In March 2013, during the Syrian Civil War, Islamist jihadist militants from Al-Nusra Front, Ahrar al-Sham, the Free Syrian Army, and other groups overran the government loyalists in the city during the Battle of Raqqa (2013) and declared it under their control, after they had taken the central square and pulled down the statue of the former president of Syria, Hafez al-Assad. Raqqa was the first provincial capital to fall to the Syrian rebels.
The Al Qaeda-affiliated Al-Nusra Front set up a sharia court at the sports centre and in early June 2013, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant said that it was open to receive complaints at its Raqqa headquarters.
Migrations
Migration from Aleppo, Homs, Idlib and other inhabited places to the city occurred as a result of the ongoing civil war in the country, and Raqqa was known as the hotel of the revolution by some because of the number of people who moved there.
De facto capital of the Islamic State (January 2014–October 2017)
Destroyed neighborhood in Raqqa, August 2017
ISIL took complete control of Raqqa by 13 January 2014. ISIL proceeded to execute Alawites and suspected supporters of Bashar al-Assad in the city and destroyed the city's Shia mosques and Christian churches[26] such as the Armenian Catholic Church of the Martyrs, which was then converted into an ISIL police headquarters and an Islamic centre, tasked to recruit new fighters. The Christian population of Raqqa, which had been estimated to be as much as 10% of the total population before the civil war began, largely fled the city.
Pro-government sources said that an anti-IS uprising took place between 5 and 7 March 2016.
On 26 October 2016, US Defense Secretary Ash Carter said that an offensive to take Raqqa from IS would begin within weeks.
The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), supported by the US, launched the Second Battle of Raqqa on 6 June 2017 and declared victory in the city on 17 October 2017. Bombardment by the US-led coalition led to the destruction of most of the city, including civilian infrastructure. Some 270,000 people were said to have fled Raqqa.
Aftermath
At the end of October 2017, the government of Syria issued a statement that said: ‘Syria considers the claims of the United States and its so-called alliance about the liberation of Raqqa city from ISIS to be lies aiming to divert international public opinion from the crimes committed by this alliance in Raqqa province... more than 90% of Raqqa city has been leveled due to the deliberate and barbaric bombardment of the city and the towns near it by the alliance, which also destroyed all services and infrastructures and forced tens of thousands of locals to leave the city and become refugees. Syria still considers Raqqa to be an occupied city, and it can only be considered liberated when the Syrian Arab Army enters it.’ […]
In mid-February 2019, a mass grave holding an estimated 3,500 bodies was discovered below a plot of farmland in the Al-Fukheikha agricultural suburb. It was the largest mass grave discovered post-ISIL rule thus far. The bodies were reported to be the victims of executions when ISIL ruled the city.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raqqa
Defense Secretary James ‘Mad Dog’ Mattis confirmed in May Washington’s resolve to annihilate the ISIS-Daesh terrorists:
‘Our intention is that the foreign fighters do not survive the fight to return home to north Africa, to Europe, to America, to Asia, to Africa. We are not going to allow them to do so.’ (quoted in the BBC report entitled Raqqa’s Dirty Secret)
That was the ‘political narrative’ of the Pentagon. The unspoken truth is that Uncle Sam had come to the rescue of the Islamic State. That decision was in all likelihood taken and carried on the orders of the Pentagon rather than the US State Department.
Confirmed by a BBC report entitled 'Raqqa’s Dirty Secret,' the US-led coalition facilitated the exodus of ISIS terrorists and their family members out of their stronghold in Raqqa, Northern Syria.
Screen Shot of BBC Report
The BBC has uncovered details of a secret deal that let hundreds of IS fighters and their families escape from Raqqa, under the gaze of the US and British-led coalition and Kurdish-led forces who control the city.
A convoy included some of IS’s most notorious members and – despite reassurances – dozens of foreign fighters. Some of those have spread out across Syria, even making it as far as Turkey.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/resources/idt-sh/raqqas_dirty_secret
While the BBC report focussed on the details of the smuggling operation, it nonetheless acknowledges the existence of a ‘Secret Deal’ involving the US and its indefectible British ally to let the terrorists escape from Raqqa.
The deal to let IS fighters escape from Raqqa — de facto capital of their self-declared caliphate — had been arranged by local officials. It came after four months of fighting that left the city obliterated and almost devoid of people. It would spare lives and bring fighting to an end. The lives of the Arab, Kurdish and other fighters opposing IS would be spared.
But it also enabled many hundreds of IS fighters to escape from the city. At the time, neither the US and British-led coalition, nor the SDF (De door de CIA gesteunde Syrian Democratic Forces die tegen de Syrische strijdkrachten vochten. svh), which it backs, wanted to admit their part.
Has the pact, which stood as Raqqa’s dirty secret, unleashed a threat to the outside world — one that has enabled militants to spread far and wide across Syria and beyond?
Great pains were taken to hide it from the world. But the BBC has spoken to dozens of people who were either on the convoy, or observed it, and to the men who negotiated the deal…
This wasn’t so much an evacuation — it was the exodus of [the] so-called Islamic State.
(Quentin Sommerville and Riam Dalati, Raqqa’s Dirty Secret, BBC, November 2017)
‘The coalition now confirms that while it did not have its personnel on the ground, it monitored the convoy from the air, [but no actual aerial bombardment of the convoys took place]…
In light of the BBC investigation, the coalition now admits the part it played in the deal…’
If they had wanted to undermine the ISIS convoy of buses and trucks, this would have been a simple operation for the US Air Force. On the other hand, they could have chosen to block rather than destroy the convoys of trucks and busses (to minimize the loss of life) and detain and incarcerate the foreign fighters.
US officials casually claimed they did not take part in the negotiations and were therefore unable to prevent the exodus of the terrorists:
‘We didn’t want anyone to leave,’ says Col Ryan Dillon, spokesman for ‘Operation Inherent Resolve,’ the Western coalition against IS.
‘It comes down to Syrians — they are the ones fighting and dying, they get to make the decisions regarding operations,’ he says.
While a Western officer was present for the negotiations, they didn’t take an ‘active part’ in the discussions. Col Dillon maintains…
What is revealing is that most of the ISIS fighters were foreign from a large number of countries pointing to a carefully organized recruitment and training program:
‘There was a huge number of foreigners. France, Turkey, Azerbaijan, Pakistan, Yemen, Saudi, China, Tunisia, Egypt.’
‘Most were foreign but there were Syrians as well.’ […] neither the US and British-led coalition, nor the SDF, which it backs, wanted to admit their part.
No one doubts that terrorism in Syria is being sponsored by NATO and the GCC (De Samenwerkingsraad van de Arabische Golfstaten, een handelsblok van zes Arabische landen in de Perzische golf. svh) but until now it was being carried out behind a veil of hypocrisy. Unable to bombard and raze the country because of the Russian and Chinese double veto, the Western powers and their Arab partners decided to bleed the country while setting it up for an attack by mercenaries. Then on February 12 came the call to jihad issued by Ayman al-Zawahiri. Suddenly, NATO, the GCC and al-Qaeda found themselves pursuing the same objective. Notwithstanding, Brussels took the view that the Egyptian sheik’s declarations were his alone and were therefore unworthy of comment as if to underline that NATO doesn’t revise its positions in response to such fatwas. This rationale remained unconvincing because it ignored the issue of the common objectives shared by the self-proclaimed advocates of democracy, on the one hand, and Islamism, on the other. It did allow appearances to be preserved. The masks are now off. The Western powers have acknowledged their links with terrorists.
https://www.globalresearch.ca/the-west-and-the-glorification-of-terrorism/32193
Rebellenleiders en andere betrokkenen hebben bevestigd dat Nederland in 2017 onder meer uniformen en pick-up trucks heeft geleverd aan Jabhat al-Shamiya (‘Levant Front’). Die organisatie is door het Openbaar Ministerie als ‘salafistisch’ en ‘jihadistisch’ omschreven. In een rechtszaak van vorig jaar stelde het OM dat Jabhat al-Shamiya naar de oprichting van een kalifaat streeft, en valt het ‘niet anders te kwalificeren dan als een criminele organisatie met terroristisch oogmerk.
En dit terwijl ‘Het Nederlandse kabinet in 2015 aan de Tweede Kamer [schreef] dat alleen ‘gematigde’ groeperingen in Syrië zouden worden gesteund. De ‘gematigde gewapende groeperingen’ werden bovendien aan strenge criteria onderworpen. Zo moest worden gecontroleerd of ze het humanitaire oorlogsrecht naleven. Ook zouden de groeperingen en hulpgoederen continu gemonitord worden. De regering betoogde dat de hulp noodzakelijk was om ervoor te zorgen dat de gematigde groepen meer gewicht in de schaal kunnen leggen als politieke onderhandelingen in Syrië tot stand komen. De strijdgroepen vechten met name tegen het regime van president Assad en tegen Islamitische Staat.
Uit onderzoek van Trouw en Nieuwsuur blijkt verder dat naast uniformen en pickup-trucks als de Toyota Hilux en Isuzu D-max, Nederland ook satelliettelefoons, laptops, matrassen, rugzakken en camera’s stuurde. De rebellen vertellen aan Nieuwsuur en Trouw dat zij erg tevreden zijn met de Nederlandse hulp en dat zij de door Nederland gekregen goederen inzetten in de gewapende strijd. Op videobeelden van de betrokken strijdgroepen is te zien hoe zij een pick-uptruck van hetzelfde type dat Nederland leverde, gebruiken door er machinegeweren op te bevestigen om vanuit de truck hun doelen te beschieten…
Openbare informatie over het Non Lethal Assistance-programma is moeilijk te verkrijgen, verzoeken om informatie op basis van de Wet openbaarheid van bestuur zijn aan Trouw en Nieuwsuur geweigerd… Het hulpprogramma kostte in totaal ruim 25 miljoen euro.
Tweede Kamer schrikt
De Tweede Kamer is geschrokken van de onthullingen. Regeringspartij CDA wil het kabinet erover aan de tand voelen. CDA'er Martijn van Helvert verzucht ongeduldig dat hij het kabinet al zes keer officieel heeft gevraagd naar de hulp aan Syrische oppositiegroepen. Hij en zijn fractiegenoot Pieter Omtzigt klagen dat het kabinet alles geheim verklaart.
Coalitiegenoot D66 vindt de onthulling van Nieuwsuur en Trouw schrikbarend. ‘Hoe heeft dit kunnen gebeuren na alle waarschuwingen van de Kamer?’ vraagt Kamerlid Sjoerd Sjoerdsma zich af.
PVV-leider Geert Wilders ziet in het nieuws reden het kabinet Rutte III om te dopen tot het kabinet Terreur I. De Nederlandse regering steunt terroristen in het buitenland en laat ze vrij rondlopen in het binnenland.’
'Minister mogelijk strafbaar’
Strafrechtadvocaat Geert-Jan Knoops reageert hard op de onthulling van Trouw en Nieuwsuur dat Nederland materiële steun heeft gegeven aan 'jihadistische' groepen in Syrië. Volgens Knoops heeft de minister van buitenlandse zaken, die verantwoordelijk is voor het Non Lethal Assistance--programma en de steun aan Jabhat al-Shamiya, zich mogelijk schuldig gemaakt aan een ‘ambtsmisdrijf.’
Volgens Knoops staat in de Grondwet dat de Nederlandse regering als taak heeft de internationale rechtsorde te bevorderen en te beschermen in ‘de breedste zin van het woord.’ De minister kan dus strafrechtelijk worden vervolgd als blijkt dat hij opzettelijk nalatig is geweest, zoals mogelijk het geval was.
Overigens kan er alleen strafvervolging plaatsvinden bij koninklijk besluit of in opdracht van de Tweede Kamer.
Lees ook:
Hoe de Nederlandse overheid een Syrische terreurbeweging faciliteerde.
US-armed 'moderate' Syrian rebels join al-Qaeda's 'Bin Laden Front' in new coalition - The Grayzone
Moest het polderpubliek in 2018 er nog blind van uitgaan dat de voltallige ‘Tweede Kamer geschrokken’ was ‘van de onthullingen,’ vier jaar later, op 9 december 2022, berichtte Het Parool dat de parlementsleden zich niet meer ongerust hoefden te maken, want, let op, de ‘Nederlandse steun aan rebellengroepen in Syrië tussen 2015 en 2018 is niet terechtgekomen bij jihadisten of terroristen,’ althans, dat ‘schrijft de commissie-Cammaert die de hulp heeft onderzocht. Wel zijn “grote risico’s” genomen met het hulpprogramma.’ Maar al snel gaf de commissie, onder leiding van 'generaal-majoor b.d. Patrick Cammaer van het Korps mariniers,’ dat op zijn minst één conclusie ‘helaas onjuist’ was. ‘Maar de algemene conclusies in het hoofdrapport werden niet bijgesteld. Kamerleden zijn kritisch en hebben vragen,’ aldus het televisieprogramma Nieuwuurvan woensdag 18 januari 2023, die hieraan toevoegde dat het ‘niet vaak voor[komt] dat een door de Tweede Kamer ingestelde onderzoekscommissie zo snel terug moet komen van een officiële publicatie. De commissie zegt zich bij haar vergissing te hebben gebaseerd op een geheim document van het OM en het ministerie van Buitenlandse Zaken. Dat stuk zelf roept nu ook veel vragen op.’ Voor een onafhankelijke insider is duidelijk dat hier sprake is van een doofpot, die in Nederland altijd in een Babylonische spraak verwarring eindigt om te voorkomen dat er politieke consequenties moeten volgen. Het spreekt voor zich dat de Nederlandse mainstream-journlisten niet ter plaatse een uitgebreid onderzoek hebben verricht. Waarom zouden zij ook? Ten aanzien van deze hele affaire verklaarde één van de weinige betrouwbare volksvertegenwoordigers Pieter Omtzigt:
Ik vind het zeer pijnlijk dat een van de centrale vraagstukken, namelijk hoe de steun rechtszaken tegen Syriëgangers beïnvloedde, niet goed bestudeerd is door de commissie. Ze hebben er veel tijd voor gehad. Het OM verandert van mening over de aard van de organisatie? Nee, dat staat er dus precies niet. Dus hoe kun je zo'n leesfout maken?
where does this go. Well, we will be sucked into the American control system. We allowed after the Obama-visit (2011) American military bases in Australia, something I would never have allowed. So now we are going to haver American submarines coming in and out of our country. We are therefore in the ambit (machtssfeer. svh) of the U.S. strategic command system. In other words: we don’t run the place (Australië. svh) ourselves anymore. Our sovereignty is peeled away by all this.
The big issue is this: every year the United States Department of Defense has a statute of responsibility to report to the Congress. In november 2022 the defense department said this: ‘The People’s Republic of China aims to restrict the United States from having a presence in China’s periphery.’ Now, can you imagine the brouhaha (de hysterie. svh) in the U.S. if the Chinese Navy decided to do their sightseeing six miles of the coast of California? China, as a great state, wants to have their front doorway unobstructed, like the U.S.
Underlying all the stuff about the need of nuclear weapons is the idea that China has either threatened us or will threaten us. This is a distortion, and it is untrue. China does not threaten the United States. Nobody can threaten the United States.
China has committed, in the eyes of the United States, the great sinn of internationalism, and that is to develop an economy as big as the United States. That is the sinn. The Americans will never condone (goedkeuren. svh) or accept a state as large as them.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VmgxAoa1n-8
Maar omdat de machtige Europese Commissie de voormalige soevereiniteit van de EU-staten niet langer respecteert kon de voorzitter van deze niet democratisch gekozen groepering, de Duitse Ursula von der Leyen, op 12 oktober 2022 tegenover een zaal vol EU-ambassadeurs benadrukken dat de Europese Unie het Russisch-Chinese bondgenootschap als een wereldwijde bedreiging ziet die dan ook — ik citeer — ‘wereldwijd moet worden bestreden.’ Het gaat de EU van Geen Jorwerd zonder Brussel daarbij niet allereerst om mensenrechten en democratie, maar, zoals altijd, om grondstoffen en markten. Von der Leyen verklaarde: ‘Neem bijvoorbeeld Lithium of zeldzame metalen; zij zijn van vitaal belang voor onze groene en digitale overgang. Geen enkele windturbine, geen enkel zonnepaneel is mogelijk zonder deze grondstoffen. De vraag ernaar zal exponentieel stijgen. Zoveel is zeker… Het niet zo goede nieuws is: één land beheerst de wereldwijde markt. Dat is China.’ Nu het machtsevenwicht in de wereld de afgelopen vier decennia naar Azië is verschoven, zullen Europa en de VS de markten en grondstoffen met geweld moeten terug veroveren, was de onderliggende boodschap van haar betoog. Opnieuw Von der Leyen:
‘Rusland’s mislukking (in Oekraïne. zo meende zij. svh) alleen zal de op regels gebaseerde wereldwijde orde niet redden. Want het revisionisme van het Kremlin is niet de enige en grootste bedreiging van de op regels gebaseerde orde. De zogeheten onbeperkte samenwerking die door Vladimir Poetin en Xi Jinping is afgekondigd is eveneens een duidelijke bedreiging van de naoorlogse orde,’ waardoor ‘wij deze wereldwijde uitdaging een halt [moeten] toeroepen.’
En aldus werd Brussel — het neoliberale bolwerk van zowel de EU als de NAVO — ondergeschikt gemaakt aan de belangen van de Amerikaanse elite in Washington en op Wall Street. Op zijn beurt verklaarde op 13 oktober 2022 de 75-jarige Spaanse sociaal-democraat Josep Borrell, Hoge Vertegenwoordiger voor het EU buitenlands beleid en veiligheid, en vicevoorzitter van de Europese Commissie (commissaris voor een sterker Europa in de wereld), tegenover aankomende diplomaten: ‘Europa is een tuin. De rest van de wereld is een jungle. En de jungle kan de tuin binnenvallen… Europeanen moeten zich veel meer bezighouden met de rest van de wereld, anders dringt de rest van de wereld naar binnen.’ Bovendien, zo waarschuwde Borrell, was sinds het einde van de Eerste Koude Oorlog in 1991 de Europese welvaart gebaseerd op het beleid van deregulering, privatisering en decennialange bezuinigingen, mogelijk gemaakt door het onttrekken van rijkdom uit Rusland en China. ‘Our prosperity was based on China and Russia — energy and market,’ aldus Borrell, daarbij doelend op de goedkope energie, lage lonen, goedkope producten en een gigantische markt, waardoor de inkomens in het Westen decennialang bevroren konden blijven, en de kloof tussen arm en rijk almaar kon toenemen.
Op 17 maart 2021 wees Clare Daly, Iers lid van het machteloze Europese Parlement op het volgende:
It is ironic that we are looking at the future of the European External Action Services under the title ‘A Stronger EU in the World,’ when the truth is that the world, particularly the places where the majority of the world’s population live outside the global north, are shaking their heads in disbelief at the weakness of the European Union, and its subservience to the U.S. Empire, even when it is blatantly against our own interests.
Instead of championing peace in Europe, overcoming differences and difficulties through dialogue and diplomacy, we have acted as a pawn for NATO, captured by the military-industrial complex, imposing sanctions, and now we have an energy crisis, a cost of living crisis, an angrier nuclear power on our doorsteps, and the Inflation Reduction Act.
If we want to be stronger stop antagonizing our trying partners, stop interfering and trying to have regime-change in countries we don’t like, stop robbing the global South — they are not going to accept your colonialism anymore. If you want to be stronger, stand up for international law, for UN principles, multilateralism. In other words: become the opposite of what you are doing now.
https://twitter.com/ClareDalyMEP/status/1636704582486073345
Eén van ’s werelds meest eerlijke onderzoeksjournalisten is de Amerikaanse auteur Chris Hedges, 15 jaar buitenland-correspondent van The New York Times tot hij zich gedwongen zag op te stappen omdat de hoofdredactie zijn onafhankelijke verslagen begon te censureren. Op 14 maart 2023 schreef hij op een Amerikaanse website onder de kop ‘Ukraine’s Death by Proxy’:
There are many ways for a state to project power and weaken adversaries, but proxy wars are one of the most cynical. Proxy wars devour the countries they purport to defend. They entice nations or insurgents to fight for geopolitical goals that are ultimately not in their interest.
The war in Ukraine has little to do with Ukrainian freedom and a lot to do with degrading the Russian military and weakening Russian President Vladimir Putin’s grip on power. And when Ukraine looks headed for defeat, or the war reaches a stalemate, Ukraine will be sacrificed like many other states, in what one of the founding members of the C.I.A., Miles Copeland Jr., referred to as the ‘Game of Nations’ and ‘the amorality of power politics.’
I covered proxy wars in my two decades as a foreign correspondent, including in Central America where the U.S. armed the military regimes in El Salvador and Guatemala and Contra insurgents attempting to overthrow the Sandinista government in Nicaragua. I reported on the insurgency in the Punjab, a proxy war fomented by Pakistan.
I covered the Kurds in northern Iraq, backed and then betrayed more than once by Iran and Washington. During my time in the Middle East, Iraq provided weapons and support to the Mujahedeen-e-Khalq (MEK) to destabilize Iran. Belgrade, when I was in the former Yugoslavia, thought by arming Bosnian and Croatian Serbs, it could absorb Bosnia and parts of Croatia into a greater Serbia.
Proxy wars are notoriously hard to control, especially when the aspirations of those doing the fighting and those sending the weapons diverge. They also have a bad habit of luring sponsors of proxy wars, as happened to the U.S. in Vietnam and Israel in Lebanon, directly into the conflict.
Proxy armies are given weaponry with little accountability, significant amounts of which end up on the black market or in the hands of warlords or terrorists. CBS News reported last year that around 30 percent of the weapons sent to Ukraine make it to the front lines, a report it chose to partially retract under heavy pressure from Kiev and Washington. The widespread diversion of donated military and medical equipment to the black market in Ukraine was also documented by U.S. journalist Lindsey Snell. Weapons in war zones are lucrative commodities. There were always large quantities for sale in the wars I covered.
Warlords, gangsters and thugs — Ukraine has long been considered one of the most corrupt countries in Europe — are transformed by sponsor states into heroic freedom fighters. Support for those fighting these proxy wars is a celebration of our supposed national virtue, especially seductive after two decades of military fiascos in the Middle East. Joe Biden, with dismal poll numbers, intends to run for a second term as a “wartime” president who stands with Ukraine, to which the U.S. has already committed $113 billion in military, economic and humanitarian assistance.
When Russia invaded Ukraine ‘[t]he whole world faced a test for the ages,’ Biden said after a lightning visit to Kiev. ‘Europe was being tested. America was being tested. NATO was being tested. All democracies were being tested.’
I heard similar sentiments expressed to justify other proxy wars.
‘They are our brothers, these freedom fighters, and we owe them our help,”’Ronald Reagan said of the Contras, who pillaged, raped and slaughtered their way through Nicaragua. ‘They are the moral equal of our Founding Fathers and the brave men and women of the French Resistance,’ Reagan added. ‘We cannot turn away from them, for the struggle here is not right versus left, it is right versus wrong.’
‘I want to hear him say we’re going to arm the Free Syrian Army,' John McCain said of President Donald Trump. ‘We’re going to dedicate ourselves to the removal of Bashar al-Assad. We’re going to have the Russians pay a price for their engagement. All players here are going to have to pay a penalty and the United States of America is going to be on the side of the people who fight for freedom.’
Those feted (gevierd. svh) as heroes of resistance, like President Volodymyr Zelensky or President Hamid Karzai in Afghanistan, are often problematic, especially as their egos and bank accounts inflate. The flood of effusive encomiums directed towards proxies by their sponsors in public rarely matches what they say of them in private.
At the Dayton peace talks, where the Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic sold out the leaders of the Bosnian Serbs and the Bosnian Croats, he said of his proxies: ‘[they] are not my friends. They are not my colleagues… They are shit.’
‘Dark money sloshed all around,’ The Washington Post wrote after obtaining an internal report produced by the Office of the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction.
Afghanistan’s largest bank liquefied into a cesspool of fraud. Travelers lugged suitcases loaded with $1 million, or more, on flights leaving Kabul. Mansions known as ‘poppy palaces’ rose from the rubble to house opium kingpins. President Hamid Karzai won reelection after cronies stuffed thousands of ballot boxes. He later admitted the C.I.A. had delivered bags of cash to his office for years, calling it ‘nothing unusual.’
Taliban in een Humvee, nadat de VS zich moest terugtrekken.
‘In public, as President Barack Obama escalated the war and Congress approved billions of additional dollars in support, the commander in chief and lawmakers promised to crack down on corruption and hold crooked Afghans accountable,’ the paper reported. ‘In reality, U.S. officials backed off, looked away and let the thievery become more entrenched than ever, according to a trove of confidential government interviews obtained by The Washington Post.’
Those lionized as the bulwark against barbarism when the arms are flowing to them, are forgotten once the conflicts end, as in Afghanistan and Iraq. The former proxy fighters must flee the country or suffer the vendettas of those they fought, as happened to the abandoned Hmong tribesmen in Laos and the South Vietnamese.
The former sponsors, once lavish in military aid, ignore desperate pleas for economic and humanitarian assistance, as those displaced by war go hungry and die from lack of medical care. Afghanistan, for the second time around, is the poster child for this imperial callousness.
The collapse of civil society spawns sectarian violence and extremism, much of it inimical to the interests of those who fomented the proxy wars. Israel’s proxy militias in Lebanon, along with its military intervention in 1978 and 1982, were designed to dislodge the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) from the country. This objective was achieved. But the removal of the PLO from Lebanon gave rise to Hezbollah, a far more militant and effective adversary, along with Syrian domination of Lebanon.
In September 1982, over three days, the Lebanese Kataeb Party, more commonly known as the Phalanges — backed by the Israeli military — massacred between 2,000 and 3,500 Palestinian refugees and Lebanese civilians in the refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila. It led to international condemnation and political unrest inside Israel. Critics called the protracted conflict ‘Lebanam,’ conflating the words Vietnam and Lebanon. The Israeli film Waltz with Bashir documents the depravity and wanton killing of thousands of civilians by Israel and its proxies during the war in Lebanon.
Proxy wars, as Chalmers Johnson pointed out, engender unintended blowback. The backing of the mujahedeen in Afghanistan fighting the Soviets, which included arming groups such as those led by Osama bin Laden, gave rise to the Taliban and al-Qaeda. It also spread reactionary jihadism throughout the Muslim world, increased terrorist attacks against western targets which culminated in the attacks of 9/11 and fueled two decades of U.S.-led military fiascos in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Somalia, Libya and Yemen.
Should Russia prevail in Ukraine, should Putin not be removed from power, the U.S. will have not only cemented into place a potent alliance between Russia and China, but ensured an antagonism with Russia that will come back to haunt us. The flood of billions of dollars of weapons into Ukraine, the use of U.S. intelligence to kill Russian generals and sink the battleship Moskva, the blowing up of the Nord Stream pipelines and the more than 2,500 U.S. sanctions targeting Russia, will not be forgotten by Moscow.
‘In a sense, blowback is simply another way of saying that a nation reaps what it sows,’ Johnson writes, ‘Although people usually know what they have sown, our national experience of blowback is seldom imagined in such terms because so much of what the managers of the American empire have sown has been kept secret.’
Those supported in proxy wars, including the Ukrainians, often have little chance of victory. Sophisticated weapons such as the M1 Abrams tanks are largely useless if those operating them have not spent months and years being trained. Prior to the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in June 1982, the Soviet bloc provided Palestinian fighters with heavy weapons, including tanks, anti-aircraft missiles and artillery. The lack of training made those weapons ineffective against Israeli air power, artillery and mechanized units.
The U.S. knows time is running out for Ukraine. It knows that high-tech weapons will not be mastered in time to blunt a sustained Russian offensive. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin warned in January that Ukraine has ‘a window of opportunity here, between now and the spring.’ ‘That’s not a long time,’ he added.
Victory, however, is not the point. The point is maximum destruction. Even if Ukraine is forced in defeat to negotiate with Russia and concede territory for peace, as well as accept status as a neutral nation, Washington will have achieved its primary goal of weakening Russia’s military capacity and isolating Putin from Europe.
Those who mount proxy wars are blinded by wishful illusions. There was little support for the Contras in Nicaragua or the MEK in Iran. The arming of so-called 'moderate' rebels in Syria saw weapons flow into the hands of reactionary jihadists.
The conclusion of proxy wars usually sees the nation or group fighting on behalf of the sponsor state betrayed. In 1972, the Nixon administration provided millions of dollars in weapons and ammunition to Kurdish rebels in northern Iraq to weaken the Iraqi government, which at the time was seen as too close to the Soviet Union. No one, least of all the U.S. and Iran, which delivered the weapons to Kurdish fighters, wanted the Kurds to create a state of their own. Iraq and Iran signed the 1975 Algiers Agreement in which the two countries settled disputes along their common border. The agreement also ended military support for the Kurds.
The Iraqi military soon launched a ruthless campaign of ethnic cleansing in northern Iraq. Thousands of Kurds, including women and children, were ‘disappeared’ or killed. Kurdish villages were dynamited into rubble. The desperate plight of the Kurds was ignored, for, as Henry Kissinger said at the time, ‘covert action should not be confused with missionary work.’
The Islamic government in Tehran resumed military aid to the Kurds during the war between Iran and Iraq from 1980 to 1988. On March 16, 1988, Iraqi President Saddam Hussein dropped mustard gas and the nerve agents sarin, tabun, and VX on the Kurdish town of Halabja. Some 5,000 people died within minutes and up to 10,000 were injured. The Reagan administration, which supported Iraq, minimized the war crimes committed against its former Kurdish allies.
The arming of Ukraine is not missionary work. It has nothing to do with liberty or freedom. It is about weakening Russia. Take Russia out of the equation and there would be little tangible support for Ukraine.
There are other occupied peoples, including the Palestinians, who have suffered as brutally and far longer than Ukranians. But NATO is not arming Palestinians to fight against their Israeli occupiers or holding them up as heroic freedom fighters. U.S. love of freedom does not extend to Palestinians or the people of Yemen currently being bombed with British and American weapons, or the Kurds, Yazidis and Arabs resisting Turkey, a longtime NATO member, in its occupation and drone war throughout the north and east of Syria.
U.S. love of freedom only extends to people who serve its ‘national interest.’
There will come a time when the Ukrainians, like the Kurds, will become expendable. They will disappear, as many others before them have, from our national discourse and our consciousness. They will nurse for generations their betrayal and suffering. The American empire will move on to use others, perhaps the ‘heroic’ people of Taiwan, to further its futile quest for global hegemony.
China is the big prize for our Dr. Strangeloves. They will pile up even more corpses and flirt with nuclear war to curtail China’s growing economic and military power. This is an old and predictable game. It leaves in its wake nations in ruins and millions of people dead and displaced. It fuels the hubris and self-delusion of the mandarins in Washington who refuse to accept the emergence of a multipolar world. If left unchecked, this ‘game of nations’ may get us all killed.
This column is from Scheerpost, for which Chris Hedges writes a regular column. Click here to sign up for email alerts. https://consortiumnews.com/2023/03/14/chris-hedges-ukraines-death-by-proxy/
Het spreekt voor zich dat degenen die financieel afhankelijk zijn van de moordzuchtige gevestigde orde, zoals Geert Mak, Bas Heijne, Hubert Smeets, Frank Westerman, Ian Buruma en al die andere, gecorrumpeerde mainstream-collega’s van mij, bovenstaande informatie angstvallig blijven verzwijgen. Het is een aloud spreekwoord dat ‘wiens brood men eet, diens woord men spreekt.’ Dat de consequenties van deze corruptie uiteindelijk bloedbaden creëren is bekend. But such is life. Volgende keer meer. 
De bovenstaande onmiskenbare samenwerking tussen Angelsaksische NAVO-landen en in dit geval de terreurbeweging ISIS wordt nog steeds verzwegen door de polderpers.
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