Page 1 of
3 A
mistaken case for Syrian regime
change By Aisling Byrne
"War with Iran is already here," wrote a
leading Israeli commentator recently, describing
"the combination of covert warfare and
international pressure" being applied to Iran.
Although not mentioned, the "strategic
prize" of the first stage of this war on Iran is
Syria; the first campaign in a much wider
sectarian power-bid. "Other than the collapse of
the Islamic Republic itself," Saudi King Abdullah
was reported to have said last summer, "nothing
would weaken Iran more than losing Syria." [1]
By December, senior United States
officials were explicit about their regime change
agenda for Syria: Tom Donilon, the US National
Security Adviser, explained that the "end of the
[President Bashar al-]Assad regime would
constitute Iran's
greatest setback in the
region yet - a strategic blow that will further
shift the balance of power in the region against
Iran."
Shortly before, a key official in
terms of operationalizing this policy, Under
Secretary of State for the Near East Jeffrey
Feltman, had stated at a congressional hearing
that the US would "relentlessly pursue our
two-track strategy of supporting the opposition
and diplomatically and financially strangling the
[Syrian] regime until that outcome is achieved".
[2]
What we are seeing in Syria is a
deliberate and calculated campaign to bring down
the Assad government so as to replace it with a
regime "more compatible" with US interests in the
region.
The blueprint for this project is
essentially a report produced by the
neo-conservative Brookings Institute for regime
change in Iran in 2009. The report - "Which Path
to Persia?" [3] - continues to be the generic
strategic approach for US-led regime change in the
region.
A rereading of it, together with
the more recent "Towards a Post-Assad Syria" [4]
(which adopts the same language and perspective,
but focuses on Syria, and was recently produced by
two US neo-conservative think-tanks) illustrates
how developments in Syria have been shaped
according to the step-by-step approach detailed in
the "Paths to Persia" report with the same key
objective: regime change.
The authors of
these reports include, among others, John Hannah
and Martin Indyk, both former senior
neo-conservative officials from the George W
Bush/Dick Cheney administration, and both
advocates for regime change in Syria. [5] Not for
the first time are we seeing a close alliance
between US/British neo-cons with Islamists
(including, reports show [6], some with links to
al-Qaeda) working together to bring about regime
change in an "enemy" state.
Arguably, the
most important component in this struggle for the
"strategic prize" has been the deliberate
construction of a largely false narrative that
pits unarmed democracy demonstrators being killed
in their hundreds and thousands as they protest
peacefully against an oppressive, violent regime,
a "killing machine" [7] led by the "monster" [8]
Assad.
Whereas in Libya, the North
Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) claimed it had
"no confirmed reports of civilian casualties"
because, as the New York Times wrote recently,
"the alliance had created its own definition for
'confirmed': only a death that NATO itself
investigated and corroborated could be called
confirmed".
"But because the alliance
declined to investigate allegations," the Times
wrote, "its casualty tally by definition could not
budge - from zero". [9]
In Syria, we see
the exact opposite: the majority of Western
mainstream media outlets, along with the media of
the US's allies in the region, particularly
al-Jazeera and the Saudi-owned al-Arabiya TV
channels, are effectively collaborating with the
"regime change" narrative and agenda with a
near-complete lack of questioning or investigation
of statistics and information put out by
organizations and media outlets that are either
funded or owned by the US/European/Gulf alliance -
the very same countries instigating the regime
change project in the first place.
Claims
of "massacres", "campaigns of rape targeting women
and girls in predominantly Sunni towns" [10]
"torture" and even "child-rape" [11] are reported
by the international press based largely on two
sources - the British-based Syrian Observatory of
Human Rights and the Local Co-ordination
Committees (LCCs) - with minimal additional
checking or verification.
Hiding behind
the rubric - "we are not able to verify these
statistics" - the lack of integrity in reporting
by the Western mainstream media has been starkly
apparent since the onset of events in Syria. A
decade after the Iraq war, it would seem that no
lessons from 2003 - from the demonization of
Saddam Hussein and his purported weapons of mass
destruction - have been learnt.
Of the
three main sources for all data on numbers of
protesters killed and numbers of people attending
demonstrations - the pillars of the narrative -
all are part of the "regime change" alliance.
The Syrian Observatory of Human Rights, in
particular, is reportedly funded through a
Dubai-based fund with pooled (and therefore
deniable) Western-Gulf money (Saudi Arabia alone
has, according to Elliot Abrams [12] allocated
US$130 billion to "palliate the masses" of the
Arab Spring).
What appears to be a
nondescript British-based organization, the
Observatory has been pivotal in sustaining the
narrative of the mass killing of thousands of
peaceful protesters using inflated figures,
"facts", and often exaggerated claims of
"massacres" and even recently "genocide".
Although it claims to be based in its
director's house [13], the Observatory has been
described as the "front office" of a large media
propaganda set-up run by the Syrian opposition and
its backers. The Russian Foreign Ministry [14]
stated starkly:
The agenda of the [Syrian]
transitional council [is] composed in London by
the Syrian Observatory of Human Rights ... It is
also there where pictures of 'horror' in Syria
are made to stir up hatred towards Assad's
regime.
The Observatory is not
legally registered either as a company or charity
in the United Kingdom, but operates informally; it
has no office, no staff and its director is
reportedly awash with funding.
It receives
its information, it says, from a network of
"activists" inside Syria; its English-language
website is a single page with al-Jazeera instead
hosting a minute-by-minute live blog page for it
since the outset of protests. [15]
The
second, the LCCs, are a more overt part of the
opposition's media infrastructure, and their
figures and reporting is similarly encompassed
only [16] within the context of this main
narrative: in an analysis of their daily reports,
I couldn't find a single reference to any armed
insurgents being killed: reported deaths are of
"martyrs", "defector soldiers", people killed in
"peaceful demonstrations" and similar
descriptions.
The third is al-Jazeera,
whose biased role in "reporting" the Awakenings
has been well documented. Described by one
seasoned media analyst [17] as the "sophisticated
mouthpiece of the state of Qatar and its ambitious
emir", al-Jazeera is integral to Qatar's
"foreign-policy aspirations".
Al-Jazeera
has, and continues, [18] to provide technical
support, equipment, hosting and "credibility" to
Syrian opposition activists and organizations.
Reports show that as early as March 2011,
al-Jazeera was providing messaging and technical
support to exiled Syrian opposition activists [19]
, who even by January 2010 were co-ordinating
their messaging activities from Doha.
Nearly 10 months on, however, and despite
the daily international media onslaught, the
project isn't exactly going to plan: a YouGov poll
commissioned by the Qatar Foundation [20] showed
last week that 55% of Syrians do not want Assad to
resign and 68% of Syrians disapprove of the Arab
League sanctions imposed on their country.
According to the poll, Assad's support has
effectively increased since the onset of current
events - 46% of Syrians felt Assad was a "good"
president for Syria prior to current events in the
country - something that certainly doesn't fit
with the false narrative being peddled.
As
if trumpeting the success of their own propaganda
campaign, the poll summary concludes:
The majority of Arabs believe
Syria's President Basher al-Assad should resign
in the wake of the regime's brutal treatment of
protesters ... 81% of Arabs [want] President
Assad to step down. They believe Syria would be
better off if free democratic elections were
held under the supervision of a transitional
government. [21]
One is left
wondering who exactly is Assad accountable to -
the Syrian people or the Arab public? A blurring
of lines that might perhaps be useful as two main
Syrian opposition groups have just announced [22]
that while they are against foreign military
intervention, they do not consider "Arab
intervention" to be foreign.
Unsurprisingly, not a single mainstream
major newspaper or news outlet reported the YouGov
poll results - it doesn't fit their narrative.
In the UK, the volunteer-run Muslim News
[23] was the only newspaper to report the
findings; yet only two weeks before in the
immediate aftermath of the suicide explosions in
Damascus, both the Guardian [24], like other
outlets, within hours of the explosions were
publishing sensational, unsubstantiated reports
from bloggers, including one who was "sure that
some of the bodies ... were those of
demonstrators".
"They have planted bodies
before," he said; "they took dead people from
Dera'a [in the south] and showed the media bodies
in Jisr al-Shughour [near the Turkish border.]"
Recent reports have cast serious doubt on
the accuracy of the false narrative peddled daily
by the mainstream international press, in
particular information put out by the Syrian
Observatory for Human Rights and the LCCs.
In December, the mainstream US
intelligence group Stratfor cautioned:
Most of the [Syrian] opposition's
more serious claims have turned out to be
grossly exaggerated or simply untrue ...
revealing more about the opposition's weaknesses
than the level of instability inside the Syrian
regime. [25]
Throughout the
nine-month uprising, Stratfor has advised caution
on accuracy of the mainstream narrative on Syria:
in September it commented that "with two sides to
every war ... the war of perceptions in Syria is
no exception". [26]
Syrian Observatory for
Human Rights and LCC reports, "like those from the
regime, should be viewed with skepticism", argues
Stratfor; "the opposition understands that it
needs external support, specifically financial
support, if it is to be a more robust movement
than it is now. To that end, it has every reason
to present the facts on the ground in a way that
makes the case for foreign backing."
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