Category Archives: War and Terror

Damascus Aorta bombing .. The great taste of death …

Posted on February 25, 2013 | Leave a comment

تفجير الشريان الأبهر لدمشق ..طعم الموت العظيم …‏

بقلم: نارام سرجون‏

بعض الكلام الذي يقال في النوائب والمصائب يبدو ثقيلا وباردا مهما كان عذبا ودافئا .. ومهما كان فيه من الأسبرين والمهدئات والعقاقير .. ومهما كان بردا وسلاما فانه يقع على الجرح كما لو كان ملحا ..

وبعض الكلام الذي نقوله يملأ الصفحات ولكنه يقع من الدفاتر كما تقع الأوراق المتعبة الصفراء من الشجر في عواصف الخريف .. وكما تنفرط حبات العقود عندما تنقطع خيطانها .. فتتبعثر الكلمات كما تتبعثر خرزات العقد وحبات الياقوت الحمراء ولانقدر على جمعها ونظمها اذا لم نمسك بالخيط ثانية ..

في كل تفجير ارهابي ينفرط عقد الكلام الجميل وتتبعثر حبات اللؤلؤ والزمرد على الأرض .. وتقع أيقونات اللغة على التراب في كل مكان .. فماذا يقال للدم .. غير كلام من دم؟؟ وهل احمرار الياقوت يساوي احمرار الدم؟؟

أحس أحيانا أن الكلام يمكن أن يتحول الى قمامة وانه يستحق أن نتعامل معه بالمكانس اذا لم يقل ماتريد قلوبنا بصدق أو اذا كان فقط صدى لما يريد الآخرون .. ولذلك فلن أقول صدى مايريد الآخرون بل مايريده قلبي ..وقلبي هو خيط العقد الذي سيحمل الياقوت الأحمر..ياقوت الدم..

أما كلام القمامة فقد انفردت فيه لغة المعارضة وثورات الربيع طوال سنتين .. فبعد كل بيان واجتماع وتصريح وتفجير كنت أقوم بكناسة الكلام المتساقط من الشاشات المعارضة والثورية والذي تراكم على الأرض كشظايا البلور المحطم .. كناسة كلام المعارضة كان دوما عملا ضروريا واسعافيا لأن من يسير حافيا على كلام الثوار سينزف من عقله لا من قدميه وستنغرز شظايا الزجاج في عينيه .. فلاتتعبوا أنفسكم في قراءة تفجير دمشق وتفسيراته ..لأن رسائل التفجير وصلت الى عناوينها دون أن تخطئ .. وقام بتسليمها سعاة بريد جبهة النصرة ..

ففي تفجير دمشق انتقلت القطعان الثورية الهائجة الى حالة فريدة وهي أنها لم تعد تعبأ بالرأي العام السوري ولابخداعه كما دأبت طوال سنتين .. فقد طاف بها الكيل .. بل صارت تغامر غير مكترثة بالمجاهرة بالحيوانية والعنف .. ولم تعد حريصة على ادخار آخر مالديها في ذخائرها الثورية من خطابات ظمئها للحرية والانعتاق .. نعم لقد قررت المعارضة التخلص من حالة الحرج والتمثيل التي امتهنتها طوال سنتين .. حيث كانت تقتل وتتهم النظام .. وتفجر الشوارع وتمسح أيديها المضرجة بالدم بجدران أجهزة الأمن السورية وتتهمها بأنها تريد اخافة الناس من الثورة السلمية وثورة الكرامة ..وتذبح الضحايا وتمسح سكاكينها باسم الرئيس وعائلته .. لكنها اليوم قررت الخروج من عباءة البراءة وصوف الخرفان الوديع وصمت الحملان دون وجل .. ولم تعد تعنيها آراء الناس ولاتعاطفهم معها ولااقتناعهم بطهارتها لأسباب كثيرة سنمر عليها ..

ومما يلفت النظر كثيرا هو أنه حتى المجلس الوطني والائتلاف قررا أن عملية خداع الناس لم تعد ضرورية خاصة بعد الأدلة الدامغة على أن ثورجيي الكرامة هم من ينسف الشوارع ويرسل الانتحاريين المجانين .. فتغطى الائتلاف بالأمس باعلانه التقية بأول ادانة لتفجير ارهابي .. ولم يتأخر في الادانة الا سنتين فقط !!.. أي بعد خراب البصرة كما يقال .. لكنه في اعلانه هذا فانه كان يقر بشكل غير مباشر ولأول مرة بأن الثورة هي من قامت بالتفجير لأنه لم يقم كما اعتاد باستعمال الأغطية والملاحف الكبيرة والشراشف في اخفاء الثورجيين عن مسرح الجريمة .. ولم يقم كعادته بمسح الدم عن سكاكين الثورة وانيابها .. ولم يتبرع كما اعتاد بالتبرع بارشاد الناس والسير في مقدمة العراضة الى حيث القاتل من أجهزة الأمن السورية.. بل اكتفى ببراءة باعلان الادانة .. وهذا يعني أنه يريد أن يقول : “نعم ليست الدولة من يقوم بالتفجير .. بل نحن من يقوم بالتفجير” .. وفي اعماق هذا الاعتراف غير المباشر حاجة ماسة لاعلان المسؤولية .. وغاية الاعتراف هي الدفاع عن الموقف العسكري للثورة وهي تتعرض للقضم اليومي.. فترد بالتفجير لتقول:

ان من يعتقد أن هناك ضعفا في “الثورة” أو أنها واهنة فهو واهم ..

ومن ينتظر سقوطها الوشيك فهو واهم ..

ومن ينتظر قبولنا الحوار فهو واهم ..

ومن ينتظر الحل السياسي فهو واهم لأن الحل هو عسكري .. وعسكري فقط ..

The aftermath of a powerful car bomb explosion near the headquarters of Syria's ruling Baath party in the centre of Damascus. (AFP Photo)

كتبت المعارضة رسالتها على أوراق من أجساد السوريين ووتركت الرسالة في بريد منطقة المزرعة على قارعة الطريق واختارت أهم نقطة التقاء لطرق في دمشق حيث يكاد كل سوري قد مر مرة واحدة على الأقل في حياته من تلك النقطة لأن تلك النقطة هي الطريق نحو جميع سورية .. فلا يوجد سوري مر في دمشق لم يدخل عبر تلك العقدة والطريق الشهير (شارع الثورة) .. أو مايسمى أبهر دمشق .. ان تلك النقطة هي الشريان الأبهر لدمشق ومنها تسافر ضخات الحياة نحو سورية كلها .

تقول الرسالة الثورية مايلي ودون مواربة: هانحن في الشريان الأبهر ..فاما نحن واما هو؟ .. أي اما أن تقبلوا بنا بالقوة حكاما قادمين والا فسنرسل كل يوم رجلا آليا مبرمجا يسمونه (انتحاري) .. يرسل ابناءكم الى الموت .. سلّموا أيها السوريون .. فتسلموا ..

في تكتيك التفجير يراد بث الرعب في نفوس السوريين فيقبلون بما لايقبلون به .. رغما عن أنوفهم ..للوصول الى معادلة جورج بوش الشهيرة: “من ليس معنا فهو ضدنا .. وغالبية السوريين ليست معنا .. فهم ضدنا ..ومن ضدنا يجب أن يموت”..

وفي هذه العقلية يكمن خطر مميت لأنها تضع نفسها لأول مرة في مواجهة الجميع علنا .. وتقرر بشكل مجنون استفزاز جميع الشرائح الشعبية حتى الرمادية منها..وهي التي ستضع عنق المعارضة تحت حد المقصلة ..

هذه الأوهام والقمامات الثورية هي مايستدعي أن نحمل مكانسنا وننظف الطرقات منها ثم نرمي بها الى الحاويات العفنة.. لاتسيروا فوق هذا الزجاج المهشم من الأوهام والحطام كيلا تصاب بالجراح عقولكم وعيونكم .. لأن رسالة القمامة الثورية تقول للسوريين بالحرف مايلي:

1- لم نقدر على الأسد ولا على جيشه بعد سنتين من دعم الدنيا كلها لنا .. ونعترف أننا فعلا لانقدر عليه .. ولن نقدر عليه وجها لوجه لافي ساعة الصفر ولا في البركان ولا في الملاحم .. وعليكم أن تعينونا عليه لأنه ثبت في مكانه بسببكم وخسرنا معركتنا بسببكم .. فكما نصرتموه وانتصر .. فان عليكم أن تخذلوه كي ننتصر ..

2- ومما تقوله الرسالة من تحت ركام الأوهام رسالة على نقيض مبدأ قديم يقول: اضرب الراعي تتشتت الأغنام .. ليصبح مبدأ الثوار هو (شتت الأغنام لتضرب الراعي) .. ان ضرب العائلة يوجع راعيها .. لذلك فلنضرب الأسد حيث يتوجع ..اضربوه في أكثر نقطة توجعه وتجبره على الأنين .. اي اضربوا الأسد في “عائلته الدمشقية” .. وعائلته هم الشعب الذي رفعه ووضعه في قصر الرئاسة .. وهي الشعب الذي ملأ الساحات دعما لبرنامجه السياسي ..وضرب العائلة سيوجع كبيرها وراعيها .. اضرب الأبناء يتراجع الوالد .. اضربوا الاخوة .. يتقهقر الأخ المحارب ويبتعد عنا ..

3- ومما تقوله الرسالة ان الضغط العسكري في الأرياف خانق على الثورة .. والثورة تريد أن تتنفس فالحذاء العسكري في فمها في الريف يضغط وهو يعصر رقبتها عصرا .. فتقرر المعارضة أن تضرب بذيلها في أي مكان مؤلم لتخفيف الضغط عنها .. وضرب المدنيين أشد ايلاما من ضرب العسكريين ..هذا الاستنتاج مبني على اعترافات ووثائق القي القبض عليها وفيها مراسلات واقتراحات سابقة من بعض صقور (الثورة) بأن تخفيف الضغط عن المقاتلين في الارياف لن يتم الا عبر الضغط على النظام عبر المدنيين .. وسيقوم طرف ثالث بتسليم رسالة تهديد للنظام بأن استمرار الضغط العسكري على عنق الثورة الريفي سيدفع ثمنه النظام في شوارع مدنه .. وهذا ماسيخلق حالة من النقمة لدى المدنيين من تردي الوضع الأمني اذا ماتتالت التفجيرات .. لأن الضغط الشعبي كفيل برفع حذاء الجيش عن أعناق الثورة..

4- هناك طرف لايزال يريد عصر المفاوضات بين الدولة السورية وخصومها الدوليين في المنطقة حتى آخر قطرة فكان تصريح العربي والابراهيمي عن ضرورة استبعاد الرئيس الأسد من الحلول بعد شيوع أجواء انفراج وتلا هذه التصريحات مباشرة تفجير دمشق (الذي كان يتنبأ به البعض بعد تلك التصريحات التي بدت موطئة له) ليزيد من الوزن النوعي لتصريحات العربي والابراهيمي ..

في التعامل مع العمليات الانتحارية لاتوجد هناك بطولة لأنها هي بحد ذاتها من أسهل أنواع العمليات تنفيذا .. فهذه العمليات يمكن ان تنفذ كل يوم في كل مدينة في العالم .. فأنت لاتريد الا حمقى يتصرفون كالروبوتات تتم برمجتها بعناية وفق برامج غسيل الدماغ .. وتحتاج الى متفجرات يمكن لأي شخص صناعتها من مواد كيماوية ..لم تنج منها لندن ونيويورك وتل أبيب

ولكن تعالوا نعرج على عباقرة الصهيونية عندما واجه الاسرائيليون سنوات الانتفاضة الفلسطينية وفوجئ الاسرائيليون بموجات من الاستشهاديين الفلسطينيين في مدنهم وشوارعهم لسنتين متتاليتين قتلت أربعة آلاف اسرائيلي .. فقرر الاسرائيليون الدخول في عملية سلام مع الفلسطينيين .. وعندما سئل رابين عن سبب قبوله للسلام بعد عناد ورفض قال: في الماضي كنا وعلى مدى عقود نخيف الفلسطيني بقتله .. لكننا اليوم أمام شخص يريد ان يموت .. فماذا يمكنني أن أفعل مع شخص لايريد أن يعيش بل أن يموت.. هل أقتله؟؟

لذلك دخلت عملية السلام ..

وتبين أن الاسرائيليين يراوغون ليكسبوا الوقت لأن رابين دخل عملية السلام مؤقتا ودوّخ الفلسطينيين بالمفاوضات ولم يعطهم أكثر من بلدية رام الله .. لكن في نفس الوقت كان الساسة الاسرائيليون يقومون بعملية دراسة واسعة للعقل الجهادي ويقومون بعمليات اختراق كثيفة أفقية وعمودية لجسم حماس من القاعدة حتى رأس الهرم .. فتم فهم سيكولوجيا العقل الجهادي .. واستعان الاسرائيليون بالعقل الوهابي لتدمير العقل الجهادي .. فكانت عمليات نيويورك تقريبا هي بداية نهاية موجات الانتحاريين الفلسطينيين .. وكأن من صمم عمليات 11 ايلول أراد منها احراج العمل الاستشهادي بأن حوله الى فعل جريمة وحشية حيوانية..

ومنذ ذلك التاريخ خرجت العمليات الاستشهادية من شوارع اسرائيل نهائيا وتنقلت في شوارع العالم لتستقر في شوارع بغداد والعراق .. وأخيرا لتحط في دمشق حيث ترقد دجاجة القاعدة على بيوض جبهة النصرة لتفقس تلك الثعابين .. في عش المعارضة السورية .. عش الحرية والديمقراطية ..

فهل يقدر الاسرائيليون على شيء لانقدر عليه؟؟؟ ما نعرفه حتى هذه اللحظة هو أننا نمسك بلجام المشكلة وأننا على ظهر الدابة .. وعلينا أن نشد اللجام .. حتى تتألم الدواب!! ..

هذه الأيام القاسيات ستمر .. شاءت المعارضة أم لم تشأ ..شاءت اسرائيل أم لم تشا .. شاءت تركيا والعرب أم لم يشاؤوا .. ونحن سنقبل التحدي .. وفي كل تفجير حقير نعرف أننا كنا على صواب في احتقارنا لهذه الثورة ولهؤلاء الثوار ولهذه المعارضة .. ونعرف أننا كنا على صواب في اختيارنا الوطني وفي رفضنا القطعي لمعارضة تقتل وتسرق وتبيع الوطن ..

وستغادر التفجيرات شوارعنا .. وسنسير في شوارعك يادمشق ولن نوقف دفق الحياة في شرايينها وشريانها الابهر .. لأن أجمل الموت هو أن يكون في دمشق وفي شرايينها وأوردتها .. ولأن أقوى الجذور هي التي تصنعها الشرايين في سفرها العميق في تراب الوطن .. وليس صحيحا أن طعم الموت في أمر حقير كطعم الموت في أمر عظيم .. فاذا كنا نموت فلنمت في دمشق .. حيث طعم الموت العظيم .. من أجلك يادمشق..من أجلك يادمشق…

River to Sea Uprooted Palestinian
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Posted in 9/11, Nusra Front, SNC, War and Terror, War on syria, Zionist entity

The War on Afghanistan is a Profit driven "Resource War".

Posted on February 7, 2013 | 1 Comment

Source - Another link

US and NATO forces invaded Afghanistan more than eleven years ago.
Afghanistan is defined as a state sponsor of terrorism.
The war on Afghanistan continues to be heralded as a war of retribution in response to the 9/11 attacks.

This article, first published in June 2010, points to the “real economic reasons” why US-NATO forces invaded Afghanistan eleven years ago.
The legal argument used by Washington and NATO to invade and occupy Afghanistan under “the doctrine of collective security” was that the September 11 2001 attacks constituted an undeclared “armed attack” “from abroad” by an unnamed foreign power.
Michel Chossudovsky, February 5, 2013

The 2001 bombing and invasion of Afghanistan has been presented to World public opinion as a “Just War”, a war directed against the Taliban and Al Qaeda, a war to eliminate “Islamic terrorism” and instate Western style democracy.

The economic dimensions of the “Global War on Terrorism” (GWOT) are rarely mentioned. The post 9/11 “counter-terrorism campaign” has served to obfuscate the real objectives of the US-NATO war.

The war on Afghanistan is part of a profit driven agenda: a war of economic conquest and plunder, “a resource war”.

While Afghanistan is acknowledged as a strategic hub in Central Asia, bordering on the former Soviet Union, China and Iran, at the crossroads of pipeline routes and major oil and gas reserves, its huge mineral wealth as well as its untapped natural gas reserves have remained, until June 2010, totally unknown to the American public.

According to a joint report by the Pentagon, the US Geological Survey (USGS) and USAID, Afghanistan is now said to possess “previously unknown” and untapped mineral reserves, estimated authoritatively to be of the order of one trillion dollars. (New York Times, U.S. Identifies Vast Mineral Riches in Afghanistan – NYTimes.com, June 14, 2010, See also BBC, 14 June 2010).

“The previously unknown deposits – including huge veins of iron, copper, cobalt, gold and critical industrial metals like lithium – are so big and include so many minerals that are essential to modern industry that Afghanistan could eventually be transformed into one of the most important mining centers in the world, the United States officials believe.

An internal Pentagon memo, for example, states that Afghanistan could become the “Saudi Arabia of lithium,” a key raw material in the manufacture of batteries for laptops and BlackBerrys.

The vast scale of Afghanistan’s mineral wealth was discovered by a small team of Pentagon officials and American geologists. The Afghan government and President Hamid Karzai were recently briefed, American officials said.

While it could take many years to develop a mining industry, the potential is so great that officials and executives in the industry believe it could attract heavy investment even before mines are profitable, providing the possibility of jobs that could distract from generations of war.

“There is stunning potential here,” Gen. David H. Petraeus, commander of the United States Central Command, said… “There are a lot of ifs, of course, but I think potentially it is hugely significant.”

The value of the newly discovered mineral deposits dwarfs the size of Afghanistan’s existing war-bedraggled economy, which is based largely on opium production and narcotics trafficking as well as aid from the United States and other industrialized countries.

Afghanistan’s gross domestic product is only about $12 billion.

“This will become the backbone of the Afghan economy,” said Jalil Jumriany, an adviser to the Afghan minister of mines.

(New York Times, op. cit.)

Afghanistan could become, according to The New York Times “the Saudi Arabia of lithium”.

“Lithium is an increasingly vital resource, used in batteries for everything from mobile phones to laptops and key to the future of the electric car.”

At present Chile, Australia, China and Argentina are the main suppliers of lithium to the world market.

Bolivia and Chile are the countries with the largest known reserves of lithium.

“The Pentagon has been conducting ground surveys in western Afghanistan. Pentagon officials said that their initial analysis at one location in Ghazni province showed the potential for lithium deposits as large as those of Bolivia”

(U.S. Identifies Vast Mineral Riches in Afghanistan – NYTimes.com, June 14, 2010, see also Lithium – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)

“Previously Unknown Deposits” of Minerals in Afghanistan
The Pentagon’s near one trillion dollar “estimate” of previously “unknown deposits” is a useful smokescreen.

The Pentagon one trillion dollar figure is more a trumped up number rather than an estimate:

“We took a look at what we knew to be there, and asked what would it be worth now in terms of today’s dollars. The trillion dollar figure seemed to be newsworthy.”

(The Sunday Times, London, June 15 2010)

Moreover, the results of a US Geological Survey study (quoted in the Pentagon memo) on Afghanistan’s mineral wealth were revealed three years back, at a 2007 Conference organized by the Afghan-American Chamber of Commerce.

The matter of Afghanistan’s mineral riches, however, was not considered newsworthy at the time.

The US Administration’s acknowledgment that it first took cognizance of Afghanistan’s vast mineral wealth following the release of the USGS 2007 report is an obvious red herring. Afghanistan’s mineral wealth and energy resources (including natural gas) were known to both America’s business elites and the US government prior to the Soviet-Afghan war (1979-1988).

Geological surveys conducted by the Soviet Union in the 1970s and early 1980s confirm the existence of vast reserves of copper (among the largest in Eurasia), iron, high grade chrome ore, uranium, beryl, barite, lead, zinc, fluorspar, bauxite, lithium, tantalum, emeralds, gold and silver. (Afghanistan, Mining Annual Review, The Mining Journal, June, 1984).

These surveys suggest that the actual value of these reserves could indeed be substantially larger than the one trillion dollars “estimate” intimated by the Pentagon-USCG-USAID study.

More recently, in a 2002 report, the Kremlin confirmed what was already known:

“It’s no secret that Afghanistan possesses rich reserves, in particular of copper at the Aynak deposit, iron ore in Khojagek, uranium, polymetalic ore, oil and gas”.

(RIA Novosti, January 6, 2002)

“Afghanistan has never been anyone’s colony – no foreigner had ever “dug” here before the 1950s.

The Hindu Kush mountains, stretching, together with their foothills, over a vast area in Afghanistan, are where the minerals lie. Over the past 40 years, several dozen deposits have been discovered in Afghanistan, and most of these discoveries were sensational. They were kept secret, however, but even so certain facts have recently become known.

It turns out that Afghanistan possesses reserves of nonferrous and ferrous metals and precious stones, and, if exploited, they would possibly be able to cover even the earnings from the drug industry. The copper deposit in Aynak in the southern Afghan Helmand Province is said to be the largest in the Eurasian continent, and its location (40 km from Kabul) makes it cheap to develop.

The iron ore deposit at Hajigak in the central Bamian Province yields ore of an extraordinarily high quality, the reserves of which are estimated to be 500 million tonnes. A coal deposit has also been discovered not far from there.

Afghanistan is spoken of as a transit country for oil and gas. However, only a very few people know that Soviet specialists discovered huge gas reserves there in the 1960s and built the first gas pipeline in the country to supply gas to Uzbekistan. At that time, the Soviet Union used to receive 2.5 billion cubic meters of Afghan gas annually. During the same period, large deposits of gold, fluorite, barytes and marble onyxes that have a very rare pattern were found.

However, the pegmatite fields discovered to the east of Kabul are a real sensation. Rubies, beryllium, emeralds and kunzites and hiddenites that cannot be found anywhere else – the deposits of these precious stones stretch for hundreds of kilometers. Also, the rocks containing the rare metals beryllium, thorium, lithium and tantalum are of strategic importance (they are used in air and spacecraft construction).

The war is worth waging…

(Olga Borisova, “Afghanistan – the Emerald Country”, Karavan, Almaty, original Russian, translated by BBC News Services, Apr 26, 2002. p. 10) ²

While public opinion was fed images of a war torn resourceless developing country, the realities are otherwise: Afghanistan is a rich country as confirmed by Soviet era geological surveys.

The issue of “previously unknown deposits” sustains a falsehood. It excludes Afghanistan’s vast mineral wealth as a justifiable casus belli. It says that the Pentagon only recently became aware that Afghanistan was among the World’s most wealthy mineral economies, comparable to The Democratic Republic of the Congo or former Zaire of the Mobutu era.

The Soviet geopolitical reports were known.

During the Cold War, all this information was known in minute detail:

…Extensive Soviet exploration produced superb geological maps and reports that listed more than 1,400 mineral outcroppings, along with about 70 commercially viable deposits…

The Soviet Union subsequently committed more than $650 million for resource exploration and development in Afghanistan, with proposed projects including an oil refinery capable of producing a half-million tons per annum, as well as a smelting complex for the Ainak deposit that was to have produced 1.5 million tons of copper per year.

In the wake of the Soviet withdrawal a subsequent World Bank analysis projected that the Ainak copper production alone could eventually capture as much as 2 percent of the annual world market.

The country is also blessed with massive coal deposits, one of which, the Hajigak iron deposit, in the Hindu Kush mountain range west of Kabul, is assessed as one of the largest high-grade deposits in the world.

(John C. K. Daly, Analysis: Afghanistan’s untapped energy, UPI Energy, October 24, 2008)

Afghanistan’s Natural Gas

Afghanistan is a land bridge.

The 2001 U.S. led invasion and occupation of Afghanistan has been analyzed by critics of US foreign policy as a means to securing control over the strategic trans-Afghan transport corridor which links the Caspian sea basin to the Arabian sea.

Several trans-Afghan oil and gas pipeline projects have been contemplated including the planned $8.0 billion TAPI pipeline project (Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India) of 1900 km., which would transport Turkmen natural gas across Afghanistan in what is described as a “crucial transit corridor”. (See Gary Olson, Afghanistan has never been the ‘good and necessary’ war; it’s about control of oil, The Morning Call, October 1, 2009).

Military escalation under the extended Af-Pak war bears a relationship to TAPI. Turkmenistan possesses third largest natural gas reserves after Russia and Iran. Strategic control over the transport routes out of Turkmenistan have been part of Washington’s agenda since the collapse of the Soviet union in 1991.

What was rarely contemplated in pipeline geopolitics, however, is that Afghanistan is not only adjacent to countries which are rich in oil and natural gas (e.g. Turkmenistan), it also possesses within its territory sizeable untapped reserves of natural gas, coal and oil.

Soviet estimates of the 1970s placed,

“Afghanistan’s ‘explored’ (proved plus probable) gas reserves at about 5 trillion cubic feet. The Hodja-Gugerdag’s initial reserves were placed at slightly more than 2 tcf.”

(See, The Soviet Union to retain influence in Afghanistan, Oil & Gas Journal, May 2, 1988)

The US. Energy Information Administration (EIA) acknowledged in 2008 that Afghanistan’s natural gas reserves are “substantial”:

“As northern Afghanistan is a ‘southward extension of Central Asia’s highly prolific, natural gas-prone Amu Darya Basin,’ Afghanistan ‘has proven, probable and possible natural gas reserves of about 5 trillion cubic feet.’ “

(UPI, John C.K. Daly, Analysis: Afghanistan’s untapped energy, October 24, 2008)

From the outset of the Soviet-Afghan war in 1979, Washington’s objective has been to sustain a geopolitical foothold in Central Asia.

The Golden Crescent Drug Trade
America’s covert war, namely its support to the Mujahideen “Freedom fighters” (aka Al Qaeda) was also geared towards the development of the Golden Crescent trade in opiates, which was used by US intelligence to fund the insurgency directed against the Soviets.¹

Instated at the outset of the Soviet-Afghan war and protected by the CIA, the drug trade developed over the years into a highly lucrative multibillion undertaking. It was the cornerstone of America’s covert war in the 1980s.

Today, under US-NATO military occupation, the drug trade generates cash earnings in Western markets in excess of $200 billion dollars a year. (See Michel Chossudovsky, America’s War on Terrorism, and, Heroin is “Good for Your Health”: Occupation Forces support Afghan Narcotics Trade, April 29, 2007)

Towards an Economy of Plunder

The US media, in chorus, has upheld the “recent discovery” of Afghanistan’s mineral wealth as “a solution” to the development of the country’s war torn economy as well as a means to eliminating poverty. The 2001 US-NATO invasion and occupation has set the stage for their appropriation by Western mining and energy conglomerates.

The war on Afghanistan is a profit driven “resource war”.

Under US and allied occupation, this mineral wealth is slated to be plundered, once the country has been pacified, by a handful of multinational mining conglomerates.

According to Olga Borisova, writing in the months following the October 2001 invasion, the US-led,

“war on terrorism [will be transformed] into a colonial policy of influencing a fabulously wealthy country.”

(Borisova, op cit).

Part of the US-NATO agenda is also to eventually take possession of Afghanistan’s reserves of natural gas, as well as prevent the development of competing Russian, Iranian and Chinese energy interests in Afghanistan.

Note

1. The Golden Crescent trade in opiates constitutes, at present, the centerpiece of Afghanistan’s export economy. The heroin trade, instated at the outset of the Soviet-Afghan war in 1979 and protected by the CIA, generates cash earnings in Western markets in excess of $200 billion dollars a year. Since the 2001 invasion, narcotics production in Afghanistan has increased more than 35 times. In 2009, opium production stood at 6900 tons, compared to less than 200 tons in 2001.

In this regard, the multibillion dollar earnings resulting from the Afghan opium production largely occur outside Afghanistan. According to United Nations data, the revenues of the drug trade accruing to the local economy are of the order of 2-3 billion annually. In contrast with the Worldwide sales of heroin resulting from the trade in Afghan opiates, in excess of $200 billion. (See Michel Chossudovsky, America’s War on Terrorism”, Global Research, Montreal, 2005)

2. Olga Borisova, “Afghanistan – the Emerald Country,” Karavan [Kazakhstan] [April 26, 2002], available in English as “Afghan Mineral Wealth Will Turn Anti-terror War into Colonialism – Kazakh Paper,” Hoover’s OnLine [April 28, 2002]. Almost 15 years ago, emeralds of very high quality were found in Afghanistan. A carat of unpolished Afghan emerald fetches over $300 in the West, and up to 10 carats of emerald can be washed out of one cubic meter of rock.

The mining of emeralds is carried out by small wok groups of men, who sell to dealers in the valley villages like Khenj, Safitchir, etc.. The mines are often located at over 4000 meters [over 13,000 feet]. For details, see Joel Donnet, “Les emeraudes de la survie du Panshir” [septembre 1999] and Lucian Kim, “Afghanistan’s Emerald Heights. The Gem-Studded Mountains Are a Pot of Gold for Anti-Taliban Forces,” Christian Science Monitor [July 2000].

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Israeli Forces Arrest 1-year-old Palestinian Terrorist

Posted on January 24, 2013 | Leave a comment

by Barb Weir
Sunday, January 20th, 2013

Israeli Captain Ramit Dan-Dertroht arrests 1-year-old Palestinian terrorist Qamar Awad in the south Hebron hills

Alert Israeli forces yesterday thwarted a potential terrorist attack by a 1-year-old Palestinian. The terrorist, Qamar Awad, was among nineteen arrested on land in the south Hebron hills that is in the process of being liberated from Palestinians. I spoke to the Israeli commander of the operation, Captain Ramit Dan-Dertroht.

Barb Weir: Captain Dan-Dertroht, is this the youngest terrorist that you have arrested?

Capt. Ramit Dan-Dertroht: I’m pretty sure it is, unless you count the pregnant woman that gave birth while trying to cross a checkpoint without permission.

Barb Weir: How did you learn of the terrorist threat?

Capt. Ramit Dan-Dertroht: Our intelligence sources are the best in the world, Barb. We discovered that they had announced the terrorist action on multiple email list serves and had encouraged as many terrorists as possible to participate.

Barb Weir: What was the intended target?

Capt. Ramit Dan-Dertroht: The land, Barb. They were attempting to break the soil in some places, and to allow their animals to consume native plants. We were sent to protect it.

Barb Weir: Whose land is it?

Capt. Ramit Dan-Dertroht: They consider it their land just because they have lived here for hundreds of years and because they have deeds to it. However, that gives them no right to abuse it, and it is Israeli policy to do all we can to liberate it from them.

They consider it their land just because they have lived here for hundreds of years and because they have deeds to it.

Barb Weir: How will you do that?

Capt. Ramit Dan-Dertroht: The law states that if they don’t use the land for three years, it reverts to the state. Therefore, our job is to make sure they don’t come here. In other places we build a wall for that purpose, but we think we can manage without it here.

Barb Weir: Didn’t the High Court recently rule that the military must facilitate access of these people to their land?

Capt. Ramit Dan-Dertroht: That’s true, Barb, but that task has been assigned to another unit. Our job is facilitate exit from the land.

Barb Weir: So where is the other unit?

Capt. Ramit Dan-Dertroht: I’m not sure. I heard they were assigned to submarine duty.

Barb Weir: Did the arrested terrorists give you much trouble?

Capt. Ramit Dan-Dertroht: You have no idea, Barb – especially the 1-year-old. We interrogated her for hours, but she refused to answer questions or sign a statement. Usually we withhold bathroom privileges until they comply, but they are responding with new resistance techniques. This one brazenly urinated and defecated in front of us, and screamed at us the whole time. I’m telling you, these Palestinian terrorists are getting tougher.

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Islamist rebels for France: Terrorists in Mali, friends in Syria!!

Posted on January 19, 2013 | Leave a comment

Two days ago I posted: Double Standards: France against terrorism in Mali with it in Syria

Islamist rebels for France: Terrorists in Mali, friends in Syria!

While France finds itself committed to intervene in Mali TO PROTECT THE STATE against the Islamist fighters related to Al-Qaeda (WOW), it considers the same guys, the jihadists who are shouting Allah Akbar and fighting the “infidel regime” in Syria as “rebels for freedom and democracy”! No problem, for France, if they are actually destroying the Syrian state, destroying the infrastructure of electricity power units, fuel pipelines, schools, ATM, police departments and all governmental institutions!

While France believes it’s a duty to send helicopters and air forces to bombard the Islamist militants in Mali, it accuse Syrian army to be “committing a brutal aggression” when it’s defending the state on its land!

We Syrians don’t ask France to help us fighting those extremist gangs that are destroying our country, but we just tell the French politicians to “f*** off” and stop dropping crocodile’s tears on Syrian people that is living now a crisis of electricity, gas and diesel thanks to those “rebels for freedom and democracy” who seem to believe that even electricity and schools belong to the “regime”! As well as thanking the EU that has organized many conferences of “the friends of Syrian people” and each time comes out with an AMAZING way of support to Syrian people: To stress the sanctions!

Whenever we run out of electricity, fuel, diesel, food and bread we remember our “friends of Syrian people” and feel, you can’t imagine how much, we feel grateful for those dear friends!
With such friends, we don’t need any more enemies!

One may say: “France is not supporting jihadists in Syria, it’s just supporting the “rebels” who are fighting for freedom and democracy” and this is why its president Francois Hollande has received Muaz Al-Khatib, the head of the so-called Syrian Opposition National coalition, that has been established in Doha with the presence of the American ambassador to Syria Robert Ford and the prince of Qatar, in his palace in Paris and recognized it as “The legitimate representative of Syrian people.” Well one can know the nature of the those rebels in Syria when you know that Muaz Al-Khatib, that is supposed to be a politician struggling for democracy, was very disappointed with the U.S decision to blacklist “Jabhat Al-Nusra” that is related to Al-Qaeda and is the key military force fighting Syrian army in Syria. Muaz Al-Khatib, in his speech at the Friends of Syria meeting in Marrakesh – Morocco on 12-12-2012, said:

“The decision to blacklist one of the groups fighting the regime as a terrorist organization must be re-examined!“

Sources:
RT: http://rt.com/news/syria-opposition-terrorist-blacklist-915/

The Voice of Russia : http://english.ruvr.ru/2012_12_12/Syria-opposition-asks-US-to-reconsider-blacklisting-Al-Nusra/

And the official site of Muaz Al-Khatib:

http://www.darbuna.net/en/2012/12/13/mouaz-al-khatibs-speech-at-group-of-friends-of-the-syria-people/

As well as the leaders of the so-called FSA and opposition figures who also condemned the American decision and considered Al-Nusra as a “friend” in declarations to France Press agency!
Source (Arabic):
France24.com

Note: This is weird that such declarations by Muaz Al-Khatib and “military opposition or rebels” can’t find a place to be published in the western media, even if you look for it on google! I could only find it in the Arabic version of france24.com because the western politicians know that while Arabic world has a hosting environment for extremism and can have compassion with Al-Nusra and Al-Qaeda, they don’t risk revealing this nature of “rebels” in Syria to the European audience because they want to keep this “white” face of them!
Iyad Khuder January 15, 2012

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Posted in Double standards, France, Hollande, Mali, Nusra Front, War and Terror, War on syria

German Publicist Todenhöfer: Appeal to Barack Obama

Posted on November 14, 2012 | Leave a comment

By Viktor Reznov

– November 13, 2012 – Posted in: Sideviews

The German publicist and journalist Jürgen Todenhöfer (Todenhoefer) has asked to share, print, sign and send this letter (below) to the re-elected U.S. President and so-called Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Barack Obama.

The former politician and book author Jürgen Todenhöfer (Todenhofer) is a known German critic of the US-led wars against Afghanistan and against Iraq and is also sceptical about the last events in Libya as well as in Syria. Mr. Todenhöfer was also the vice chairman of the executive board at German media company Hubert Burda Media till 2008 and he travelled to Syria several times in the last two years.

For Mr. Todenhöfer, the Bush administration was deceiving the public during the war in Iraq and the German journalist and author claims that the US war in Iraq has killed over several hundred thousand Iraqi civilians.

Of course, Mr. Todenhöfer was in Iraq himself, several times, especially for the research to his interesting book “Why do you kill, Zaid?” that people should really read, because it is an interesting piece of truth.
Jürgen Todenhöfer`s appeal to all:
PLEASE SHARE, PRINT, SIGN AND SEND THIS LETTER TO PRESIDENT OBAMA!

The President of the United States of America
Mr. Barack Obama
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Ave. NW.
Washington D.C. 20500
USA

Dear Mr. President,

The events of the last decade force us to rethink our relationship between the West and the Muslim world. Otherwise, like in the past years, we will face one disaster after another.
I think that should put the following 10 points on the top of our considerations.

1: The West is a lot more violent than the Muslim world. Millions of Arabic civilians have been killed since the start of colonialism. Not once in the last 200 years has a Muslim country attacked a western country.

2: Nothing promotes terrorism more than the West’s “anti-terror wars”. They are a
terror-breeding program.

3: Terrorism is not a typically Muslim problem, but a global one instead.

4: Terrorists under the guise of Islam are murderers. Leaders of wars of aggression
violating international law under the guise of Christianity are as well.

5: Muslims were and still are at least as tolerant as Jews and Christians.

6: The love of God and the love of ones neighbor are the main commandments in the
Koran as well, and not just in the Bible.

7: Western politics towards the Muslim world suffer from a frightening ignorance of the simplest facts.

8: The West needs to treat the Muslim world just as fairly and generously as it (rightly) treats Israel. Muslims are worth just as much as Jews and Christians.

9: Muslims need to work towards an Islam of progress and tolerance, as their Prophet
Mohammed did. They need to rip the religious mask from the face of “Muslim terrorism”.

10: The order of the day is the art of statesmanship, not the art of war – in Afghanistan, in Pakistan, in Iraq, in Iran, in Syria and in Palestine.

I ask you to please help redefine our relationship with the Muslim world.

Sincerely,

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The End of the New World Order

Posted on October 20, 2012 | Leave a comment

The upheavals of the early 21st century have changed our world. Now, in the aftermath of failed wars and economic disasters, pressure for a social alternative can only grow

By Seumas Milne

October 19, 2012 “The Guardian” – In the late summer of 2008, two events in quick succession signalled the end of the New World Order. In August, the US client state of Georgia was crushed in a brief but bloody war after it attacked Russian troops in the contested territory of South Ossetia.

The former Soviet republic was a favourite of Washington’s neoconservatives. Its authoritarian president had been lobbying hard for Georgia to join Nato’s eastward expansion. In an unblinking inversion of reality, US vice-president Dick Cheney denounced Russia‘s response as an act of “aggression” that “must not go unanswered”. Fresh from unleashing a catastrophic war on Iraq, George Bush declared Russia’s “invasion of a sovereign state” to be “unacceptable in the 21st century”.

As the fighting ended, Bush warned Russia not to recognise South Ossetia’s independence. Russia did exactly that, while US warships were reduced to sailing around the Black Sea. The conflict marked an international turning point. The US’s bluff had been called, its military sway undermined by the war on terror, Iraq and Afghanistan. After two decades during which it bestrode the world like a colossus, the years of uncontested US power were over.

Three weeks later, a second, still more far-reaching event threatened the heart of the US-dominated global financial system. On 15 September, the credit crisis finally erupted in the collapse of America’s fourth-largest investment bank. The bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers engulfed the western world in its deepest economic crisis since the 1930s.

The first decade of the 21st century shook the international order, turning the received wisdom of the global elites on its head – and 2008 was its watershed. With the end of the cold war, the great political and economic questions had all been settled, we were told. Liberal democracy and free-market capitalism had triumphed. Socialism had been consigned to history. Political controversy would now be confined to culture wars and tax-and-spend trade-offs.

In 1990, George Bush Senior had inaugurated a New World Order, based on uncontested US military supremacy and western economic dominance. This was to be a unipolar world without rivals. Regional powers would bend the knee to the new worldwide imperium. History itself, it was said, had come to an end.

But between the attack on the Twin Towers and the fall of Lehman Brothers, that global order had crumbled. Two factors were crucial. By the end of a decade of continuous warfare, the US had succeeded in exposing the limits, rather than the extent, of its military power. And the neoliberal capitalist model that had reigned supreme for a generation had crashed.

It was the reaction of the US to 9/11 that broke the sense of invincibility of the world’s first truly global empire. The Bush administration’s wildly miscalculated response turned the atrocities in New York and Washington into the most successful terror attack in history.

Not only did Bush’s war fail on its own terms, spawning terrorists across the world, while its campaign of killings, torture and kidnapping discredited Western claims to be guardians of human rights. But the US-British invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq revealed the inability of the global behemoth to impose its will on subject peoples prepared to fight back. That became a strategic defeat for the US and its closest allies.

This passing of the unipolar moment was the first of four decisive changes that transformed the world – in some crucial ways for the better. The second was the fallout from the crash of 2008 and the crisis of the western-dominated capitalist order it unleashed, speeding up relative US decline.

This was a crisis made in America and deepened by the vast cost of its multiple wars. And its most devastating impact was on those economies whose elites had bought most enthusiastically into the neoliberal orthodoxy of deregulated financial markets and unfettered corporate power.

A voracious model of capitalism forced down the throats of the world as the only way to run a modern economy, at a cost of ballooning inequality and environmental degradation, had been discredited – and only rescued from collapse by the greatest state intervention in history. The baleful twins of neoconservatism and neoliberalism had been tried and tested to destruction.

The failure of both accelerated the rise of China, the third epoch-making change of the early 21st century. Not only did the country’s dramatic growth take hundreds of millions out of poverty, but its state-driven investment model rode out the west’s slump, making a mockery of market orthodoxy and creating a new centre of global power. That increased the freedom of manoeuvre for smaller states.

China’s rise widened the space for the tide of progressive change that swept Latin America – the fourth global advance. Across the continent, socialist and social-democratic governments were propelled to power, attacking economic and racial injustice, building regional independence and taking back resources from corporate control. Two decades after we had been assured there could be no alternatives to neoliberal capitalism, Latin Americans were creating them.

These momentous changes came, of course, with huge costs and qualifications. The US will remain the overwhelmingly dominant military power for the foreseeable future; its partial defeats in Iraq and Afghanistan were paid for in death and destruction on a colossal scale; and multipolarity brings its own risks of conflict. The neoliberal model was discredited, but governments tried to refloat it through savage austerity programmes. China’s success was bought at a high price in inequality, civil rights and environmental destruction. And Latin America’s US-backed elites remained determined to reverse the social gains, as they succeeded in doing by violent coup in Honduras in 2009. Such contradictions also beset the revolutionary upheaval that engulfed the Arab world in 2010-11, sparking another shift of global proportions.

By then, Bush’s war on terror had become such an embarrassment that the US government had to change its name to “overseas contingency operations”. Iraq was almost universally acknowledged to have been a disaster, Afghanistan a doomed undertaking. But such chastened realism couldn’t be further from how these campaigns were regarded in the western mainstream when they were first unleashed.

To return to what was routinely said by British and US politicians and their tame pundits in the aftermath of 9/11 is to be transported into a parallel universe of toxic fantasy. Every effort was made to discredit those who rejected the case for invasion and occupation – and would before long be comprehensively vindicated.

Michael Gove, now a Tory cabinet minister, poured vitriol on the Guardian for publishing a full debate on the attacks, denouncing it as a “Prada-Meinhof gang” of “fifth columnists”. Rupert Murdoch’s Sun damned those warning against war as “anti-American propagandists of the fascist left”. When the Taliban regime was overthrown, Blair issued a triumphant condemnation of those (myself included) who had opposed the invasion of Afghanistan and war on terror. We had, he declared, “proved to be wrong”.

A decade later, few could still doubt that it was Blair’s government that had “proved to be wrong”, with catastrophic consequences. The US and its allies would fail to subdue Afghanistan, critics predicted. The war on terror would itself spread terrorism. Ripping up civil rights would have dire consequences – and an occupation of Iraq would be a blood-drenched disaster.

The war party’s “experts”, such as the former “viceroy of Bosnia” Paddy Ashdown, derided warnings that invading Afghanistan would lead to a “long-drawn-out guerrilla campaign” as ”fanciful”. More than 10 years on, armed resistance was stronger than ever and the war had become the longest in American history.

It was a similar story in Iraq – though opposition had by then been given voice by millions on the streets. Those who stood against the invasion were still accused of being “appeasers”. US defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld predicted the war would last six days. Most of the Anglo-American media expected resistance to collapse in short order. They were entirely wrong

A new colonial-style occupation of Iraq would, I wrote in the first week of invasion, “face determined guerrilla resistance long after Saddam Hussein has gone” and the occupiers “be driven out”. British troops did indeed face unrelenting attacks until they were forced out in 2009, as did US regular troops until they were withdrawn in 2011.

But it wasn’t just on the war on terror that opponents of the New World Order were shown to be right and its cheerleaders to be talking calamitous nonsense. For 30 years, the west’s elites insisted that only deregulated markets, privatisation and low taxes on the wealthy could deliver growth and prosperity.

Long before 2008, the “free market” model had been under fierce attack: neoliberalism was handing power to unaccountable banks and corporations, anti-corporate globalisation campaigners argued, fuelling poverty and social injustice and eviscerating democracy – and was both economically and ecologically unsustainable.

In contrast to New Labour politicians who claimed “boom and bust” to be a thing of the past, critics dismissed the idea that the capitalist trade cycle could be abolished as absurd. Deregulation, financialisation and the reckless promotion of debt-fuelled speculation would, in fact, lead to crisis.

The large majority of economists who predicted that the neoliberal model was heading for breakdown were, of course, on the left. So while in Britain the main political parties all backed “light-touch regulation” of finance, its opponents had long argued that City liberalisation threatened the wider economy.

Critics warned that privatising public services would cost more, drive down pay and conditions and fuel corruption. Which is exactly what happened. And in the European Union, where corporate privilege and market orthodoxy were embedded into treaty, the result was ruinous. The combination of liberalised banking with an undemocratic, lopsided and deflationary currency union that critics (on both left and right in this case) had always argued risked breaking apart was a disaster waiting to happen. The crash then provided the trigger.

The case against neoliberal capitalism had been overwhelmingly made on the left, as had opposition to the US-led wars of invasion and occupation. But it was strikingly slow to capitalise on its vindication over the central controversies of the era. Hardly surprising, perhaps, given the loss of confidence that flowed from the left’s 20th-century defeats – including in its own social alternatives.

But driving home the lessons of these disasters was essential if they were not to be repeated. Even after Iraq and Afghanistan, the war on terror was pursued in civilian-slaughtering drone attacks from Pakistan to Somalia. The western powers played the decisive role in the overthrow of the Libyan regime – acting in the name of protecting civilians, who then died in their thousands in a Nato-escalated civil war, while conflict-wracked Syria was threatened with intervention and Iran with all-out attack.

And while neoliberalism had been discredited, western governments used the crisis to try to entrench it. Not only were jobs, pay and benefits cut as never before, but privatisation was extended still further. Being right was, of course, never going to be enough. What was needed was political and social pressure strong enough to turn the tables of power.

Revulsion against a discredited elite and its failed social and economic project steadily deepened after 2008. As the burden of the crisis was loaded on to the majority, the spread of protests, strikes and electoral upheavals demonstrated that pressure for real change had only just begun. Rejection of corporate power and greed had become the common sense of the age.

The historian Eric Hobsbawm described the crash of 2008 as a “sort of right-wing equivalent to the fall of the Berlin wall”. It was commonly objected that after the implosion of communism and traditional social democracy, the left had no systemic alternative to offer. But no model ever came pre-cooked. All of them, from Soviet power and the Keynesian welfare state to Thatcherite-Reaganite neoliberalism, grew out of ideologically driven improvisation in specific historical circumstances.

The same would be true in the aftermath of the crisis of the neoliberal order, as the need to reconstruct a broken economy on a more democratic, egalitarian and rational basis began to dictate the shape of a sustainable alternative. Both the economic and ecological crisis demanded social ownership, public intervention and a shift of wealth and power. Real life was pushing in the direction of progressive solutions.

The upheavals of the first years of the 21st century opened up the possibility of a new kind of global order, and of genuine social and economic change. As communists learned in 1989, and the champions of capitalism discovered 20 years later, nothing is ever settled.

This is an edited extract from The Revenge of History: the Battle for the 21st Century by Seumas Milne, published by Verso. Buy it for £16 at guardianbookshop.co.uk

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article32804.htm

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Posted in 9/11, Afghanistan, China, Economy, Iraq war, New World Ordder, Resistance, War and Terror, War Crimes and Criminals

CNN wonders if ‘rebels’ are turning into ‘terrorists’

Posted on October 18, 2012 | Leave a comment

FLC

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Posted in CNN, Free Syrian Army, War and Terror, War on syria

When Is The Syrian ‘Opposition’ Syrian?

Posted on October 8, 2012 | Leave a comment

When Is The Syrian ‘Opposition’ Syrian?

“Do people around here talk about the Syrian crises?” I ask.

“They do, of course”, answers the waiter. “Do they talk about the training of the so called ‘Syrian opposition’”? I press further. “Some do”, he smiles evasively. There is a girl working nearby. We ask her about surveillance.

“Of course my phone is tapped,“ she replies. “But that is nothing unusual. They are tapping everyone’s phones around here. Other things happen as well, but I can’t talk about them.” My colleague and friend Levent (he has to be identified only by his first name, for safety reasons) joins the discussion:

“Wiretapping is just one of the most innocent things this government does. It is not only used for collecting intelligence, but also for character assassination of those who dare to stand in its way. For instance, the phones of the generals who declared their outrage and opposition over western involvement in Turkish affairs had been tapped, their conversation flow recorded and broken up to be fabricated into ludicrous but extremely damaging sentences, electronically.”

Incirlik however – is just the beginning of our journey. We drive 200 kilometers to the city of Hatay – a culturally and religiously diverse southernmost Turkish metropolis near the several border crossings to Syria. Most of the way the highway is suspiciously smooth and fast, perfect for the deployment of troops. It is clear that in Hatay almost everyone is afraid to talk, from the local barbers to shop owners, hotel receptionists or even the majority of common passersby. Suleyman, an owner of a huge coffee shop with several impressive water pipes is one exception, but even he prefers to keep his full name and the name of his business anonymous:

“People that the west describes as ‘Syrian opposition’ are considered here, in Hatay, as just a bunch of renegades and bandits. It is hard to believe they actually call them refugees! Refugees with guns, roaming our streets; get real! They are not good people. Almost all of them wear beards, carry guns and make our citizens frightened.”

A uniformed police officer appears at the door as we speak. He gives us an inquisitive look and disappears as suddenly as he entered. “90% of Syrian people are in favor of Assad’s government and only countries like Saudi Arabia and Qatar are supportive of the ‘opposition’, and of course the West,” continues Suleyman. Soon a small circle of people is formed around our table. Once they hear that I am not ‘one of those official media people’, they begin gesturing and talking over each other, explaining that Hatay – the city they love and feel proud of – is renowned for the peaceful coexistence of various ethnic and religious groups.

“There are Syrians living here for ages, as well as Armenians, Jews and other diverse ethnic groups. There are Sunni, Shia and several Muslim sects. We used to all live in peace!” “Hatay is very close to Syria”, explains an old man, sipping his strong tea. “90% of the people here are somehow linked to the major city of Aleppo just across the border. And this place – Hatay – even used to be an independent republic; it only joined Turkey in 1939.”

Then Suleyman who obviously has more on his mind, speaks:

“People here believe that the US and the west in general are heavily involved in the conflict in Syria, and that they are grooming the opposition which is both very religious and very intolerant. Hillary Clinton was here in Turkey, and she openly declared that her country would be supporting the ‘refugees’. Now, to make it clear, these people that are being called ‘refugees’ come to our city, and they rent houses here and then many of them are walking around fully armed, waving their machine guns. What is on everyone’s mind here is that they did not come here just to fight the war at the other side of the border – they appear to be quite ready and capable of igniting the violence in Hatay itself.”

But the right wing, pro-government media in the country is using a rather different, and more complicated language to justify the support Turkey is giving to the ‘refugees’. Today’s Zaman newspaper on August 29, 2012 noted:

“Exploiting the issue of Syrian refugees in domestic politics in order to criticize the government is a cause for concern, according to many analysts in Turkey, who believe that the tensions that have occasionally broken out in recent weeks between local Turkish people and Syrians who have taken refuge in Turkey should not be exploited by the opposition; nor should the issue be treated as one of internal politics.”

We drive to the border. It is almost a full moon when we arrive at the Cilvegozu crossing, barbed wiring and watchtowers on both sides of the access road. There are a few cars with Syrian license plates in front of an enormous metal gate, and there are several Turkish taxis waiting seemingly idly by the side of the road. But periodically the gate opens and the cars come in and out. My Turkish colleague inquires if we can pass to the other side and talk to the Syrian border guard. The answer is a resolute “No!” – no Turks and no foreigners are allowed to cross here. The border is open – 24 hours a day – but only for Syrian citizens and the ‘refugees’. Mehmet is a local taxi driver who is shuttling Syrian citizens between two sides of the border. He is at first reluctant and suspicious, but eventually he agrees to talk: “Hundreds of people pass through this gate every day”, he explains. “And this is not the only one – there are of course other crossings in the area. Some people who come here are injured.

Syrian border guards are very lenient: if they see that civilians have been caught in the crossfire, they let them pass without any hindrance.

And once in Turkey, they get registered, processed, housed.” He confirms that the border is only for Syrians and the ‘others’ (he does not elaborate, as we are supposed to know): “We can only take the people to the other side, to the Syrian post, and then return having picked up others from there. Everything is organized; it is not like some spontaneous border traffic like in the old days.”Apaydin village is just a few minutes drive from the road connecting Hatay and the border at Cilvegozu. There are refugee camps; at least two of them.

Officially all these camps are supposed to be for the immigrants escaping violence in Syria, but we are told that one camp is strictly for ‘fighters’ and the other one for civilians.

“The nearest camp is for those who have been fighting against Assad”, explains a fruit seller at the side of the road. “There is a constant military presence around that camp. We are so unhappy about the Syrians coming back and forth! We are afraid, but nobody would pay any attention to us.”

As we make our way towards Apaydin camp, we are in constant telephone contact with the investigative journalist, Huseyin Guler. He keeps sending warnings:

“I went 3 times near those camps. Yesterday we tried to enter the Apaydin camp but the guards became aggressive and tried to grab my equipment and to delete the photos. We resisted! They tried to take my cameras by force, but we said: ‘you’d have to fight us! We will defend our equipment. At the end they backed up, but only after some physical brawling. And this time we just tried to photograph the camp from a distance.

Before disappearing, I found one sympathetic soldier. I asked him: ‘There must be some serious reason why we are not allowed to take photos.’ ‘Yes’, he replied: ‘There are commandos and soldiers from the Syrian opposition inside this camp’”.

Now we are here. I have plenty of experience with photographing army camps. Just in the last two months I managed to sneak into those near the warzones in Africa: on the Ugandan and DR Congo border, as well as to the one near Gisenyi in Rwanda. But Apaydin Camp is differentt.

To be precise, this is no Red Cross or UNHCR facility; there are no signs of usual refugees, like baby clothes drying, families sitting idly near the fence, cooking fires sending smoke towards the sky. From the first glimpse, this is one heavy combat camp, surrounded by layers of barbed wire, with watchtowers, soldiers pacing back and forth along the perimeter. Tents are minimalistic and the entrance is like that to some military base.

We drive at regular speed surveying all the possible angles for photographing. Then one sharp 180-degree turn and we begin working: in a slow movement across the front of the gate. I use a very fast professional Nikon. All goes well, but the guard is also fast, and he begins to signal at us, trying to make us stop. We ignore him, making another fast 180-degree turn and hitting the dirt road along the perimeter, although at some distance from the soldiers. It is not much but it is something. I let the motor of the camera run and take a sequence of shots, from several angles.

My Turkish colleague is at the wheel and he is as good and steady as one gets.“I was inside Apaydin Camp only once”, explains Huseyin Guler, when we finally manage to meet in a safe place in Hatay. “I actually did not enter; I was dragged inside – I was detained! Others are luckier, but not many. For instance yesterday, a Russian journalist – Fatma – was for some reason allowed to go in. Later she said that those so called refugees are directly ‘fed’ with US intelligence.”

“You see, I have been working here now as an investigative journalist for one year and eight months. I shuttle between the border and the camps. Fighters leave Apaydin Camp in the middle of the night. And they return before dawn. We did our surveillance. Local villagers are confirming that the armed groups are regularly crossing the border at Kizilcat, which is actually a Turkmen village in origin. They march with the weapons on their backs. Across the border from Kizilcat, there used to be a Syrian control post, but now there is none. So the fighters crossing to Syria are managing to train the locals and to return before dawn. Turkish border guards just let them pass.

Four months ago a Syrian MP came to Hatay. He protested at the murder of 120 Syrian officials in his country. CIA, Mossad and MIT (Turkish intelligence) immediately began pointing the finger at Assad and the government, but in this part of the world almost everyone knows who is really responsible.”

Huseyin Guler than recalls how he went, six months ago, to the meeting of the ‘refugees’ where he was told that they were invited there by the PM of Turkey himself – Mr Erdogan – and that if they were given money, weapons and training, they would be willing and happy to fight Assad’s government. Mr. Guler filed the story for Aydenlik. And the Turkish government never disputed it. He added, “In another border village – Asagi Pullu Yazi – I once met people who were coming directly from the fighting. One of the fighters said his cousin had been injured and was in the hospital. He even insisted that I know and use his name – Ahmed Mullah Hassan.”

For months I have been meeting Mr Serkan Koc, leading Turkish documentary filmmaker and the chairman of National TV (Ulusal TV) at a discreet café of Pera Museum in Istanbul. We have been exchanging our documentary films and at one point Mr Koc interviewed me for his television station. But mainly we discussed Syria. He offered great insight into the occurrences at the border; he even supplied me with his own photos taken in Syria, permitting me to use them in my reports. This time, when I went to the border, he was helping to coordinate my steps remotely, over the phone, and supplying me with the details of his investigation:

“Of course you do realize that those people are not really ‘Syrian opposition’. They are modern-day legionnaires collected from various Arab countries, including Qatar and Saudi Arabia, paid by western imperialist powers. Some are members of Al-Qaeda and other terrorist organizations. Most are militant Sunni Muslims. One could describe them as rogue elements hired to fight the Assad government. It is important to point out that some 90% of Syrian people are still supporting Assad and I think he is now actually winning the war, although reading the western media you would never think so. Assad is enjoying the support of China, Russia, Latin America, Iran, Hezbollah, and many other countries and movements world-wide. The Turkish government is clearly in decline, supporting those terrorist elements the west calls the ‘Syrian opposition’.

Levent is my friend of many years and this report was supposed to be signed by both of us, but at the last moment he decides that it would not be safe for him: over one thousand people in Turkey are already in prison, some tortured.

The victims are nationalist (anti-western) military officers and generals, journalists and intellectuals. Levent is a young Turkish intellectual. After some hesitation he offers his theory:

“I don’t see all this as a regional problem. Syria is just one pawn in a tremendous game that is destroying the nation-states worldwide. The US and the west are intervening in Iraq, Libya and now in Syria with absolute impunity. Syria and Iran are two obstacles to absolute control over the Middle East by predominantly western business interests. It is all about control of the natural resources, of the people, the armies… World government project, with the west giving orders exclusively.”

Levent sees the Turkish government as a major and negative regional player:

“The present Turkish leadership is clearly under the influence of western imperialist powers. But the way it behaves – is all very blurry and designed to confuse people. On the world stage, the Turkish government tries to portray itself as decisively anti-Israeli, but just look at the military arrangements between the two countries, including the air force base in Konya which is still helping to train Israeli military pilots!”

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Posted in Turkey, War and Terror, War on syria

Syria Did not Apologize to Turkey: Al-Jafari

Posted on October 5, 2012 | Leave a comment

Local Editor

Syria’s Permanent Envoy to the UN Security Council Bashar Al-Jafari stated Thursday that the Syrian government did not send any apology letter to the Turkish government as the latter claimed, and assured that it will not send such a apology letter over the shells that were fired from the Syrian side killing five Turks and wounding a number.

Speaking to El-Nashra news website, Al-Jafari stressed that

“the Syrian government is working on investigating the accident and not on apologizing,” reiterating that Syrian Information Minister Omran Al- Zoabi’s statement was the government’s official statement and it did not include any apology.

“We have waited one year and eight months for the Turkish government to present an apology over its acts in Syria. It is a tragic development that a Turkish woman was killed with her three children, and we sympathize with that with all what it takes because she is an innocent Turkish citizen,” the Syrian official further said.

As he emphasized that the Syrian government did not know who fired the shells, he pointed out that “in that region there are many groups that are interested in creating conflict between Syria and Turkey.”

Moreover, Al-Jafari clarified that

“we did not hear from the Turkish side any sympathy or solidarity with the innocent Syrian citizens who were killed in the terror explosions of Aleppo. Therefore, we must be fair in our approaches.”

Turkey’s Deputy Prime Minister, Besir Atalay had claimed earlier Thursday that “Syria has admitted it was responsible for the shelling that killed five civilians on Turkish soil and has apologized.”
“The deputy premier also said Syria assured that “such an incident would not be repeated.”

River to Sea Uprooted Palestinian
The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of this Blog!

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Posted in Muslim Brotherhood, Nato Crimes, Turkey, War and Terror, War on syria

Videos: Dirty hands of " Israel " in Syria

Posted on October 4, 2012 | Leave a comment

Only five percent of “insurgents” in Syria are Syrians – the rest are vicious foreign mercenaries paid by the Zionist Cabal alliance.

“The exploitation of the Palestinian people? The criminal Zionist enterprise ” Israel” should be permanently blocked and alienated from the ” International Community” and from participating in any kind of trade – it’s colonial past in South Africa and colonization of Palestine – its war on and infiltration in the destabilization of the Middle East are international crimes and crimes of humanity. “Israel” is a genuinely abnormal entity and should be declared insane; it is characterized by mental derangement causing unrest and danger to the world. Hiyam Naour June 18 2012

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