West Pours Arms into Syria as Al Qaeda Mass Slaughters Civilians

Tony Cartalucci
Activist Post

Repeat a lie often enough, and hopefully people will begin to believe it. That is what a concerted effort by Western media houses hopes to achieve as they claim the recent flow of heavy weapons from Western nations and their Arab-Israeli partners is boosting “moderate rebels” and “tilting” the balance of Syria’s conflict against the Syrian government.

The Washington Post in particular, sets the tempo for this coordinated propaganda campaign, claiming in their report, “In Syria, new influx of weapons to rebels tilts the battle against Assad,” that:

A surge of rebel advances in Syria is being fueled at least in part by an influx of heavy weaponry in a renewed effort by outside powers to arm moderates in the Free Syrian Army, according to Arab and rebel officials.

The report also states:

The officials declined to identify the source of the newly provided weapons, but they noted that the countries most closely involved in supporting the rebels’ campaign to oust Assad have grown increasingly alarmed at the soaring influence of Islamists over the fragmented rebel movement. They include the United States and its major European allies, along with Turkey and the United Arab Emirates, and Saudi Arabia and Qatar, the two countries most directly involved in supplying the rebels. 

The Washington Post refuses to use the term, “Al Qaeda,” and instead labels the international, Persian Gulf financed, armed, and harbored terror organization as, “radical Islamists.”

It quotes an unnamed Arab official as saying:

If you want to weaken al-Nusra, you do it not by withholding [weapons] but by boosting the other groups. 

Al Qaeda and the “Moderates” are One and the Same

Al-Nusra, of course, is Al Qaeda in Syria and is linked directly to the openly Western-created and backed “moderate” opposition. Moaz al-Khatib, leader of the so-called National Coalition, demanded the US take al-Nusra in particular off their list of sanctioned terrorist organizations. In December of 2012, Reuters quoted al-Khatib as saying:

The decision to consider a party that is fighting the regime as a terrorist party needs to be reviewed. We might disagree with some parties and their ideas and their political and ideological vision. But we affirm that all the guns of the rebels are aimed at overthrowing the tyrannical criminal regime. 

In the same article, Reuters would admit:

The United States designated the Jabhat al-Nusra (Nusra Front) as a foreign terrorist organisation and said it was trying to hijack the revolt on behalf of al Qaeda in Iraq. 

While the Washington Post tries to claim Al Qaeda is somehow a separate entity from the “Syrian opposition,” the West’s own opposition front openly defends and supports Al Qaeda’s ongoing violence, which most recently manifested itself in a car bomb targeting scores of civilians, including school children.

As the West simultaneously accuses Saudi Arabia and Qatar (and here) of being the primary financiers of Al Qaeda, it itself has admitted years before the so-called “Syrian uprising” began that it was itself funding and arming extremist groups with direct ties to Al Qaeda with the goal of fostering the very violence now taking place in Syria and along its peripheries. The purpose of now repeatedly lying about arming only “moderate” militants in Syria, is to cover up both past admissions that the West planned to overthrow both Syria and neighboring Iran by arming and funding Al Qaeda since at least 2007, as well as obvious evidence that they arein fact doing just that in Syria now.

Image: (Left) The US Army West Point Combating Terrorism Center’s 2007 report, “Al-Qa’ida’s Foreign Fighters in Iraq” indicated which areas in Syria Al Qaeda fighters filtering into Iraq came from. The overwhelming majority of them came from Dayr Al-Zawr in Syria’s southeast, Idlib in the north near the Turkish-Syrian border, and Dar’a (Daraa) in the south near the Jordanian-Syrian border. (Right) A map indicating the epicenters of violence in Syria indicate that the exact same hotbeds for Al Qaeda in 2007, now serve as the epicenters of so-called “pro-democracy fighters.” The Washington Post now claims that arming militants near Dar’a (Daraa) will help keep weapons out of extremists’ hands, despite the US Army long-ago identifying it as one of many Al Qaeda hotbeds. 

US Admissions to Arming Al Qaeda in Syria as Early as 2007 

In 2007, the Wall Street Journal published an article titled, “To Check Syria, U.S. Explores Bond With Muslim Brothers” which stated:

On a humid afternoon in late May, about 100 supporters of Syria’s largest exile opposition group, the National Salvation Front, gathered outside Damascus’s embassy here to protest Syrian President Bashar Assad’s rule. The participants shouted anti-Assad slogans and raised banners proclaiming: “Change the Regime Now.”

Later in the article, it would be revealed that the National Salvation Front (NSF) was in contact with the US State Department and that a Washington-based consulting firm in fact assisted the NSF in organizing the rally:

In the weeks before the presidential election, the State Department’s Middle East Partnership Initiative, which promotes regional democracy, and NSF members met to talk about publicizing Syria’s lack of democracy and low voter turnout, participants say. A Washington-based consulting firm, C&O Resources Inc., assisted the NSF in its planning for the May 26 anti-Assad rally at the Syrian embassy, providing media and political contacts. State Department officials stress they provided no financial or technical support to the protestors.

The article then admits:

One of the NSF’s most influential members is the Syrian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood — the decades-old political movement active across the Middle East whose leaders have inspired the terrorist groups Hamas and al Qaeda. Its Syrian offshoot says it has renounced armed struggle in favor of democratic reform. 

Also in 2007, reported by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh in his New Yorker article, “The Redirection,” it was stated (emphasis added):

To undermine Iran, which is predominantly Shiite, the Bush Administration has decided, in effect, to reconfigure its priorities in the Middle East. In Lebanon, the Administration has cooperated with Saudi Arabia’s government, which is Sunni, in clandestine operations that are intended to weaken Hezbollah, the Shiite organization that is backed by Iran. The U.S. has also taken part in clandestine operations aimed at Iran and its ally Syria. A by-product of these activities has been the bolstering of Sunni extremist groups that espouse a militant vision of Islam and are hostile to America and sympathetic to Al Qaeda. 

Hersh’s report would continue by stating:

the Saudi government, with Washington’s approval, would provide funds and logistical aid to weaken the government of President Bashir Assad, of Syria. The Israelis believe that putting such pressure on the Assad government will make it more conciliatory and open to negotiations. –The Redirection, Seymour Hersh (2007)

Further admissions of a joint US-Israeli-Saudi conspiracy against Syria included:

…[Saudi Arabia’s] Bandar and other Saudis have assured the White House that “they will keep a very close eye on the religious fundamentalists. Their message to us was ‘We’ve created this movement, and we can control it.’ It’s not that we don’t want the Salafis to throw bombs; it’s who they throw them at—Hezbollah, Moqtada al-Sadr, Iran, and at the Syrians, if they continue to work with Hezbollah and Iran. –The Redirection, Seymour Hersh (2007) 

In regards to sectarian extremism in particular it was forewarned that:

Robert Baer, a former longtime C.I.A. agent in Lebanon, has been a severe critic of Hezbollah and has warned of its links to Iranian-sponsored terrorism. But now, he told me, “we’ve got Sunni Arabs preparing for cataclysmic conflict, and we will need somebody to protect the Christians in Lebanon. It used to be the French and the United States who would do it, and now it’s going to be Nasrallah and the Shiites” –The Redirection, Seymour Hersh (2007) 

While the Western media now concedes that Al Qaeda is playing a primary role in Syria’s violence, it not only is pretending as if open, and repeated admissions by US, Saudi, and Lebanese officials as far back as 2007 to organize and arm Al Qaeda in the first place never happened, it continuously attempts to frame Al Qaeda as being somehow separate, even opposed to “moderate rebels” – despite these “moderates” defending and embracing Al Qaeda’s al-Nusra front by name.

However, the West most certainly did organize, arm, and fund Al Qaeda ahead of the so-called “uprising,” and for each time the Washington Post, CNN, the BBC, the Guardian, or any other corporate-financier propaganda organization attempts to repeat lies regarding the West’s role in fomenting Syria’s current crisis, the truth must likewise be repeated.

The West with its Israeli, Saudi, and Qatari partners, created and have since fueled Al Qaeda for over 3 decades using them both as the ultimate casus belli and as an inexhaustible mercenary force from Mali, Algeria, and Libya, to Syria, Iraq, Iran, and Pakistan. Al Qaeda linked extremists are finding themselves a lynchpin in the West’s geopolitical agenda even as far as Southeast Asia where so-called “fundamentalist” groups are linking up with Wall Street’s proxy Anwar Ibrahim in Malaysia.

Ultimately, the Washington Post concedes that terrorists are failing in Syria, and that even with the influx of heavy weapons, regime change may still be a far fetched goal. By matching the West’s repeated lies, with the repeated truth, we can prevent the attempted rewriting of the West’s admitted and shameful role in creating this 2-year-long bloodbath as far back as 2007. Similarly, we must identify the corporate-financier interests driving this agenda – interests we most likely patronize on a daily basis, and both boycott and permanently replace them to erode the unwarranted influence they have used to both plan and execute this assault on Syria’s people.

Tony Cartalucci’s articles have appeared on many alternative media websites, including his own at Land Destroyer Report, Alternative Thai News Network and LocalOrg. Read other contributed articles by Tony Cartalucci here.