Syria

Resistance And Aid

June 8, 2021 Ramazan Mendanlioglu, Red Pepper. Organize! Community organizing, Democratization, Rojava, Syria

In the villages, cities and regions of Rojava, in the predominantly Kurdish north east of Syria, political upheaval has resulted in the largely decentralised self-administration of many areas, including health, economy, law, education and internal security. The Rojava revolution led to both the secularisation and democratisation of institutions that had, until then, been controlled by an elitist-centralist national state. But what exactly does this mean? How is Rojava’s decentralisation expressed in everyday life? Located in north eastern Rojava, Amûdê County demonstrates what decentralisation and self-administration can look like in practice. Starting at the end of government rule in 2012, its communes, district people’s council and the municipality (Şaredarî) were all subjected to processes of democratisation.

US, UK, EU Barbaric Sanctions Are Killing Syrians

May 10, 2021 Vanessa Beeley, The Wall Will Fall. Educate! International Law, Sanctions, Syria, Western imperialism

In order to review the sanctions against Syria, we must see these sadistic, punitive measures in greater context. We must review US UK and EU neocolonialist foreign policy which invariably leads to conflict and is based on lies, in order to protect their world order which is the oppression and subjugation of sovereign states that do not comply with their need to control global resources. On that basis the incremental and illegal sanctions now crippling the Syrian economy in its most fragile stage, post war, are an attempt by the US alliance to prevent Syria winning the hybrid war that has been waged against it for ten years and for decades prior to 2011. The latest batch of sanctions under the pretext of the Caesar Law are again based on falsehoods – the Caesar report, the latest in a long line of manipulated information, commissioned by Qatar who financed terrorism in Syria, to criminalise the Syrian government.

White Helmets Corruption Scandal Deepens

May 8, 2021 Ben Norton, The Grayzone. Educate! Corruption, Syria, The Netherlands, White Helmets

The decade-long dirty war on Syria proved to be a cash cow for some of the most prominent US and UK regime-change operatives. Western government contractors got hundreds of millions of dollars to run schemes to destabilize Damascus – and some of them took a cut for themselves, profiting off of the pillage. One of the main players in the cottage industry of contractors that helped run the Western regime-change war on Syria, and which was eventually implicated in a massive corruption scandal, was the Mayday Rescue Foundation. Mayday served as the fiscal sponsor of Syria Civil Defense, known popularly as the White Helmets, a deceptive humanitarian interventionist operation that became a key propaganda weapon in the dirty war on Damascus.

Protecting The OPCW Against Transparency

April 25, 2021 Vanessa Beeley, The Wall Will Fall. Educate! Chemical Weapons, European Union (EU), OPCW, Syria

On the 15th April 2021 an extraordinary event took place in the European Parliament, in Brussels. An Ireland South MEP, Mick Wallace, expressed concerns over the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) handling of an alleged chemical attack in Douma, Eastern Damascus, Syria, on the 7th April 2018, which was immediately blamed on the Syrian government prior to the OPCW investigative team securing access to the site of the reported attack. A “chemical attack” that led to the US, UK and French bombing of Damascus and Homs on the 14th April 2018, targeting purported “chemical weapon” research centers, a claim denied by Syrian officials and employees at the centers.

‘Progressives’ In The US Are Openly Supporting Biden’s War On Syria

April 6, 2021 Margaret Flowers, Clearing the FOG. Podcast Joe Biden, Syria, US Regime Change, US Sanctions

The Biden administration is doubling down on aggression toward Syria and a small group of progressives is openly supporting US intervention. Clearing the FOG speaks with Max Blumenthal of The Grayzone about who is behind a recent open letter taking leftists to task for opposing the US' foreign policy in Syria, the truth about the US' military presence and economic warfare there and how the corporate media are misleading the public as well as how Syria fits into the Pentagon's global great power conflict strategy. Blumenthal is the author of "The Management of Savagery: How America’s National Security State Fueled the Rise of Al Qaeda, ISIS, and Donald Trump" and is an expert on the region.

US Sanctions Are Killing Innocent Syrians

April 3, 2021 Hasan Ismaik, Foreign Policy. Educate! Syria, US Regime Change, US Sanctions, Wars and Militarism

A friend of mine was found dead in his bed this past winter because he had no heating. Why? Because U.S. sanctions are hurting ordinary people rather than Bashar al-Assad’s government; there is only an hour or so of electricity per day. Last month, my phone rang. A relative in Damascus asked me to help a young Syrian child, Mohammed Daafis. Two-year-old Mohammed’s family uses a Primus kerosene stove, a Victorian-era product, for cooking. There is no boiler for running hot water in the shower. Electricity rationing in Syria has reached its highest levels due to the government’s inability to secure the fuel needed to generate electricity as a result of international sanctions. Like any child of his age, Mohammed was playing with his siblings—in a 300-square-foot dark house.

Syria War: Who Are The Real Anti-Imperialists?

April 1, 2021 Joseph Massad, Middle East Eye. Strategize! Left Politics, Noam Chomsky, Syria, US Imperialism

In the history of post-World War Two US imperialism, there have been various cases of aggression against countries and regimes that many anti-imperialist, socialist leftists around the world have considered reactionary, or at least not worthy of their support. In some cases, there was a consensus that while the regime in question was not to be defended, the imperialist aggression against it was not intended to save people from its dictatorial predations, but rather to secure imperialist hegemony and economic profits that would continue to oppress people. Even in cases when anti-imperialists thought the targeted regime deserved defence, their efforts mostly focused on opposing intervention.

Two Ambassadors To Syria With Wildly Different Analyses

March 31, 2021 Rick Sterling, Popular Resistance. Educate! Syria, US Imperialism, US Sanctions, Wars and Militarism

In the past few months, Grayzone journalist Aaron Mate has interviewed two former ambassadors to Syria: former UK Ambassador Peter Ford and former U.S. Ambassador Robert S. Ford. The two ambassadors have a common surname but dramatically different perspectives. This article will compare the statements and viewpoints of the two diplomats. Peter Ford trained as an Arabist and served in the British foreign service in numerous cities including Beirut, Riyadh, and Cairo. He was Ambassador to Bahrein from 1999 to 2003, then Syria from 2003 to 2006. From 2006 until 2014 he was a senior officer with the UN Relief Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees.

Pushback: Former US Ambassador On Syria’s Ten Year War

March 28, 2021 Aaron Mate, The Grayzone. Resistance Report Syria, US Imperialism, US Sanctions, Wars and Militarism

Robert Ford served as US Ambassador to Syria from 2011 to 2014. On the tenth anniversary of the Syrian war, Ford speaks to Aaron Maté about the roots of the conflict; the US role; the current US sanctions that target Syria’s reconstruction; chemical weapons allegations against the Syrian government; and why he now supports the withdrawal of US forces.

The War Of Hunger Is Taking Over From The War Of Guns

March 27, 2021 Patrick Cockburn, Counterpunch. Educate! Caesar Act, Hunger, Syria, US Sanctions

Great dollops of hypocrisy invariably accompany expressions of concern by outside powers for the wellbeing of the Syrian people. But even by these low standards, a new record for self-serving dishonesty is being set by the Caesar Civilian Protection Act, the new US law imposing the harshest sanctions in the world on Syria and bringing millions of Syrians to the brink of famine. Supposedly aimed at safeguarding ordinary Syrians from violent repression by President Bashar al-Assad, the law is given a humanitarian garnish by naming it after the Syrian military photographer who filmed and smuggled out of the country pictures of thousands of Syrians killed by the government.

After Ten Years Of Civil War In Syria, US (Quietly) Declares Defeat

March 26, 2021 Alan Macleod, Mintpress News. Educate! Media, Syria, US Regime Change, Wars and Militarism

Damascus, Syria - This March marks the 10-year anniversary of the Arab Spring and the protests that rocked Syria, which were a starting point for the ongoing civil war. That conflict has led to over half a million deaths and nearly 13 million people displaced, according to some estimates. Now, after 10 years of attempts to topple the government of President Bashar al-Assad, it appears that many in the U.S. government and media are quietly conceding defeat. “We tell Syria’s human stories so that the ‘victors’ don’t write its history,” ran the headline of a CNN article marking the anniversary.

Purging Inconvenient Facts In Coverage Of Biden’s ‘First’ Air Attacks

March 5, 2021 Gregory Shupak, Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting. Educate! Joe Biden, Media, Syria, Wars and Militarism

When the Biden administration bombed Syria on February 25, the attack killed “at least 22,” most of them members of Iraqi militias, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a London-based monitoring organization opposed to the Syrian government. The US said the bombing was retaliation for three rocket attacks on US bases in Iraq that it claims were carried out by groups allied with Iran (NBC, 2/25/21). In one of the attacks, rockets fired at Erbil airport killed a military contractor and an Iraqi civilian. The US does not say that its airstrike on Syria was aimed at the group that carried out the Erbil attack, which, as the New York Times (2/26/21) reported, was claimed by a previously unknown armed group calling itself the Guardians of the Blood. United States officials said it appeared to be affiliated with one or more of Iraq’s better-known militias, and Thursday’s strikes in Syria targeted facilities belonging to them. Furthermore, the site that the US bombed in Syria “was not specifically tied to the rocket attacks”

Joe Biden Is Following A Blueprint for Forever War

March 3, 2021 Danny Sjursen, In These Times. Educate! Joe Biden, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Wars and Militarism

Last week, the U.S. military bombed a site near al-Hurri, along the Iraqi border inside Syria, where Iranian-backed Iraqi militias were allegedly stationed. Although the U.S. launched its missiles across an international border (and without the approval of Congress), White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki framed the strike as a “defensive” response to a series of rocket attacks that have killed one and wounded several Americans over the past two weeks. The American bombing left “up to a handful dead,” according to one U.S. official who spoke with CNN, and Tehran condemned the assault as “illegal and a violation of Syria’s sovereignty” — a perception gap certain to complicate President Joe Biden’s pronounced plans to reverse Donald Trump’s antagonistic Iran policies and rejoin the nuclear deal. The campaign will do little to further the United States’ objectives in the Middle East (in as much as they can even be articulated at this point), but it heralds something more dispiriting still...

Biden’s Plan To ‘Carve Up’ Iraq Into Three Statelets Has Proven Disastrous

March 3, 2021 Mohamed Elmaazi, The Interregnum. Educate! Iraq, Joe Biden, Syria, US Foreign Policy

Sami Ramadani is an Iraqi-born lecturer in sociology and writes on Middle East current affairs. A political exile from Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, Ramadani nonetheless campaigned against US-led sanctions as well as the invasion and occupation of the country. He is a member of the steering committee of Stop the War Coalition. Ramadani spoke at length with Mohamed Elmaazi about the consequences of the US-led invasion and occupation of Iraq and challenged some misconceptions regarding the nature of the resistance to the foreign military presence there. He also explained that an improvement of America’s foreign policy towards Iraq will be shaped by whether US President Joe Biden ditches his original plan to carve the country up into three separate ethno-religious statelets, with a weak central government.

Biden’s Reckless Syria Bombing Is Not The Diplomacy He Promised

March 1, 2021 Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J. S. Davies, Popular Resistance. Educate! Iran, Joe Biden, Syria, Wars and Militarism

The February 25 U.S. bombing of Syria immediately puts the policies of the newly-formed Biden administration into sharp relief. Why is this administration bombing the sovereign nation of Syria? Why is it bombing “Iranian-backed militias” who pose absolutely no threat to the United States and are actually involved in fighting ISIS? If this is about getting more leverage vis-a-vis Iran, why hasn’t the Biden administration just done what it said it would do: rejoin the Iran nuclear deal and de-escalate the Middle East conflicts? According to the Pentagon, the U.S. strike was in response to the February 15 rocket attack in northern Iraq that killed a contractor working with the U.S. military and injured a U.S. service member. Accounts of the number killed in the U.S. attack vary from one to 22.

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