Washington has sanctioned two “opposition” teams for “human rights abuses,” and Republican lawmakers have paid US proxies a go to
Washington has a historical past of utilizing sanctions as a persist with prod their pet terrorists into doing their soiled work.
Again in America’s good previous days, when few of its residents bothered to care about US-backed proxy wars half a world away, the scapegoat du jour was Syrian President Bashar Assad. Each few days, we’d hear from some Western chief about how Assad needed to go, as Washington spent billions of {dollars} in money and weapons in an effort to oust him – and failed, thanks in a big half to the Russian army help granted at Assad’s request.
Having remained in energy, Assad fell off the West’s radar. Till now – simply as Syria is on the verge of normalizing relations with its Center Japanese neighbors, together with a resumption of fundamental ties with Saudi Arabia, which used to again US regime-change efforts by funding and arming the ‘Free Syrian Military’ jihadist opposition teams alongside the CIA and the Pentagon. So now that peace is on the verge of breaking out within the Center East, there’s motion afoot once more by Washington on Syria.
The Biden administration has simply sanctioned “Syrian armed opposition teams” working in northern Syria, the place all of America’s proxy buddies hang around, together with the Kurds and the militant teams previously generally known as the “Syrian rebels.” On August 17, the US Treasury Division concern-trolled Damascus within the sanctions announcement, citing the necessity to defend the “peace, safety, stability, or territorial integrity of Syria.” Or no less than the half the place the oil is, and over which the precise president of Syria has so little management that the federal government has repeatedly accused Washington of stealing the oil by hauling it throughout the border into Iraq, with the safety of US army autos.
When former US President Donald Trump realized that each one that actually mattered for the US in Syria was the oil, he tossed the Syrian battle into Turkey’s lap, and stopped speaking about ISIS (anybody keep in mind them?) Immediately, Turkey controls the “Syrian insurgent” teams newly sanctioned by Washington: the Suleiman Shah Brigade and the Hamza Division. It is smart, contemplating that the US used NATO ally Turkey as a staging space for coaching those self same jihadists, again after they have been Western-backed.
Some Washington officers have been nervous concerning the impression of Trump delegating the Syrian battle to Turkey on the destiny of US-allied Kurds (whom Ankara considers enemies of the state), who had been holding down the fort for the US in that very same strategic oil-rich area. And now each units of US proxies are hanging on the market and combating with one another, with the US Treasury Division citing “human rights abuses.”
It appears that evidently the one time Washington cares about Syrians – or considers them a single folks – is when it’s appropriate for the needs of financial exploitation. “The US is dedicated to supporting the Syrian folks’s capability to dwell with out worry of exploitation from armed teams and with out worry of violent repression,” mentioned the Underneath Secretary of the Treasury for Terrorism and Monetary Intelligence, Brian E. Nelson. If that was actually the case, then Washington wouldn’t have exploited armed teams in an try to overthrow the nation’s president and impose a decade-long warfare on the Syrian folks.
Only a few days after the US sanctions have been imposed, a gaggle of Republican congressmen arrived in Syria. Given Washington’s respect for nationwide sovereignty, certainly that they had permission from the Syrian authorities to enter – which have to be why they got here in via the backdoor from Turkey, on the US and ‘insurgent’-controlled aspect of the nation, and solely reportedly stayed for half-hour. However they did have time to fulfill with members of the White Helmets, an NGO based by former British MI6 officer James Le Mesurier, which had an uncanny knack for working freely in Al-Qaeda-held territory all through the warfare, whereas making an Oscar-winning documentary. The trio of congressmen, Ben Cline (R-VA), Scott Fitzgerald (R-WI), and French Hill (R-AR), additionally met with “opposition figures” – it’s unclear which of them, however a lot of the “opposition” teams working within the area are no less than linked to somebody on Washington’s naughty lists – from the designated terrorists of the Kurdish PKK (Kurdistan Employees Celebration), to Turkish-controlled and previously US-backed Syrian militias.
Possibly the Congressmen have been simply actually confused. In spite of everything, when was the final time you heard a Western official check with the PKK as a terrorist group, to which Ankara attributes tens of 1000’s of deaths? Regardless of additionally being sanctioned by the EU, the group has nonetheless been working with impunity inside Sweden since 1986, after a few of its members have been suspected to have performed a job within the assassination of a Swedish prime minister who opposed utilizing the Nordic nation as a form of working base for the group’s anti-Turkish operations. After that, Swedish politicians apparently simply figured that it will be greatest to fake that the group didn’t exist fairly than take care of the headache of all of it, and have since turned a blind eye to the assorted felony actions used to fund their operations.
The sudden look of the Republican officers in Syria is paying homage to the assorted neocon Republican bigwigs from earlier administrations, who took important talking charges to handle the Iranian opposition rallies of the Mojahedin-e-Khalq (MEK) close to Paris, simply earlier than that group was conveniently delisted from the State Division’s terrorist record, and subsequently normalized and leveraged by the West to advocate in favor of regime change in Iran as a form of opposition-in-waiting. Who can blame American lawmakers for dropping observe of who the terrorists are and who the liberty fighters are lately?
“What I consider Syria wants, and the identical factor the US wants, is American management,” Hill mentioned, blaming Biden for failing to cease unlawful medication popping out of Syria and making Assad wealthy, whereas clearly having no drawback with the Syrian oil from terrorist-held territory making the US wealthy. As in: “get up and begin doing what America desires you to do in opposition to Assad once more.” As a result of “American management” means efficiently shopping for or bullying others to do your soiled give you the results you want.
Now that the US wants extra proxies to forestall an imminent Syrian rapprochement with its neighbors, how quickly can we count on an announcement a few lifting of terrorist designations – or of those new sanctions for a number of of those teams – in alternate for them agreeing to do Washington’s bidding once more, in opposition to Assad? The truth that Syria is even again on the radar, to the purpose of warranting a go to from the primary high-level US delegation since warmonger Senator John McCain visited in 2017, strongly means that Washington is getting nervous concerning the potential for Center Japanese unity – significantly amongst allies of Russia.
The statements, views and opinions expressed on this column are solely these of the writer and don’t essentially characterize these of RT.
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