US in Syria: How to Build a Terror-State

By Tony Cartalucci

A nation is its institutions, and should those institutions weaken, the nation itself will be weakened. And should those institutions be destroyed, the nation, for all intents and purposes, will also be destroyed.

A dramatic example of how to destroy a nation unfolded in 2003 in Iraq as a US led axis invaded and occupied it, intentionally targeting and destroying Iraqi institutions and essential infrastructure, including the police, military, and the government as well as bridges, electricity, and communications.

In the ruins left in the wake of the US-led invasion, through the “Coalition Provisional Authority,” US and European corporations were invited in to not only rebuild these institutions and infrastructure, but to do so in a manner making them dependent on and profitable to US-European corporate-financier interests well into the foreseeable future.

The West’s vast influence in Iraq today is owed to this process. While it is likely the West envisioned a client state far more obedient and subservient to Western interests than Iraq is today, the complicity it does receive across Iraq and even across the wider region, is vastly greater than before the 2003 invasion.

The US State Department through the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) continue to undermine local, independent institutions and infrastructure in favor of US-funded and directed institutions as well as US-controlled infrastructure. It is the mechanics of modern day empire.

While Iraq is an extreme example of just how far and overt this process can be, the United States is repeating this same process the world over through direct and indirect military operations or more subtly through the use of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs).

America’s Burgeoning Terror-State in the Levant

In Syria, the United States has engineered and perpetuated a proxy war against the government in Damascus and its Russian and Iranian allies beginning in 2011. Before even the armed conflict began in 2011, the United States admittedly poured resources into opposition groups including the Muslim Brotherhood to prepare the ground for violent subversion.

In 2007, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh would write in his 9-page report, “The Redirection: Is the Administration’s new policy benefitting our enemies in the war on terrorism?” that:

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 now prophetic report would also reveal US support for the Muslim Brotherhood:

There is evidence that the Administration’s redirection strategy has already benefitted the Brotherhood. The Syrian National Salvation Front is a coalition of opposition groups whose principal members are a faction led by Abdul Halim Khaddam, a former Syrian Vice-President who defected in 2005, and the Brotherhood. A former high-ranking C.I.A. officer told me, “The Americans have provided both political and financial support. The Saudis are taking the lead with financial support, but there is American involvement.”

The US, through backing a large, alternative political front, was already well on its way in 2007 toward creating a parallel state within Syria to eventually undermine and overthrow before eventually absorbing the Syrian nation.

As hostilities began, the US augmented its proxy political party with both opposition media fronts and armed militant groups – essentially the creation of mass media and an army for its growing parallel terror state.

The New York Times in 2013 would admit in an article titled, “Arms Airlift to Syria Rebels Expands, With Aid From C.I.A.,” that:

With help from the C.I.A., Arab governments and Turkey have sharply increased their military aid to Syria’s opposition fighters in recent months, expanding a secret airlift of arms and equipment for the uprising against President Bashar al-Assad, according to air traffic data, interviews with officials in several countries and the accounts of rebel commanders.

As the war has continued on, the United States and its Arab and European allies have steadily built other institutions to augment the political, military, and media capabilities of this burgeoning terror-state, including hospitals operated in Al Qaeda-held territory by Western NGOs, and of course the so-called “White Helmets,” described on their own website as:

The volunteers save people on all sides of the conflict – pledging commitment to the principles of “Humanity, Solidarity, Impartiality” as outlined by the International Civil Defence Organisation. This pledge guides every response, every action, every life saved – so that in a time of destruction, all Syrians have the hope of a lifeline.

In reality, the “White Helmets” operate solely in terrorist-held territory, as the nation of Syria already has an effective, professional, and well organized civil defense organization. The “White Helmets” appear to be “targeted intentionally” because they are operating side-by-side designated terrorist organizations including Al Nusra, quite literally Al Qaeda in Syria.

In one graphic instance (GRAPHIC VIDEO), these “White Helmet” Al Qaeda auxiliaries can be seen literally standing by as Al Nusra terrorists execute a prisoner, before rushing in to remove the body. Had Syrian or Russian warplanes struck these terrorists in the midst of carrying out war crimes, these “White Helmets” would have rightfully been liquidated side-by-side the terrorists they were aiding and abetting.

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Despite the “White Helmets” severing quite literally as Al Qaeda auxiliaries, the US through USAID and more recently, the German government, have provided the faux-NGO millions in funding.

US State Department Deputy Spokesperson Mark Toner in April 2016, according to a US State Department official transcript, would admit:

Well, I can tell you that we provide, through USAID, about $23 million in assistance to them [the “White Helmets”].

Toner was responding to queries by journalists regarding why a US-funded organization was receiving millions of dollars in assistance, but whose leader is banned from traveling to the United States. Toner attempted to claim the situation was “complicated,” but in reality, it is a simple matter of the US once again arming and funding terrorists abroad while simultaneously attempting to pose as fighting them back home.

More recently, AP would report in an article titled, “Germany ups financial support for Syria’s White Helmets,” that:

Germany’s Foreign Ministry says it is increasing financial support for the Syria Civil Defense group, also known as the White Helmets.

The ministry said in a statement Friday that it has raised its funding for the group this year from 5 million euros ($5.61 million) to 7 million euros ($7.85 million).

With a sectarian extremist political party like the Muslim Brotherhood, an armed force comprised of Al Qaeda and other extremist groups, and an array of complicit alleged NGOs including the “White Helmets,” the US and its allies have attempted to create a parallel state within Syria – a parallel state it hopes will eventually inherit the entirety of Syria’s territory, just as violent sectarian terrorist factions have assumed control over Libya – deconstructing it as a functioning nation state and plunging its people into open-ended, perpetual catastrophe that is reverberating across the planet in the form of terrorism and migrant crises.

The US and its partners are posing as fighting against terrorism, while carving out entire nations for Al Qaeda and its affiliates everywhere from the North African nation of Libya, to the  ‎Levantine nation of Syria. It is a foreign policy in reality that cannot be sustained with the unraveling rhetoric used to promote and perpetuate it on the global stage, particularly in front of the UN.

Tony Cartalucci, Bangkok-based geopolitical researcher and writer, especially for the online magazine“New Eastern Outlook”., where this article first appeared.