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<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial">----- Original Message -----
<DIV style="BACKGROUND: #e4e4e4; font-color: black"><B>From:</B> <A
title=tanstl@hotmail.com href="mailto:tanstl@hotmail.com">David Sladky</A>
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<DIV><B>Sent:</B> Wednesday, January 02, 2013 10:21 AM</DIV>
<DIV><B>Subject:</B> This is the best piece on Syria I've seen</DIV></DIV>
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<DIV class=ecxsubheadlinestyle><FONT size=4>Washington's Sectarian
Killers</FONT></DIV>
<DIV class=ecxsubheadlinestyle><FONT size=4></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV class=ecxsubheadlinestyle><FONT
size=2>http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/12/28/for-whom-the-syrian-bell-tolls/<BR></FONT></DIV>
<H1 class=ecxarticle-title>For Whom the Syrian Bell Tolls</H1>
<DIV class=ecxmainauthorstyle>by PEPE ESCOBAR</DIV>
<DIV class=ecxmain-text>The top geopolitical tragedy in 2012 is bound to remain
the top geopolitical tragedy in 2013: the rape of Syria.<BR>Just as once in a
while I go back to my favorite Hemingway passages, lately I’ve been going back
to some footage I shot years ago of the Aleppo souk – the most extraordinary of
all Middle Eastern souks. It’s like being shot in the back; I was as fond of the
souk’s architecture as of its people and traders. Weeks ago, most of the souk –
the living pulse of Aleppo for centuries – was set on fire and destroyed by the
“rebels” of the so-called Free Syrian Army (FSA).<BR>In this Syrian tragedy,
there is no Hemingway young hero, no Robert Jordan in the International Brigades
fighting alongside Republican guerrillas against the fascists during
the Spanish Civil War. In the Syrian civil war, the international brigades are
mostly of the mercenary, Salafi-jihadi, beheading and car-bombing type. And the
(few) young Americans in place are basically high-tech pawns in a game played by
the rapacious NATOGCC club (the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and its Arab
puppets of the Gulf Cooperation Council).<BR>The tragedy continues. The Syrian
state, political and military security apparatus will maintain its
mini-blitzkriegs – with no second thoughts for “collateral damage”. On the
opposing side, “rebel” commanders will be betting on a new
Saudi-Qatari-encouraged Supreme Military Council.<BR>The Salafis and
Salafi-jihadis of the al-Nusrah Front – 7th century fanatics, beheading
enthusiasts and car-bombing operatives who do the bulk of the fighting – were
not invited. After all, the al-Nusrah Front has been branded a “terrorist
organization” by Washington. <A
href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0300176163/counterpunchmaga"
target=_blank><IMG class=ecxalignright hspace=6 alt="" vspace=6 align=left
src="http://www.tomdispatch.com/images/managed/TDescobar.gif"></A><BR>Now check
the reaction of a Muslim Brotherhood (MB) bigwig, Hama-born deputy comptroller
general Mohammed Farouk Tayfour; he said the decision was “too hasty”. And check
the reaction of the new Syrian opposition leader, Ahmed Moaz al-Khatib, at a
“Friends of Syria” meeting in Morocco; the decision must be “reexamined”.
Virtually all “rebel” outfits publicly declared their undying love for the
hardcore al-Nusrah.<BR>So with the al-Nusrah fanatics probably disguising their
Islamically correct beards under a prosaic hoodie, expect plenty more “rebel”
advances on Damascus – despite two major beatings (last July and then this
month), courtesy of Syrian government counter-offensives. After all, that lavish
training by US, British and Jordanian Special Forces has got to yield some
results, not to mention the loads of extra lethal weapons provided by those
paragons of democracy in the Persian Gulf. By the way, the al-Nusrah Front
controls sections of devastated Aleppo.<BR><STRONG>Sectarian Hatred Rules
</STRONG><BR>Then there’s the Orwellian, brand new National Coalition of Syrian
Revolutionary and Opposition Forces – a Washington-Doha co-production. Meet the
new boss, same as the old (lousy) boss, which was the Syrian National Council
(SNC). It’s just rhetoric; the only thing that matters for the “National
Coalition” is to get more lethal weapons. And they love al-Nusrah, even if
Washington doesn’t.<BR>Qatar unloaded tons of weapons “like candy” (according to
a US arms dealer) in “liberated” Libya. Only after the Benghazi blowback did the
Pentagon and the State Department wake up to the fact that weaponizing the
Syrian rebels may be, well, the road to more blowback. Translation: Qatar will
keep unloading tons of weapons in Syria. The US will keep “leading from
behind”.<BR>Expect more horrible sectarian massacres as the one in Aqrab. <A
href="http://blogs.channel4.com/alex-thomsons-view/happened-syrian-town-aqrab/3426"
target=_blank><FONT color=#0068cf>Here</FONT></A> is the most authoritative
version of what may have really happened. This proves once again that what the
NATOGCC “rebels” are actually winning is the YouTube war. So expect more
massive, relentless waves of spin and propaganda – with Western corporate media
cheerleading of the Syrian “freedom fighters” putting to shame the 1980s jihad
in Afghanistan.<BR>Expect more major distortions of context, as when Russian
Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov said, “The fighting will become even
more intense, and [Syria] will lose tens of thousands and, perhaps, hundreds of
thousands of civilians… If such a price for the removal of the president seems
acceptable to you, what can we do? We, of course, consider it absolutely
unacceptable.”<BR>Ergo, Russia is trying to do everything to prevent this from
happening. And if NATOGCC “rebels” carry out their threats to attack the Russian
and Ukrainian embassies in Damascus, they had better trim their beards and run
for cover from the no-nonsense Spetnatz – Russian Special Forces.<BR>Expect more
sectarian hatred, as in Sunni Sheikh and al-Jazeera star Yusuf al-Qaradawi
casually issuing a <A
href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZgVF0t2mfsE&feature=player_embedded"
target=_blank><FONT color=#0068cf>fatwa</FONT></A> legitimizing the killing of
millions of Syrians, be they military or civilian, as long as they are Alawites
or Shi’ites.<BR>Sectarian hatred will rule, with Qatar in the lead, followed by
Saudis with large pocketbooks and assorted hardcore Islamists. Agenda; war
against Shi’ites, against Alawites, against secularists, even against moderates,
not only in Syria but all across the Middle East.<BR><STRONG>A Patriot vs
Iskander face-off</STRONG><BR>The new Syrian Army strategy boils down to a major
pull back from countryside backwaters and bases, concentrating their troops in
cities and towns.<BR>Expect the overall strategy of the NATOGCC club to remain
more or less the same; bog down the Syrian Army in as many areas as possible;
demoralize them; and keep oiling the terrain for a possible North Atlantic
Treaty Organization intervention (the chemical weapons hype and the relentless
carping over a “humanitarian catastrophe” are part of the extensive psy ops
package).<BR>The Syrian Army may have the heavy weapons; but when confronting a
tsunami of mercenaries and Salafi-jihadists fully trained and weaponized by the
NATOGCC club, the whole thing may take years, Lebanon civil war-style. That
leads us to the next “best” option – which is in fact a spin-off; the death of
the Syrian state by a thousand, make it a million, cuts.<BR>What’s certain is
that the “coalition of the willing” against Syria will have no trouble
unraveling once the endgame is reached. Washington bets on a post-Assad regime
run by the MB. No wonder King Playstation in Jordan is freaking out; he knows
the MB will also take over Jordan and expel him to permanently shop at
Harrods.<BR>Those paragons of democracy – the medieval petro-monarchies in the
Persian Gulf – are also freaking out; they fear the popular appeal of the MB
like the plague. Syrian Kurdistan – now definitely on its way to total autonomy
and eventually freedom – already keeps Ankara freaking out. Not to mention the
future prospect of a tsunami of unemployed Salafi-jihadis merrily ensconced in
the Syria-Turkish border and ready to run amok.<BR>And then there’s the complex
Turkey-Iran relationship. Tehran has already warned Ankara in no uncertain <A
href="http://www.todayszaman.com/newsDetail_getNewsById.action?newsId=301277"
target=_blank><FONT color=#0068cf>terms </FONT></A>about the just-to-be-deployed
NATO missile defense system.<BR>That’s got to be the newspeak masterpiece of
late 2012. Pentagon spokesman George Little has been adamant that “the United
States has been supporting Turkey in its efforts to defend itself… [against
Syria].”<BR>Thus the deployment of 400 US troops to Turkey to run two Patriot
missile batteries, to “defend” Turkey from “potential threats emanating from
Syria”.<BR>Translation; this has nothing to do with Turkey, it’s all about the
Russian military in Syria. Moscow has given Damascus not only very effective,
hypersonic Iskander surface-to-surface missiles (virtually immune to missile
defense systems) but the ground-to-air, multiple target defense system Pechora
2M, a nightmare to the Pentagon if ever a no-fly zone is imposed over
Syria.<BR>Welcome to the Patriot vs Iskander face-off. And right in the line of
fire, we find Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan – an outsized
egomaniac harboring a deep inferiority complex in relation to the Europeans –
left in the cold under NATO’s master plan.<BR>Turkey’s Achilles heel (apart from
the Kurds) is its self-promoted role of being a crossroads of energy between
East and West. The problem is Turkey depends on energy supplies from both Iran
and Russia; unwisely, it is antagonizing both, at the same time, with its
muddled Syrian policy.<BR>All I hear is doom and gloom.<BR>How to solve this
tragedy? No one seems to be listening to Syrian Vice President Farouk Al-Sharaa.
In this <A
href="http://english.al-akhbar.com/content/exclusive-interview-syrian-vp-farouk-al-sharaa-proposes-alternative-war"
target=_blank><FONT color=#0068cf>interview</FONT></A> with Lebanon’s Al-Akhbar,
he stresses “the threat of the current campaign to destroy Syria, its history,
civilization, and people… With every passing day, the solution gets further
away, militarily and politically. We must be in the position of defending
Syria’s existence.”<BR>He does not have “a clear answer to what the solution may
be”. But he has a road map:<BR>Any settlement, whether starting with talks or
agreements between Arab, regional, or foreign capitals, cannot exist without a
solid Syrian foundation. The solution has to be Syrian, but through a historic
settlement, which would include the main regional countries, and the members of
UN Security Council. This settlement must include stopping all shapes of
violence, and the creation of a national unity government with wide powers. This
should be accompanied by the resolution of sensitive dossiers related to the
lives of people and their legitimate demands.<BR>This is not what the NATOGCC
compound wants – even as the US, Britain, France, Turkey, Qatar and Saudi Arabia
are all engaged in their own divergent agendas. What the NATOGCC war has already
accomplished is one objective – very similar, by the way, to Iraq in 2003; it
has completely torn the fragile Syrian social fabric to shreds.<BR>That is
disaster capitalism in action, phase I; the terrain is already prepared for a
profitable “reconstruction” of Syria once a pliable, pro-Western
turbo-capitalism government is installed.<BR>Yet in parallel, blowback also
works its mysterious ways; millions of Syrians who initially supported the idea
of a pro-democracy movement – from the business classes in Damascus to traders
in Aleppo – now have swelled the government support base as a counterpunch
against the gruesome ethnic-religious cleansing promoted by the “rebels” of the
al-Nusrah kind.<BR>Yet with NATOGCC on one side and Iran-Russia on the other
side, ordinary Syrians caught in the crossfire have nowhere to go. NATOGCC will
stop at nothing to carve – in blood – any dubious entity ranging from a pro-US
emirate to a pro-US “democracy” run by the MB. It’s not hard to see for whom the
bell tolls in Syria; it tolls not for thee, as in John Donne, but for doom,
gloom, death and destruction.<BR><STRONG><EM>Pepe Escobar</EM></STRONG><EM> is
the author of</EM> <A
href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0978813820/counterpunchmaga"
target=_blank><FONT color=#0068cf>Globalistan: How the Globalized World is
Dissolving into Liquid War</FONT></A> (Nimble Books, 2007) and <A
href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0978813898/counterpunchmaga"
target=_blank><FONT color=#0068cf>Red Zone Blues: a snapshot of Baghdad during
the surge</FONT></A>. His most recent book is <A
href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0300176163/counterpunchmaga"
target=_blank><FONT color=#0068cf>Obama Does Globalistan</FONT></A> (Nimble
Books, 2009). <EM>He may be reached at</EM> pepeasia@yahoo.com<BR><EM>This
column originally appeared on <A href="http://www.atimes.com/"
target=_blank><FONT color=#0068cf>Asia
Times</FONT></A>.</EM><BR></DIV></DIV></DIV></DIV></DIV></BODY></HTML>