave Egypt 500 million dollars (US) and said that the remainder will be given in installments, which will start after the NAM summit in Tehran. Does the payment schedule say anything?
The timing of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) visit to Cairo to negotiate a loan on the eve of the NAM summit in Tehran is also suspicious. After a year of uncertainty and begging, Qatar and the IMF have opened their pockets to the Egyptians (although Qatar sent some money earlier). The Libyan Transitional Council government has even offered to pitch in financially, even when its own coffers are in disarray as a result of the NATO war on Libya and the looting of Libya’s treasury and assets by the Atlanticists with the help of US neoliberal economist turned Libyan “minister of oil and finance” Ali Tarhouni. As for the House of Saud everyone understands that their terms for financial aid to Egypt include the continuation of anti-Iranian policies in Cairo.
Everyone will be Watching Morsi in Tehran
Readings on Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood, which govern under the banner of the Freedom and Justice Party, vary. On the one hand the Egyptian government has maintained the closure of the borders with the Palestinians in Gaza. It has also pledged to honor its international treaties, a sly reference to its peace treaty with Israel that seeks to avoid mentioning Israel and prevent a media fuss. On the other hand, Morsi made positive gestures to Tehran at Mecca’s emergency Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) summit about forming an Ankara-Cairo-
Like most politicians, Morsi has watered-down his election promises. He has had to walk a fine line surrounded by enemies and competitors alike while he has worked to slowly accumulate power. When he was elected there was a delay in announcing the outcome of the Egyptian election. Field Marshal Tantawi and the Egyptian military junta were taking their time to think over on deciding whether to keep Morsi as a president or to impose a new round of martial law while forcibly installing their fellow general Ahmed Shafik as the country’s civilian president.
Morsi is at odds with Egypt’s military commanders who are the longstanding allies of Israel and the US, as well as allies of the House of Saud. Aside from retiring the two most important members of the Egyptian military junta, Morsi has also reversed the Egyptian military’s decisions to subordinate his presidency and amend the post-Mubarak constitution of Egypt. This power play has been widely described as a pre-emptive counter-coup against the Egyptian military junta. Doha may have supported the move to make sure that its Muslim Brotherhood racehorse stays in power, as opposed to the Saudi’s Egyptian military and Nour Party racehorses. Whether the counter-coup was a move made in the context of Qatari-Saudi rivalries or strictly a move to attain political freedom for Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood is a ten million Qatari riyal question.
Looking East Policy Shift in Cairo?
Where Morsi’s foreign policy is going after the NAM conference in Tehran is the other important question. Where he stands will begin to crystallize from the NAM meeting onwards. The fear of rapprochement between Iran and Egypt certainly keeps a lot of people up at night in Riyadh, Tel Aviv, London, and Washington, DC. Everyone is waiting to see what Cairo and Tehran will do and for many the expectations of rapprochement are running high, but the leverage and restrictions that exist over Morsi should not be forgotten either.
Although there is far less fanfare and attention being paid to Morsi’s trip to China, what he does there will also be very important. Some say he plans on slowly shifting Cairo’s foreign policy away from the Atlanticist camp, with Washington as its capital, towards the Eurasianist camp that includes China and Iran. Certainly Chinese foreign aid will reduce Egyptian dependency on the Atlanticists and their Arab petro-monarch partners. What we are dealing with here is an intricate web of multiple relations between different groups who are interacting with one another in different ways and through changing relationships.
Addendum - August 25, 2012
The unelected Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas threatened to boycott the NAM summit after the Iranian media and Hamas both announced that Prime Minister Haniyeh, the democratically-
An award-winning author and geopolitical analyst, Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya is the author of The Globalization of NATO (Clarity Press) and a forthcoming book The War on Libya and the Re-Colonization of Africa. He has also contributed to several other books ranging from cultural critique to international relations. He is a Sociologist and Research Associate at the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG), a contributor at the Strategic Culture Foundation (SCF), Moscow, and a member of the Scientific Committee of Geopolitica, Italy. He has also addressed the Middle East and international relations issues on various news networks including Al Jazeera, teleSUR, and Russia Today. His writings have been translated into more than twenty languages. In 2011 he was awarded the First National Prize of the Mexican Press Club for his work in international investigative journalism. The above article is from his Press TV column.
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Sun Aug 26, 2012 7:24 am (PDT) . Posted by:
"Rick Rozoff" rwrozoff
http://www.progress
Progressive Press
August 25, 2012
The Dirty War on Syria
John-Paul Leonard
The Not so Independent Independent?
Robert Fisk has been starting to doubt the official line a little in the pieces he's writing from Damascus for the Independent. I submitted two comments to his latest article, "The bloody truth about Syria's uncivil war - Those trying to topple Assad have surprised the army with their firepower and brutal tactics."
(The first comment showed up after a few minutes, presumably it had passed computerized vetting for bad language, but it disappeared in an hour or two. Not sure if they ran afoul of the thought police, or if there is a rule against URL's in posts. So here they are again without the URL's, let's hope they stay up. Most of the comments so far are pro-Syria and anti-US death squads.)
1. I hope this comment somehow reaches the Syrian Arab Army leadership. Fisk's reports often give indications that the Syrian army needs a well-thought-
2. Dear Mr Fisk,
I'd like to ask if in repeating that "the revolt began after secret police officers tortured to death a 13-year-old boy," have you checked into this or are you trusting the media - the corrupt warmongering mainstream media? There are two sides to every story and every time I dig out the Syrian side, I find that the tale put out everywhere by the CIA-trained FSA is a Big Lie.
In the case of Hamza al Khateeb, he was 17, not 13, and he was not arrested and tortured for writing graffiti. He joined by an armed mob that was firing at a police station, and was killed by three bullets - whether fired by the police or perhaps even by provocateurs, commandos tasked with stoking violence. The cause of death - gunshot wounds, and not torture - was established by the coroner before it was known who Hamza was. His body was taken from the scene of the shootings directly to the hospital.
The Syrian government narrative "True Story of Hamza al-Khateeb's Death Belies Media Fabrications" can be found online as well as a youtube video "Medical Examiner Interview about Hamza Al-Khateeb."
I think you too, the more you dig into the Syria story, the more you will find it is a dirty war based on a Big Lie against a small, proud, nation that dares to be INDEPENDENT.
Aug 24
Give Us Each Day Our Fill of Lies
A top story on Yahoo yesterday blared the headline, "Assad's War on Syria's Children." The casual viewer will assume that Assad is massacring 1000s of kids. Read it and come to find out all they have is two kids who exhibit violent behavior, after their rebel father and uncle fought back against the army instead of evacuating. Moral: terrorists make terrible parents.
Typical, twisted, Goebbelsian MSM war propaganda, from the aptly named "Daily Beast."
For that false flag the US is planning in order to get their war on Syria, I bet you their proxy insurgents the FSA Fanatic Saudi Assassins wipe out a school full of kids with chemical weapons and blame it on Assad. No war propaganda more potent than the killing of babies.
They have already recycled the phony Kuwait/Iraq incubator babies deaths tale from 1990 against Syria now. The FSA massacre at Houla was blamed on the Syrian government and used to justify sanctions against Syria - even after the truth had come out that it was done by US-sponsored death squads and not the Syrian Army.
They make up their own truth - and it's the Big Lie every time.
Aug. 22
Turnabout is Fair Play - Syria should set up Local Militias, and put a Bounty on Terrorist Heads too
By now I've seen innumerable reports and videos of the gratitude of Syrians for the protection of their Army against the depredations of FSA terrorist gangs. The latest one appeared in The Telegraph, Aug. 21, Robert Fisk reporting:
At least a dozen civilians emerged from their homes, retirees in their 70s, shopkeepers and local businessmen with their families and, unaware that a foreign journalist was watching, put their arms round Syrian troops.
I also just came across a report from June in Global Research on how the largesse of the oil emirates Qatar and KSA trickles down to the smallest pawns in the game
The young people no longer want to work in the field. You can earn every day 5000, 8000, 1000 pounds, if they kill policemen. A man from Qusseir (Qusair), who has recently reported himself to the authorities, has confessed, that he has 150 000 Syrian pounds for committing the kidnapping and murder of six soldiers.
Syrian soldiers have said that they have received about 180 000 Syrian pounds [about $3000 US], to desert (from the Army), what is a fortune here in Syria.
Fisk also quotes an Army general on the terrorists:
They snipe at us and then they run and hide and in the sewers. Foreigners, Turks, Chechens, Afghans, Libyans, Sudanese." And Syrians, I said. "Yes, Syrians too, but smugglers and criminals," he said.
Juxtaposing these three facts, a tactic occurred to me that could help Syria win the counter-insurgency. Rather than making civilians wait for the army to save them, why not recruit trustworthy veterans or reservists for a neighborhood militia in civilian dress? Some neighborhoods and clans have already done this on their own, Christians in particular, setting up checkpoints with armed guards to protect themselves. Most Syrian men serve two years in the army, so they know how to fire a gun.
As an incentive, declare a bounty for the killing or capture of foreign terrorists. Of course, such a program needs to be well-planned to avoid abuses. Candidates for neighborhood counter-insurgency commando service would need to be vetted and trained to avoid chaos and killings of ordinary civilians, or infiltration by FSA sympathizers. But we already have those problems with the FSA. So with judicious application, such a program could be a game-changer.
Bounties should either be higher, or paid exclusively for, foreign combatants. For their protection, foreign journalists should wear Press jackets, carry a visa, and make themselves known to authorities in the areas where they are working. Reservists might need special training in stalking snipers, and their identities might need to be kept secret, to avoid being singled out by terrorists.
Chairman Mao said, "The guerrilla must swim among the people as the fish swims." The same holds true for counter-insurgents. Well-targeted, hand-in-glove methods will also greatly reduce the physical and moral damage from the use of heavy weapons, which are at any rate poorly suited to hit-and-run guerrilla tactics.
It is understandable if the Syrian authorities may experience anxiety about loss of direct control over each weapon and soldier under such a policy, but adequate control can be maintained. The fact remains that the heroic Syrian Arab Army was built for a conventional war with Israel. Today's war waged by the US and proxies is an insidious, unconventional model, requiring innovation and cunning to combat it.
Update Aug. 24. When i see a single FSA sniper terrorizing a whole neighborhood, or one terrorist blowing up a tank with an RPG, I really have to ask if the SAA are using the best mix of weapons. True, they keep killing terrorists, but can they afford the cost? NATO can send more insurgents and wear Syria down in a war of attrition.
Nowadays is the age of open source - you can't concentrate all tasks and do everything yourself - got to harness the power of the people. The Evil Empire got to be as big as it is because it learned this long ago. Syria is under attack by a CIA People Power Coup, among other things. The Syrian people are so thankful to their army, I'm sure they would be glad to help.
A comment on Twitter today by @FadiSalem, quoting an Aleppo activist about the FSA: "They have no regards what so ever for civilian life. They hide among them, leave them when shelling starts."
Aug. 20
REALITY AND DEMONOLOGY IN THE WAR ON SYRIA
It seems the real situation in Syria is never as bad as the hysteria pushed by the Western media. Of course, no news is always bad news for the media, but with Syria, there is an added motive - catastrophic reports raise the pressure for intervention.
That's why I liked the concluding words of this unusually low-key, level-headed "Despatch from Damascus" by a German journalist, posted on Aug. 4th:
Damascus itself was placid, and normal life went on...I walked through the city, speaking to shop owners, taxi drivers, people on the streets, policemen, women in headscarves and in Western outfits. The answer was always the same – the international media completely distort what is happening. They singled out the Qatar-based TV station Al-Jazeera for particular criticism...
A final surprise came at the Lebanese side of the border. There I saw the first time the black-white-
From this account we not only learn of the exaggeration of violence, but also that the people overwhelmingly support the government.
In a recent interview, Alex Jones agreed with guest Syrian Girl Partisan that short of a chemical weapons false flag attack, the empire has few options open to intervene. The latest attempt to drum up such a pretext was aimed as much at Iran as Syria. The claim by Dep't of Offense Secretary Panetta that Iran is training militias in Syria was a masterpiece of duplicity
- the US itself has already invaded both Iran and Syria with commandos, death squads and proxies,
- the allegation of a military intervention by Iran in Syria could be a pretext for an overt attack on either country.
- claims of a loyalist militia are constantly used to shift blame for killings by US proxy death squads onto the Syrian government, and to cover up the fact that Syrian civilians themselves are rejecting and even opposing the US-backed militants
Perhaps the US will be content just do as much damage to Syria as it can using the jihadist cannon fodder available, and let the conflict splutter on. They have been trying to crack Syria for 65 years now. Syria's electoral reform will make it easier to buy influence in the country. Already in 2014, they can try to create a scandal over the question whether the constitution allows Assad to run for president again or not. While one school of thought was that Syria needed to be taken out before tackling Iran, tying up Syria with low-intensity warfare may be enough.
Facts vs. Acts -- Analyzing Activist Assumptions
Let us look at some of the reasons given by opposition activists for supporting armed violence against the Syrian state.
- 42 years of rule by the Assad family
- Security forces allegedly firing on unarmed demonstrators
- Torture
- Shelling in civilian areas
Like Father Like Son?
When you ask Syria opposition activists, "Why not give the new reforms a chance?" they often answer, "Too little, too late. We suffered 42 years under the Assad dictatorship.
The opposition likes to conflate Hafez Assad the strongman with his son. Bashar Assad was chosen to be president by the Baath party, and does not appear to wield absolute, personal power. Yet the opposition blames him for everything from the houseflies to the weather.
My impression is that Bashar is on the soft side for a leader, rather than the strongman dictator type. In interviews, he conscientiously rejects any notion of his own personal power, speaking always of the constitution, the party, the office.
When Bashar was first elected, he announced plans for reforms. Unfortunately, they were too long in coming, true enough. Perhaps he couldn't push them through over the old guard in the Baath party.
Another point of softness was B. Assad's attempt to win Western favor by making concessions. A few years back, he let in the IMF austerity shamans -- an entering wedge for destabilization. This spring, he tried to respect the UN ceasefire, which only let terrorists get more deeply entrenched.
If the US and the activists they support wanted reform, they could have pushed for reform and got it. Instead, the protests immediately turned to violence. Nevertheless, as soon as the protests started in Spring 2011, the Baathists saw the writing on the wall and started the political reform process.
Who pulled the trigger first? Who had the motive and the plan?
Another favorite opposition argument is that peaceful protesters restrained themselves for a long time, until the "brutal crack-down by the Assad regime" stoked their rage and they started to fight back. However, the facts show that violence began almost from the start, so quickly that it is very hard to figure out who fired first. Michel Chossudovsky of Global Research analysed the evidence in a May 2011 article, "Syria: Who is Behind The Protest Movement? Fabricating a Pretext for a US-NATO 'Humanitarian Intervention.
The Western media has presented the events in Syria as part of the broader Arab pro-democracy protest movement, spreading spontaneously from Tunisia, to Egypt, and from Libya to Syria.
Media coverage has focussed on the Syrian police and armed forces, which are accused of indiscriminately shooting and killing unarmed "pro-democracy" demonstrators. While these police shootings did indeed occur, what the media failed to mention is that among the demonstrators there were armed gunmen as well as snipers who were shooting at both the security forces and the protesters.
Chossudovsky notes that the protests started not in Damascus, where the authentic internal opposition is based, but in Daraa (or Deraa), a small town of 75,000 souls on the border with Jordan. The pattern has held throughout -- the FSA always concentrates on targets near borders, as they must be supplied from foreign countries.
The first fatalities in Daraa were seven policemen and four armed protesters. Some or all of the dead may have been shot by mysterious snipers on rooftops, who were shooting at BOTH police and protesters. In Syrian state TV footage used by the BBC, it says on the screen, "You are seeing gunmen shooting at unarmed civilians and security forces."
Why shoot at both sides? To stoke enmity and violence between the two sides. What would be the motive? For violent elements to take over the protest movement and overthrow the state.
In other words, as the BBC put it in their emotion-charged video "Inside the Secret Revolution," the snipers were "agents provocateur.
Up until the stage of open warfare this summer made it impossible, drumbeaters for war on Syria have blamed all killings by terrorists on the Shabiha. Yet there is very little evidence for their "ghostly" existence (other than the usual "unconfirmed activist reports" and dubious videos).
Of course, the last thing a government wants to do is stoke internal violence, and even less, to kill its own security forces. The Syrian authorities were doing what any state does, to try and restore law and order, not to pour oil on flames and engulf itself.
Rather than "cracking down," the authorities immediately tried to calm the situation by offering to release the students who had been arrested, but the mobs went ahead and set fire to government buildings. Were they paid or incited to do this?
The Biased Broadcasting Corporation, or BBC
The BBC don't try to explain why the government would want to provoke violence. We know, however, from the US Unconventional Warfare manual TC 18-01, that the US does use this kind of violent destabilization tactic. The BBC then present a "witness" (with face dramatically hidden from the camera), allegedly a Syrian army defector. His wild story would have fetched a good price on the Lebanese border. Officers allegedly ordered their men at gunpoint to shoot, saying, "Don't shoot the 'armed groups,' they are with us. There are no rebels, no conspirators, just the people. Shoot the people." According to this Hollywood-cartoon-
A month later, as the army occupies Daraa to try to restore order, Al-Jazeera reports this hellish scenario: people don't dare to go in the streets because "plain clothes thugs and secret police" snipers on rooftops are shooting both civilians and soldiers. Based on "unconfirmed activist reports" of course. But we have a report from Webster Tarpley on the same situation in Homs in November. Tarpley told that the people of Homs begged for the Army to come restore orde. Meanwhile the Big Lie Media pinned blame on Assad for the havoc wreaked by the FSA there, always claiming the rooftop snipers were Assad's - one form of their video lies.
Tarpley on Russia Today, Nov. 2011:
I've just completed about one week of fact-finding tour of the country and I've been in Homs, I've been in Tartus, Banias, I've been in the military hospital here in Baghdad, and I can tell you what average everyday Syrians of all ethnic groups - Christian, Sunni, Shiite, Alawite, Druze - what they say about this, is that they are being shot at by snipers. In Homs in particular they are saying that there are terrorist snipers shooting at civilians, men women and children. Blind terrorism, random killing, simply for the purpose of destabilizing the country. I would not call this a civil war by any stretch of the imagination. I think that's a very, very misleading term in the following sense. What you're dealing with here are death squads. You're dealing here with terror commandos, the kind of thing that everybody remembers from Argentina and Central America. This is a typical CIA method. In this case it's a joint production of the CIA, MI-6, Mossad,
DGSE of the French. It's got money coming from Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar.
All throughout 2011 and up until the surge on Damascus and Aleppo, the MSM try to pretend that all killings have been carried out either by the army or the Shabiha, never by the FSA. FSA terrorists sometimes even dress in Syrian Army uniforms, to reflect blame for their terror acts on army. Total casualty figures are inflated, packaged as civilian deaths and laid at the government's door in full, without detailing how many were combatants.
It takes careful analysis, but when the effort is made, it never seems to fail: the MSM narrative is always a Big Lie, where atrocities are groundlessly blamed on government forces. One is tempted to simply ignore the MSM.
When a government carries out a false flag, they are always quick to point the blame at their target. Thus the BBC was quick to blame "government death squads," but the Syrians were puzzled. They did not leap to tell the story that would work for them and say, these are CIA death squads - they just called them "protesters.
creating facts on the ground, and the Anglo-Americans have always been the top specialists at it.
The "Shabiha" - Ghosts of Ghosts
I have seen innumerable cases where photos of civilians killed by "shabiha" were debunked as fakes, and not one confirmed one yet. If real photos were available, "activists" would not resort to faking them, with the risk of being found out. This leads to the conclusion that there are no real photos, and I have been assured by an anti-FSA activist who checked into this in the first few months and found that all photos of government atrocities were fakes.
It's logical that the intentional civilian killings are carried out by the FSA, as they have the motive - it destabilizes Syria. One, they can blame the killings on "Shabiha." Two, they hope to terrorize the populace into supporting them. Three, it weakens the country and may weaken the people's will to resist takeover by the US proxies. Some grief-stricken families may turn against the government for not stopping the FSA from killing their loved ones. This is all tried and true insurrectionary tactics.
Meanwhile the government has every motive and makes every effort not to kill civilians, but it must defeat armed insurrection.
Torture
Another reason given for opposition to Assad is torture.
Torture is a bad thing, no question about it.
It causes psychological damage to victims, and even to its practitioners. And to no purpose - it doesn't even work nearly as well as soft indoctrination.
Torture should be eliminated. However, it is not the reason the US wants to topple Assad.
A few years ago, under the practice of "extraordinary rendition," the US even sent "terrorist suspects" to Syria to be tortured. The US also tortures inmates in Guantanamo. Torture is a worldwide problem.
If activists want to end torture, is making war on Syria the best way to go about it? No. Allowing reforms to take root, allowing a multiparty democracy to develop, is the best hope to end the practice.
War on Syria will lead to more, not less terror. Government officials lack experts in soft indoctrination methods, yet feel the need to find out if detainees are just "peaceful protesters" or armed militants. And the torture of civilians by the FSA is much more brutal than that by the state. The Al Berri clan were beaten and bloodied before being shredded in a machine gun fusillade.
Shelling Residential Areas
This is an issue that has worried me, as seen in earlier blog entries below.
The media like to call this "Assad using the army to attack his own people," as they are fishing for a UN resolution under the R2P "responsibility to protect" theory.
Let's ask opposition activists why the FSA is using residential areas as human shields? The activists will probably say it's OK for revolutionaries.
Do they know this is a war crime, as security expert Charles Shoebridge pointed out the other day, in a tweet to Human Rights Watch reminding them of their own position - "all sides must avoid deploying military targets such as fighters or weapons in or near densely populated areas, and they must try to remove civilians from areas of military operations."
In other words, endangering civilians by mounting a guerrilla warfare operation in cities and towns is a war crime in itself, not to mention the acts of terror against non-combatants by the invading mercenaries.
While sharing my sentiment that we'd like it if a more limited type of response could eradicate the insurgents' occupation of urban areas, Shoebridge also noted, "A person who knows about military matters knows this is what happens in urban war. Rebels condemned by UN for exactly this."
Sometimes the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) shells areas where FSA snipers have occupied the rooftops. Under cover of artillery fire, SAA is able to take back the high ground. It's a question of tactics.
The army has made statements that they are striving to minimize civilian casualties, by advancing slowly on terrorist nests, giving civilians a chance to flee.
The FSA also do have some heavy weapons and mortars, which they are known to lob unprovoked into peaceful civilian areas.
According to carefully-laid plans
We've seen now that the motivation for violence rests squarely with the Evil Empire, not with the Syrian state. As for the Empire's evil plan, an updated version of it was published by Michel Chossudovsky on Aug. 3 in "Towards A 'Soft Invasion'? The Launching of a 'Humanitarian War' against Syria". He writes,
Rather than carrying out an all out Blitzkrieg, the US-NATO-Israel military alliance has chosen to intervene under the diabolical R2P frame of "humanitarian warfare". Modelled on Libya, the following broad stages are envisaged:
1) A US-NATO backed insurgency [involving] by death squads is launched under the disguise of a "protest movement" (mid-March 2011 in Daraa)
2) British, French, Qatari and Turkish Special Forces are on the ground in Syria, advising and training the rebels as well as overseeing special operations. Mercenaries hired by private security companies are also involved in supporting rebels forces
3) The killings of innocent civilians by the Free Syrian Army (FSA) are deliberately carried out as part of a covert intelligence operation. (See SYRIA: Killing Innocent Civilians as part of a US Covert Op. Mobilizing Public Support for a R2P War against Syria, Global Research, May 2012)
4) The Syrian government is then blamed for the resulting atrocities. Media disinformation is geared towards demonizing the Syrian government. Public opinion is led into endorsing a military intervention on humanitarian grounds.
5) Responding to public outrage, US-NATO is then "forced to step in" under a Humanitarian "Responsibility to Protect" (R2P) mandate. Media propaganda goes into high gear. "The International Community" comes to the rescue of the Syrian people."
6) Warships and fighter jets are then deployed to the Eastern Mediterranean. These actions are coordinated with logistical support to the rebels and Special forces on the ground.
7) The final objective is "regime change" leading to the "break-up of the country" along sectarian lines and/or the installation of an "Islamist-dominated or influenced regime" modelled on Qatar and Saudi Arabia.
8) War plans in relation to Syria are integrated with those pertaining to Iran. The road to Tehran goes through Damascus. The broader implications of US-NATO intervention are military escalation and the possible unleashing of a regional war extending from the Eastern Mediterranean to Central Asia, in which China and Russia could be directly or indirectly involved.
Stages 1 through 4 have already been implemented.
Stage 5 has been announced.
Progressives for and Against Assad Want the Same Things After All
If you ask progressive pro- and anti-government activists what is their vision for Syria, it probably comes down to the same shopping list:
- secular, pluralist, parliamentary democracy
- freedom of speech and political association
- security and safety, human rights, women's rights, no police brutality
- continuation of the policy of resistance to Zionism, no peace without the Golan Heights
- national unity, economic independence and development
For some progressives like me, it was clear before the fiasco of Aleppo and Damascus that the best chance for Syria to reach these goals was to give the reform constitution a chance. After Aleppo, it became clear to many more people that the armed militants would deliver just the opposite. They represent the worst of all possible worlds - a descent into the kind of hell the Ugly American Empire has left behind in Somalia or Afghanistan. A shattered landscape of feuding warlords, a human rights catastrophe that makes feudalism look like Utopia, Syria as a pariah and an appendage of Israel, carved up like the map under the French mandate, and ironically under the same flag.
Why do Revolutions Backfire?
Like begets like. Due process leads to democracy. Violence leads to tyranny.
It's not clear though how many "opposition activists" really are inspired by revolutionary or democratic sentiment, and how many are trolls. Neo-con wolves in lefty clothing reflect perfectly the duplicitous essence of Color Revolution Technology.
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Progressive Press
August 25, 2012
The Dirty War on Syria
John-Paul Leonard
The Not so Independent Independent?
Robert Fisk has been starting to doubt the official line a little in the pieces he's writing from Damascus for the Independent. I submitted two comments to his latest article, "The bloody truth about Syria's uncivil war - Those trying to topple Assad have surprised the army with their firepower and brutal tactics."
(The first comment showed up after a few minutes, presumably it had passed computerized vetting for bad language, but it disappeared in an hour or two. Not sure if they ran afoul of the thought police, or if there is a rule against URL's in posts. So here they are again without the URL's, let's hope they stay up. Most of the comments so far are pro-Syria and anti-US death squads.)
1. I hope this comment somehow reaches the Syrian Arab Army leadership. Fisk's reports often give indications that the Syrian army needs a well-thought-
2. Dear Mr Fisk,
I'd like to ask if in repeating that "the revolt began after secret police officers tortured to death a 13-year-old boy," have you checked into this or are you trusting the media - the corrupt warmongering mainstream media? There are two sides to every story and every time I dig out the Syrian side, I find that the tale put out everywhere by the CIA-trained FSA is a Big Lie.
In the case of Hamza al Khateeb, he was 17, not 13, and he was not arrested and tortured for writing graffiti. He joined by an armed mob that was firing at a police station, and was killed by three bullets - whether fired by the police or perhaps even by provocateurs, commandos tasked with stoking violence. The cause of death - gunshot wounds, and not torture - was established by the coroner before it was known who Hamza was. His body was taken from the scene of the shootings directly to the hospital.
The Syrian government narrative "True Story of Hamza al-Khateeb's Death Belies Media Fabrications" can be found online as well as a youtube video "Medical Examiner Interview about Hamza Al-Khateeb."
I think you too, the more you dig into the Syria story, the more you will find it is a dirty war based on a Big Lie against a small, proud, nation that dares to be INDEPENDENT.
Aug 24
Give Us Each Day Our Fill of Lies
A top story on Yahoo yesterday blared the headline, "Assad's War on Syria's Children." The casual viewer will assume that Assad is massacring 1000s of kids. Read it and come to find out all they have is two kids who exhibit violent behavior, after their rebel father and uncle fought back against the army instead of evacuating. Moral: terrorists make terrible parents.
Typical, twisted, Goebbelsian MSM war propaganda, from the aptly named "Daily Beast."
For that false flag the US is planning in order to get their war on Syria, I bet you their proxy insurgents the FSA Fanatic Saudi Assassins wipe out a school full of kids with chemical weapons and blame it on Assad. No war propaganda more potent than the killing of babies.
They have already recycled the phony Kuwait/Iraq incubator babies deaths tale from 1990 against Syria now. The FSA massacre at Houla was blamed on the Syrian government and used to justify sanctions against Syria - even after the truth had come out that it was done by US-sponsored death squads and not the Syrian Army.
They make up their own truth - and it's the Big Lie every time.
Aug. 22
Turnabout is Fair Play - Syria should set up Local Militias, and put a Bounty on Terrorist Heads too
By now I've seen innumerable reports and videos of the gratitude of Syrians for the protection of their Army against the depredations of FSA terrorist gangs. The latest one appeared in The Telegraph, Aug. 21, Robert Fisk reporting:
At least a dozen civilians emerged from their homes, retirees in their 70s, shopkeepers and local businessmen with their families and, unaware that a foreign journalist was watching, put their arms round Syrian troops.
I also just came across a report from June in Global Research on how the largesse of the oil emirates Qatar and KSA trickles down to the smallest pawns in the game
The young people no longer want to work in the field. You can earn every day 5000, 8000, 1000 pounds, if they kill policemen. A man from Qusseir (Qusair), who has recently reported himself to the authorities, has confessed, that he has 150 000 Syrian pounds for committing the kidnapping and murder of six soldiers.
Syrian soldiers have said that they have received about 180 000 Syrian pounds [about $3000 US], to desert (from the Army), what is a fortune here in Syria.
Fisk also quotes an Army general on the terrorists:
They snipe at us and then they run and hide and in the sewers. Foreigners, Turks, Chechens, Afghans, Libyans, Sudanese." And Syrians, I said. "Yes, Syrians too, but smugglers and criminals," he said.
Juxtaposing these three facts, a tactic occurred to me that could help Syria win the counter-insurgency. Rather than making civilians wait for the army to save them, why not recruit trustworthy veterans or reservists for a neighborhood militia in civilian dress? Some neighborhoods and clans have already done this on their own, Christians in particular, setting up checkpoints with armed guards to protect themselves. Most Syrian men serve two years in the army, so they know how to fire a gun.
As an incentive, declare a bounty for the killing or capture of foreign terrorists. Of course, such a program needs to be well-planned to avoid abuses. Candidates for neighborhood counter-insurgency commando service would need to be vetted and trained to avoid chaos and killings of ordinary civilians, or infiltration by FSA sympathizers. But we already have those problems with the FSA. So with judicious application, such a program could be a game-changer.
Bounties should either be higher, or paid exclusively for, foreign combatants. For their protection, foreign journalists should wear Press jackets, carry a visa, and make themselves known to authorities in the areas where they are working. Reservists might need special training in stalking snipers, and their identities might need to be kept secret, to avoid being singled out by terrorists.
Chairman Mao said, "The guerrilla must swim among the people as the fish swims." The same holds true for counter-insurgents. Well-targeted, hand-in-glove methods will also greatly reduce the physical and moral damage from the use of heavy weapons, which are at any rate poorly suited to hit-and-run guerrilla tactics.
It is understandable if the Syrian authorities may experience anxiety about loss of direct control over each weapon and soldier under such a policy, but adequate control can be maintained. The fact remains that the heroic Syrian Arab Army was built for a conventional war with Israel. Today's war waged by the US and proxies is an insidious, unconventional model, requiring innovation and cunning to combat it.
Update Aug. 24. When i see a single FSA sniper terrorizing a whole neighborhood, or one terrorist blowing up a tank with an RPG, I really have to ask if the SAA are using the best mix of weapons. True, they keep killing terrorists, but can they afford the cost? NATO can send more insurgents and wear Syria down in a war of attrition.
Nowadays is the age of open source - you can't concentrate all tasks and do everything yourself - got to harness the power of the people. The Evil Empire got to be as big as it is because it learned this long ago. Syria is under attack by a CIA People Power Coup, among other things. The Syrian people are so thankful to their army, I'm sure they would be glad to help.
A comment on Twitter today by @FadiSalem, quoting an Aleppo activist about the FSA: "They have no regards what so ever for civilian life. They hide among them, leave them when shelling starts."
Aug. 20
REALITY AND DEMONOLOGY IN THE WAR ON SYRIA
It seems the real situation in Syria is never as bad as the hysteria pushed by the Western media. Of course, no news is always bad news for the media, but with Syria, there is an added motive - catastrophic reports raise the pressure for intervention.
That's why I liked the concluding words of this unusually low-key, level-headed "Despatch from Damascus" by a German journalist, posted on Aug. 4th:
Damascus itself was placid, and normal life went on...I walked through the city, speaking to shop owners, taxi drivers, people on the streets, policemen, women in headscarves and in Western outfits. The answer was always the same – the international media completely distort what is happening. They singled out the Qatar-based TV station Al-Jazeera for particular criticism...
A final surprise came at the Lebanese side of the border. There I saw the first time the black-white-
From this account we not only learn of the exaggeration of violence, but also that the people overwhelmingly support the government.
In a recent interview, Alex Jones agreed with guest Syrian Girl Partisan that short of a chemical weapons false flag attack, the empire has few options open to intervene. The latest attempt to drum up such a pretext was aimed as much at Iran as Syria. The claim by Dep't of Offense Secretary Panetta that Iran is training militias in Syria was a masterpiece of duplicity
- the US itself has already invaded both Iran and Syria with commandos, death squads and proxies,
- the allegation of a military intervention by Iran in Syria could be a pretext for an overt attack on either country.
- claims of a loyalist militia are constantly used to shift blame for killings by US proxy death squads onto the Syrian government, and to cover up the fact that Syrian civilians themselves are rejecting and even opposing the US-backed militants
Perhaps the US will be content just do as much damage to Syria as it can using the jihadist cannon fodder available, and let the conflict splutter on. They have been trying to crack Syria for 65 years now. Syria's electoral reform will make it easier to buy influence in the country. Already in 2014, they can try to create a scandal over the question whether the constitution allows Assad to run for president again or not. While one school of thought was that Syria needed to be taken out before tackling Iran, tying up Syria with low-intensity warfare may be enough.
Facts vs. Acts -- Analyzing Activist Assumptions
Let us look at some of the reasons given by opposition activists for supporting armed violence against the Syrian state.
- 42 years of rule by the Assad family
- Security forces allegedly firing on unarmed demonstrators
- Torture
- Shelling in civilian areas
Like Father Like Son?
When you ask Syria opposition activists, "Why not give the new reforms a chance?" they often answer, "Too little, too late. We suffered 42 years under the Assad dictatorship.
The opposition likes to conflate Hafez Assad the strongman with his son. Bashar Assad was chosen to be president by the Baath party, and does not appear to wield absolute, personal power. Yet the opposition blames him for everything from the houseflies to the weather.
My impression is that Bashar is on the soft side for a leader, rather than the strongman dictator type. In interviews, he conscientiously rejects any notion of his own personal power, speaking always of the constitution, the party, the office.
When Bashar was first elected, he announced plans for reforms. Unfortunately, they were too long in coming, true enough. Perhaps he couldn't push them through over the old guard in the Baath party.
Another point of softness was B. Assad's attempt to win Western favor by making concessions. A few years back, he let in the IMF austerity shamans -- an entering wedge for destabilization. This spring, he tried to respect the UN ceasefire, which only let terrorists get more deeply entrenched.
If the US and the activists they support wanted reform, they could have pushed for reform and got it. Instead, the protests immediately turned to violence. Nevertheless, as soon as the protests started in Spring 2011, the Baathists saw the writing on the wall and started the political reform process.
Who pulled the trigger first? Who had the motive and the plan?
Another favorite opposition argument is that peaceful protesters restrained themselves for a long time, until the "brutal crack-down by the Assad regime" stoked their rage and they started to fight back. However, the facts show that violence began almost from the start, so quickly that it is very hard to figure out who fired first. Michel Chossudovsky of Global Research analysed the evidence in a May 2011 article, "Syria: Who is Behind The Protest Movement? Fabricating a Pretext for a US-NATO 'Humanitarian Intervention.
The Western media has presented the events in Syria as part of the broader Arab pro-democracy protest movement, spreading spontaneously from Tunisia, to Egypt, and from Libya to Syria.
Media coverage has focussed on the Syrian police and armed forces, which are accused of indiscriminately shooting and killing unarmed "pro-democracy" demonstrators. While these police shootings did indeed occur, what the media failed to mention is that among the demonstrators there were armed gunmen as well as snipers who were shooting at both the security forces and the protesters.
Chossudovsky notes that the protests started not in Damascus, where the authentic internal opposition is based, but in Daraa (or Deraa), a small town of 75,000 souls on the border with Jordan. The pattern has held throughout -- the FSA always concentrates on targets near borders, as they must be supplied from foreign countries.
The first fatalities in Daraa were seven policemen and four armed protesters. Some or all of the dead may have been shot by mysterious snipers on rooftops, who were shooting at BOTH police and protesters. In Syrian state TV footage used by the BBC, it says on the screen, "You are seeing gunmen shooting at unarmed civilians and security forces."
Why shoot at both sides? To stoke enmity and violence between the two sides. What would be the motive? For violent elements to take over the protest movement and overthrow the state.
In other words, as the BBC put it in their emotion-charged video "Inside the Secret Revolution," the snipers were "agents provocateur.
Up until the stage of open warfare this summer made it impossible, drumbeaters for war on Syria have blamed all killings by terrorists on the Shabiha. Yet there is very little evidence for their "ghostly" existence (other than the usual "unconfirmed activist reports" and dubious videos).
Of course, the last thing a government wants to do is stoke internal violence, and even less, to kill its own security forces. The Syrian authorities were doing what any state does, to try and restore law and order, not to pour oil on flames and engulf itself.
Rather than "cracking down," the authorities immediately tried to calm the situation by offering to release the students who had been arrested, but the mobs went ahead and set fire to government buildings. Were they paid or incited to do this?
The Biased Broadcasting Corporation, or BBC
The BBC don't try to explain why the government would want to provoke violence. We know, however, from the US Unconventional Warfare manual TC 18-01, that the US does use this kind of violent destabilization tactic. The BBC then present a "witness" (with face dramatically hidden from the camera), allegedly a Syrian army defector. His wild story would have fetched a good price on the Lebanese border. Officers allegedly ordered their men at gunpoint to shoot, saying, "Don't shoot the 'armed groups,' they are with us. There are no rebels, no conspirators, just the people. Shoot the people." According to this Hollywood-cartoon-
A month later, as the army occupies Daraa to try to restore order, Al-Jazeera reports this hellish scenario: people don't dare to go in the streets because "plain clothes thugs and secret police" snipers on rooftops are shooting both civilians and soldiers. Based on "unconfirmed activist reports" of course. But we have a report from Webster Tarpley on the same situation in Homs in November. Tarpley told that the people of Homs begged for the Army to come restore orde. Meanwhile the Big Lie Media pinned blame on Assad for the havoc wreaked by the FSA there, always claiming the rooftop snipers were Assad's - one form of their video lies.
Tarpley on Russia Today, Nov. 2011:
I've just completed about one week of fact-finding tour of the country and I've been in Homs, I've been in Tartus, Banias, I've been in the military hospital here in Baghdad, and I can tell you what average everyday Syrians of all ethnic groups - Christian, Sunni, Shiite, Alawite, Druze - what they say about this, is that they are being shot at by snipers. In Homs in particular they are saying that there are terrorist snipers shooting at civilians, men women and children. Blind terrorism, random killing, simply for the purpose of destabilizing the country. I would not call this a civil war by any stretch of the imagination. I think that's a very, very misleading term in the following sense. What you're dealing with here are death squads. You're dealing here with terror commandos, the kind of thing that everybody remembers from Argentina and Central America. This is a typical CIA method. In this case it's a joint production of the CIA, MI-6, Mossad,
DGSE of the French. It's got money coming from Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar.
All throughout 2011 and up until the surge on Damascus and Aleppo, the MSM try to pretend that all killings have been carried out either by the army or the Shabiha, never by the FSA. FSA terrorists sometimes even dress in Syrian Army uniforms, to reflect blame for their terror acts on army. Total casualty figures are inflated, packaged as civilian deaths and laid at the government's door in full, without detailing how many were combatants.
It takes careful analysis, but when the effort is made, it never seems to fail: the MSM narrative is always a Big Lie, where atrocities are groundlessly blamed on government forces. One is tempted to simply ignore the MSM.
When a government carries out a false flag, they are always quick to point the blame at their target. Thus the BBC was quick to blame "government death squads," but the Syrians were puzzled. They did not leap to tell the story that would work for them and say, these are CIA death squads - they just called them "protesters.
creating facts on the ground, and the Anglo-Americans have always been the top specialists at it.
The "Shabiha" - Ghosts of Ghosts
I have seen innumerable cases where photos of civilians killed by "shabiha" were debunked as fakes, and not one confirmed one yet. If real photos were available, "activists" would not resort to faking them, with the risk of being found out. This leads to the conclusion that there are no real photos, and I have been assured by an anti-FSA activist who checked into this in the first few months and found that all photos of government atrocities were fakes.
It's logical that the intentional civilian killings are carried out by the FSA, as they have the motive - it destabilizes Syria. One, they can blame the killings on "Shabiha." Two, they hope to terrorize the populace into supporting them. Three, it weakens the country and may weaken the people's will to resist takeover by the US proxies. Some grief-stricken families may turn against the government for not stopping the FSA from killing their loved ones. This is all tried and true insurrectionary tactics.
Meanwhile the government has every motive and makes every effort not to kill civilians, but it must defeat armed insurrection.
Torture
Another reason given for opposition to Assad is torture.
Torture is a bad thing, no question about it.
It causes psychological damage to victims, and even to its practitioners. And to no purpose - it doesn't even work nearly as well as soft indoctrination.
Torture should be eliminated. However, it is not the reason the US wants to topple Assad.
A few years ago, under the practice of "extraordinary rendition," the US even sent "terrorist suspects" to Syria to be tortured. The US also tortures inmates in Guantanamo. Torture is a worldwide problem.
If activists want to end torture, is making war on Syria the best way to go about it? No. Allowing reforms to take root, allowing a multiparty democracy to develop, is the best hope to end the practice.
War on Syria will lead to more, not less terror. Government officials lack experts in soft indoctrination methods, yet feel the need to find out if detainees are just "peaceful protesters" or armed militants. And the torture of civilians by the FSA is much more brutal than that by the state. The Al Berri clan were beaten and bloodied before being shredded in a machine gun fusillade.
Shelling Residential Areas
This is an issue that has worried me, as seen in earlier blog entries below.
The media like to call this "Assad using the army to attack his own people," as they are fishing for a UN resolution under the R2P "responsibility to protect" theory.
Let's ask opposition activists why the FSA is using residential areas as human shields? The activists will probably say it's OK for revolutionaries.
Do they know this is a war crime, as security expert Charles Shoebridge pointed out the other day, in a tweet to Human Rights Watch reminding them of their own position - "all sides must avoid deploying military targets such as fighters or weapons in or near densely populated areas, and they must try to remove civilians from areas of military operations."
In other words, endangering civilians by mounting a guerrilla warfare operation in cities and towns is a war crime in itself, not to mention the acts of terror against non-combatants by the invading mercenaries.
While sharing my sentiment that we'd like it if a more limited type of response could eradicate the insurgents' occupation of urban areas, Shoebridge also noted, "A person who knows about military matters knows this is what happens in urban war. Rebels condemned by UN for exactly this."
Sometimes the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) shells areas where FSA snipers have occupied the rooftops. Under cover of artillery fire, SAA is able to take back the high ground. It's a question of tactics.
The army has made statements that they are striving to minimize civilian casualties, by advancing slowly on terrorist nests, giving civilians a chance to flee.
The FSA also do have some heavy weapons and mortars, which they are known to lob unprovoked into peaceful civilian areas.
According to carefully-laid plans
We've seen now that the motivation for violence rests squarely with the Evil Empire, not with the Syrian state. As for the Empire's evil plan, an updated version of it was published by Michel Chossudovsky on Aug. 3 in "Towards A 'Soft Invasion'? The Launching of a 'Humanitarian War' against Syria". He writes,
Rather than carrying out an all out Blitzkrieg, the US-NATO-Israel military alliance has chosen to intervene under the diabolical R2P frame of "humanitarian warfare". Modelled on Libya, the following broad stages are envisaged:
1) A US-NATO backed insurgency [involving] by death squads is launched under the disguise of a "protest movement" (mid-March 2011 in Daraa)
2) British, French, Qatari and Turkish Special Forces are on the ground in Syria, advising and training the rebels as well as overseeing special operations. Mercenaries hired by private security companies are also involved in supporting rebels forces
3) The killings of innocent civilians by the Free Syrian Army (FSA) are deliberately carried out as part of a covert intelligence operation. (See SYRIA: Killing Innocent Civilians as part of a US Covert Op. Mobilizing Public Support for a R2P War against Syria, Global Research, May 2012)
4) The Syrian government is then blamed for the resulting atrocities. Media disinformation is geared towards demonizing the Syrian government. Public opinion is led into endorsing a military intervention on humanitarian grounds.
5) Responding to public outrage, US-NATO is then "forced to step in" under a Humanitarian "Responsibility to Protect" (R2P) mandate. Media propaganda goes into high gear. "The International Community" comes to the rescue of the Syrian people."
6) Warships and fighter jets are then deployed to the Eastern Mediterranean. These actions are coordinated with logistical support to the rebels and Special forces on the ground.
7) The final objective is "regime change" leading to the "break-up of the country" along sectarian lines and/or the installation of an "Islamist-dominated or influenced regime" modelled on Qatar and Saudi Arabia.
8) War plans in relation to Syria are integrated with those pertaining to Iran. The road to Tehran goes through Damascus. The broader implications of US-NATO intervention are military escalation and the possible unleashing of a regional war extending from the Eastern Mediterranean to Central Asia, in which China and Russia could be directly or indirectly involved.
Stages 1 through 4 have already been implemented.
Stage 5 has been announced.
Progressives for and Against Assad Want the Same Things After All
If you ask progressive pro- and anti-government activists what is their vision for Syria, it probably comes down to the same shopping list:
- secular, pluralist, parliamentary democracy
- freedom of speech and political association
- security and safety, human rights, women's rights, no police brutality
- continuation of the policy of resistance to Zionism, no peace without the Golan Heights
- national unity, economic independence and development
For some progressives like me, it was clear before the fiasco of Aleppo and Damascus that the best chance for Syria to reach these goals was to give the reform constitution a chance. After Aleppo, it became clear to many more people that the armed militants would deliver just the opposite. They represent the worst of all possible worlds - a descent into the kind of hell the Ugly American Empire has left behind in Somalia or Afghanistan. A shattered landscape of feuding warlords, a human rights catastrophe that makes feudalism look like Utopia, Syria as a pariah and an appendage of Israel, carved up like the map under the French mandate, and ironically under the same flag.
Why do Revolutions Backfire?
Like begets like. Due process leads to democracy. Violence leads to tyranny.
It's not clear though how many "opposition activists" really are inspired by revolutionary or democratic sentiment, and how many are trolls. Neo-con wolves in lefty clothing reflect perfectly the duplicitous essence of Color Revolution Technology.
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Sun Aug 26, 2012 5:11 pm (PDT) . Posted by:
"Rick Rozoff" rwrozoff
http://www.globalti
Global Times
August 27, 2012
Diaoyu slowly drifting into crosshairs
The PLA Nanjing Military Region has been conducting a navy-air force joint exercise in the East China Sea. The drill comes against the backdrop of military exercises between the US and Japan in defending the Diaoyu Islands.
Meanwhile, the Japanese government has stressed that Washington will cover Diaoyu as part of the US-Japan Security Treaty. Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda has repeatedly stated the possibility of deploying Self-Defense Forces in the Diaoyu conflict.
The drill of Nanjing Military Region, whether it is a routine exercise or is considering Diaoyu, has come at the right time.
Japan's increasingly radical approach over the island disputes is pushing the Diaoyu issue toward a military confrontation. The Japanese government is dangerously fanning the flames in East Asia.
Both China and Japan should be cautious in mentioning military clashes. Creating a war scenario should be a taboo for officials. Japan has to be clear that the hatred of Japan's invasion is still buried in the Chinese consciousness. A rising China will by no means allow military humiliation by Japan to happen again.
World War II is long over for the Chinese. But Japan repeatedly reminds us of that history. Tokyo has never honestly faced that war. No sincere remorse can be felt in its attitude toward China. On the contrary, it tries to make up for defeat in the past with new sources of conflict with its neighbor.
If a new war breaks out between China and Japan, it may well take on an aspect of revenge. Let it be said, however, that China has no plan to square up with Japan. Hatred toward Japan has been a topic of restraint in Chinese media and in remarks by officials. On the Diaoyu issue, Japan has repeatedly mentioned the deployment of Self-Defense Forces.
Japan mustn't go too far in provoking China. Japanese officials should think twice before uttering provocative words. In modern history, all the conflicts between China and Japan were caused by Japanese invasion. Japan has no right to attack China bitterly as it does today. The Chinese public has boundless antipathy toward Japan.
While both sides are claiming sovereignty over Diaoyu, Japan is escalating the situation as its Defense Minister Satoshi Morimoto warned against Chinese side moving one millimeter closer to Diaoyu and threatened the use of Self-Defense Forces. It is inviting the participation of the Chinese navy.
The wise strategy for Japan is to keep the conflict under control. Japan will pay a huge price if it continues this insanity.
Global Times
August 27, 2012
Diaoyu slowly drifting into crosshairs
The PLA Nanjing Military Region has been conducting a navy-air force joint exercise in the East China Sea. The drill comes against the backdrop of military exercises between the US and Japan in defending the Diaoyu Islands.
Meanwhile, the Japanese government has stressed that Washington will cover Diaoyu as part of the US-Japan Security Treaty. Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda has repeatedly stated the possibility of deploying Self-Defense Forces in the Diaoyu conflict.
The drill of Nanjing Military Region, whether it is a routine exercise or is considering Diaoyu, has come at the right time.
Japan's increasingly radical approach over the island disputes is pushing the Diaoyu issue toward a military confrontation. The Japanese government is dangerously fanning the flames in East Asia.
Both China and Japan should be cautious in mentioning military clashes. Creating a war scenario should be a taboo for officials. Japan has to be clear that the hatred of Japan's invasion is still buried in the Chinese consciousness. A rising China will by no means allow military humiliation by Japan to happen again.
World War II is long over for the Chinese. But Japan repeatedly reminds us of that history. Tokyo has never honestly faced that war. No sincere remorse can be felt in its attitude toward China. On the contrary, it tries to make up for defeat in the past with new sources of conflict with its neighbor.
If a new war breaks out between China and Japan, it may well take on an aspect of revenge. Let it be said, however, that China has no plan to square up with Japan. Hatred toward Japan has been a topic of restraint in Chinese media and in remarks by officials. On the Diaoyu issue, Japan has repeatedly mentioned the deployment of Self-Defense Forces.
Japan mustn't go too far in provoking China. Japanese officials should think twice before uttering provocative words. In modern history, all the conflicts between China and Japan were caused by Japanese invasion. Japan has no right to attack China bitterly as it does today. The Chinese public has boundless antipathy toward Japan.
While both sides are claiming sovereignty over Diaoyu, Japan is escalating the situation as its Defense Minister Satoshi Morimoto warned against Chinese side moving one millimeter closer to Diaoyu and threatened the use of Self-Defense Forces. It is inviting the participation of the Chinese navy.
The wise strategy for Japan is to keep the conflict under control. Japan will pay a huge price if it continues this insanity.
