Who Is Really Waging War In Syria?
Voice of Russia
August 20, 2012
Who really wages the war in Syria?
Boris Volkhonsky
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German spies, stationed on ships off the Syrian coast, are transmitting intelligence to the FSA to aid in their campaign against the regime of President Bashar al-Assad.
Germany’s Federal Intelligence Service (BND) agents use high-tech equipment enabling them to observe troop movements as far inland as 600 kilometers. Later, this information is passed to US and British intelligence officers who pass it on to FSA.
[I]n this war the West is siding with forces it has been so keen to fight since 2001. The Jabhat al-Nusra is not just one of the anti-Assad groups (who are, by definition, good guys), but a jihadist group suspected of affiliations to al-Qaeda.
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As reported by the Sunday Times, British intelligence on Syrian troop movements is helping rebels launch successful attacks on regime forces. The newspaper quoted a Syrian opposition official who said that British authorities “know about and approve 100%” the intelligence from their Cyprus military bases being passed through Turkey to the rebel troops of the Free Syrian Army (FSA).
According to the official, the most valuable information has been on the movements of troops loyal to President Bashar al-Assad towards the town of Aleppo. The information the rebels get from British intelligence through Turkey enabled them, among other things, to ambush troops and a column of more than 40 tanks in a valley near Saraqib. “We cut them off and destroyed many of them with repeat attacks with rocket-propelled grenades.” said the official.
Also on Sunday, the German newspaper Bild also revealed that Germany is much more active in Syria than was previously believed. German spies, stationed on ships off the Syrian coast, are transmitting intelligence to the FSA to aid in their campaign against the regime of President Bashar al-Assad.
Germany’s Federal Intelligence Service (BND) agents use high-tech equipment enabling them to observe troop movements as far inland as 600 kilometers. Later, this information is passed to US and British intelligence officers who pass it on to FSA.
The German newspaper also quotes an unnamed US intelligence official as saying that “No Western intelligence service has such good sources inside Syria” as Germany’s BND.
The information really has a twofold impact.
On the one hand, it obviously shows that the West is in fact totally ignoring the UN resolutions on Syria which exclude any outside interference. While starting open warfare would require a UN Security Council approval, the West is conducting clandestine operations and supplying arms to the rebels. How far are NATO countries from openly admitting that they already have both feet in the Syrian civil war still remains an open question.
But there remains another question that the NATO strategists are probably reluctant to face – let alone answer it. In the past one and a half year (or, probably even more) the West has spent a lot of resources on its attempts to picture the Syrian president as not just a bad guy, but likely the worst ever seen in the region.
That, by definition, would presuppose that the rebels fighting Bashar Assad are good guys. Otherwise it would be too difficult to sell to the public the fact that the West is supporting them.
But as events in Libya and other Arabic countries have shown, the forces triumphing after the oppressive regimes are toppled are far from even distantly resembling the ideals of “democracy” propagated by the West. In Syria, where sectarian differences are greater than anywhere in the Middle East (possibly excluding Lebanon), the task of finding real “good guys” seems even harder. While the West is obsessed with the idea of toppling Bashar Assad, it will continue to turn a blind eye to the fact. But once (and if) it succeeds, the outcome might be even more dreadful than whatever atrocities are now ascribed to the Syrian “dictator”.
This fact is already beginning to dawn upon at least some members of the Western media community. On Monday, the Washington Post published a story about one of the groups within the Syrian opposition movement. The group, the al-Nusra Front for the Protection of the People of the Levant, popularly known as the Jabhat al-Nusra, is fielding scores of fighters, some of them foreigners, in the battle for Aleppo, and reportedly in other locations, too.
The fact that it recruits foreigners does not seem strange in the context of the above information on foreign aid to the rebels. Indeed, the war in Syria has ceased to be a civil war and is turning into a combined operation of outside forces.
But what is more important is the fact that in this war the West is siding with forces it has been so keen to fight since 2001. The Jabhat al-Nusra is not just one of the anti-Assad groups (who are, by definition, good guys), but a jihadist group suspected of affiliations to al-Qaeda. And, according to the Washington Post, it is gaining prominence in the war to topple the current regime in Syria.
So, the question that remains unanswered is the following – what will the US and its NATO allies do after they manage to topple Bashar al-Assad? And what if the virus of the anti-establishment militancy spreads to the countries the West would not like to be infected, like Saudi Arabia and its Gulf satellites. There is little reason to mourn the Saudi regime, but there may be reason to be wary of the forces that might replace it.
Boris Volkhonsky, senior research fellow, Russian Institute for Strategic Studies
In the interests of predictive modelling, and pigeon-holing, it can be helpful to look for parallels when indecisive conflicts become quagmires. Whilst Libya might initially have seemed like a relevant parallel to Syria, there are now sufficient differences between the Syria and Libya campaigns to seek a better model from which to map and record factors likely influence the outcome.
In superficial geopolitical respects, the parallel most similar to the conflict in Syria is the Iran-Iraq War Iraq happily played the role of Western-backed aggressor and the Iranian military, with very little outside help, fought their Iraqi counterparts to a standstill. Not long afterwards, the West turned on Iraq and destroyed it – which seems a perverse way to reward a compliant and self-sacrificing servant.
Unwilling to risk white Christian skins to find out how good Syria’s defenses might be, the West has nominated Turkey as its (Iraq-equivalent) sacrificial lamb/temperature probe. Unfortunately, the Turks aren’t as stupid as the white Christians wish they would/could be and, apart from personal experience with quagmires, they can probably remember what happened to Iraq (and who could forget?). It’s also quite likely that many Turks can remember how the West rewarded Libyans for Qaddafi’s compliance with Western demands – by looting their treasury and then wrecking their infrastructure.
However, the important difference between the Syria conflict and the Iran-Iraq War is that Iran had to soldier on alone, whereas Syria has the bespoke support of the second and third most powerful nations on Earth.
And, quagmires aside, that will be the deciding factor.
Germany is de facto active and overt aggressor against Syrian Arab Republic, together with U.K. France, U.S.A., Saudi Arabia, Qatar, “new-free- Libya” and Turkey.
Potential break-up of Syria will set Turkey a blaze making with resulting balkanization as full and just compensation for her eager and overzealous servitude.
Maybe Turkish officials should confer with Madame Madeleine Albright, ex-U.S.
Secretary of State/War provided she is not busy buying real estates, shares in TeleCom and Mining companies in Kosovo, stolen from Serbia using military aggression of
U.S.- led NATO in 1999!!!
I am befuddled by the assumed ignorance of these countries involved.Are they that dumb or
is this a front.The participants in this and any other conflict in the middle east will be rewarded in kind to what everyone else is getting over there.These people will risk the total
annihilation of mankind rather than live harmoniously with the rest of the world.Trust them at
your own risk.These individuals are responsible for all the chaos in our world today.A tiger
can not change it,s strips.After Syria is vilified ,Iran will be on the radar.But because of the
attacks and blatant disregard for international law,the countries that have not been attacked
yet will prepare themselves for war.Russia and China have said has much.That means a nuclear confrontation with no winners ,only losers.MANKIND