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Since January, a group of some forty Syrian exiles have been meeting secretly at Ludwigkirchplatz 3-4 in Berlin, on the premises of the Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politk (German Institute for International and Security Affairs). While this think tank is funded by German employers, its meetings are bankrolled by the U.S. Departments of State and Defense. They are chaired by Steven Heydemann, a dual US-Israeli national, who has long worked for the CIA [1], before becoming a researcher at the U.S. Institute of Peace. This organization, which provides the formal venue for the meetings, is - contrary to what its name might suggest - a screen for the Pentagon [2]. Not surprisingly, the Swiss Ministry of Foreign Affairs is associated with this project.
The program is labelled “The Day After Tomorrow. Supporting a democratic transition in Syria”. In Washington’s Orwellian vocabulary, “democratic transition” means the replacement of an elected president who enjoys the widespread support of the Syrian people, Bashar al-Assad, with one picked by the Western powers, and the phrase “Day After” refers to the period following the overthrow of the Syrian regime by those same Western powers.
While the Syrian people were approving by referendum a new constitution [3], the task force was busy drafting another one. It also defined what would be the future policy of the Syrian government. The final document was presented by U.S. Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, to the President of the Syrian National Council, Abdel Bayset Syda [4], at the third conference of the Friends of Syria in Paris, on July 6. Mr. Syda gave his agreement to the implementation of the “road map”.
[1] Typically, such an activity was covered by the Ford Foundation, the U.S. Information Agency and the Freedom House.
[2] The U.S. Institute of Peace was created in conjunction with the National Endowment for Democracy, which is its counterpart. On U.S. Congress documents, its budget comes under the Pentagon, while the NED’s is attached to the State Department.
[3] “Constitution of the Syrian Arab Republic - 2012”, Voltaire Network, 26 February 2012.
[4] The Western press has made it a habit of spelling Mr. Syda’s name by adding an “a”, transforming it into “Sayda,” to avoid confusion with the disease of the same name.
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Syria is bracing for more political chaos as all antagonistic forces appear to have entered into an unholy alliance to bring the government to its knees by ingeniously choreographing massacres and attributing them to Syrian government, thereby turning the country into fertile soil for US-led invasion.
Deadly clashes broke out on Friday between Syrian forces and armed groups in the township of Houla in Homs and claimed the lives of 108 people including at least 32 children according to the head of the UN observer mission in Syria. However, Syrian authorities on Sunday denied having a hand in the carnage.
“Women, children and old men were shot dead. This is not the hallmark of the heroic Syrian army,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Jihad Makdesi told reporters in Damascus.
Makdesi said the massacre was carried out by “terrorists” after fighting between rebels and forces loyal to al-Assad.
“They (rebels) were equipped with mortars and anti-tank missiles, which is a quantitative leap,” he said.
Violence is spiraling drastically despite the presence of 260 UN observers who are currently monitoring the ceasefire as part of a six-point peace plan proposed by UN-Arab League envoy Kofi Annan in March.
Earlier this month, 55 people were killed and about 400 others injured in two strings of terrorist bombings near a military intelligence building in Damascus.
What deserves due attention in the carnage that happened in Houla is that many were shot dead at close range, many were Shia Muslims and many were women and children. In other words, these atrocities are conjectured to have been carried out at the hands of the extremist Wahhabis and al-Qaeda elements who are notorious for targeting women and children in their terrorist operations.
Another element which reinforces this speculation is that many among those who were killed were Shia Muslims for whom the Wahhabis nurse inveterate loathing. Despite the prevailing trend in western media to rule out the possible presence of the al-Qaeda in the country, the presence of al-Qaeda terrorists is gradually gaining strength in Syria. They are believed to have penetrated the country from Iraq, Jordan, Turkey and Lebanon.
Washington is funding the rebel groups in Syria. A report reveals that the rebels in Syria “have begun receiving significantly more and better weapons in recent weeks, an effort paid for by Persian Gulf nations and coordinated in part by the United States” (The Washington post, ).
“We are increasing our nonlethal assistance to the Syrian opposition, and we continue to coordinate our efforts with friends and allies in the region and beyond in order to have the biggest impact on what we are collectively doing,” said a senior State Department official, one of several US and foreign government officials on the condition of anonymity.
Besides, Washington is pressing Qatar and Saudi Arabia to fund and provide the rebels with heavy weaponries.
This behavior on the part of Washington runs counter to the fact that many rebels are linked with al-Qaeda and that the US claims to be fighting terror group. Along with Washington, the British government acknowledged early in March that it has provided an extra 2 million to the Western-backed rebels fighting the Syrian government. Prime Minister David Cameron told a hearing at the House of Commons Liaison Committee that his government had provided cash and equipment to western-backed rebels in Syria in the name of emergency medical supplies and food.
The government of al-Assad is losing ground thanks to the influx of the extremist Wahhabis and al-Qaeda members and on account of the financial and military support the rebels receive from the West and the Persian Gulf regimes.
The noose is getting tighter and tighter and all Washington and the extremists want is an absence of Bashar al-Assad. The implication is not that they are consciously united to topple the government of al-Assad but that they are united in a malicious cause to do so, each with its own benefits to reap. In other words, all these groups are fomenting unrest in Syria, and dragging the country into shreds of despair in their own way. Although these groups may ostensibly be at daggers drawn over different issues, they share one common point: the fall of al-Assad and therefore turning the situation to their own interest.
Metaphorically speaking, Syria is now going through a sea of troubles where there are many opportunists who will readily make the best of the crisis in the country.
Most importantly, Israel is silently and ironically funneling millions of dollars to the rebels in Syria. In fact, Israel is capitalizing enormously on the collapse of Bashar al-Assad government. The fall of al-Assad in Syria means a lot to Israel. It is in fact tantamount to immense latitude and a capacious place of potency in the Middle East.
Syria is now a nightmarishly humanitarian catastrophe lavishly brought about by the regional Arab puppet regimes, extremist Wahhabis, al-Qaeda, Washington and Israel.
Ismail Salami is a frequent contributor to Global Research. Global Research Articles by Ismail Salami
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