Divide et
Impera
The
Imperialist Violence in Syria, Part 3 of 7 -
Part 1
By Kim
Petersen and B. J. Sabri
From
The WikiLeaks Files:
A December 13,
2006 cable, "Influencing the SARG [Syrian
government] in the End of 2006," indicates that, as
far back as 2006 - five years before "Arab Spring"
protests in Syria - destabilizing the Syrian
government was a central motivation of US policy.
The author of the cable was William Roebuck, at the
time chargé d'affaires at the US embassy in
Damascus. The cable outlines strategies for
destabilizing the Syrian government. In his summary
of the cable, Roebuck wrote:
We believe
Bashar's weaknesses are in how he chooses to react
to looming issues, both perceived and real, such as
the conflict between economic reform steps (however
limited) and entrenched, corrupt forces, the Kurdish
question, and the potential threat to the regime
from the increasing presence of transiting Islamist
extremists. This cable summarizes our assessment of
these vulnerabilities and suggests that there may be
actions, statements, and signals that the USG can
send that will improve the likelihood of such
opportunities arising.
This cable
suggests that the US goal in December 2006 was to
undermine the Syrian government by any available
means, and that what mattered was whether US action
would help destabilize the government, not what
other impacts the action might have. In public the
US was in favor of economic reform, but in private
the US saw conflict between economic reform and
"entrenched, corrupt forces" as an "opportunity." In
public, the US was opposed to "Islamist extremists"
everywhere; but in private it saw the "potential
threat to the regime from the increasing presence of
transiting Islamist extremists" as an "opportunity"
that the US should take action to try to increase.
Roebuck lists
Syria's relationship with Iran as a "vulnerability"
that the US should try to "exploit." His suggested
means of doing so are instructive:
Possible
action:
PLAY ON SUNNI
FEARS OF IRANIAN INFLUENCE: There are fears in Syria
that the Iranians are active in both Shia
proselytizing and conversion of, mostly poor,
Sunnis. Though often exaggerated, such fears reflect
an element of the Sunni community in Syria that is
increasingly upset by and focused on the spread of
Iranian influence in their country through
activities ranging from mosque construction to
business....
Roebuck thus
argued that the US should try to destabilize the
Syrian government by coordinating more closely with
Egypt and Saudi Arabia to fan sectarian tensions
between Sunni and Shia, including by the promotion
of "exaggerated" fears of Shia proselytizing of
Sunnis, and of concern about "the spread of Iranian
influence" in Syria in the form of mosque
construction and business activity.
By 2014, the
sectarian Sunni-Shia character of the civil war in
Syria was bemoaned in the United States as an
unfortunate development. But in December 2006, the
man heading the US embassy in Syria advocated in a
cable to the secretary of state and the White House
that the US government collaborate with Saudi Arabia
and Egypt to promote sectarian conflict in Syria
between Sunni and Shia as a means of destabilizing
the Syrian government. At that time, no one in the
US government could credibly have claimed innocence
of the possible implications of such a policy...
It was easy to
predict then that, while a strategy of promoting
sectarian conflict in Syria might indeed help
undermine the Syrian government, it could also help
destroy Syrian society. But this consideration does
not appear in Roebuck's memo at all, as he
recommends that the US government cooperate with
Saudi Arabia and Egypt to promote sectarian
tensions.1
From the US
Congress
The US path to
destroy Syria is long. On 12 April 2003, twenty-four
days after the US invasion of Iraq, a Zionist
representative from New York, Eliot T. Engle,
sponsored
the Syria Accountability Act
(SAA). The charge was Syria's involvement of
terrorism, aiding Saddam Hussein (meaning Iraq)
escaping sanctions, helping the insurgency against
the US invasion of Iraq, supporting of Hezbollah,
chemical weapons, and so on. (We have to go on
record on an important issue. Saying "a Zionist
representative" is not a vacuous namedropping—it is
a political statement indicative of how Israel
passes its policy aims in Syria and the Arab world
through the American legislative system.) The Act
was passed in December 2003. Invoking the
omnipresent pretext of American national security
and pretending "constitutional" presidential
privileges on foreign policy, George Bush
essentially turned the Israeli policy toward Syria
into a policy of the United States. (For reading:
Statement by the President on H.R.
1828)
In his
article, “The
Syria Accountability and Lebanese Sovereignty
Restoration Act of 2003: Two Years On,”
David Schenker, from the Zionist-imperialist
think tank, the Washington Institute, recalled his
experience in testifying before the House of
Representatives (7 June 2006). He wrote, “Syria has
proven a tough nut to crack. The SAA has helped,
although the Legislation itself is not sufficient to
compel a change in Syrian behavior. The Bush
Administration has adopted some steps, but the
challenge is how to leverage the SAA in conjunction
with other tools at the Administration’s
disposal—multilateral efforts in particular—to
ratchet up the pressure on Syria to force behavioral
change.” “Ratchet up pressure” is the key phrase as
to what US neocons/Zionists believe they must do in
Syria, not only in connection to Lebanon, but also,
obviously, in relation what Syria represents for
Israel—a rejectionist state of Israel that must be
destroyed.
The
Assassination of Rafiq Hariri
The
assassination of Rafiq Hariri (a billionaire, dual
citizen of Saudi Arabia and Lebanon, and a former
prime minister of Lebanon) on 14 February 2005 is
the paramount example of how the United States,
Western Europe, and Israel plan their subversion
against the Arab states that do not obey US diktat,
or resist US-backed Israeli colonialist-imperialism.
The assassination offers a very interesting angle
with regard how pretexts are developed and used. Let
us see why Hariri was killed. On 2 September 2004,
the UNSC issued resolution
1559 calling on Syria to
withdraw its remaining forces from Lebanon. Syria
complied but only partially and slowly.
The ruse to
get Syria out of Lebanon—which was a part of Greater
Syria in history until France, using its Sykes-Picot
mandate over Syria, severed it and made it an
independent state in 1943—had, therefore, to be
achieved by other means. The assassination of Hariri
was that specific means. With the accusation that
Syria was behind the assassination, the stage was
set to force Syria's complete withdrawal from
Lebanon under the threat of enforcing resolution
1559 by military means. Forty-five days after the
assassination (5 April 2005), Syria began its
withdrawal from Lebanon and completed it by the end
of that month.
Who ordered
the assassination of Hariri?
Since neither
Syria nor Hezbollah had stakes in the assassination
of Hariri, who benefited from it? Our logical answer
is Israel and the United States. [2]
Considering the long list of objectives of these two
states in the situation of all Arab states, proving
this assertion is a matter of deductive reasoning.
Having briefly
described the path the United States took in the
quest to destabilize Syria, it is important to see
its current methods of war. If the US plans in Syria
were insufficient to raise alarm, we have to deal
with other features applied on the Syrian theater of
death (and before that in Afghanistan and Iraq). We
are talking about an imperialist instrument of war:
vocabulary as a weapon of mass confusion. Many terms
and phrases had been coined to make people conform
to Washington's indoctrination. But do terms such as
"moderate," "extremist," "moderate Arab states—who
are they?", "Islamic," Islamist," "dictator,"
"democracy," "no role for Assad in the future of
Syria," "Sunni," "Alawite," "Shiite," "ISIS," "stop
the Iranian occupation of Syria," "IS," "DAESH,"
"U.S. hitting ISIS," etc., have any tangible meaning
outside the world of imperialist propaganda?
Let us
examine some of these terms. Does the diction "a
future for Syria without Assad" have any meaning?
Would that be a re-made Syria with a bankrupt
sectarian system similar to the one a criminal named
George W. Bush and his Zionist neocons installed in
Iraq? Would the US bring
Noah Feldman or others to
write a "constitution" for Syria? (Feldman is a
Zionist lawyer from New York and a
theoretician on "Islamic
terrorism," "Jihad," and on so-called Islamic
democracy. He authored the sectarian constitution
for Iraq while this was under active US military
occupation led by Paul Bremer. Bremer's
constitution, as the Iraqis call it, has become the
cornerstone and foundation for the partition of Iraq
on approximate confessional and ethnic lines.3
Or, would it
be a so-called Islamic state swearing allegiance to
US imperialism, to Al Saud, and to the
British-installed al-Thani ruling family of Qatar?
What is the implication of saying that Assad is the
problem, yet names behind state policies such as
Obama, Erdogan, Hollande, Merkel, Turki al-Faisal,
or Bandar Bin Sultan go unmentioned in this context?
What does the Syrian "moderate opposition" mean in
the US imperialist lexicon, if not groups financed
and supported by Washington? And for clarity's sake,
we ask, moderate in what?
Again, what is
the US game in Syria?
Let us cite
Condoleezza Rice. Rice is the quintessential
dual-face American hypocrite when the issue is US
interventions. Although the first quotation we cite
below is about Iraq, its philosophy and intent
applies to US policy in Syria.
Rice,
describing in petty melodramatic terms (similar to
those one can find in a cheap romance novel) how she
confronted her master criminal boss on the sectarian
violence that the United States designed and
implemented in Iraq, wrote the following [Italics
are ours]:
"So what's
your plan, Condi?" The president was suddenly
edgy and annoyed. "We'll just let them kill each
other, and we'll standby and try to pick the
pieces?"
I was
furious at the implication…."No,
Mr. President," I said, trying to stay calm.
"We just can't win by putting our forces in the
middle of their blood feud. If they want to have a
civil war we're going to have to let them."4
Comment: 1)
Rice is shameful. She made her criminal boss look
caring. 2) Rice, daughter of a Presbyterian minister
who presumably taught her not to lie, lied big.
First, calling sectarian infighting "civil war" is
deception because these are two different entities.
Sectarian strife within a nation pits a community
against another with dissimilar beliefs or ethnic
origins. Civil conflict is between political
factions within a nation regardless of sectarian or
confessional beliefs. The US uses both terms
interchangeably to obfuscate the nature of its
interference in the pursuit of specific policy
objectives. Besides, there never was any sectarian
infighting between Arab Sunni and Shiite Muslims in
Iraq until the US invasion and occupation fomented
it to preempt resistance to its occupation. 3) Rice
and her neocon masters thrive when sectors of a
nation they occupy engage in violent infighting—it
provides them easier means of control. This happened
in the Philippines, Korea, Viet Nam, Iraq, and it is
now happening in Libya and Syria through mercenaries
and proxies. That is why we often hear US
imperialists and Arab stooges talking about things
like "Assad wants to make an Alawite state," "ISIS
is a fact," "Kurds want their own state and so do
the Assyrians and the Armenians," and so on.
Regardless of terminology or concepts, the US
strategy is unexceptional—it is an ancient Roman
imperial and military strategy: Divide et
Impera.
With regard to
how US duality works in the Syrian example, let us
consider the exchange she had with Syrian Foreign
Minister, Walid Muollem:
"... I
delivered my point about Syria's interference in
Lebanon, and its failure to stop terrorists in their
country from crossing their borders into Iraq."
"it's hard to
stop them," he said, but I was having none of it.
"They're
coming through Damascus airport," I countered.5
Comment: We
know what US exceptionalism means: it is okay for
the US to interfere in the affairs of every country
in the world, but others are not permitted to do so
except with US approval. It is not okay that
volunteers cross Syria into Iraq to fight the US
invasion force, but it is okay for America's stooges
to allow weapons and mercenaries to Syria through
Turkish and Jordanian airports.
In recalling
the documented history of US interference in the
affairs of myriad countries including its staunchest
ally Britain (read, “Harold
Wilson, Lyndon Johnson and the Vietnam War, 1964-68”),
the present authors state the following:
The
violence in Syria is not an accidental product of
uncontrolled events, is not a result of a civil war,
is not because the Syrian state is ruled by despotic
elites—but it is a result of a combined
American-Israeli geopolitical strategy to install a
new Syrian regime at the order of Tel Aviv and
Washington. Syria, therefore, is not but another
link—after Iraq, Libya, and Yemen— in the US and
Israeli quest to dismantle the Arab system of
nation, and to end the Palestinian Question
permanently.
Let us now
examine what was cooking in the US pot against Syria
60 years ago. In his outstanding research on the CIA
plotting and machinations against the Arab nations
including Syria during the 1950s, California State
University history professor, Hugh Wilford, wrote
the following:
On
August 21, 1956, Foster Dulles convened GAMMA, a
top-secret task force with representatives from
State, Defense, and the CIA ... GAMMA's main
contribution was to agree to a proposal to send the
eminent foreign service veteran Loy Henderson on a
tour of the Middle East that seemed intended to
incite military aggression against Syria by its Arab
neighbors.... Henderson told a meeting in the White
House that he had discovered a deep sense of anxiety
about Syria in the region, yet little concerted will
to act; only Turkey, a NATO ally, showed much
appetite for intervention...."6
Let us fast
forward to the US occupation of Iraq. On page 473 of
his book, The Twilight War (Penguin Press,
New York, 2012), David Crist (a historian from the
US imperialist establishment) writes, “'Recock'
became the word of the day at CENTCOM. The United
States would get out of Iraq and prepare for the
next war in the global fight against terrorism, with
rumors circulating that Syria was next. The U.S.
military concurred.”
Why Syria "was
next" on the US list of priorities? Has Syria ever
harmed or threatened the national security of the
United States? No. But because Israel strongly
influences US foreign policy (read, John J.
Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt, “The
Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy”)
toward the Arab states, and because Syria is the
last Arab state resisting Israeli imperialism there
are two concrete answers.7
First, Israel
wants to weaken Syria and dismember it, as it wanted
done to Iraq by American neocon Zionists.
Dismembering Syria should expose the Lebanese
resistance movement Hezbollah that depends on Syria
for support. The second is more complex. First,
controlling Syria enters in the logic of American
quest of global hegemony. Second, to carve out a
Kurdish autonomous region to be joined with the
areas controlled by Iraqi Kurds creating a Kurdish
State potentially at the service of US imperialism
and Israel.8,
9 Third, Syria's
eastern regions and Israeli-occupied Golan Heights
have sizeable oil deposits. (Read, “World
powers must recognize Israeli annexation of Golan
Heights”; “Huge
oil discovery in Golan Heights - Israeli media”).
4) From an imperialist perspective, the geopolitical
re-design of the region would help expand plans for
the strategic control of world resources and
distribution.
Crist's
revelation impels us to reflect on the motives and
ideologies that underlie all anti-Arab actions taken
by the United States. What we have today in Syria
(and Iraq, Yemen, Sudan, Libya, and Palestine) is an
accurate reproduction of age-old tested policies by
the West at the expense of nations targeted for
reasons rooted in the politics of imperialism,
colonialism, Zionism, and piracy of resources. In
Syria, however, the situation is a little bit more
intricate due to the presence of a long list of
operators never seen before in a single regional
war, not even in Afghanistan.
Kim
Petersen is a former
editor of the Dissident Voice newsletter. He can be
reached at
kimohp@inbox.com
B. J.
Sabri is an observer of the politics of modern
colonialism, imperialism, Zionism, and of
contemporary Arab issues. He can be reached at
b.j.sabri@aol.com
Next: Part 4
of 7
NOTES
-
Robert Naiman,
“WikiLeaks
Reveals How the US Aggressively Pursued Regime
Change in Syria, Igniting a Bloodbath,”
Truth-out, 9 October 2015
-
-
See
Kim Petersen, “Syria
in the Imperialist Crosshairs,”
Dissident Voice, 26 October 2005.
-
Note:
since the dawn of Islam in Iraq (early 7th
century) until the US invasion (2003), and
regardless what administrative geopolitical form
distinguished it, there have never been
confessional lines in all Arab regions of Iraq
or ethnic lines separating the various
communities. However, historically, and during
the rule of the Ottoman Turks, Arab Shiite
Muslims formed a relative majority in the South
of Iraq and Sunnis in the rest. After WWII, the
lines between Arab Shiite and Sunni Muslims
became integrated due to internal migrations and
economic development. The US deliberately
created the lines when it imposed a No-Fly Zone
on specific regions of Iraq in 1991 after the
war for Kuwait. As for the Kurdish regions, with
the exception of Sulaymaniya and Erbil with a
Kurdish Majority, most of the north of Iraq was
inhabited by a mixture of ethnic Groups
including Arabs, Assyrians, Armenians, Turkoman,
Kurds, and Yezidis. The US arbitrarily
delineated Kurdish areas when it imposed the
non-fly Zone on the north of Iraq in 1991.
-
Condoleezza Rice, No Higher Honor, Crown
Publishers, New York, 2011, p. 544, 561
-
Rice, 561
-
Hugh
Wilford, America's Great Game: The CIA's
Secret Arabists and the Shaping of the Modern
Middle East, Basic Books, New York, 2013, p.
273
-
Note:
Lebanon cannot be described as a resister state.
Resistance to Israel in Lebanon follows
confessional lines. 1) The Saudi-controlled
faction led by Saad Hariri is in line with the
policy of accommodation adapted by Al Saud vs.
Israel. 2) Christians are divided in two camps:
the Faranjia and Aoun camp that opposes Israel;
and the Geagea and Jmail (supported by Saudi
Arabia) that seeks accommodation and had very
close relations with Ariel Sharon and Menachem
Begin during the Israeli invasion of Lebanon).
The Jumblatt Druze faction (supported by Al
Saud) has been known for continuous zigzagging
on the issue of the resistance to Israel. This
leaves only Hezbollah as the real opponent of
Israeli settler-imperialism. Outside the Arab
world, Iran is the only other remaining state
that opposes Israel.
-
The
Kurdish Question in Iraq goes beyond the scope
of this work. Succinctly, there is a US-Kurdish
connection in the context of imperialism,
dependency; Iraqi Kurdish politician Masoud
Barzani has collaborated in turning a potential
Kurdish state into a tool at the service of US
imperialism and Israel.
-
In
his article, “To
defeat ISIS, Create a Sunni State,”
John Bolton stated, "The Kurds
still face enormous challenges, with dangerously
uncertain borders, especially with Turkey. But
an independent Kurdistan that has international
recognition could work in America’s favor."
[Italics added]
|