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| Armed rebels clash with Syrian government forces in the center of Syria's restive northern city of Aleppo. |
Last
week, the NATO powers launched their long-awaited summer offensive against
Syria. This was a multi-pronged effort designed not just to overthrow the
government of President Assad, but also to totally disintegrate the existing
structures of the Syrian state, dissolving the entire country into chaos,
confusion, secession, attempted coups d’état, and a likely massacre of Assad
backers, Alawites, Christians, Kurds, and other minority groups.
This
assault peaked between July 18 and July 21. Almost a week later, all
indications suggest that Assad, the Baath party, and the Syrian state have
proven to be much stronger than the NATO planners had imagined, and that the
imperialist attack has been defeated for the time being.
The
easiest way for NATO to destroy independent Syria would be to obtain a UN
Security Council resolution authorizing a no-fly zone, a bombing campaign, and
incursions by special forces, many of them sent by Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the
other reactionary Gulf monarchies. But this path has been blocked by the
courageous resistance of Russia and China. Another method would be to form a
coalition of the willing outside of the United Nations and proceed to the
attack, as was done in the cases of Serbia and Iraq. But, with Russian
President Vladimir Putin reasserting Russia’s support for Syria, this method
poses the risk of Russian and Chinese retaliation in ways which the
Anglo-Americans might find extremely painful. Therefore, NATO created a
multi-layered strategy to subvert and destroy the Syrian state using covert
action below the threshold of bombing and invasion, although including out
special forces and espionage.
The
signal to activate the assembled capabilities was given by US Secretary of
State Hillary Clinton on July 8, when she warned Damascus that little time
remained to avoid a “catastrophic assault” capable of destroying the Syrian
state. This is exactly what was attempted last week.
First,
NATO attempted to isolate Syria by interrupting communications with its
traditional ally, Iran. According to the Wall Street Journal of July 23, the
United States in particular has exerted pressure on the government of Iraq to
deny overflight permission for flights between Syria and Iran through Iraqi
airspace. An official US diplomatic demarche delivered in Baghdad demanded that
such flights be banned. At the same time, pressure was exerted on the
government of Egypt to violate the international status of the Suez Canal by
preventing the transit of Iranian ships allegedly headed for Syrian ports. But
these efforts have yielded only mixed results, according to this account.
The
main diplomatic thrust of the destabilization effort was yet another UN
Security Council resolution opening the door to Chapter Seven economic
sanctions and military attack on Syria. This transparent bid for a general war
in the Middle East was duly vetoed by Russia and China, while Pakistan and
South Africa abstained despite US pressure. United States Ambassador to the UN
Susan E. Rice became hysterical, raving that the Russian Federation was
“pitiful,” “dangerous,” and “deplorable” after she lost the vote. Hillary
Clinton had previously branded Russia as “despicable” and “intolerable.” One
imagines these charming ladies chewing the carpet as Hitler reportedly did
during the run-up to the Munich conference of September 1938.
Russian
Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov correctly described the US diplomatic posture as
“justifying terrorism.” According to Lavrov, the US stance amounted to, “We
will continue to support terrorist attacks until the Security Council does what
we want.” It would now be in order for Russia and China to propose a Security
Council resolution condemning the United States and its allies for giving
material support to terrorism.
The
most dramatic single episode of the assault was an apparent explosion on
Wednesday, July 18 in one of the main Syrian government buildings which killed
Defense Minister Rajha (the top Christian in the government), crisis management
director Turkmani, and Assef Shawkat, a military intelligence expert and
brother-in-law of President Assad. Interior Minister Shaar was reported
wounded, and national security director Ikhtiyar succumbed later to injuries.
Western media were quick to gloat, attributing the explosion to a suicide
bomber recruited from inside one of the key ministries, but this may reflect an
attempt to launch a variation of Operation Splinter Factor among top officials.
Other hypotheses include a rocket fired from a US drone. Thierry Meyssan has
reported that the explosion was detonated from inside the US Embassy, which is
nearby.
The
goal of this attack was clearly the decapitation of the Syrian military and
security forces, and of the Syrian state overall. But thanks to the fact that
President Assad was not involved, Syria was able to maintain continuity of
government and a functioning command structure, which quickly recovered from
this staggering blow. Within hours, replacements for the slain officials had
been nominated and announced to the public, and a reshuffling of top jobs
continued for several days. If NATO had prepared a coup d’état to fill the
void, there is no indication that it ever got off the ground.
So
far, the NATO attack on Syria has depended mainly on Salvadoran-style death
squads composed mainly of foreign fighters, including al-Qaeda and similar
groups, some of which had originated as part of the US counterinsurgency effort
in Iraq in 2005, during the tenure in Baghdad of US Ambassador John Negroponte.
One of Negroponte’s disciples, Ambassador Robert Ford, was present in Damascus
during the pre-2011 preparation of the current assault.
But,
given the inability of the numerically weak death squads to capture and hold
even a single town or village, to say nothing of a region of the country, it
was decided to recruit and deploy an entirely new echelon of foreign fighters
from all over North Africa and the Middle East. These were necessarily
mercenaries, fanatics, convicts, and adventurers whose military training and
weaponry would be inferior even to those of fighters deployed by NATO so far.
Their
task was to implement a strategy of swarming. In military terms, swarming is
the attempt to overwhelm an opponent by a rapid series of attacks from loosely
coordinated autonomous groups. Quantity trumps quality. Many thousands of
additional fighters were shipped in by NATO; Meyssan puts their numbers between
40,000 and 60,000, but this may be excessive. They crossed Syrian borders with
Jordan, Turkey, Lebanon, and Iraqi Kurdistan. The fighters themselves came from
Libya, Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan, Iraq, and other countries.
As they entered Syria from foreign territory, the fighters seized temporary
control of several border crossings, a fact much-hyped by the Western press.
The
premise of this irregular assault had been the wishful notion that resistance
by the Syrian army would collapse. But the Fourth Armored division, the
Republican Guard, and other key units held fast. This left the foreign fighters
as sitting ducks in vulnerable positions they could not hope to defend. As of
this writing, the foreign fighters have been largely mopped up in Damascus, and
another large concentration in Aleppo appears to be surrounded and destined for
annihilation. NATO’s pool of cannon fodder has thus been sharply depleted.
To
spread the idea that Syrian resistance had collapsed and that further
resistance against NATO was futile, Ben Rhodes of the Obama White House, the US
ambassador to Saudi Arabia, Saudi Prince Bandar, and other officials had also
prepared a campaign of psychological media warfare and video fakery. Syrian
state television, al Adounia, and other pro-Syrian broadcasters were to be
denied access to Nilesat and Arabsat, and their signals replaced by fake
programming generated by the CIA, including with movie sets and Potemkin
villages in the Gulf monarchies. But this plan had been revealed many weeks in
advance, notably by Meyssan. Accordingly, loyal Syrian broadcasters prepared
their audience with public service announcements about what was coming, and how
to receive genuine programming.
Programming
on Nilesat and Arabsat was in fact repeatedly interrupted, while the widely
hated al Jazeera of Qatar and Saudi al Arabiya reported that Assad had fled.
But few were fooled by the crude NATO substitutes, so shock and awe fell flat.
A NATO plan to organize a panic run on the Syrian currency, contributing a
further dimension of economic and logistical chaos, also fell short.
As
it became clear that the anti-government forces trapped in Damascus were being
decimated, King Abdullah of Jordan began harping on the danger that Syrian
chemical weapons might be used or get out of control - an established meme of
NATO propaganda. NATO was clearly still looking for a pretext to attack, but
the eleven Russian warships assigned to Tartus and the eastern Mediterranean
left that approach fraught with peril.
A
danger is also emerging for the reactionary feudal monarchs who are NATO’s main
allies in the Middle East. Partly as a result of NATO’s incessant pro-democracy
rhetoric, the ferment of social protest is now widespread in Saudi Arabia,
surely one of the countries most vulnerable to a mass upsurge. On July 22, an
explosion occurred at the headquarters of the Saudi intelligence service in
Riyadh, killing the deputy director. The target may also have been Prince
Bandar bin Sultan, who had just been named intelligence boss, and who is deeply
implicated in the Syrian events. Was this somebody’s payback? More importantly,
might this attack become the trigger for a mass movement in Saudi Arabia
powerful enough to threaten the feudal-reactionary dynasty and the power of the
infamous Sudairi clan?
By Webster G. Tarpley
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