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Syria

Two Ambassadors To Syria With Wildly Different Analyses

March 31, 2021 Rick Sterling, Popular Resistance. , , ,
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. , , ,
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. , , ,
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. , , ,
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. , , ,
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. , , ,
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. , , ,
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. , , ,
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. 

On Contact: Realities Of War

February 28, 2021 Chris Hedges, RT. , , ,
On the show this week, Chris Hedges discusses the realities of war, its appeal for young men and its destruction of them, with Salar Abdoh, novelist and essayist. Abdoh's new novel, 'Out of Mesopotamia', considered one of a handful of great modern war novels, tells the story of Saleh, a jaded, middle-aged Iranian reporter who accompanies Shia militias, as Abdoh did, in Iraq and Syria during the heavy fighting between 2014 and 2017.

Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix

February 28, 2021 Caitlin Johnstone. , , ,
This latest Biden airstrike is being spun as “defensive” and “retaliatory” despite its targeting a nation the US invaded (Syria) in response to alleged attacks on US forces in another nation the US invaded (Iraq). You can’t invade a nation and then claim self-defense there. That’s not a thing. If you’re uncritically repeating US government claims about its justifications for acts of mass military violence, you’re not doing journalism, you’re writing Pentagon press releases. It’s like the Biden administration is actively trying to vindicate everyone who spent the last four years saying that as far as policy decisions are concerned there’s nothing unusual about the Trump administration.

Biden’s First Strike

February 28, 2021 Adil Ahmad Haque, Just Security. , , ,
The United States carried out airstrikes in Syria early Friday morning, killing several people and destroying several buildings. The Pentagon says that the airstrikes were a response to a rocket attack that occurred on Feb. 15, some 10 days earlier, at Erbil airport in northern Iraq, some 400 km away. That rocket attack killed a Filipino contractor, wounded four American contractors, and wounded a U.S. soldier. It’s not clear whether the U.S. airstrikes targeted the group responsible for the rocket attack, or other groups affiliated with it. The Pentagon says “the strikes destroyed multiple facilities located at a border control point used by a number of Iranian backed militant groups including Kait’ib Hezbollah and Kait’ib Sayyid al Shuhada.”

Tell Biden: Stop Bombing Syria!

February 26, 2021 Workers World Party. , , ,
It has taken only 36 days in office for the Biden administration to show the world, through a bombing attack on Syria, that it is belligerent, aggressive and hell-bent on war. There was only a short respite from Trump’s vile words and actions. Now we have to face Biden’s vile deeds and resist them. Even the excuse U.S. imperialism gave for bombing Syria was feeble. A rocket attack some weeks ago killed a mercenary in Iraq. Excuses like that open the door to new U.S. wars and interventions all over countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America where Washington has replaced official U.S. troops with soldiers of fortune. You might think the Biden administration had enough problems at home to keep it busy. The COVID-19 pandemic still rages despite the vaccines – whose distribution has been a disgrace.

US-Backed Militants Steal 140,000 Barrels Per Day Of Syrian Oil

February 25, 2021 News Desk, AMN News. , , ,
Tehran - Militants of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), which is supported by Washington, steal 140,000 barrels of crude oil on a daily basis from oil fields in Syria’s northeastern province of Hasakah, according to a report. Ghassan Halim Khalil, governor of Hasakah, announced the grim news in an interview with the Lebanese al-Akhbar newspaper on Saturday, adding that the SDF militants are plundering Syrian oil in various ways, all with the participation and support of American forces deployed to the region. He stressed that precise intelligence collected and received show that US-backed militants use tanker trucks from the Taramish area in Tigris and al-Malikiyah to smuggle the Syrian oil to neighboring Iraq.

Government Secrecy Causes Conspiracy Theories

February 14, 2021 Caitlin Johnstone. , , ,
The DC Circuit has ruled that the CIA is under no obligation to comply with Freedom of Information Act requests pertaining to its involvement with insurgent militias in Syria, overturning a lower court’s previous ruling in favor of a Buzzfeed News reporter seeking such documents. As Sputnik‘s Morgan Artyukhina clearly outlines, this ruling comes despite the fact that mainstream news outlets have been reporting on the Central Intelligence Agency’s activities in Syria for years, and despite a US president having openly tweeted about those activities. “In other words, the CIA will not be required to admit to actions it is widely reported as having done, much less divulge documents about them to the press for...

UN Expert: End US Sanctions On Syria

January 16, 2021 Aaron Maté, The Grayzone. , , ,
An independent United Nations expert is calling on the US to lift its crippling sanctions on Syria. Under the Caesar Act, US sanctions explicitly target Syria’s reconstruction in the aftermath of a catastrophic 10-year war. Alena Douhan, the UN Special Rapporteur on the impact of sanctions, says that the US sanctions are illegal and depriving Syrian civilians of their basic needs. “People shouldn’t die, people shouldn’t suffer, and people shouldn’t fear whether they can survive after tomorrow, because they have neither medicine or food, because of the sanctions applied,” Douhan says.
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