For a president that is executing Bush\u2019s \u201cwar on terror\u201d against Al-Qaeda and \u201cits affiliates,\u201d it seems odd that President Obama has targeted the secular Syrian government for \u201cregime change.\u201d<\/p>\n
Equally odd is that Obama\u2019s strongest military ally on the ground in Syria- the best equipped and effective fighting force against the Syrian Government \u2013 is Jabhat al-Nusra, a group that has affiliated itself with al-Qaeda, and aims to turn Syria into an extremist Islamic state that enforces a fundamentalist version of Sharia law.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s difficult to know exactly how al-Nursa received its guns, but one can make an educated guess.\u00a0For example, The New York Times\u00a0explained in detail<\/a>\u00a0how the CIA has been in a massive arms trafficking operation that has already funneled thousands of tons of guns from Saudi Arabia and Qatar to Syria:<\/p>\n \u201cThe C.I.A. role in facilitating the [weapons] shipments\u2026 gave the United States a degree of influence over the process [of weapon distribution]\u2026American officials have confirmed that senior White House officials were regularly briefed on the [weapons] shipments.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Where are the guns winding up in this massive arms trafficking operation? An important question to ask is: which rebels in Syria have guns and which ones don\u2019t. \u00a0The Guardian reports<\/a>:<\/p>\n \u201cThe [secular] Free Syrian Army\u2019s shortage of weapons and other resources compared with [jihadist] Jabhat al-Nusra is a recurrent theme\u2026 \u2018If you join al-Nusra, there is always a gun for you but many of the FSA brigades can\u2019t even provide bullets for their fighters,\u2019\u20263,000 FSA [Free Syrian Army]\u00a0men have joined al-Nusra in the last few months, mainly because of a lack of weapons and ammunition\u2026Al-Nusra fighters rarely withdraw for shortage of ammunition\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n While it\u2019s difficult to know if CIA trafficked guns are going directly or indirectly to al-Nursa, it\u2019s extremely likely that these guns are going directly into the hands of ideological cousins of al-Nursa, since the Syrian rebels are completely dominated by Islamic extremists.<\/p>\n For example, when the Economist magazine was outlining the most important fighting groups in Syria,\u00a0\u201cWho\u2019s Who in the Syrian Battlefield,\u201d\u00a0<\/a>they noted with regret that the only important non-Islamist group was in the Kurdish areas, which is virtually an autonomous zone. As far as the secular U.S.-backed fighting group, The Supreme Military Command, the Economist conceded it \u201chas little control on the ground.\u201d Keep in mind that the Economist is very much in favor of a U.S.-NATO military intervention in Syria.<\/p>\n The New York Times also confirmed the\u00a0complete dominance of extremists<\/a>\u00a0on the rebel side:<\/p>\n \u201cNowhere in rebel-controlled Syria is there a secular fighting force to speak of.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Thus, the minority of secular rebel fighters are not leading the civil war and will not be in power if Assad falls. Instead, honest Syrian revolutionaries will instantly fall victim to the extremists, who will immediately proceed to a mopping-up mission of their former allies.<\/p>\n It\u2019s now clear that Obama\u2019s foreign policy in Syria is actively encouraging terrorism.\u00a0Many rebel-controlled areas in Syria are now new safe havens for terrorists, and there have been hundreds of terrorist bombing attacks against the Syrian government, many of which have targeted civilian areas.<\/p>\n While the U.S. is pouring arms into the jihadist-controlled areas, they have also\u00a0downplayed the atrocities committed by these rebels, which are well documented on Youtube and include a multitude of war crimes that include beheadings, group execution of prisoners,\u00a0ethnic cleansing<\/a>, and the recent episode where a famous rebel commander was videotaped\u00a0mutilating a dead Syrian solider and eating his heart.<\/a><\/p>\n By minimizing this barbarism the Obama administration ensures that it will continue, since the extremists are empowered by U.S. support and are shielded in the U.S. media and protected from international political pressures.<\/p>\n One question the U.S. media never thinks of asking is: Where did all these Islamic extremists come from and why?\u00a0The Sunni Islamic opposition inside Syria has long been religiously moderate, implying that many of the extremists are foreigners.<\/p>\n The ideological source of this extremism came from Saudi Arabian religious figures and their allies, who use Islam as a political tool to target nations \u201cunfriendly\u201d to Saudi Arabia and the United States.\u00a0The most glaring example of this in regard to Syria was the Fatwa (official interpretation\/statement)\u00a0issued by 107 Islamic scholars\u00a0<\/a>that denounced the Syrian government and encouraged Muslims to fight against it. The statement essentially encouraged jihad, though the word wasn\u2019t mentioned explicitly.<\/p>\n The statement includes:<\/p>\n \u201cIt is a duty for all Muslims to support the revolutionaries in Syria [against the government] \u2026 so that they can successfully complete their revolution and attain their rights and their freedom.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n The hypocrisy of such a statement is almost too glaring: the many Saudi figures who signed the document that want \u201cfreedom\u201d in Syria are not demanding freedom in Saudi Arabia, by far the country with the least amount of freedoms in the world.<\/p>\n With Saudi Arabia and Qatar providing guns to the Syrian rebels \u2013 with help from the CIA \u2013 the Saudi religious figures attached to the Saudi regime give religious\/political support by misleading devout Muslims to flock to Syria to attack a country of Muslims, thus creating the giant sectarian divisions we now see throughout the Islamic world.<\/p>\n The vast majority of this Islamic sectarian warfare is exported by Saudi Arabia, which funds radical Islamic schools all over the Middle East that attract the downtrodden of these countries by providing basic social services that the host country is too poor \u2013 or unwilling \u2013 to provide. There is an informative chapter on this dynamic in Vijay Prashad\u2019s excellent book, A People\u2019s History of the Third World.<\/p>\n Now the debate among U.S.-NATO countries is whether to give more sophisticated weaponry to the extremist-dominated rebels in Syria.\u00a0The\u00a0Obama Administration is pressuring the European Union<\/a>\u00a0to drop its arms embargo on Syria so that a new torrent of weapons can flood the country (apparently the CIA operations haven\u2019t yet completely drenched Syria with guns).<\/p>\n In response to the \u201cdrop the embargo\u201d discussion,\u00a0Oxfam intelligently responded<\/a>\u00a0by saying:<\/p>\n \u201cSending arms to the Syrian opposition won\u2019t create a level playing field. Instead, it risks further fueling an arms free-for-all where the victims are the civilians of Syria. Our experience from other conflict zones tells us that this crisis will only drag on for far longer if more and more arms are poured into the country.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n One EU diplomat gave a\u00a0scathing rebuke to the Obama Administration\u2019s claim<\/a>\u00a0that it could ensure that new weapons wouldn\u2019t wind up in \u201cthe wrong hands\u201d in Syria:<\/p>\n \u201cIt would be the first conflict where we pretend we could create peace by delivering arms,\u201d the diplomat said. \u201cIf you pretend to know where the weapons will end up, then it would be the first war in history where this is possible. We have seen it in Bosnia, Afghanistan and Iraq. Weapons don\u2019t disappear; they pop up where they are needed.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n In Syria the weapons are needed by those doing the brunt of the fighting. Again, the al-Nursa extremists are widely acknowledged to be the most effective fighting force against the Syrian government, the guns will thus flow to them.<\/p>\n Obama has taken the saying, \u201cthe enemy of my enemy is my friend,\u201d to irrational heights, and in so doing is helping to produce a new generation of Islamic extremists that will help fuel the U.S.-led never-ending \u201cwar on terror.\u201d\u00a0The real intention of the War on Terror is not to stop terrorists, but to target nation states that are opposed to U.S. foreign policy: Iraq and Libya \u2013 like Syria \u2013 were both secular countries at the time of their being invaded; Afghanistan was invaded even though the vast majority of those involved in the 9-11 attacks were from Saudi Arabia.\u00a0There was no terrorist problem in Iraq before the U.S. invaded, just like there was no terrorist problem in Syria before the U.S.-backed rebels came onto the scene.<\/p>\n It\u2019s blatantly obvious to most Americans that Syria and Iran are at the top of Obama\u2019s war list, a much higher priority than any terrorist group.\u00a0This is why Obama is tolerating the terrorist groups inside Syira; they are being used as tools against his real target, Syria and then Iran.<\/p>\n The Syrian people must be left to themselves to decide their future.\u00a0The United States is utterly incapable of \u201chelping\u201d countries by using military means, as the fractured nations of Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya painfully prove.\u00a0The global anti-war movement must demand Hands Off Syria!<\/p>\n Shamus Cooke<\/strong>\u00a0is a social service worker, trade unionist, and writer for Workers Action (www.workerscompass.org<\/a>) He can be reached at\u00a0shamuscooke@gmail.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n
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