The Prodigal Sons of the State Dept - Part 3 - Entry of ISIS

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From 2012 to April 2014, the phenomenon of the ISIS/ISIL, called “Daesh” (Bad People/terrorists) by people in Islamic states to avoid using the word “Islamic” to describe the organization that calls itself “Islamic State”,  burst upon the scene.

The earlier version appeared to have morphed from diverse warlord groups operating in Iraq. The effort to set up democratic US-model elections in Iraq had predictably led to the rise of a government dominated by the majority Shia. There were power-sharing deals to keep the heavily-armed Sunnis (Saddam Hussein was a Sunni) pacified. However the jostling between warlords had spiraled into chaos. American interest in keeping up ground forces di- minished as belated realization that the 2003 ‘WMD dossiers’ were blatant scams, started percolating even through parts of the US public discourse and mainstream media. For reference, even in 2005, State Department retirees and others were citing the consternation of people in the US intelligence community: They had recognized the ‘satellite photos’ that were waved around in the UN Security Council by US Secretary of State General Colin Powell as ‘proof’ of Iraqi WMD. They knew that those were from 1990, and long-since destroyed or otherwise emptied. Rising domestic pressure to bring the troops home, was accompanied by rising pressure on Iraqi politicians to demand exit of the Americans.

A swift rash of attacks by the initial version of ISIS was eventually put down, and the Americans pulled out - significantly including cut-backs in aerial intervention. By late 2013/early 2014, the new ISIS had exploded on the scene, sweeping across the landscape of Iraq. It became evident that the earlier disappearance from Iraq was because the ISIS had been pulled out and redeployed inside the massive Sunni belt of Syria, particularly along the Euphrates river corridor, and the borders with Turkey.

With the Syrian government desperately fighting off the urban/suburban insurrection, the so-called ISIS forces occupied essentially all of the areas marked in white in Figure above as well as most of the Sunni-majority areas. Reuter published so-called Secret Files revealing the structure of the ISIS (Ref: https://www.spiegel.de/international/world/islamic-state-files-show-structure-of-islamist-terror-group-a-1029274.html). 

We will cite some facts and leave the rest to be filtered by the reader. The city of Raqqa fell to ’rebels’ in March 2013 and on October 17, the Islamic State called all the leaders and announced a full takeover: anyone with other ideas was executed, the rest swore allegiance to the Islamic State.

The second phase of the invasion started with Turkey openly transporting trainloads of heavy weapons to its border areas and feeding the ISIS to occupy the Euphrates valley (https://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/16/world/europe/turkey-is-a-steady-source-of-isis-recruits.html). 

Meanwhile Israeli forces attacked Syrian soldiers in the Golan Heights even as they were trying to defend against ISIS assaults; the ISIS wounded were taken into Israeli hospitals for treatment (https://www.timesofisrael.com/idf-allows-first-peek-into-secret-field-hospital-on-syrian-border/ and https://en.farsnews.com/newstext.aspx?nn=13921113001187 and https://foreignpolicy.com/2014/06/11/exclusive-israel-is-tending-to-wounded-syrian-rebels/) . 

Syrian air force bases were attacked by Israeli air power, and then overrun by the ISIS. In most cases, all Syrian soldiers who surrendered - and did not manage to be absorbed into ISIS ranks by virtue of ethnicity, were murdered and dumped in mass graves or rivers. In quick succession, villages small towns and larger cities fell to the invaders.

In December 2013, other Syrian rebel groups, even Al Nusra whom the US belatedly started calling an ‘Al Qaeda- related’ Islamist extremist group, banded together to attack ISIS and pushed them out of most of the occupied Syrian areas, even Raqqa. This may have been mostly for show, as the ISIS was needed elsewhere: by June 2014 the ISIS was swarming in Iraq.

The Kurds in the border areas declared independence, and were supported by American/NATO airpower and weapons to some extent. They managed to repel ISIS attacks on the city of Kobani. There were heart-rending reports of young Kurdish women soldiers fighting until they had exhausted their ammunition, and then, facing capture and torture, killed themselves with explosives, killing several of the ISIS swarming over them. The Kurdish SDF (Syrian Democratic Forces) were reported to be fighting in collaboration with the Free Syrian Army (FSA) against the ISIS in September 2014 (https://www.reuters.com/article/world/syrian-army-turkish-forces-clash-near-border-state-media-idUSKBN1X91UX/_).

The Syrian government claimed since the very beginning, that they were facing a foreign terrorist invasion. This has been more than vindicated by the massive scale of subsequent warfare, with the Syrian armed forces severely outgunned and outmanned, and reduced to defending a few pockets around Damascus and in the province of Latakia. By mid 2015, these areas were also under threat with Damascus suburbs getting heavy shelling. The cities of Homs, Aleppo, Raqqa, Kobani and Palmyra had been lost from Syrian control. Deir ez Zor (D-e-Z), near the Iraq border, has a gruesome history: It was where the Turkish Ottoman forces drove thousands of exhausted Armenian families, and left them to starve to death under the desert sun during the Armenian Genocide. D-e-Z became a besieged garrison with an airport that was often under fire. Syrian soldiers who surrendered elsewhere, had been mercilessly beheaded by the ISIS and the other Rebels, and perhaps this knowledge of certain torture and death sustained the D-e-Z defenders through a historic stand until they were relieved by a combined Syrian-Iranian force in late 2016. The commander of the D-e-Z garrison, General Zahreddin died days later when his vehicle hit a mine outside D-e-Z. At the very last stage of the D-e-Z siege, US warplanes killed over 100 Syrian soldiers in their defensive positions outside D-e-Z, 3 minutes before the ISIS launched a massive assault, very nearly breaking through the Syrian defense line. The US military later claimed that this was an error - which the Russians and Syrians found incredible.

The US Taxpayer’s Benevolence

US involvement started with covert aid to the Syrian Rebels, and clearly supported the armed groups trying to invade Damascus and overthrow the Assad government. The US arming, training and funding the ‘dissent’ in Syria, was quite open and proudly announced. There was strong support for the principle of supporting the Forces of Freedom in Syria against the ‘regime’ of the ‘brutal dictator Assad’, with measures including decapitation strikes, and War Crimes Trials loudly demanded against President Assad. The small fact that Syria was (and is) a sovereign member of the United Nations, that had done nothing hostile against the United States nor posed any challenge to the security of the USA, was not seen mentioned.

It is now apparent that covert aid started very early, but formal approval for military aid to the ‘Rebels’ did not occur until September 2014, by which time the ISIS was swarming all over Iraq and Syria. By 2015, the US had authorized some of the rebel groups to call in US/ NATO airstrikes, purportedly to allow them to fight off ISIS assaults, but equally enabling strikes on the forces of the Syrian government (https://nypost.com/2014/09/17/house-grudgingly-approves-arms-for-syrian-rebels/ and https://www.reuters.com/article/world/u-s-congress-approves-arming-syrian-rebels-funding-government-idUSKBN0HD1UJ/ and https://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2014/09/17/349075789/after-a-long-wait-syrian-rebels-hope-the-weapons-will-now-flow and https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-to-give-some-syria-rebels-ability-to-call-airstrikes-1424208053).

Doubts about the nature of the Allies receiving US aid appeared in the US media following this Congressional approval. By September 2014 the media were putting the term ’moderate’ in quotes while referring to the rebels whom the US taxpayer was supporting. Thus there were reports that the US-funded ‘Opposition’ against the Syrian Government, had sworn that they backed the ‘rebels’ against the ’Al Qaeda’. In this context, we must point out that the term  ’Al Qaeda’ means ”root directory’ of a hard disk in a computer found in the rubble in Afghanistan by US forces in 2001. The term appears to find usage mainly in justifying funding from Western lawmakers, as in ’we need funding to fight Al Qaeda in (fill in the geographic feature such as ‘Arabian Peninsula’ or ‘Iraq’). 

The only reported usage of such a term in an in- ternal Arabic document was an early position paper by Dr. Aiman Al Zuwahiri, lieutenant to Sheikh Osama Bin Laden, de- scribing the members of the initial Afghan resistance against the Soviets as the core of the movement for Islamic purity (https://www.reuters.com/article/world/syria-s-moderate-rebels-say-they-need-weapons-not-training-idUSKBN0HA0QX/ and https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/turkeys-erdogan-does-not-rule-out-meeting-syrias-assad-restore-ties-2024-06-28/).

In September 2014, the US forces bombed ISIS sites in Syria. By May 2015, apparent consternation had dawned in Washington DC about what was obvious to anyone else: that Saudi Arabia and Turkey were sponsoring the ISIS- the same entities that the US forces were supposed to be bombing in Syria. By November 2015, the optimism had faded, lamenting that more airstrikes were not likely to help defeat the ISIS. But by then the Russians were in action (https://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/isis-terror/u-s-bombs-isis-sites-syria-targets-khorasan-group-n209421 and https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/syria-crisis-turkey-and-saudi-arabia-shock-western-countries-by-supporting-antiassad-jihadists-10242747.html)

To be Continued.. 

Who Fathered ISIS? The Prodigal Sons of the State Dept - Part 2 - History

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Simplified Demographics

It can be speculated on how to resolve the above cognitive dissonance, starting with above Figure. This is a map of Syria from 1976, overlaid with simplified demo-graphics. At the time, the total population of Syria was around 6.3 million (https://en.wikipedia.org/ wiki/Demographics_of_Syria). 

The vast region in white bordering Iraq and Jordan was and still is sparsely populated. The southwest including Dam- ascus and the Ghouta province and the northwest (Latakia, Idlib and Hama) are the most fertile, with Latakia having a Mediterranean coastline. The Golan Heights at the southwest are partially occupied by Israel since the war of 1967. The majority (60 %) of Syria’s population follow the Sunni sect of Islam. The power centers of the ruling Baath Party draw support from the Alawites who are part of the Shia branch of Islam. They constituted 13% while the Sunni Kurds were 10%, Greek-Orthodox Christians were 8%, Armenian-Christians, Arab-Druze, Arab-Ismaeli each 2%, and Turkmen, Circassian and Assyrian making up the remainder. Some 60% of the total population lived in the Aleppo province and along the Euphrates River Valley, stretching from Idlib and Aleppo in the northwest to Deir-ez-Zor at the eastern Iraq border. The navigable river is a corridor of commerce and invasions since ancient times.

Sunni-Shia Faultline

The history of the Sunni-Shia divide is summarized in (https://www.cfr.org/article/sunni-shia-divide). Today 85% of Muslims (all ardent followers of Islam’s Prophet Mohammed) are Sunni, and 15% are from the remaining sects including the Shia (Alawite, Ahmadiya, to name two). Shias have concentrations in the Middle East and North Africa in certain pockets.

Syria’s neighbors are Iraq, Jordan, Turkey and Israel. When President Erdogan came to power in Turkey, he rode on a platform to introduce fundamentalist Islamic reforms. He reversed decades of Field Marshal Kemal Attaturk’s western- seeking secularism that even imposed tough (for Believers) dress codes. Relations with Israel initially became less civil.

Both Turkey and Saudi Arabia are predominantly Sunni. Iraq has a majority Shia population which was ruled by Sad- dam Hussein’s minority Sunni military officers until his over- throw. Today a Shia-majority government rules Iraq. In Syria, despite having the 60% Sunni population, the ruling Baath Party is led by an Alawite Shia, and, most unusually for any Muslim-majority nation and particularly an Arab nation, has always had Christians and other Unbelievers (in Islam) in government positions. Thus the Shia rulers of Syria found little favor from either Turkey or Saudi Arabia. An uneasy peace reigned in the region, enforced by regimes that kept dissent out of public view, with occasional uprisings put down with massive force. The practices and freedoms were notably similar whether in ’Authoritarian’ Syria or ’US-Allied and Civilized’ Turkey and the Gulf Emirates such as Bahrain and Qatar – and a lot worse in US-Frontline Ally Saudi Arabia. This stability changed as the Arab Spring provided the openings for regime change.

The Anti-Shia Alliance

As recently as the early 2000s, Israelis would tell anyone that they regarded Saudi Arabia as the primary source of existential threats to the Jewish nation. It appears that during the 2010s, Israel’s relations with Saudi Arabia and Turkey have improved dramatically. Simultaneously, they have organized themselves against the Shia populations led by Iran. Today Israel views the Shia militant groups Hezbollah (in Iran and Syria) and Hamas (in Lebanon) as their greatest threats, backed by the narrative that Iran is attempting to acquire nuclear weapons which Israel already has in plenty. Saudi Arabia also shares these fears (informed sources claim that they already have nuclear weapons which they funded Pakistan to acquire from China), while Turkey sees Iran as perhaps an obstacle to the rebirth of the Ottoman Caliphate.

Since the demise of Saddam Hussein and the rise of the Shia in Iraq through democratic elections and other power blocs, Syria’s, Iran’s and Iraq’s Shia populations have found much in common. One is that they are on the target list of Turkey and Saudi Arabia, and more recently the ISIS and by extension the Allies of those nations, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, NATO and the USA. With Israel and its supporters in the USA urging all to follow their example and launch military attacks on the Shia.

AK47 automatic assault rifles, RDX and C4 explosives for car bombs, rocket-propelled grenade launchers and anti-tank guided missiles are freely available throughout the region, happily supplied by eager purveyors. This reality is ignored by those who argue loudly for installing peaceful democratic rule by majority approval with respect for the rights of all – while supporting their own pet terrorist gangs in the interests of ‘saving’ natural resources for their own wealth.

By 2011, Syria had 21.1 million native Syrians, plus 1.3 million refugees from the wars in Iraq, 0.5 million Palestinian refugees and some 5200 Somalian refugees. By 2015, over 10 million Syrians were in regions occupied by the ISIS, and two million lived in Rojava, the region ruled by Kurdish forces. Another 6 million had left the country, and an undetermined, very large number, estimated by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) at 7 million were internally dis- placed refugees.

The Color Revolution and Regime Change Wars In the Middle East

“Regime Change Wars” are not new in the history of the United States. The Mossadegh “regime” in Iran, which was elected by popular vote, was overthrown by street riots, strongly suspected to be fomented by foreign interests including the USA (https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02684527.2011.580603?scroll=top&needAccess=true and https://www.cia.gov/resources/csi/static/all-the-shahs-men.pdf). 

The Salvador Allende government in Chile was considered to be “leftist” and was overthrown, likewise, by interests supported by US funding (https://www.jstor.org/stable/165728 and https://ttu-ir.tdl.org/server/api/core/bitstreams/aa893fdf-f06b-4166-8eb0-86861b2d57c1/content). An attempt was made back in 1961 to overthrow the government led by Fidel Castro in Cuba (the ill-fated Bay of Pigs event) (https://www.rienner.com/title/Politics_of_Illusion_The_Bay_of_Pigs_Invasion_Reexamined and https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-latin-american-studies/article/abs/ships-in-the-night-the-cia-the-white-house-and-the-bay-of-pigs/97907DF7A0522B57B89DA275118827CA). 

Cut to the 21st century. 

The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, were the culmination of quite a widespread number of terrorist projects over the preceding decade (https://www.bharat-rakshak.com/MONITOR/ISSUE5-2/narayanan.html). The reaction in the USA was perhaps a realization that a “Clash of Civilizations” as projected by Prof. Huntington , had become inevitable (https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-1-349-62397-6_6).

It appears that entities in and out of the US and Allied governments developed plans to exploit long-held regional feuds, jealousies and suspicion to fragment the Arab and larger Islamic world, as a response against the rise of militant Islam. As the “smart” mobile phone and Internet access penetrated the Arab world, the technical capabilities to mount mass uprisings became available. Meanwhile the idea of Color Revolutions had been tested in the nations of the Former Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact nations - the term referring to the use of a particular distinctive color such as orange, painted over large areas or worn by many, to convey the notion of common cause, uniform outrage and vast numbers. The mushrooming growth of media communications technology in the 21st century had no small effect on the growth of Color Revolutions mass, highly coordinated, highly agile uprisings, apparently by unarmed youth. 

In turn, agitations grew and turned violent in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya (https://www.researchgate.net/publication/283593632_The_color_revolution_virus_and_authoritarian_antidotes_Political_protest_and_regime_counterattacks_in_post-communist_spaces ; https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262017770/the-color-revolution/  ; https://muse.jhu.edu/article/270334 and https://www.globalresearch.ca/google-s-revolution-factory-alliance-of-youth-movements-color-revolution-2-0/23283 )

Today, Tunisia appears to have survived without much damage, Egypt went through several upheavals but has re- turned to military rule after both President (General) Mubarak and his successor, Mr. Morsi, died in prison. Muammar Gaddafi of Libya was captured and beaten to death after a NATO-led ’intervention’ - Libya today is still fragmented, and a prime market for weapons and mercenaries, even out- doing Syria. Note: At latest look in January 2020, Russian- supported and Turkish-supported, western-encouraged militias appear to be consolidating on opposite sides with the European and UN leadership expressing concern about the fate of Libyan oil.

In the United Arab Emirates, feeble attempts to start agitations were promptly and decisively suppressed. Yemen is in the final stages (we hope) of a ’civil’ war that has brought famine and genocide, but also brought dozens of billions of dollars in weapon sales to Saudi Arabia, perhaps to make up for losses in the field.

Color Revolutions To ISIS Black Flags

Herring and Christian advanced some points for consideration. The first was that the so-called ‘Arab Spring’ was never a desire for self-rule or pluralistic democracy as understood, but a desire for Islamic rule. “Each country that fell to that faux-organic sweep of protest shared a trait in common: aside from being brutal dictatorships, they were also secular governments.” Put differently, the ’popular outcome’ as visible from the noise of the mobs, would have been an absolutely repressive Islamic dictatorship. (https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2014/08/the_return_of_the_arab_spring.html)

They went on to reason that the rise of the ISIS would not have gone unnoticed by government intelligence agencies and that the ISIS was far from being a ragtag bunch of malcontents: it is an immensely well-organized, well-planned, well trained and well-funded, brutal multinational army. That cannot be created without very powerful interests driving it, and this could not have been missed by intelligence agencies.

They then reason that President Obama’s administration could have at least allowed the growth of ISIS, in the confidence that this force could be swept into Sunni majority Syria, to achieve the regime overthrow for which the President could not obtain congressional or UN approval. Whether there was any thought given to how the resulting theocratic mob rule could be controlled enough to gain access to the wealth of Syria or whether there was an even grander plan to dominate the Middle East, are unknown.

In Syria, the Color Revolution spiraled out of the government’s ability to control, with stunning rapidity by March 2011. Given that the government’s ethnic support base ac- counts for much less than 20% of the population, they did not have the luxury of trying to out-number the street demonstrators with counter demonstrations. The demonstrators attacked government buildings and officials from the early days, and quickly got senior army officers to mutiny and defect. Government efforts to contain the protests by arresting leaders, only served as fodder for the international media campaign pointing to ‘brutal repression of dissent’, in a spiral of increasing violence.

Unlike Tunisia where the self-immolation of a starving street vendor protesting intolerable corruption was the trigger that ‘went viral’, it is clear that the Syrian rebellion was from the start based on deep conspiracy that brought senior military officers into the open. The defectors formed the core of the Free Syrian Army (FSA) in the Ghouta suburbs of Damascus- from the start a heavily armed and trained group focused on overthrowing the government by force. As seen below, the FSA quickly - or perhaps with uncanny foresight and planning, brought foreign military and financial aid. Unsurprisingly, it brought rather desperate and urgent response from loyalist forces. In the cities of Homs and Aleppo government forces were besieged, and lost control. The government termed the so-called protests a Terrorist Invasion - again a very prescient observation in view of what happened shortly thereafter.

The campaign against Syria was organized with admirable marketing skill. By June 2011, the UN’s top humanitarian relief official, Undersecretary Valerie Amos, had expressed grave concern, at the reported death of 1200 people, and the exit of some 10,000 refugees from Syria into Turkey. In August 2017, the UN Secretary General’s Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict, Ms. Radhika Coomaraswamy, declared [30] that “the use of excessive and lethal force” by the security forces is “taking a heavy toll on civilian lives, including children...We have had credible allegations of children being killed or wounded in security operations against civilians in Syria”. 

This followed a Syrian military operation against so-called ’protestors’ in the port city of Latakia - no doubt there were hostilities involving heavy weapons in populated urban areas, a.k.a. street fighting. The UN ’temporarily’ withdrew non-essential personnel from Syria. It is worth noting here that Latakia is home to a long- held Russian Naval Base, one of the few points from where Russia could project power in the Mediterranean. She continued: 

“There are also allegations that children have been tortured by the security forces. State parties have a duty to protect children in any police or military operations and I call on the Syrian authorities to fulfill their obligations.” (https://news.un.org/en/%20en/story/2011/06/378262-syria-un-%20relief-official-voices-concern-over-%20violence-against-civilians)

Another UN report, from the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, declared that the Syrian government crackdown might amount to ’crimes against humanity’ and might call for an investigation by the International Criminal Court. Of course this appears to be laudable concern for innocents, but was remarkably missing from the UN’s repertoire shortly thereafter as the ISIS massacred, raped and enslaved Yazidis and other minorities in Iraq, and set out to do the same to the minorities in Syria. Perhaps the UN suffered ’atrocity fatigue’, the kindest explanation that we can imagine. (https://news.un.org/en/story/2011/08/384432)

Jet fighters and helicopter gunships were shot down, artillery was used in urban areas and outside, and there were reports of captives being tortured and executed on both sides. These reports were of course played up in the western media as evidence of the so-called ’brutality’ of the Assad regime and Assad himself. Calm reference to history might show that Assad’s government reacted much less strongly than others, for instance the United States Government, have done when faced with a secessionist “dissent”, which soon turned into foreign-funded, foreign-armed Civil War. The UN, as usual and in the best habits that led to the failure of the League of Nations, appears to have made no effort to ascertain, not to mention hinder, the arms-vending forces behind the violent protests and ascribe responsibility for the children and other innocents being caught up in the resulting war.

The only alternative open to Assad, as far as we can see, was probably to follow the fate of Muammar Gaddafi in Libya. And leave his nation to the fate that Libya is still experiencing.

In next part, we will deal with entry of ISIS to the scene and how that fundamentally changed the situation on the ground for all the relevant parties. Again, we are  seeing this play out in Bangladesh where Islamists are not slowly replacing the so called revolutionaries. 

Who Fathered ISIS? The Prodigal Sons of the State Dept - Part 1

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Bhumika : What this article series is about? and What article series is not about.. 

In the 2016 US election debates, the terms like Warmongers, FakeNews, Genocide, Deep State, Swamp, Establishment etc started becoming part of American mainstream discussion, highlighted by a sharp public exchange between former US Secretary of State and Senator from New York, Ms. Hillary Clinton, and the then Presidential Candidate, National Guard Major and Hon. Congresswoman from Hawaii, Ms. Tulsi Gabbard. This article series recollects observations over the past decade from the US public media in an attempt to understand some of these issues. I feel that I, observing from India, but having lived in west for many years have a comparatively objective perspective on the situation. This is about how all this looked to a student of religion, history and geopolitics sitting in Mumbai looking keenly at the changes in public discourse in the west. It started from 2012 in India (having keenly participated in NaMo campaign of 2014 on social media front), the term like mainstream media, fake-news, "ecosystem" had become part of Indian SM-lexicon by then. So, I felt like certain elements and memes from NaMo 2014 campaign replaying on western stage and the stark difference between how Hindus of India reacted to those elements and memes as opposed to how US society did the same in 2016 (and British populace did the same during Brexit).

Now that my bhumika (perspective) is clarified, let us dive down the rabbit hole.

The ’mainstream media’ narrative then (in 2015/16) was that "America is supporting the People of Syria to fight against oppression - from the ‘Regime’ of the ‘Brutal Dictator Assad’ and the Islamic State (ISIS)". The ISIS also attacked the people of Iraq. Iranian ‘terrorists’ were interfering by helping the ‘Regime’ to oppress the Syrian people between poison gas attacks and bombing children. They were also impeding American efforts to save the Iraqi people from the ISIS. Saudi Arabia and Turkey were still Allies of America, who were helping in the Coalition along with NATO nations and Israel, to fight.... Someone!

This glorious Coalition was also simultaneously bombing Yemen. And Libya. And Syria. The Russians were also meddling by helping the Brutal Dictator (Assad) and the Iranians. All of this impeded President Obama’s (Nobel Peace Prize Awardee!!) sworn mission to degrade and eventually to destroy the ISIS. But despite all this, the Coalition was seen to be winning. The ISIS was defeated. All was well. 

Against this narrative, few maverick voices struck a discordant note. Senator Black of Virginia, before he retired, pointed out that the Christian minority in Syria was depending on President Assad’s protection for their very survival against the Islamic extremists. He was ignored. US Rep. Tulsi Gabbard criticized the ”Regime Change Wars”, and was attacked even to the point of being called a ‘Russian asset’. Some of us who were following the Syrian War, were trying to include reports on Twitter to give diverse perspectives both local from the war zone and from around the world. This increasingly become essential, given the extreme polarization that was developing in the US and European media between anti-President Trump and not-anti- President Trump camps that made both unreliable. 

But, neutral observer who wishes to see a dhaarmik world, these discrepancies need to be understood and remembered.

In 2024, this has again become an utterly critical issue. If the above entities are allowed to resume their genocide and other machinations, November 2024 may be the last election in the United States of America as we know it. The United Kingdom is already accelerating in its slide towards a Sharia-run Mediaeval Theocracy, and Europe despite some last-minute wake-up screams, is being dragged down by overwhelming force.

Christmas 2019 Celebrations in Liberated Syria

Flashy firework displays and bright lit Christmas trees popped up all across Syria to celebrate Christmas, a joyous day not only for the Christian minority, but to people of other faiths living in the country. Christians were among the minority groups persecuted by various Islamist militant forces, which tore Syria into pieces since 2011. The central government has managed to regain control over most of the country, and life there is slowly returning to normality. That includes celebrating Christmas openly and without fear of sectarian violence. (ref: https://www.rt.com/news/476797-syria-christmas-celebration-photos/)

The web channel RT.com was banned in some countries as “Fake News”. But on the topic of the war in Syria, as on an increasing number of controversial topics, it proved to be superior by far to such proclaimed Defenders of the Free Press and Purveyors of the Truth as CNN, BBC, ABCnews, the New York Times and the Washington Post. So as a neutral observer, I will risk showing my gullibility by quoting from them and from others who were rarely cited in the western Mainstream Media of the Free World. 

Here is a Christmas Eve 2019 Tweet from the Iraqi Christian Foundation.

Here is another by Sarah Abdullah

And another by Tim Anderson

Tim Anderson has been closely associated with Hands Off Syria. movement. That hardly earned him the friendship of the US government – one of four national entities still occupying parts of the nation of Syria, a member of the United Nations. As declared by the then US President Trump -  all this was for the express purpose of taking and selling their oil (Ref : https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/trumps-baffling-plan-to-pillage-syrias-oil and https://www.newsweek.com/syria-bashar-al-assad-us-working-terrorists-selling-oil-stolen-country-turkey-1477451).

The relevant troika in the region : Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Israel. A remarkable convergence of interests was seen between these three when it comes to oil. President Trump’s possible sarcasm in innocently ‘outing’ the policy rationale was lost on those who cited him as a (unique) war criminal and pirate – ignoring the genesis and history of the war in Syria. Top officers of the United States Armed Forces confirmed in no uncertain terms their knowledge of the rules: that the oil in Syria belongs to Syria, and for anyone else to take it out and sell it without Syria’s express permission, is ‘Piracy’. To ”the Syrian people” was the way the State Department spun it, apparently unaware of the United Nations position that the government led by President Assad was the only Syrian authority of the Syrian People recognized by the United Nations.

Cognitive Dissonance

Reading reports from Syria and comparing them with those in the mainstream media of the Free World’s leaders (two links cited above), still induces extreme cognitive dissonance in me. Consider this :

The tweets cited above where Christians were celebrating with the SAA (Syrian Arab Army), the official Armed forces of President Assad’s “regime”. This is the so called “brutal regime” that the US Government has been trying for many years to overthrow - or denies ever having wanted to overthrow, depending on the day and the entity making the declaration du jour. While the reports from Putin’s Russia and Assad’s Syria may be dismissed as those from the repressed media of Authoritarian Regimes, the question remains - why were the Christians in Iraq, so recently liberated by the USA and NATO, repeating the same?

Allied with the USA against President Assad  were the United Kingdom, NATO, Germany, the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, Canada, Australia, the Islamic Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the Islamic Sultanate of Qatar, the Islamic United Arab Emirates, the Islamic Republic of Turkey, and the Jewish Republic of Israel 

(Ref : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/US_intervention_in_the_Syrian_civil_war ; https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-35002733  ; https://www.dailysabah.com/war-on-terror/2019/10/19/german-troops-deployment-and-ops-in-syria-fall-within-right-of-self-defense-germanys-top-court-rules and https://www.vice.com/en/article/syria-deraa-usa-jordan-fsa-regime-cia/). 

And of course the Islamic States in Iraq, Syria and the Levant (ISIS/ISIL) were also allied with above coalition (since goals of both the parties were the same). To call the Syrian government a  ‘Brutal Regime’ while allied with some of the above, provides some food for thought, where thought is not punishable by death. One might wonder about their record as protectors of the Freedom to dissent and of Belief. Several of the militias or gangs operating in Syria as Allies of the above team, were and some still are funded using US taxpayer money.

In next part, I will deal with history and geography of the region, the Shia-Sunni Faultlines and the colour revolutions that were propping up everywhere in the region like mushrooms do on dung heap.

Remember - similar colour revolution was attempted in India too - First during Anna Hazare-Kejriwal movement in 2012, then in Farmer protest 4 years ago. Albeit unsuccessfully. They were just successful in pulling this off in Bangladesh recently. So while this is history and that of region far away from India, we Hindus are not immune to its fallout - same things are being tried out in India against Hindus as we speak. So it is always good to remember the mistakes others have committed.

To be Continued....