NATO (USA/TURKEY/SAUDI) ALLIES WITH SUNI MUJAHIDIN AND AL QAIDA FOR REGIME CHANGE IN SHIITE SYRIA AND IRAN. (Правда о Сирии 2)

While EU is inundated by Suni muslims, NATO, its defence organisation is concocting with suni islamists against secular Baath party ( like in former Irak) in Syria as a step to regime change in Iran. Hardly in Israeli interests, let alone in the interest of Europe. Western Mass Media seem to be a chorus of poisonous frogs all of them submitted to the pre-supposed interest of the self-named ‘Godchoosen’ people.(=comment by AV). Pls read the 2 articles hereunder as well as on this homepage (scroll down):Bloody Bandits and Western (NATO) LIES about SYRIA, Правда о Сирии !

I) The ROVING EYE
Syrian blood etches a new line in the sand
Pepe Escobar

Once upon a time, early in the previous century, a line in the sand was drawn, from Acre to Kirkuk. Two colonial powers – Britain and France – nonchalantly divided the Middle East between themselves; everything north of the line in the sand was France’s; south, it was Britain’s.

Many blowbacks – and concentric tragedies – later, a new line in the sand is being drawn by Saudi Arabia and Qatar. Between Syria and Iraq, they want it all. Talk about the return of the repressed; now, as part of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization-Gulf Cooperation Council compound, they’re in bed with their former colonial masters.

Blow by blow
No matter what militarized Western corporate media spins,

Dilbert

there’s no endgame in Syria – yet. On the contrary; the sectarian game is just beginning.

It’s 1980s Afghanistan all over again. The over 100 heavily armed gangs engaged in civil war in Syria are overflowing with Gulf Cooperation Council funds financing their Russian RPGs bought on the black market. Salafi-jihadis cross into Syria in droves – not only from Iraq but also Kuwait, Algeria, Tunisia and Pakistan, following enraged calls by their imams. Kidnapping, raping and slaughtering pro-Assad regime civilians is becoming the law of the land.

They go after Christians with a vengeance. [1] They force Iraqi exiles in Damascus to leave, especially those settled in Sayyida Zainab, the predominantly Shi’ite neighborhood named after Prophet Muhammad’s grand-daughter, buried in the beautiful local mosque. The BBC, to its credit, at least followed the story. [2]

They perform summary executions; Iraq’s deputy interior minister Adnan al-Assadi told AFP how Iraqi border guards saw the Free Syrian Army (FSA) take control of a border outpost and then “executed 22 Syrian soldiers in front of the eyes of Iraqi soldiers”.

The Bab al-Hawa crossing between Syria and Turkey was overrun by no less than 150 multinational self-described mujahideen [3] – coming from Algeria, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, the United Arab Emirates, Chechnya and even France, many proclaiming their allegiance to Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM).

They burned a lot of Turkish trucks. They shot their own promo video. They paraded their al-Qaeda flag. And they declared the whole border area an Islamic state.

Hand over your terrorist ID
There’s no way to understand the Syrian dynamics without learning that most FSA commanders are not Syrians, but Iraqi Sunnis. The FSA could only capture the Abu Kamal border crossing between Syria and Iraq because the whole area is controlled by Sunni tribes viscerally antagonistic towards the al-Maliki government in Baghdad. The free flow of mujahideen, hardcore jihadis and weapons between Iraq and Syria is now more than established.

The idea of the Arab League – behaving as NATO-GCC’s fully robed spokesman – offering exile to Bashar al-Assad may be as ridiculous as the notion of the CIA supervising which mujahideen and jihadi outfits may have access to the weapons financed by Qatar and the Saudis.

At first, it might have been just a bad joke. After all, the exile offer came from those exact same paragons of democracy, the House of Saud and Qatar, who control the Arab League and are financing the mujahideen and the anti-Syria jihad.

Baghdad, though, publicly condemned the exile offer. And the aftermath – in fact on the same day – was worthy of The Joker (yes, Batman’s foe); a wave of anti-Shi’ite bombings in Iraq, with over 100 people dead, duly claimed by the Islamic State of Iraq, al-Qaeda’s local franchise. Spokesman Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi energetically urged the Sunni tribes in Anbar and Nineveh to join the jihad and topple the “infidel” government in Baghdad.

The mujahideen/jihadi back and forth between Syria and Iraq has been more than confirmed by Izzat al-Shahbandar, a senior member of Iraq’s Parliament and close aide to Prime Minister al-Maliki. Baghdad even has updated lists. The crossover could only spawn more frenetic Orwellian newspeak, nailed by the website Moon of Alabama. [4]

Mujahideen and jihadis active in Iraq are now “Iraqi insurgents”. And mujahideen and jihadis active in Syria remain the usual “Syrian rebels”. They have been all decommissioned as “terrorists”. Under this logic, the Colorado Batman shooter may also be described as an “insurgent”.

Follow the money
As it stands, the romanticized Syrian “rebels” plus the insurgents formerly known as terrorists cannot win against the Syria military – not even with the Saudis and Qataris showering them with loads of cash and weapons.

Nor is there any evidence the regime is contemplating a retreat to the Alawite mountains in northern Syria, as evoked by this collective foreign policy blog discussion. After all the “rebels” do not control any territory.

What’s certain is who would profit from Syria being progressively balkanized. The House of Saud and Qatar would love nothing better than to have the civil war exported to Iraq and Lebanon; in their very narrow calculations, that would eventually yield fellow Sunni regimes.

So expect Saudi and Qatari funds buying every well-connected Syrian regime apparatchik in sight – even while the urban Sunni bourgeosie still has not abandoned the ship.

And as the civil war spreads out, a tsunami of weapons will keep inundating Jordan, Lebanon, Iraq and of course Turkey, boosting assorted guerrilla outfits, Kurdish included – yet one more facet of now ostracized neo-Ottoman Turkey impotently watching nation states carved out of that 1920s colonial line in the sand being smashed.

Strategically, this will always be a war by proxy; essentially Saudi Arabia vs Iran – with the House of Saud behind hardcore Islamists of all colors compared to Qatar supporting “its” Muslim Brotherhood. But most of all this is the US-NATO-GCC vs Iran.

Israel’s motives go way beyond the Saudi/Qatari sectarian lust. Israel’s Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu has just excavated a Bushism – calling Iran-Syria-Hezbollah an “axis of evil”. What Tel Aviv wants in the long run is clear; for Washington, Obama administration or not, to bring down the axis.

Meanwhile, this long-term goal does not prevent Defense Minister Ehud Barak from getting crazy – speculating on an invasion of Syria based on a hypothetical transfer of Syrian anti-aircraft missiles or even chemical weapons to Hezbollah.

Washington for its part would love at least a pliable/puppet Sunni regime in Damascus to turbo-charge the encircling of Iran – without increasing Israel’s substantial fears. Meanwhile, what passes for “smart power” is no more than glorified wishful thinking. Here in detail is how pro-Israel functionaries in the US are designing post-Assad Syria. [5]

Meet the new Bane
For all its production values, NATO’s jihad – in conjunction with al-Qaeda affiliates and copycats – still has not delivered regime change. UN Security Council sanctions won’t be forthcoming, as Beijing and Moscow have already stressed three times. So Plan Bs keep surfacing all the time. The latest is straight from the Iraq playbook; Damascus will attack civilians with chemical weapons. This lasted only for a few news cycles.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has already made it clear; regime change is anathema, especially for a reason that eludes most in the West – jihadis at the gates of Damascus means they are a stone’s throw from the Caucasus, the possible new pearl in a lethal collar bound to destabilize Muslim Russia.

Blowback meanwhile is ready to strike like the Medusa. What is for all practical purposes NATO-GCC mujahideen/jihadi death squads will be more than happy to bleed Syria across sectarian lines – in the sand and especially in urban areas. It’s hunting season now, not only for Alawites but also Christians (10% of the population).

A foreign policy that privileges Sunni jihadis formerly known as terrorists to create a “democratic” state in the Middle East seems to have been conjured by Bane – the Hannibal Lecter meets Darth Vader bad guy in The Dark Knight Rises, the final chapter of the Batman trilogy. And yes, we are his creators. While the best lack all conviction, and the worst are full of passionate intensity, a masked Sunni jihadi superman is slouching towards Damascus to be born.

Notes:
1. http://vaticaninsider.lastampa.it/en/homepage /world-news/detail/articolo/siria-syria-15868/
2. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-18930876
3, http://english.alarabiya.net/articles/2012/07/22/227739.html
4. http://www.moonofalabama.org/2012/07/nyt-terrorists-are -now-insurgents.html#comments
5. http://thecable.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2012/07/20/ inside_the_secret_effort_to_plan_for_a_post_assad_syria

Pepe Escobar is the author of Globalistan: How the Globalized World is Dissolving into Liquid War (Nimble Books, 2007) and Red Zone Blues: a snapshot of Baghdad during the surge. His most recent book is Obama does Globalistan (Nimble Books, 2009). He may be reached at [email protected]

(Copyright 2012 Asia Times Online (Holdings) Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact us about sales, syndication and republishing.)

II)

Exclusive: Secret Turkish nerve center leads aid to Syria rebels

By Regan Doherty and Amena Bakr

DOHA/DUBAI | Fri Jul 27, 2012 8:12am EDT

(Reuters) – Turkey has set up a secret base with allies Saudi Arabia
and Qatar to direct vital military and communications aid to Syria’s
rebels from a city near the border, Gulf sources have told Reuters.

News of the clandestine Middle East-run “nerve centre” working to
topple Syrian President Bashar al-Assad underlines the extent to which
Western powers – who played a key role in unseating Muammar Gaddafi in
Libya – have avoided military involvement so far in Syria.

“It’s the Turks who are militarily controlling it. Turkey is the main
co-ordinator/facilitator. Think of a triangle, with Turkey at the top
and Saudi Arabia and Qatar at the bottom,” said a Doha-based source.

“The Americans are very hands-off on this. U.S. intel(ligence) are
working through middlemen. Middlemen are controlling access to weapons
and routes.”

The centre in Adana, a city in southern Turkey about 100 km (60 miles)
from the Syrian border, was set up after Saudi Deputy Foreign Minister
Prince Abdulaziz bin Abdullah al-Saud visited Turkey and requested it,
a source in the Gulf said. The Turks liked the idea of having the base
in Adana so that they could supervise its operations, he added.

A Saudi foreign ministry official was not immediately available to
comment on the operation.

Adana is home to Incirlik, a large Turkish/U.S. air force base which
Washington has used in the past for reconnaissance and military
logistics operations. It was not clear from the sources whether the
anti-Syrian “nerve centre” was located inside Incirlik base or in the
city of Adana.

Qatar, the tiny gas-rich Gulf state which played a leading part in
supplying weapons to Libyan rebels, has a key role in directing
operations at the Adana base, the sources said. Qatari military
intelligence and state security officials are involved.

“Three governments are supplying weapons: Turkey, Qatar and Saudi
Arabia,” said a Doha-based source.

Ankara has officially denied supplying weapons.

“All weaponry is Russian. The obvious reason is that these guys (the
Syrian rebels) are trained to use Russian weapons, also because the
Americans don’t want their hands on it. All weapons are from the black
market. The other way they get weapons is to steal them from the Syrian
army. They raid weapons stores.”

The source added: “The Turks have been desperate to improve their weak
surveillance, and have been begging Washington for drones and
surveillance.” The pleas appear to have failed. “So they have hired
some private guys come do the job.”

President Barack Obama has so far preferred to use diplomatic means to
try to oust Assad, although Secretary of State Hillary Clinton signaled
this week that Washington plans to step up help to the rebels.

Reuters has established that Obama’s aides have drafted a resolution
which would authorize greater covert assistance to the rebels but still
stop short of arming them.

The White House’s wariness is shared by other Western powers. It
reflects concerns about what might follow Assad in Syria and about the
substantial presence of anti-Western Islamists and jihadi fighters
among the rebels.

The presence of the secret Middle East-run “nerve centre” may explain
how the Syrian rebels, a rag-tag assortment of ill-armed and poorly
organized groups, have pulled off major strikes such as the devastating
bomb attack on July 18 which killed at least four key Assad aides
including the defense minister.

A Turkish diplomat in the region insisted however that his country
played no part in the Damascus bombing.

“That’s out of the question,” he said. “The Syrian minister of
information blamed Turkey and other countries for the killing. Turkey
doesn’t do such things. We are not a terrorist country. Turkey condemns
such attacks.”

However, two former senior U.S. security officials said that Turkey has
been playing an increasing role in sheltering and training Syrian
rebels who have crossed into its territory.

One of the former officials, who is also an adviser to a government in
the region, told Reuters that 20 former Syrian generals are now based
in Turkey, from where they are helping shape the rebel forces. Israel
believes up to 20,000 Syrian troops may now have defected to the
opposition.

Former officials said there is reason to believe the Turks stepped up
their support for anti-Assad forces after Syria shot down a Turkish
plane which had made several passes over border areas.

Sources in Qatar said the Gulf state is providing training and supplies
to the Syrian rebels.

“The Qataris mobilized their special forces team two weeks ago. Their
remit is to train and help logistically, not to fight,” said a
Doha-based source with ties to the FSA.

Qatar’s military intelligence directorate, Foreign Ministry and State
Security Bureau are involved, said the source.

WESTERN CAUTION

The United States, Israel, France and Britain – traditionally key
players in the Middle East – have avoided getting involved so far,
largely because they see little chance of a “good outcome” in Syria.

“Israel is not really in the business of trying to ‘shape’ the outcome
of the revolt,”, a diplomat in the region said. “The consensus is that
you’re damned if you do and you’re damned if you don’t. The risk of
identifying with any side is too great”.

A former U.S. official who advises a government in the region and other
current and former U.S. and European security officials say that there
has been little to zero direct assistance or training from the U.S. or
its European allies.

The former official also said that few sophisticated weapons such as
shoulder-fired bazookas for destroying tanks or surface-to-air missiles
have reached the anti-Assad forces.

While some Gulf officials and conservative American politicians have
privately suggested that a supply of surface-to-air missiles would help
anti-Assad forces bring the conflict to a close, officials familiar
with U.S. policy say they are anxious to keep such weapons out of the
hands of Syrian rebels. They fear such weapons could make their way to
pro-jihad militants who could use them against Western aircraft.

AFTER ASSAD

The CIA and the Israelis’ main concern so far has been that elements of
al-Qaeda may attempt to infiltrate the rebels and acquire some of
Syria’s stockpile of chemical weapons.

Sima Shine, a former chief Mossad analyst who now serves as an adviser
to the Israeli government, told Reuters: “It’s a nightmare for the
international community, and chiefly the Americans – weapons of
mass-destruction falling into the hands of terrorists. In parallel to
its foreign contacts, Israel is taking this especially seriously. After
all, we are here, and the Americans are over there.”

She envisaged two circumstances under which Hezbollah, the Lebanese
Islamist group, could obtain some of the chemical weapons stockpile.

“Assad goes and anarchy ensues, during which Hezbollah gets its hands
on the weapons. There is a significant Hezbollah presence in Syria and
they are well-ensconced in the military and other national agencies. So
they are close enough to make a grab for it.

“Another possibility is that Assad, knowing that he is on his way out,
will authorized a handover to Hezbollah, as a message to the world
about the price of encouraging his ouster.”

However, British and U.S. officials believe there is little or no sign
of Assad being toppled imminently.

The situation, one senior European official said, is still likely to
veer back and forth, like a tug-of-war between pro- and anti-Assad
forces.

There is no indication, the official added, that Assad himself has any
intention of doing anything but fighting on until the bitter end.

(additional reporting by Mark Hosenball in London and Dan Williams in
Jerusalem; writing by Richard Woods; editing by Michael Stott and Ralph
Boulton)

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/07/27/us-syria-crisis-centre-idUSBRE86Q0JM20120727