Al-Qaeda

Scandal Deepens Around CNN’s Clarissa Ward Staging Syria Prison Scene

December 18, 2024 Wyatt Reed, The Grayzone. Educate! Al-Qaeda, Bashar al-Assad, Clarissa Ward, CNN, Fraud, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, Media, Propaganda, Regime Change, Syria

“In nearly twenty years as a journalist, this was one of the most extraordinary moments I have witnessed.” That’s how veteran CNN journalist Clarissa Ward described her foray into a Syrian prison on December 12, where she promptly claimed to have rescued a forgotten inmate after three months in jail. But there was just one problem with the “extraordinary moment”: a review of a dramatic story depicted by CNN reveals a number of glaring inconsistencies, the greatest of which is that the man stands accused of being an impostor.

War Propaganda And The Fall Of Syria

December 14, 2024 Margaret Kimberley, Black Agenda Report. Educate! Al-Qaeda, Israel, Middle East, Propaganda, Syria, US Imperialism, Wars and Militarism

The rapid fall of the Syrian Arab Republic government was both a shock and a catastrophe for that region and for the world. It was incomprehensible that the state which withstood a sustained attack since 2011 from the United States, Israel, Turkey and other NATO members, and gulf monarch states such as Saudi Arabia, would collapse so swiftly. The defeat was political, not military. There was surprisingly little actual fighting on the battlefield. Russia, Syria’s most powerful ally, is engaged in Ukraine, while Turkey, Syria’s nemesis, played a two-sided game of working with its NATO allies while claiming to be negotiating in good faith with Russia.

How The West Rebranded Al-Qaeda’s Jolani As Syria’s ‘Woke’ New Leader

December 13, 2024 Alan MacLeod, MintPress News. Educate! Al-Qaeda, Hezbollah, Israel, Lebanon, Middle East, Syria, Terrorist, US Imperialism

Corporate media is heralding the fall of Bashar al-Assad and the emergence of Abu Mohammed al-Jolani as the new leader of Syria, despite his deep ties to both al-Qaeda and ISIS. “How Syria’s ‘diversity-friendly’ jihadists plan on building a state,” runs the headline from an article in Britain’s Daily Telegraph that suggests that Jolani will construct a new Syria, respectful of minority rights. The same newspaper also labeled him a “moderate Jihadist.” The Washington Post described him as a pragmatic and charismatic leader, while CNN portrayed him as a “blazer-wearing revolutionary.”

From Damascus To Chaos: Assad’s Fall And Al-Qaeda’s Comeback

December 12, 2024 Mnar Adley, MintPress News. Resistance Report Al-Qaeda, Middle East, Regime Change, Syria, Wars and Militarism

There are some weeks when decades happen. In just a few days, the Syrian government has fallen, President Bashar al-Assad has fled to Moscow, and Al-Nusra founder Abu Mohammad al-Julani has taken power. How could all of this have happened so quickly? Only last year, it appeared that Assad was entrenching his position internationally, being invited back into the Arab League. Assad also moved away from Russia and Yemen and towards a closer relationship with Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States. Two guests, Kevork Almassian and Mohammad Marandi, will join the MintCast this week to discuss Syria’s collapse and what it means for the regional Axis of Resistance.

US, UK Consider Removing HTS From Terror Blacklist

December 9, 2024 News Desk, The Cradle. Educate! Al-Qaeda, Bashar al-Assad, ISIS, Syria, Terrorism, United Kingdom (UK), US Imperialism, Wars and Militarism

US officials are considering removing Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) from the US terrorist list after the offshoot of the Islamic State of Iraq (later known as ISIS) helped achieve the long-term US goal of overthrowing the Syrian government led by President Bashar al-Assad, The Washington Post reported on 9 December. “US officials are in contact with all the groups involved in fighting in Syria, including the main group that ousted Assad, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), which was once affiliated with Al-Qaeda and remains on a US terrorist list,” the newspaper wrote.

Turkey Takes Aleppo

December 9, 2024 Justin Podur, Orinoco Tribune. Educate! Al-Qaeda, Axis of Resistance, Bashar al-Assad, BRICS, Colonialism, Genocide, Golan Heights, History, Iran, Islamic State, Israel, Palestinian Resistance, Regime Change, Syria, Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), Turkey, US Imperialism

Before it fell under 20th century Anglo-American colonialism, Syria was the core of the Levant, encompassing (today’s) Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and Palestine, the site of multireligious, multicultural cities between which people traveled and traded freely. In the countryside, peasants and herders tended an agricultural and pastoral landscape of olive and orange trees, pasture, forest, and drylands. This region was under the control of the Ottoman Empire for hundreds of years (perhaps Erdogan’s dream is to take some of it back. He’s been accused of “neo-Ottoman” fantasies).

HTS Declares End Of Syrian Government As Extremists Swarm Damascus

December 8, 2024 News Desk, The Cradle. Educate! Al-Qaeda, Bashar al-Assad, coup, Syria, Terrorists

Over the past 10 days, HTS and Syrian National Army (SNA) fighters – most of them former members of Al-Qaeda and ISIS – took control of the cities of Aleppo, Hama, and Homs before advancing on Damascus. Nevertheless, heavy battles were reported at the Sayyeda Zainab Shrine in Damascus, where a few dozen Shia Muslim fighters reportedly gathered to protect the holy site from the Salafi extremists. In response, the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) continuously “repositioned” its troops to avoid clashing with the extremists, citing the protection of civilians before folding entirely on Sunday.

Al-Qaeda-Linked ‘Rebels’ In Syria Say They ‘Love Israel’

December 7, 2024 Ben Norton, Geopolitical Economy. Resistance Report Al-Qaeda, DIA, Gaza, Hezbollah, HTS, Iran, Iraq, ISIL, ISIS, Islamic State, Israel, Jabhat al-Nusra, Lebanon, Nusra Front, Palestine, Syria, Turkey, Wars and Militarism

The United States spent billions over years arming and training militants in Syria, many linked to Al-Qaeda and ISIS. Current US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan admitted back in 2012 that “AQ [Al-Qaeda] is on our side in Syria”. In late November 2024, armed extremists took over Syria’s second-biggest city, Aleppo, in an operation sponsored by NATO member Turkey. Some of the Al-Qaeda-linked “rebels” that rule the Syrian provinces of Aleppo and Idlib told the Israeli media that they “love Israel”. They vowed to establish a new pro-Western regime in Syria.

The US And Israel Quietly Revived Al-Qaeda Allies In Syria

December 4, 2024 Robert Inlakesh, MintPress News. Educate! Al-Qaeda, Israel, Syria, US Imperialism, Wars and Militarism

As Syrian opposition forces, spearheaded by the Al-Qaeda affiliate Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, intensify their offensive to seize more territory after capturing Aleppo, Washington has distanced itself from the attack—a remarkable reversal, considering its longstanding support for weaponizing so-called “moderate rebel” groups based in Idlib. Under President Barack Obama, the U.S. government secretly poured billions into a covert operation designed to topple Bashar al-Assad’s government. The CIA’s Timber Sycamore program, one of the agency’s most expensive undertakings, at its peak, funneled $100,000 per Syrian militant trained—many of whom would ultimately fight under the banner of Al-Qaeda-linked factions.

Lessons From Majid Khan’s Release From Guantánamo

February 26, 2023 David Rosen, Progressive.org. Educate! Al-Qaeda, Criminal Justice and Prisons, Guantanamo Bay, Human Rights, Torture

On February 2, U.S. prisoner and former al Qaeda courier Majid Khan was released from the Guantánamo Bay Detention Camp in Cuba after more than sixteen years of imprisonment. “We are very pleased with Majid’s release,” says J. Wells Dixon, a senior staff attorney at the New York City-based Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR). “Majid’s transfer to Belize is the culmination of nearly twenty years of work by the CCR and the law firm Jenner & Block,” Dixon tells The Progressive “Our only regret is that he was not released sooner.” On October 7, 2001, in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, the United States, together with Great Britain, launched “Operation Enduring Freedom,” the war in Afghanistan and the beginning of the “global war on terror.”

Biden’s Assassination Of al-Qaeda Leader Ayman al-Zawahiri Was Illegal

August 7, 2022 Marjorie Cohn, Truthout. Educate! Afghanistan, Al-Qaeda, extrajudicial murder, Joe Biden

President Joe Biden’s assassination of al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri in Afghanistan was illegal under both U.S. and international law. After the CIA drone strike killed Zawahiri on August 2, Biden declared, “People around the world no longer need to fear the vicious and determined killer.” What we should fear instead is the dangerous precedent set by Biden’s unlawful extrajudicial execution. In addition to being illegal, the killing of Zawahiri also occurred in a moment when the United Nations had already determined that people in the U.S. had little to fear from him. As a United Nations report released in July concluded, “Al Qaeda is not viewed as posing an immediate international threat from its safe haven in Afghanistan because it lacks an external operational capability and does not currently wish to cause the Taliban international difficulty or embarrassment.”

How Obama-Biden Team Empowered Terrorists In Syria

April 22, 2022 Aaron Mate. Educate! Al-Qaeda, Russia, Syria, US Imperialism, Wars and Militarism

Hours after the Feb. 3 U.S. military raid in northern Syria that left the leader of ISIS and multiple family members dead, President Biden delivered a triumphant White House address. The late-night Special Forces operation in Syria's Idlib province, Biden proclaimed, was a "testament to America’s reach and capability to take out terrorist threats no matter where they hide around the world." Unmentioned by the president, and virtually all media accounts of the assassination, was the critical role that top members of his administration played during the Obama years in creating the Al Qaeda-controlled hideout where ISIS head Abu Ibrahim al-Qurayshi, as well as his slain predecessor, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, found their final refuge.

America Plea Bargains For Its Crimes Of Torture

March 28, 2022 John Kiriakou, Scheer Post. Educate! 9/11, Al-Qaeda, C.I.A., Guantanamo Bay, Human Rights, Terrorism, Torture

The Guardian reported last week that a recently-declassified CIA Inspector General’s report from 2008 found that CIA officers at a covert detention site in Afghanistan used a prisoner, Ammar al-Baluch, as a “training prop,” taking turns smashing his head against a plywood wall and leaving him with permanent brain damage. Baluch is currently one of five defendants before a military tribunal at the US military prison at Guantanamo charged with participating in the planning for the September 11 attacks. The case has been stuck in the pre-trial phase for 10 years, in part because much of the information that the government wants to use against the defendants was collected using torture.

Time For UK Government To Come Clean On Ties To US Torture Program

February 16, 2022 John Kiriakou, Covert Action Magazine. Educate! Al-Qaeda, Human Rights, Torture, United Kingdom (UK), US Imperialism, Wars and Militarism

We Americans have had a painful and difficult national debate over the past 20 years relative to torture. Torture was official U.S. government policy from 2002 until at least 2005, and that iteration was not formally outlawed until passage of the McCain-Feinstein Amendment in 2015. (The torture program was a highly-classified secret from 2002 until I revealed it in a nationally-televised interview in December 2007.) In truth, torture has been illegal in the U.S. since at least the end of World War II. In 1946, the U.S. Government executed Japanese soldiers who had waterboarded American prisoners of war. In January 1968, the Washington Post ran a front-page photograph showing an American soldier waterboarding a North Vietnamese prisoner.

How Washington Is Positioning Syrian Al-Qaeda’s Founder As Its ‘Asset’

June 10, 2021 Ben Norton and Max Blumenthal, The Grayzone. Educate! Al-Qaeda, Media, Syria, US Regime Change

March 2021 - marked the 10th anniversary of the Western regime-change war on Syria. And after a decade of grueling conflict, Washington is still maneuvering to extend its longstanding relationship with the Salafi-jihadist militants fighting Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. With the northeastern province of Idlib under the control of a self-proclaimed “Syrian Salvation Government” led by the rebranded version of Syria’s al-Qaeda franchise, and protected under the military aegis of NATO member state Turkey, powerful elements from Brussels to Washington have been working to legitimize its leader. This June, PBS Frontline aired a special, “The Jihadist,” featuring a sit-down interview with Abu Mohammad al-Jolani, de facto president of the “Syrian Salvation Government” and founder of the Syrian branch of al-Qaeda originally called Jabhat al-Nusra, today re-branded as Hay-at Tahrir al-Sham, or HTS.

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