Collateral Damage (June 13)
Around this time in 2010 it came out that more and more US soldiers were committing suicide. It was nearly as common as death in combat.
The Pentagon promised to hire more mental health specialists, already the fastest-growing job classification in the armed forces.
The world is becoming an immense military base, and that base is becoming a mental hospital the size of the world. Inside the nuthouse, which ones are crazy? The soldiers killing themselves or the wars that oblige them to kill?
Eduardo Galeano. Children of the Days. A Calendar of Human History. 2013
In De Groene Amsterdammer van woensdag 18 november 2015 gaf de in Parijs wonende freelance-correspondent Marijn Kruk de volgende uitgesproken mening:
Parijs werd niet alleen slachtoffer van wraakzuchtige losers, maar ook van de ultieme mondiale provocatie van IS: voer oorlog met ons! Dat zou te veel eer zijn. Parijs werd op 13 november niet alleen slachtoffer van wraakzuchtige maatschappelijke losers, maar ook van de ultieme mondiale provocatie van IS: voer oorlog met ons!
Laat ik allereerst de mening van collega Kruk analyseren. Of de warriors, die in Parijs een 'oorlog' uitvochten, zoals de Franse president de gebeurtenis kwalificeerde, dit ook daadwerkelijk uit 'wraakzuchtige' motieven deden, weet meneer Kruk niet, aangezien hij geen van de betrokkenen heeft geïnterviewd. Kortom, dit is geen objectief feit, maar een persoonlijke opinie van iemand die in een onbesuisd moment zo opgewonden raakte dat hij niet in staat was helder na te denken. De 'oorlog' was daarvoor te dichtbij gekomen. Feit is dat niet alle oorlogshandelingen voortkomen uit 'wraakzucht.' Dat kan iedereen weten, en zeker iemand die een 'briljante studie geschiedenis' achter de rug heeft. Sterker nog, de afgelopen vijf eeuwen heeft het Westen overal ter wereld ontelbare oorlogen gevoerd met als enig motief: roof, zonder een greintje 'wraakzucht,' want de slachtoffers van het regelmatig genocidale westerse kolonialisme waren niet of nauwelijks bij machte om wraak te nemen. Had meneer Kruk het klassieke werk The Clash of Civilizations van de Amerikaanse neoconservatieve politicoloog Samuel Huntington gelezen dan zou hij hebben geweten dat
the West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion, but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact, non-Westerners never do.
Geen serieuze historicus die Huntington's uitspraak tegenspreekt, en ik vermoed dat zelfs Kruk dit niet zou aandurven. Wie is meneer Kruk? Op het eerste gezicht zie ik een nogal arrogant ogende blanke over wie het volgende bekend is:
Marijn Kruk is op 23 juni 1971 in Leiden geboren en heeft zijn briljante studie Geschiedenis succesvol afgerond aan de Utrechtse universiteit met als specialisatie de culturele geschiedenis vanaf de Verlichting. Zijn scriptie droeg de titel 'Het heden bedroeft mij en de toekomst verontrust mij.' Hij krijgt nu de mogelijkheid om in Parijs zijn onderzoek verder te zetten en zijn kennis te verdiepen op het gebied van politieke studies bij Pierre Manent op de l’Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (EHESS).
Getuige de naam 'Amerik,' hetgeen 'heerser van het thuisland' betekent, hebben we hier te maken met iemand uit een milieu dat de de wereld iets wil meedelen en meent iets te moeten verdedigen, in dit geval kennelijk 'het thuisland.' Marijn Amerik Kruk's negatieve kwalificatie 'maatschappelijke losers,' is te weinig doordacht. Het dwingt ook niet tot nadenken, is slechts bedoeld als beschimping. Jammer maar begrijpelijk, want Kruk schreef dit artikel voor De Groene Amsterdammer, zoals bekend de spreekbuis van de Nederlandse 'politiek-literaire elite.' Toch is hier inderdaad sprake van 'maatschappelijk losers,' niet in de zin die Kruk eraan geeft, maar wel in de betekenis van een sociaal fenomeen dat serieus moet worden genomen, aangezien een steeds grotere groep burgers in het neoliberale Westen overbodig is geworden. Sterker nog, de overtolligen dreigen een groot maatschappelijk probleem te worden, dat een ernstige bedreiging vormt van de belangrijkste kapitalistische dogma: de oneindige groei van de winsten voor de elite. Zonder het te beseffen heeft Kruk de kern van de zaak te pakken, te weten: de dagelijkse vernedering van de 'maatschappelijke losers,' en de bedreiging die hieruit voortvloeit. De wijze waarop opiniemakers als Kruk daar nog eens een schepje bovenop doet, leidt niet tot de beheersing van 'het thuisland,' maar tot een situatie waarbij een stel kleinburgers uit een geconditioneerd reflex alleen nog hun gal kunnen spugen tegen van alles en nog wat. Wat de mainstream-media hadden moeten doen is zich verplaatsen in de daders, en niet allereerst in de slachtoffers, want dat kan elke burger met een beetje empathie zelf wel. Als journalist dient men te proberen juist het onverklaarbare te verklaren. Men moet naar motieven blijven zoeken, door de daders als het ware een gezicht te geven. De polderpers staat daar huiverig tegenover. Zij is bang dat het geven van motieven gelijk staat aan het rechtvaardigen van de aanvallen. Bovendien zou dan tegelijkertijd vast komen te staan dat het 'terrorisme' hier een antwoord is op het westerse terrorisme elders, en daar zijn de commerciële massamedia niet voor ingehuurd. Vandaar ook dat NRC Handelsblad onmiddellijk op maandag 16 november 2015 'De gezichten van de slachtoffers' publiceerde, want zo luidde de melodramatische tekst boven de portretten:
Parijs verkeert in rouw. Tussen de vele kaarsen en bloemen in de stad krijgen de slachtoffers van de aanslagen langzaam een gezicht.
Toch is het interessanter voor het publiek om de 'gezichten' van de daders te kennen, dat wil zeggen hun drijfveren. In wat voor wereld leven zij? En hoe ervaren zij die wereld? Zolang men dit niet weet zal elke reactie beperkt blijven tot nog meer terreur en contra-terreur. Het dagblad Trouw opende op maandag 16 november 2015, onder een pagina brede foto van een blanke jonge vrouw die bescherming zocht bij een blanke jongeman, met de kop:
Met oorlog alleen wint niemand de strijd tegen terreur
De kop verraadt onmiddellijk een paradox, waarvoor de lezer en de mainstream-journalist stekeblind zijn. Elke moderne 'oorlog' is namelijk per definitie 'terreur,' om de simpele reden dat de overgrote meerderheid van de slachtoffers ongewapende burgers zijn. Dit is al een eeuw lang bekend. De Zweedse journalist Sven Lindqvist schreef in zijn boek A History of Bombing (2001) dat enkele maanden na de wapenstilstand, die een einde maakte aan de Eerste Wereldoorlog,
a demand was made that the German pilots who had bombed London be brought to trial as war criminals. The British Air Ministry protested. Trials of that sort 'would be placing a noose round the necks of our airman in future wars.' Since the aim of the British air attacks against German cities had been 'to weaken the morale of civilian inhabitants (and thereby their ''will to win'') by persistent bomb attacks which would both destroy life (civilian and otherwise) and if possible originate a conflagration which should reduce to ashes the whole town,' the application of the Hague Convention in these cases would defeat the very purpose of bombardment.
This was top secret. Publicly the air force continued to say something quite different, just as the navy had done throughout the 19th century. This was the best tack (koers. svh) to take, wrote the air staff in 1921: 'It may be thought better, in view of the allegations of the "barbarity" of air attacks, to preserve appearances by formulating milder rules and by still nominally confining bombardment to targets which are strictly military in character… to avoid emphasizing the truth that air warfare has made such restrictions obsolete and impossible.'
Kort samengevat, al bijna een eeuw geleden wist zowel de militaire als politieke elite dat oorlog onvermijdelijk leidt tot grootschalige schendingen van de mensenrechten, tot oorlogsmisdaden en misdaden tegen de menselijkheid,
de verzamelnaam voor een groot aantal verschillende grootschalige inbreuken op de mensenrechten. De benaming 'misdaden tegen de menselijkheid' wordt binnen het internationaal recht gebruikt voor de moorddadige vervolging van een groep mensen als eerste en belangrijkste aanklacht. Het begrip werd voor het eerst gebruikt in de inleiding van de Vredesconventie van Den Haag in 1907, en vervolgens toegepast tijdens de processen van Neurenberg, omdat vergrijpen zoals de Holocaust niet een specifiek verdrag schonden, maar wel zwaar bestraft dienden te worden.
Met andere woorden, de Shock and Awe-doctrine die de NAVO, onder aanvoering van de VS, toepast is een andere benaming voor 'misdaden tegen de menselijkheid,' en wel omdat in de praktijk het massale geweld geen onderscheid maakt tussen burgers en militairen. Een moderne oorlog is per definitie een grootschalige schending van de mensenrechten, zoals elke deskundige en elk slachtoffer uit ervaring weet. Niet alleen zij weten dit, ook degenen die geschoold zijn in de mensenrechten en die daaraan hun status en inkomen ontlenen weten dit, ook al verzwijgen ze deze misdaden, zoals academici en mijn wakkere collega's van de mainstream-pers doorgaans doen. Ik doe een stapje terug om een bredere context te beschrijven:
‘Killing 50-90% of the people in 67 Japanese cities and then bombing them with two nuclear bombs is not proportional, in the minds of some people, to the objectives we were trying to achieve.’ […]
‘What makes it immoral if you lose but not if you win?’ […]
McNamara admits that ‘[Lemay], and I’d say I, were behaving as war criminals.’ But the two never went before court to answer for their actions — they were treated as heros when they returned home victorious. In fact, the threat of war crimes trials could even encourage violence, or a stubborn refusal to surrender, if the leaders know they will be tried, executed, and relegated to perpetual historical infamy if they lose.
Generaal Curtis LeMay, die opklom tot stafchef van de Amerikaanse luchtmacht, vatte het Amerikaans uitgangspunt als volgt samen:
There is no such thing as an innocent civilian.
En over de Vietnamezen zei hij tijdens de Vietnam Oorlog:
We will bomb them back to the Stone Age.
Het was dezelfde Curtis LeMay, die na 1945 tegen minister van Defensie Robert McNamara opmerkte:
'If we'd lost the war, we'd all have been prosecuted as war criminals.' And I think he's right. He, and I'd say I, were behaving as war criminals. LeMay recognized that what he was doing would be thought immoral if his side had lost. But what makes it immoral if you lose and not immoral if you win?
In de met een Oscar bekroonde documentaire The Fog of War (2003) stelde McNamara de vraag:
Why was it necessary to drop the nuclear bomb if LeMay was burning up Japan? And he went on from Tokyo to firebomb other cities. 58% of Yokohama. Yokohama is roughly the size of Cleveland. 58% of Cleveland destroyed. Tokyo is roughly the size of New York. 51% percent of New York destroyed. 99% of the equivalent of Chattanooga, which was Toyama. 40% of the equivalent of Los Angeles, which was Nagoya. This wasall done before the dropping of the nuclear bomb, which by the way was dropped by LeMay's command. Proportionality should be a guideline in war. Killing 50% to 90% of the people of 67 Japanese cities and then bombing them with two nuclear bombs is not proportional, in the minds of some people, to the objectives we were trying to achieve.
'Necessary' of niet, 'Shock and Awe' is het officiële militaire terrorisme, waarmee het Westen zijn hegemonie probeert te consolideren. De slachtoffers ervan behoren tot de gezichtloze massa elders, met wie Kruk's 'wraakzuchtige maatschappelijke losers' zich verwant voelen. In zijn in het Engels vertaalde studie Drone Theory (2015) gaat de Franse filosoof Grégoire Chamayou dieper in op de verschillen en overeenkomsten tussen het westers terrorisme en het islamitisch terrorisme. Zo stelt hij in het hoofdstuk Drones and Kamikazes:
Whereas the kamikaze implies a total fusion of the fighter's body and weapon, the drone ensures their radical separation. The kamikaze: My body is a weapon. The drone: My weapon has no body. The former implies the death of the agent. The latter totally excludes it. Kamikazes are those for whom death is certain. Drone pilots are those for whom death is impossible. In this sense, they represent two opposite poles on the spectrum of exposure to death. In between the two are classic fighters, those for whom death is a risk.
One speaks of 'suicide bombing' or of 'suicide assassination,' but what would be the antonym (tegengestelde. svh)? There is no specific expression to designate those who kill by explosion without ever risking their lives. Not only is it not necessary for them to die in order to kill, but it is impossible for them to be killed as they kill…
the weapon of sacrifice and the weapon of self-preservation — did not succeed each other chronologically, one following from the other as history follows from prehistory. On the contrary, they emerged together, as two opposed but historically simultaneous tactics.
Grégoire Chamayou doet wetenschappelijk onderzoek voor het prestigieuze Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, met 30.000 medewerkers en een jaarlijks budget van 3 miljard euro, de grootste Franse overheidsorganisatie voor 'fundamenteel wetenschappelijk onderzoek,' en is als filosoof niet geneigd het gewelddadig verzet tegen de westerse terreur af te doen met de simplistische kwalificatie 'wraakzuchtige maatschappelijke losers.' In tegenstelling tot de journalist Marijn Kruk, wijst Chamayou op het volgende veelzeggende aspect:
It sets those who have nothing but their bodies with which to fight in opposition to those who possess capital and technology.
But these two regimes, the one tactical, the other material, also correspond to two different ethical regimes: the ethic of heroic sacrifice, on one hand, and the ethic of vital self-preservation, on the other.
The drone and the kamikaze stand in contrast as two opposed forms of moral sensibility, two forms of ethos that reflect each other's antithesis and nightmare. What is at stake in this difference, at least on the face of it, is a particular concept of one's relationship to death, both one's own and that of others; to sacrifice or self-preservation; to danger and to courage and to vulnerability and destructiveness. Involved here are two political and affective economies regarding one's relationship to death, both the death that one deals and that to which one exposes oneself; but also two opposed concepts or visions of horror.
Chamayou's beschrijving toont tevens het ultieme verschil tussen het egoïstisch individualisme en de solidariteit van het collectivisme. Het onderscheid demonstreert tevens het absolute onvermogen van de westerling om zichzelf op te offeren voor zijn — met de mond beleden — 'westerse normen en waarden.' De journalist Kruk en de rest van de mainstream-media hebben voor dit aspect geen oog, zij beschouwen het veel beschaafder om met geavanceerde technologische apparatuur anderen te vermoorden, onder wie ontelbare onschuldigen, dan het plegen van een zelfmoordaanslag. Dat er qua terreur überhaupt geen enkel fundamenteel verschil bestaat tussen een drone-aanslag en een zelfmoordaanslag is een feit waar zij, hun opdrachtgevers en hun politici niet in geïnteresseerd zijn. 15 oktober 2015 maakte de Amerikaanse onderzoeksjournalist Jeremy Scahill op de website van The Intercept bekend dat de redactie
obtained a cache of secret documents detailing the inner workings of the U.S.
military’s assassination program in Afghanistan, Yemen, and Somalia. The
documents, provided by a whistleblower, offer an unprecedented glimpse into Obama’s drone wars,
zoals bijvoorbeeld het feit dat
U.S. DRONE STRIKES HAVE KILLED SCORES OF CIVILIANS IN AFGHANISTAN, PAKISTAN, YEMEN AND SOMALIA. DRONE LEAK: 90% OF KILLED WEREN'T TARGETED
The report, compiled from classified documents released by a source in the intelligence community, corroborates the many news accounts of civilian deaths caused by drone strikes. U.S. drone strikes have killed scores of civilians in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia since 2009… Despite the high number of civilian casualties and criticism that the program lacks transparency, President Barack Obama has repeatedly defended the strikes… 'Anyone caught in the vicinity is guilty by association,' the source of the documents told The Intercept… So it’s a phenomenal gamble.'
Kruk en zijn collega's van de 'vrije' polderpers zullen het feit dat '90 procent' van de drone-doden onschuldige burgers zijn nooit 'terrorisme' betitelen, maar hooguit 'collateral damage.' Dat hier sprake is van verholen racisme wordt duidelijk zodra men weet dat 'islamitisch terrorisme' in het Westen nooit zal worden vergoelijkt met de term 'bijkomende schade.' Het argument dat het Westen niet bewust burgers vermoord is in strijd met de werkelijkheid, waarbij de Amerikaanse strijdkrachten zelfs ziekenhuizen aanvalt en vluchtende patiënten doodschiet, en bovendien bewust het vermoorden van onschuldige burgers incalculeert als 'collateral damage,' een eufemisme dat mijn collega's zo graag en zo gedachteloos hebben overgenomen om de mythe overeind te houden dat 'het vredestichtende Westen' altijd 'humanitair ingrijpt' vanwege zijn 'responsibility to protect.' In werkelijkheid spelen naast de economische en financiële belangen, de geopolitieke drijfveren van de elite een doorslaggevende rol. Zo is bekend dat Washington en Wall Street ISIS hebben gecreëerd en in stand houden. De macht van het jaarlijks honderden miljarden verslindende militair-industrieel complex moet natuurlijk gelegitimeerd worden. Vandaar dat de elite een vijand nodig heeft, en als die er niet meer is, moet er een vijand worden geschapen via de virtuele werkelijkheid van de massamedia. Dit verklaart ook waarom de nauwe band tussen ISIS en de VS in de westerse mainstream- media verzwegen wordt. Donderdag 19 november 2015 verklaarde de bekende Amerikaanse onderzoeksjournalist Glenn Greenwald daarover in een uitzending van DemocracyNow!:
there’s lots of evidence that the CIA utterly failed in their mission and that the U.S. government has done all sorts of things unwittingly to strengthen ISIS. And so, I think if you want to talk about who has blood on their hands, personally, I would look first to ISIS, the people who actually shot those people in the Paris streets. It’s really weird. Usually after a terrorist attack, nobody is allowed to suggest that anybody has blame other than the terrorists themselves. But for some reason, in this case, leading establishment figures and journalists feel free to go around detracting—distracting attention from ISIS and saying, 'No, it’s not ISIS that has blood on their hands, it’s Edward Snowden.' For some reason, that’s now allowed. So, if that’s what we’re doing, if that’s the game we’re playing, I would look to the U.S. government first, because they failed to find the plot despite huge amounts of money and unlimited power to do so, and because they’ve done all sorts of things to strengthen the group that apparently bears responsibility for this attack.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Well, I’d like to turn to a clip from an Al Jazeera interview in August with the former head of the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency, Michael Flynn. The host, Mehdi Hasan, questions Flynn about how much the U.S. knew about the rise of the so-called Islamic State in Syria.
MEHDI HASAN: Many people would argue that the U.S. actually saw the rise of ISIL coming and turned a blind eye, or even encouraged it as a counterpoint to Assad. In a secret analysis by the agency you ran, the Defense Intelligence Agency in August 2012 said — and I quote… 'there is a possibility of establishing a declared or undeclared Salafist Principality in Eastern Syria... and this is exactly what the supporting powers to the opposition want, in order to isolate the Syrian regime.' The U.S. saw the ISIL caliphate coming and did nothing.
MICHAEL FLYNN: Yeah, I think that what we—where we missed the point — I mean, where we totally blew it, I think, was in the very beginning. I mean, we’re talking four years now into this effort in Syria. Most people won’t even remember—it’s only been a couple years—the Free Syrian Army, that movement. I mean, where are they today? Al-Nusra, where are they today, and what have—how much have they changed? When you don’t get in and help somebody, they’re going to find other means to achieve their goals. And I think right now what we have allowed is—
MEHDI HASAN: Hold on, you were helping them in 2012, while these groups—
MICHAEL FLYNN: Yeah, we’ve allowed this — we’ve allowed this extremist — you know, these extremist militants to come in —
MEHDI HASAN: But why did you allow them to do that, General?
MICHAEL FLYNN: Those are — those are —
MEHDI HASAN: You were in post. You were the head of the Defense Intelligence Agency.
MICHAEL FLYNN: Yeah, right, right. Well, those are… Those are policy issues.
MEHDI HASAN: I took the liberty of printing out that document.
MICHAEL FLYNN: Yeah, yeah.
MEHDI HASAN: This is a memo I quoted from. Did you see this document in 2012? Would this come across your table?
MICHAEL FLYNN: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I paid very close attention to all the [inaudible] —
MEHDI HASAN: OK, so when you saw this, did you not pick up a phone and say, 'What on Earth are we doing supporting these Syrian rebels?'
MICHAEL FLYNN: Sure. I mean, that—that kind of information is presented, and —
MEHDI HASAN: And what did you do about it?
MICHAEL FLYNN: — those become — those become — I argued about it.
MEHDI HASAN: In 2012, your agency was saying, quote, 'the Salafists, the Muslim Brotherhood and [al-Qaeda in Iraq] are the major forces driving the insurgency in Syria.'
MICHAEL FLYNN: Mm-hmm.
MEHDI HASAN: In 2012, the U.S. was helping coordinate arms transfers to those same groups. Why did you not stop that, if you’re worried about the rise of, quote-unquote, 'Islamic extremism'?
MICHAEL FLYNN: Yeah, I mean, I hate to say it’s not my job, but that — my job was to ensure that the accuracy of our intelligence that was being presented was as good as it could be. And I will tell you, it goes before 2012 — I mean, when we were in Iraq, and we still had decisions to be made before there was a decision to pull out of Iraq in 2011. I mean, it was very clear what we were going to face.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: That was the former head of the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency, Michael Flynn, being interviewed by Mehdi Hasan of Al Jazeera. So, Glenn Greenwald, could you respond to that interview? And also explain—you’ve said repeatedly that the U.S. media tends to simply echo what U.S. government and military officials say. Explain what you think accounts for that.
GLENN GREENWALD: Well, first of all, that clip is unbelievable. It is literally one of the three most important military officials of the entire war on terror, General Flynn, who was the head of the Defense Intelligence Agency. He’s saying that the U.S. government knew that by creating a vacuum in Syria and then flooding that region with arms and money, that it was likely to result in the establishment of a caliphate by Islamic extremists in eastern Syria—which is, of course, exactly what happened. They knew that that was going to happen, and they proceeded to do it anyway. So when the U.S. government starts trying to point the finger at other people for helping ISIS, they really need to have a mirror put in front of them, because, by their own documents, as that extraordinary clip demonstrates, they bear huge responsibility for that happening, to say nothing of the fact that, as I said, their closest allies in the region actually fund it.
And then, just to take a step further back, The Washington Post six months ago reported what most people who pay attention to this actually know, which is that what we call ISIS is really nothing more than a bunch of ex-Baathist military officials who were disempowered and alienated by the U.S. invasion of Iraq, and the subsequent instability that it caused, and then the policies of the—the sectarian policies of Prime Minister Maliki in basically taking away all of the power of those ex-Baathists in favor of Shiite militias and Iran-aligned militias and the like. And so, essentially, what I think everybody at this point understands is that the reason there is such a thing as ISIS is because the U.S. invaded Iraq and caused massive instability, destroyed the entire society, destroyed all of the infrastructure, destroyed all order, and it was in that chaos that ISIS was able to emerge. So, again, if you’re looking for blame, beyond ISIS, the U.S. government is a really good place to look…
So, as far as why the media is willing to sort of spread these claims so uncritically, you know, there are complicated reasons. I mean, one is that the media itself is very nationalistic, and they get wrapped up and caught up in the sort of über-patriotism and jingoism as much as non-journalists do, and see the world through that lens. Another is that they spend a huge amount of time with these government officials. They are in the same socioeconomic sphere. They talk to them all day and night, because that’s where they get their stories from, is the ones that are fed to them by officials. And so they see the world through their lens and also, at the same time, want to serve them and please them in order to continue to get sources. A lot of these people are people who work for large corporations, and large corporations want to keep positive relations with the U.S. government, and so report favorably on them rather than in a way that would anger the government, because that’s not in their interest to do.
And then, finally, there’s a lot of resentment and bitterness to the Snowden reporting among lots of journalists, because they were excluded from the story, though journalism won a lot of awards that they themselves have never won. And they hate Edward Snowden, and they hate the journalism that he enabled, and so this is sort of their chance to demonize not just him, but the journalism. And so, they’re eagerly giving a platform to any U.S. officials who want to say that the person who has blood on their hands is Edward Snowden.
De belangrijkste reden waarom ISIS tot nu toe zo succesvol kan opereren is simpelweg dat NAVO-landen als Turkije en de VS, naast bevriende staten als Saoedie-Arabië, en Qatar de terreurgroep militair en financieel steunen, en de 'Joodse staat' openlijk gewonde terroristen uit Syrië in Israelische veldhospitalen oplapt, zodat ze hun terreurdaden weer kunnen voortzetten. Dit alles wordt angstvallig verzwegen door corrupte journalisten als Henk Hofland, die deze terreur verkoopt onder de noemer 'het vredestichtende Westen,' terwijl miljonair Geert Mak, de 'man van het grote verhaal, de verbanden, de historische context,' vol lof is over de ‘kracht van onze westerse samenleving' zijnde 'onze democratie, onze variatie in ideeën, onze tolerantie, onze openheid tegenover andere culturen.' Toch weet ook de mainstream-journalistiek over de nauwe banden tussen NAVO-lid Turkije en ISIS. Dinsdag 24 november 2015 berichtte de bekende Amerikaanse journalist Rob Kall het volgende:
According to journalist, Nafeez Ahmed,
'Earlier this year, the Turkish daily Meydan reported citing an Uighur source that more than 100,000 fake Turkish passports had been given to ISIS... Further corroboration came from a Sky News Arabia report by correspondent Stuart Ramsey, which revealed that the Turkish government was certifying passports of foreign militants crossing the Turkey-Syria border to join ISIS. The passports, obtained from Kurdish fighters, had the official exit stamp of Turkish border control, indicating the ISIS militants had entered Syria with full knowledge of Turkish authorities.'
This barely scratches the surface. A senior Western official familiar with a large cache of intelligence obtained this summer from a major raid on an ISIS safehouse told the Guardian that 'direct dealings between Turkish officials and ranking ISIS members was now "undeniable."'
The same official confirmed that Turkey, a longstanding member of NATO, is not just supporting ISIS, but also other jihadist groups, including Ahrar al-Sham and Jabhat al-Nusra, al-Qaeda's affiliate in Syria. 'The distinctions they draw [with other opposition groups] are thin indeed,' said the official. 'There is no doubt at all that they militarily cooperate with both.'
In a rare insight into this brazen state-sponsorship of ISIS, a year ago Newsweek reported the testimony of a former ISIS communications technician, who had travelled to Syria to fight the regime of Bashir al-Assad.
The former ISIS fighter told Newsweek that Turkey was allowing ISIS trucks from Raqqa to cross the 'border, through Turkey and then back across the border to attack Syrian Kurds in the city of Serekaniye in northern Syria in February.' ISIS militants would freely travel 'through Turkey in a convoy of trucks," and stop "at safehouses along the way.'
A highly damning article by the Columbia University Institute for the Study of Human Rights, by David Phillips, reports the many ways that Turkey is supporting, abetting and enabling ISIS, stating,
'Columbia University's Program on Peace-building and Rights assigned a team of researchers in the United States, Europe, and Turkey to examine Turkish and international media, assessing the credibility of allegations. This report draws on a variety of international sources -- The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Guardian, The Daily Mail, BBC, Sky News, as well as Turkish sources, CNN Turk, Hurriyet Daily News, Taraf, Cumhuriyet, and Radikal among others.'
The list of allegations and support for the allegations that Phillips team put together include:
Turkey Provides Military Equipment to ISIS
Turkey Provided Transport and Logistical Assistance to ISIS Fighters
Turkey Provided Training to ISIS Fighters
Turkey Offers Medical Care to ISIS Fighters
Turkey Supports ISIS Financially Through Purchase of Oil
Turkey Assists ISIS Recruitment
Turkish Forces Are Fighting Alongside ISIS
Turkey Helped ISIS in Battle for Kobani
Turkey and ISIS Share a Worldview
Each of the allegations is supported by evidence, with links. For example, here's their section on Turkey helping ISIS sell oil:
Turkey Supports ISIS Financially Through Purchase of Oil
On September 13, 2014, The New York Times reported on the Obama administration's efforts to pressure Turkey to crack down on ISIS extensive sales network for oil. James Phillips, a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation, argues that Turkey has not fully cracked down on ISIS's sales network because it benefits from a lower price for oil, and that there might even be Turks and government officials who benefit from the trade.
Fehim TaÅŸtekin wrote in Radikal on September 13, 2014 about illegal pipelines transporting oil from Syria to nearby border towns in Turkey. The oil is sold for as little as 1.25 liras per liter. TaÅŸtekin indicated that many of these illegal pipelines were dismantled after operating for 3 years, once his article was published.
According to Diken and OdaTV, David Cohen, a Justice Department official, says that there are Turkish individuals acting as middlemen to help sell ISIS's oil through Turkey.
On October 14, 2014, a German Parliamentarian from the Green Party accused Turkey of allowing the transportation of arms to ISIS over its territory, as well as the sale of oil.
Phillips report cites 'RT reports on Vice President Joe Biden's remarks detailing Turkish support to ISIS:
US Vice-President Joe Biden has accused America's key allies in the Middle East of allowing the rise of the Islamic State (IS), saying they supported extremists with money and weapons in their eagerness to oust the Assad regime in Syria.
America's 'biggest problem' in Syria is its regional allies, Biden told students at the John F. Kennedy Jr. Forum at the Institute of Politics at Harvard University on Thursday.
'Our allies in the region were our largest problem in Syria,' he said, explaining that Turkey, Saudi Arabia and the UAE were 'so determined to take down Assad,' that in a sense they started a 'proxy Sunni-Shia war' by pouring 'hundreds of millions of dollars and tens of thousands of tons of weapons' towards anyone who would fight against Assad.
And Patrick Cockburn, in the London Review of Books, also comments on Joe Biden's remarks:
'When the bombing of Syria began in September, Obama announced with pride that Saudi Arabia, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain and Turkey were all joining the US as military partners against Isis. But, as the Americans knew, these were all Sunni states which had played a central role in fostering the jihadis in Syria and Iraq. This was a political problem for the US, as Joe Biden revealed to the embarrassment of the administration in a talk at Harvard on 2 October. He said that Turkey, Saudi Arabia and the UAE had promoted ''a proxy Sunni-Shia war'' in Syria and 'poured hundreds of millions of dollars and tens of thousands of tons of weapons into anyone who would fight against Assad -- except that the people who were being supplied were al-Nusra and al-Qaida and the extremist element of jihadis coming from other parts of the world.' He admitted that the moderate Syrian rebels, supposedly central to US policy in Syria, were a negligible military force. Biden later apologised for his words, but what he had said was demonstrably true and reflects what the administration in Washington really believes. Though they expressed outrage at Biden's frankness, America's Sunni allies swiftly confirmed the limits of their co-operation. Prince al-Waleed bin Talal al-Saud, a business magnate and member of the Saudi royal family, said: 'Saudi Arabia will not be involved directly in fighting Isis in Iraq or Syria, because this does not really affect our country explicitly.' In Turkey, Erdogan said that so far as he was concerned the PKK was just as bad as Isis.
In a recent article in the Guardian, Professor David Graeber of the London School of Economics stated how 'Back in August, the YPG, fresh from their victories in Kobani and Gire Spi, were poised to seize Jarablus, the last Isis-held town on the Turkish border that the terror organisation had been using to resupply its capital in Raqqa with weapons, materials, and recruits -- Isis supply lines pass directly through Turkey.' Graeber added: 'Commentators predicted that with Jarablus gone, Raqqa would soon follow. Erdoggan reacted by declaring Jarablus a 'red line': if the Kurds attacked, his forces would intervene militarily -- against the YPG. So Jarablus remains in terrorist hands to this day, under de facto Turkish military protection. http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2015/07/turkey-syria-erdogan-lost-election-want-win-as-army-chief.html#
It's impossible to discuss the connection between Turkey and ISIS without discussing the Kurds. The Undercoverinfo.org article reports this connection between the Kurds and Turkey:
The Kurds of northern Syria, together with the Kurds of Turkey and Iraq, have been at war with ISIS since the latter rose up and declared their so-called caliphate. It was the Syrian Kurds and their Kurdish comrades in Turkey who helped rescue the Yezidis, after they had fled the ISIS onslaught to take refuge in the Sinjar mountains. It was the Syrian Kurds and their comrades in Turkey who liberated the city of Kobani from ISIS.
But the Kurds of northern Syria have not just been waging war. They have also been waging peace: creating new, democratic structures, declaring autonmous cantons; setting up schools, universities, hospitals. They have taken their inspiration from the Zapatistas of Mexico, who in their thousands retreated into the jungles of Chiapas and together with the Mayans created a new society, free from the oppression of the Mexican authorities.
In short, the northern Syrian Kurds have created and are living a social revolution. It is no wonder, therefore, that the authoritarian and neo-Islamist Erdogan Government of Turkey is doing everything it can to break the Kurds, including providing covert support to the Kurds' main enemy, to ISIS.
CNN acts shocked that Turkey, a member of NATO, has attacked Russia, which is fighting ISIS. The reality is, both the USA and Turkey want Assad out. There lies the rub.
The shooting down of the Russian jet clarifies the reality that the US, in choosing to allow Turkey to engage in a long, aggressive campaign supporting, abetting and empowering ISIS, is itself helping ISIS.
This should be a huge problem for the US and it's surrogate NATO, since we are responsible for supporting Turkey, a NATO member nation. But Turkey, like the US and France and NATO, wants to get rid of Syria's Assad. It is confusing because it seems we are fighting ISIS, but at the same time letting Turkey support ISIS, as an enemy of Assad.
It is hard to imagine France continuing to tolerate Turkey continuing to be a part of NATO, unless their desire to get rid of Assad is greater than their desire to deal with ISIS. But just today, Hollande spoke clearly, stating that Assad must go.
Watching the news of the Turkish shoot-down of the Russian jet, it verges on bizarre, seeing the mainstream media frame the shoot-down without including background on Turkey's history of supporting ISIS.
It seems that without Turkey's support, ISIS might not be the powerhouse terror organization it has become. And worse, without the White House's and Obama's tacit support for Turkey's massive support for ISIS, we wouldn't be where we are today. And lets not forget that because Turkey has refused to allow the US to fly sorties out of its Incirlik airbase, US jets have to fly 1200 miles.
Considering this aspect of the ISIS narrative, one must ask why Turkey is even being allowed to stay a member of NATO? And why are the mainstream media ignoring this, and why haven't members of congress and presidential candidates started calling for doing something about Turkey. And why would we be allowing people with Turkish passports into the US, given the background I've provided.
Turkey is not alone. Saudi Arabia is also a major problem, but that's another article.
Underlying all of this is Assad and those who want to get rid of him. It appears that Turkey blew the Russian jet out of the sky because it was fighting for Assad, attacking non-ISIS areas of Syria. If the US and NATO are allies with Turkey then it would seem they are allies with ISIS, fighting a war defending Syria's Assad. But the US would have us believe that is not the case. The problem is, it's complicated.
One thing that seems less complicated is Russia's role. It is supporting Assad and fighting ISIS.
I wonder about where the leaders in the US military stand on Turkey, on ISIS. I wonder about the Israeli connection.
I'm not expert at international analysis, especially when it gets complicated. But the triangulated relationship between ISIS, the USA and Syria's Assad is very odd. It's hard to believe we are truly fighting ISIS, when we are so friendly to Turkey, such a close friend to ISIS.
Al deze feiten maken duidelijk hoe doortrapt de mening is van de Nederlandse journalist Marijn Kruk in De Groene Amsterdammer van woensdag 18 november 2015. Hoe 'briljant' zijn 'studie geschiedenis' ook mag zijn geweest, mijn collega is en blijft een oppervlakkige domoor, een propagandist die niet in staat is achter de schermen te kijken om te zien wie zijn zogenaamde 'wraakzuchtige maatschappelijk losers' aanstuurt. Wat dat betreft past hij naadloos in de gelederen van de 'politieke-literaire elite' in de polder. Helaas voor de doorsnee westerling wordt hij zelf slachtoffer van de corrupte westerse mainstream-journalistiek, een feit dat onderstreept wordt door De Telegraaf van vanochtend, woensdag 25 november 2015. Over de gehele voorpagina bericht de stem van 'het gezond verstand' dat de 'NAVO pal achter Turken,' staat, dezelfde 'Turken' die ISIS steunen, dezelfde 'NAVO' waarvan de VS, die ISIS steunt, de aanvoerder is, en dat alle burgers dus meegezogen worden in een conflict dat kan eindigen in een apocalyptische wereldoorlog, terwijl er in de commerciële media geen werkelijke tegenstem te vernemen is. Sterker nog: De Telegraaf en De Groene Amsterdammer verschillen nu in niets zodra het een nieuwe gewelddadig conflict betreft. Beide zijn even corrupt.
De redactie van De Groene huist tegenover het gebouw van de Nederlandse Bank op het Amsterdamse Frederiksplein. Daar kunt u uw klachten deponeren zodra de oorlogsvoorbereidingen daadwerkelijk uitlopen op een desastreus treffen tussen het met nucleaire wapens uitgeruste Westen en Oosten, of wanneer Amsterdam getroffen wordt door een grote aanslag, want ook de Nederlandse hoofdstad zal ongetwijfeld op het lijstje staan, zeker nu het gemeentebestuur de banden met het zionistisch regime in Tel Aviv aanhaalt. Het wil maar niet doordringen dat niet langer meer alleen het Westen bepaalt waar de frontlinie ligt.
Premier Netanyahu spreekt met een jihadi uit Syrië
De redactie van De Groene huist tegenover het gebouw van de Nederlandse Bank op het Amsterdamse Frederiksplein. Daar kunt u uw klachten deponeren zodra de oorlogsvoorbereidingen daadwerkelijk uitlopen op een desastreus treffen tussen het met nucleaire wapens uitgeruste Westen en Oosten, of wanneer Amsterdam getroffen wordt door een grote aanslag, want ook de Nederlandse hoofdstad zal ongetwijfeld op het lijstje staan, zeker nu het gemeentebestuur de banden met het zionistisch regime in Tel Aviv aanhaalt. Het wil maar niet doordringen dat niet langer meer alleen het Westen bepaalt waar de frontlinie ligt.
NATO is harbouring the Islamic State
Why France’s brave new war on ISIS is a sick joke, and an insult to the victims of the Paris attacks
By Nafeez Ahmed
This exclusive is published by INSURGE INTELLIGENCE, a crowd-funded investigative journalism project
“We stand alongside Turkey in its efforts in protecting its national security and fighting against terrorism. France and Turkey are on the same side within the framework of the international coalition against the terrorist group ISIS.”
Statement by French Foreign Ministry, July 2015
The 13th November Paris massacre will be remembered, like 9/11, as a defining moment in world history.
The murder of 129 people, the injury of 352 more, by ‘Islamic State’ (ISIS) acolytes striking multiple targets simultaneously in the heart of Europe, mark a major sea-change in the terror threat.
For the first time, a Mumbai-style attack has occurred on Western soil — the worst attack on Europe in decades. As such, it has triggered a seemingly commensurate response from France: the declaration of a nationwide state of emergency, the likes of which have not been seen since the 1961 Algerian war.
ISIS has followed up with threats to attack Washington and New York City.
Meanwhile, President Hollande wants European Union leaders to suspend the Schengen Agreement on open borders to allow dramatic restrictions on freedom of movement across Europe. He also demands the EU-wide adoption of the Passenger Name Records (PNR) system allowing intelligence services to meticulously track the travel patterns of Europeans, along with an extension of the state of emergency to at least three months.
Under the extension, French police can now block any website, put people under house arrest without trial, search homes without a warrant, and prevent suspects from meeting others deemed a threat.
“We know that more attacks are being prepared, not just against France but also against other European countries,” said the French Prime Minister Manuel Valls. “We are going to live with this terrorist threat for a long time.”
Hollande plans to strengthen the powers of police and security services under new anti-terror legislation, and to pursue amendments to the constitution that would permanently enshrine the state of emergency into French politics. “We need an appropriate tool we can use without having to resort to the state of emergency,” he explained.
Parallel with martial law at home, Hollande was quick to accelerate military action abroad, launching 30 airstrikes on over a dozen Islamic State targets in its de facto capital, Raqqa.
France’s defiant promise, according to Hollande, is to “destroy” ISIS.
The ripple effect from the attacks in terms of the impact on Western societies is likely to be permanent. In much the same way that 9/11 saw the birth of a new era of perpetual war in the Muslim world, the 13/11 Paris attacks are already giving rise to a brave new phase in that perpetual war: a new age of Constant Vigilance, in which citizens are vital accessories to the police state, enacted in the name of defending a democracy eroded by the very act of defending it through Constant Vigilance.
Mass surveillance at home and endless military projection abroad are the twin sides of the same coin of national security, which must simply be maximized as much as possible.
“France is at war,” Hollande told French parliament at the Palace of Versailles.
“We’re not engaged in a war of civilizations, because these assassins do not represent any. We are in a war against jihadist terrorism which is threatening the whole world.”
The friend of our enemy is our friend
Conspicuously missing from President Hollande’s decisive declaration of war, however, was any mention of the biggest elephant in the room: state-sponsorship.
Syrian passports discovered near the bodies of two of the suspected Paris attackers, according to police sources, were fake, and likely forged in Turkey.
Earlier this year, the Turkish daily Meydan reported citing an Uighur source that more than 100,000 fake Turkish passports had been given to ISIS. The figure, according to the US Army’s Foreign Studies Military Office (FSMO), is likely exaggerated, but corroborated “by Uighurs captured with Turkish passports in Thailand and Malaysia.”
Further corroboration came from a Sky News Arabia report by correspondent Stuart Ramsey, which revealed that the Turkish government was certifying passports of foreign militants crossing the Turkey-Syria border to join ISIS. The passports, obtained from Kurdish fighters, had the official exit stamp of Turkish border control, indicating the ISIS militants had entered Syria with full knowledge of Turkish authorities.
The dilemma facing the Erdogan administration is summed up by the FSMO: “If the country cracks down on illegal passports and militants transiting the country, the militants may target Turkey for attack. However, if Turkey allows the current course to continue, its diplomatic relations with other countries and internal political situation will sour.”
This barely scratches the surface. A senior Western official familiar with a large cache of intelligence obtained this summer from a major raid on an ISIS safehouse told the Guardian that “direct dealings between Turkish officials and ranking ISIS members was now ‘undeniable.’”
The same official confirmed that Turkey, a longstanding member of NATO, is not just supporting ISIS, but also other jihadist groups, including Ahrar al-Sham and Jabhat al-Nusra, al-Qaeda’s affiliate in Syria. “The distinctions they draw [with other opposition groups] are thin indeed,” said the official. “There is no doubt at all that they militarily cooperate with both.”
In a rare insight into this brazen state-sponsorship of ISIS, a year ago Newsweek reported the testimony of a former ISIS communications technician, who had travelled to Syria to fight the regime of Bashir al-Assad.
The former ISIS fighter told Newsweek that Turkey was allowing ISIS trucks from Raqqa to cross the “border, through Turkey and then back across the border to attack Syrian Kurds in the city of Serekaniye in northern Syria in February.” ISIS militants would freely travel “through Turkey in a convoy of trucks,” and stop “at safehouses along the way.”
The former ISIS communication technician also admitted that he would routinely “connect ISIS field captains and commanders from Syria with people in Turkey on innumerable occasions,” adding that “the people they talked to were Turkish officials… ISIS commanders told us to fear nothing at all because there was full cooperation with the Turks.”
In January, authenticated official documents of the Turkish military were leaked online, showing that Turkey’s intelligence services had been caught in Adana by military officers transporting missiles, mortars and anti-aircraft ammunition via truck “to the al-Qaeda terror organisation” in Syria.
According to other ISIS suspects facing trial in Turkey, the Turkish national military intelligence organization (MIT) had begun smuggling arms, including NATO weapons to jihadist groups in Syria as early as 2011.
The allegations have been corroborated by a prosecutor and court testimony of Turkish military police officers, who confirmed that Turkish intelligence was delivering arms to Syrian jihadists from 2013 to 2014.
Documents leaked in September 2014 showed that Saudi Prince Bandar bin Sultan had financed weapons shipments to ISIS through Turkey. A clandestine plane from Germany delivered arms in the Etimesgut airport in Turkey and split into three containers, two of which were dispatched to ISIS.
A report by the Turkish Statistics Institute confirmed that the government had provided at least $1 million in arms to Syrian rebels within that period, contradicting official denials. Weapons included grenades, heavy artillery, anti-aircraft guns, firearms, ammunition, hunting rifles and other weapons — but the Institute declined to identify the specific groups receiving the shipments.
Information of that nature emerged separately. Just two months ago, Turkish police raided a news outlet that published revelations on how the local customs director had approved weapons shipments from Turkey to ISIS.
Turkey has also played a key role in facilitating the life-blood of ISIS’ expansion: black market oil sales. Senior political and intelligence sources in Turkey and Iraq confirm that Turkish authorities have actively facilitated ISIS oil sales through the country.
Last summer, Mehmet Ali Ediboglu, an MP from the main opposition, the Republican People’s Party, estimated the quantity of ISIS oil sales in Turkey at about $800 million — that was over a year ago.
By now, this implies that Turkey has facilitated over $1 billion worth of black market ISIS oil sales to date.
There is no “self-sustaining economy” for ISIS, contrary to the fantasies of the Washington Post and Financial Times in their recent faux investigations, according to Martin Chulov of the Guardian:
“… tankers carrying crude drawn from makeshift refineries still make it to the [Turkey-Syria] border. One Isis member says the organisation remains a long way from establishing a self-sustaining economy across the area of Syria and Iraq it controls. ‘They need the Turks. I know of a lot of cooperation and it scares me,’ he said. ‘I don’t see how Turkey can attack the organisation too hard. There are shared interests.’”
Senior officials of the ruling AKP have conceded the extent of the government’s support for ISIS.
The liberal Turkish daily Taraf quoted an AKP founder, Dengir Mir Mehmet Fırat, admitting: “In order to weaken the developments in Rojova [Kurdish province in Syria] the government gave concessions and arms to extreme religious groups…the government was helping the wounded. The Minister of Health said something such as, it’s a human obligation to care for the ISIS wounded.”
The paper also reported that ISIS militants routinely receive medical treatment in hospitals in southeast Turkey— including al-Baghdadi’s right-hand man.
Writing in Hurriyet Daily News, journalist Ahu Ozyurt described his “shock” at learning of the pro-ISIS “feelings of the AKP’s heavyweights” in Ankara and beyond, including “words of admiration for ISIL from some high-level civil servants even in Şanliurfa. ‘They are like us, fighting against seven great powers in the War of Independence,’ one said. ‘Rather than the PKK on the other side, I would rather have ISIL as a neighbor,’ said another.”
Meanwhile, NATO leaders feign outrage and learned liberal pundits continue to scratch their heads in bewilderment as to ISIS’ extraordinary resilience and inexorable expansion.
Unsurprisingly, then, Turkey’s anti-ISIS bombing raids have largely been token gestures. Under cover of fighting ISIS, Turkey has largely used the opportunity to bomb the Kurdish forces of the Democratic Union Party (YPG) in Syria and Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) in Turkey and Iraq. Yet those forces are widely recognized to be the most effective fighting ISIS on the ground.
Meanwhile, Turkey has gone to pains to thwart almost every US effort to counter ISIS. When this summer, 54 graduates of the Pentagon’s $500 million ‘moderate’ Syrian rebel train-and-equip program were kidnapped by Jabhat al-Nusra — al-Qaeda’s arm in Syria — it was due to a tip-off from Turkish intelligence.
The Turkish double-game was confirmed by multiple rebel sources to McClatchy, but denied by a Pentagon spokesman who said, reassuringly:
“Turkey is a NATO ally, close friend of the United States and an important partner in the international coalition.”
Nevermind that Turkey has facilitated about $1 billion in ISIS oil sales.
According to a US-trained Division 30 officer with access to information on the incident, Turkey was trying “to leverage the incident into an expanded role in the north for the Islamists in Nusra and Ahrar” and to persuade the United States to “speed up the training of rebels.”
As Professor David Graeber of London School of Economics pointed out:
“Had Turkey placed the same kind of absolute blockade on Isis territories as they did on Kurdish-held parts of Syria… that blood-stained ‘caliphate’ would long since have collapsed — and arguably, the Paris attacks may never have happened. And if Turkey were to do the same today, Isis would probably collapse in a matter of months. Yet, has a single western leader called on Erdoğan to do this?”
Some officials have spoken up about the paradox, but to no avail. Last year, Claudia Roth, deputy speaker of the German parliament, expressed shock that NATO is allowing Turkey to harbour an ISIS camp in Istanbul, facilitate weapons transfers to Islamist militants through its borders, and tacitly support IS oil sales.
Nothing happened.
Instead, Turkey has been amply rewarded for its alliance with the very same terror-state that wrought the Paris massacre on 13th November 2015. Just a month earlier, German Chancellor Angela Merkel offered to fast-track Turkey’s bid to join the EU, permitting visa-free travel to Europe for Turks.
No doubt this would be great news for the security of Europe’s borders.
State-sponsorship
It is not just Turkey. Senior political and intelligence sources in the Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) have confirmed the complicity of high-level KRG officials in facilitating ISIS oil sales, for personal profit, and to sustain the government’s flagging revenues.
Despite a formal parliamentary inquiry corroborating the allegations, there have been no arrests, no charges, no prosecutions.
The KRG “middle-men” and other government officials facilitating these sales continue their activities unimpeded.
In his testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee in September 2014, General Martin Dempsey, then chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, was asked by Senator Lindsay Graham whether he knew of “any major Arab ally that embraces ISIL”?
General Dempsey replied:
“I know major Arab allies who fund them.”
In other words, the most senior US military official at the time had confirmed that ISIS was being funded by the very same “major Arab allies” that had just joined the US-led anti-ISIS coalition.
These allies include Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the UAE, and Kuwait in particular — which for the last four years at least have funneled billions of dollars largely to extremist rebels in Syria. No wonder that their anti-ISIS airstrikes, already miniscule, have now reduced almost to zero as they focus instead on bombing Shi’a Houthis in Yemen, which, incidentally, is paving the way for the rise of ISIS there.
Porous links between some Free Syrian Army (FSA) rebels, Islamist militant groups like al-Nusra, Ahrar al-Sham and ISIS, have enabled prolific weapons transfers from ‘moderate’ to Islamist militants.
The consistent transfers of CIA-Gulf-Turkish arms supplies to ISIS have been documented through analysis of weapons serial numbers by the UK-based Conflict Armament Research (CAR), whose database on the illicit weapons trade is funded by the EU and Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs.
“Islamic State forces have captured significant quantities of US-manufactured small arms and have employed them on the battlefield,” a CAR report found in September 2014. “M79 90 mm anti-tank rockets captured from IS forces in Syria are identical to M79 rockets transferred by Saudi Arabia to forces operating under the ‘Free Syrian Army’ umbrella in 2013.”
German journalist Jurgen Todenhofer, who spent 10 days inside the Islamic State, reported last year that ISIS is being “indirectly” armed by the West:
“They buy the weapons that we give to the Free Syrian Army, so they get Western weapons — they get French weapons… I saw German weapons, I saw American weapons.”
ISIS, in other words, is state-sponsored — indeed, sponsored by purportedly Western-friendly regimes in the Muslim world, who are integral to the anti-ISIS coalition.
Which then begs the question as to why Hollande and other Western leaders expressing their determination to “destroy” ISIS using all means necessary, would prefer to avoid the most significant factor of all: the material infrastructure of ISIS’ emergence in the context of ongoing Gulf and Turkish state support for Islamist militancy in the region.
There are many explanations, but one perhaps stands out: the West’s abject dependence on terror-toting Muslim regimes, largely to maintain access to Middle East, Mediterranean and Central Asian oil and gas resources.
Pipelines
Much of the strategy currently at play was candidly described in a 2008 US Army-funded RAND report, Unfolding the Future of the Long War (pdf). The report noted that “the economies of the industrialized states will continue to rely heavily on oil, thus making it a strategically important resource.” As most oil will be produced in the Middle East, the US has “motive for maintaining stability in and good relations with Middle Eastern states.” It just so happens that those states support Islamist terrorism:
“The geographic area of proven oil reserves coincides with the power base of much of the Salafi-jihadist network. This creates a linkage between oil supplies and the long war that is not easily broken or simply characterized… For the foreseeable future, world oil production growth and total output will be dominated by Persian Gulf resources… The region will therefore remain a strategic priority, and this priority will interact strongly with that of prosecuting the long war.”
Declassified government documents clarify beyond all doubt that a primary motivation for the 2003 Iraq War, preparations for which had begun straight after 9/11, was installing a permanent US military presence in the Persian Gulf to secure access to the region’s oil and gas.
The obsession over black gold did not end with Iraq, though — and is not exclusive to the West.
“Most of the foreign belligerents in the war in Syria are gas-exporting countries with interests in one of the two competing pipeline projects that seek to cross Syrian territory to deliver either Qatari or Iranian gas to Europe,” wrote Professor Mitchell Orenstein of the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies at Harvard University, in Foreign Affairs, the journal of Washington DC’s Council on Foreign Relations.
In 2009, Qatar had proposed to build a pipeline to send its gas northwest via Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Syria to Turkey. But Assad “refused to sign the plan,” reports Orenstein. “Russia, which did not want to see its position in European gas markets undermined, put him under intense pressure not to.”
Russia’s Gazprom sells 80% of its gas to Europe. So in 2010, Russia put its weight behind “an alternative Iran-Iraq-Syria pipeline that would pump Iranian gas from the same field out via Syrian ports such as Latakia and under the Mediterranean.” The project would allow Moscow “to control gas imports to Europe from Iran, the Caspian Sea region, and Central Asia.”
Then in July 2011, a $10 billion Iran-Iraq-Syria pipeline deal was announced, and a preliminary agreement duly signed by Assad.
Later that year, the US, UK, France and Israel were ramping up covert assistance to rebel factions in Syria to elicit the “collapse” of Assad’s regime “from within.”
“The United States… supports the Qatari pipeline as a way to balance Iran and diversify Europe’s gas supplies away from Russia,” explained Orenstein in Foreign Affairs.
An article in the Armed Forces Journal published last year by Major Rob Taylor, an instructor at the US Army’s Command and General Staff College, Fort Leavenworth, thus offered scathing criticism of conventional media accounts of the Syrian conflict that ignore the pipeline question:
“Any review of the current conflict in Syria that neglects the geopolitical economics of the region is incomplete… Viewed through a geopolitical and economic lens, the conflict in Syria is not a civil war, but the result of larger international players positioning themselves on the geopolitical chessboard in preparation for the opening of the pipeline… Assad’s pipeline decision, which could seal the natural gas advantage for the three Shi’a states, also demonstrates Russia’s links to Syrian petroleum and the region through Assad. Saudi Arabia and Qatar, as well as al-Qaeda and other groups, are maneuvering to depose Assad and capitalize on their hoped-for Sunni conquest in Damascus. By doing this, they hope to gain a share of control over the ‘new’ Syrian government, and a share in the pipeline wealth.”
The pipelines would access not just gas in the Iran-Qatari field, but also potentially newly discovered offshore gas resources in the Eastern Mediterranean — encompassing the offshore territories of Israel, Palestine, Cyprus, Turkey, Egypt, Syria, and Lebanon. The area has been estimated to hold as much as 1.7 billion barrels of oil and up to 122 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, which geologists believe could be just a third of the total quantities of undiscovered fossil fuels in the Levant.
A December 2014 report by the US Army War College’s Strategic Studies Institute, authored by a former UK Ministry of Defense research director, noted that Syria specifically holds significant offshore oil and gas potential. It noted:
“Once the Syria conflict is resolved, prospects for Syrian offshore production — provided commercial resources are found — are high.”
Assad’s brutality and illegitimacy is beyond question — but until he had demonstrated his unwillingness to break with Russia and Iran, especially over their proposed pipeline project, US policy toward Assad had been ambivalent.
State Department cables obtained by Wikileaks reveal that US policy had wavered between financing Syrian opposition groups to facilitate “regime change,” and using the threat of regime change to induce “behavior reform.”
President Obama’s preference for the latter resulted in US officials, including John Kerry, shamelessly courting Assad in the hopes of prying him away from Iran, opening up the Syrian economy to US investors, and aligning the regime with US-Israeli regional designs.
Even when the 2011 Arab Spring protests resulted in Assad’s security forces brutalizing peaceful civilian demonstrators, both Kerry and then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton insisted that he was a “reformer” — which he took as a green light to respond to further protests with massacres.
Assad’s decision to side with Russia and Iran, and his endorsement of their favoured pipeline project, were key factors in the US decision to move against him.
Europe’s dance with the devil
Turkey plays a key role in the US-Qatar-Saudi backed route designed to circumvent Russia and Iran, as an intended gas hub for exports to European markets.
It is only one of many potential pipeline routes involving Turkey.
“Turkey is key to gas supply diversification of the entire European Union. It would be a huge mistake to stall energy cooperation any further,” urgedDavid Koranyi, director of the Atlantic Council’s Eurasian Energy Futures initiative and a former national security advisor to the Prime Minister of Hungary.
Koranyi noted that both recent “major gas discoveries in the Eastern Mediterranean” and “gas supplies from Northern Iraq” could be “sourced to supply the Turkish market and transported beyond to Europe.”
Given Europe’s dependence on Russia for about a quarter of its gas, the imperative to minimize this dependence and reduce the EU’s vulnerability to supply outages has become an urgent strategic priority. The priority fits into longstanding efforts by the US to wean Central and Eastern Europe out of the orbit of Russian power.
Turkey is pivotal to the US-EU vision for a new energy map:
“The EU would gain a reliable alternative supply route to further diversify its imports from Russia. Turkey, as a hub, would benefit from transit fees and other energy-generated revenues. As additional supplies of gas may become available for export over the next five to 10 years in the wider region, Turkey is the natural route via which these could be shipped to Europe.”
A report last year by Anglia Ruskin University’s Global Sustainability Institute (GSI) warned that Europe faced a looming energy crisis, particularly the UK, France and Italy, due to “critical shortages of natural resources.”
“Coal, oil and gas resources in Europe are running down and we need alternatives,” said GSI’s Professor Victoria Andersen.
She also recommended a rapid shift to renewables, but most European leaders apparently have other ideas — namely, shifting to a network of pipelines that would transport oil and gas from the Middle East, Eastern Mediterranean and Central Asia to Europe: via our loving friend, Erdogan’s Turkey.
Nevermind that under Erdogan, Turkey is the leading sponsor of the barbaric ‘Islamic State.’
We must not ask unpatriotic questions about Western foreign policy, or NATO for that matter.
We must not wonder about the pointless spectacle of airstrikes and Stazi-like police powers, given our shameless affair with Erdogan’s terror-regime, which funds and arms our very own enemy.
We must not question the motives of our elected leaders, who despite sitting on this information for years, still lie to us, flagrantly, even now, before the blood of 129 French citizens has even dried, pretending that they intend to “destroy” a band of psychopathic murdering scum, armed and funded from within the heart of NATO.
No, no, no. Life goes on. Business-as-usual must continue. Citizens must keep faith in the wisdom of The Security State.
The US must insist on relying on Turkish intelligence to vet and train ‘moderate’ rebels in Syria, and the EU must insist on extensive counter-terrorism cooperation with Erdogan’s regime, while fast-tracking the ISIS godfather’s accession into the union.
But fear not: Hollande is still intent on “destroying” ISIS. Just like Obama and Cameron — and Erdogan.
It’s just that some red lines simply cannot be crossed.
Dr Nafeez Ahmed is an investigative journalist, bestselling author and international security scholar. A former Guardian writer, he writes the ‘System Shift’ column for VICE’s Motherboard, and is a weekly columnist for Middle East Eye.
He is the winner of a 2015 Project Censored Award, known as the ‘Alternative Pulitzer Prize’, for Outstanding Investigative Journalism for his Guardian work, and was twice selected in the Evening Standard’s ‘Power 1,000’ most globally influential Londoners, in 2014 and 2015.
Nafeez has also written and reported for The Independent, Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, The Scotsman, Foreign Policy, The Atlantic, Quartz, Prospect, New Statesman, Le Monde diplomatique, New Internationalist, Counterpunch, Truthout, among others.
He is a Visiting Research Fellow at the Faculty of Science and Technology at Anglia Ruskin University, where he is researching the link between global systemic crises and civil unrest for Springer Energy Briefs.
Nafeez is the author of A User’s Guide to the Crisis of Civilization: And How to Save It (2010), and the scifi thriller novel ZERO POINT, among other books. His work on the root causes and covert operations linked to international terrorism officially contributed to the 9/11 Commission and the 7/7 Coroner’s Inquest.
This article was amended on 21st November 2015 to review and supplement sources cited relating to Turkish sponsorship of ISIS, ensuring their credibility, accuracy and plausibility. Some previously quoted sources were removed due to being too partisan within the Turkish political scene, and new more reliable sources added.
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