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Bill the Butcher ~ Syria: The Heart Of The Matter ~ Warning Graphic Content
A man wearing combat fatigue trousers and a dark jacket stands in what looks like an excavation, bending over a corpse in a military uniform. The corpse’s face and upper body are artificially blurred, but one can make out that its shirt is undone and that there’s a large gaping wound in its chest. The man in combat fatigues bends over the corpse, hacking away with a knife, and stands up with a bloody piece of flesh in each hand. The one in the right hand, clearly seen, is evidently part of the liver; in the other hand, going by what the subtitles say, is the heart. Staring into the camera, the man says “We swear to god we will eat your hearts, you soldiers of Bashar the dog…Heroes of Baba Amr, we will take out their hearts and eat them.” To the cheers (“Allahu Akbar”) of the watching people, at least one of whom is briefly visible on the right of the screen, he then bites into the heart. The video then ends abruptly.
(The video can also be watched here.) That was a video a lot of people are suddenly talking about – a so-called “atrocity video” from Syria. I saw this video two days ago, and only now do I feel composed enough to write coherently about it. My immediate reaction was of, I’m sorry to say, acute bloodlust – I wanted to go to Syria, take up arms, and help hunt down and exterminate these vermin one by one. Over the succeeding hours, I calmed myself enough to think of it more rationally, though in no way did it mitigate my anger. And it’s only much later that the video suddenly struck the news websites – so for once I was ahead of the curve. Before I go any further, those of you who are long-time readers of mine may be a bit surprised at how much attention I pay to the situation in Syria. After all, I didn’t spend a fraction of this time on Libya, or even Afghanistan – and I’ve barely even mentioned Mali. This video, actually, will serve as an illustration why I think Syria is so important. Syria, in essence, is not a civil war – it’s an international proxy war, where what I call the NATO/Arab monarchy/Al Qaeda*/Zionist Alliance (NAQZA for short) is attempting to destroy and overthrow the last secular and at least nominally socialist Arab regime. The dry run for it was in Libya in 2011, and the success there had emboldened NAQZA to try it in Syria as well. The fact that Libya disintegrated into a quite predictable warlord-run mess wasn’t of course important, because it served the purpose of NAQZA, which was always divide-and-rule; the same divide and rule strategy imperialists have used since the dawn of civilisation. As I’ve said earlier, the actual target isn’t Syria – it’s Russia and China, because to overthrow Syria would remove the only country in West Asia or North Africa capable and willing to side with Iran, and Iran is the next domino to be targeted in the run up to surrounding and isolating Russia and China. [*For the purposes of this article I shall call the organisation Al Qaeda, though I subscribe to the viewpoint that it is basically a tool of the Empire and is correctly called Al CIAda. As I pointed out in the past, Al Qaeda and the American Empire are close allies on virtually any topic you care to name.] It’s certainly not the fault of NAQZA that the Syrian state hasn’t collapsed. The expectation was that it would do so, in short order, as Libya did – but, of course, that didn’t happen. One of the important reasons it didn’t happen was that NAQZA overplayed its hand in Libya, turning a UN-approved “humanitarian intervention” into a full-throated regime change operation. Neither Russia nor China was stupid enough to let that happen again in Syria. However, NAQZA couldn’t, of course, back down – they had too much to lose. So they began a two-pronged approach – on the one hand, the various Syrian “rebels” ( a loose-knit coalition of competing gangs of criminals, defected soldiers, fundamentalist jihadists, and disaffected youth) were given a common name, the so-called Free Syrian Army, which I prefer to call the Fake Syrian Army. Meanwhile, the Al Qaeda part of the double attack on Syria was centred around a gang of jihadists called the Jabhat al-Nusra. In recent days, this has openly declared its allegiance to Al Qaeda and can be for all intents and purposes considered Al Qaeda in Syria. I shall therefore refer to it as Al Qaeda. From the beginning, there was no particular reason to imagine that the Fake Syrian Army was anything more than a front meant to whitewash support for the “rebellion”, which was always primarily carried out by Al Qaeda. It was the same thing as was done in Libya, where Al Qaeda did the actual fighting on the ground, NATO acted as its air force, and the so-called Libyan rebel outfits were nothing more than window dressing. Parts of the Fake Syrian Army – mostly those comprising defectors – did some fighting, but as was recognised long ago, the only worthwhile fighting force was Al Qaeda. In recent days, the Fake Syrian Army has taken two hits. The first comprises defeats on the ground, so important that even the Western propaganda mission (again, something I’ve discussed in detail before) has quit talking about the imminent fall of the Syrian government and begun discussing the terrifying possibility that Assad might actually win – unless, of course, the West immediately intervenes, if not by invading, then by providing arms. Just how those arms are meant to only go to the Fake Syrian Army (which does not, of course, actually exist as a unified body with a command structure) and not go to Al Qaeda isn’t part of the discussion – nor can it have any meaning, because the second hit they have taken is the wholesale desertion of entire units to Al Qaeda. This, too, is something the Western propaganda media has been forced to acknowledge. But it hasn’t changed the policy of their governments – because, of course, their interest in overthrowing Syria is as keen as it ever was. So, they (primarily the British slave-vassal government of Donald Cameron) have proposed the ridiculous move of arming the Fake Syrian Army, as a means of weakening Al Qaeda, while doubling “non-lethal aid”. How exactly this is supposed to work I’m sure I couldn’t tell you, nor could anybody else. Now, let me take a moment to explain my view of the Syrian situation. I am no particular supporter of the Syrian president, who is not just a dynast but a neoliberal, both things I cordially detest. However, I am a supporter of the Syrian people and the Syrian state, which is to say I support secular, liberal societies against fundamentalist jihadist vermin, Zionist Nazi tools, and their Western neo-colonial backers. Therefore, I fully back the Syrian armed forces (which, incidentally, are fighting for Syria, not Assad, as this report makes clear) in their campaign against the so-called “rebels”. All right so far? As I’ve said, the Fake Syrian Army is made up of disparate gangs, which have no existence as a unified body. But, because the West needs a fig-leaf for its imperialist crusade, these no-hopers are collectively treated as the Good Guys, as compared to the Bad Guys of Al Qaeda and the Absolutely Evil Guys of the Syrian Army. That narrative never really stood up to any examination, what with the Fake Syrian Army recruiting child soldiers, murdering prisoners and mutilating corpses – and making gleeful videos of all this. But it finally ran into a brick wall with this video. There are a few things one has to remember: First, the video is genuine. The terrorist which mutilates the soldier’s corpse and cannibalises it has been identified. It has a name – Khalid al-Hamad, alias Abu Sakkar – and has appeared in previous videos in which it has shelled civilian villages in Lebanon. It is also the commander of one of the Fake Syrian Army’s gangs, something called the Farouq Brigade. Let that sink in for a moment. This creature isn’t a member of the Bad Guys. It isn’t an Al Qaeda group member; it isn’t even a Fake Syrian Army defector to Al Qaeda. It is, in fact, one of the Good Guys – to whom Cameron and the other Western controllers of this democratic revolution want to send arms. Oh, can you just imagine how democratic these people will be if they ever take power? So, what exactly did the Fake Syrian Army’s so-called leadership (which can’t even stop its alleged troops from deserting in droves to Al Qaeda) have to say about it? While reluctantly admitting that Abu Sakkar is indeed the man in the video, it said that this “…was an isolated incident. [His] actions do not represent the FSA. His actions only represent himself…This is not just a normal person who sits home. He has had two brothers killed. His mum and dad were detained and the rest of his family displaced.” So, in effect, it isn’t Abu Sakkar’s fault that it cannibalised the soldier’s heart. It’s the fault of the “regime” that it was put in a position where it had no choice but to do that. Nor, of course, do the other Fake Syrian Army terrorists murder and torture prisoners or blockade Christian villages and so on; they don’t grill decapitated prisoners’ heads either – it was an isolated instance only. Interesting theory, isn’t it? Even more interesting is the fact that this video isn’t actually new. It was filmed back in March, and was obtained by the imperial propaganda organ known as Time Magazine. Time Magazine, by its own admission, was told by Abu Sakkar’s confederates – including its brother – that the video was genuine. Yet, by its own admission, Time sat on this video, claiming “Two TIME reporters first saw the video in April in the presence of several of Abu Sakkar’s fighters and supporters, including his brother. They all said the video was authentic. We later obtained a copy. Since then TIME has been trying to ensure that the footage is not digitally manipulated in any way — a faked film like this would be powerful propaganda for the regime… and, as yet, TIME has not been able to confirm its integrity.” [Source] Even though the terrorist’s own brother and gang members confirmed the video as genuine, and even though other videos of this terrorist exist, Time sat on it until the video was posted only by a “proregime” group on 12th May and went viral. If it hadn’t, one assumes, Time would never have let it out – though Western propaganda sources routinely pass off terrorist claims as proven facts, issuing only a disclaimer that “so and so cannot be independently verified”. Apparently, in this case, Time couldn’t verify it because “Abu Sakkar has not commented on whether the man in the video is indeed him …” I wonder if only a confession would be evidence enough for Time in other cases? Does Time consider, say, a drug-gang murderer or paedophile innocent unless he or she confesses? I don’t think so, do you? And if it had been a government soldier doing this, can you just imagine the outraged howls in the corridors of power at NAQZA and its media acolytes, calling this a proof of Assad’s barbarity and demanding an immediate invasion of Syria? Of course you can. Strangely enough, after the story broke, on 14th May, Time had no problems interviewing Abu Sakkar. This interview was interesting because not only did the creature admit its cannibalism, it made it clear that it was an act of war, not a “one-off incident” as the Fake Syrian Army leadership would have us believe. “In an interview conducted via Skype in the early hours of May 14 al Hamad explained to TIME what caused him to cut out the soldier’s organs: “We opened his cell phone and I found a clip of a woman and her two daughters fully naked and he was humiliating them, and sticking a stick here and there.” [Source] Of course, we have to take it on trust that such a video existed, or that it depicted what this cannibal and terrorist gangster would have us believe it did, and even then we’d have to ask whether that justifies cannibalism. But that isn’t the end of it, as the creature made clear in the same interview: “I have another video clip that I will send to them. In the clip I am sawing another Shabiha [pro-government militiaman] with a saw. The saw we use to cut trees. I sawed him in small pieces and large ones.” Since we now have confirmation straight from the horse’s mouth that this wasn’t a one-off incident, we can be sure that more of this kind of thing will go on the longer this war continues. This kind of war crime, of course, is in an altogether different category from the bombardment of towns in the course of urban fighting, or even drone warfare. The former may be a military necessity; the latter is sheer callousness and laziness. But this kind of war crime is in the league of the psychopath, not the fighter. Let me ask you something – if this had happened in some Western city, would anybody have spent so much time looking for “root causes” and not calling the cannibal an out-and-out psycho? Of course not. There’s another thing to be understood – that no such war crime is a one-person effort. Even if one for the moment believes the Fake Syrian Army claim that Abu Sakkar’s “actions, it wasn’t exactly alone. It was surrounded by people from its gang who were watching and photographing it. They not only didn’t try to stop it, one can clearly hear them cheering. Any war criminal, in fact, is part of a chain of enablers, in this case the people who armed it and put it into the position of power it has now, the people who provided moral support by cheering it on, and the terrorist who videotaped the act. Each of those people bears a share of responsibility for this crime. If the intention of the video was to frighten the Syrian Army and the government, or their Hezbollah allies, the opposite effect would seem to have been achieved; because what this will cause, of course, is anger and renewed determination to exterminate the terrorist gangs. Also, there will – and has – been widespread revulsion, including revulsion among people who imagined that the “rebellion” was anything but a Western-sponsored destabilisation effort. The Fake Syrian Army’s gangs are also hated by the people in the zones they occupy, because of their indiscipline, crimes and infighting, so that they even prefer Al Qaeda. All this is bad, bad news for the Fake Syrian Army. Therefore, I predict that there will be a major effort at damage control by the Fake Syrian Army “leaders” and their foreign controllers. The first target of this will be Abu Sakkar itself. Despite claims that it would be brought to trial, such a thing will of course never happen. It might spill too many beans in the course of that trial and implicate too many enablers. So, Abu Sakkar is a marked man, er, thing. If I were it, I wouldn’t trust my own shadow anymore. In a war where atrocities have become a tool, a bullet in the back is just another drop in the flood. And ultimately that’s the reason why I concentrate on Syria; it’s because the choice is between (imperfect) civilisation and utter and complete savagery. As of the moment, savagery seems to be winning. But it may not be yet too late to turn the tide. Note: I hesitated a long time before sharing this video and writing this article. I do not, actually, enjoy atrocity stories. But I decided that publicity, in this case, was essential. If these terrorist vermin were to take over Syria, people should not be able to react with surprise to the bloodbath to come. You were warned. You knew what was coming. I wish I could say, Peace.
Warning: This post contains disturbing images and video footage.
Bill the Butcher
This therefore did not happen
Diario sulla Siria ~ Images of the war in Syria
A documentary made by the team of Russia 24 channel correspondents in Syria.
To activate the subtitles click on the icon CC at the bottom right of the screen, top video italiano, second video english.
Gerald Celente – Trends In The News – “A State Of Siege!” – (4/22/13) *HD Version*
pack of idiots USA
Beslan:”Moderate Chechen Terrorists” Backed by London and Washington ~ 2004
It is not wise to assess the current international situation without taking the strategic reality into account. During the September 3, 2004 hostage taking in Beslan, Russia, resulting in 186 children killed, the major media outlets distanced themselves from the horror by throwing their support behind Aslan Maskhadov’s “moderate Chechens”, who were then backed by London and Washington. One year later, however, Shamil Basayev – the architect of this intentionally bloody operation – has just been proclaimed deputy prime minister of the government in exile. Once more, time has shown that immediate emotions serve more complex interests: the Caspian Sea resources. Voltaire Network| Paris (France) | 7 September 2005 Now it is one year later, and still what do we know about that tragedy, the political objectives of its leaders and its consequences? To answer these questions, it is necessary to reconstruct the scene first. Chechnya is a member state of the Russian Federation, which suffered two successive wars in only a decade and is still immersed in chaos. [3]. For those with an ethnic vision of Russia, white and orthodox, all boils down to a classic colonial war. On the other hand, for those with a Euro-Asian definition of the Federation, the current problem results from the state collapse during the 1991-1999 period where President Yeltsin hesitated between a war against his own people and a de facto independence. That power vacuum was used by both the armed groups and Islamist preachers for their profit at the same time, according to a scheme comparable to that known by Afghanistan during that same period. Both points of view can be equally sustained, but it is important to have a good understanding of the ideologies behind them. The ethnic vision is defended by the extreme right-wing in Russia and Chechnya itself, and by the supporters of the “Clash of Civilizations” in the West. The Euro-Asian vision is the one promoted by President Putin, who does not skip an occasion to celebrate the Muslim contribution to the construction of Russia [4]. Historical analysis sides with the followers of the Euro-Asian vision, as Prof. Francisco Veiga of the University of Barcelona has pointed out [5]. However, Prof. Veiga does not give up the ethnic approach, which may constitute a political approach. Whatever it is, the Chechen issue is also and probably above all, an international strategic issue: there is an oil pipeline network going through that state, which is crucial for Russian exploitation of the Caspian Sea oil. Consequently, Russia’s rivals and opponents, particularly the United States, are interested in the conflict to go on and even spread all over the Caucasus [6]. The U.S. efforts in that region are visible. The United States has established its servants in Georgia, whose army they control as well as their airspace from the Incirlik base in Turkey [7]. In response, the Russians secretly supported South Ossetia’s separatists in Georgia [8]. The political process underway has allowed the Russian Federation to organize elections in Chechnya on August 29, 2004. World observers, even those in the Arab League, have unanimously witnessed the fairness of the ballot, while, loyal to itself, the western press has kept denouncing a farce organized by dictator Putin’s apprentice. The call of the independence movement to boycott the ballot has not succeeded as expected; the participation average reached 79%. General Alkanov – a candidate in favor of the Federation – won the election easily. A bad looser, the western press saw evidence of manipulation in the result. Two days later, French President Jacques Chirac and German Chancellor Gerhard Schroder, who have a different view on this matter, traveled to Sochi to congratulate President Putin for having reestablished the democratic institutions in Chechnya. However, the chaos supporters spared no efforts to frustrate the political process: on August 24, a Tupolev 154 of the Moscow-Sochi Airlines and a Tupolev 134 of the Moscow-Volgograd Airlines exploded in the air, claiming 90 lives. After having investigated the possibility of an accident, Russian authorities admitted that both airliners must have been the targets of attacks. The Al-Islambuli (Kata’ib al-Islambuli) Brigades [9] claimed responsibility for the action. On August 31, the same organization detonated a bomb in Moscow, across from the Moscow Subway Rizhskaya station, resulting in 10 people dead and 50 wounded. But the most terrible event was yet to come. On September 1st, 32 armed men and women broke into the Beslan school (North Ossetia, Russia Federation) during the celebrations of “The Knowledge Event”. They took 1300 hostages among students, student’s parents and school staff and concentrated them in the facility gym, where they put a great number of explosives. The security forces surrounded the school while Dr. Leonid Roshal (who had already acted as a go-between during the hostages crises at the Moscow Theater) came to negotiate. However, the kidnappers made no demand; they just refused to feed and give water to the hostages, killing 20 of them every time a member of their group was wounded by the security forces. Meanwhile, the Kremlin, which did not think the problem was related to the Chechen cause but that it was organized by a foreign power, brought the matter up to the UN Security Council. The latter refused to debate a resolution project and just limited itself to condemn the holding of hostages and the attacks against the airplanes through a communiqué in which it urged the international community to cooperate with the Russian authorities, so that the culprits would be arrested and tried [10]. The next day, Ingushetia’s former president Ruslan Aushev tried, in turn, to serve as an intermediary and obtained the freedom of some hostages. Children were still without water or food and had to drink their own urine in order to survive. Kidnappers showed themselves particularly insensitive and sarcastic. The chief of the squad declared that he acted by order of military chief Shamil Basáyev, without formulating any demand whatsoever. His game consisted of leaving the situation to deteriorate while the mass media kept arriving in the small city. Unexpectedly, the chief of the squad demanded the presence of several personalities and stated that he would not let the children drink water until President Putin announced Chechnya’s independence on television. On the third day, the kidnappers authorized the medical service to evacuate the bodies of 21 hostages that had begun to rot due to hot and humid weather. An explosion was then heard and nobody knew whether it was some pupil’s father who had fired from outside the school or, what was more likely, the accidental blow-up of a bomb. The explosion triggered a general shooting amidst which the police launched the assault. The shoot-out and bombs resulted in 376 people killed, 11 Russian soldiers and 32 kidnappers among them. Only one kidnapper survived, who would be judged. The autopsies revealed that 22 of his comrades-in-arms were drug addicts and died under stress due to lack of drugs. Their ID’s are still uncertain. Shamil Basayev claimed responsibility for the action, which was condemned by the Chechen government spokesman in exile, Ahmed Zakaiev. For the attack in Beslan, Shamil Basayev could not rely on his militant forces. He had to resort to drug addicts, paid with drugs and commanded by various battle-hardened combatants. Basayev does not enjoy any legitimacy at all in Chechnya and has no supporters. He is a military chief with a mercenary career in different conflicts before unsuccessfully trying to be part of Chechnya’s policy-making and eventually return to armed action. The operation had been devised to end up in slaughter. The squad had placed bombs in the gym, sticking them onto the roofs with surgical tape – such a precarious system that one may wonder how it could last three days. Seemingly, the military commanders of the group had decided to flee, leaving the rest of their comrades to sacrifice, but they were caught after the facts sped up. The squad did not make any demand before the second day came to an end, that is, before the arrival of foreign reporters. The demand they formulated was unrealistic and purely formal. The purpose was, therefore, to create a situation of crisis instead of negotiating anything. . The hostages holding took place three days after the presidential election in Chechnya and hours after the end of the Russian-German-French summit in Sochi, which had welcomed the political normalization in Chechnya. Such an action had aimed at stopping the political process and international recognition of Vladimir Putin’s action to establish democracy. While the first anniversary of the Beslan massacre got closer, Shamil Basayev, subjected to an international order of arrest, gave an interview to a U.S. television channel. After that, he was named deputy prime minister of the Chechen government in exile in Washington and London, though that same government had officially condemned the Beslan operation. Zbigniew Brzezinski is known as the U.S. official that personally recruited Osama Bin Laden, and also for having entrusted him with the organization of a series of attacks in Afghanistan aimed at prompting the soviet intervention. In various works and lectures, Brzezinski has not ceased to advocate the dismantling not only of the USSR but of the Russian Federation as well, and to bring his support to all separatist movements so that they become anti-Russian. The Beslan operation was not perpetrated by militants but by mercenaries. Its objective, therefore, was not the defense of a cause, either the independence of Chechnya or the establishment of a caliphate. It was part of the “great game” where big powers vie for control of the Caucasus and the resources of the Caspian Sea. Its organizer, Shamil Basayev, is deputy prime minister of a government in exile with contacts in Washington and London. He has all the necessary logistics aid provided by the U.S. government through institutions known to have links with the CIA.
“Hired Guns” ~Beslan: the mystery clarified by Thierry Meyssan
One year ago now, on September 1st, 2004, a group of armed men broke into a school in Beslan (North Ossetia) taking children, parents and professors as hostages. At the end of three days of crisis, a series of explosions and a police raid, 376 people were killed, including 172 children. A Chechen military chief, Shamil Basayev, claimed responsibility for the action. Strange as it may seem, far from expressing any compassion for the Russians, the western press brutally blamed President Putin, holding him accountable for the slaughter for having maintained an appalling colonial war in Chechnya and simultaneously planned a blind raid. Some writers went further ahead, accusing Vladimir Putin of having deliberately caused such gory situation to justify new authoritarian measures. [1]. On its side, the Kremlin responded saying that the hostage taking had no relation with the Chechen conflict, which was undergoing normalization, but evidently with the fact that Russia was a target of international terrorism. This version was soon amended when Russian experts hinted that the operation would actually have been prepared by the British service in order to weaken Russia [2].The Chechen tragedy
The august 2004 elections
The Beslan massacre
A few remarks
Masks down
That Chechen government in exile is supported by the American Committee for Peace in Chechnya, led by former National Security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, located at the site of the Freedom House [11], led, in turn, by former CIA director James Woolsey.
Shamil Basáyev said he had recently been in contact with Osama Bin Laden, whom the United States is currently trying to capture in vain.What can be inferred from all this
On April 14th 1986, Ronald Reagan ordered a series of bombings directed against Libya under “Operation El Dorado Canyon”
A war on Libya has been on the drawing board of the Pentagon for more than 20 years. Using nukes against Libya was first envisaged in 1996.
On April 14th 1986, Ronald Reagan ordered a series of bombings directed against Libya under “Operation El Dorado Canyon”, in reprisal for an alleged Libya sponsored terrorist bombing of a Berlin discotheque. The pretext was fabricated. During these air raids, which were condemned by both France and Italy, Qadhafi’s residence was bombed killing his younger daughter … more here
Apr 14, 1986: On April 14, 1986, the United States launches air strikes against Libya in retaliation for the Libyan sponsorship of terrorism against American troops and citizens. The raid, which began shortly before 7 p.m. EST (2 a.m., April 15 in Libya), involved more than 100 U.S. Air Force and Navy aircraft, and was over within an hour. Five military targets and “terrorism centers” were hit, including the headquarters of Libyan leader Muammar al-Qaddafi. During the 1970s and ’80s, Qaddafi’s government financed a wide variety of Muslim and anti-U.S. and anti-British terrorist groups worldwide, from Palestinian guerrillas and Philippine Muslim rebels to the Irish Republican Army and the Black Panthers. In response, the U.S. imposed sanctions against Libya, and relations between the two nations steadily deteriorated. In 1981, Libya fired at a U.S. aircraft that passed into the Gulf of Sidra, which Qaddafi had claimed in 1973 as Libyan territorial waters. That year, the U.S. uncovered evidence of Libyan-sponsored terrorist plots against the United States, including planned assassination attempts against U.S. officials and the bombing of a U.S. embassy-sponsored dance in Khartoum, Sudan. In December 1985, five American citizens were killed in simultaneous terrorist attacks at the Rome and Vienna airports. Libya was blamed, and U.S. President Ronald Reagan ordered expanded sanctions and froze Libyan assets in the United States. On March 24, 1986, U.S. and Libyan forces clashed in the Gulf of Sidra, and four Libyan attack boats were sunk. Then, on April 5, terrorists bombed a West Berlin dance hall known to be frequented by U.S. servicemen. One U.S. serviceman and a Turkish woman were killed, and more than 200 people were wounded, including 50 other U.S. servicemen. U.S. intelligence reportedly intercepted radio messages sent from Libya to its diplomats in East Berlin ordering the April 5 attack on the LaBelle discotheque. On April 14, the United States struck back with dramatic air strikes against Tripoli and Banghazi. The attacks were mounted by 14 A-6E navy attack jets based in the Mediterranean and 18 FB-111 bombers from bases in England. Numerous other support aircraft were also involved. France refused to allow the F-111s to fly over French territory, which added 2,600 total nautical miles to the journey from England and back. Three military barracks were hit, along with the military facilities at Tripoli’s main airport and the Benina air base southeast of Benghazi. All targets except one were reportedly chosen because of their direct connection to terrorist activity. The Benina military airfield was hit to preempt Libyan interceptors from taking off and attacking the incoming U.S. bombers. Even before the operation had ended, President Reagan went on national television to discuss the air strikes. “When our citizens are abused or attacked anywhere in the world,” he said, “we will respond in self-defense. Today we have done what we had to do. If necessary, we shall do it again.” Operation El Dorado Canyon, as it was code-named, was called a success by U.S. officials. Qaddafi’s 15-month-old adopted daughter was killed in the attack on his residence, and two of his young sons were injured. Although he has never admitted it publicly, there is speculation that Qaddafi was also wounded in the bombing. Fire from Libyan surface-to-air missiles and conventional anti-aircraft artillery was heavy during the attack, and one F-111, along with its two-member crew, were lost in unknown circumstances. Several residential buildings were inadvertently bombed during the raid, and 15 Libyan civilians were reported killed. The French embassy in Tripoli was also accidentally hit, but no one was injured. On April 15, Libyan patrol boats fired missiles at a U.S. Navy communications station on the Italian island of Lamedusa, but the missiles fell short. There was no other major terrorist attack linked to Libya until the 1988 bombing of Pan Am 747 over Lockerbie, Scotland. All 259 passengers and crew of that flight were killed, and 11 people on the ground perished. In the early 1990s, investigators identified Libyan intelligence agents Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi and Lamen Khalifa Fhimah as suspects in the bombing, but Libya refused to turn them over to be tried in the United States. But in 1999–in an effort to ease United Nations sanctions against Libya–Colonel Moammar Gadhafi agreed to turn the suspects over to Scotland for trial in the Netherlands using Scottish law and prosecutors. In early 2001, al-Megrahi was convicted and sentenced to life in prison, although he continues to profess his innocence and work to overturn his conviction. Fhimah was acquitted. In accordance with United Nations and American demands, Libya accepted responsibility for the bombing, though it did not express remorse. The U.N. and U.S. lifted sanctions against Libya; the country then paid each victim’s family approximately $8 million in compensation. In 2004, Libya’s prime minister said that the deal was the “price for peace,” implying that his country only accepted responsibility to get the sanctions lifted, angering the survivors’ families. He also admitted that Libya had not really accepted guilt for the bombing. Pan Am Airlines, which went bankrupt as a result of the bombing, is still seeking $4.5 billion in compensation from Libya in civil court. Qaddafi surprised many around the world when he became one of the first Muslim heads of state to denounce al-Qaida after the attacks of September 11, 2001. In 2003, he gained favor with the administration of George W. Bush when he announced the existence of a program to build weapons of mass destruction in Libya and that he would allow an international agency to inspect and dismantle them. Though some in the U.S. government pointed to this as a direct and positive consequence of the ongoing war in Iraq, others pointed out that Qaddafi had essentially been making the same offer since 1999, but had been ignored. In 2004, U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair visited Libya, one of the first western heads of state to do so in recent memory; he praised Libya during the visit as a strong ally in the international war on terror. In February 2011, as unrest spread through much of the Arab world, massive political protests against the Qaddafi regime sparked a civil war between revolutionaries and loyalists. In March, an international coalition began conducting airstrikes against Qaddafi strongholds under the auspices of a U.N. Security Council resolution. On October 20, Libya’s interim government announced that Qaddafi had died after being captured near his hometown of Sirte. ************** The great masses of the people in the very bottom of their hearts tend to be corrupted rather than consciously and purposely evil … therefore, in view of the primitive simplicity of their minds, they more easily fall a victim to a big lie than to a little one, since they themselves lie in little things, but would be ashamed of lies that were too big. “Our evidence is direct, it is precise, it is irrefutable,” announced the President of the United States. He was explaining that the American bombing attack upon Libya of 14 April 1986 was in retaliation for the Libyan bombing nine days earlier of a West Berlin nightclub frequented by American servicemen which had killed two soldiers and one civilian and injured many others.[ii] In actuality, the evidence of Libyan culpability in the bombing was never directly or precisely presented to the world, but little notice was taken of that. For over a decade the American public had been told that Libyan leader Muammar el-Qaddafi was behind one terrorist act after another in every part of the world. A few days before the American attack, President Reagan had referred to him as the “mad dog of the Middle East”. This was just one more example. It all fit. The bombs dropped on Libya took the lives of a reported 40 to 100 people, all civilians but one, and wounded another hundred or so. The French Embassy, located in a residential district, was destroyed. The dead included Qaddafi’s young adopted daughter and a teenage girl visiting from London; all of Qaddafi’s other seven children as well as his wife were hospitalized, suffering from shock and various injuries.[iii] It was not claimed by the United States that any of the people killed or wounded had any connection to the Berlin bombing. Like the mideast terrorists who threw hand grenades at an El Al ticket counter to kill Israelis simply because they were Israelis, and those who planted a bomb on PanAm flight 103 in order to kill Americans simply because they were Americans, the bombing of Libya was an attempt to kill Libyans simply because they were Libyans. After the air attack, White House spokesman Larry Speakes announced that “It is our hope this action will preempt and discourage Libyan attacks against innocent civilians in the future.”[iv] The Libyan the United States most wanted to kill of course was Qaddafi. The bombing had been an assassination attempt. Said a “well-informed Air Force intelligence officer” cited by the New York Times, “There’s no question they were looking for Qaddafi. It was briefed that way. They were going to kill him.”[v] Which is what you have to do with a mad dog. Subsequently, two of Qaddafi’s children filed suit in the United States to stop President Reagan from launching more “assassination attempts” on their family. The suit, which was rejected in court, alleged that Reagan and other top officials, in ordering the raids, had violated an executive order that bars attempted assassinations of foreign government leaders.[vi] Another suit filed in Washington was in behalf of 65 people killed or injured by the bombing.[vii] Meanwhile, the US Navy was awarding 158 medals to the pilots who dropped 500-pound and 2,000-pound bombs in the dark of night upon sleeping people.[viii] The notion of targeting Qaddafi’s family originated with the CIA, which claimed that in Bedouin culture Qaddafi would be diminished as a leader if he could not protect his home: “If you really get at Qaddafi’s house — and by extension his family — you’ve destroyed an important connection for the people in terms of loyalty.”[ix] To make sure the Libyan people got the message, the Voice of America repeatedly told them, following the bombing, things like “Colonel Qaddafi is your tragic burden” and that as long you obey his orders you must “accept the consequences”.[x] The president’s claim of irrefutable evidence was based on alleged interceptions of communications between the Libyan capital of Tripoli and the Libyan Embassy in East Berlin. Reagan declared that on 25 March, Libya had sent orders to the embassy “to conduct a terrorist attack against Americans, to cause maximum and indiscriminate casualties”; then the embassy alerted Tripoli on 4 April that the attack would be carried out the next day, that “Tripoli will be happy when you see the headlines tomorrow”, and that after the bombing the embassy reported that the action had been successful and could not be traced to it.[xi] These are, at best, interpretations and paraphrases. The complete, unedited, unexpurgated, literal texts of the relevant communications were not made public. They were intercepted by the National Security Agency and decoded with the help of the German BND (Federal Intelligence Service) which had broken the Libyan code years before. After the decoding was completed, reported Der Spiegel, Germany’s leading newsmagazine, it was still not clear what the wires actually said, there being different versions. Moreover, the NSA and BND came to different conclusions about the meaning of the messages, “but these disagreements were quickly pushed aside for political reasons”. German security officials, who insisted that Libya should not be the only focus of investigation and who cautioned against a “premature accusation”, also looked into rival groups of disco competitors and drug dealers. In January 1987, a senior official in Bonn told investigative reporter Seymour Hersh that the German government continued to be “very critical and skeptical” of the American position linking Libya to the bombing; and at the end of the following year, Germany announced that the investigation was being ended.[xii] “Some White House officials had immediate doubts that the case against Libya was clear-cut,” Hersh reported. “What is more, the discotheque was known as a hangout for black soldiers, and the Libyans had never been known to target blacks or other minorities.”[xiii] As in many other instances that we have seen, however, official Washington’s official position, repeated often enough, became official truth. Three years after the incident, Time magazine could state matter-of-factly that “Libyan-backed terrorists bombed a disco in West Berlin”, thereby provoking the American “retaliatory” bombing.[xiv] Much of Washington’s secret planning for the Libyan operation took place at the same time as the secret talks and arms dealing with Iran. Thus, the Reagan administration was pursuing the elimination of one Middle East source of terrorism while it was arming another. Moreover, the two missions involved some of the same national security people, notably John Poindexter and Oliver North. Although the Carter administration did not carry out any overt military attacks upon Libya, it was possibly involved in a very serious covert action. On 27 June 1980, an Italian passenger plane was destroyed by a missile over the Mediterranean, taking 81 lives. At the same time, a Libyan plane which may have been carrying Qaddafi was flying in the vicinity. Italian air controllers listed it as a “VIP 56″ flight, denoting that top officials were aboard. In 1988, Italian state television reported that the plane had been mistakenly shot down by a missile belonging to a NATO country, possibly Italy. A year later, an Italian defense ministry report revealed that it was probably a Sidewinder air-to-air missile that was used, a weapon employed by NATO. The Italian press began speculating that a plan to assassinate the Libyan leader had gone awry, and instead the Italian plane had been shot down by a NATO power. (At the time of the disaster, Qaddafi had hinted that the United States was responsible.) The US and France — Libya’s chief foes — issued denials, as well as NATO itself, but the Italian military was taking great pains to conceal information about the case. Nevertheless, an air force officer admitted to destroying the radar tape for that evening, and a civilian investigation suggested that many air force personnel were persuaded to lie or “forget” about the incident.[xv] Ronald Reagan and his ultra-ideological comrades took office in January 1981 committed to a massive transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich. One of the pivotal ways in which they so artfully reached this end was through huge increases in the military budget; i.e., welfare for the rich, for defense industry friends and business associates, past, present, and future. But in order for the military-industrial-intelligence complex to sell this to the American public and Congress, there had to be a fresh supply of wars, armed conflict, insurgencies, counter-insurgencies … or rumors and “threats” of same … and enemies, ideally of the monster type, to be defended against. Qaddafi was a designer-monster: a quirky, unpredictable, super-uppity Third World leader, sitting on the world’s ninth largest oil reserve; a man with deep-seated pan-Islamic, pan-Arabic, anti-imperialist, and anti-Zionist convictions; an artless braggart mouthing revolutionary rhetoric so juvenile he could serve equally well as bogeyman or buffoon; a man carrying out or supporting enough real terrorist acts so that any exaggeration would be believed. There were elements of a bitter personal feud between the two men. Ronald Reagan — a man who played with air strikes as if he were directing movie scenes — had chosen to take on a man who, like himself, was a prisoner of ideology and had left his mark on the world media with a trail of dogmatic observations and actions, as well as plain stupid remarks. (All of the great prophets of modern times, Qaddafi said, have come from the desert and were uneducated: “Mohammed, Jesus and myself.”)[xvi] The Libyan leader, however, did have a social conscience, not a quality known to be part of Ronald Reagan’s DNA. (“You don’t see poverty or hunger here. Basic needs are met to a greater degree than in any other Arab country,” reported Newsweek in 1981 about Libya.)[xvii] Qaddafi’s principal crime in Reagan’s eyes was not that he supported terrorist groups, but that he supported the wrong terrorist groups; i.e., Qaddafi was not supporting the same terrorists that Washington was, such as the Nicaraguan Contras, UNITA in Angola, Cuban exiles in Miami, the governments of El Salvador and Guatemala, and the US military in Grenada. The one band of terrorists the two men supported in common was the Moujahedeen in Afghanistan. Some of the belligerent American operations against Qaddafi, actual and threatened, and charges of Libyan terrorism, actual and fabricated, were timed to stir up American jingoist juices when Congress was debating the military budget or aid to Reagan’s favorite terrorists, whom he called freedom fighters. The 14 April 1986 bombing of Libya, for example, came one day before the House opened a new round of debate on aid to the Contras. Then, speaking on the 15th, Reagan said: “I would remind the House voting this week that this archterrorist [Qaddafi] has sent $400 million [sic] and an arsenal of weapons and advisers into Nicaragua.”[xviii] Very shortly after taking office, Reagan announced the appointment of a special group to study “the Libyan problem”. The State Department appeared to have two schools of thought: diplomatic pressure on Qaddafi or a more confrontational view. “Nobody,” one official pointed out, “advocates being nice to him.”[xix] Soon a master plan had been drawn up by the CIA, which Newsweek exposed in August, 1981: “a large-scale, multiphase and costly scheme to overthrow the Libyan regime” and obtain what the CIA called Qaddafi’s “ultimate” removal from power. The plan called for a “disinformation” program designed to embarrass Qaddafi and his government; the creation of a “counter government” to challenge his claim to national leadership; and an escalating paramilitary campaign of small-scale guerrilla operations.[xx] The escalation was immediate. On 19 August, American planes crossed Qaddafi’s “line of death”, the 120-mile limit claimed by Libya in the Gulf of Sidra, and shot down two Libyan jets. The United States, which considered it international waters, as did most of the rest of the world — although this concept is more debatable when applied to aircraft than when applied to ships[xxi] _- purposely chose the area to conduct military exercises. As expected, Libya rose to the bait, at least according to Washington, which claimed that the Libyan planes had fired first. An enraged Qaddafi accused the US of “international terrorism” and, in a phone call to the leader of Ethiopia, reportedly threatened to assassinate Reagan.[xxii] An official who served in a national security position under Reagan responded that there was no question that the “only thing to do with Qaddafi was kill him. He belonged dead.”[xxiii] Soon the US media were reporting a barrage of Qaddafi death threats against the life of Reagan or other senior officials. In October, a story appeared that the American ambassador to Italy was hastily flown out of the country after Italian authorities discovered a Libyan plot to assassinate him, “that was aborted when Italian police deported ten suspected Libyan hit men”. But some American officials in Washington and Rome disputed the story, while another government source confirmed it.[xxiv] A month later, there was a report of an attempt upon the life of an American diplomat in Paris — seven shots were fired at Christian Chapman, but he escaped unharmed. That same day Secretary of State Alexander Haig — who referred to Qaddafi as “the patron saint of terror” — suggested that Libya was behind the attempt, although he admitted that he had “no other information” directly implicating Libya. But Chapman had recently received some threats, said the French government, some of which had been traced to Tripoli.[xxv] A New York Times analysis of the incident, however, concluded that “something less than an organized assassination attempt might have been involved.”[xxvi] In late November, the administration announced that a number of terrorists trained in Libya had entered the United States with plans to assassinate President Reagan or other officials. This prompted a huge nationwide search for “the Libyan hit squad” and for Americans to whom they might turn for assistance, including the Weather Underground. Then the infamous international terrorist “Carlos” was brought into the picture, and the administration said that it had received first-hand descriptions from informers of the training and plans of the terrorists. Each day new and ominous details arose in the media, which had already forgotten the exposure in August of the initiation of a government disinformation campaign against Libya.[xxvii] “We have the evidence,” Reagan told newsmen, “and he [Qaddafi] knows it.” Reporters pressed the White House to make the evidence public, but were refused. Some officials, however, including some senior FBI officials, were said to be skeptical about the reports.[xxviii] Syndicated columnist Jack Anderson then described what a shadowy, unreliable group the suppliers of the hit-squad information were, adding that several of them were known to have connections with Israeli intelligence, “which would have its own reasons to encourage a U.S.-Libyan rift,” there being a deep and mutual animosity between Israel and Qaddafi.[xxix] In mid-1981 a task force under William Clark, Deputy Secretary of State, had been set up to look into the whole Qaddafi issue. Years later, Seymour Hersh was to report: According to key sources, there was little doubt inside Clark’s task force about who was responsible for the spate of anti-Qaddafi leaks — the CIA, with the support of the President, Haig and Clark. “This item [the Libyan hit squad] stuck in my craw,” one involved official recalls. “We came out with this big terrorist threat to the U.S. Government. The whole thing was a complete fabrication.” … One task force official eventually concluded that [CIA Director William] Casey was in effect running an operation inside the American Government: “He was feeding the disinformation into the (intelligence) system so it would be seen as separate, independent reports” and taken seriously by other Government agencies.[xxx] As matters turned out, most of the presumed assassins were Lebanese who had helped Reagan negotiate the release of US hostages in Beirut and who hated Qaddafi.[xxxi] When the story’s purpose had been served, it faded away. However much some of Qaddafi’s reported threats were disinformation, there were real plans by the West to kill him. A February 1981 French plot, with US cooperation under discussion, had to be canceled when French President Giscard was unexpectedly defeated at the polls.[xxxii] In 1984 it went further, with the CIA sharing highly sensitive intelligence, including satellite photographs and communications intercepts, with the French secret service to aid them in at least two major, but unsuccessful, operations to assassinate or overthrow Qaddafi, who was perceived by the French as a threat to what they thought of as their interests in Africa. One of the operations resulted in a pitched battle in Libya between exiles and Qaddafi loyalists.[xxxiii] And in 1985, the State Department had to go to great lengths to head off a White House-sponsored plan for a joint US-Egyptian land and air invasion of Libya. Secretary of State George Shultz called the plan “crazy”, while his department colleagues referred to the free-wheeling staff of the National Security Council as “those madmen in the White House”.[xxxiv] At Christmas of that year, after bomb attacks at the Rome and Vienna airports killed about 20 people, including five Americans, all the usual suspects were quickly accused, with Iran and the Palestinian splinter group of the nefarious Abu Nidal heading the list.[xxxv] The Reagan administration soon added Qaddafi, announcing that the CIA had found a strong Libyan connection, when all they had was that the Tunisian passports of three of the terrorists had purportedly been traced to Libya. Within days, Reagan declared that there was “irrefutable” evidence of Qaddafi’s role in the airport bombings, although he knew that this was not true. At the same time, new economic sanctions against Libya were announced, “to get economic sanctions out of the way so the next time [we] could do more”.[xxxvi] The next time was in March 1986. US Navy jets again crossed Qaddafi’s “line of death”, daring retaliation. When there wasn’t any, they returned the next day and the day after, twice attacking a Libyan anti-aircraft site and destroying three or four ships. Washington asserted that on the second day, Libya had first fired several missiles at the American planes. Shortly afterward, one of a group of British electronics engineers working in Libya at the time was interviewed by the Sunday Times of London. The engineer said that he had been watching the radar screens during the two days of fighting and saw American warplanes cross not only into the 12 miles of Libyan territorial waters, but over Libyan land as well. “I watched the planes fly approximately eight miles into Libyan air space,” said the engineer. “I don’t think the Libyans had any choice but to hit back. In my opinion they were reluctant to do so.”[xxxvii] Following the first American attack in March on Libya, Qaddafi spoke on the phone with King Fahd of Saudi Arabia, who subsequently told US officials that the Libyan leader appeared deeply affected by the violence unleashed against him. The king described Qaddafi as “incomprehensible and disoriented”, a description similar to other reports which appeared during the 1980s which spoke of a very depressed Qaddafi who didn’t seem to understand what the United States had against him. Before and after the events of March, he made half a dozen attempts through third parties to open a dialogue with Washington, but Reagan administration officials rebuffed them all. The would-be European and Arab mediators, including King Fahd, were firmly told that the United States was not interested either in “a direct or indirect dialogue” with Qaddafi.[xxxviii] That at least was the official policy, the face turned to the public. There were, however, reports that the White House was secretly dealing with the Libyan leader; to what extent is not known. The only certain contact was a November 1985 visit with Qaddafi in Libya by the US ambassador to the Vatican, William Wilson. The meeting was disavowed by official Washington as being unauthorized and Wilson lost his post after it was disclosed.[xxxix] Meanwhile, and throughout the term of the Reagan administration, the United States was increasing military assistance to Libya’s immediate neighbors and conducting military exercises with Egypt designed to provoke Qaddafi; instituting diverse forms of economic sanctions against Libya with varying degrees of ineffectiveness; trying to unify Libyan exile opposition groups and giving them financial support and encouragement; the same to the governments of Egypt and France for various anti-Qaddafi actions, not excluding assassination. It should be noted that France — the United States’ chief “anti-terrorism” partner — in 1985 deliberately sank the Greenpeace ship Rainbow Warrior, killing a Greenpeace photographer. This, with the express approval of French President Francois Mitterand.[xl] Disinformation was a regular part of the process: using the foreign and American press to publicize fictitious new Libyan terrorist plans, and to announce — with each new terrorist act that occurred in the Western world — that Libya “may” be responsible; to make Qaddafi believe that key trusted aides were disloyal, that the Libyan military was plotting against him, that his Russian military advisers were plotting against him, that his troops were deserting en masse, or that a new US military attack was on the horizon; a process they hoped would push the man into “irrational” acts. His imminent downfall was predicted as regularly as that of Castro.[xli] One operation involved Navy Seal commandos landing on Libyan beaches and leaving tell-tale signs of the incursions — such as matchboxes and Israeli cigarette butts — to make the Libyans nervous, ever more paranoid.[xlii] An August 1986 memo from John Poindexter, the president’s national security adviser, which spelled out some of the disinformation program, mentions itself that at the time Qaddafi was “quiescent” on the terrorist front.[xliii] Shortly afterward, a key Reagan administration official admitted to American reporters that if pressed for “hard evidence” of the charges against Libya they wouldn’t have any. “It will look like we’re crying wolf once again.”[xliv] In response to the Poindexter memo — the exposure of which had caused a mini-scandal — the senior spokesman for the State Department, Bernard Kalb, resigned in protest, because he was “worried about faith in America … American credibility” and “anything which hurts America”.[xlv] The issue spilled over to the British, whose officials described US intelligence analyses about Libya’s intentions as “wildly inaccurate”, which they said were passed to the British in “a deliberate effort to deceive”.[xlvi] In this same period, in light of new US news reports (engendered by the Poindexter memo), of possible further strikes against Libya in retaliation for terrorist actions allegedly being planned by Qaddafi’s regime, Libya’s effective prime minister called upon the United States to furnish details on the alleged actions so that Libya could “cooperate fully to avert and abort such attacks and apprehend the individuals and put them on trial.” He said that his request, sent to Washington through diplomatic channels, had gone unanswered.[xlvii] The next day, Qaddafi, in a speech in Libya, challenged the United States to produce bank statements showing that Libya financed terrorism.[xlviii] ”Half the lies they tell about the Irish aren’t true,” a son of Erin once observed. The regular employment of disinformation about Qaddafi and Libya by the United States so clouded the historical picture that it is extremely difficult in most cases to separate fact from fiction, to distinguish Libyan moral or token backing or simply promises to a revolutionary movement from major, vital support. The fact that the Reagan administration felt the need to undertake disinformation campaigns against Libya indicates a paucity of smoking guns. On 1 September 1969, Captain Muammar el-Qaddafi had led a group of fellow officers in a bloodless overthrow of the monarchy and established the Libyan Arab Republic. Despite his “troublemaking” abroad, he initially kept in the good graces of the West — the US thwarting three serious plots against his rule during his first two years[xlix] — because of his fierce anti-communism, which stemmed basically from his taking Marxism’s implicit atheism at face value and viewing it as irreconcilably at odds with his Islamic faith. But this did not keep him from trying to institute revolutionary social and economic changes in Libyan society which others called Marxist. This, plus entering into oil development and arms agreements with the Soviet Union, may have spelled the beginning of the end for the West’s tolerance of his foreign adventures.[l] During the 1970s and ’80s, Qaddafi was accused of using his large oil revenues to support — with funds, arms, training, offices, havens, diplomacy and/or general subversion — a wide array of radical/insurgent/terrorist organizations, particularly certain Palestinian factions and Muslim dissident and minority movements in various parts of the Middle East, Africa, and Asia; as well as the IRA and Basque and Corsican separatists in Europe; several groups engaged in struggle against the apartheid regime in South Africa; Noriega in Panama, opposition groups and politicians in Costa Rica, St. Lucia, Jamaica, Dominica, and France’s Caribbean colonies of Guadeloupe, French Guiana, and Martinique; the Japanese Red Army, the Italian Red Brigades, Germany’s Baader-Meinhof gang … the list is without end. It was claimed as well that Libya was behind, or at least somehow linked to, the attempt on Pope John Paul’s life, the assassination of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, mining the Suez Canal, attempting to blow up the US Embassy in Cairo, various plane hijackings, a bomb explosion on an American airliner over Greece, blowing up a synagogue in Istanbul, and seeking to destabilize the governments of Chad, Liberia, the Sudan, and other African countries … and … Qaddafi took drugs, was an extreme womanizer, was bisexual, dressed in women’s clothing, wore makeup, carried a teddy bear, had epileptic fits …[li] More established is the fact that for several years Qaddafi made use of former CIA staffers, notably Edwin Wilson and Frank Terpil, to supply him with aircraft and pilots, mechanics and Green Beret instructors, all manner of sophisticated weaponry, equipment and explosives, and to help set up paramilitary training camps in Libya.[lii] And Amnesty International, in 1987, concluded that Libya had carried out attacks on at least 37 anti-Qaddafi dissidents abroad since 1980, with 25 being killed.[liii] In January 1989, the State Department added to Qaddafi’s credits by asserting that Libya was funding and training “radical individuals and groups whose activities exacerbate local problems” in Thailand, the Philippines, Indonesia, Japan and New Caledonia. A few months earlier, the CIA had accused Libya of building the largest poison gas plant in the world.[liv] In March 1990, a fire broke out at the plant in question and burned it to the ground. President Bush immediately and personally assured the world that the United States “absolutely” had nothing to do with the fire. A week earlier, the White House spokesman had been asked if the US might take military action to destroy the plant. “We don’t rule out anything,” was the reply.[lv] And in Chicago, members of a street gang … That, in its entirety, is how the Los Angeles Times reported it, and it sounded like the bizarre Libyan strongman was at it again. In actuality, “assassination”, planned or concrete, was not one of the charges, and no evidence at all was presented at the trial that Libya had anything to do with originating or encouraging these acts, or had paid or promised any money. The El Rukn gang members, a Moslem sect, and naive in the extreme, had met with Libyan representatives in New York, Panama and Libya, and pathetically tried to impress them with their prowess and loyalty to Qaddafi. They had been inspired by Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan purportedly receiving a Libyan promise of $5 million. If El Rukn received a promise of $2.5 million — and we have only their word for it — it would appear that both promises were no more than Qaddafi’s revolutionary self-indulgence. (The IRA also claimed that they had not received any money from Libya, contrary to Qaddafi’s claim.[ii]) It is perhaps a measure of the hostility toward Libya that had been inculcated in the American people for more than a decade, that the gang members — through government use of a questionable informer and through entrapment — were found guilty by a jury of federal conspiracy charges and sentenced to extraordinarily long sentences. It was reportedly the first time ever that US citizens had been convicted on terrorism charges.[iii] It is like a grade B horror movie. A dozen times it rises from the dead and lurches towards the audience; a dozen times it is cut to ribbons, staggering back, collapsing in a heap; and a dozen times it rises again and clomps slowly forward. But it is not the mummy’s ghost, and it is not haunting the upper Nile. It is the notion that the Libyan leader, Col. Muammar Qaddafi, is responsible for every act of terrorism in the entire world, and it haunts the pages of the western press and the screens of western television sets.[iv] On 21 December 1988, PanAm flight 103 exploded over Lockerbie, Scotland, killing 270 people, more than half of them Americans. Five months later, the State Department announced that the CIA was “confident” that the villains who planted the bomb were members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command (PFLP-GC), led by Ahmed Jibril, based in Syria, and hired by Iran to avenge the American shooting down of an Iranian airliner.[v] Though little could be done to apprehend Jibril and his cohorts, this remained the US government’s official, certain, and oft-repeated judgment, even though Syria and Iran were viewed as the keys to the release of Western hostages held in Lebanon. Then, in 1990, something strange happened. The United States was preparing to go to war against Iraq, when who should pop up as one of its allies, sending troops to Saudi Arabia in the jihad against Saddam Hussein? None other than the terrorist-haven land of Syria. And whose cooperation in the war was Washington angling for? The wicked Iran. This would not do. In early October, American officials declared that newly uncovered evidence indicated that Libyan intelligence agents may have assembled and planted the bomb. But this, they were quick to point out, did not clear Iran, Syria or the PFLP-GC of complicity.[vi] After the war, little by little, a putative case against Libya was leaked, until 14 November 1991 when two Libyan intelligence operatives were indicted in absentia as the perpetrators. The head of the Justice Department’s criminal division asserted the same day that there was no evidence to link either Syria or Iran to the bombing “and he brushed aside suggestions that the conclusion had been influenced by the United States’ desire for improved relations with Syria”.[vii] Within the next 20 days, the remaining four American hostages held in Lebanon were released along with the most prominent hostage, Britisher Terry Waite. And the evidence against the two Libyans? Two pieces of metal the size of fingernails, allegedly from electronic timing devices. One has to read the detailed account of what the case against Libya rests upon to appreciate its full shakiness.[viii] Moreover, in December 1993, a BBC program, “Silence Over Lockerbie”, presented new findings which cast significant doubt about the case against Libya and indicated that Britain and the United States may have fingered Libya to divert suspicion from Syria and Iran. The key new information was that the Swiss manufacturer of the electronic timers changed his previous story which had named Libya as the only purchaser of such devices. He now remembered that he had sold some of the timers to East Germany as well. There were close links between the East German secret police and the PFLP_GC and other Arab terrorist groups. Even more significant, an engineer with the Swiss company declared that he had told the Lockerbie investigators about the East German connection in late 1990, which means that the international investigators knew that their accusation against Libya had a large, if not fatal, hole in it either before the accusation was made public in October, or shortly thereafter.[ix] “No German judge could, with the present evidence, put the two suspects into jail,” declared Volker Rath, German government prosecutor and specialist in Lockerbie, in 1994.[x] Postscript: In 2003, the Libyan government accepted “responsibility” for the 1988 bombing — without admitting to an actual role in the event — in the hope of ending US and UN sanctions. Libya agreed to this because in 2001 a Libyan had been found guilty in a trial in the Hague of having planted the bomb. This trial, however, was widely regarded as a farce.[xi] It may be that the oft-depressed Muammar el-Qaddafi finally began to understand — finding his way past the verbiage and the disinformation — what the United States and other governments had against him. In the latter half of 1988 he seemed to grow up, instituting a host of progressive changes into Libyan society — freeing up civil liberties, releasing hundreds of political prisoners, removing restrictions on travel abroad, loosening up the economy (“All Libyans are called upon to become bourgeois.”); at the same time, making peace or improving relations with a number of African neighbors.[xii] But as the year 1989 opened and Washington prepared to shift from Ronald Reagan to George Bush, the United States marked the occasion by conducting some more “military exercises” in Libya’s back yard and shooting down two more Libyan planes. The State Department then saw fit at this particular time to issue its most detailed account to date of Libyan involvement in international terrorism — “an attempt to maintain international pressure” on Libya, wrote the Los Angeles Times.[xiii] Nonetheless, Qaddafi continued to display his new persona. He announced that he had decided to cut off or trim the flow of funds to various foreign groups and he told several Palestinian groups that they would no longer receive direct funding from his government and would have to close their offices in Libya. He also admitted that Libya had bankrolled terrorist groups, but said that it no longer did so — “when we discovered that these groups were causing more harm than benefit to the Arab cause, we halted our aid to them completely and withdrew our support” — adding that he did not wish for any confrontation with Washington.[xiv] The United States was not impressed with any of this. It may have felt that it had nothing to gain by relaxing its crusade against Qaddafi, but it did have an enemy to lose. References @ end Andrew I. Killgore While corroborating the widely held view that the 2000 trial of the Pan Am Flight 103 bombing was a travesty, the author ties up several loose ends as he looks back on the sequence of events that laid the ground for the Lockerbie air disaster. Revealed in a book by former Mossad agent Victor Ostrovsky, the reported facts center around the 1986 false-flag operation staged by the Mossad that got the U.S. to bomb Libya, dragging it even deeper into the Middle East quagmire on the side of Israel. References: Libya – 1981-1989: Reagan meets his match ~ W. Blum”Killing Hope” 1. Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf (Houghton Mifflin Co., Boston, 1971; original version 1925) Vol. 1, chapter 10, p. 231. 8. The Guardian (London), 24 February 1987. 27. Ibid., 4 December 1981, p. 1. 34. Washington Post, 20 February 1987, p. 1. 49. Patrick Seale & Maureen McConville, The Hilton Assignment (London, 1973), pp. 176-7 and passim; New York Times, 3 October 1971, p. 26
U.S. bombs Libya ~ This Day in History
Libya – 1981-1989: Reagan meets his match ~ W. Blum”Killing Hope”
Adolf Hitler
were convicted in late 1987 of planning terrorist activities. U.S. prosecutors charged that the gang expected to receive $2.5 million from Libya for assassination attempts on American politicians and for attacks on U.S. aircraft and government facilities.[i]
PanAm flight 103
The new Qaddafi?
******See Also ~
Taking Another Look at the Destruction of Pan Am 103
2. New York Times, 15 April 1986.
3. Seymour Hersh, “Target Qaddafi”, The New York Times Magazine, 22 February 1987, p. 22.
4. New York Times, 15 April 1986, p. 11
5. Hersh, p. 20. A corroborating comment is given by an air force pilot. See also: The Guardian (London), 19 April 1986.
6. San Francisco Chronicle, 6 October 1987.
7. Ibid., 16 April 1987, p. 15.
9. Hersh, p. 20.
10. The Guardian (London), 9 May 1986, p. 11; see also New York Times, 15 April 1986, p. 11.
11. New York Times, 15 April 1986, transcript of Reagan’s address, and Larry Speakes cited in article, p. 11; Bob Woodward, VEIL: The Secret Wars of the CIA 1981-1987 (New York, 1987), pp. 444-5
12. Der Spiegel (Hamburg, West Germany), 21 April 1986, p. 20; Los Angeles Times, 11-13 January 1988; New York Times, 22 December 1988, p. 14; Hersh, p. 74. In December 1992, German officials charged a Palestinian with the bombing. It is not clear what the outcome of that arrest was.
13. Hersh, p. 74.
14. Time magazine, 16 January 1989, p. 20.
15. The Times (London), 2 October 1989, p. 10; 28 September 1989, p. 9; LA Weekly (Los Angeles), 27 October-2 November 1989, p. 10, column by Alexander Cockburn; Los Angeles Times, 2 November 1988; Washington Post, 2 & 26 September, 1999
16. Los Angeles Times, 24 November 1988, p. 16.
17. Newsweek, 20 July 1981, p. 42, citing a Western ambassador in Tripoli
18. New York Times, 16 April 1986, pp. 1, 20.
19. Washington Post, 21 March 1981, p. A3.
20. Newsweek 3 August 1981, p. 19.
21. See Boston Globe, 25 March 1986, p. 7 for a discussion of this question.
22. Washington Post, 13 October 1981, p. D17, Jack Anderson.
23. Hersh, p. 24.
24. Newsweek, 19 October 1981, p. 43; New York Times, 25 October 1981; 26 October, 1981, p. 4.
25. Time magazine, 23 November 1981.
26. New York Times, 13 November 1981, p. 3.
28. Ibid., 8 December 1981, p. 7.
29. Jack Anderson, San Francisco Chronicle, 7 January 1982.
30. Hersh, pp. 24, 26.
31. Duncan Campbell and Patrick Forbes, “Tale of Anti-Reagan Hit Team Was `Fraud’,” New Statesman magazine (London), 16 August 1985, p. 6; Jack Anderson, San Francisco Chronicle, 13 January 1989, p. E5.
32. Time magazine, 23 November 1981, p. 40.
33. Hersh, p. 48.
35. The Guardian (London), 30 and 31 December 1985.
36. San Francisco Chronicle, 13 July 1987, Jack Anderson column; Hersh, pp. 48, 71.
37. Sunday Times (London), 6 April 1986, p. 12.
38. The Guardian (London), 3 April 1986.
39. New York Times, 19 December 1986, p. 1, and 20 December, p. 6, for a summary of the incident. The Reagan administration acknowledged Wilson’s action in March, and he resigned under pressure in May. It would have been earlier if not for the fact that he was a close friend of Reagan.
40. The Guardian (London), 30 August 1986, citing the French news magazine L’Express.
41. See, e.g., Wall Street Journal, 25 August 1986, p. 1, for a story about Qaddafi’s plans for new anti-US terrorist attacks and US plans to attack Libya, and Washington Post, 2 October 1986 which reported that the information in the Journal article (picked up by much of the US media) had been part of a disinformation program. See also the Post, 27 August 1986, p. 1 and 5 October 1986, p. 1.
42. The Guardian (London), 18 September 1987, citing The Montgomery Journal (presumably the paper in Montgomery, Alabama of that name).
43. Washington Post, 2 October 1986, p. 1.
44. New York Times, 27 August 1986, p. 7
45. The Guardian (London), 9 October 1986.
46. Ibid., 13 October 1986, citing a story in the Sunday Telegraph (London) of 12 October.
47. Washington Post, 31 August 1986, p. A25.
48. Wall Street Journal, 2 September 1986, p. 31.
50. See Jonathan Bearman, Qadhafi’s Libya (Zed Books, London, 1986) for a detailed discussion of Qaddafi’s ideological development and his program of social revolution for Libya.
51. Qaddafi’s alleged record of terrorism and idiosyncracies: see, e.g., John K. Cooley, “The Libyan Menace”, Foreign Policy (Washington), Spring 1981, pp. 75-7; David Blundy and Andrew Lycett, Qaddafi and the Libyan Revolution (Little, Brown & Co., Boston, 1987), chapter 6 plus page 21; also, many of the newspaper articles cited herein, such as Los Angeles Times, 19 January 1989.
52. Peter Maas, Manhunt: The Incredible Pursuit of a C.I.A. Agent Turned Terrorist (Random House, New York, 1986), passim.
53. San Francisco Chronicle, 18 July 1987.
54. Los Angeles Times, 26 October 1988, 19 January 1989.
55. New York Times, 15 March 1990, p. 1.
56. Los Angeles Times, 19 January 1989.
57. New York Times, 6 July 1972, p. 2. The same article states that the Black Muslims in Chicago (Farrakhan’s group) received a loan, not a contribution, of $3 million to build a mosque. (But whether the money was actually given, is not certain.) See Blundy and Lycett, p. 80, re the skepticism of British security forces about the IRA getting much, if any, money from Qaddafi.
58. Chicago Tribune, 1987: 3 April, 8 October, 15 October, 28 October, 30 October, 19 November, 25 November.
59. Bill Schaap, Covert Action Information Bulletin (Washington, DC). No. 30, Summer 1988, p. 76.
60. Washington Post, 11 May 1989, p. 1.
61. Los Angeles Times, 10 October 1990, p. 1.
62. Ibid., 15 November 1991, p. 25.
63. Mark Perry, Eclipse: The Last Days of the CIA (Wm. Morrow & Co., New York, 1992) pp. 335-48. Despite the title, the author is sympathetic to the CIA and accepts the official version of the guilt of the Libyans, although it’s not easy for him or for the reader.
64. Der Spiegel (Hamburg, Germany), 18 April 1994, pp. 92-7; Sunday Times (London), 19 December 1993, p. 2; The Times (London), 20 December 1993, p. 11; Los Angeles Times, 20 December 1993.
65. Der Spiegel, 18 April 1994, p. 93.
66. See W. Blum’s essay:http://members.aol.com/bblum6/panam.htm
67. Los Angeles Times, 24 November 1988, p. 1.
68. Ibid., 19 January 1989.
69. Ibid., 4 September 1989; 26 October 1989, citing an interview in the Egyptian magazine Al Mussawar. It can not be determined from the article whether Qaddafi himself referred to any of these groups as “terrorist”.
Olive Schreiner: The bestiality and insanity of war
Olive Schreiner
From “Woman and War”
Woman and Labour (1911)
But, it may then be said: “What of war, that struggle of the human creature to attain its ends by physical force and at the price of the life of others: will you take part in that also?” We reply: Yes; more particularly in that field we intend to play our part. We have always borne part of the weight of war, and the major part. It is not merely that in primitive times we suffered from the destruction of the fields we tilled and the houses we built; or that in later times as domestic labourers and producers, though unwaged, we, in taxes and material loss and additional labour, paid as much as our males towards the cost of war; nor is it that in a comparatively insignificant manner, as nurses of the wounded in modern times, or now and again as warrior chieftainesses and leaders in primitive and other societies, we have borne our part; nor is it even because the spirit of resolution in its women, and their willingness to endure, has in all ages again and again largely determined the fate of a race that goes to war, that we demand our controlling right where war is concerned. Our relation to war is far more intimate, personal, and indissoluble than this. Men have made boomerangs, bows, swords, or guns with which to destroy one another; we have made the men who destroyed and were destroyed! We have in all ages produced, at an enormous cost, the primal munition of war, without which no other would exist. There is no battlefield on earth, nor ever has been, howsoever covered with slain, which is has not cost the women of the race more in actual bloodshed and anguish to supply, then it has cost the men who lie there. We pay the first cost on all human life.
In supplying the men for the carnage of a battlefield, women have not merely lost actually more blood, and gone through a more acute anguish and weariness, in the long months of bearing and in the final agony of childbirth, than has been experienced by the men who cover it; but, in the long months and years of rearing that follow, the women of the race go through a long, patiently endured strain which no knapsacked soldier on his longest march has ever more than equalled; while, even in the matter of death, in all civilised societies, the probability that the average woman will die in childbirth is immeasurably greater than the probability that the average male will die in battle.
There is, perhaps, no woman, whether she have borne children, or be merely potentially a child-bearer, who could look down upon a battlefield covered with slain, but the thought would rise in her, “So many mothers’ sons! So many bodies brought into the world to lie there! So many months of weariness and pain while bones and muscles were shaped within; so many hours of anguish and struggle that breath might be; so many baby mouths drawing life at woman’s breasts;— all this, that men might lie with glazed eyeballs, and swollen bodies, and fixed, blue, unclosed mouths, and great limbs tossed — this, that an acre of ground might be manured with human flesh, that next year’s grass or poppies or karoo bushes may spring up greener and redder, where they have lain, or that the sand of a plain may have a glint of white bones!” And we cry, “Without an inexorable cause, this should not be!” No woman who is a woman says of a human body, “It is nothing!”
On that day, when the woman takes her place beside the man in the governance and arrangement of external affairs of her race will also be that day that heralds the death of war as a means of arranging human differences. No tinsel of trumpets and flags will ultimately seduce women into the insanity of recklessly destroying life, or gild the wilful taking of life with any other name than that of murder, whether it be the slaughter of the million or of one by one.
*****
The twenty thousand men prematurely slain on a field of battle, mean, to the women of their race, twenty thousand human creatures to be borne within them for months, given birth to in anguish, fed from their breasts and reared with toil, if the numbers of the tribe and the strength of the nation are to be maintained. In nations continually at war, incessant and unbroken child-bearing is by war imposed on all women if the state is to survive; and whenever war occurs, if numbers are to be maintained, there must be an increased child-bearing and rearing. This throws upon woman as woman a war tax, compared with which all that the male expends in military preparations is comparatively light.
*****
It is also true, that, from the loftiest standpoint, the condemnation of war which has arisen in the advancing human spirit, is in no sense related to any particular form of sex function. The man and the woman alike, who with Isaiah on the hills of Palestine, or the Indian Buddha under his bo-tree, have seen the essential unity of all sentient life; and who therefore see in war but a symptom of that crude disco-ordination of life on earth, not yet at one with itself, which affects humanity in these early stages of its growth: and who are compelled to regard as the ultimate goal of the race, though yet perhaps far distant across the ridges of innumerable coming ages, that harmony between all forms of conscious life, metaphorically prefigured by the ancient Hebrew, when he cried, “The wolf shall dwell with the lamb; and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them!” – to that individual, whether man or woman, who has reached this standpoint, there is no need for enlightenment from the instincts of the child-bearers of society as such; their condemnation of war, rising not so much from the fact that it is a wasteful destruction of human flesh, as that it is an indication of the non-existence of that co-ordination, the harmony which is summed up in the cry, “My little children, love one another.”
But for the vast bulk of humanity, probably for generations to come, the instinctive antagonism of the human child-bearer to reckless destruction of that which she has at so much cost produced, will be necessary to educate the race to any clear conception of the bestiality and insanity of war.
War will pass when intellectual culture and activity have made possible to the female an equal share in the control and governance of modern national life; it will probably not pass away much sooner; its extinction will not be delayed much longer.
It is especially in the domain of war that we, the bearers of men’s bodies, who supply its most valuable munition, who, not amid the clamour and ardour of battle, but singly, and alone, with a three-in-the-morning courage, shed our blood and face death that the battlefield may have its food, a food more precious to us than our heart’s blood; it is we especially, who in the domain of war, have our word to say, a word no man can say for us. It is our intention to enter into the domain of war and to labour there till in the course of generations we have extinguished it.
March 24, 1999 ~ Another Great Day for US/NATO: NATO bombs Yugoslavia
The Criminal Nato Attack on Yugoslavia
by Brigitte Queck, political scientist foreign policy
When on 24 March 1999 the NATO states started bombing the sovereign state of Yugoslavia, this unbelievable and brutal aggression had been preceded by a just as unbelievable and fabricated propaganda warfare in radio, press and TV, initiated by the powers of the West. This propaganda is still going on today.
Even today, many western books and other publications on this period describe the so-called “Racak Massacre” of 15 January 1999 as the trigger for the NATO war against Yugoslavia. The US government had installed the US diplomat William Walker as head of the OSCE in Kosovo. Before, he had managed the dirty business of the US in Latin America, supporting regimes friendly to the US, especially in El Salvador. It was this OSCE who had appointed the Finnish dentist Helena Ranta as head of the forensic investigation commission which was to investigate the Racak Massacre. Before the investigations had even started, W. Walker declared in front of a TV camera that this cruel massacre had been committed by Serbs. Years later, on 16 October 2008, Helena Ranta explained herself in the “Helsingin Sanomat”, explaining that she had been under an overwhelming pressure from W. Walker and the western media who wanted her to confirm Walker’s statement regarding the Serbian mass murder.
Racak was the greatest strategem
Danica Marinkovic, at the time examining magistrate of the regional court in Pristina-Kragujevac, commented the Racak event on 28 October 2008 in the “Glas Javnosti”: “Racak was the greatest strategem.” At the time [of the alleged “massacre”], there had been a classical combat between the Serbian police and UÇK terrorists. The OSCE had been informed about this in advance by the Serbian police.
Asked about the victims’ examination, she declared: “All were wearing civil clothes, but many wore military shoes or boots […].” 37 of the 40 victims had gunshot residue on their hands indicating that they had been involved in combats before they were killed. Both the Belarus and the Finnish forensic specialists who had carried out the autopsies came to these conclusions.
Asked whether she had talked about this to Helena Ranta or W. Walker, she said: “During my first meeting with Ranta, I could not find a way to communicate with her and I never saw her again. It was obvious that it was her political mission to accuse the Serbs. But she was neither an expert nor a professional. I also did not talk to Walker because it was clear that he was supporting the UÇK.”
In other words: After the so-called “Racak Massacre”, which was actually, as we know now, the result of a clash between Serb police units and UÇK troops, who had been trained in logistics and warfare and were financed by the [German secret service] BND and the US American CIA, these victims were “converted“ into civil victims and thus presented a pretext for a war – just like Hitler fabricated a trigger for World War II when he had the German radio station in Gleiwitz stormed by KZ inmates clad in Polish uniforms. It was converted into a massacre – even genocide, committed by Serbs against Kosovo Albanians!
Appendix of the Rambouillet Accords (Annex B) kept secret
In consequence of Racak, the western states initiated the Rambouillet negotiations starting on 6 February 1999 in France. They had been started by the Balkans Contact Group which had been founded in 1994 to coordinate the international reactions to the war in Bosnia. The terms of the negotiations contained ten non-negotiable fundamental principles for the future cooperation between the Yugoslavian government and the Kosovo Albanians, including proposals for an autonomous Kosovo and stationing NATO troops in Kosovo.
According to the official communication – and all western media complied with this – the Rambouillet negotiations were merely about a greater autonomy of the Kosovo that was to be demanded by Milosevic. In this context, one should be aware that, from 1974–1989, the Kosovo had enjoyed an autonomy that was unique world-wide. The Kosovo Albanians had their own language, their own universities and schools and received enormous support from all Yugoslavian republics. But this status of autonomy had also permitted vetoing any legislation in Serbia. In 1989, the Yugoslavian president had merely reduced this status of autonomy to the international standard by putting the federal state (Yugoslavia) in charge of the police, the judicative and the legal institutions. Under pressure in Rambouillet, Milosevic was eventually willing to grant the Kosovo Albanians again wider concessions to their autonomy.
But the Kosovo-Albanians, encouraged by the unconditional support of the West and its media mouthpieces, who would blame Milosevic for a failure of the Rambouillet negotiations, insisted on a full independence of the Kosovo from Yugoslavia. In the negotiations, the Kosovo-Albanians were represented by Hashim Thaci, a mass murderer sentenced to 22 years of jail in Yugoslavia. When Thaci, at the end of the Rambouillet negotiations, finally had signed the agreement written by the West, and Milosevic refused his signature, the Yugoslavian President was suddenly pushed into the role of the scapegoat unwilling to compromise!
But the appendix of the Rambouillet agreement (Annex B), which could not have been signed by any head of state in the world as it would have meant the surrendering of his country’s sovereignty was kept secret from the citizens of the Western European states. It included “freedom of movement of NATO forces in all Yugoslavia, including Yugoslavian airspace and the sea as well as the full immunity of NATO soldiers and their administration.”
Only the members of parliaments of these countries were permitted to read Annex B, but they were obliged to keep their silence.
Neo-colonial subjection agreement
They cowardly kept their promise and since the Yugoslavian President Milosevic could not sign this agreement, which might have correctly been labeled “neo-colonial subjection-to-NATO agreement”, the war was mapped out!
After the NATO had attacked the sovereign state Yugoslavia, including the Kosovo, illegally without declaration of war and violating international law, it went on to bomb it for 78 days in succession from an altitude of 8000 meter. This was justified by western politicians, including former left-wing politicians like German Chancellor Schröder, German Foreign Minister Fischer and Defense Minister Scharping, with the unbelievably perfidious lie: “We had to prevent a second Auschwitz!”
The NATO aggression destroyed Yugoslavia’s complete infrastructure, including all factories, the chemical plant in Pancevo, railways and bridges. If the Yugoslavian workers had not reacted and dumped the poisonous solutions of various containers in time, the Pancevo region would have been rendered uninhabitable by the bombings. But also residential areas, schools, kindergartens and hospitals were bombed with weapons banned by international law like radioactive bombs (DU), graphite bombs and other illegal weapons.
Various sides exerted pressure on the Yugoslavian President Milosevic to give in, in order to prevent a NATO ground offensive and an even more complete destruction of the country, and finally the Yugoslavian Government and the Serbian Parliament accepted a so-called peace plan, proposed by the EU special emissary Ahtisaari and the Russian special emissary Chernomyrdin.
The plan decreed that the Kosovo should remain an integral part of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. All hostilities in this area should cease and all refugees should be permitted to return to their homes. Additionally, the plan included an immediate withdrawal of Yugoslavian security forces from the Kosovo and an international peace keeping mission with substantial support from NATO. This plan came into force on 10 June 1999 when it was passed by the UN Security Council under resolution no. 1244.
UN resolution 1244: Integral part of Serbia
The Serbs kept their word. They withdrew their troops from Kosovo. But in the following months, there was sheer chaos instead of the peace promised by the so-called international community. Arbitrary murders increased by a factor of 20 under international control, compared to times of war when Kosovo was occupied by Yugoslavian troops. The reason for this was that the UNMIC converted the UÇK to a supposedly civil organization, the Kosovo Protection Corps and even paid it with UN money. If some optimists had really believed that things in Kosovo might change for the better with the entry of “international” troops (they were really mostly NATO troops), they were bitterly disappointed.
Thousands of Serbs, Roma and other groups, including Kosovo Albanians, fled from their native land which they no longer recognized as their home. Soon the Serbs in Kosovo – which they used to call the cradle of their nation – were just members of a minority who had to fear for their lives every day, restricted to enclaves guarded by international troops.
Two further developments kept the Serbian refugees from returning to their former homes in Kosovo: The expulsion of some 230,000 refugees (Serbs, Roma and not a small number of Kosovo Albanians hostile to the UÇK) from Kosovo, which was not prevented by the so-called international troops, and the 2004 pogrom on the Serbs who had remained in Kosovo, in which many Serbs lost their lives, hundreds of them were injured and 4,500 Non-Albanians were expelled, 700 houses and numerous cloisters were rampantly destroyed.
Today, after the unilateral declaration of Kosovo’s independence in February 2008, without approval by the UN, and after the recognition of the Kosovo by numerous – also western European – states as a sovereign state, which violated international law, many states and western politicians who had supported the military strive of the Kosovo-Albanians for independence, do not like to be reminded of UN resolution 1244 which declared the Kosovo an integral part of Serbia.
Mineral resources worth over 10 trillion dollars
There was good reason for [carving the Kosovo out of Serbia]: the inexhaustible natural resources of the Kosovo: 77,302,000 tons of coal, copper, zinc, lead, nickel, gold, silver, marble, manganese, iron ore, asbestos and limestone – to name but a few.
The value of these mineral resources is estimated to be over 10 trillion dollars and these extremely valuable resources in the hands of the local workers represented the real reason for the military interference of the West in 1999 with the controversy between the Yugoslavian army and the UÇK. Additionally, the UÇK had been trained for years and supported with millions of dollars and German Marks by the West through its secret services CIA and BND, trained for this war, which is still misleadingly called a “civil war in Yugoslavia”.
During the NATO war against Yugoslavia, the whole infrastructure of the country was destroyed, but the Trepca mines in Kosovo were spared from the bombings. Of course, the mines should continue to make a profit after the war – but then in private hands.
To lay one’s hand on this complex which was guarded by the workers, in the year 2000 two blatant lies were purported:
• The Serbs were accused of having killed and burned 1,500 Kosovo Albanians in the region, so the matter had to be investigated.
• The Trepca mines were reported to present a severe health risk for the population.
The thousands of radioactive DU bombs dropped in Kosovo, of course, have never been mentioned to this day! So it happened that on 14 August 2000, helicopters brought 900 British, French, Italian and Pakistani KFOR soldiers, armed to their teeth, to the Trepca mines. Workers who tried to defend their factory, were beaten up brutally and in some cases severely injured by tear gas and plastic bullets. Then factory managers and resistant workers were arrested. In UN papers, this still reads as “induction of the process of democratization in Kosovo.” But in reality this attack made it possible to start selling off the Trepca mines to private foreign groups.
The murderer of Serbs in Krajina, Çeku, who is still wanted for his crimes, was Prime Minister of the Kosovo until January 2008 and was head of both the ICMM created by Unmic and the KTA; both organizations that are responsible for privatizations in Kosovo! Çeku had been trained as a killer in Virginia for the American military contractor MPRI and was held responsible for the murder of 669 Serbs, mainly in Krajina, by a Yugoslavian court.
OTPOR trained by the CIA
After the Kosovo was put under international supervision – that is, under a neo-colonial administration – the Serbs had to be forced under the dictate of market economy, as well. In 2000, parliamentary elections were held in Yugoslavia. A while before the elections, leading NATO politicians had warned that, if Milosevic was elected again, another bombing of Yugoslavia could not be excluded! In addition, both the western media and the Yugoslavian opposition – which had been supported by the West for months in advance – claimed that Milosevic was going to manipulate the elections. It was also due to this pressure from outside that over 50% of the Serb population did not vote in these elections.
In the first ballot, Milosevic was 700,000 votes short of a victory. But also the DOS, with Kostunica as their candidate, supported by the West, did not reach the necessary majority. Since both the West and the opposition were not willing to risk a run-off ballot, the fight was transferred from the ballot box to the streets where the opposition closely cooperated with the student organization OTPOR. OTPOR had been launched by the West and, as we learned later, trained by the CIA in Sofia. After 78 days of NATO bombing, this organization did not denounce the aggressor, but the President of its own country instead, with wordings coming from NATO think tanks. Sprayed all over were slogans that read: “He [Milosevic] is finished!”
When the opposition hauled in a group of 4000 men with busses from Cazak who stormed the parliament where another counting of votes was under way, the staged coup culminated. And when, unfortunately, some previously influential supporters of Milosevic, including the former head of the secret service Jovica Stanisic and the former Chief of Staff Momcilo Perisic, changed sides, the opposition did not think it necessary to adhere to parliamentarian rules. There was no run-off ballot between Milosevic and Kostunica! After this illegal election, Kostunica was proclaimed President of Yugoslavia. Afterwards, the US Secretary of State Albright called out delightedly: “Now, finally, the last bastion of socialism in Europe has fallen!”
In gratitude for their contribution to the system change in Yugoslavia, the student organization OTPOR received the Human Rights Award 2001 of the German Friedrich Ebert Foundation a year later.
Comments to article 87a of the Grundgesetz [constitutional law] of the Federal Republic of German state:
Majority of the population in poverty
“In case of tension, the armed forces can protect civil objects […] and be active in battling organized insurgents […].” But this is true only for the political and economical system in Germany and in other western countries. For countries with other political systems, as we saw in the example of socialist Yugoslavia, other rules apply!
In summary: Ten years ago, socialist Yugoslavia ceased to exist. Decisive for this development were bombings over months, but also political and economic pressure, lies and the bribing of collaborators within the country, with millions of dollars, coming from well-known organizations of NATO countries aiming to introduce a capitalist market economy into this country.
They succeeded. The former Yugoslavian President Milosevic was taken to trial before the International Criminal Court in Den Haag, an executive organ of NATO, but also by way of treason by his own followers. In Den Haag he bravely defended his views and his country. It is the power of the capital and the hate of all that is remotely reminiscent of socialism which is to blame for Milosevic’s death.
Today, in Yugoslavia, as in the former GDR, there is a high rate of unemployment. Corruption is in the millions. Only a few have access to education and arts. There is poverty for the majority of the population and affluence for the chosen few, a high crime level, prostitution, trade in drugs and people – all these were unknown in times of socialism. In addition, there is the concern for our sons, daughters and grandchildren.
The world did not develop towards reconciliation between the systems of socialism and capitalism as many of the naïve politicians in the former socialist states expected. Instead, the number of wars was increased world-wide.
Weapons are the largest branch of trade – and for this to remain as it is, wars have to be planned and carried out. Just like the NATO war against the flourishing Yugoslavia. But it is up to us, the peoples of the world, to change this social system, which cannot be our choice. •
Ten years ago, March 24th 1999, marks the commencement of NATO’s aerial bombardment of Yugoslavia. The bombings which lasted for almost three months, were followed by the military invasion (under a bogus UN mandate) and illegal occupation of the province of Kosovo. Following a pattern set during the War in Bosnia, public opinion has been carefully misled. The multibillion dollar Balkans narcotics trade has played a crucial role in “financing the conflict” in Kosovo in accordance with Western economic, strategic and military objectives. Amply documented by European police files, acknowledged by numerous studies, the links of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) to criminal syndicates in Albania, Turkey and the European Union have been known to Western governments and intelligence agencies since the mid-1990s. “…The financing of the Kosovo guerilla war poses critical questions and it sorely test claims of an “ethical” foreign policy. Should the West back a guerilla army that appears to partly financed by organised crime.” 1 While KLA leaders were shaking hands with US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright at Rambouillet, Europol (the European Police Organization based in the Hague) was “preparing a report for European interior and justice ministers on a connection between the KLA and Albanian drug gangs.”2 In the meantime, the rebel army has been skilfully heralded by the global media (in the months preceding the NATO bombings) as broadly representative of the interests of ethnic Albanians in Kosovo. With KLA leader Hashim Thaci (a 29 year “freedom fighter”) appointed as chief negotiator at Rambouillet, the KLA has become the de facto helmsman of the peace process on behalf of the ethnic Albanian majority and this despite its links to the drug trade. The West was relying on its KLA puppets to rubber-stamp an agreement which would have transformed Kosovo into an occupied territory under Western Administration. Ironically Robert Gelbard, America’s special envoy to Bosnia, had described the KLA last year as “terrorists”. Christopher Hill, America’s chief negotiator and architect of the Rambouillet agreement “has also been a strong critic of the KLA for its alleged dealings in drugs.”3 Moreover, barely a few two months before Rambouillet, the US State Department had acknowledged (based on reports from the US Observer Mission) the role of the KLA in terrorising and uprooting ethnic Albanians: “…the KLA harass or kidnap anyone who comes to the police, … KLA representatives had threatened to kill villagers and burn their homes if they did not join the KLA [a process which has continued since the NATO bombings]… [T]he KLA harassment has reached such intensity that residents of six villages in the Stimlje region are “ready to flee.” 4 While backing a “freedom movement” with links to the drug trade, the West seems also intent in bypassing the civilian Kosovo Democratic League and its leader Ibrahim Rugova who has called for an end to the bombings and expressed his desire to negotiate a peaceful settlement with the Yugoslav authorities.5 It is worth recalling that a few days before his March 31st Press Conference, Rugova had been reported by the KLA (alongside three other leaders including Fehmi Agani) to have been killed by the Serbs. Remember Oliver North and the Contras? The pattern in Kosovo is similar to other CIA covert operations in Central America, Haiti and Afghanistan where “freedom fighters” were financed through the laundering of drug money. Since the onslaught of the Cold War, Western intelligence agencies have developed a complex relationship to the illegal narcotics trade. In case after case, drug money laundered in the international banking system has financed covert operations. According to author Alfred McCoy, the pattern of covert financing was established in the Indochina war. In the 1960s, the Meo army in Laos was funded by the narcotics trade as part of Washington’s military strategy against the combined forces of the neutralist government of Prince Souvanna Phouma and the Pathet Lao.6 The pattern of drug politics set in Indochina has since been replicated in Central America and the Caribbean. “The rising curve of cocaine imports to the US”, wrote journalist John Dinges “followed almost exactly the flow of US arms and military advisers to Central America”.7 The military in Guatemala and Haiti, to which the CIA provided covert support, were known to be involved in the trade of narcotics into Southern Florida. And as revealed in the Iran-Contra and Bank of Commerce and Credit International (BCCI) scandals, there was strong evidence that covert operations were funded through the laundering of drug money. “Dirty money” recycled through the banking system–often through an anonymous shell company– became “covert money,” used to finance various rebel groups and guerilla movements including the Nicaraguan Contras and the Afghan Mujahadeen. According to a 1991 Time Magazine report: “Because the US wanted to supply the mujehadeen rebels in Afghanistan with stinger missiles and other military hardware it needed the full cooperation of Pakistan. By the mid-1980s, the CIA operation in Islamabad was one of the largest US intelligence stations in the World. `If BCCI is such an embarrassment to the US that forthright investigations are not being pursued it has a lot to do with the blind eye the US turned to the heroin trafficking in Pakistan’, said a US intelligence officer.8 Since the early 1990s, Bonn and Washington have joined hands in establishing their respective spheres of influence in the Balkans. Their intelligence agencies have also collaborated. According to intelligence analyst John Whitley, covert support to the Kosovo rebel army was established as a joint endeavour between the CIA and Germany’s Bundes Nachrichten Dienst (BND) (which previously played a key role in installing a right wing nationalist government under Franjo Tudjman in Croatia).9 The task to create and finance the KLA was initially given to Germany: “They used German uniforms, East German weapons and were financed, in part, with drug money”.10 According to Whitley, the CIA was, subsequently instrumental in training and equipping the KLA in Albania.11 The covert activities of Germany’s BND were consistent with Bonn’s intent to expand its “Lebensraum” into the Balkans. Prior to the onset of the civil war in Bosnia, Germany and its Foreign Minister Hans Dietrich Genscher had actively supported secession; it had “forced the pace of international diplomacy” and pressured its Western allies to recognize Slovenia and Croatia. According to the Geopolitical Drug Watch, both Germany and the US favoured (although not officially) the formation of a “Greater Albania” encompassing Albania, Kosovo and parts of Macedonia.12 According to Sean Gervasi, Germany was seeking a free hand among its allies “to pursue economic dominance in the whole of Mitteleuropa.”13 Bonn and Washington’s “hidden agenda” consisted in triggering nationalist liberation movements in Bosnia and Kosovo with the ultimate purpose of destabilising Yugoslavia. The latter objective was also carried out “by turning a blind eye” to the influx of mercenaries and financial support from Islamic fundamentalist organisations.14 Mercenaries financed by Saudi Arabia and Koweit had been fighting in Bosnia.15 And the Bosnian pattern was replicated in Kosovo: Mujahadeen mercenaries from various Islamic countries are reported to be fighting alongside the KLA in Kosovo. German, Turkish and Afghan instructors were reported to be training the KLA in guerilla and diversion tactics.16 According to a Deutsche Press-Agentur report, financial support from Islamic countries to the KLA had been channelled through the former Albanian chief of the National Information Service (NIS), Bashkim Gazidede.17 “Gazidede, reportedly a devout Moslem who fled Albania in March of last year [1997], is presently [1998] being investigated for his contacts with Islamic terrorist organizations.”18 The supply route for arming KLA “freedom fighters” are the rugged mountainous borders of Albania with Kosovo and Macedonia. Albania is also a key point of transit of the Balkans drug route which supplies Western Europe with grade four heroin. 75% of the heroin entering Western Europe is from Turkey. And a large part of drug shipments originating in Turkey transits through the Balkans. According to the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), “it is estimated that 4-6 metric tons of heroin leave each month from Turkey having [through the Balkans] as destination Western Europe.”19 A recent intelligence report by Germany’s Federal Criminal Agency suggests that: “Ethnic Albanians are now the most prominent group in the distribution of heroin in Western consumer countries.”20 In order to thrive, the criminal syndicates involved in the Balkans narcotics trade need friends in high places. Smuggling rings with alleged links to the Turkish State are said to control the trafficking of heroin through the Balkans “cooperating closely with other groups with which they have political or religious ties” including criminal groups in Albanian and Kosovo.21 In this new global financial environment, powerful undercover political lobbies connected to organized crime cultivate links to prominent political figures and officials of the military and intelligence establishment. The narcotics trade nonetheless uses respectable banks to launder large amounts of dirty money. While comfortably removed from the smuggling operations per se, powerful banking interests in Turkey but mainly those in financial centres in Western Europe discretely collect fat commissions in a multibillion dollar money laundering operation. These interests have high stakes in ensuring a safe passage of drug shipments into Western European markets. Arms smuggling from Albania into Kosovo and Macedonia started at the beginning of 1992, when the Democratic Party came to power, headed by President Sali Berisha. An expansive underground economy and cross border trade had unfolded. A triangular trade in oil, arms and narcotics had developed largely as a result of the embargo imposed by the international community on Serbia and Montenegro and the blockade enforced by Greece against Macedonia. Industry and agriculture in Kosovo were spearheaded into bankruptcy following the IMF’s lethal “economic medicine” imposed on Belgrade in 1990. The embargo was imposed on Yugoslavia. Ethnic Albanians and Serbs were driven into abysmal poverty. Economic collapse created an environment which fostered the progress of illicit trade. In Kosovo, the rate of unemployment increased to a staggering 70 percent (according to Western sources). Poverty and economic collapse served to exacerbate simmering ethnic tensions. Thousands of unemployed youths “barely out of their Teens” from an impoverished population, were drafted into the ranks of the KLA…22 In neighbouring Albania, the free market reforms adopted since 1992 had created conditions which favoured the criminalisation of State institutions. Drug money was also laundered in the Albanian pyramids (ponzi schemes) which mushroomed during the government of former President Sali Berisha (1992-1997).23 These shady investment funds were an integral part of the economic reforms inflicted by Western creditors on Albania. Drug barons in Kosovo, Albania and Macedonia (with links to the Italian mafia) had become the new economic elites, often associated with Western business interests. In turn the financial proceeds of the trade in drugs and arms were recycled towards other illicit activities (and vice versa) including a vast prostitution racket between Albania and Italy. Albanian criminal groups operating in Milan, “have become so powerful running prostitution rackets that they have even taken over the Calabrians in strength and influence.”24 The application of “strong economic medicine” under the guidance of the Washington based Bretton Woods institutions had contributed to wrecking Albania’s banking system and precipitating the collapse of the Albanian economy. The resulting chaos enabled American and European transnationals to carefully position themselves. Several Western oil companies including Occidental, Shell and British Petroleum had their eyes rivetted on Albania’s abundant and unexplored oil-deposits. Western investors were also gawking Albania’s extensive reserves of chrome, copper, gold, nickel and platinum… The Adenauer Foundation had been lobbying in the background on behalf of German mining interests. 25 Berisha’s Minister of Defence Safet Zoulali (alleged to have been involved in the illegal oil and narcotics trade) was the architect of the agreement with Germany’s Preussag (handing over control over Albania’s chrome mines) against the competing bid of the US led consortium of Macalloy Inc. in association with Rio Tinto Zimbabwe (RTZ).26 Large amounts of narco-dollars had also been recycled into the privatisation programmes leading to the acquisition of State assets by the mafias. In Albania, the privatisation programme had led virtually overnight to the development of a property owning class firmly committed to the “free market”. In Northern Albania, this class was associated with the Guegue “families” linked to the Democratic Party. Controlled by the Democratic Party under the presidency of Sali Berisha (1992-97), Albania’s largest financial “pyramid” VEFA Holdings had been set up by the Guegue “families” of Northern Albania with the support of Western banking interests. VEFA was under investigation in Italy in 1997 for its ties to the Mafia which allegedly used VEFA to launder large amounts of dirty money.27 According to one press report (based on intelligence sources), senior members of the Albanian government during the Presidency of Sali Berisha including cabinet members and members of the secret police SHIK were alleged to be involved in drugs trafficking and illegal arms trading into Kosovo: (…) The allegations are very serious. Drugs, arms, contraband cigarettes all are believed to have been handled by a company run openly by Albania’s ruling Democratic Party, Shqiponja (…). In the course of 1996 Defence Minister, Safet Zhulali [was alleged] to had used his office to facilitate the transport of arms, oil and contraband cigarettes. (…) Drugs barons from Kosovo (…) operate in Albania with impunity, and much of the transportation of heroin and other drugs across Albania, from Macedonia and Greece en route to Italy, is believed to be organised by Shik, the state security police (…). Intelligence agents are convinced the chain of command in the rackets goes all the way to the top and have had no hesitation in naming ministers in their reports.28 The trade in narcotics and weapons was allowed to prosper despite the presence since 1993 of a large contingent of American troops at the Albanian-Macedonian border with a mandate to enforce the embargo. The West had turned a blind eye. The revenues from oil and narcotics were used to finance the purchase of arms (often in terms of direct barter): “Deliveries of oil to Macedonia (skirting the Greek embargo [in 1993-4] can be used to cover heroin, as do deliveries of kalachnikov rifles to Albanian `brothers’ in Kosovo”.29 The Northern tribal clans or “fares” had also developed links with Italy’s crime syndicates.30 In turn, the latter played a key role in smuggling arms across the Adriatic into the Albanian ports of Dures and Valona. At the outset in 1992, the weapons channelled into Kosovo were largely small arms including Kalashnikov AK-47 rifles, RPK and PPK machine-guns, 12.7 calibre heavy machine-guns, etc. The proceeds of the narcotics trade has enabled the KLA to rapidly develop a force of some 30,000 men. More recently, the KLA has acquired more sophisticated weaponry including anti-aircraft and antiarmor rockets. According to Belgrade, some of the funds have come directly from the CIA “funnelled through a so-called “Government of Kosovo” based in Geneva, Switzerland. Its Washington office employs the public-relations firm of Ruder Finn–notorious for its slanders of the Belgrade government”.31 The KLA has also acquired electronic surveillance equipment which enables it to receive NATO satellite information concerning the movement of the Yugoslav Army. The KLA training camp in Albania is said to “concentrate on heavy weapons training – rocket propelled grenades, medium caliber cannons, tanks and transporter use, as well as on communications, and command and control”. (According to Yugoslav government sources.32 These extensive deliveries of weapons to the Kosovo rebel army were consistent with Western geopolitical objectives. Not surprisingly, there has been a “deafening silence” of the international media regarding the Kosovo arms-drugs trade. In the words of a 1994 Report of the Geopolitical Drug Watch: “the trafficking [of drugs and arms] is basically being judged on its geostrategic implications (…) In Kosovo, drugs and weapons trafficking is fuelling geopolitical hopes and fears”…33 The fate of Kosovo had already been carefully laid out prior to the signing of the 1995 Dayton agreement. NATO had entered an unwholesome “marriage of convenience” with the mafia. “Freedom fighters” were put in place, the narcotics trade enabled Washington and Bonn to “finance the Kosovo conflict” with the ultimate objective of destabilising the Belgrade government and fully recolonising the Balkans. The destruction of an entire country is the outcome. Western governments which participated in the NATO operation bear a heavy burden of responsibility in the deaths of civilians, the impoverishment of both the ethnic Albanian and Serbian populations and the plight of those who were brutally uprooted from towns and villages in Kosovo as a result of the bombings. 1. Roger Boyes and Eske Wright, Drugs Money Linked to the Kosovo Rebels The Times, London, Monday, March 24, 1999. 2. Ibid. 3. Philip Smucker and Tim Butcher, “Shifting stance over KLA has betrayed’ Albanians”, Daily Telegraph, London, 6 April 1999 4. KDOM Daily Report, released by the Bureau of European and Canadian Affairs, Office of South Central European Affairs, U.S. Department of State, Washington, DC, December 21, 1998; Compiled by EUR/SCE (202-647-4850) from daily reports of the U.S. element of the Kosovo Diplomatic Observer Mission, December 21, 1998. 5. “Rugova, sous protection serbe appelle a l’arret des raides”, Le Devoir, Montreal, 1 April 1999. 6. See Alfred W. McCoy, The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia Harper and Row, New York, 1972. 7. See John Dinges, Our Man in Panama, The Shrewd Rise and Brutal Fall of Manuel Noriega, Times Books, New York, 1991. 8. “The Dirtiest Bank of All,” Time, July 29, 1991, p. 22. 9. Truth in Media, Phoenix, 2 April, 1999; see also Michel Collon, Poker Menteur, editions EPO, Brussels, 1997. 10. Quoted in Truth in Media, Phoenix, 2 April, 1999). 11. Ibid. 12. Geopolitical Drug Watch, No 32, June 1994, p. 4 13. Sean Gervasi, “Germany, US and the Yugoslav Crisis”, Covert Action Quarterly, No. 43, Winter 1992-93). 14. See Daily Telegraph, 29 December 1993. 15. For further details see Michel Collon, Poker Menteur, editions EPO, Brussels, 1997, p. 288. 16. Truth in Media, Kosovo in Crisis, Phoenix, 2 April 1999. 17. Deutsche Presse-Agentur, March 13, 1998. 18. Ibid. 19. Daily News, Ankara, 5 March 1997. 20. Quoted in Boyes and Wright, op cit. 21. ANA, Athens, 28 January 1997, see also Turkish Daily News, 29 January 1997. 22. Brian Murphy, KLA Volunteers Lack Experience, The Associated Press, 5 April 1999. 23. See Geopolitical Drug Watch, No. 35, 1994, p. 3, see also Barry James, In Balkans, Arms for Drugs, The International Herald Tribune Paris, June 6, 1994. 24. The Guardian, 25 March 1997. 25. For further details see Michel Chossudovsky, La crisi albanese, Edizioni Gruppo Abele, Torino, 1998. 26. Ibid. 27. Andrew Gumbel, The Gangster Regime We Fund, The Independent, February 14, 1997, p. 15. 28. Ibid. 29. Geopolitical Drug Watch, No. 35, 1994, p. 3. 30. Geopolitical Drug Watch, No 66, p. 4. 31. Quoted in Workers’ World, May 7, 1998. 32. See Government of Yugoslavia at http://www.gov.yu/terrorism/terroristcamps.html. 33. Geopolitical Drug Watch, No 32, June 1994, p. 4. *************** The Kosovo region lay at the heart of the Serbian empire in the late Middle Ages but was lost to the Ottoman Turks in 1389 following Serbia’s defeat in the Battle of Kosovo. By the time Serbia regained control of Kosovo from Turkey in 1913, there were few Serbs left in a region that had come to be dominated by ethnic Albanians. In 1918, Kosovo formally became a province of Serbia, and it continued as such after communist leader Josip Broz Tito established the Federal People’s Republic of Yugoslavia in 1945, comprising the Balkan states of Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Montenegro, Slovenia, and Macedonia. However, Tito eventually gave in to Kosovar demands for greater autonomy, and after 1974 Kosovo existed as independent state in all but name. Serbs came to resent Kosovo’s autonomy, which allowed it to act against Serbian interests, and in 1987 Slobodan Milosevic was elected leader of Serbia’s Communist Party with a promise of restoring Serbian rule to Kosovo. In 1989, Milosevic became president of Serbia and moved quickly to suppress Kosovo, stripping its autonomy and in 1990 sending troops to disband its government. Meanwhile, Serbian nationalism led to the dissolution of the Yugoslav federation in 1991, and in 1992 the Balkan crisis deteriorated into civil war. A new Yugoslav state, consisting only of Serbia and the small state of Montenegro, was created, and Kosovo began four years of nonviolent resistance to Serbian rule. The militant Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) emerged in 1996 and began attacking Serbian police in Kosovo. With arms obtained in Albania, the KLA stepped up its attacks in 1997, prompting a major offensive by Serbian troops against the rebel-held Drenica region in February-March 1998. Dozens of civilians were killed, and enlistment in the KLA increased dramatically. In July, the KLA launched an offensive across Kosovo, seizing control of nearly half the province before being routed in a Serbian counteroffensive later that summer. The Serbian troops drove thousands of ethnic Albanians from their homes and were accused of massacring Kosovo civilians. In October, NATO threatened Serbia with air strikes, and Milosevic agreed to allow the return of tens of thousands of refugees. Fighting soon resumed, however, and talks between Kosovar Albanians and Serbs in Rambouillet, France, in February 1999 ended in failure. On March 18, further peace talks in Paris collapsed after the Serbian delegation refused to sign a deal calling for Kosovo autonomy and the deployment of NATO troops to enforce the agreement. Two days later, the Serbian army launched a new offensive in Kosovo. On March 24, NATO air strikes began. In addition to Serbian military positions, the NATO air campaign targeted Serbian government buildings and the country’s infrastructure in an effort to destabilize the Milosevic regime. The bombing and continued Serbian offensives drove hundreds of thousands of Kosovar Albanians into neighboring Albania, Macedonia, and Montenegro. Many of these refugees were airlifted to safety in the United States and other NATO nations. On June 10, the NATO bombardment ended when Serbia agreed to a peace agreement calling for the withdrawal of Serb forces from Kosovo and their replacement by NATO peacekeeping troops. With the exception of two U.S. pilots killed in a training mission in Albania, no NATO personnel lost their lives in the 78-day operation. There were some mishaps, however, such as miscalculated bombings that led to the deaths of Kosovar Albanian refugees, KLA members, and Serbian civilians. The most controversial incident was the May 7 bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade, which killed three Chinese journalists and caused a diplomatic crisis in U.S.-Chinese relations. On June 12, NATO forces moved into Kosovo from Macedonia. The same day, Russian troops arrived in the Kosovo capital of Pristina and forced NATO into agreeing to a joint occupation. Despite the presence of peacekeeping troops, the returning Kosovar Albanians retaliated against Kosovo’s Serbian minority, forcing them to flee into Serbia. Under the NATO occupation, Kosovar autonomy was restored, but the province remained officially part of Serbia. Slobodan Milosevic was ousted from power by a popular revolution in Belgrade in October 2000. He was replaced by the popularly elected Vojislav Kostunica, a moderate Serbian nationalist who promised to reintegrate Serbia into Europe and the world after a decade of isolation. Slobodan Milosevic died in prison in the Netherlands on March 11, 2006, shortly before his trial for crimes against humanity and genocide was due to end.
© 2006, Current Concerns, www.currentconcerns.ch, Phone +41-44-350 65 50, Fax +41-44-350 65 51
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Remembering the 1999 NATO led War on Yugoslavia: Kosovo “Freedom Fighters” Financed by Organized Crime
The following article was written and published in April 1999.
Michel Chossudovsky, March 19, 2009
Heralded by the global media as a humanitarian peace-keeping mission, NATO’s ruthless bombing of Belgrade and Pristina goes far beyond the breach of international law. While Slobodan Milosevic is demonised, portrayed as a remorseless dictator, the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) is upheld as a self-respecting nationalist movement struggling for the rights of ethnic Albanians. The truth of the matter is that the KLA is sustained by organised crime with the tacit approval of the United States and its allies.Covert Financing of “Freedom Fighters”
America and Germany join Hands
Islamic Fundamentalism in Support of the KLA
The Laundering of Dirty Money
The Albanian Connection
NOTES
This Day in History Official Story
On March 24, 1999, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) commences air strikes against Yugoslavia with the bombing of Serbian military positions in the Yugoslav province of Kosovo. The NATO offensive came in response to a new wave of ethnic cleansing launched by Serbian forces against the Kosovar Albanians on March 20.
Voices Of The Voiceless – Lowkey Feat. Immortal Technique (Anti War Video)
more videos here at original source
The Eisenhower Doctrine claims another backyard for America ~ The Middle East 1957-1958
The resolution stated that “the United States regards as vital to the national interest and world peace the preservation of the independence and integrity of the nations of the Middle East.” Yet, during this very period, as we have seen, the CIA initiated its operation to overthrow the government of Syria. The business part of the resolution was contained in the succinct declaration that the United States “is prepared to use armed forces to assist” any Middle East country “requesting assistance against armed aggression from any country controlled by international communism”. Nothing was set forth about non-communist or anticommunist aggression which might endanger world peace. Wilbur Crane Eveland, the Middle East specialist working for the CIA at the time, had been present at a meeting in the State Department two months earlier called to discuss the resolution. Eveland read the draft, which stated that “many, if not all” of the Middle East states “are aware of the danger that stems from international communism”. Later he wrote: I was shocked. Who, I wondered, had reached this determination of what the Arabs considered a danger? Israel’s army had just invaded Egypt and still occupied all of the Sinai Peninsula and the Gaza Strip. And, had it not been for Russia’s threat to intervene on behalf of the Egyptians, the British, French, and Israeli forces might now be sitting in Cairo, celebrating Nasser’s ignominious fall from power.1 The simplistic and polarized view of the world implicit in the Eisenhower Doctrine ignored not only anti-Israeli sentiments but currents of nationalism, pan-Arabism, neutralism and socialism prevalent in many influential quarters of the Middle East. The framers of the resolution saw only a cold-war battlefield and, in doing so, succeeded in creating one. In April, King Hussein of Jordan dismissed his prime minister, Suleiman Nabulsi, amidst rumors, apparently well-founded, of a coup against the King encouraged by Egypt and Syria and Palestinians living in Jordan. It was the turning point in an ongoing conflict between the pro-West policy of Hussein and the neutralist leanings of the Nabulsi regime. Nabulsi had announced that in line with his policy of neutralism, Jordan would develop closet relations with the Soviet Union and accept Soviet aid if offered. At the same time, he rejected American aid because, he said, the United States had informed him that economic aid would be withheld unless Jordan “severs its ties with Egypt” and “consents to settlement of Palestinian refugees in Jordan”, a charge denied by the State Department. Nabulsi added the commentary that “communism is not dangerous to the Arabs”. Hussein, conversely, accused “international communism and its followers” of direct responsibility for “efforts to destroy my country”. When pressed for the specifics of his accusation, he declined to provide any. When rioting broke out in several Jordanian cities, and civil war could not be ruled out, Hussein showed himself equal to the threat to his continued rule. He declared martial law, purged the government and military of pro-Nasser and leftist tendencies, and abolished all political opposition. Jordan soon returned to a state of relative calm. The United States, however, seized upon Hussein’s use of the expression “international communism” to justify rushing units of the Sixth Fleet to the eastern Mediterranean—a super aircraft carrier, two cruisers, and 15 destroyers, followed shortly by a variety of other naval vessels and a battalion of marines which put ashore in Lebanon—to “prepare for possible future intervention in Jordan”.2 Despite the fact that nothing resembling “armed aggression from any country controlled by international communism” had taken place, the State Department openly invited the King to invoke the Eisenhower Doctrine.3 But Hussein, who had not even requested the show of force, refused, knowing that such a move would only add fuel to the fires already raging in Jordanian political life. He survived without it. Sometime during this year the CIA began making secret annual payments to King Hussein, initially in the millions of dollars per year. The practice was to last for 20 years, with the Agency providing Hussein female companions as well. As justification for the payment, the CIA later claimed that Hussein allowed American intelligence agencies to operate freely in Jordan. Hussein himself provided intelligence to the CIA and distributed part of his payments to other government officials who also furnished information or cooperated with the Agency.4 A few months later, it was Syria which occupied the front stage in Washington’s melodrama of “International Communism”. The Syrians had established relations with the Soviet Union via trade, economic aid, and military purchases and training. The United States chose to see something ominous in this although it was a state of affairs engendered in no small measure by John Foster Dulles, as we saw in the previous chapter. American antipathy toward Syria was heightened in August following the Syrian government’s exposure of the CIA-directed plot to overthrow it. Washington officials and the American media settled easily into the practice of referring to Syria as a “Soviet satellite” or “quasi-satellite”. This was not altogether objective or spontaneous reporting. Kennett Love, a New York Times correspondent in close contact to the CIA (see Iran chapter), later disclosed some of the background: The US Embassy in Syria connived at false reports issued in Washington and London through diplomatic and press channels to the effect that Russian arms were pouring into the Syrian port of Latakia, that “not more than 123 Migs” had arrived in Syria, and that Lieutenant Colonel Abdel Hameed Serraj, head of Syrian intelligence, had taken over control in a Communist-inspired coup. I travelled all over Syria without hindrance in November and December [1956] and found there were indeed “not more than 123 Migs”. There were none. And no Russian arms had arrived for months. And there had been no coup, although some correspondents in Beirut, just a two-hour drive from Damascus, were dispatching without attribution false reports fed to them by embassy visitors from Damascus and a roving CIA man who worked in the guise of a US Treasury agent. Serraj, who was anti-Communist, had just broken the clumsy British-US-Iraqi-supported plot [to overthrow the Syrian government]. Syria was quiet but worried lest the propaganda presage a new coup d’etat or a Western-backed invasion.5 As if to further convince any remaining skeptics, Eisenhower dispatched a personal emissary, Loy Henderson, on a tour of the Middle East. Henderson, not surprisingly, returned with the conclusion that “there was a fear in all Middle East countries that the Soviets might be able to topple the regimes in each of their countries through exploiting the crisis in Syria”.6 He gave no indication as to whether the Syrians themselves thought they were going through a crisis. As an indication of how artificial were the crises announced by the White House, how arbitrary were the doomsday pronouncements about the Soviet Union, let us consider the following from a Department of Defense internal memorandum of June 1957, about two months before Henderson went to the Middle East: The USSR has shown no intention of direct intervention in any of the previous Mid-Eastern crises, and we believe it is unlikely that they would intervene, directly, to assure the success of a leftist coup in Syria.7 In early September, the day after Henderson returned, the United States announced that the Sixth Fleet was once again being sent to the Mediterranean and that arms and other military equipment were being rushed to Jordan, Lebanon, Iraq and Turkey. A few days later, Saudi Arabia was added to the list. The Soviet Union replied with arms shipments to Syria, Egypt and Yemen. The Syrian government accused the US of sending warships dose to her coast in an “open challenge” and said that unidentified planes had been flying constantly over the Latakia area day and night for four days, Latakia being the seaport where Soviet ships arrived. Syria further claimed that the US had “incited” Turkey to concentrate an estimated 50,000 soldiers on Syria’s border. The Syrians ridiculed the explanation that the Turkish troops were only on maneuvers. Eisenhower later wrote that the troops were at the border with “a readiness to act” and that the United States had already assured the leaders of Turkey, Iraq and Jordan that if they “felt it necessary to take actions against aggression by the Syrian government, the United States would undertake to expedite shipments of arms already committed to the Middle Eastern countries and, further, would replace losses as quickly as possible.” The president had no quarrel with the idea that such action might be taken to repel, in his words, the “anticipated aggression” of Syria, for it would thus be “basically defensive in nature” (emphasis added).8 The American role here may have been more active than Eisenhower suggests. One of his advisers, Emmet John Hughes, has written of how Under-Secretary of State Christian Herter, later to replace an ailing John Foster Dulles as Secretary, “reviewed in rueful detail… some recent clumsy clandestine American attempts to spur Turkish forces to do some vague kind of battle with Syria”.9 Dulles gave the impression in public remarks that the United States was anxious to somehow invoke the Eisenhower Doctrine, presumably as a “justification” for taking further action against Syria. But he could not offer any explanation of how this was possible. Certainly Syria was not going to make the necessary request. The only solution lay in Syria attacking another Arab country which would then request American assistance. This appears to be one rationale behind the flurry of military and diplomatic activity directed at Syria by the US. A study carried out for the Pentagon some years later concluded that in “the 1957 Syrian crisis … Washington seem[ed] to seek the initial use of force by target”10 (emphasis added; “‘target” refers to Syria). Throughout this period, Washington officials alternated between striving to enlist testimonials from other Arab nations that Syria was indeed a variety of Soviet satellite and a threat to the region, and assuring the world that the United States had received a profusion of just such testimony. But Jordan, Iraq and Saudi Arabia all denied that they felt threatened by Syria. Egypt, Syria’s closest ally, of course concurred. At the height of the “crisis”, King Hussein of Jordan left for a vacation in Europe. The Iraqi premier declared that his country and Syria had arrived at a “complete understanding”. And King Saud of Saudi Arabia, in a message to Eisenhower, said that US concern over Syria was “exaggerated” and asked the president for “renewed assurances that the United States would refrain from any interference in the internal affairs of Arab states”. Saud added that “efforts to overturn the Syrian regime would merely make the Syrians more amenable to Soviet influence”, a view shared by several observers on all sides. At the same time, the New York Times reported: From the beginning of the crisis over Syria’s drift to the left, there has been less excitement among her Arab neighbors than in the United States. Foreign diplomats in the area, including many Americans, felt that the stir caused in Washington was out of proportion to the cause. Eventually, Dulles may have been influenced by this lack of support for the American thesis, for when asked specifically to “characterize what the relation is between Soviet aims in the area and the part that Syria adds to them”, he could only reply that “The situation internally in Syria is not entirely clear and fluctuates somewhat.” Syria, he implied, was not yet in the grip of international Communism. The next day, Syria, which had no desire to isolate itself from the West, similarly moderated its tone by declaring that the American warships had been 15 miles offshore and had continued “quietly on their way”.11 It appears that during this same restless year of 1957, the United States was also engaged in a plot to overthrow Nasser and his troublesome nationalism, although the details are rather sketchy. In January, when King Saud and Iraqi Crown Prince Abdul Illah were in New York at the United Nations, they were approached by CIA Director Allen Dulles and one of his top aides, Kermit Roosevelt, with offers of CIA covert planning and funding to topple the Egyptian leader whose radical rhetoric, inchoate though it was, was seen by the royal visitors as a threat to the very idea of monarchy. Nasser and other army officers had overthrown King Farouk of Egypt in 1952. Ironically, Kermit Roosevelt and the CIA have traditionally been given credit for somehow engineering this coup. However, it is by no means certain that they actually carried this out.12 “Abdul Illah,” wrote Eveland, “insisted on British participation in anything covert, but the Saudis had severed relations with Britain and refused. As a result, the CIA dealt separately with each: agreeing to fund King Saud’s part in a new area scheme to oppose Nasser and eliminate his influence in Syria; and to the same objective, coordinating in Beirut a covert working group composed of representatives of the British, Iraqi, Jordanian, and Lebanese intelligence services.”13 The conspiracy is next picked up in mid-spring at the home of Ghosn Zogby in Beirut. Zogby, of Lebanese ancestry, was the chief of the CIA Beirut station. He and Kermit Roosevelt, who was staying with him, hosted several conferences of the clandestine planners. “So obvious,” Eveland continued, “were their ‘covert’ gyrations, with British, Iraqi, Jordanian and Lebanese liaison personnel coming and going nightly, that the Egyptian ambassador in Lebanon was reportedly taking bets on when and where the next U.S. coup would take place.” At one of these meetings, the man from the British Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) informed the gathering that teams had been fielded to assassinate Nasser. Shortly afterwards, Eveland learned from a CIA official that John Foster Dulles, as well as his brother Allen, had directed Roosevelt to work with the British to bring down Nasser. Roosevelt now spoke in terms of a “palace revolution” in Egypt.14 From this point on we’re fishing in murky waters, for the events which followed produced more questions than answers. With the six countries named above, plus Turkey and Israel apparently getting in on the act, and less than complete trust and love existing amongst the various governments, a host of plots, sub-plots and side plots inevitably sprang to life; at times it bordered on low comedy, though some would call it no mote than normal Middle East “diplomacy”. Between July 1957 and October 1958, the Egyptian and Syrian governments and media announced the uncovering of what appear to be at least eight separate conspiracies to overthrow one or the other government, to assassinate Nasser, and/or prevent the expected merger of the two countries. Saudi Arabia, Iraq and the United States were most often named as conspirators, but from the entanglement of intrigue which surfaced it is virtually impossible to unravel the particular threads of the US role.15 Typical of the farcical goings-on, it seems that at least one of the plots to assassinate Nasser arose from the Dulles brothers taking Eisenhower’s remark that he hoped “the Nasser problem could be eliminated” to be an order for assassination, when the president, so the story goes, was merely referring to improved US-Egyptian relations. Upon realizing the error, Secretary Dulles ordered the operation to cease.16 (Three years later, Allen Dulles was again to “misinterpret” a remark by Eisenhower as an order to assassinate Patrice Lumumba of the Congo.) Official American pronouncements during this entire period would have had the world believe that the Soviet Union was the eminence grist behind the strife in Jordan, the “crisis” in Syria, and unrest generally in the Middle East; that the Soviet aim was to dominate the area, while the sole purpose of US policy was to repel this Soviet thrust and maintain the “independence” of the Arab nations. Yet, on three separate occasions during 1957—in February, April and September—the Soviet Union called for a fourpower (US, USSR, Great Britain and France) declaration renouncing the use of force and interference in the internal affairs of the Middle Eastern countries. The February appeal had additionally called for a four-power embargo on arms shipments to the region, withdrawal of all foreign troops, liquidation of all foreign bases, and a conference to reach a general Middle East settlement. The Soviet strategy was clearly to neutralize the Middle East, to remove the threat it had long felt from the potentially hostile control of the oil region by, traditionally, France and Great Britain, and now the United States, which sought to fill the “power vacuum” left by the decline of the two European nations as Middle East powers. History does not relate what a Middle East free from big-power manipulation would have been like, for neither France, Great Britain, nor the United States was amenable to even calling the Soviet “bluff”, if that was what it was. The New York Times summarized the attitude of the three Western nations to the first two overtures as one that “deprecated the Soviet proposals as efforts to gain recognition of a Soviet right to a direct voice in the affairs of the Middle East. They have told the Russians to take up their complaints through the United Nations.” Following the September proposal, John Foster Dulles, replying to a question at a press conference, said that “the United States is skeptical of these arrangements with the Soviet Union for ‘hands-off. What they are apt to mean is our hands off and their hands under the table.” This appears to be the only public comment the US government saw fit to make on the matter.17 It may be instructive to speculate upon the reaction of the Western nations if the Soviet Union had announced a “Khrushchev Doctrine”, ceding to itself the same scope of action in the Middle East as that stipulated in the Eisenhower Doctrine. In January 1958, Syria and Egypt announced their plans to unite, forming the new nation of the United Arab Republic (UAR). The initiative for the merger had come from Syria who was motivated in no small part by her fear of further American power plays against her. Ironically, under the merger arrangement, the Communist Party, already outlawed in Egypt, was dissolved in Syria, an objective which a year and a half of CIA covert activity had failed to achieve. Two weeks after the birth of the UAR, and in direct response to it, Iraq and Jordan formed the Arab Union, with the United States acting as midwife. This union was short lived, for in July a bloody coup in Iraq overthrew the monarchy, the new regime establishing a republic and promptly renouncing the pact. The trumpets of Armageddon could once more be heard distinctly in the Oval Office. “This somber turn of events,” wrote Eisenhower in his memoirs, “could, without vigorous response on our part, result in a complete elimination of Western influence in the Middle East.”18 Although the president would not be so crass as to mention a concern about oil, his anxiety attack was likely brought on by the fact that one of the greatest oil reserves in the world was now under rule of a government which might well prove to be not as pliable an ally as the previous regime, and too independent of Washington. The time for a mere show of force was over. The very next day, the marines, along with the American navy and air force, were sent in—not to Iraq, but to Lebanon. Of all the Arab states, Lebanon was easily the United States’ closest ally. She alone had supported the Eisenhower Doctrine with any enthusiasm or unequivocally echoed Washington’s panic about Syria. To be more precise, it was the president of Lebanon, Camille Chamoun, and the foreign minister, Charles Malik, a Harvard Ph.D. in philosophy, who had put all their cold-war eggs into the American basket. Chamoun had ample reason to be beholden to the United States. The CIA apparently played a role in his 1952 election,19 and in 1957 the Agency furnished generous sums of money to Chamoun to use in support of candidates in the Chamber of Deputies (Parliament) June elections who would back him and, presumably, US policies. Funds were also provided to specifically oppose, as punishment, those candidates who had resigned in protest over Chamoun’s adherence to the Eisenhower Doctrine. As is customary in such operations, the CIA sent an “election specialist” along with the money to Beirut to assist in the planning. American officials in Washington and Lebanon proceeded on the assumption, they told each other, that Egypt, Syria and Saudi Arabia would also intervene financially in the elections. The American ambassador to Lebanon, Donald Heath, argued as well, apparently without ironic intention, that “With both the president and the new chamber of deputies supporting American principles, we’d also have a demonstration that representative democracy could work” in the Middle East. To what extent the American funding helped, or even how the money was spent, is not known, but the result was a landslide for pro-government deputies; so much so, that it caused considerable protest within Lebanon, including the charge that Chamoun had stacked the parliament in order to amend the constitution to permit him to seek an otherwise prohibited second six-year term of office the following year.20 By late April 1958, tensions in Lebanon had reached bursting point. The inordinate pro-American orientation of Chamoun’s government and his refusal to dispel rumors that he would seek a second term incensed both Lebanese nationalists and advocates of the Arab nationalism, which Nasser was promoting throughout the Middle East. Demands were made that the government return to the strict neutrality provided for in the National Pact of 1943 at the time of Lebanon’s declaration of independence from France. A rash of militant demonstrations, bombings and clashes with police took place, and when, in early May, the editor of an anti-government newspaper was murdered, armed rebellion broke out in several parts of the country, and US Information Agency libraries in Tripoli and Beirut were sacked. Lebanon contained all the makings of a civil war. “Behind everything,” wrote Eisenhower, “was out deep-seated conviction that the Communists were principally responsible for the trouble and that President Chamoun was motivated only by a strong feeling of patriotism.” The president did not clarify who or what he meant by “Communists”. However, in the next paragraph he refers, without explanation, to the Soviet Union as “stirring up trouble” in the Middle East. And on the following page, the old soldier writes that “there was no doubt in our minds” about Chamoun’s charge that “Egypt and Syria had been instigating the revolt and arming the rebels”.21 In the midst of the fighting, John Foster Dulles announced that he perceived “international communism” as the source of the conflict and for the third time in a year the Sixth Fleet was dispatched to the eastern Mediterranean; police supplies to help quell rioters, as well as tanks and other heavy equipment, were airlifted to Lebanon. At a subsequent news conference, Dulles declared that even if international communism were not involved, the Eisenhower Doctrine was still applicable because one of its provisions stated that “the independence of these countries is vital to peace and the national interest of the United States.” “That is certainly a mandate,” he said, “to do something if we think that out peace and vital interests are endangered from any quarter.”22 Thus did one of the authors of the doctrine bestow upon himself a mandate. Egypt and Syria, from all accounts, supported the rebels’ cause with arms, men and money, in addition to inflammatory radio broadcasts from Cairo, although the extent of the material support is difficult to establish. A UN Observation Group went to Lebanon in June at the request of Foreign Minister Malik and reported that they found no evidence of UAR intervention of any significance. A second UN report in July confirmed this finding. It is open to question, however, what degree of reliance can be placed upon these reports, dealing as they do with so thorny an evaluation and issued by a body in the business of promoting compromise. In any event, the issue was whether the conflict in Lebanon represented a legitimate, home-grown civil war, or whether it was the doing of the proverbial “outside agitators”. On this point, historian Richard Barner has observed: No doubt the Observation Group did minimize the extent of UAR participation. But essentially they were correct. Nasser was trying to exploit the political turmoil in Lebanon, but he did not create it. Lebanon, which had always abounded in clandestine arsenals and arms markets, did not need foreign weapons for its domestic violence. Egyptian intervention was neither the stimulus nor the mainstay of the civil strife. Once again a government that had lost the power to rule effectively was blaming its failure on foreign agents.23 President Eisenhower—continuing his flip-flop thinking on the issue—wrote that it now seemed that Nasser “would be just as happy to see a temporary end to the struggle … and contacted our government and offered to attempt to use his influence toend the trouble.”24 Camille Chamoun had sacrificed Lebanon’s independence and neutrality on the altar of personal ambition and the extensive American aid that derived from subscribing to the Eisenhower Doctrine. Lebanese Muslims, who comprised most of Chamoun’s opposition, were also galled that the Christian president had once again placed the country outside the mainstream of the Arab world, as he had done in 1956 when he refused to break relations with France and Great Britain following their invasion of Egypt. Chamoun himself had admitted the significance of his pro-American alignment in a revealing comment to Wilbur Crane Eveland. Eveland writes that in late April, I’d suggested that he might ease tensions by making a statement renouncing a move for reelection. Chamoun had snorted and suggested that I look at the calendar: March 23 was a month behind us, and no amendment to permit another term could legally be passed after that date. Obviously, as he pointed out, the issue of the presidency was not the real issue; renunciation of the Eisenhower Doctrine was what his opponents wanted.25 Instead of renouncing the doctrine, Chamoun invoked it. Although scattered Chamoun had, by this time, already announced his intention to step down from office when his term expired in September. He was now concerned about American forces helping him to stay alive until that date, as well as their taking action against the rebels. For the previous two months, fear of assassination had kept him constantly inside the presidential palace, never so much as approaching a window. The murder of the Iraqi king and prime minister during the coup was not designed to make him feel more secure. The Eisenhower Doctrine was put into motion not only in the face of widespread opposition to it within Lebanon, but in disregard of the fact that, even by the doctrine’s own dubious provisions, the situation in Lebanon did not qualify: It could hardly be claimed that Lebanon had suffered “armed aggression from any country controlled by international communism”. If further evidence of this were needed, it was provided by veteran diplomat Robert Murphy who was sent to Lebanon by Eisenhower a few days after the US troops had landed. Murphy concluded, he later wrote, that “communism was playing no direct or substantial part in the insurrection”.26 Yet, Eisenhower could write that the American Government “was moving in accord with the provisions of the Middle East Resolution [Eisenhower Doctrine], but if the conflict expanded into something that the Resolution did not cover, I would, given time, go to the Congress for additional authorization”.27 Apparently the president did not place too much weight on John Foster Dulles having already determined that the Resolution’s mandate was open-ended. Thus it was that American military forces were dispatched to Lebanon. Some 70 naval vessels and hundreds of aircraft took part in the operation, many remaining as part of the visible American presence. By 25 July, the US forces on shore totaled at least 10,600. By August 13, their number came to 14,000, more than the entire Lebanese Army and gendarmerie combined.28 “In my [radio-TV] address,” wrote Eisenhower, “I had been careful to use the term ‘stationed in’ Lebanon rather than ‘invading’.”29 This was likely a distinction lost upon many Lebanese, both high and low, supporters of the rebels and supporters of the government, including government tank forces who were prepared to block the entrance into Beirut of US troops; only the last-minute intercession on the spot by the American ambassador may have averted an armed clash.30 At a meeting between Robert Murphy and Lebanese Commander-in-Chief General Faud Chehab—related by Eveland who was briefed by Murphy afterwards— the American diplomat was warned that the Lebanese people were “”restless, resentful, and determined that Chamoun should resign and U.S. troops leave at once. Otherwise the general could not be responsible for the consequences. For fifteen years his officers had acted behind his back; now, he feared, they might revolt and attack the American forces.” Murphy had listened patiently, Eveland relates, and then … escorted the general to a window overlooking the sea. Pointing to the supercarrier Saratoga, swinging at anchor on the horizon, the President’s envoy had quietly explained that just one of its aircraft, armed with nuclear weapons, could obliterate Beirut and its environs from the face of the earth. To this, Murphy quickly added that he’d been sent to be sure that it wouldn’t be necessary for American troops to fire a shot. Shehab [Chehab], he was certain, would ensure that there were no provocations on the Lebanese side. That, Murphy told me, ended the conversation. It now seemed that the general had “regained control” of his troops.31 None of the parties seem to have considered what would have been the fate of the thousands of American military personnel in a Beirut obliterated from the face of the earth. Civil warfare in Lebanon increased in intensity in the two weeks following the American intervention. During this period, CIA transmitters in the Middle East were occupied in sending out propaganda broadcasts of disguised origin, a tactic frequently employed by the Agency. In the case of one broadcast which has been reported, the apparent aim was to deflect anti-US feelings onto the Soviet Union and other targets. But the residents of the Middle East were not the only ones who may have been taken in by the spurious broadcast, for it was picked up by the American press and passed on to an unwitting American public; the following appeared in US newspapers: BEIRUT, July 23 (UPI)—A second mysterious Arab radio station went on the air yesterday calling itself the “Voice of Justice” and claiming to be broadcasting from Syria. Its program heard here consisted of bitter criticism against Soviet Russia and Soviet Premier Khrushchev. Earlier the “Voice of Iraq” went on the air with attacks against the Iraqi revolutionary government. The “Voice of Justice” called Khrushchev the “hangman of Hungary”and warned the people of the Middle East they would suffer the same fate as the Hungarians if the Russians got a foothold in the Middle East.32 On 31 July, the Chamber of Deputies easily chose General Chehab to succeed Chamoun as president in September, an event that soon put a damper on the fighting in Lebanon and marked the beginning of the end of the conflict which, in the final analysis, appears to have been more a violent protest than a civil war. Tension was further eased by the US announcement shortly afterwards of its intention to withdraw a Marine battalion as a prelude to a general withdrawal. The last American troops left Lebanon in late October without having fired a shot in anger. What had their presence accomplished? The authors of the Pentagon study referred to earlier concluded that “A balanced assessment of U.S. behavior in the Lebanon crisis is made difficult by the suspicion that the outcome might have been much the same if the United States had done nothing. Even Eisenhower expressed some doubt on this score.”33 American intervention against the new Iraqi government was more covert. A secret plan for a joint US-Turkish invasion of the country, code-named Operation CANNON-BONE, was drafted by the US joint Chiefs of Staff shortly after the coup in 1958. Reportedly, only Soviet threats to intercede on Iraq’s side forced Washington to hold back. But in 1960, the United States began to fund the Kurdish guerrillas in Iraq who were fighting for a measure of autonomy.34 At the same time, the Iraqis, under Brig. General Abdul Karim Kassem, started to work towards the creation of an international organization to counter the power of the Western oil monopolies. This was to become OPEC, and was not received with joy in certain Western quarters. In February 1960, the Near East Division of the CIA’s clandestine services requested that the Agency find a way to “incapacitate” Kassem for “promoting Soviet bloc political interests in Iraq”. “We do not consciously seek subject’s permanent removal from the scene,” said the Near East Division. “We also do not object should this complication develop.” As matters turned out, the CIA mailed a monogrammed handkerchief containing an “incapacitating agent” to Kassem from an Asian country. If the Iraqi leader did in fact receive it, it certainly didn’t kill him. That was left to his own countrymen who executed him three years later.35 The significance of the Lebanese intervention, as well as the shows of force employed in regard to Jordan and Syria, extended beyond the immediate outcomes. In the period before and after the intervention, Eisenhower, Dulles and other Washington officials offered numerous different justifications for the American military action in Lebanon: protecting American lives; protecting American property; the Eisenhower Doctrine, with various interpretations; Lebanese sovereignty, integrity, independence, etc.; US national interest; world peace; collective self-defense; justice; international law; law and order; fighting “Nasserism” … the need to “do something” …36 In summing up the affair in his memoirs, president Eisenhower seemed to settle upon one rationale in particular, and this is probably the closest to the truth of the matter. This was to put the world—and specifically the Soviet Union and Nasser—on notice that the United States had virtually unlimited power, that this power could be transported to any corner of the world with great speed, that it could and would be used to deal decisively with any situation with which the United States was dissatisfied, for whatever reason.37 At the same time, it was a message to the British and the French that there was only one Western superpower in the post-war world, and that their days and that their days as great powers in the Lands of Oil were over.
by William Blum “Killing Hope”
On 9 March 1957, the United States Congress approved a presidential resolution which came to be known as the Eisenhower Doctrine. This was a piece of paper, like the Truman Doctrine and the Monroe Doctrine before it, whereby the US government conferred upon the US government the remarkable and enviable right to intervene militarily in other countries. With the stroke of a pen, the Middle East was added to Europe and the Western hemisphere as America’s field of play.
fighting, at times heavy, was continuing in Lebanon, it was the coup in Iraq on 14 July that tipped the scales in favor of Chamoun making the formal request for military assistance and the United States immediately granting it. A CIA report of a plot against King Hussein of Jordan at about the same time heightened even further Washington’s seemingly unceasing sense of urgency about the Middle East.
Washington and Syria ~ 1956-1957
“Neutrality,” proclaimed John Foster Dulles in 1956, “has increasingly become an obsolete conception, and, except under very exceptional circumstances, it is an immoral and shortsighted conception.”1 The short-sightedness of the neutralist government lay perhaps in its inability to perceive that its neutralism would lead to John Foster Dulles attempting to overthrow it. Syria was not behaving like Washington thought a Third World government should. For one thing, it was the only state in the area to refuse all US economic or military assistance. Damascus did not much care for the strings which came attached— the acceptance of military aid usually meant the presence of American military advisers and technicians; furthermore, the US Mutual Security Act of 1955 specified that the recipient country agree to make a contribution to “the defensive strength of the free world”, and declared it US policy “to encourage the efforts of other free nations … to foster private initiative and competition [i.e., capitalism].”2 Another difficulty posed by Syria was that, although its governments of recent years had been more or less conservative and had refrained from unpleasant leftist habits like nationalizing American-owned companies, US officials—suffering from what might be called anti-communist paranoia or being victims of their own propaganda—consistently saw the most ominous handwritings on the walls. To appreciate this, one has to read some of the formerly-secret-now-declassified documents of the National Security Council (NSC), based in part on reports received from the American embassy in Damascus during 1955 and 1956 … “If the popular leftward trend in Syria continues over any considerable period, there is a real danger that Syria will fall completely under left-wing control either by coup or usurpation of authority” … “the fundamental anti-US and anti-West orientation of the Syrians is stimulated by inevitable political histrionics about the Palestine problem” … “Four successive short-lived governments in Syria have permitted continuous and increasing Communist activities” … “the Communists support the leftist cliques [in] the army” … “apathy towards Communism on the part of politicians and army officers” is a threat to security … “the Arab Socialist Resurrectionist Party (ASRP)” and “the Communist Party of Syria are capable of bringing about further deterioration of Syrian internal security” … danger of ASRP “coup d’etat” and “increased Communist penetration of government and army” … “Of all the Arab states. Syria is at the present time the most wholeheartedly devoted to a neutralist policy with strong anti-Western overtones” … “If the present trend continues there is a strong possibility that a Communist-dominated Syria will result, threatening the peace and stability of the area and endangering the achievement of out objectives in the Near East” … we “should give priority consideration to developing courses of action in the Neat East designed to affect the situation in Syria and to recommending specific steps to combat communist subversion” …3 It would appear that the idea of military men who were leftist and/or apathetic to communists must truly have been an incongruous phenomenon to the American official mind. But nowhere in any of the documents is there mention of the leftists/Communists/ASRP having in fact done anything illegal or wicked, although the language employed is similar to what we saw in the Guatemala chapter: These people don’t join anything, they “infiltrate”, they “penetrate”; they “control”, they’re “opportunistic”. In actuality, the behavior described is like that of other political animals: trying to influence key sectors of the society and win allies. But to the men holding positions of responsibility in the National Security Council and the State Department, the evil intent and danger of such people was so self-evident as not to require articulation. There is one exception, perhaps expressed to explain away an uncomfortable observation: In fact, the Communist Party does not appear to have as its immediate objective seizure of power. Rather it seeks to destroy national unity, Co strengthen support for Soviet policies and opposition to Western policies and to exacerbate tensions in the Arab world. It has made significant progress coward these objectives.4 There is no indication of what the author had in mind by “national unity”. A leftist-oriented or communist-dominated Syrian government, reasoned the US ambassador to Syria, James Moose, Jr., would clearly threaten American interests in neighboring Turkey, which, in turn, could outflank all the states of the NATO alliance, and so forth and so on.5 It was clear that since the Syrian government could not be relied upon to do anything about this major impending disaster, something would have to be done about the Syrian government. To this we add the usual Middle-Eastern intrigue: in this case, Iraq plotting with the British to topple the governments in both Syria and Nasser’s Egypt; the British pressuring the Americans to join the conspiracy;6 and the CIA compromising—leave Nasser alone, at least for the time being, and we’ll do something about Syria.7 An implausible scenario, scandalous, but in the time-honored tradition of the Middle East. The British were old hands at it. Dulles and the Americans, still exulting in their king-making in Iran, were looking to further remake the oil region in their own image. Wilbur Crane Eveland was a staff member of the National Security Council, the high-level inter-agency group in Washington which, in theory, monitors and controls CIA clandestine activities. Because of Eveland’s background and experience in the Middle East, the CIA had asked that he be lent to the Agency for a series of assignments there. Archibald Roosevelt was, like his cousin Kermit Roosevelt, a highly-placed official of the CIA; both were grandsons of Teddy. Kermit had masterminded the overthrow of the Iranian government in 1953. Archie had fond hopes of doing the same in Syria. Michail Bey Ilyan had once served as Syria’s foreign minister. In 1956 he was the leader of the conservative Populist Party. At a meeting of these three men in Damascus, Syria on 1 July 1956, as described by Eveland in his memoirs, Roosevelt asked Ilyan “what would be needed to give the Syrian conservatives enough control to purge the communists and their leftist sympathizers. Ilyan responded by ticking off names and places: the radio stations in Damascus and Aleppo; a few key senior officers; and enough money to buy newspapers now in Egyptian and Saudi hands.” “Roosevelt probed further. Could these things, he asked Ilyan, be done with U.S. money and assets alone, with no other Western or Near Eastern country involved?” “Without question, Ilyan replied, nodding gravely.” On 26 July, Egyptian President Gamal Abdul Nasser announced that his government was taking over the operation of the Suez Canal. The reaction of the Britishand French was swift and inflamed. The United States was less openly hostile, though it was critical and Egyptian government funds in the US were frozen. This unexpected incident put a crimp in the CIA’s plans, for—as Ilyan explained to Eveland in despair— Nasser was now the hero of the Arab world, and collaboration with any Western power to overthrow an Arab government was politically indefensible. Eventually the coup was scheduled for 25 October. The logistics, as outlined by Ilyan, called for senior colonels in the Syrian army to: take control of Damascus, Aleppo, Homs, and Hamah. The frontier posts with Jordan, Iraq, and Lebanon would also be captured in order to seal Syria’s borders until the radio stations announced that a new government had taken over under Colonel Kabbani, who would place armored units at key positions throughout Damascus. Once control had been established, Ilyan would inform the civilians he’d selected that they were to form a new government, but in order to avoid leaks none of them would be told until just a week before the coup. For this operation, money would have to change hands. Ilyan asked for and received half a million Syrian pounds (approximately $167,000). The Syrian further stipulated that to guarantee their participation the Syrian plotters would require assurance from the highest level of the American government that the US would both back the coup and immediately grant recognition to the new government. This, Ilyan explained, could be communicated as follows: in April, President Eisenhower had said that the United States would oppose aggression in the Middle East, hut not without congressional approval. Could the president repeat this statement, in light of the Suez crisis, he asked, on a specified date when Ilyan’s colleagues would be told to expect it? Eisenhower’s words would provide the guarantees they were seeking. An affirmative reply to Ilyan’s plan arrived in Damascus from Washington the next day. A proper occasion for the requested statement would have to be found and Secretary Dulles would be the one to use it. The scheme was for Dulles to make public reference to Eisenhower’s statement between 16 and 18 October, thus giving Ilyan the week he needed to assemble his civilian team. Before long, John Foster Dulles held a press conference. In light of recent Israeli attacks on Jordan, one of the reporters present asked whether the United States might come to Jordan’s aid per “our declaration of April 9″. Yes, replied the Secretary of State, repeating the reference to the April statement. The date was 16 October. But following close on the heels of this was a message from Ilyan in Damascus to Eveland in Beirut postponing the date of the coup for five days to 30 October because Colonel Kabbani had told Ilyan that his people weren’t quite ready. The postponement was crucial. Early in the morning of the 30th, a very distraught Michail Ilyan appeared at Eveland’s door. “Last night,” he cried, “the Israelis invaded Egypt and are right now heading for the Suez Canal! How could you have asked us to overthrow our government at the exact moment when Israel started a war with an Arab state?”8 The leftist-trend-in-Syria bell continued to ring in Washington. In January 1957, wrote President Eisenhower later, CIA Director Alien Dulles “submitted reports indicating that the new Syrian Cabinet was oriented to the left”.9 Two months later, Dulles prepared a “Situation Report on Syria” in which he wrote of an “increasing trend toward a decidedly leftist, pro-Soviet government”. Dulles was concerned with “organized leftist officers belonging to the Arab Socialist Resurrection Party”.10 That same month, a State Department internal document stated: The British are believed to favor active stimulation of a change in the present regime in Syria, in an effort to assure a pro-Western orientation on the part of future Syrian governments. … The United States shares the concern of the British Government over the situation in Syria.11 Then, in June, an internal Department of Defense memorandum spoke of a possible “leftist coup”. This was to be carried out, according to the memo, against “the leftist Syrian Government”.12 Thus it was that in Beirut and Damascus, CIA officers were trying their hands again at stage-managing a Syrian coup. On this occasion, Kermit Roosevelt, rather than cousin Archibald, was pulling the strings. He arranged for one Howard (“Rocky”!) Stone to be transferred to Damascus from the Sudan to be sure that the “engineering” was done by a “pro”. Stone was, at thirty-two, already a legend in the CIA’s clandestine service as the man who had helped Kim Roosevelt overthrow the Iranian government four years earlier, though what Stone’s precise contribution was has remained obscure. The proposed beneficiary of this particular plot was to be Adib Shishakly, former right-wing dictator of Syria, living covertly in Lebanon. Shishakly’s former chief of security, Colonel Ibrahim Husseini, now Syrian military attache in Rome, was secretly slipped into Lebanon under cover of a CIA-fabricated passport. Husseini was then to be smuggled across the Syrian border in the trunk of a US diplomatic car in order to meet with key Syrian CIA agents and provide assurances that Shishakly would come back to rule once Syria’s government had been overthrown. But the coup was exposed before it ever got off the ground. Syrian army officers who had been assigned major roles in the operation walked into the office of Syria’s head of intelligence, Colonel Sarraj, turned in their bribe money and named the CIA officers who had paid them. Lieut. Col. Robert Molloy, the American army attache, Francis Jeton, a career CIA officer, officially Vice Consul at the US Embassy, and the legendary Howard Stone, with the title of Second Secretary for Political Affairs, were all declared personae -non gratae and expelled from the country in August. Col. Molloy was determined to leave Syria in style. As his car approached the Lebanese border, he ran his Syrian motorcycle escort off the road and shouted to the fallen rider that “Colonel Sarraj and his commie friends” should be told that Molloy would “beat the shit out of them with one hand tied behind his back if they ever crossed his path again.” The Syrian government announcement which accompanied the expulsion order stated that Stone had first made contact with the outlawed Social Nationalist Party and then with the army officers. When the officers reported the plot, they were told to continue their contacts with the Americans and later met Shishakly and Husseini at the homes of US Embassy staff members. Husseini reportedly told the officers that the United States was prepared to give a new Syrian government between 300 and 400 million dollars in aid if the government would make peace with Israel. An amusing aside to the affair occurred when the Syrian Defense Minister and the Syrian Ambassador to Italy disputed the claim that Husseini had anything to do with the plot. The Ambassador pointed out that Husseini had not been in Syria since 20 July and his passport showed no indication that he had been out of Italy since that time. The State Department categorized the Syrian charge as “complete fabrications” and retaliated by expelling the Syrian ambassador and a Second Secretary and recalling the American ambassador from Syria. It marked the first time since 1915 that the United States had expelled a chief of mission of a foreign country.13 In the wake of the controversy, the New York Times reported that: There are numerous theories about why the Syrians struck at the United States. One is that they acted at the instigation of the Soviet Union. Another is that the Government manufactured an anti-U.S. spy story to distrait public attention from the significance of Syria’s negotiations with Moscow.14 In the same issue, a Times editorial speculated upon other plausible-sounding explanations.15 Neither in its news report nor in its editorial did the New York Times seem to consider even the possibility that the Syrian accusation might be true. President Eisenhower, recalling the incident in his memoirs, offered no denial to the accusation. His sole comment on the expulsions was: “The entire action was shrouded in mystery but the suspicion was strong that the Communists had taken control of the government. Moreover, we had fresh reports that arms were being sent into Syria from the Soviet bloc.”16 Syria’s neutralism/” leftism” continued to obsess the United States. Five years later, when John F. Kennedy was in the White House, he met with British Prime Minister Macmillan and the two leaders agreed, according to a CIA report, on “Penetration and cultivation of disruptive elements in the Syrian armed forces, particularly in the Syrian army, so that Syria can be guided by the West.”17 Decades later, Washington was still worried, though Syria had still not “gone communist”. ***************
weather events took out internet giving me time to study some history, which is a good thing. the present can always be understood better by studying the past …. found this jewel of excerpt from“Killing Hope” by William Blum
Purchasing a New Government
Killing Hope PDF Here … lots more info
What Really Happened in the “Yom Kippur” War?
side note from me after reading this: have been digging for why Egypt decided to attack, and now I know why, it was set up. this is same time frame of the attack on USS Liberty (a two hour long attack, where US Govt turned help for ship back around and were told to stand down, like Benghazi). this, in my opinion, is when US really started militarizing Israel as beachhead in ME, and in return for the favor Israel government wants to run USA.
What Really Happened in the “Yom Kippur” War?
Moscow
Here in Moscow I recently received a dark-blue folder dated 1975. It contains one of the most well-buried secrets of Middle Eastern and of US diplomacy. The secret file, written by the Soviet Ambassador in Cairo, Vladimir M. Vinogradov, apparently a draft for a memorandum addressed to the Soviet politbureau, describes the 1973 October War as a collusive enterprise between US, Egyptian and Israeli leaders, orchestrated by Henry Kissinger. If you are an Egyptian reader this revelation is likely to upset you. I, an Israeli who fought the Egyptians in the 1973 war, was equally upset and distressed, – yet still excited by the discovery. For an American it is likely to come as a shock.
According to the Vinogradov memo (to be published by us in full in the Russian weekly Expert next Monday), Anwar al-Sadat, holder of the titles of President, Prime Minister, ASU Chairman, Chief Commander, Supreme Military Ruler, entered into conspiracy with the Israelis, betrayed his ally Syria, condemned the Syrian army to destruction and Damascus to bombardment, allowed General Sharon’s tanks to cross without hindrance to the western bank of the Suez Canal, and actually planned a defeat of the Egyptian troops in the October War. Egyptian soldiers and officers bravely and successfully fought the Israeli enemy – too successfully for Sadat’s liking as he began the war in order to allow for the US comeback to the Middle East.
He was not the only conspirator: according to Vinogradov, the grandmotherly Golda Meir knowingly sacrificed two thousand of Israel’s best fighters – she possibly thought fewer would be killed — in order to give Sadat his moment of glory and to let the US secure its positions in the Middle East. The memo allows for a completely new interpretation of the Camp David Treaty, as one achieved by deceit and treachery.
Vladimir Vinogradov was a prominent and brilliant Soviet diplomat; he served as ambassador to Tokyo in the 1960s, to Cairo from 1970 to 1974, co-chairman of the Geneva Peace Conference, ambassador to Teheran during the Islamic revolution, the USSR Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs and the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation. He was a gifted painter and a prolific writer; his archive has hundreds of pages of unique observations and notes covering international affairs, but the place of honor goes to his Cairo diaries, and among others, descriptions of his hundreds of meetings with Sadat and the full sequence of the war as he observed it unfold at Sadat’s hq as the big decisions were made. When published, these notes will allow to re-evaluate the post-Nasser period of Egyptian history.
Vinogradov arrived to Cairo for Nasser’s funeral and remained there as the Ambassador.
three year war
He recorded the creeping coup of Sadat, least bright of Nasser’s men, who became Egypt’s president by chance, as he was the vice-president at Nasser’s death. Soon he dismissed, purged and imprisoned practically all important Egyptian politicians, the comrades-in-arms of Gamal Abd el Nasser, and dismantled the edifice of Nasser’s socialism.
Vinogradov was an astute observer; not a conspiracy cuckoo. Far from being headstrong and doctrinaire, he was a friend of Arabs and a consistent supporter and promoter of a lasting and just peace between the Arabs and Israel, a peace that would meet Palestinian needs and ensure Jewish prosperity.
The pearl of his archive is the file called The Middle Eastern Games. It contains some 20 typewritten pages edited by hand in blue ink, apparently a draft for a memo to the Politburo and to the government, dated January 1975, soon after his return from Cairo. The file contains the deadly secret of the collusion he observed. It is written in lively and highly readable Russian, not in the bureaucratese we’d expect.
Two pages are added to the file in May 1975; they describe Vinogradov’s visit to Amman and his informal talks with Abu Zeid Rifai, the Prime Minister, and his exchange of views with the Soviet Ambassador in Damascus. Vinogradov did not voice his opinions until 1998, and even then he did not speak as openly as in this draft. Actually, when the suggestion of collusion was presented to him by the Jordanian prime minister, being a prudent diplomat, he refused to discuss it.
The official version of the October war holds that on October 6, 1973, in conjunction with Hafez al-Assad of Syria, Anwar as-Sadat launched a surprise attack against Israeli forces.
They crossed the Canal and advanced a few miles into the occupied Sinai. As the war progressed, tanks of General Ariel Sharon crossed the Suez Canal and encircled the Egyptian Third Army.
The ceasefire negotiations eventually led to the handshake at the White House.
For me, the Yom Kippur War (as we called it) was an important part of my autobiography. A young paratrooper, I fought that war, crossed the canal, seized Gabal Ataka heights, survived shelling and face-to-face battles, buried my buddies, shot the man-eating red dogs of the desert and the enemy tanks. My unit was ferried by helicopters into the desert where we severed the main communication line between the Egyptian armies and its home base, the Suez-Cairo highway. Our location at 101 km to Cairo was used for the first cease fire talks; so I know that war not by word of mouth, and it hurts to learn that I and my comrades-at-arms were just disposable tokens in the ruthless game we – ordinary people – lost. Obviously I did not know it then, for me the war was a surprise, but then, I was not a general.
Vinogradov dispels the idea of surprise: in his view, both the canal crossing by the Egyptians and the inroads by Sharon were planned and agreed upon in advance by Kissinger, Sadat and Meir. The plan included the destruction of the Syrian army as well.
At first, he asks some questions:
“how the crossing could be a surprise if the Russians evacuated their families a few days before the war? The concentration of the forces was observable and could not escape Israeli attention. Why did the Egyptian forces not proceed after the crossing but stood still? Why did they have no plans for advancing? Why there was a forty km-wide unguarded gap between the 2d and the 3d armies, the gap that invited Sharon’s raid? How could Israeli tanks sneak to the western bank of the Canal? Why did Sadat refuse to stop them? Why were there no reserve forces on the western bank of the Canal?”
Vinogradov takes a leaf from Sherlock Holmes who said: when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth. He writes:
“These questions can’t be answered if Sadat is to be considered a true patriot of Egypt. But they can be answered in full, if we consider a possibility of collusion between Sadat, the US and Israeli leadership – a conspiracy in which each participant pursued his own goals. A conspiracy in which each participant did not know the full details of other participants’ game. A conspiracy in which each participant tried to gain more ground despite the overall agreement between them.”
Sadat’s Plans
Before the war Sadat was at the nadir of his power: in Egypt and abroad he had lost prestige. The least educated and least charismatic of Nasser’s followers, Sadat was isolated. He needed a war, a limited war with Israel that would not end with defeat. Such a war would release the pressure in the army and he would regain his authority. The US agreed to give him a green light for the war, something the Russians never did. The Russians protected Egypt’s skies, but they were against wars. For that, Sadat had to rely upon the US and part with the USSR. He was ready to do so as he loathed socialism.
He did not need victory, just no defeat; he wanted to explain his failure to win by deficient Soviet equipment. That is why the army was given the minimal task: crossing the Canal and hold the bridgehead until the Americans entered the game.
Plans of the US
During decolonisation the US lost strategic ground in the Middle East with its oil, its Suez Canal, its vast population. Its ally Israel had to be supported, but the Arabs were growing stronger all the time. Israel had to be made more flexible, for its brutal policies interfered with the US plans. So the US had to keep Israel as its ally but at the same time Israel’s arrogance had to be broken. The US needed a chance to “save” Israel after allowing the Arabs to beat the Israelis for a while. So the US allowed Sadat to begin a limited war.
Israel
Israel’s leaders had to help the US, its main provider and supporter. The US needed to improve its positions in the Middle East, as in 1973 they had only one friend and ally, King Feisal. (Kissinger told Vinogradov that Feisal tried to educate him about the evilness of Jews and Communists.) If and when the US was to recover its position in the Middle East, the Israeli position would improve drastically. Egypt was a weak link, as Sadat disliked the USSR and the progressive forces in the country, so it could be turned. Syria could be dealt with militarily, and broken.
The Israelis and Americans decided to let Sadat take the Canal while holding the mountain passes of Mittla and Giddi, a better defensive line anyway. This was actually Rogers’ plan of 1971, acceptable to Israel. But this should be done in fighting, not given up for free.
As for Syria, it was to be militarily defeated, thoroughly. That is why the Israeli Staff did sent all its available troops to the Syrian border, while denuding the Canal though the Egyptian army was much bigger than the Syrian one. Israeli troops at the Canal were to be sacrificed in this game; they were to die in order to bring the US back into the Middle East.
However, the plans of the three partners were somewhat derailed by the factors on the ground: it is the usual problem with conspiracies; nothing works as it should, Vinogradov writes in his memo to be published in full next week in Moscow’s Expert.
Sadat’s crooked game was spoiled to start with. His presumptions did not work out. Contrary to his expectations, the USSR supported the Arab side and began a massive airlift of its most modern military equipment right away. The USSR took the risk of confrontation with the US; Sadat had not believed they would because the Soviets were adamant against the war, before it started. His second problem, according to Vinogradov, was the superior quality of Russian weapons in the hands of Egyptian soldiers — better than the western weapons in the Israelis’ hands.
As an Israeli soldier of the time I must confirm the Ambassador’s words. The Egyptians had the legendary Kalashnikov AK-47 assault rifles, the best gun in the world, while we had FN battle rifles that hated sand and water. We dropped our FNs and picked up their AKs at the first opportunity. They used anti-tank Sagger missiles, light, portable, precise, carried by one soldier. Saggers killed between 800 and 1200 Israeli tanks. We had old 105 mm recoilless jeep-mounted rifles, four men at a rifle (actually, a small cannon) to fight tanks. Only new American weapons redressed the imbalance.
Sadat did not expect the Egyptian troops taught by the Soviet specialists to better their Israeli enemy – but they did.
They crossed the Canal much faster than planned and with much smaller losses.
Arabs beating the Israelis – it was bad news for Sadat. He overplayed his hand. That is why the Egyptian troops stood still, like the sun upon Gibeon, and did not move. They waited for the Israelis, but at that time the Israeli army was fighting the Syrians. The Israelis felt somewhat safe from Sadat’s side and they sent all their army north. The Syrian army took the entire punch of Israeli forces and began its retreat. They asked Sadat to move forward, to take some of the heat off them, but Sadat refused. His army stood and did not move, though there were no Israelis between the Canal and the mountain passes.
Syrian leader al Assad was convinced at that time that Sadat betrayed him, and he said so frankly to the Soviet ambassador in Damascus, Mr Muhitdinov, who passed this to Vinogradov. Vinogradov saw Sadat daily and asked him in real time why he was not advancing. He received no reasonable answer: Sadat muttered that he does not want to run all over Sinai looking for Israelis, that sooner or later they would come to him.
The Israeli leadership was worried: the war was not going as expected. There were big losses on the Syrian front, the Syrians retreated but each yard was hard fought; only Sadat’s passivity saved the Israelis from a reverse. The plan to for total Syrian defeat failed, but the Syrians could not effectively counterattack.
This was the time to punish Sadat: his army was too efficient, his advance too fast, and worse, his reliance upon the Soviets only grew due to the air bridge. The Israelis arrested their advance on Damascus and turned their troops southwards to Sinai.
The Jordanians could at this time have cut off the North-to-South route and king Hussein proposed this to Sadat and Assad. Assad agreed immediately, but Sadat refused to accept the offer. He explained it to Vinogradov that he did not believe in the fighting abilities of the Jordanians. If they entered the war, Egypt would have to save them. At other times he said that it is better to lose the whole of Sinai than to lose a square yard on the Jordan: an insincere and foolish remark, in Vinogradov’s view. So the Israeli troops rolled southwards without hindrance.
During the war, we (the Israelis) also knew that if Sadat advanced, he would gain the whole of Sinai in no time; we entertained many hypotheses why he was standing still, none satisfactory. Vinogradov explains it well: Sadat ran off his script and was waited for US involvement. What he got was the deep raid of Sharon.
This breakthrough of the Israeli troops to the western bank of the Canal was the murkiest part of the war, Vinogradov writes. He asked Sadat’s military commanders at the beginning of the war why there is the forty km wide gap between the Second and the Third armies and was told that this was Sadat’s directive. The gap was not even guarded; it was left wide open like a Trojan backdoor in a computer program.
Sadat paid no attention to Sharon’s raid; he was indifferent to this dramatic development. Vinogradov asked him to deal with it when only the first five Israeli tanks crossed the Canal westwards; Sadat refused, saying it was of no military importance, just a “political move”, whatever that meant. He repeated this to Vinogradov later, when the Israeli foothold on the Western bank of became a sizeable bridgehead. Sadat did not listen to advice from Moscow, he opened the door for the Israelis into Africa.
This allows for two explanations, says Vinogradov: an impossible one, of the Egyptians’ total military ignorance and an improbable one, of Sadat’s intentions. The improbable wins, as Sherlock Holmes observed.
The Americans did not stop the Israeli advance right away, says Vinogradov, for they wanted to have a lever to push Sadat so he would not change his mind about the whole setup. Apparently the gap was build into the deployments for this purpose. So Vinogradov’s idea of “conspiracy” is that of dynamic collusion, similar to the collusion on Jordan between the Jewish Yishuv and Transjordan as described by Avi Shlaim: there were some guidelines and agreements, but they were liable to change, depending on the strength of the sides.
Bottom line
The US “saved” Egypt by stopping the advancing Israeli troops. With the passive support of Sadat, the US allowed Israel to hit Syria really hard.
The US-negotiated disengagement agreements with the UN troops in-between made Israel safe for years to come
(In a different and important document, “Notes on Heikal’s book Road to Ramadan”, Vinogradov rejects the thesis of the unavoidability of Israeli-Arab wars: he says that as long as Egypt remains in the US thrall, such a war is unlikely. Indeed there have been no big wars since 1974, unless one counts Israeli “operations” in Lebanon and Gaza.)
The US “saved” Israel with military supplies.
Thanks to Sadat, the US came back to the Middle East and positioned itself as the only mediator and “honest broker” in the area.
Sadat began a violent anti-Soviet and antisocialist campaign, Vinogradov writes, trying to discredit the USSR. In the Notes, Vinogradov charges that Sadat spread many lies and disinformation to discredit the USSR in the Arab eyes.
His main line was:
“the USSR could not and would not liberate Arab soil while the US could, would and did.”
Vinogradov explained elsewhere that the Soviet Union was and is against offensive wars, among other reasons because their end is never certain.
However, the USSR was ready to go a long way to defend Arab states. As for liberation, the years since 1973 have proved that the US can’t or won’t deliver that, either – while the return of Sinai to Egypt in exchange for separate peace was always possible, without a war as well.
After the war, Sadat’s positions improved drastically. He was hailed as hero, Egypt took a place of honor among the Arab states. But in a year, Sadat’s reputation was in tatters again, and that of Egypt went to an all time low, Vinogradov writes.
The Syrians understood Sadat’s game very early: on October 12, 1973 when the Egyptian troops stood still and ceased fighting, President Hafez el Assad said to the Soviet ambassador that he is certain Sadat was intentionally betraying Syria. Sadat deliberately allowed the Israeli breakthrough to the Western bank of Suez, in order to give Kissinger a chance to intervene and realise his disengagement plan, said Assad to Jordanian Prime Minister Abu Zeid Rifai who told it to Vinogradov during a private breakfast they had in his house in Amman. The Jordanians also suspect Sadat played a crooked game, Vinogradov writes. However, the prudent Vinogradov refused to be drawn into this discussion though he felt that the Jordanians “read his thoughts.”
When Vinogradov was appointed co-chairman of the Geneva Peace Conference, he encountered a united Egyptian-American position aiming to disrupt the conference, while Assad refused even to take part in it.
Vinogradov delivered him a position paper for the conference and asked whether it is acceptable for Syria. Assad replied: yes but for one line. Which one line, asked a hopeful Vinogradov, and Assad retorted:
“the line saying “Syria agrees to participate in the conference.”
Indeed the conference came to nought, as did all other conferences and arrangements.
Though the suspicions voiced by Vinogradov in his secret document have been made by various military experts and historians, never until now they were made by a participant in the events, a person of such exalted position, knowledge, presence at key moments. Vinogradov’s notes allow us to decipher and trace the history of Egypt with its de-industrialisation, poverty, internal conflicts, military rule tightly connected with the phony war of 1973.
A few years after the war, Sadat was assassinated, and his hand-picked follower Hosni Mubarak began his long rule, followed by another participant of the October War, Gen Tantawi.
Achieved by lies and treason, the Camp David Peace treaty still guards Israeli and American interests. Only now, as the post-Camp David regime in Egypt is on the verge of collapse, one may hope for change. Sadat’s name in the pantheon of Egyptian heroes was safe until now. In the end, all that is hidden will be made transparent.
Postscript. In 1975, Vinogradov could not predict that the 1973 war and subsequent treaties would change the world. They sealed the fate of the Soviet presence and eminence in the Arab world, though the last vestiges were destroyed by American might much later: in Iraq in 2003 and in Syria they are being undermined now. They undermined the cause of socialism in the world, which began its long fall. The USSR, the most successful state of 1972, an almost-winner of the Cold war, eventually lost it. Thanks to the American takeover of Egypt, petrodollar schemes were formed, and the dollar that began its decline in 1971 by losing its gold standard – recovered and became again a full-fledged world reserve currency. The oil of the Saudis and of sheikdoms being sold for dollars became the new lifeline for the American empire.
Looking back, armed now with the Vinogradov Papers, we can confidently mark 1973-74 as a decisive turning point in our history.
ISRAEL SHAMIR has been sending dispatches to CounterPunch from Moscow.
*************
Related …..
A veteran of the October 1973 “Yom Kippur” war (“Harb Ramadan”), Henry Lowi ~ Sharon – the End of an Era?
Israel’s Coming “Civil War”: The Haredi Jews Confront the Militarized Secular Zionist State
Haredim and the Zionist Colonial State Even before the forcible imposition (‘founding’) of the state of Israel , the Haredim were opposed to Zionism. Today the vast majority of Haredim in Israel remain staunchly opposed to the Zionist state for religious, ethical and political reasons. Haredi religious teaching claims that the Jewish people are bound by three oaths: (1) not to settle in Israel by using force or violence, (2) not to make war with other nations and (3) not to act as if the other nations of the world would persecute Israel . Haredim opposed Israel ’s violent ethnic cleaning of over 850,000 Palestinians in the course of establishing the Israeli State and continues to oppose Israeli settlers’ violently land grabs against Palestinians. Unlike other so-called ‘ultra-Orthodox’ sects, who support Zionist colonialism and bless the Israeli military, the Haredim maintain that militarism corrupts the spirit and that Zionists have transformed Jews from righteous followers of the Torah into rabid ethnocentric supporters of a militarist state. For the Haredim, ‘state worship’, especially the waving of the Israeli flag in the temple, is a sacrilege comparable to the renegade Jews condemned by Moses for worshipping the Golden Calf. The majority of Haredim boycott elections, organize their own schools (Yeshivas), encourage students to deepen their religious studies, emphasize community and family values (of a profoundly patriarchal sort) with numerous children and strongly reject the Zionist state’s efforts to conscript Haredi youth into their colonial occupation army, the so-called Israeli Defense (sic) Force (IDF). All major Zionist political parties and the ruling colonial regime unite to demonize the Haredim, claiming they are shirking their patriotic military responsibilities. Via the mass media and public pronouncements Zionist politicians and the state incite Israeli hatred against the Haredim: A study in 2006 claimed that over a third of Israeli Jews identified the Haredim as the most unpopular group in Israel . The Haredim, on the other hand, have reason to fear and loath the secular militarist Zionist state and politicians: They claim that after World War II in the Zionist-controlled relocation camps for refugee Jewish children in Teheran, the Jewish Agency imposed Zionist ideology and militarist anti-religious policies in order to cut Haredim children off from their spiritual roots. According to one Haredim report many religious Jewish youth from Poland , mostly survivors of the Holocaust and Soviet Russia, were subjected to “unimaginable mental and physical cruelty with one goal in mind: (the) obliteration of Judaism”. Given the Israeli drive today to harness a corrupted form of Judaism to serve colonial militarism, the Haredim have every reason to believe that the conscription of their sons and daughters will be accompanied by cruel, systematic Zionist brainwashing to ensure they make efficient (brutal) occupation soldiers. Haredim versus Israeli State Values The Haredim fervently believe in and practice the Biblical teaching: “Be fruitful and multiply”. They have large families and the median age among the Haredim is 16 years. Their peaceful message to the militarist Zionists could be summed up as: “Make babies, not bombs”. Some Haredim leaders have met with Palestinian and Iranian officials and, in line with their religious doctrine, have declared their support for peaceful resolution of conflicts and denounced Israel ’s aggressive military posture. Haredim are intensely religious and dedicate their time to discuss and debate the readings of their great religious scholars: Their message to the Zionists is to read Maimonides’ ethical treatises rather than listen to Netanyahu’s bellicose, blood curdling rants. Haredim live and study largely within the confines of their close communities. They insist on sending their sons to the yeshivas to study religious doctrine rather than to the West Bank to kill Palestinians. They call on their children to serve G-d – not the IDF. They seek truth in the Torah – not in conquest via the Preventive War Doctrines espoused by prestigious Israeli and overseas Zionist academic militarists. Haredim focus on building a better life within their community; they reject the efforts of the Zionist state to entice them into joining the violent self-styled ‘Jewish’ settlers engaged in brutal land grabs in the West Bank , in the name of “contributing to society (sic)”. The ‘introverted Haredi way of life’ is seen as a righteous alternative to the crass militarism, money laundering, financial speculation, human body part trafficking and real estate swindles rife among the elite Israelis and among sectors of overseas Zionists engaged in procuring multi- billion dollar tribute from the US Treasury. Haredim believe, with exemplary evidence, that conscripting their youth into the Israeli colonial army would destroy their moral values, as their sons would be forced to grope and search Arab women at checkpoints, break the legs of stone-throwing Palestinian children, defend lawless self-styled ‘Jewish’ settlers as they paint obscene graffiti in mosques and churches and attack Arab children on their way to school … not to speak of the ill effects of what secular Israeli Jews call a “modern education”, full of historical fabrications about the origins of Israel, scientific readings on high tech war-making and “advanced” economic doctrines proclaiming the sacred role of the free market, and justifying the 60% poverty rate among Haredim as “self-induced”. The Haredim demand that the Israeli Jewish elite stop trying to conscript their youth into the IDF and stop the job discrimination, which has trippled the unemployment rate among Haredim. The Coming ‘Civil War’: Zionist State versus the Haredim The elected leader, Yair Lapid, of newly formed Yesh Atid Party, dubbed a “centrist” by the New York Times, and a ‘moderate’ by the leading ideologues of the US Zionist “lobby”, ran on a platform of forcibly ending the Haredi exemption from conscription into the colonial military service. Yair Lapid, in the run-up to joining a new Netanyahu coalition regime, has launched a vicious attack on the Haredim. Lapid premises his agreement to joining Netanyahu’s war machine on his plans to forcibly confront the Haredi leadership. Yair Lapid taps the class and secular resentments of Israel’s upwardly mobile youth who bitterly complain of having to serve in the army, thus delaying their money-making opportunities, while the poor, semi-literate “blacks” (a derogatory term referring to the clothing of Haredim) engage in “worthless studies” of the Torah. Lapid, using the same perverted logic as Netanyahu, claims that “Ten percent of the population cannot threaten 90 percent with civil war”, (Financial Times, 2/14/13, p. 6.). Once again, the executioner (Lapid) accuses the victim (Haredim) of the violence he is about to commit. Lapid’s Yesh Atid, the centrist (sic) party, has allied with Naftali Bennett’s neo-fascist ‘Jewish Home Party’ (pushing for the annexation of all of Palestine and expulsion of non-Jews) in smashing Haredi exemption to military conscription. They hold veto power over the next cabinet. This rabidly secular militarist assault has provoked great opposition and united the otherwise Zionist-religious parties: The Shas Party (Sephardic Haredim) and United Torah Judaism have taken up the defense of the Haredim. Lines are being drawn far beyond a Haredim-Zionist State confrontation. The Larger Meaning of the Haredim-Zionist Conflict The Haredim hostility to the secular Zionist state is in part based on its opposition to military conscription, thus calling into question Israeli militarism, in general, and specifically its policy of colonial occupation and regional aggression. While some Haredim may oppose conscription for religious reasons and seek exemption solely for its own youth, objectively, the effect is to undermine Israel ’s violation of Palestinian rights and to call into question the entire apartheid system. By speaking to spiritual values, they deny the legitimacy of the idea of a Jewish police state based on force, violence, torture and disappearance of political prisoners. Their questioning of the institutional configuration upholding Jewish supremacy and Israel as the homeland of the Chosen People, they strike a powerful blow at the ideological underpinnings of the overseas activity of the Zionist power configuration. Their animosity to the fusion of Jewish chauvinism and religious rituals and the tribal deification of the Israeli state is counterposed to their embrace of Moses Ten Commandments. The Haredim study the teaching of the profound Judaic philosopher Maimonides and abhor Zionist militaristic strategists like Walzer, Dershowitz, Kagan, Feith, Netanyahu, etc. who preach colonial “just war” doctrines. Representing 10% of the Israeli population and a far greater percentage of military age youth, the Haredim are in a position to sharply limit the scope of future Zionist wars. If they succeed in blocking conscription, they would provide a lasting contribution to making the world in general, and the Middle East in particular, a more secure and peaceful place to live. Facing the prospect of a loss of future cannon fodder to sustain its colonial ventures, and in their frenzied attacks on the Haredim, the Israeli-Zionist elite have incited the majority of Israeli Jews to demonize them as ‘backward’, illiterate, freeloaders and to blame the religious curriculum for their growing and current 60% rate of poverty and high unemployment. Israel ’s war machine needs fresh recruits to maintain its imperial quest for a Greater Israel. Demographics – with families exceeding five children –indicate the Haredim are likely to double their percentage of the Israeli population over the next two decades. Faced with the ‘facts on the ground and in the cradle’, the colonial expansionist imperative drives all the leading Zionist parties to end Haredi exemptions. In response Haredi leaders threaten to engage in massive civil disobedience if the Zionists impose conscription, rightly seeing conscription of its youth as an assault on its most profoundly held spiritual and family values and as an opening wedge in destroying traditional community solidarity and reciprocal relations. The Haredim share a common plight with Israel ’s Arab population: Both communities face increasing police harassment, discrimination, religious persecution and rising levels of poverty. A Haredim-Arab alliance would unite 30% of the population against a common secular militarist and plutocratic enemy. Farfetched as it seems on the subjective level, there are objective historical and structural processes which are driving the two groups together. It is one of the great ironies of history that the world’s modern secular anti-imperialist movements should find their most consequential allies among Israel ’s most traditional and deeply religious movement.
By Prof. James Petras
Israel is heading towards a profound internal crisis: a Jew-on-Jew confrontation, which has major implications for its relations with the Palestinians, as well as its Arab neighbors. The conflict is between the highly militarized Zionist state and the Haredi religious movement over a number of issues, including recent proposals by the Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu to end the religious exemption of Haradi youth from serving in Israel ’s colonial armed forces.
And There Was Silence ~ Bill the Butcher
They came for me, one night I did not know what they were about But they asked me questions And so they took me out one night And they put a gun in my hand And the media cheered, saying Years passed. New terrorists 
When the darkness was heavy outside
And I was in my lover’s arms;
They came for me with their guns,
They pulled me out of my lover’s arms.
She screamed, but not very long
And there was silence.
When they dragged me with them
I did not know why
I got no answer to my questions
Not then, not later.
All I got was abuse,
And there was silence.
Who I knew, and why I read
Subversive literature; why I was
An enemy of the nation.
Questions to which I had no answer
Except for silence.
Far into the forest, and they shot me there
By the side of a muddy track
One night, while it was raining.
Just a shot in the night
And there was silence.
While I lay on my back
With the rain in my face.
They took photographs, plenty of photographs
Of me, with a gun in my cold dead hand
And there was silence.
A terrorist, Maoist, enemy of the state
Had been eliminated. A minister posed for cameras
With medal for the man who shot me
Somewhere, my lover wept. Unknown, forgotten
And there was silence.
Were found and killed.
Another day, another night
Just a shot in the night
And lovers crying in the night
And there was silence.
The Children Killed by America’s Drones. “Crimes Against Humanity” committed by Barack H. Obama
But behind each name there is the face of a child with a family history in a village in a far away country, with a mom and a dad, with brothers and sisters and friends. Among the list, are infants of 1, 2, 3 and 4 years old. In some cases brothers and sisters of an entire family are killed. Four sisters of the Ali Mohammed Nasser family in Yemen were killed. Afrah was 9 years old when she and her three younger sisters Zayda (7 years old) , Hoda (5 years old) and Sheika (4 years old) were struck by an American drone. Ibrahim, a 13 year old boy of the Abdullah Mokbel Salem Louqye family in Yemen was struck by a US drone, together with his younger brother Asmaa (9 years old) and two younger sisters, Salma (4 years old) and Fatima (3 years old) These children are innocent. They are not different from our own children. Their lives were taken away at a very young age as part of a military agenda, which claims to be combating “international terrorism” These drone attacks are extremely precise. We are not dealing with “collateral damage”. Drone operators have the ability of viewing from a computer screen their targets well in advance of a strike. A family home is referred to as a “structure” or a “building” rather than a house. When they target a home with family members, they kill children. And they know that in advance of the drone strike: “Bryant saw a flash on the screen: the explosion. Parts of the building collapsed. The child had disappeared. Bryant had a sick feeling in his stomach. “Did we just kill a kid?” he asked the man sitting next to him. “Yeah, I guess that was a kid,” the pilot replied. “Was that a kid?” they wrote into a chat window on the monitor.” ( The Woes of an American Drone Operator, Spiegel.de, December 14, 2012) These children were killed on the orders of the US President and Commander in Chief Barack H. Obama. The commander in chief sets the military agenda and authorizes these killings to proceed. The killings were quite deliberate. They are categorized as “crimes against humanity” under international law. Those who ordered these drone killings, including the president of the United States, are war criminals under international law and must be indicted and prosecuted It should be noted that the drone attacks on civilians have increased dramatically during the Obama presidency (see below). Michel Chossudovsky, January 26, 2012 The List of Names was compiled by The Bureau of Investigative Journalism Total US strikes: 362 Total confirmed US operations (all): 54-64 Total US strikes: 10-23 by Drones Team | 1 Comment This map details the locations of CIA drone strikes in the remote Pakistani tribal areas. Partial List of Children Killed PAKISTAN Name | Age | Gender Noor Aziz | 8 | male YEMEN Afrah Ali Mohammed Nasser | 9 | female
This is a list of names of innocent children killed by America’s drones
CIA Drone Strikes in Pakistan 2004–2013
Obama strikes: 310
Total reported killed: 2,629-3,461
Civilians reported killed: 475-891
Children reported killed: 176
Total reported injured: 1,267-1,431US Covert Action in Yemen 2002–2013
Total confirmed US drone strikes: 42-52
Possible extra US operations: 135-157
Possible extra US drone strikes: 77-93
Total reported killed (all): 374-1,112
Total civilians killed (all): 72-177
Children killed (all): 27-37US Covert Action in Somalia 2007–2013
Total US drone strikes: 3-9
Total reported killed: 58-170
Civilians reported killed: 11-57
Children reported killed: 1-3Drone Infographics
Interactive map
Abdul Wasit | 17 | male
Noor Syed | 8 | male
Wajid Noor | 9 | male
Syed Wali Shah | 7 | male
Ayeesha | 3 | female
Qari Alamzeb | 14| male
Shoaib | 8 | male
Hayatullah KhaMohammad | 16 | male
Tariq Aziz | 16 | male
Sanaullah Jan | 17 | male
Maezol Khan | 8 | female
Nasir Khan | male
Naeem Khan | male
Naeemullah | male
Mohammad Tahir | 16 | male
Azizul Wahab | 15 | male
Fazal Wahab | 16 | male
Ziauddin | 16 | male
Mohammad Yunus | 16 | male
Fazal Hakim | 19 | male
Ilyas | 13 | male
Sohail | 7 | male
Asadullah | 9 | male
khalilullah | 9 | male
Noor Mohammad | 8 | male
Khalid | 12 | male
Saifullah | 9 | male
Mashooq Jan | 15 | male
Nawab | 17 | male
Sultanat Khan | 16 | male
Ziaur Rahman | 13 | male
Noor Mohammad | 15 | male
Mohammad Yaas Khan | 16 | male
Qari Alamzeb | 14 | male
Ziaur Rahman | 17 | male
Abdullah | 18 | male
Ikramullah Zada | 17 | male
Inayatur Rehman | 16 | male
Shahbuddin | 15 | male
Yahya Khan | 16 |male
Rahatullah |17 | male
Mohammad Salim | 11 | male
Shahjehan | 15 | male
Gul Sher Khan | 15 | male
Bakht Muneer | 14 | male
Numair | 14 | male
Mashooq Khan | 16 | male
Ihsanullah | 16 | male
Luqman | 12 | male
Jannatullah | 13 | male
Ismail | 12 | male
Taseel Khan | 18 | male
Zaheeruddin | 16 | male
Qari Ishaq | 19 | male
Jamshed Khan | 14 | male
Alam Nabi | 11 | male
Qari Abdul Karim | 19 | male
Rahmatullah | 14 | male
Abdus Samad | 17 | male
Siraj | 16 | male
Saeedullah | 17 | male
Abdul Waris | 16 | male
Darvesh | 13 | male
Ameer Said | 15 | male
Shaukat | 14 | male
Inayatur Rahman | 17 | male
Salman | 12 | male
Fazal Wahab | 18 | male
Baacha Rahman | 13 | male
Wali-ur-Rahman | 17 | male
Iftikhar | 17 | male
Inayatullah | 15 | male
Mashooq Khan | 16 | male
Ihsanullah | 16 | male
Luqman | 12 | male
Jannatullah | 13 | male
Ismail | 12 | male
Abdul Waris | 16 | male
Darvesh | 13 | male
Ameer Said | 15 | male
Shaukat | 14 | male
Inayatur Rahman | 17 | male
Adnan | 16 | male
Najibullah | 13 | male
Naeemullah | 17 | male
Hizbullah | 10 | male
Kitab Gul | 12 | male
Wilayat Khan | 11 | male
Zabihullah | 16 | male
Shehzad Gul | 11 | male
Shabir | 15 | male
Qari Sharifullah | 17 | male
Shafiullah | 16 | male
Nimatullah | 14 | male
Shakirullah | 16 | male
Talha | 8 | male
Zayda Ali Mohammed Nasser | 7 | female
Hoda Ali Mohammed Nasser | 5 | female
Sheikha Ali Mohammed Nasser | 4 | female
Ibrahim Abdullah Mokbel Salem Louqye | 13 | male
Asmaa Abdullah Mokbel Salem Louqye | 9 | male
Salma Abdullah Mokbel Salem Louqye | 4 | female
Fatima Abdullah Mokbel Salem Louqye | 3 | female
Khadije Ali Mokbel Louqye | 1 | female
Hanaa Ali Mokbel Louqye | 6 | female
Mohammed Ali Mokbel Salem Louqye | 4 | male
Jawass Mokbel Salem Louqye | 15 | female
Maryam Hussein Abdullah Awad | 2 | female
Shafiq Hussein Abdullah Awad | 1 | female
Sheikha Nasser Mahdi Ahmad Bouh | 3 | female
Maha Mohammed Saleh Mohammed | 12 | male
Soumaya Mohammed Saleh Mohammed | 9 | female
Shafika Mohammed Saleh Mohammed | 4 | female
Shafiq Mohammed Saleh Mohammed | 2 | male
Mabrook Mouqbal Al Qadari | 13 | male
Daolah Nasser 10 years | 10 | female
AbedalGhani Mohammed Mabkhout | 12 | male
Abdel- Rahman Anwar al Awlaki | 16 | male
Abdel-Rahman al-Awlaki | 17 | male
Nasser Salim | 19
Defeat and Victory ~ Bill the Butcher
I get it – I understand your message
In terms of blood and iron.
You are strong
You have power over me.
And so –
What use is your power?
What is the worst you can do to me
Kill me?
Tear apart my body
Leave me a bleeding corpse?
Yes, you can do that
If you want. Is that your victory?
Everyone has to die someday.
Killing me is not your victory.
I will not bow to you
You will not make me cower
In fear. You can kill me
But you can’t frighten me
You can’t keep me silent.
You can crush me
But you can’t frighten me
You can defeat me
But you can’t conquer me.
And you can knock me down
But you can’t make me bow down
And that is your defeat
That is my victory.
Copyright B Purkayastha 2013
President al-Assad : Out of Womb of Pain, Hope Should Be Begotten, from Suffering Important Solutions Rise
DAMASCUS, (SANA)_ President Bashar al-Assad said if pain is pervading like a dark cloud over the country, the emotional state only, with its sublimity, is not enough to compensate the loss of the loved ones or the restoration of security and peace to the country or providing bread, water, fuel and medicine nationwide.
In his speech on the latest developments on Sunday, President al-Assad added that out of the womb of pain, hope should be begotten and form the bottom of suffering the most important solutions rise, as the dark cloud in the sky conceals the sun light, but it also carries in its layers rain, purity and hope of welfare and offering.
President al-Assad said “These feelings of agony, sadness, challenge and intention are huge energy that will not get Syria out of its crisis unless it turns this energy into a comprehensive national move that saves the homeland from the unprecedented campaign hatched against it.”
”This national move is the only balm to the deep wounds which affected our society and were about to divide it as it is the only way that is able to keep Syria geographically and making it politically stronger,” the President added.
“At the beginning they wanted it an alleged revolution but the Syrian people rebelled against them, then they tried to impose it by money, media and arms secretly and when they failed, they moved to the second phase through dropping the masks of a “peaceful revolution” and unveiled the cover of the weapons they were using secretly to use them openly starting their attempts to occupy cities as to pounce upon the other cities,” President al-Assad said, adding that “their brutal behaviors didn’t deter our people, through their awareness and steadfastness, to unveil their lies and reject them. Therefore they decided to take revenge on the people through spreading terrorism everywhere.”
The President stressed that the Takfiries were working at the back rows through the explosion operations and the mass killing leaving the armed gangs at the front line but the unity of the Syrian people and army obliged them to move for fighting at the front lines where they led the rudder of the blood, killing and mutilation ship.
“Each citizen is responsible and able to provide something even if it is tiny or limited as he/she may consider, because the homeland is for everyone; we all defend it each with his/her capacity and capability, because the thought is a way of defense, the stance is a way of defense, construction is a way of defense and protecting people’s properties is a way of defense,” President al-Assad added.
“Since the attack is launched against the homeland with all its human and material components, the mindful citizen has certainly known that passivity, waiting for time or others to solve the problem is a sort of pushing the country towards abyss, and not participating in solutions is a kind of taking the homeland backwards with no progress towards overcoming what the home is going through,”
They have killed civilians and the innocent to kill light and brightness in our country; they have assassinated the qualified and intellectuals to spread their ignorance on our minds; they sabotaged the infrastructure built with the people’s money to make suffering pervade into our lives; they prevented children from their schools to devastate the future of the country and express their wildness and they cut off electricity, communications and fuel supply, leaving the elderly and children suffering from the cold weather without medicine to emphasize their savagery. But their thievery has been manifested through sabotaging wheat stocks, stealing wheat and flour to make the loaf like a dream for citizens and to starve people… Is it a conflict for power and post or is it a conflict between the homeland and its enemies? Is it a struggle for authority or a revenge of the Syrian people who did not give those terrorist killers the password for dismembering Syria and its society.
”Because takfiri through is alien to our country, they had to import it from abroad, whether in terrorists or thought…Thus, takfiris, terrorists, Qaeda members calling themselves Jihadis streamed from everywhere to command the combat operations on the ground…The gunmen, having failed, retreated to the backlines as aides in acts of kidnapping, pillaging and sabotage…Servants, and at best, guides who spy on their fellow citizens to serve criminals takfiris who only speak the language of slaughtering and mangling.” ”The crisis has other dimensions, not only internal ones as it became clear to all who want to see.
Regionally, there are sides who seek to partition Syria, others to weaken it, and some sides are providing the criminals with funds and weapons, while others with support and training…It was no surprise to us what some neighboring countries have done to weaken and control the Syrian people, and the countries who sought a foothold in a history they don’t have, writing it instead in the blood of innocent Syrians, but Syria and the Syrian people are strong, and they vow that they will not forget.”
”Syria has always been, and will remain, a free and sovereign country that won’t accept servility and guardianship, which has been a nuisance for the West, so they sought to take advantage of internal events to drive Syria out of the political equation in the region to get rid of this irksome problem and to strike the culture of resistance and turn us into inferiors…But the West is not the entire international community, as there are world countries, namely Russia and China, and many others which won’t agree to meddling in the internal affairs of countries and destabilizing the region.”
”In light of this, there cannot be talk about the solution unless we take into consideration these factors: the internal, the regional and the international…Any procedure that does not change these factors is not a real solution and has no impact…Let’s start form the internal front: If some tended to see the disagreement in the beginning as one between loyalists and opposition, this disagreement in a civilized world should be on the way to build the homeland not destroy it…on developing it rather than taking it decades back…When part of the people becomes tied to the outside the conflict becomes between the homeland and outside powers, between the country’s independence and hegemony over it, between staying free or occupying it, and hence the issue becomes defending the homeland and all unify against the outside aggression which is aided by some internal tools.”
”It is not a matter of loyalists against opposition, nor an army vis-à-vis gangs and criminals…We are in a state of war in the full sense of the word…We are repelling a fierce outside aggression in a new disguise, which is more lethal and dangerous than a traditional war, because they do not employ their tools to strike us, but they have us implement their projects, and target Syria using a bunch of Syrians and a lot of foreigners.”
”Such war is confronted through defending the homeland in parallel with a reform that is necessary to all of us, which may not change the reality of war, yet it strengthens us and reinforces our unity in the face of the war…Reforms without security is like security without reform. No one will be successful without the other…Those who keep parroting that Syria has opted for a security solution do not see or hear…We have repeatedly said that reforms and politics go in one hand and eliminating terrorism in the other.”
“We did not ever reject the political solution as we have adopted it from the first day based on dialogue as its main pillar as we lend our hands to those who have a national political project that moves Syria forward but with whom we dialogue.. with those who are carrying extremist thinking, and do not believe except in blood, killing and terrorism, ” the president wondered.
President al-Assad also wondered whether we should dialogue with gangs that are ordered from abroad and pursue a foreigner who orders them to reject dialogue because it believes that dialogue will foil his schemes aiming at weakening and undermining Syria .
The President asserted that the leaders of some regional countries know that Syria to come out of the crisis will undermine their political future after they were involved and drowned their peoples with lies, spent their countries’ potentials in supporting terrorism and involved in the bloodshed and killing innocent.
‘The West, but not we who closed the door of dialogue as it has used to give orders while we have got used to independence, sovereignty and freedom of decision,” President al-Assad said.
The President added “Who talks only about the political solution and turned the blind eye to these facts is either an ignorant of the facts or a coward who immolates his country and citizens to the criminals and those who support them, the matter which we will not allow, ”
The political solution in Syria will be as following: the first stage, firstly, the adherence of all concerned regional and international countries to stopping funding and harboring gunmen in parallel to the cessation of terrorist operations by gunmen in a way that facilitates the return of the displaced Syrians to their original residing areas safely.
After that immediately, the military operations halt by the Armed Forces which have the right of response if the security of homeland or citizens is threatened or public or private properties were attacked.
Secondly, finding a mechanism to guarantee the adherence of all sides to the former item and curbing borders.
Thirdly, the current government starts intensive communications with all Syrian society spectra with all its parties and bodies to run open dialogues for holding a national dialogue conference as all sides desiring a solution in Syria from inside and outside Syria can participate.
The second stage: First, the current government calls for a comprehensive national dialogue conference for reaching a national charter that adheres to the Syrian sovereignty, its unity and territorial integrity.
It also rejects foreign interference and renounce all types of terrorism and violence, as this charter would draw the political future of Syria and propose the constitutional and judicial systems and depict the political and economic features, in addition to the agreement on new laws for parties, elections, local administration and others.
Secondly, the national charter is to be presented for a popular referendum.
Thirdly, a broadened government is established where the Syrian components are represented, as it is tasked to implement the items of the national charter.
Fourth, the constitution is presented for referendum, and after it is ratified, the broadened government adopts the laws agreed on in the dialogue conference according to the new constitution including the election law, and then carrying out new parliamentary elections.
The third stage : Firstly, a new government is formed according to the constitution.
Secondly, a conference for national reconciliation is held and an amnesty to those arrested due to the events is given with preserving the civil rights of their owners.
Thirdly, working on rehabilitating infrastructure, reconstruction, in addition to compensating the citizens affected.
”Homeland is above all…We can strengthen Syria through political initiatives and defending every single grain of land…The Syrian throbs with forgiveness and tolerance, but pride and patriotism run in his veins…the majority of people have risen against terrorism. Some have helped through providing the competent authorities with valuable information which enabled them to abort terrorist attacks against citizens…Others have risen against terrorists and deprived them of a support base, whether through defending their areas or even taking to the streets in protest against gunmen, many even martyred while doing so, and others have defended the cities, districts and infrastructure hand in hand with the armed forces.”
”Those citizens have demonstrated deep awareness. The aspired-to security does not come through fence-sitting, watching, escaping or groveling to the outside…If we are not fine in our country, we won’t be so anywhere outside it…The homeland is not for those who dwell in it, but for those who defend it.”
”The homeland is for those who rose from all walks of life and affiliations when their homeland needed them, even though they were wronged at times…Their giving has been without bounds…Some were honored with martyrdom, and their blood had punctured the fake ‘Spring’ and shielded the people from deceit that was about to bear fruit in the beginning…Their blood has punctured what the West falsely dubbed Spring, but was a vindictive fire that sought to torch whatever came its way through an abominable sectarianism, blind hatred and loathsome partitioning…It was a Spring only for those who planned it and tried to make it a reality, which is now collapsing.”
”The blood of martyrs protected and will protect the homeland and the region, and will protect our territorial integrity and reinforce accord among us, while at the same time purify our society of disloyalty and treason, and keep us from moral, human and cultural downfall, which is the strongest victory…When the homeland triumphs, it does not forget those who sacrificed for its sake.”
”I’d like to extend my salutations to those who deserve it most: the Syrian Arab army who are shedding blood and sweat for Syria which they see uppermost…Greetings to our armed forces who are fighting the fiercest of wars and are determined to restore security and stability to the homeland through uprooting terrorism.”
”The armed forces have wrote down the epics of heroism thanks to their cohesion, steadfastness and national unity which reflected those of the people…thus doing citizens proud and keeping them safe…Kudos to every soldier who is completing the mission of his colleagues who passed away!” ”I salute every single citizen who did his national duty through standing by the armed forces, each from his position…Those are the pride of Syria whose names will go down in history, for they are writing history in their blood and valor.”
”I come from the people and will remain so…Posts are transient but the homeland is everlasting…The tears of bereaved mothers will refresh the pure souls of their gone loved ones ad burn the criminals…”
”Syria will remain as it is and will return, God willing, stronger…There is no ceding rights or giving up on principles…Those who placed their bets on weakening Syria to forget Golan and its occupied lands are mistaken…Golan is ours and Palestine is our cause that we won’t give up on…We will remain the supporters of resistance against the one enemy..Resistance is a culture, not individuals.”
”The people and state who bore the brunt of standing with the Palestinian people in their just cause for decades, despite all the challenges and costs that every Syrian citizen has paid, cannot be but in the same place towards Palestinians…Any attempt to implicate the Palestinians in the Syrian events is aimed at deflecting attention from the main enemy , and is stillborn…The Palestinians in Syria are doing their duty towards their second homeland like any Syrian…We are responsible, as Syrian people and state, for doing our duty towards them as towards any Syrian citizen. I salute every honest Palestinian who valued the Syrian stances and did not treat Syria as a hotel which he leaves when the service goes downhill.”
”In spite of what has been planned against Syria, they could never change us…Patriotism runs in our blood and Syria is the most precious of all…Your steadfastness over two years tells the whole world that Syria is impervious to collapse and the Syrian people impervious to humiliation…We will always be like that…Hand in hand we will move ahead, taking Syria to a brighter and stronger future.”
Civil Resistance / First Lady Asmaa’ Al Assad
Civil Resistance / First Lady Asmaa’ Al Assad ~ By Daniel Mabsout
The greatest of challenges are facing Syria and the Syrians and the president of Syria . The forces who succeeded in carrying on the western scheme of destabilization and chaos in countries like Iraq and Libya are trying to do the same in Syria . Under the pretext of removing a dictator , they are destroying the country . It is not that they want to …replace something with something else; what they seek rather is the destruction of Syria , they seek the decomposition of the constituents of the society as such . They seek the despair of people and their turning against the president and the regime ; they target the children and mothers with such pressure seeking that they give up on the struggle and give in to the intervention out of despair and wanting to stop more blood spilling . Therefore the society in all its colors and categories should answer the call and face this challenge and refuse to be cornered and blackmailed and deprived of its alternatives by the forces of evil . Everything depends on and lies within the capacity of the Syrians to stand up to the challenge and not bend before the difficulty or give up or run away or be trapped in the fear of destiny and panic of want . What is required –in other terms- is Resistance , all kinds of Resistance , forbearance and Resistance : peoples’ Resistance and social Resistance .The enemy is betting on your surrender and weakness and testing your abilities and valor . Syria has become the center of the world . The outcome of this assault is not be decided in the battleground itself but in the capacity of the Syrians to resist .
The choices are not many and the alternatives are limited, and what is at stake is the capacity of the people , of all people and of any people to continue existing with dignity without being affiliated to western powers and subdued to Israel and to predator countries . The Syrians have to prove themselves, to prove that they can survive the circumstance and the challenge and come out of it safe and wholesome and mentally and emotionally sound . There is no greater defeat for the enemy than seeing Syrians undergoing bravely all these circumstances without giving up their basic principles of co-existence and solidarity and openness .
In this instance we salute lady Asmaa’ al Assad – the first Lady of Syria -who is leading the Resistance of the civilians : the Resistance of the mothers and sisters and children of Syria by standing by and supporting her people and their army and embodying the true example of commitment . God bless the first lady and bless each mother and father and brother in Syria who is refusing to sell Syria cheap to its enemies . Thus Syria shall reap victory over all and this should be the victory of all.
Hizb al Nasr ~ Preghiera della Vittoria
سألك يا الله يا سميع يا قريب يا مجيب يا سريع يا منتقم يا شديد البطش يا جبار يا قهار يا من لا يعجزه قهر الجبابرة ولا يعظم عليه هلاك المتمردة من الملوك والأكاسرة أن تجعل كيد من كادنا في نحره ومكر من مكر بنا عائدا عليه، وحفرة من حفر لنا واقعا فيها ومن نصب لنا شبكة الخداع، اجعلها ياسيدي مساقا إليها ومصادا فيها وأسيرا لديها
Satyagraha – A Poem
I testify, There are no weapons more lethal than yours No men and horses mightier than yours And of all those who have occupied my land Yours is the darkest, most dreadful occupation You choose to kill But killing is a parasite It will eat away your spirit Kill Until you’re exhausted I am not like you I wont allow you to stain my soul And to seduce me into killing you Three things stop me My beliefs*, values and heritage Ignorant Arrogant of your ignorance Why not ask the sea waves Ask the sand where did the past invaders go? Visit the museums, The size of your head is no different to theirs Neither is the size of your shoes Nor will your fate be any different Raised in isolation In closed communities Apart from all the others I am an Arab My seas are wide open My sky is without end With enduring sunshine I am not looking to eat someone’s food Or steal someone’s land I inherited my land From my father and his ancestors I inherited all religions And I pray on Friday, Saturday and on Sunday Pretending to sit on God’s lap Carrying a vengeful sword Starting war after war My God is in my heart Light, love and mercy I walk slowly I plant a seed for charity It yields a tree I dig for water wells with a needle I build an ark for the survivors And wait for the rain Which will bring in the flood I wait for the breeze of revolution To come and take away the oppressors The sun that will set today Will rise again tomorrow I have patience I have strength I have mercy I have forgiveness My God is compassion In his name I will liberate my land And all the lands. I will restore humanity In the soul of man I am not like you So take aim Kill Until you’re exhausted - Abdul Karim Sabawi is Palestinian poet from Gaza. This poem was contributed to PalestineChronicle.com. *Satyagraha is the Philosophy of nonviolent protest, or passive resistance. Mohandas K. Gandhi introduced it in South Africa (1906) and, from 1917, developed it in India in the period leading up to independence from Britain. *Islam has strict rules for killing in the battlefield and forbids the intentional targeting of civilians in times of war.
By Abdul Karim Sabawi – Gaza
Take aim
I am not like you
I am not like you
I am not like you
I am in no hurry
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The Furnace ~ Bill the Butcher
All day the soldiers had fought the rebels, beating them back street by street, working our way towards the centre of the town. By evening, we had come far enough so that the battalion commander had decided to halt for the night and consolidate our gains, and to prevent the rebels from trying to ambush our troops in the darkness. So the sun was just going down when we entered the house the platoon leader had chosen to be our base for the night. It had once been a handsome, well-built house, and was still relatively intact, though the walls were pockmarked with bullets and the glass in the windows like jagged teeth. There was a large scorch mark on one wall, but overall it was still in quite good shape, especially when compared to the other houses in the street, most of which were burnt-out ruins without roofs or walls, the charred interiors open to view. The rebels had been here, recently – so recently that the air still smelled of them, of the perfumed oil which so many of them anointed themselves with to better prepare for their journey to Paradise. On the wall above the TV set, the screen of which had been smashed in, someone had painted in blood red letters a promise to tear the heart out of every captive they took. It wasn’t an idle boast, either – what the rebels did to any of our men they took prisoner didn’t bear thinking about. Next to the threat, a smashed crucifix still hung askew, the head of the Jesus figure hacked off. The original owners had been Christian, and I wondered what had happened to them, if they’d managed to escape before the rebels came. “Looking at that?” one of the soldiers asked, sitting down next to me. He cocked his head, studying the lettering. “It’s sloppy,” he decided. “They did it in a hurry. I’ve seen much better ones.” “Does it bother you?” I asked in return. He shrugged. “Anybody can make threats. If we were to pay attention to threats we’d never get anything done.” “They aren’t that far off,” I said, listening to the rattle of a machine gun in the distance. “Two streets away,” the soldier said. He was quite young, in his early twenties, but had a hard-bitten face with eyes that belonged to someone nearer fifty. “Don’t worry, they won’t be back.” Before I could reply, something exploded so close to us the walls trembled and flakes of plaster fell from the ceiling. It was instantly followed by another explosion, and another. The blasts merged into a constant wall of sound, so intense that I could make out nothing else. Instinctively, I crouched on the floor, rolling into a fetal position with my arms wrapped round my middle. At last the sound eased, the walls stopped shaking, and I opened my eyes. The soldier was bending over me, shaking my shoulder. It was some time before I could make out what he was saying. “It’s all right,” he told me. “That was our artillery, hitting the other side. The shells weren’t even close.” “They weren’t?” My mouth and throat were so dry the words hardly came out. I worked my lips and tongue. “What is it like when it’s closer?” I asked when I could speak again. The soldier shook his head. “You don’t really need to know that,” he said. He rubbed his jaw, his fingers scraping over the stubble. “I hope we get a bit of rest tonight. Let’s go and find you a place to sleep.” “I’ll be all right,” I protested. “You’re the one who’ll be fighting – you’re the one who needs sleep.” “I don’t sleep much.” He grinned, but the smile was bitter. “I haven’t really slept in months, and I don’t think I will again until we’ve won this war – if I live that long.” I peered at him curiously. I’d only been attached to the unit since the previous morning and hadn’t got to know any of the men on a personal basis. I glanced at his chest, but he wasn’t wearing a name tag. None of the soldiers did, for excellent reasons. “What’s your name?” “Murad.” He looked at me. “Al Nasseri. You’re not to mention that if you write about me, of course.” “Naturally not.” I’d been briefed that the soldiers’ names were not to be divulged under any circumstances, because a lot of their families were in the territory the rebels still held. “But there are a lot of people called Murad al Nasseri.” “Doesn’t matter. Don’t mention it.” “I won’t, don’t worry. Where are you from?” He shrugged. “My family is in Hima. They’re in the old part of the town, the part that was under the enemy’s control. But we got it back, just like we’ll get everything back.” “You’re very confident.” We’d walked through the house to the kitchen. Another soldier, an older man with a sergeant’s stripes on his sleeve, sprawled in a chair, his head thrown back, sleeping. We stepped carefully over his legs and lowered our voices, but he didn’t stir in any case. It was probably the first rest he’d had since the start of the offensive. Murad filled a kettle from a bucket of water and put it on the stove. Amazingly, the gas was still on. “You’re sure we’ll win? Speaking off the record, of course.” “We’ll win.” Murad’s voice was filled with some emotion I couldn’t identify, something which made me look at him sharply. It wasn’t confidence, or bravado, but something else. “We’ll do anything it takes, but we’ll win.” “How can you be so certain?” “I’ll tell you later.” I didn’t say anything for the moment, watching him as he boiled some tea. There were only two surviving cups in the kitchen, and one of them had a broken handle. Murad handed me the other without comment and we went back to the living room. Someone had been inside in the meantime and put on an emergency lamp; in its blue-white light the room looked like something out of an old black-and-white movie. Murad settled back down on the chair and took off his helmet. Without it, he suddenly looked even younger, and the scar that crossed his forehead seemed even more shocking than it might have otherwise been. It looked as though somebody had tried to hack his head in two with a knife. “How did you get that?” I asked. A lot of the soldiers were scarred – they wore the scars proudly, like badges of honour more precious than medals – but this one was especially awful. He touched the scar. “It’s a long story.” He glanced at me. “You were asking how I was so certain we’ll do whatever it takes to win.” And in his voice I heard that emotion again, and I thought I could recognise it – a blend of steely determination and an anger which went far beyond words, an anger that ate through to the core of this boy’s being. “You’re sure you want to hear this?” I waited for a heavy burst of firing to die down. Silence fell at last, broken only by an occasional shot. “I have nothing else to do anyway,” I told him. ******************************** I told you my family is from Hima (Murad said). We weren’t rich, but we had a nice enough life, before all this started. My father had a business selling construction materials, and my mother was a teacher. I had one younger brother, Salim, who was in school. I wasn’t your typical obedient son, growing up. I got into more than my share of trouble, and I never did get into books and studying. It never seemed to make sense to me to spend the growing years of my life cooped up with things which didn’t interest me while I could be out and about. So you might say I was a bit of a wild child, but I never did anything actually criminal. Now, of course, Hima is in ruins, but it was a nice enough town then, with tree-lined streets and open-air cafes. My father had wanted me to get involved in the family business, but a life spent selling cement and iron rods wasn’t for me, and I told him so. He wasn’t too happy about it, of course, but then I never had much of a head for figures, and Salim was more compliant than me, anyway. But there weren’t much in the way of jobs available otherwise, not for someone who’d got through school with difficulty, so I joined the army. That wasn’t anything that made either of my parents happy, either, but there it was. Besides, I liked the army; it gave me the kind of life I was probably yearning for without even being aware of it. I thought it would be my career for life. And then the rebellion started. There’s no point talking about the early fighting, and how we were rushed around from one place to another, fighting to defend strategic points from the rebels. Several of my own friends deserted to the other side – there’s no point talking about that either. As far as we’re concerned, once they left, they weren’t our friends any longer. They were simply traitors and terrorists, allied to the foreign jihadists who are trying to destroy our country and our way of life. So we were rushed around, and finally we managed to stem the rebel advance, and then we began to fight back. And so it was that early this year I found myself at the point of one of the lead battalions fighting to retake my old hometown from the terrorists. Later, the magazines and the TV channels put out a lot of nonsense about the battle of Hima, that we had routed the terrorists and chased them out of their holes with their tails between their legs. Your paper, too, said things like that. I don’t blame the media, really; they needed morale-boosting news, and they didn’t have journalists embedded with the frontline soldiers, not like now. No, I don’t blame them – but it didn’t happen that way at all. It wasn’t a glorious charge, it was slow, slogging city fighting, the kind we hadn’t seen before. Have you ever been to Hima? No? Well, while the new part of the city is modern, the old part – where the terrorists were – is a maze of narrow lanes, lined with old buildings with thick brick walls which were right up against each other. The terrorists had blocked the lanes with rubble, forming a series of barricades, so that we couldn’t use the streets, and our armour was useless. And because the enemy had stopped the people of the old town from fleeing – my parents and brother were still in there, along with everyone else – we couldn’t simply pulverise a target area with artillery and move in to mop up what was left, like we’d have done elsewhere; like we’ve done in this town, for instance. Instead, we had to fight our way house by house, often room by room, and having to be careful to spare the civilians as much as we could. After all, a lot of them were our own relatives. Even when we took a house, it wasn’t enough, because the terrorists had made holes in the walls between buildings so they could run back and forth without showing themselves in the street. Sometimes we would take an entire street and then we’d find the terrorists swarming back and attacking us from the rear. And of course they’d booby-trap houses they were about to abandon, so we would have to first clear those out. I’m telling you – it wasn’t the kind of thing glorious victories are made of. That battle taught us to hate the enemy. You can’t help it, in a situation like that. We were constantly tense because of the fear of a terrorist counterattack, unable to take the time out for a proper meal, sleeping leaning in a corner of a room for half an hour while a comrade stood guard to make sure some terrorist bastard didn’t come and cut your throat. We grew to be like wild animals, filled with aggression born of fear. It was a furnace, you see – and we were like pieces of metal thrust into the centre of it, and shaped by the heat into something we’d never be otherwise. We almost never saw the terrorists. We could hear them sometimes, often right in the next house, moving around and talking among themselves, and of course we could hear their shooting and the explosions of their grenades. Sometimes they’d yell “Allahu Akbar” and we knew that either they’d hit one of us, or that one of them had been killed. And, of course, sometimes we’d hear their shrieks of agony, and that brought us great satisfaction. But we almost never saw them, except sometimes through a telescopic sight, or, very, very rarely, when we met them in hand-to-hand fighting. It was during these rare moments that all that pent-up aggression would erupt. We’d forget our training, and turn into beasts intent on destruction, stabbing and clubbing and fighting with everything from our guns to chunks of rubble we’d use as bludgeons. And of course Allah help any of those terrorist bastards who fell alive into our hands. I’ve myself done things, and seen things done, during those times – well, I’ll spare you. I don’t enjoy thinking about them, but I don’t imagine I’ll ever stop. And of course the war’s still going on, and I don’t know how much more I’ll see before it’s through. Once we captured a terrorist headquarters. I’d been in the lead squad which had stormed it, under the cover of a storm of heavy machine gun fire. We were just too late – the enemy had run, though they had left several of their dead behind and some wounded who saw us and begged for mercy. Yes, then they begged for mercy, when they found themselves in our hands. We didn’t have any mercy for them, I can tell you, even if we’d had any to begin with; not when we saw what they’d done to three men they’d imprisoned in one of the rooms on suspicion of being our supporters. And then the next day the terrorists counterattacked and took the building back again. That sort of thing happened so often we lost count. Still, we advanced, street by street, through the sprawl of the old town. Sometimes I’d stand looking up at the sky – but making sure to stay well under cover, you understand, because of the terrorist snipers – and I’d see the plumes of smoke from burning buildings in the distance. I’d have a fair idea, of course, where those buildings were, and I’d wonder how much longer it would take to reach my family’s home, and in what shape I’d find them. Of course I couldn’t telephone them, because the lines were all down and because the cell phones had been jammed to hinder terrorist communications. I hoped they were all right. I hoped they had something to eat. Then, one evening, the platoon officer called us together and asked for volunteers to carry out a reconnaissance patrol. We had reached a street which gave on to a crossroads, which the terrorists should have turned into a strongpoint. I was familiar with the area, so of course I volunteered. There was no other option, really. I owed it to the others, and to my family There were three of us who were sent out – more would’ve been too many to be stealthy. The two others with me –Bashir and Hassan – were both from Hima, too, and excellent soldiers, but they didn’t know the locality. We left soon after dark, climbing out of a window into a dingy backyard, and stooping down a back lane. It was dark, of course, with no electricity, and we had no luxuries like night vision equipment. We moved in a crouch, keeping our heads as low as possible, hugging the walls of the houses. We heard people talking more than once – whether terrorists, or possibly civilians, we couldn’t tell. I knew a narrow back lane which gave on to the crossroads. When I was a teenager, a girl I had a crush on lived nearby, and she and I had often sneaked away along this lane to avoid her mother’s eagle eye. Fatima was long gone, moved away years ago, and there had been other girls afterwards, many of them – but I still remembered the lane, every twist and turn of it; and, as I’d expected, the enemy hadn’t thought it worth barricading. Though it took us a long time, we finally reached the point where it met the crossroads. It was a moonless night, but there were enough stars visible to cast some light. The buildings around the crossroads were silhouetted against the sky, their windows patches of absolute darkness. We’d have to get in closer. In all the things I’ve gone through in this war, the crawl through that crossroads must be the most nerve-wracking. All around us, the high buildings towered into the air, full of menace. We were only three men, and at each step we felt as though a thousand eyes were watching us. We moved on our bellies, crawling like snakes along the bottom of the walls, trying to make no noise whatever. And we did manage to check out the crossroads thoroughly. We marked the position of a sandbagged barrier they’d built to one side, and a rough bunker made of slabs of concrete on another. I remember lying on the ground right under a window through which a terrorist was leaning, smoking a cigarette – his hot ash fell on the back of my hand. Someone inside was talking to him, in a language I couldn’t understand – he must have been one of the foreign jihadists the Gulf monarchies had pushed in. After some time he moved back from the window, and I could breathe again. After about an hour we’d managed to work our way around the crossroads, and get a fairly good idea of the terrorist defences. Finally reaching the lane again, we got stiffly to our feet and prepared to get back to our platoon. I suppose we’d let our guard down at that moment, thinking we were over the worst, because it was then that the terrorist patrol found us. No, they didn’t catch us completely by surprise – we’d been stupid, but not that stupid. The terrorists and we caught sight of each other at almost exactly the same moment. There weren’t many of them either – four or five. One of them gave a shout, and then we were all shooting at them, and they were shooting at us. I remember one of them was so close to me that my muzzle flashes lit up his chest and I could see his clothes ripping from my bullets. Then suddenly the shooting was over, and I found myself alone. I could hear the terrorists coming, though, yelling at each other as they swarmed out of their positions at the crossroads. I knew they’d be on me in moments if I tried to run for the lane. And if they captured me, death would seem a blessing. Without consciously thinking about it, I ran for the nearest building, on my right. It was at the entrance of the lane, and before the fighting started had evidently been under construction. We’d noticed sacks of cement and piles of bricks still stacked around the entrance. I dodged behind one of these stacks and into the cover of the shadow cast by the upper floors. There were stairs leading up, and I climbed them as quickly as I could. One of the hardest things to do was to keep from gasping for breath – I was terrified and winded – and I held a handkerchief over my mouth and nose to muffle the sound as much as I could. Outside, there was still a lot of shooting, but I had no idea who was firing, or at whom. I climbed two storeys before I had to stop to rest. My legs refused to support me any longer, and I lay down on the rough concrete, gasping, feeling as though the pounding of my heart could be heard across town. After a long time, the shouting and shooting outside died down, and a little after that I felt able to get up again. I was extremely thirsty, and I discovered that at some point in the evening I’d lost my water bottle. At first I tried to tolerate the thirst, but it soon grew to be a monster tearing at the inside of my throat. Finally, I began hunting around for water. It had rained in the morning, and I hoped that I’d be able to find a puddle where the wind had blown it in. It wouldn’t be the first time I’d had to drink from a puddle. I was still looking for the water when I heard a sound behind me, and someone grabbed me by the shoulder… I was extremely fortunate that at that time I was in the far corner of the half-finished building, where the shadow was thickest. The terrorist hadn’t been able to identify who I was – one of his comrades or a soldier. It made him slow, and unsure enough to catch hold of me instead of killing me instantly. I twisted in his grip, throwing myself down, and an instant later he was on me. He was small, but immensely tough, and fast. Neither of us could use our guns in that situation, rolling on the floor, and for a moment I thought I was getting the upper hand. Then he threw a punch that knocked my helmet off my head, and I saw a faint glitter of starlight on steel as he swung a bayonet at my face… It didn’t hurt. I felt the blade slam into my forehead, and the skin part like paper, but it didn’t hurt, not then. Nor did the spurt of blood falling over my eyes slow me down. At that point I was reacting entirely by instinct, and as he raised the bayonet again I slammed a knee into his belly, caught his knife arm, and twisted as hard as I could. I don’t remember exactly what happened the next few seconds, but a little bit later I was lying on my back on the concrete, feeling dizzy, while next to me I could hear something flopping around and groaning. After a while the moaning stopped, and I either lost consciousness or went to sleep. It must have been several hours later that I woke. It was cold, and at first I couldn’t see. Touching my face, I found my eyelids were stuck together with drying blood, and after a little rubbing I managed to open my eyes. The first light of dawn had just lightened the sky, and looking around I found I could see a great deal more than during the night. My helmet lay beside me, and beside it, my gun. And on my other side was a crumpled form, its face turned away from me, the haft of the bayonet sticking out of its throat. It was the dead terrorist of course. I don’t know to this day what prompted me to reach out and turn the corpse over. I had seen many dead terrorists, and the most I’d done to them afterwards was smash their bearded faces with my boot. But this was a different kind of fight, one on one, him against me. I suppose I wanted to see just what kind of man I’d killed. At first I didn’t understand why he looked familiar. I thought that it was maybe a trick of the light. I rubbed my eyes again, and peered close, and only then did I admit it to myself. Under the beard covering his cheeks and jaw, I saw the face of Salim. The dead terrorist was my brother. ************************************** “The platoon commander sent me back to the field dressing station, and the doctors there wanted to hospitalise me. But I refused point blank – I demanded that they patch me up and send me back to the platoon. They thought it was heroism, but it wasn’t. I just needed to know what had happened. “I found out three days later, when we finally captured my parents’ home street. The terrorists had finally broken, and were streaming out of the town, leaving only small suicidal rear-guards in an attempt to stall our advance. We gave them no quarter. “My parents were still at the house, which was almost intact. I don’t want to describe the way they reacted when I showed up at their door. I asked them about Salim, where he was.” “You didn’t tell them he was dead?” I asked. “Of course not. I still haven’t told them – I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I don’t know if I ever will be able to. But this is what they said – “When the terrorists had taken over the old city, some of their local members had turned up at my parents’ door. They knew I was in the army, and they demanded that my parents send me a message ordering me to desert. When my father refused, they held a gun to my mother’s head and threatened to shoot her first, and then him. Then Salim said he’d go with them instead – to save our parents’ lives. “I can still feel us fighting,” he continued. “I can feel the bayonet scraping on my skull. And I wonder – I wonder every night – what I’d have done if I’d recognised him then. Would I still have fought him? Or would I have let him kill me? I keep wondering, but I can’t think of an answer.” Murad fell silent, looking at his hands. I waited, watching him, not daring to intrude. “I told you,” he said finally, “that this war’s a furnace, didn’t I? It’s tempered us, hardened us, and made us what we’d never have been otherwise. It turned my brother into a reluctant terrorist. It turned me into an unknowing fratricide. And all of us – we’ve all lost something in this war, friends or relatives or our innocence. All we have left is the thirst for revenge. It drives us on, and it won’t be quenched until the last terrorist is driven from the land.” Heavy shelling began in the distance, making the walls rattle. Murad looked up at me and smiled suddenly. “Tomorrow’s fighting will soon begin,” he said, putting on his helmet and hiding the scar. “Shall we go and get some more tea?”
Bill’s Blogspot
Two hours later,” Murad said, “our men attacked and flushed the terrorists from the crossroads. As I found later, Bashir and Hassan had both got back to the platoon and told them where the defences were – and reported that I’d been killed. When they found me, I looked as though I wasn’t too far from death, they told me later. But I didn’t feel anything. I only felt numb.
Copyright B Purkayastha 2013
Syria ~ General Command : Army Units Destroyed Israeli Vehicle Crossed Cease-Fire Line
DAMASCUS, SANA_ General Command of the Army and the Armed Forces said that our armed forces destroyed an Israeli vehicle entered from the occupied territories and crossed the cease-fire line towards the village of Bir Ajam.
“The village is located in the liberated area of Syrian territories where there are armed terrorist groups, ” the General Command said in a statement issued Tuesday.
“Following that, the Israeli enemy fired two rockets from the occupied site of Tal al-Faras toward one of our sites in al-Zubaydiah village; no casualties reported, ” the statement said.
It added that the aggression aims at raising the terrorist groups’ collapsed moral due to the painful blows they received at the hands of our armed forces in more than one place, especially in al-Qsier area.
The General Command of the Army and the Armed Forces said that the blatant aggression confirms again the involvement of the Zionist entity in the ongoing events in Syria and the direct coordination with the armed terrorist gangs.
The statement stressed that any breach or an attempt to violate the state sovereignty will be responded.
It stressed that whoever thinks that he is able to test our strength, alert and readiness to maintain our dignity and sovereignty is mistaken.
Ghossoun /
Syrian Army Blocks Terrorists’ Escape Routes from Qusseir
Syrian Army Blocks Terrorists’ Escape Routes from Qusseir
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Syrian Army Blocks Terrorists’ Escape Routes from Qusseir
TEHRAN (FNA)- The Central city of al-Qusseir which was under the control of the rebels in recent days has now fallen strategically and militarily after the Syrian army blocked the routes used by the terrorists for communication and escape, a prominent Syrian military expert and strategist said on Tuesday. |
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“Qusseir has fallen strategically and militarily now; as far as the battlefield and the troops number is concerned, the Syrian army in almost 70% in control,” Salim Harba told FNA on Tuesday.
Harba also said that the Syrian army troops loyal to President Bashar al-Assad are present “in other areas of the city as well, but are currently in fight with the terrorists and armed groups stationed in those regions”.
From strategic perspectives, the Syrian army has created an end for the battle in al-Qusseir which will lead to its win, he added.
“Militarily speaking, the Syrian army has managed to stage a battle in al-Qusseir at such a speed, preciseness and skill that even the most powerful armies of the world cannot carry it out,” Harba said.
The Syrian army started the operation in al-Qusseir city 46 days ago to regain control of the city.
Earlier in the day, the state media in Syria said the army was still advancing in the strategic city and took full control over its Eastern part.
The rebels in al-Qusseir have been buoyed by Salafi groups in Lebanon’s Northern city of Tripoli and Ersal. The Syrian government has recently warned that it would not waver in responding to the armed groups which are moving in an out between Syria and Lebanon.
Earlier reports on Monday said that the Syrian armed forces restored security and stability to most of al-Qusseir city neighborhoods in Homs countryside, killing and wounding a large number of terrorists, most of them non-Syrian fighters.
Dozens of terrorists laid down their weapons and surrendered to the army, a military source told the Syrian Arab News Agency, adding that scores of terrorists were arrested in cooperation with the locals.
Nawaf Alwani, the leader of a terrorist group affiliated to al-Nusra Front, Alaa Amer, Jamal Khankan, Mohammad Jamal al-Mashhadani, Mohammad Bakr, Mohammad al-Abdullah, Ahmad Sahms Eddin, Abdul-Aziz al-Itr, Khedr Sabra, Basel Mohammad Turkmani, Maher Sukkar and Khaled Rahal were among the killed terrorists, the source added.
The army is currently pursuing the armed terrorist groups in some areas in the city.
Army units destroyed large numbers of tunnels used by the terrorists to carry out their terrorist acts and hide their weapons and equipment there.
The army also seized huge amounts of weapons and ammunition and dismantled dozens of explosive devices planted by the terrorists on the roads and in the buildings.
Syrian Army Detains French, British, Belgian, Dutch, Qatari Officers in al-Qusseir
Syrian Army Detains French, British, Belgian, Dutch, Qatari Officers in al-Qusseir
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Syrian Army Detains French, British, Belgian, Dutch, Qatari Officers in al-Qusseir
TEHRAN (FNA)- The Syrian troopers detained dozens of foreign officers in the restive al-Qusseir region, sources said on Tuesday, adding that most of the detainees were from France, Britain, Belgium, the Netherlands and Qatar. |
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Assim Qansou, a representative of the socialist party in Lebanon’s parliament, told the Lebanese al-Nashrah newspaper that during the battle in al-Qusseir city, the Syrian army has arrested tens of French, British, Belgian, Dutch and Qatari officers.
The EU’s anti-terror chief said in April that hundreds of Europeans are now fighting with rebel forces in Syria against Bashar al-Assad’s government.
Gilles de Kerchove estimated the number in Syria at about 500.
Intelligence agencies are concerned some could join groups linked to al-Qaeda and later return to Europe to launch terrorist attacks.
The UK, Ireland and France are among the EU countries estimated to have the highest numbers of fighters in Syria.
“Not all of them are radical when they leave, but most likely many of them will be radicalized there, will be trained,” de Kerchove said.
“And as we’ve seen this might lead to a serious threat when they get back.”
Across Europe, intelligence agencies have stepped up investigations, says the BBC’s Europe correspondent Duncan Crawford.
In Britain and Belgium they have increased efforts to track how people are recruited.
In the Netherlands, officials have raised the terror threat level there to “substantial” – partly over concerns about radicalized citizens returning from Syria.
The Syrian army announced on Tuesday that it found an Israeli military vehicle during its wide-scale attack in the central city of al-Qusseir.
According to the report, the vehicle was found along with tapping and jamming devices in al-Qusseir where the Syrian army has taken full control over the entire Eastern part of the strategic city near the borders with Lebanon.
Pentagon asks US Congress for extra $79.4bn for Afghan war
Pentagon asks US Congress for extra $79.4bn for Afghan war
hmmm for the new base on Iran’s border or what ??? fu, you pay for it if you want it, no hand outs … you were supposed to leave long ago
The Pentagon has submitted a request of nearly 80 billion dollars for the fiscal year 2014 to the US Congress to cover the cost of war in Afghanistan.
The request for USD 79.4 billion was issued on Friday, and it comes in addition to a USD-526.6-billion budget proposed by the Pentagon for the operations in the war-stricken country.
The war funds, officially known as Overseas Contingency Operations (OCO), will take over the daily operations by US forces as well as the cost of the planned withdrawal of troops and equipments from Afghanistan.
Pentagon Press Secretary George Little announced that the amount requested on Friday was less than that of 2013, which is USD 87.2 billion.
“The main goal is to limit the impact of sequestration (automatic cuts) on military readiness, particularly training and maintenance accounts,” Little said, adding, “This reprogramming request is in large measure an attempt to shift funds to those accounts.”
Meanwhile, the Pentagon issued another request to the Congress on Friday over having authority to shift the defense funds for 2013 – nearly USD 10 billion – in order to counterbalance automatic cuts.
Commentators say the cost of the troops withdrawal could exceed seven billion dollars.
According to a research by Harvard Kennedy School in March, each of the more than 866,180 US soldiers injured in Iraq and Afghanistan is expected to cost the US government approximately two million dollars in long-term medical costs.
Linda Bilmes, who conducted the research, said the total cost for all injured soldiers was $1.7 trillion, including 800 billion dollars already allocated for wounded veterans.
The wars on Iraq and Afghanistan will be the most expensive wars in US history, totaling some four to six trillion dollars, Bilmes stated in her report.
Related posts:
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- Leader of Oppression Land Obama pitches Congress short-term budget deal
- US mayors call on Congress to end wars
- 1.4mn US troops on global active duty: Pentagon
- US budget cuts may force reduction in military aid to Israel
- Why is US military power diminishing?
- US Gen. in Afghanistan may ask for extra troops
- US to spend $413bn more on Afghan war
- 60,000 to lose jobs in Massachusetts: Congressman
- US upgrading military bases in Afghanistan
Tehran to Host Meeting of Friends of Syria on May 29 :)
Tehran to Host Meeting of Friends of Syria on May 29 
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Tehran to Host Meeting of Friends of Syria on May 29
TEHRAN (FNA)- Tehran will be hosting the meeting of the Friends of Syria in late May in a bid to find a peaceful solution to the ongoing crisis in the Muslim country. |
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Representatives of a number of foreign countries and international organizations will take part in the upcoming friends of Syria meeting in the Iranian capital on May 29.
Last week, Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi announced that Iran “will host the Friend of Syria Meeting” later in this month and that the relevant invitations had been sent to many countries and international organizations to take part in the event.
He expressed the hope that many world leaders would give positive response to Iran’s invitation.
Salehi further mentioned that he had a meeting with Egyptian Foreign Minister Mohamed Kamel Amr over Syria on the sidelines of a foreign ministerial meeting of the Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC) in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, and discussed the proposal of the quadrilateral Contact Group on the settlement of the Syrian crisis.
“It seems that the crisis in Syria is progressing in a way that many regional counties as well as the international community member states are moving to resolve the issue (crisis in Syria),” Salehi underscored.
Iran has intensified diplomatic efforts to end the ongoing crisis in Syria.
Also, Salehi said earlier this month that his recent tour of the regional states, which took him to Jordan and Syria, was aimed at preventing the spread of the Syrian crisis into the region, and added that the regional countries share Tehran’s views on Syria.
“The Islamic Republic of Iran is in constant contact with different regional states to prevent the harmful aftermaths of some regional developments from spreading to the entire region,” Salehi said on the sidelines of a conference dubbed as ‘Diplomacy and Soft Power in the Great Prophet’s (PBUH) Sirah (life and tradition)’ in Tehran.
Salehi also said that during his trip to Damascus he had a meeting with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to share the world and regional countries’ views on the Syrian crisis with Assad, and said “good decisions were made” at the meeting.
Iranian officials have repeatedly underlined that Tehran is in favor of negotiations between the Syrian government and opposition groups to create stability in the Middle Eastern country.
Last November, Iran hosted a meeting between the representatives of the Syrian government and opposition to encourage them to start talks to find a political solution to their problems. The National Dialogue Conference kicked off work in Tehran mid November with the motto of ‘No to Violence, Yes to Democracy”.
The meeting brought together almost 200 representatives of various Syrian ethnicities, political groups, minorities, the opposition, and state officials.
Syria has been experiencing unrest since March 2011 with organized attacks by well-armed gangs against Syrian police forces and border guards being reported across the country.
Hundreds of people, including members of the security forces, have been killed, when some protest rallies turned into armed clashes.
The government blames outlaws, saboteurs, and armed terrorist groups for the deaths, stressing that the unrest is being orchestrated from abroad.
In October 2011, calm was almost restored in the Arab state after President Assad started a reform initiative in the country, but Israel, the US and its Arab allies sought hard to bring the country into chaos through any possible means. Tel Aviv, Washington and some Arab capitals have been staging various plots to topple President Bashar al-Assad, who is well known in the world for his anti-Israeli stances.
Extremists Attack Members of Jordanian Popular Committee for Supporting Syria
Extremists Attack Members of Jordanian Popular Committee for Supporting Syria
Scores of al-Qaeda-linked takfiri extremists attacked the members of the Jordanian Popular Committee for Supporting Syria and the Resistance Approach in Irbid city in Jordan to prevent them from holding an activity in solidarity with Syria and its people.
Extremists from the Salafi party gathered in front of the Professional Associations Complex in Irbid, where the activity is scheduled to be held carrying bladed weapons and the banners of al-Qaeda and Jabhat al-Nusra.
The extremists attacked the committee members and the Jordanian activists, causing the injury of three activists as one of them admitted to the hospital.
The committee was able to go through with the event, where speakers expressed full solidarity with Syria and its people against the aggression on it.
They condemned the US existence in Jordan, expressing rejection of holding a conference for the friends of terrorism in Syria, in Amman, in a reference to the so-called ‘friends of Syria Conference’.
They also called for not turning Jordan into a passage to the conspiracy against Syria.
Seizure of Israeli Vehicle in al-Qseir Proves Scale of Israeli Involvement in Syria ~ Why Al-Qusayr takeover by SAA is important?
Media Source: Seizure of Israeli Vehicle in al-Qseir Proves Scale of Israeli Involvement in Syria
DAMASCUS, (SANA) – A media source said that the seizure of an Israeli military vehicle which terrorists had been using in al-Qseir refutes the allegations made by Israel to justify its aggression on Syria and proves the scale of Israel’s military and intelligence involvements in the events in Syria.
The source said that the Israeli military support for the armed terrorist groups proves the involvement of Qatar, Turkey and Israel in the aggression on Syria which is waged through a single central operations room.
The source pointed out that the Israeli military support for terrorism in Syria proves once more that Israel was and still is adopting the policy of organized state terrorism, stressing that the world must act to confront this terrorism.
The source said that the questions raised by the seizure of the Israeli military vehicle and the surveillance and jamming equipment in al-Qseir show that the armed terrorist groups with all their different names are merely headlines for a single structure led by Israel, Qatar and Turkey.
H. Sabbagh
*********** In a strategic success, Syrian army has overtaken large part of Al-Qusayr, inflicting severe defeat on terrorists and capturing hundreds of them. Al-Qusayr is a strategic region and for its mountainous terrain, it overlooks other surrounding regions, covering all connecting roads. As said before, Al-Qusayr was providing the route for arms and forces entry to Syria, and functioned as headquarters for terrorists to manage the affairs from and sent troops to different regions. Having putting full siege on Al-Qusayr, Syrian army managed a great victory by overtaking large part of the city. Currently, whole south, west and east of Al-Qusayr are controlled by Syrian army, with northern part being only in terrorists’ control. During overtake, hundreds of terrorists were captured, destroying their spirit, and inflicting heavy costs to opposition forces. The following is a glance at recent victories by Syrian army in Al-Qusayr · Syrian army has taken control of some government centers including culture center, church, and Municipality square in Al-Qusayr. · Syrian army has taken full control of Jusiya in Reef Qusayr in Homs province in vicinity of Lebanese borders, and cleared almost all regions from terrorists. · With Syrian army seizing most villages in Reef Qusayr in central Syria, some terrorist groups entertained the idea of talking to Syrian government and giving up the arms and surrender. · Syrian state news agency announced several operations by Syrian army in Homs, reporting that the army has destroyed communication roads and tunnels of terrorists in Al-Qusayr. · Chaharda, Tall Hanash, and Ras al-Maa were strategic points in providing arms and logistics by Lebanese groups to Syria. Farouq Brigades were entrenched in Jusiya and according to graffiti by terrorists, Ahmed Seif al-Din was Farouq Brigades commander. They had the religion under their control since a year, converting the school to their headquarters. · During Syrian army extensive operation in southern part of Reef Al-Qusayr in Homs province in central Syria, large amounts of weapons of Israeli made were discovered by Syria army and seized. · Syrian army restores peace and security in cultural centers, church, Municipality square, and al-Qayta neighborhood in Al-Qusayr in Homs province. · Khabar Press news website reported Israeli Special Forces have entered Al-Qusayr to help Al-Nusra Front. Intelligence agents entered Syria from Lebanon to prevent Syrian army progress towards Al-Qusayr.
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Why Al-Qusayr takeover by Syrian army is important?
The CIA, Qatar, and the Creation of Syria’s Jabhat al Nusra ~ La CIA, il Qatar e la creazione di Jabhat al-Nusra ~ (Eng-Ita)
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The CIA, Qatar, and the Creation of Syria’s Jabhat al Nusra
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A recent interview given by: an ‘anonymous’ Qatari security official, has shed further light on CIA-led covert arms shipments to militants fighting in Syria. In this Reuters article, the security official and several ‘anonymous’ rebel Commanders confirm that Qatar has “tightened coordination of arms flows to Syria,” under alleged concern of weapons ending up in the hands of Al Qaeda linked Islamic extremist militants; the very militants as noted previously, that have continually formed the spearhead of the insurgency against the Syrian Government:
Raghead: Reaper Creeper
Copyright B Purkayastha 2013
Jalili: Syrian People Will Not Alone Pay Price of War on Syria, But Rather the Europeans
or ♫ “Baby I’m coming home …. “♩ ♪ ♫ ♬
TEHRAN, (SANA)- Secretary of Iranian Supreme National Security Council, Saeed Jalili stressed that “the price is not only being paid by Syrian people. Rather it is also being paid by the people of Europe.”
“Insisting on this wrongful behavior with the terrorists they have given opportunities to terrorists to come thousands of kilometers from Afghanistan to the borders of Europe. I think that this is something that the people in Europe need to be worried about this,” Jalili added in an interview with Euronews Network broadcast by the Iranian news agencies.
Jalili pointed out that Iran’s cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is ‘unprecedented’ as Iran has provided the agency with the widest level of cooperation that is possible.
H.Zain/ Ghossoun
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