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By Eric Zuesse

A four-minute video that was posted to youtube on April 29th documents that the U.S. government has been lying about an organization, the White Helmets, the U.S. government hires to assist Syria’s Al Qaeda, called “Al Nusra,” to dispose of corpses of persons Al Nusra executes. Nusra kills Syrian government soldiers; and, according to Seymour Hersh and other investigative journalists, has, throughout the Syrian war, been supplied guns and other weapons by the governments of U.S., Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Turkey, for that purpose. This is part of America’s operation to overthrow Bashar al-Assad, whom even Western polling shows to be popular amongst the Syrian general population. That same polling shows Nusra and other jihadist organizations (and the U.S. government, which arms them) to be extremely unpopular in Syria.

On April 19th, the U.S. State Department had blocked entrance into the United States by Raed Saleh, the head of the White Helmets, and refused to say why. Saleh had been invited to receive in NYC an award by USAID and NGOs that the U.S. government finances, but he was barred at the airport, apparently because the FBI had placed him onto its no-fly list as a known terrorist.

The White Helmets claim to receive no funds from any government, but the four-minute video shows a State Department official admitting “we supply through USAID about twenty three million dollars in assistance to them” (which might be annually, but that question wasn’t addressed in the video). The White Helmets’ founder, James Lemesurier, is himself funded by the governments of UK, Japan, Denmark and Netherlands, all of which are likewise trying to overthrow Assad.

Thus, U.S. and other Western taxpayers are funding this allegedly ‘non-partisan’ and ‘humanitarian’ but actually jihadist, organization, whose leader was, on April 19th, prevented from receiving in the U.S., a ‘humanitarian’ award, for processing corpses that Nusra — which the U.S. government also supports — is producing. The White Helmets also rescue jihadists (and their inevitable civilian hostages), who have been injured by Syrian government forces. That’s their ‘humanitarian’ work. This video shows jihadists cheering White Helmets. The anti-Assad ‘charities’ that were wanting to award Raed Saleh in the U.S., have said they’ll instead do it in Turkey, which is a U.S. ally — even a member of NATO.

As regards what the Syrian public think, it’s highly favorable toward Assad and highly unfavorable toward the jihadist organizations that now infest their country from abroad, and also against the United States, which they view as being the main source of this ‘civil war’ (which is instead actually a foreign invasion of their country).

The video also shows the British agent (and Britain is yet another U.S. ally) who founded and organized the ‘non-partisan humanitarian organization’, White Helmets, Mr. Lemesurier.

The Syrian government is an ally of Russia, and America’s policy is to overthrow and replace the leader of any nation who is friendly toward Russia, such as Saddam Hussein, Muammar Gaddafi, Manuel Zelaya, Viktor Yanukovych, or Bashar al-Assad. These governments then become failed states. When Zelaya was replaced in 2009, the country he led, Honduras, became a narco-state and has since had the world’s highest murder-rate. Jihadists weren’t even needed in the Honduran case. The U.S. government didn’t perpetrate that particular coup, but only helped it succeed and enabled the installed new regime to remain in power. The Honduran coup was actually perpetrated by agents of that country’s twelve aristocratic families, who own almost all of the country. However, normally, the U.S. government itself overthrows the leaders it doesn’t like, and doesn’t merely aid the regimes that a coup by the local aristocracy has already installed. Hillary Clinton, the U.S. Presidential candidate, was the key person in the Obama Administration who worked, behind the scenes, to keep in power the coup regime that took over in Honduras on 28 June 2009. Without her assistance to the Honduran coup-regime, Zelaya, whom virtually all other governments supported as being still the legal leader of Honduras, would have been restored to power; the coup-regime would have had to bow out. By contrast, her — and President Obama’s — efforts to replace Syria’s secular but nominally Shiite President Assad, by using Saudi-funded foreign-imported Sunni jihadists, haven’t been nearly so successful, unless creating the highest degree of misery among the residents in any country in the world, is viewed by Obama and Clinton as ‘success’.

As I had reported on April 16th, headlining, “Why Obama Prioritizes Ousting Assad Over Defeating Syria’s Jihadists”:

The “2016 Global Emotions Report” by Gallup, surveying over a thousand people in each one of 140 different nations, found that, by far, the people in Syria had “the lowest positive experiences worldwide,” the people there were far more miserable than in any other nation. The score was 36 (on a scale to 100). Second and third worst were tied at 51: Turkey because of the tightening dictatorship there as Turkey has become one of Obama’s key allies in toppling Assad; Nepal, on account of the earthquake.

So: America certainly doesn’t give a damn about the sufferings of the Syrians, and of the Iraqis, sufferings that the U.S. itself caused and which invasions by us (and by the jihadists we and our Saudi and other ‘friends’ have armed and assisted to get into Syria through our ‘friend’ Turkey) have produced the two nations with the most misery on this planet. Our Presidents mouth platitudes of ‘caring’, but, to judge by their actions, are merely lying psychopaths. But whatever they are, they’re causing the most misery of anyone. How much coverage of that fact is there in the American press? Hasn’t America’s press actually been complicit in this, all along?

So, this is the reason why the U.S. government refuses entry to a terrorist it hires to create hell for the people in Syria: it doesn’t want individuals such as Raed Saleh inside the United States. America’s leaders know that, if something like this happens, and if word of it becomes well known, the American public could become even less supportive of their leaders than they already are. It’s not what America’s aristocracy want. They might not care about the American public, but they care very much about staying in power, regardless whether under the “Democratic” or under the “Republican” label.

Back on 26 June 2015, Raed Saleh had somehow been allowed into the United States, to address an “Arria” briefing (named after the far-right aristocratic military Venezuelan diplomat and member of the U.S. aristocratic Council on Foreign Relations, Diego Arria) to the U.N. Security Council, where Saleh announced in his opening paragraph that his focus would be “to convey the message of the search and rescue teams in Syria about the suffering of the Syrian people due to the regime’s bombing with indiscriminate weapons, particularly barrel bombs.” Those were the cheap, even amateurish, improvised bombs that the Syrian Army were using to kill as many of the jihadists as they could, but which also inevitably killed and maimed also many Syrian civilians in the occupied areas of the country — there’s no way to avoid it. Saleh’s speech didn’t mention any of the many foreign jihadist groups such as Nusra and ISIS that were and are killing far more of everybody than Assad’s forces were. His focus was instead totally against Assad and the government’s forces, not at all against the jihadist mercenaries who had entered the country and made hell there; and, Saleh said, “The Syrian people who are being killed every day, Ladies and Gentlemen, hold you responsible” for not helping those jihadists eliminate the existing Syrian government. He said this without at all referring to what even Western polling of Syrians had consistently shown to be the case, which was the exact opposite: they hold the U.S. to blame and they loathe the jihadists and support the government. So, clearly, the United States did the correct thing when finally placing this jihadist of theirs onto America’s no-fly list. To the exact contrary of the U.S. government’s propaganda which says that he’s a hero and that he and his organization are ‘nonpartisan’ and that he is, as he calls himself, “the head of Syrian Civil Defense,” that appellation for him is like calling Hitler’s medics during his invasion of, say, France, “French Civil Defense.” George Orwell’s allegorical novel 1984 has clearly been surpassed in today’s reality. The extent to which Western publics accept the arrant lies they’re fed is exceeding, perhaps, even Orwell’s expectations.

So: one typical piece of Republican propaganda about the White Helmets is the May 1st article in the Wall Street Journal, “White Helmets Are White Knights for Desperate Syrians”, while a typical piece of Democratic propaganda about them is the New York Times eleven days earlier, on April 20th, which headlined “Leader of Syria Rescue Group, Arriving in U.S. for Award, Is Refused Entry”, and it reported there that “Joshua Landis, a Syria expert at the University of Oklahoma at Norman, called the denial of entry ‘a scandal.’ ‘The White Helmets are one of the few organizations in Syria that have been above reproach,’ he said. ‘They have tried to observe strict neutrality in order to facilitate their humanitarian work and save lives. To do this they have worked along side all sorts of militias in order to get to victims of the fighting.’” He didn’t say that the “militias” are overwhelmingly foreign jihadist groups paid by America’s fundamentalist-Sunni allies the Sauds, and Qatar’s royal family the Thanis, to overthrow the secular Shiite Assad. But, after all, it’s only propaganda, anyway. Right?

Furthermore, the Syrian public might view that conception of ‘strict neutrality’ much the way Jews in Hitler’s concentration camps viewed the conception of ‘strict neutrality’ as between themselves and their oppressors, or the way Chinese in the Nanjing Massacre viewed that ‘strict neutrality’ between themselves and the Japanese invaders. And, polls in Syria do show they view the U.S. and its allies as the invaders. Instead of ‘strict neutrality,’ the U.S. and its allies are the foreign invaders, and not at all ‘neutral’. And, to state this documented fact (documented here by the links) isn’t propaganda at all; it’s news-reporting, in an entirely verified historical context (which is very different from propaganda).

What that four-minute video shows is news-reporting, in exactly this sense. That’s why it’s presented here: it brings all of this together, succinctly; and what I’ve done here is to document some of its important historical context, to help people who are skeptical of it (and, in such a lying world, everything should be viewed with a scientist’s skepticism) understand and evaluate it, at a deeper level than a mere four minutes can possibly present, even in a video.

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Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of They’re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010, and of CHRIST’S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity.

Originally posted at strategic-culture.org

5 August 2016

By Andrew J Bacevich

My earliest recollection of national politics dates back exactly 60 years to the moment, in the summer of 1956, when I watched the political conventions in the company of that wondrous new addition to our family, television. My parents were supporting President Dwight D. Eisenhower for a second term and that was good enough for me. Even as a youngster, I sensed that Ike, the former supreme commander of allied forces in Europe in World War II, was someone of real stature. In a troubled time, he exuded authority and self-confidence. By comparison, Democratic candidate Adlai Stevenson came across as vaguely suspect. Next to the five-star incumbent, he seemed soft, even foppish, and therefore not up to the job. So at least it appeared to a nine-year-old living in Chicagoland.

Of the seamy underside of politics I knew nothing, of course. On the surface, all seemed reassuring. As if by divine mandate, two parties vied for power. The views they represented defined the allowable range of opinion. The outcome of any election expressed the collective will of the people and was to be accepted as such. That I was growing up in the best democracy the world had ever known — its very existence a daily rebuke to the enemies of freedom — was beyond question.

Naïve? Embarrassingly so. Yet how I wish that Election Day in November 2016 might present Americans with something even loosely approximating the alternatives available to them in November 1956. Oh, to choose once more between an Ike and an Adlai.

Don’t for a second think that this is about nostalgia. Today, Stevenson doesn’t qualify for anyone’s list of Great Americans. If remembered at all, it’s for his sterling performance as President John F. Kennedy’s U.N. ambassador during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Interrogating his Soviet counterpart with cameras rolling, Stevenson barked that he was prepared to wait “until hell freezes over” to get his questions answered about Soviet military activities in Cuba. When the chips were down, Adlai proved anything but soft. Yet in aspiring to the highest office in the land, he had come up well short. In 1952, he came nowhere close to winning and in 1956 he proved no more successful. Stevenson was to the Democratic Party what Thomas Dewey had been to the Republicans: a luckless two-time loser.

As for Eisenhower, although there is much in his presidency to admire, his errors of omission and commission were legion. During his two terms, from Guatemala to Iran, the CIA overthrew governments, plotted assassinations, and embraced unsavory right-wing dictators — in effect, planting a series of IEDs destined eventually to blow up in the face of Ike’s various successors. Meanwhile, binging on nuclear weapons, the Pentagon accumulated an arsenal far beyond what even Eisenhower as commander-in-chief considered prudent or necessary.

In addition, during his tenure in office, the military-industrial complex became a rapacious juggernaut, an entity unto itself as Ike himself belatedly acknowledged. By no means least of all, Eisenhower fecklessly committed the United States to an ill-fated project of nation-building in a country that just about no American had heard of at the time: South Vietnam. Ike did give the nation eight years of relative peace and prosperity, but at a high price — most of the bills coming due long after he left office.

The Pathology of American Politics

And yet, and yet…

To contrast the virtues and shortcomings of Stevenson and Eisenhower with those of Hillary Rodham Clinton and Donald Trump is both instructive and profoundly depressing. Comparing the adversaries of 1956 with their 2016 counterparts reveals with startling clarity what the decades-long decay of American politics has wrought.

In 1956, each of the major political parties nominated a grown-up for the highest office in the land. In 2016, only one has.

In 1956, both parties nominated likeable individuals who conveyed a basic sense of trustworthiness. In 2016, neither party has done so.

In 1956, Americans could count on the election to render a definitive verdict, the vote count affirming the legitimacy of the system itself and allowing the business of governance to resume. In 2016, that is unlikely to be the case. Whether Trump or Clinton ultimately prevails, large numbers of Americans will view the result as further proof of “rigged” and irredeemably corrupt political arrangements. Rather than inducing some semblance of reconciliation, the outcome is likely to deepen divisions.

How in the name of all that is holy did we get into such a mess?

How did the party of Eisenhower, an architect of victory in World War II, choose as its nominee a narcissistic TV celebrity who, with each successive Tweet and verbal outburst, offers further evidence that he is totally unequipped for high office? Yes, the establishment media are ganging up on Trump, blatantly displaying the sort of bias normally kept at least nominally under wraps. Yet never have such expressions of journalistic hostility toward a particular candidate been more justified. Trump is a bozo of such monumental proportions as to tax the abilities of our most talented satirists. Were he alive today, Mark Twain at his most scathing would be hard-pressed to do justice to The Donald’s blowhard pomposity.

Similarly, how did the party of Adlai Stevenson, but also of Stevenson’s hero Franklin Roosevelt, select as its candidate someone so widely disliked and mistrusted even by many of her fellow Democrats? True, antipathy directed toward Hillary Clinton draws some of its energy from incorrigible sexists along with the “vast right wing conspiracy” whose members thoroughly loathe both Clintons. Yet the antipathy is not without basis in fact.

Even by Washington standards, Secretary Clinton exudes a striking sense of entitlement combined with a nearly complete absence of accountability. She shrugs off her misguided vote in support of invading Iraq back in 2003, while serving as senator from New York. She neither explains nor apologizes for pressing to depose Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi in 2011, her most notable “accomplishment” as secretary of state. “We came, we saw, he died,” she bragged back then, somewhat prematurely given that Libya has since fallen into anarchy and become a haven for ISIS.

She clings to the demonstrably false claim that her use of a private server for State Department business compromised no classified information. Now opposed to the Trans Pacific Partnership (TTP) that she once described as the “gold standard in trade agreements,” Clinton rejects charges of political opportunism. That her change of heart occurred when attacking the TPP was helping Bernie Sanders win one Democratic primary after another is merely coincidental. Oh, and the big money accepted from banks and Wall Street as well as the tech sector for minimal work and the bigger money still from leading figures in the Israel lobby? Rest assured that her acceptance of such largesse won’t reduce by one iota her support for “working class families” or her commitment to a just peace settlement in the Middle East.

Let me be clear: none of these offer the slightest reason to vote for Donald Trump. Yet together they make the point that Hillary Clinton is a deeply flawed candidate, notably so in matters related to national security. Clinton is surely correct that allowing Trump to make decisions related to war and peace would be the height of folly. Yet her record in that regard does not exactly inspire confidence.

When it comes to foreign policy, Trump’s preference for off-the-cuff utterances finds him committing astonishing gaffes with metronomic regularity. Spontaneity serves chiefly to expose his staggering ignorance.

By comparison, the carefully scripted Clinton commits few missteps, as she recites with practiced ease the pabulum that passes for right thinking in establishment circles. But fluency does not necessarily connote soundness. Clinton, after all, adheres resolutely to the highly militarized “Washington playbook” that President Obama himself has disparaged — a faith-based belief in American global primacy to be pursued regardless of how the world may be changing and heedless of costs.

On the latter point, note that Clinton’s acceptance speech in Philadelphia included not a single mention of Afghanistan. By Election Day, the war there will have passed its 15th anniversary. One might think that a prospective commander-in-chief would have something to say about the longest conflict in American history, one that continues with no end in sight. Yet, with the Washington playbook offering few answers, Mrs. Clinton chooses to remain silent on the subject.

So while a Trump presidency holds the prospect of the United States driving off a cliff, a Clinton presidency promises to be the equivalent of banging one’s head against a brick wall without evident effect, wondering all the while why it hurts so much.

Pseudo-Politics for an Ersatz Era

But let’s not just blame the candidates. Trump and Clinton are also the product of circumstances that neither created. As candidates, they are merely exploiting a situation — one relying on intuition and vast stores of brashness, the other putting to work skills gained during a life spent studying how to acquire and employ power. The success both have achieved in securing the nominations of their parties is evidence of far more fundamental forces at work.

In the pairing of Trump and Clinton, we confront symptoms of something pathological. Unless Americans identify the sources of this disease, it will inevitably worsen, with dire consequences in the realm of national security. After all, back in Eisenhower’s day, the IEDs planted thanks to reckless presidential decisions tended to blow up only years — or even decades — later. For example, between the 1953 U.S.-engineered coup that restored the Shah to his throne and the 1979 revolution that converted Iran overnight from ally to adversary, more than a quarter of a century elapsed. In our own day, however, detonation occurs so much more quickly — witness the almost instantaneous and explosively unhappy consequences of Washington’s post-9/11 military interventions in the Greater Middle East.

So here’s a matter worth pondering: How is it that all the months of intensive fundraising, the debates and speeches, the caucuses and primaries, the avalanche of TV ads and annoying robocalls have produced two presidential candidates who tend to elicit from a surprisingly large number of rank-and-file citizens disdain, indifference, or at best hold-your-nose-and-pull-the-lever acquiescence?

Here, then, is a preliminary diagnosis of three of the factors contributing to the erosion of American politics, offered from the conviction that, for Americans to have better choices next time around, fundamental change must occur — and soon.

First, and most important, the evil effects of money: Need chapter and verse? For a tutorial, see this essential 2015 book by Professor Lawrence Lessig of Harvard: Republic Lost, Version 2.0. Those with no time for books might spare 18 minutes for Lessig’s brilliant and deeply disturbing TED talk. Professor Lessig argues persuasively that unless the United States radically changes the way it finances political campaigns, we’re pretty much doomed to see our democracy wither and die.

Needless to say, moneyed interests and incumbents who benefit from existing arrangements take a different view and collaborate to maintain the status quo. As a result, political life has increasingly become a pursuit reserved for those like Trump who possess vast personal wealth or for those like Clinton who display an aptitude for persuading the well to do to open their purses, with all that implies by way of compromise, accommodation, and the subsequent repayment of favors.

Second, the perverse impact of identity politics on policy: Observers make much of the fact that, in capturing the presidential nomination of a major party, Hillary Clinton has shattered yet another glass ceiling. They are right to do so. Yet the novelty of her candidacy starts and ends with gender. When it comes to fresh thinking, Donald Trump has far more to offer than Clinton — even if his version of “fresh” tends to be synonymous with wacky, off-the-wall, ridiculous, or altogether hair-raising.

The essential point here is that, in the realm of national security, Hillary Clinton is utterly conventional. She subscribes to a worldview (and view of America’s role in the world) that originated during the Cold War, reached its zenith in the 1990s when the United States proclaimed itself the planet’s “sole superpower,” and persists today remarkably unaffected by actual events. On the campaign trail, Clinton attests to her bona fides by routinely reaffirming her belief in American exceptionalism, paying fervent tribute to “the world’s greatest military,” swearing that she’ll be “listening to our generals and admirals,” and vowing to get tough on America’s adversaries. These are, of course, the mandatory rituals of the contemporary Washington stump speech, amplified if anything by the perceived need for the first female candidate for president to emphasize her pugnacity.

A Clinton presidency, therefore, offers the prospect of more of the same — muscle-flexing and armed intervention to demonstrate American global leadership — albeit marketed with a garnish of diversity. Instead of different policies, Clinton will offer an administration that has a different look, touting this as evidence of positive change.

Yet while diversity may be a good thing, we should not confuse it with effectiveness. A national security team that “looks like America” (to use the phrase originally coined by Bill Clinton) does not necessarily govern more effectively than one that looks like President Eisenhower’s. What matters is getting the job done.

Since the 1990s women have found plentiful opportunities to fill positions in the upper echelons of the national security apparatus. Although we have not yet had a female commander-in-chief, three women have served as secretary of state and two as national security adviser. Several have filled Adlai Stevenson’s old post at the United Nations. Undersecretaries, deputy undersecretaries, and assistant secretaries of like gender abound, along with a passel of female admirals and generals.

So the question needs be asked: Has the quality of national security policy improved compared to the bad old days when men exclusively called the shots? Using as criteria the promotion of stability and the avoidance of armed conflict (along with the successful prosecution of wars deemed unavoidable), the answer would, of course, have to be no. Although Madeleine Albright, Condoleezza Rice, Susan Rice, Samantha Power, and Clinton herself might entertain a different view, actually existing conditions in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Somalia, Sudan, Yemen, and other countries across the Greater Middle East and significant parts of Africa tell a different story.

The abysmal record of American statecraft in recent years is not remotely the fault of women; yet neither have women made a perceptibly positive difference. It turns out that identity does not necessarily signify wisdom or assure insight. Allocating positions of influence in the State Department or the Pentagon based on gender, race, ethnicity, or sexual orientation — as Clinton will assuredly do — may well gratify previously disenfranchised groups. Little evidence exists to suggest that doing so will produce more enlightened approaches to statecraft, at least not so long as adherence to the Washington playbook figures as a precondition to employment. (Should Clinton win in November, don’t expect the redoubtable ladies of Code Pink to be tapped for jobs at the Pentagon and State Department.)

In the end, it’s not identity that matters but ideas and their implementation. To contemplate the ideas that might guide a President Trump along with those he will recruit to act on them — Ivanka as national security adviser? — is enough to elicit shudders from any sane person. Yet the prospect of Madam President surrounding herself with an impeccably diverse team of advisers who share her own outmoded views is hardly cause for celebration.

Putting a woman in charge of national security policy will not in itself amend the defects exhibited in recent years. For that, the obsolete principles with which Clinton along with the rest of Washington remains enamored will have to be jettisoned. In his own bizarre way (albeit without a clue as to a plausible alternative), Donald Trump seems to get that; Hillary Clinton does not.

Third, the substitution of “reality” for reality: Back in 1962, a young historian by the name of Daniel Boorstin published The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America. In an age in which Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton vie to determine the nation’s destiny, it should be mandatory reading. The Image remains, as when it first appeared, a fire bell ringing in the night.

According to Boorstin, more than five decades ago the American people were already living in a “thicket of unreality.” By relentlessly indulging in ever more “extravagant expectations,” they were forfeiting their capacity to distinguish between what was real and what was illusory. Indeed, Boorstin wrote, “We have become so accustomed to our illusions that we mistake them for reality.”

While ad agencies and PR firms had indeed vigorously promoted a world of illusions, Americans themselves had become willing accomplices in the process.

“The American citizen lives in a world where fantasy is more real than reality, where the image has more dignity than its original. We hardly dare to face our bewilderment, because our ambiguous experience is so pleasantly iridescent, and the solace of belief in contrived reality is so thoroughly real. We have become eager accessories to the great hoaxes of the age. These are the hoaxes we play on ourselves.”

This, of course, was decades before the nation succumbed to the iridescent allure of Facebook, Google, fantasy football, “Real Housewives of _________,” selfies, smartphone apps, Game of Thrones, Pokémon GO — and, yes, the vehicle that vaulted Donald Trump to stardom, The Apprentice.

“The making of the illusions which flood our experience has become the business of America,” wrote Boorstin. It’s also become the essence of American politics, long since transformed into theater, or rather into some sort of (un)reality show.

Presidential campaigns today are themselves, to use Boorstin’s famous term, “pseudo-events” that stretch from months into years. By now, most Americans know better than to take at face value anything candidates say or promise along the way. We’re in on the joke — or at least we think we are. Reinforcing that perception on a daily basis are media outlets that have abandoned mere reporting in favor of enhancing the spectacle of the moment. This is especially true of the cable news networks, where talking heads serve up a snide and cynical complement to the smarmy fakery that is the office-seeker’s stock in trade. And we lap it up. It matters little that we know it’s all staged and contrived, as long as — a preening Megyn Kelly getting under Trump’s skin, Trump himself denouncing “lyin’ Ted” Cruz, etc., etc. — it’s entertaining.

This emphasis on spectacle has drained national politics of whatever substance it still had back when Ike and Adlai commanded the scene. It hardly need be said that Donald Trump has demonstrated an extraordinary knack — a sort of post-modern genius — for turning this phenomenon to his advantage. Yet in her own way Clinton plays the same game. How else to explain a national convention organized around the idea of “reintroducing to the American people” someone who served eight years as First Lady, was elected to the Senate, failed in a previous high-profile run for the presidency, and completed a term as secretary of state? The just-ended conclave in Philadelphia was, like the Republican one that preceded it, a pseudo-event par excellence, the object of the exercise being to fashion a new “image” for the Democratic candidate.

The thicket of unreality that is American politics has now become all-enveloping. The problem is not Trump and Clinton, per se. It’s an identifiable set of arrangements — laws, habits, cultural predispositions — that have evolved over time and promoted the rot that now pervades American politics. As a direct consequence, the very concept of self-government is increasingly a fantasy, even if surprisingly few Americans seem to mind.

At an earlier juncture back in 1956, out of a population of 168 million, we got Ike and Adlai. Today, with almost double the population, we get — well, we get what we’ve got. This does not represent progress. And don’t kid yourself that things really can’t get much worse. Unless Americans rouse themselves to act, count on it, they will.

Andrew J. Bacevich, a TomDispatch regular, is the author most recently of America’s War for the Greater Middle East: A Military History..

First published in TomDispatch

Copyright 2016 Andrew J. Bacevich

5 August 2016

By Nick Turse

It’s rare to hear one top military commander publicly badmouth another, call attention to his faults, or simply point out his shortcomings. Despite a seemingly endless supply of debacles from strategic setbacks to quagmire conflicts since 9/11, the top brass rarely criticize each other or, even in retirement, utter a word about the failings of their predecessors or successors. Think of it as the camouflage wall of silence. You may loathe him. You may badmouth him behind closed doors. You may have secretly hoped for his career to implode. But publicly point out failures? That’s left to those further down the chain of command.

And yet that’s effectively exactly what newly installed U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) chief, General Thomas Waldhauser, did earlier this year in a statement to the Senate Arms Services Committee (SASC). It’s just that no one, almost certainly including Waldhauser himself, seemed to notice or recognize it for the criticism it was, including the people tasked with oversight of military operations and those in the media.

Over these last years, the number of personnel, missions, dollars spent, and special ops training efforts as well as drone bases and other outposts on the continent have all multiplied. At the same time, incoming AFRICOM commanders have been publicly warning about the escalating perils and challenges from terror groups that menace the command’s area of operations. Almost no one, however — neither those senators nor the media — has raised pointed questions, no less demanded frank answers, about why such crises on the continent have so perfectly mirrored American military expansion.

Asked earlier this year about the difficulties he’d face if confirmed, Waldhauser was blunt: “A major challenge is effectively countering violent extremist organizations, especially the growth of al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, Boko Haram in Nigeria, al-Shabaab in Somalia, and ISIL in Libya.”

That should have been a déjà vu moment for some of those senators. Three years earlier, the man previously nominated to lead AFRICOM, General David Rodriguez, was asked the same question. His reply was suspiciously similar: “A major challenge is effectively countering violent extremist organizations, especially the growth of Mali as an al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb safe haven, Boko Haram in Nigeria, and al-Shabaab in Somalia.”

All that had changed between 2013 and 2016, it seemed, was the addition of one more significant threat.

In the midst of Rodriguez’s 2016 victory lap (as he was concluding 40 years of military service), Waldhauser publicly drew attention to just how ineffective his run as AFRICOM chief had been. Some might call it unkind — a slap in the face for a decorated old soldier — but perhaps turnabout is fair play. After all, in 2013, Rodriguez did much the same to his predecessor, General Carter Ham, when he offered his warning about the challenges on the continent.

Three years before that, in 2010, Ham appeared before the same committee and said, “I believe that the extremist threat that’s emerging from East Africa is probably the greatest concern that Africa Command will face in the near future.” Ham expressed no worry about threats posed by al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb or Boko Haram. ISIL in Libya didn’t even exist. And even that “greatest concern,” al-Shabaab, was, Ham noted, “primarily focused on internal matters in Somalia.”

In other words, over these last years, each incoming AFRICOM commander has offered a more dismal and dire assessment of the situation facing the U.S. military than his predecessor. Ham drew attention to only one major terror threat, Rodriguez to three, and Waldhauser to four.

His Own Worst Critic

That said, Waldhauser isn’t the only AFRICOM chief to point a finger at Rodriguez’s checkered record. Another American general cast an even darker shadow on the outgoing commander’s three-year run overseeing Washington’s shadow war in Africa:

“AFRICOM’s priorities on the continent for the next several years will be… in East Africa to improve stability there. Most of that is built around the threat of al-Shabaab. And then, in the North and West Africa is really built around the challenges from Libya down to northern Mali and that region and that instability there creates many challenges… And then after that is the West Africa, really about the Boko Haram and the problem in Nigeria that is, unfortunately, crossing the boundary into Cameroon, Chad, and Niger. So those are the big challenges and then just the normal ones that continue to be a challenge are the Gulf of Guinea… as well as countering the Lord’s Resistance Army…”

That critic was, in fact, General David Rodriguez himself in an AFRICOM promotional video released on multiple social media platforms last month. It was posted on the very day that his command also touted its “more than 30 major exercises and more than 1,000 military to military engagements” between 2013 and 2015. It was hardly a surprise, however, that these two posts and the obvious conclusion to be drawn from them — just how little AFRICOM’S growing set of ambitious continent-wide activities mattered when it came to the spread of terror movements — went unattended and uncommented upon.

Waldhauser and Rodriguez have not, however, been alone in pointing out increased insecurity on the continent. “Terrorism and violent extremism are major sources of instability in Africa,” Assistant Secretary Linda Thomas-Greenfield of the State Department’s Bureau of African Affairs told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in May. “Terrorist organizations such as al-Shabaab, Boko Haram (which now calls itself the Islamic State in West Africa), al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), and al-Murabitoun are conducting asymmetric campaigns that cause significant loss of innocent life and create potentially long-term humanitarian crises.”

National intelligence director James Clapper, who called the continent “a hothouse for the emergence of extremist and rebel groups” in 2014, spoke of the dangers posed by the Lord’s Resistance Army and al-Shabaab, as well as terror threats in Egypt, Libya, Mali, Nigeria, and Tunisia, and instability in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Republic of Congo, Burundi, the Central African Republic, and South Sudan before the Senate Armed Services Committee earlier this year.

And then there’s Brigadier General Donald Bolduc who heads Special Operations Command Africa (SOCAFRICA), the most elite U.S. troops on the continent. He painted a picture that was grimmer still. Last November, during a closed door presentation at the annual Special Operations Command Africa Commander’s Conference in Garmisch, Germany, the SOCAFRICA chief drew attention not just to the threats of al-Shabaab, al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, Boko Haram, ISIL, and the Lord’s Resistance Army, but also another “43 malign groups” operating in Africa, according to another set of documents obtained via the Freedom of Information Act.

The growth of terror groups from the one named by Ham in 2010 to the 48 mentioned by Bolduc in 2015 is as remarkable as it has been unremarked upon, a record so bleak that it demands a congressional investigation that will, of course, never take place.

Questions Unasked, Questions Unanswered

U.S. Africa Command boasts that it “neutralizes transnational threats” and “prevents and mitigates conflict,” while training local allies and proxies “in order to promote regional security, stability, and prosperity.” Rodriguez’s tenure was, however, marked by the very opposite: increasing numbers of lethal terror attacks across the continent including those in Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Côte d’Ivoire, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, Kenya, Mali, Niger, Nigeria, Somalia, South Sudan, and Tunisia. In fact, data from the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism at the University of Maryland shows that attacks have spiked over the last decade, roughly coinciding with AFRICOM’s establishment. In 2007, just before it became an independent command, there were fewer than 400 such incidents annually in sub-Saharan Africa. Last year, the number reached nearly 2,000.

While these statistics may be damning, they are no more so than the words of AFRICOM’s own chiefs. Yet the senators who are supposed to provide oversight haven’t seemed to bat an eye, let alone ask the obvious questions about why terror groups and terror attacks are proliferating as U.S. operations, bases, manpower, and engagement across the continent grow. (Note that this is, of course, the same Senate committee that Rodriguez misled, whether purposefully or inadvertently, earlier this year when it came to the number of U.S. military missions in Africa without — again — either apparent notice or any repercussions.)

In an era of too-big-to fail generals, an age in which top commanders from winless wars retire to take prominent posts at influential institutions and cash in with cushy jobs on corporate boards, AFRICOM chiefs have faced neither hard questions nor repercussions for the deteriorating situation. (Similar records — heavy on setbacks, short on victories — have been produced by Washington’s war chiefs in Afghanistan and Iraq for the past 15 years and they, too, have never led to official calls for any sort of accountability.)

Rodriguez is now planning on resting at his northern Virginia home for a few months and, as he told Stars and Stripes, seeing “what comes next.”

U.S. Africa Command failed to respond to multiple requests for an interview with Rodriguez, but if he follows in the footsteps of the marquee names among fellow retired four-stars of his generation, like David Petraeus and Stanley McChrystal, he’ll supplement his six-figure pension with one or more lucrative private sector posts.

What comes next for AFRICOM will play out on the continent and in briefings before the Senate Armed Services Committee for years to come. If history is any guide, the number of terror groups on the continent will not decrease, the senators will fail to ask why this is so, and the media will follow their lead.

During his final days in command, AFRICOM released several more short videos of Rodriguez holding forth on varioius issues. In one of the last of these, the old soldier praised “the whole team” for accomplishing “a tremendous amount over the last several years.” What exactly that was went unsaid, though it certainly wasn’t achieving AFRICOM’s mandate to “neutraliz[e] transnational threats.” But what Rodriguez said next made a lot of sense. He noted that AFRICOM wasn’t alone in it — whatever it was. Washington, D.C., he said, had played a key role, too. In that, he couldn’t have been more on target. The increasingly bleak outlook in Africa can’t simply be laid at the feet of AFRICOM’s commanders. Again and again, they’ve been upfront about the deteriorating situation. Washington has just preferred to look the other way.

Nick Turse is the managing editor of TomDispatch, a fellow at the Nation Institute, and a contributing writer for the Intercept. He is the author of the New York Times bestseller Kill Anything That Moves: The Real American War in Vietnam. His latest book is Next Time They’ll Come to Count the Dead: War and Survival in South Sudan. His website is NickTurse.com..

Copyright 2016 Nick Turse

First published in Tomdispatch.com

2 August 2016

By Alex Lantier

Co-Written by Alex Lantier and Johannes Stern

Relations between Ankara and Washington are deteriorating rapidly following the July 15 coup attempt in Turkey, which the Turkish government believes was supported by the Obama administration. In a series of stunning statements on Friday, delivered from the bombed-out ruins of a police base in Ankara, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan directly accused the US government of backing the coup.

Erdogan denounced statements by top US military and intelligence officials attending a security conference in Aspen, Colorado who criticized him for launching a purge of the Turkish army in the aftermath of the coup. US Director of National Intelligence James Clapper rebuked Erdogan for arresting Turkish military officers close to Washington. “Many of our interlocutors have been purged or arrested,” he fumed. “There’s no question this is going to set back and make more difficult cooperation with the Turks.”

Gen. Joseph Votel, the chief of the US Central Command, which oversees US military operations in the Middle East, warned that the purge was “something to be very, very concerned about” because it could harm the campaign against the Islamic State (IS) militia in Syria. NATO Supreme Commander General Curtis Scaparrotti declared, “Some of the officers that we have our relationships with in Turkey are now either detained, in some cases retired as a result of the coup. We’ve got some work to do there.”

Erdogan angrily charged Votel with supporting the coup, saying, “The US general stands on the coup plotters’ side with his words. He disclosed himself via his statements… Is it up to you to decide on this? Who are you? Instead of thanking the state for repelling the coup attempt, you stand with the coup plotters.”

Referring to the US-based Turkish Islamist Fethullah Gülen, whom he accuses of organizing the coup, Erdogan said: “The coup plotter is in your country. You are nurturing him there. It’s out in the open.” He added, “My people know who is behind this scheme… they know who the superior intelligence behind it is, and with these statements you are revealing yourselves, you are giving yourselves away.”

The Turkish president attacked US and European ruling circles for expressing concern that escalating arrests of army officers would harm Turkey’s future. He pledged to continue the crackdown in the army. “What are their concerns?” he asked. “They are concerned about the suspensions, detentions, arrests and the like and the increase in them. Are they going to increase? If the people are guilty, they will.”

The statements by both Erdogan and the US officials underscore the drastic deterioration in relations between Washington and Ankara that had already occurred prior to the coup. Far from welcoming Erdogan’s survival, Washington is attacking a government that narrowly survived a coup attempt that claimed over 270 lives and nearly led to Erdogan’s assassination.

The coup has exposed the explosive tensions growing behind the scenes within the NATO alliance, of which Turkey is a member state. The attempted putsch took place against the backdrop of a warming of relations between Turkey and Russia that cuts across US policy in the Middle East, in particular, US plans to undermine Russian influence by orchestrating the overthrow of Moscow’s sole surviving Arab ally, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

The Turkish government recklessly shot down a Russian jet involved in fighting US-backed rebels in Syria. In the aftermath of that incident in November of last year, Turkey has become increasingly concerned that the Syrian war is strengthening the position of separatist Kurdish forces. Under those conditions, Ankara intitated a broad shift in its foreign policy this spring. It signaled that it might cease backing the Syrian war, which it had agreed to support shortly after Washington launched it five years ago.

After the ouster of Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu in May, his replacement, Binali Yıldırım, proposed to bring Turkish foreign policy back to the “good old days.” He said he intended to “increase the number of friends and reduce the number of enemies.”

In June, Erdogan sent Moscow a letter calling Russia “a friend and a strategic partner.” The letter stated, according to the Kremlin, “We never had a desire or a deliberate intention to down an aircraft belonging to Russia.”

Coincidentally or otherwise, Davutoglu has made statements indicating that he gave the shoot-down order in November–though he later retracted them–and the pilot who shot down the Russian warplane in November flew a rebel F-16 fighter over Ankara during the failed coup.

On July 13, two days before the coup, Yıldırım even included Syria in the list of countries with which Turkey intended to improve ties. He said, “I am sure that we will return ties with Syria to normal. We need it. We normalized our relations with Israel and Russia. I’m sure we will go back to normal relations with Syria as well.”

Since 2001, US imperialism has laid waste to Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria in order to install pro-US puppet regimes, crush Russian influence and dominate the Middle East. It takes little imagination to recognize that powerful sections of the American bourgeoisie, which historically backed three successful coups in Turkey (1960, 1971 and 1980), might have at least tolerated last month’s coup attempt in order to cut off developing ties between Russia and Turkey.

The US foreign policy establishment is, moreover, deeply disturbed by the policies Erdogan outlined after the coup, indicating that he was considering an alliance with Russia and Iran. In a telephone call with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani a few days after the coup, Erdogan said that Turkey is now “even more determined to work hand-in-hand with Iran and Russia to resolve regional issues and strengthen our efforts to return peace and stability to the region.” Erdogan is now scheduled to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin in St. Petersburg on August 9.

US officials in Aspen insisted that such alliances were unacceptable to Washington. Clapper accused Moscow of trying to “drive a wedge between Turkey and the West, specifically Turkey and NATO.”

As for Scaparrotti, he declared, “We will watch closely how this relationship develops. I would be concerned if they were departing from the values that are the bedrock of the Washington Treaty [which founded NATO]—the rule of law.”

Under these conditions, US claims that Washington had no advance warning of the coup are simply not credible. Turkey’s Incirlik Air Base, which hosts more than 5,000 American soldiers and is the main base for the US-led bombing campaign against Syria and Iraq, was the organizing center of the putsch. Pro-coup fighter jets flew in and out of Incirlik as the coup unfolded. Shortly after the coup failed, the base commander, General Bekir Ercan Van, was arrested along with other pro-coup soldiers at the base.

Given that Incirlik is the site of dozens of US nuclear weapons, no credibility can be given to claims that US intelligence was unaware that a coup against Erdogan was being organized from there. Were that truly the case, it would represent a CIA intelligence breakdown of stunning proportions.

It is now being reported that Ankara received warning of the coup and Erdogan escaped assassination only because of reports from Russian forces that US-linked assassins were on the way to kill him.

Russian forces at the nearby Khmeimim airbase in Syria reportedly intercepted coded radio signals containing information about preparations for a coup and shared them with the Turkish government. Erdogan left a hotel in Marmaris only minutes before 25 rebel soldiers descended on the hotel and began shooting. Ultimately, hundreds were killed and thousands wounded as rebel army units bombed the Turkish parliament and attacked pro-Erdogan protesters and loyal military and police units.

A pro-coup officer captured by the Turkish government, Lieutenant Colonel Murat Bolat, told the conservative Yeni Savak newspaper that his unit was designated to detain and possibly murder Erdogan after receiving precise information on Erdogan’s location from US sources.

“A person in the meeting, whom I guess was an officer from the Special Forces, said, ‘Nobody will be allowed to rescue the president from our hands,’” he said, indicating that this meant Erdogan was to be shot after he was captured if the forces who had arrested him faced any counterattack.

Yeni Safak also identified US General John F. Campbell as the “man behind the failed coup.” According to the newspaper, the former commander of the Resolute Support Mission and United States Forces in Afghanistan worked with a team of 80 CIA operatives, distributing $2 billion to pro-US and pro-Gülen elements in the Turkish military to prepare the coup.

First published in WSWS.org

1 August 2016

By Judith Bello

Here is a brief update on the activities of the US Peace Council delegation in Syria. I could spend many words and hours debunking every lie you have been told about Syria and Syrians in the last 5 years, a Sisyphean task in today’s environment. Instead I will share some of my perceptions of recent events based on my experiences in Damascus this week.

Yesterday was quite an interesting day. We met with President Assad in the morning and talked at some length. We began by exchanging introductions and then we asked him some very serious questions. We were not allowed to record the session but many of us took at least some notes. He told us that his strongest focus is on representing the Syrian people and holding the state together on their behalf. He described numerous programs the Syrian state has enacted to protect the people during this very difficult time. The government has converted schools and other buildings into refugee centers. They continue to provide, to the best of their ability, free education and medical care to everyone in the government held areas; they supply power, clean water and food even to areas that are occupied by militants where it is possible.

And he proudly told us that the Syrian Arab Army, an army of the people which is defending the country against a brutal attack, have finally closed the road from Aleppo to Turkey. This is very important because the militants in East Aleppo, and especially Al Nusra Front, the Syrian branch of Al Qaeda, have been receiving money and weapons from Turkey. He then told us that he had just issued the order to implement the humanitarian corridors and amnesty for Syrian nationals. He said that there are two ways to deplete the violence. The first is to fight to the bitter end. The other is to provide an incentive for people to stop fighting and give them a safe passage back to the lives they have left.

These are the first steps in the reconciliation plan which the Reconciliation Minister had talked about extensively, and which was cited by many others we spoke to as the best thinking to restore peace to Syria. We had already had two extended meetings with the Minister of Reconciliation, one in his office and the other over dinner at our hotel where he explained the methodology for reconciliation which they have been developing for some time. Amnesty and humanitarian aid are just the beginning. Evacuating as many civilians as possible is a temporary step to secure their welfare while negotiations are ongoing.

They used this process quite successfully in Homs last winter when they evacuated thousands of fighters and their families from neighborhoods they have long held hostage. Many were bused to Idlib where they may well resume fighting, but a densely populated areas of Homs is now secure and the civilians are able to live their lives in peace. The tens of thousands of citizens who remained were provided humanitarian relief and basic needs with reconstruction assistance on the horizon. You can see the video I posted on my blog at the time when they joyously welcomed the Syrian Arab Army. Minister Haidar admitted that Reconciliation plans are a work in progress and problems do occur. He also explained a complex process involving contact with and empowerment of the local people in the occupied areas that I can explain at some other time.

Each case is unique. East Aleppo has been very closely tied to a stream of foreign fighters who came in through Turkey. They are unlikely to walk away. Al Nusra/Al Qaeda is the primary organization there. And there may be a larger civilian population than in some of the other areas where the plan has succeeded. While the world is watching, it must be stated that the deep plan of working with local fighters and civilian councils will not unfold immediately. Ali Haidar, the Minister of Reconciliation and the long time leader of a dissident party prior to the current crisis in Syria (the war), is on his way to Aleppo to assess conditions and work on making the contacts necessary to begin the real process of reconciliation.

Of course, the first steps of this plan for reconciliation have been all over the news with varying judgements. The New York Times refers to reconciliation and restoration of the fighters’ citizenship as ‘surrender’, but that is not the way those vested in ‘reconciliation’ see it. People we spoke to told us that Syrians are tired of the war. Many initially joined the fight because they were being paid. They say that others joined out of confusion during the initial attacks on their villages and neighborhoods and that many men in occupied areas are given the choice to fight for the militants or be killed immediately. The president told us that he would prefer to heal the country rather than unleash a sea of rage and revenge. The only context in which this does not make sense is one where the sovereign Syrian State is not acknowledged.

Starvation might be less an issue in Aleppo than the fact that the fighters and their families will no longer have income. Last week it was reported, even by Western sources that the current situation was imminent and so an effort was made by the militants in East Aleppo to bring in several months worth of food and other necessities. In the last 24 hours, the Russians have air dropped more food and supplies into East Aleppo. And there are resources at the humanitarian corridors. The NY Times is reporting that people don’t want to leave East Aleppo. However, RT, however, is reporting that militants are firing on civilians who try to leave the area. Clearly there are problems that need to be addressed.

However, there are significant differences between the perspective presented by the Western press and that of the Syrians we met with this week. There is one I would like to point out, that was made very clear by everyone I met with during my stay here in Damascus. Syria is a sovereign country. It has a government which is doing its best to provide the services that governments provide including the provision of necessary resources and services to civilians including personal security which includes ethnic and religious tolerance and equality under the law. None of the forces at war with the government of Syria have demonstrated the capacity, or more importantly, the desire to provide these basic human and civil rights to the people of Syria.

President Bashar Assad, who was elected 2 years ago by the majority of Syrian citizens with a clear majority of votes, comes across as a well educated, progressive individual who is taking responsibility for providing for the people of his country who elected him by a significant majority, and leading a government which is attempting to respond to the issues that have caused civil unrest and discontent within that society while at the same time facing a vicious attack, funded, armed and manned by wealthy countries that have no civil rights and provide few social resources to their population. Not only is the government of Syria with their President doing their best to support the people of that country, but were he to leave, there would be no leadership in the fight against forces that oppose the values of the vast majority of Syrian people and are determined to tear the state apart.

Syrian is home to several ethnic groups and numerous sects of Christianity and Islam. They have lived together in peace for centuries if not longer. This week, the Grand Muftii and the Bishop of the Orthodox Church told us they are ‘cousins’. People tell me it is shameful to ask another person their religion or ethnic background as it is socially irrelevant. There is an awareness of the economic issues that are a source of suffering but the war has taken precedence. There is no doubt that the Syrian government has made mistakes and no one in Syria denies it. However, the US demand that Assad abandon his office and his responsibilities is unrealistic and out of sync with American values as well as with Syrian values. The US insistence on continuing to fuel this vicious war with money and weapons, through proxies and direct strikes, through propaganda and political manipulation, until he abdicates is criminal. It is a violation of international law, us law, and common morality.

Judith Bello has spent the week in Damascus with a US Peace Council Delegation on a fact finding mission. We talked to people in government, business and social services. We spoke to professors, staff and student representatives at Damascus University, and we met at length with Ali Haidar, Chairman of the Syrian Social Nationalist Party and Minister of Reconciliation in the current Government. Yesterday we had a meeting with the President. Today we went to Ma’alula. Tomorrow most of us will fly home. Judith joined the Delegation as a representative of the United National Antiwar Coalition (UNAC). She will be writing more about this unique and eye opening experience as will the other participants.

30 July 2016

By Franklin Lamb

Jablah, North Syria: “Don’t cry for us Syria” has recently become a motto/logo of sorts for many physically and psychologically brutalized youth around this ancient land. They are the youngsters who represent a new generation of Syrians, many of whom were born in this century. It is into their patriotic hands that the Syria’s Torch has been passed.

Amid all the dissension and fear-mongering surrounding refugees in the midst of a bloody civil/proxy war, many of Syria’s youth are focused on helping fellow Syrians. As much of the rest of the world seemingly passes its time pontificating and posturing in padded chairs and security councils, volunteers around Syria are risking their lives to help those in dire need and who are attempting to find safety.

The war statistics from Syria are fairly well known. As are the dangers of Syria’s youth heeding seductive Sirene calls to violence with offers of salaries and various perks and escapes from reality. The conflict here has, according to some NGO estimates, now claimed the lives of nearly half a million Syrians, out of a pre-war population of 22 million. More than 11 percent of the Syrian population is estimated to have been killed or injured. More than five million have fled the country while approximately 8 million are internally displaced. The UN estimates that nearly 12 million people are in urgent need of humanitarian assistance, more than six million being children ranging from infants to age 12. These distressing numbers rise every day and have left few Syrian families untouched as they carve a deep psychological scar on the population, none more so than upon the youth.

One consequence from more five years of civil war in their country is the pulling of Syria’s youth toward extremist groups due to myriad deprivations and personal traumas, loss of economic and educational opportunities, the destruction of infrastructure and spreading fighting; besieged areas, and much more. Youth unemployment now reaches nearly 90 percent in some areas of the country with no end in sight for this conflict. These factors, more than ideology cause many youth to join extremist groups such that many male adolescents end up joining armed groups for lack of a better option and for some income.

Many Syrian adolescents, who this observer has had the honor to meet, have experienced terrible psychological traumas, like losing family members and other conflict-related tragedies. The widely reported increase in the use of drugs and alcohol among adolescents, as a coping measure in the face of hardship, is a point of concern when it comes to the health of young Syrians. The financial resources of most Syrian families have become so limited, it is to the point that fathers cannot provide for their families and increasingly marry their daughters off prematurely. Where male mobility is hindered by security concerns, females may be the sole family support. Looking for basic necessities such as food, fuel and water, they often end up waiting in line for hours to receive relief assistance.

Fragmentation of family structure, tensions due to the economic situation, contrasting political views, exposure to sectarianism, and tribal conflict often result in a rise of adolescents’ insecurity and fear, a wish for rebellion, feelings of hatred, and radical thinking that can have potentially long-lasting results on their future and Syria’s. This trend is particularly evident in areas where sectarian and tribal conflicts are widespread.

At the same time, adolescents reveal great determination to improve lives here. Despite fearing for their lives as well as the lives of loved ones, Syria’s youth are today exhibiting extraordinary resilience and freely discuss with foreigners, various strategies that would help them and their fellow citizens. Foremost is the need felt by youngsters for the return of security and peace in the country for their parents and the overall community. Paralyzing fear and extreme sadness resulting from the war permeates every discussion with Syria youngsters who see the end of the conflict as the only hope for a better future. One youngster in the Wadi al Nasra (Valley of the Christian) near Homs, explained, “We do not know what is coming. We have a very long, painful road ahead but I know that our involvement change our country’s course.”

For this observer, some surprising reactions among Syria’s youth include a strong rejection of the forces inside and outside of Syria who seek to manipulate religions and sects for political purposes. Student’s frankness and detailed knowledge expressed is encouraging given their resistance to confessional political manipulation. It gives one hope for this country’s future. Syrian youth generally want no part of turning sects against one another and vow that after this war ends Syria will embrace all her people whether they are believers or not and with a blind eye to what sect or religion someone belongs to. “This is who we are as a people, two medical students explained to this observer, this is our heritage and our values and we shall return to them and hopefully learn from this ugly experience that distorted us and gave the world the wrong impression of who we are.”

Syrian adolescents are also calling for more opportunities to actively help their community and the people most severely affected by the situation, through volunteering and joining charities and relief organizations. According to a UNICEF survey of last year, roughly 60 percent of the interviewed adolescents would like to engage in activities, especially in relief work and related trainings (e.g., first aid), and recreational and cultural activities for their countrymen. There is currently a serious shortage of centers available at key locations.

Their strength and resilience comes from the love and support of parents and friends; from the community that shares their fate and the inspiring example of relief workers who devote their time to helping others as well as from within themselves and from their desire for a better future.

Syria’s new generation wants to be evaluated by their community with respect, their capabilities and potentials recognized, to be supported, understood and encouraged. Amidst sentiments of uncertainty on how the war here will develop, Syrian’s youth are committed in many ways to bring positive changes and improvements to their communities. Today they are feeding the hungry, organizing dozens of activities for children, repairing war damage, cleaning streets and alleys, trimming foliage in parks and along highways, tutoring kids out of regular schools, volunteering at hospitals and clinics, donating blood, organizing scout trips into the countryside, counseling and supporting traumatized patients, organizing funfairs and arts and crafts events for kids, teaching and conducting art projects to games to nutritious meals preparations, to discussions about what to do and what not to do to stay safe in their neighborhoods, and much more. Syria’s youngsters, like most youngsters are spectacular.

Parents of young people here in Syria are naturally deeply concerned about the numerous daily threats their children face and their bleak future. As a result, they often become overprotective and give little space or freedom to adolescents in a desperate effort to keep them safe. Parents themselves are under enormous stress and sometimes end up isolating their children in order to protect them without considering the psychological impact, particularly on adolescents. Parents’ restrictions create a deep feeling of frustration in adolescents, especially among girls, who feel locked inside the house, confined to their bedrooms and constantly longing to get out and be with their friends.

Nevertheless parents, while expressing disapproval to this observer for some of their children’s behavior, consider their children this country’s future and the only hope for a better Syria. They know the hardship that their children’s generation is experiencing and their delayed potential. Parents here know well that social tensions from the war negatively influence adolescent behavior. Finishing education is clearly a priority for 94 percent of parents surveyed last year by the NGO, Mercy Corp. A high percentage (81 percent) of adolescents who were interviewed by Merci Corps is currently studying, with the largest majority getting formal education in public and private schools. Nevertheless, 76 percent are facing serious difficulties in continuing their education. As one male adolescent explained, “We go to school every day. Sometimes there is no teacher, but we still go. It is better than sitting doing nothing.”

The main obstacle for all students here remains the security situation, which results in challenges to the school premises; the closure of schools; lack of teachers, books and supplies; and parents forcing their children to drop out because of fear for their safety as well as the financial need to work. Further, among displaced adolescents, a strong feeling of marginalization within the school environment often results in adolescents dropping out of school.

Those who are able to find a job (22 percent according to the UNHCR) dropped out of school and are currently working but they are often poorly paid. Driven by the need to help their families and sometimes being the only breadwinner in the household, adolescents work as shop assistants, street vendors, in construction and farming. The majority receive, on average, less than $100 per month.

Against this bleak backdrop, Syria’s youth refuse to be defeated or to abandon what many refer to as “Mother Syria.” Youngsters today in Syria are seeking educational activities and relief work and volunteering with charities and relief organizations for the purpose of helping their countrymen in need. Youngsters here explain that by helping others it gives them a sense of purpose and they deem it rewarding, even when dangerous. According to a UNICEF survey on last year, roughly 60 percent of the interviewed adolescents would like to engage in activities, especially in relief work and related trainings (e.g., first aid), and recreational and cultural activities for their countrymen. Syrian adolescents are also calling for more opportunities to actively help their community and the people most severely affected by the situation, through volunteering and joining charities and relief organizations. Their strength and resilience comes from the love and support of parents and friends; from the community that shares their fate and the inspiring example of relief workers who devote their time to helping others.

Though rare, some recreational activities, such as sports, especially football are available at times. They often are organized by local groups and schools. In some communities, religious groups engage with youth quite actively. Whatever the type of activity that adolescents take part in, there is always positive feedback that brings purpose to their lives and encourages them, especially if it involves helping others.

Hundreds of thousands of youngsters have fled Syria for a new life abroad. An equal number refused to leave and resolved to continue trying to salvage their beloved Syria recognizing that there were many needs that they can help fill on the grass roots level despite the increasingly complexity of the regional and international competition for Syria.

For this observer, surprising reactions among Syria’s youth include a strong rejection of the forces inside and outside of Syria who seek to manipulate religions and sects for political purposes. Students frankness and detailed knowledge expressed is encouraging given their resistance to confessional political manipulation is refreshing and gives one hope for this country’s future. They want no part of turning sects against one another and vow that after this war ends Syria will embrace all her people whether they are believers or not and with a blind eye to what sect or religion one belongs to. “This is who we are as a people, two medical students vising the crusader fortress Crac des Chevalier last week, explained to this observer, “this is our heritage and our values and we shall return to them and hopefully learn from this ugly experience that distorted us and gave the world the wrong impression of who we are.”

May Syria’s youth ever grasp tightly and proudly their country’s Torch as its flame brightens Syrian paths as they reclaim and rebuild this cradle of civilization.

To provide a meal to a Syrian refugee child in Lebanon: Please visit:

http://mealsforsyrianrefugeechildrenlebanon.com

For Syria Heritage Updates please visit:

www.Syrian-heritage.com

Franklin Lamb is a visiting Professor of International Law at the Faculty of Law, Damascus University and volunteers with the Sabra-Shatila Scholarship Program (sssp-lb.com).

30 July 2016

By Mohammad Ashraf

(For three weeks now the entire Kashmir Valley has been turned into a huge prison with total blockade of communication within and with outside world)

The intention of the authorities in Delhi appears to cow down Kashmiris to the extent that they bite the dust and give up! This shows the utter lack of knowledge about the Kashmiris and their 5,000 year old history. Kashmir from the ancient times was known to be a very beautiful country somewhere in the Himalaya. One finds mention of Kashmir in almost all ancient chronicles of the Greeks, the Arabs and even the Chinese. There are no other people in this area who have such an ancient recorded history. It used to be the best seat of learning in this entire area. Kashmir had trade relations with Central Asia and people from far and wide used to come here for studies. The most important Buddhist Council which changed this religion from the strictest Hinayana School to the more acceptable Mahayana was held in Kashmir.

Kashmiris are proud of their ancient history. However, the country was an independent sovereign kingdom till the sixteenth century when Akbar, the Mughal King annexed it to his empire through treachery. Mughals had failed twice to capture Kashmir but then Akbar invited the then king Yusuf Shah Chak to Lahore for talks, arrested him there and attacked Kashmir. Being leaderless, Kashmiris still gave a fight and his son Yaqub Shah Chak fought a guerrilla war for six months but was ultimately captured in Kishtwar. Thus ended Kashmir’s independence in 1586!

Since that time the country of Kashmir has been under the occupation of outsiders who took turns in capturing it one after the other. After Mughals came the Afghans. Then came the Sikhs and finally, the Dogras purchased it from the British for a paltry sum of rupees seventy five lakhs along with its inhabitants. All the foreign rulers oppressed the local people so much that they ultimately became wretched serfs without any self-respect and dignity. The four centuries of slavery completely squeezed out of them every semblance of chivalry and manhood and they were turned into characterless bonded labour! However, there were occasional rebellions but these were put down with a harsh hand!

In spite of all the harshest conditions for last four centuries, Kashmiris have survived and are now more vigorous and vocal than ever before! There are no Mughals; there are no Afghans, there is no Sikh empire and there is no Dogra kingdom but the Kashmiris are still there! It is only their misfortune that when the whole sub-continent was having an awakening of freedom and they were expecting to free themselves from the centuries of slavery that they got locked up in a tangle which refuses to go away.However, they have not given up the hope of final salvation. It is the misfortune of the authorities keeping them down that they have not learnt a lesson from Kashmir’s history. Kashmiris will survive all the harshest measures and would still be there. However, on the contrary, the people oppressing themmercilessly may not be there like the oppressors of the earlier times!

For last three weeks the entire valley has been converted into a prison and a virtual concentration camp. There is continuous curfew in the entire valley without any relaxation or break. All communication links within Kashmir and with the outside world have been snapped. Nonstop protests are taking place all over the valley. Protesting teenagers, children and women are being showered with bullets and pellets. Over 50 people have been killed and more than 3,000 injured. As per latest reports, the pellets have affected the eyesight of over 185 persons. The newspaper presses and offices were sealed and papers confiscated. One used to hear about such harsh measures being taken in the countries behind the erstwhile “Iron Curtain”. Some of the measures are even harsher than the “Iron Curtain” measures! Kashmir is supposed to be an integral part of the democratic and secular republic of India. There is no record of similar measures ever having being taken in any other part of the republic of India. The authorities could have learnt a lesson from the happenings of 2008 and 2010. Kashmiris can never be cowed down and they always rise up whenever they feel their existence is being threatened.

For last 70 years it has not been possible for the outside forces to bring down Kashmiris on their knees. They have risen up again and again and will continue to do so in future also. A British author has observed that no outsider has ever been able to know what is really in the heart of a Kashmiri and it is only a kind word and a joke which brings out the best in a Kashmiri.The authorities in Delhi stillseem to believe in cowing down and subduing people rather than winning them over. Probably they have forgotten the saying of the most famous illustrious son of Kashmir, Kalhana, “The country of Kashmir may be conquered by the force of spiritual merit, but not by the force of soldiers!” The time seems to have run out for Delhi and there appears no turning back now!

Mohammad Ashraf, I.A.S. (Retired), Former Director General Tourism, Jammu & Kashmir.

28 July 2016

By Andre Vltchek

New Cold War is now in full swing and the West is using both old and new tactics, in order to demonize and discredit all of its opponents: from Russia to China, Venezuela, North Korea, South Africa and Iran.

Our anti-imperialist media outlets, including those of the RT, TeleSUR, Press TV, CCTV and Sputnik are being labeled as ‘propaganda’ channels. Defensive and internationalist initiatives of our countries are branded as aggressions. Those governments that are relentlessly working on behalf of the people are defined as ‘evil’ or at least as ‘dictatorships’.

The Empire is erecting complex and destructive web of lies and manipulations, literally trapping some countries in grotesque pseudo-legal concepts, as recently happened to China, which was confronted by The Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) at The Hague, which has recently ruled against, what F. William Engdhal described, as “any and all claims of China to various islands or even rocks inside what is known as the ‘Nine Dash Line’ between China’s coast and The Philippines.” China actually never asked for any ‘arbitration’; it is repeating that it has been ready to negotiate directly with the Philippines. But the West and the previous servile administration in Manila decided to turn this historical dispute into a yet another ideological and propaganda battle.

The War against the “coalition of unwilling” is constantly diversifying. Propagandists in North America and Europe are inventing new ‘weapons’ of mass intellectual and information destruction. Nothing is left intact.

The latest ‘battle’ is truly unconventional, one could even say ‘innovative’ – it is an attempt to demonize Russian athletes, and even to prevent them, at lease some of them, from participating in the upcoming Rio de Janeiro Olympic games!

Of course, Russia’s athletes are legendary, as are its artists, scientists and thinkers. To drag the entire Russian Olympic team through the dirt and infamy could be definitely considered a great victory for the Western Empire and its fundamentalist philosophy. To ban it altogether from participating at the Olympics would be even more ‘delightful’.

“Just look at those sneaky, filthy, dishonest Russians – they are cheating wherever they go! They are doping their athletes, turning them into some robots stuffed with steroids… They are winning unfairly!”

Deena Stryker makes an excellent point in her recent essay for the NEO:

“Today the airways were full of talk about the possibility that Russia would be banned from taking part in the up-coming Olympic Games in Brazil, on the pretext that the IOC has ‘definitive proof’ — in the words of a spokesman — that the Putin government was complicit in the doping of its athletes going back to 2013.

Two things strike me as strange: the first is the fact that the Russian doctor and former lab head who apparently faked test results now lives in California, were he heads a laboratory.

The second thing is that sports fans are less likely than other people to be up on foreign news and international politics, while they are passionate about sports news… These people are bound to make up a sizable portion of any electorate, so someone in President Obama’s foreign policy team probably decided to target them instead of consumers of hard news. Sports fans have probably not followed the Ukraine coup, or even the NATO buildup on Russia’s borders…”

The IOC itself is historically a notoriously corrupt institution. It has been always more than willing to provide favors to those who either pay, or hold reigns of power.

It is not that the Russian labs and all Russian athletes are clean, far from it! There were definitely several (or many) cases of doping, and the labs were not always ‘clean’ or transparent. But!

But so many athletes and so many labs, all over the world, are guilty of the same wrongdoings. But it is only Russia that may be forced to pay the heaviest, the ultimate price.

To claim that this is not part of the political battle would be ludicrous.

But sidelining, even demonizing Russia may not be the only purpose for this complex ‘operation’.

Just very recently, Brazil, the host country of the 2016 Olympic games, went through some agonizing events. Its socialist government had been framed and forced out of power, by both the local extreme right wing elites and by their handlers in the West.

Protests are still raging. Discontent with the coup and with the new regime is growing.

There is great chance that there will be clashes between the protesters and armed forces, during the Games.

In such an explosive environment, anything could become symbolic, even the epic fight of the Russian, Chinese, Cuban and other athletes against the competitors representing the West.

During my recent visit to Brazil I realized how popular Russia is becoming among the ordinary people there. It is clear for whom so many Brazilian sports fans would be cheering, especially now, after the shameless coup.

This (the planners in Washington most likely decided) has to be prevented. The solidarity of BRICS countries should not be shown on television screens to those billions of sports fans all over the world.

Now, with Temer and his clique holding power in Brazil, it would be much easier to simply ‘delete’ Russia from the Olympic map, if the IOC decides to impose blank ban on the entire Russian team.

If the coup never took place, if Dilma and the PT were still in power, there were several ways to resist this latest West’s onslaught against Russia and its athletes. There were even ways to humiliate the spineless IOC. For instance, the government of Brazil could have arranged a parallel event for the Russian athletes, in order to show its solidarity. But now, the way things are, there is no chance for such a ‘rebellion’!

Brazil is screaming under attacks from the market fundamentalists. Its new (illegitimate, but fully pro-Western) government naturally sees Russia as one of its archenemies.

One should never under-estimate the Empire! In its own, deeply destructive way, it is truly brilliant. Its Machiavellian tactics are extremely effective. And this sport saga is just a proof of it!

On July 26, 2016, the RT reported:

“The International Olympic Committee has rejected calls for a blanket ban on Russia at the Rio 2016 Games, ruling that individual sports federations should decide whether Russian athletes are eligible to compete.

Athletes will need to meet strict criteria laid out by the IOC, including proving to international federations that they have a clean doping record and have been tested by “reliable” international anti-doping bodies.”

Conditions are almost impossible to meet, in such a short time that is left before the beginning of the Olympic games in Rio.

The Empire is becoming thoroughly unpredictable. It is attacking on all fronts. It lost all its shame and decency.

And the Western mass media is now fully lined-up, providing ideological cover and unabashed propaganda. And now it is not only the media in the United States, but also in Germany, the U.K. and elsewhere.

Most likely, the free world (those countries that are refusing to accept the West’s dictates) will soon lose one more important battle. But the struggle goes on! Those Russian athletes who will make it to Rio will be fighting great symbolic battles, like those that were fought in Berlin, during the 1936 Olympics.

Andre Vltchek is a philosopher, novelist, filmmaker and investigative journalist. He covered wars and conflicts in dozens of countries.

28 July 2016

By Pepe Escobar

Since the recent ruling by The Hague in favor of the Philippines and against China over the South China Sea, Southeast Asia has been engulfed on how to respond. They dithered. They haggled. They were plunged into despair.

It was a graphic demonstration of how “win-win” business is done in Asia. At least in theory.

In the end, at a summit in Vientiane, Laos, the 10-nation Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and China finally settled for that household mantra – “defusing tensions”.

They agreed to stop sending people to currently uninhabited “islands, reefs, shoals, cays, and other features” after ASEAN declared itself worried about land reclamation and “escalations of activities in the area”.

And all this without even naming China – or referring to the ruling in The Hague.

China and ASEAN also pledged to respect freedom of navigation in the South China Sea (which Washington insists is in danger); solve territorial disputes peacefully, through negotiations (that happens to be the official Chinese position), also taking into consideration the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS); and work hard to come up with a Code of Conduct in the South China Sea (that’s been going on for years; optimistically, a binding text will be ready by the first half of 2017).

So, problem solved? Not really. At first, it was Deadlock City. Things only started moving when the Philippines desisted to mention The Hague in the final statement; Cambodia – allied with China – had prevented it from the start.

And that’s the heart of the matter when it comes to ASEAN negotiating with China. It’s a Sisyphean task to reach consensus among the 10 members – even as ASEAN spins its role as the perfect negotiation conduit. China for its part prefers bilaterals – and has applied Divide and Rule to get what it wants, seducing mostly Laos and Cambodia as allies.

That threat by a peer competitor

The strategic geopolitical centrality of the South China Sea is well known: A naval crossroads of roughly $5 trillion in annual trade; transit sea lanes to roughly half of global daily merchant shipping, a third of global oil trade and two-thirds of all liquid natural gas (LNG) trade.

It’s also the key hub of China’s global supply chain. The South China Sea protects China’s access to the India Ocean, which happens to be Beijing’s crucial energy lifeline. Woody Island in the Paracels, southeast of Hainan island, also happens to be a key bridgehead in One Belt, One Road (OBOR) – the New Silk Roads. The South China Sea is strictly linked to the Maritime Silk Road.

The arbitration panel in The Hague (composed of four Europeans, one American of Ghanaian descent and, significantly, no Asians) issued a ruling that is non-binding; moreover, it was not exactly neutral, as China, one the conflicting parties, simply refused to take part.

Beyond these expressions of mutual ASEAN-China understanding, hardcore action will keep everyone’s juices flowing. The Pentagon, predictably, won’t refrain from its FON (Freedom of Navigation) program, which has recently featured several B-52 overflights in the South China Sea along with the usual US Navy patrols.

But now Beijing is counter punching in style – showing off one of its H-6K long-range nuclear-capable bombers overflying Scarborough Shoal, near the Philippines. That only increased Pentagon paranoia, because the real game in the South China Sea revolves to a large extent over China’s aerial and underwater military strategy.

To understand the progression, we need to go back to the early 1980s, when the Little Helmsman Deng Xiaoping set up China’s first Special Economic Zone (SEZ) in Shenzhen. From the start, the whole Chinese miracle always depended upon China’s eastern seaboard’s fabulous capacity to engage in global trade. More than half of China’s GDP depends on global trade.

But, strategically, China has no direct access to the open seas. Geophysics is implacable: there are islands all around. And geopolitics followed; many of these are and can become a problem.

Wu Shicun, the president of China’s National Institute for South China Sea Studies, has been constant over the years; all of Beijing’s actions boil down to securing strategic access to the opens seas. This may be construed in the West as aiming for a “Chinese lake”. But it’s in fact about securing its own naval backyard. And that implies, predictably, deep suspicion about what the US Navy may come up with. The Defense Ministry loses sleep about it 24/7.

For Beijing, it’s crystal clear; the eastern seaboard must be protected at all costs – because they are the entry and exit point of China’s global supply chains. Yet as Beijing improves its military sophistication, the hegemon – or exceptionalist – machine gets itchier and itchier. Because the whole ingrained exceptionalist worldview can only conceive it as a “threat” by a peer competitor.

The larger-than-life “access” drama

From Exceptionalistan’s point of view, it’s all about the myth of “access”. The US must have full, unrestricted “access” to the seven seas, the base of its Empire of Bases, post-Rule Britannia system: the “indispensable nation” ruling the waves.

But now Beijing has reached a new threshold. It’s already in the position to successfully defend the strategic southern island of Hainan. The Yulin naval base in Hainan is the site of China’s expanded submarine fleet, which not only features stalwarts such as the 094A Jin-class submarine, but the capability to deliver China’s new generation ICBM, the JL-3, with an estimated range of 12,000km.

Translation: China now can not only protect, but also project power, aiming ultimately at unrestricted access to the Pacific.

The US counter punch to all this is “Anti-Access”, or A2, plus Area Denial, which in Pentagonese turns out as A2/AD. Yet China has evolved very sophisticated A2/AD tactics, which include cyber warfare; submarines equipped with cruise missiles; and most of all anti-ship ballistic missiles such as the Dongfeng 21-D, an absolute nightmare for those sitting duck billion-dollar US aircraft carriers.

A program called Pacific Vision, funded by the Pentagon’s Office of Net Assessments, eventually came up with the Air-Sea Battle concept. Virtually everything about Air-Sea Battle is classified. As the concept was being elaborated, China has mastered the art of very long range ballistic missiles – a lethal threat to the Empire of Bases, fixed and/or floating.

What is known is that the core Air-Sea Battle concept, known in Orwellian Pentagonese as “NIA/D3”,“networked, integrated forces capable of attack-in-depth to disrupt, destroy and defeat adversary forces”. To break through the fog, this is how the Pentagon would trample over Chinese A2/AD. The Pentagon wants to be able to attack all sorts of Chinese command and control centers in a swarm of “surgical operations”. And all this without ever mentioning the word “China”.

So these are the stakes. The indispensable nation’s military hegemony over the whole South China Sea must always be undisputed. Always. But already it is not. China is positioning itself as a cunning, asymmetrical aspirant to “peer competitor”. For the moment Beijing ranks second in the Pentagon’s list of “existential threats” to the US. Were not for Russia’s formidable nuclear power, China would already be number one.

At the same time China does not need to launch any military offensive against an ASEAN member; it’s bad for business. The environment after The Hague’s ruling – as the Laos summit proved – points toward long-term diplomatic solutions. But make no mistake; at some point in the future, there will be a serious confrontation between the US and China over “access” to the South China Sea.

Pepe Escobar is an independent geopolitical analyst. He writes for RT, Sputnik and TomDispatch, and is a frequent contributor to websites and radio and TV shows ranging from the US to East Asia.

27 July 2016

By Afro-Middle East Centre

Although Turkey survived the recent coup attempt, the impact of that operation will be felt for a long time, and there are serious implications for the putchists as well as the rest of Turkish society and the Middle East region.

The evening of Friday, 15 July, saw one of the most severe attacks on Turkey’s democracy since 1997, as a small faction of the Turkish Armed Forces (TSK) attempted to wrestle control of the state. With more than 200 people killed and 1 500 wounded, a state of emergency was declared days later for a period of three months. As the government began its clampdown against those it accuses of being participants in or complicit with the coup attempt, questions have already been raised about the nature of the democratic process in Turkey, the clampdown by the state, and the stability of the strategically important Eurasian country in an already politically volatile region. Much of this discussion is spiced with a range of conspiracy theories.

How the coup attempt unfolded

The coup operation began around 19:30 Turkish time, and was initially met with shock as many citizens assumed the military presence suggested an imminent terrorist threat; the terrorist attack on Istanbul’s Ataturk Airport two weeks earlier was still fresh in Turkish minds. But as tanks rolled onto two Bosphorus bridges in Istanbul, and social media showed military planes flying low over Istanbul and Ankara, it was clear something was awry. A short while later Prime Minister Binali Yildirim confirmed that Turkey was under threat of a coup d’état. The coup plotters did not, however, expect a strong civilian opposition to tanks, attack helicopters and armoured vehicles. After President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s public call on citizens to oppose the military action by those he claimed were members of the movement of US-based Turkish businessperson and preacher Fethullah Gulen, Istanbul and Ankara streets became sites of determined civilian resistance.

The coup plot seemed to have been organised well in advance, and was supported by a significant number of senior officers of the TSK’s air, navy and ground forces. Importantly, the chief of staff, and the heads of the airforce, naval and ground troops refused to cooperate with the plotters, resulting in the breakdown of communication within the army. Had the heads of these strategic arms of the army cooperated, a substantially different picture might have emerged. The putschists incorrectly assumed that they would receive the support of a significant part of the armed forces.

The execution of the plot seemed to have been accelerated by about six hours because of security warnings issued by the National Intelligence Organization (MIT) to senior TSK commanders that afternoon. The operation was planned to begin in the early hours of Saturday morning. The confusion resulting from the change of plan helped make the coup a failure. Another failure followed the disorientation of conscript soldiers who faced public resistance, and who were unaware of the intentions of the putschists, having been told they would be performing an anti-terror exercise. The plotters’ strategy was severely weakened by the fact that they failed to shut down satellite communications, and media was was able to broadcast messages from the prime minister. Further, they seem to have been blindsided by the calls from minarets around the country for civilians to oppose the coup. The Turkish media played a major role in encouraging resistance to the coup, and, in a rare show of unity, media outlets from across the political spectrum declared the coup illegal and a threat to Turkey’s democracy. (In contrast, some western and Arab media such as CNBC and Al Ahram falsely reported Friday night that Erdogan had fled, and sought asylum in Germany.)

Whose coup is it anyway?

From the first announcement about the unfolding coup by Erdogan, Yildirim and other government sources linked the operation to Gulen and his Hizmet movement. His followers around the world are estimated at between three and six million. US court records estimate his institutions’ worth as being between 20 and 50 billion dollars in the USA alone. Some figures put the total global assets as 150 billion dollars. Some opposition groups, notably the fiercely secular Hurriyet newspaper and the opposition Republican Party (CHP) – both extremely critical of Erdogan’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) – also pointed fingers at Hizmet. Hurriyet’s Ahmet Hakan, one of the loudest critics of the AKP and Erdogan, also dismissed the theory posited in western media that the president had planned the coup to strengthen his grip over the state. A number of other theories also allege conspiracies, with some accusing the USA, including the claim that the CIA had plotted with Gulen; and others adding that the MIT had been pre-emptively informed of the coup by the Russians as part of their attempt to strengthen relations with Turkey. These theories were spurred on by the fact that western politicians waited for the coup to fail before condemning it, and that the aircraft involved in the coup took off from Incirlik military airbase where the US airforce fighting the Islamic State group (IS) is based.

The timing of the coup attempt is likely linked to the fact that the government already had plans to shake up the top ranks of the army before the end of 2016, with a number of officers, it is suspected, being dismissed, retired or tried. In addition, the annual meeting of the Supreme Council of Ministers, which is tasked with the appointment of military personnel, is to take place in August 2016, and Gulenists expected that meeting to result in a purge of their members in the army. An MIT list of alleged Gulen ‘infiltrators’ was to be used at the meeting, and it is likely that a number of the putschists’ names were on that list. The July coup would, then, have been their last opportunity to protect their positions and oppose Erdogan and the government. Many of the coup plotters, government sources claim, had graduated from Hizmet schools.

The Gulen-AKP alliance and split

The Gulen movement – now outlawed in Turkey as a terrorist organisation – has a long history in Turkish politics dating back to the early 1970s when Gulen’s exceptional oratory skills made him a popular preacher, and his network of schools was started. Gulen’s views on the need to mainstream Islam within the major organs of the state in the 1980s, when the Turkish state was a secular fundamentalist state ruled by an anti-religious military junta, gained it favour with Islamists such as those from Necmettin Erbakan’s MilliGorus (Felicity) Islamic Party. Erdogan, a former student of Erbakan, became the mayor of Istanbul in 1996 on a MiliGorus ticket. Although Erbakan remained sceptical of Gulen’s ideology, the AKP, a MiliGorus breakaway that won national elections in 2002, perceived Gulen as an ally against a hostile state that positioned the military as the guardian of the republic.
Erdogan saw Gulen as politically significant precisely because Hizmet, although never openly contesting for space on the Turkish political stage in its forty-year history, was regarded as apolitical. This perception allowed the preacher to cross the boundaries between politics, religion, power and influence. A core arm of Hizmet is its huge school network which includes around 930 schools in Turkey – many catering to the upper echelons of Turkish society, and whose graduates have occupied significant positions in the state apparatus since the mid-1980s, as well as about 2 000 schools in 160 other countries around the world, including South Africa. These cater for a total of around 1.2 million students.

There is little doubt that Gulen wields significant influence, and that millions of dollars flow through his global education network and associated business, media and other organisations. The ease with which Gulen schools operate around the world, employing hundreds of teachers, enrolling thousands of students, and with strong government and civil society contacts, has resulted in allegations that its activities are convenient for intelligence gathering and exercising political influence. Unlike various Middle East Islamist parties which have usually been met with sanctions, Hizmet has become an influential lobby in the USA. It cultivates the image of a ‘moderate’ Muslim group led by a ‘moderate’ Muslim personality who focuses on what Hizmet calls ‘cultural Islam’ – as opposed to ‘political Islam’ . This brand of Islam made Gulen popular in the West, particularly in post-9/11 USA where Gulen became a significant voice in the US ‘war against terror’.

The Gulenist emphasis on interfaith dialogue and its relaxed attitude in some circumstances on issues like alcohol attracted the attention of states that view Erdogan and the AKP as more extreme. As important for his critics is the fact that Gulen never criticised Israeli policies or US foreign policy in the Middle East – even when this seemed detrimental to Turkish interests. Gulen was scathing in his criticism of the ‘Freedom Flotilla’ that attempted to ferry aid to the besieged Palestinian territory of Gaza. In contrast to global condemnation of the murder of nine (Turkish) civilians on board the Mavi Marmara, the lead ship in the 2010 Freedom Flotilla, by Israeli security forces, Gulen blamed flotilla organisers because they did not obtain Israeli permission. He also said those in the flotilla knew that they had put their lives at risk, suggesting they deserved the treatment they received from the Israelis.
The AKP’s first decade in power helped strengthen Gulen’s power base in Turkey. The AKP-Hizmet alliance proved useful for both parties – even after Gulen criticised Erdogan for the Mavi Marmara debacle – until 2012 when MIT head Hakan Fidan was arrested. Fidan was leading secret peace talks with the leader of the banned Kurdish Workers Party (PKK), Abdullah Ocalan. The arrest was seen by the government as an attempt at sabotage by Gulenists within the judiciary who were loathe to see reconciliation between the Kurdish rebel group and the state. In response, the government sponsored a bill which, after it was passed in 2014, threatened closure of Hizmet’s chain of preparatory schools in Turkey. This was followed by corruption allegations against AKP politicians, leading to the arrests of top AKP officials, and a number of resignations and dismissals of officials. The AKP alleged this was a campaign by Gulenists in the judiciary who were part of what the AKP began calling a ‘parallel state’. Relations between the former allies descended into distrust and acrimony, with tit-for-tat actions that included banning of pro-Gulen media and judicial attacks against AKP members.

Aftermath and impact

The most obvious result of 15 July was the mass arrests that include people from the military, police, judiciary and the education sector. The coup attempt provided the AKP government an opportunity to crush Hizmet and get rid of its members in state structures, and also to clamp down on other dissenting voices. Around 10 000 people have been detained, with around 9 000 of those being soldiers, and there have been allegations that some detainees are being tortured. In addition, around 40 000 military officials, police officers, judges, governors, teachers and academics have been suspended or dismissed.
While most Turkish opposition parties have expressed support of the government’s security efforts after the defeat of the coup attempt, various western governments have been vocal in their criticism of the mass arrests and clampdown in Turkey. In particular, European and US spokespersons have repeatedly insisted that Turkey must deal with the coup within the ‘rule of law’ – even before the arrests had begun.
This places Turkey on a collision course with the USA. Although a formal extradition request for Gulen has not yet been submitted to the USA, various Turkish officials – including Erdogan – have emphasised that it will be. US officials, including secretary of state John Kerry, have responded by insisting that such a request will only be considered if sufficient evidence is provided that Gulen is guilty as claimed. Relations between Turkey and the USA – fellow NATO members and ostensible allies – have been rocky for the past few years. Despite the US use of Turkey’s Incirlik airforce base to launch attacks against IS, the relationship is fraught. An extradition demand, together with the warming of relations with Russia, will likely make US-Turkish relations even more tenuous.

Turkey’s relations with the European Union and various EU member states are also likely to sour. Erdogan’s ignoring of European demands regarding the mass arrests are set to be significantly readjusted. Anti-EU sentiment has risen in Turkey, reflected in the opinion columns of newspapers. This is a result of what many in Turkey see as the hypocritical stance by the EU that was reflected in its slow reaction to the attempted coup, and threats that Turkey might will disqualify itself for EU accession should it reinstate the death penalty will help ensure that Turkey becomes even more distant from the possibility of EU membership. However, the manner in which . Turkish officials believe that if their country had not been able to join the EU after fifty-three years, it is unlikely to succeed now. EU accession has been used as a carrot by the bloc and its members, they believe, to garner Turkish support in the Middle East with little benefit to Turkey. Turkey, meanwhile, has been a benefactor for NATO states. With Turkey’s interest in the EU waning, the country seems more concerned in rebuilding relations with its neighbours.

Relations with Russia are set to improve. The coup attempt came three weeks after Turkey began a rapprochement with Russia, following a break in relations after Turkey’s downing of a Russian fighter jet. Turkish-Russian relations have been tested by Russia’s airstrikes on the Turkmen region of Bayirbucak in Northern Syria. However, the soldiers responsible for downing the Russian jet have been arrested on suspicion of being part of the coup network. Some Russian officials suggest that their government has accepted the Turkish version that the Russian jet was shot down as part of a Gulen plot. Russia having been one of the first governments to condemn the coup, and with Erdogan and Russian president, Vladimir Putin, set to meet in weeks, Turkey will seek to advance its political and economic relationship with Russia. Turkey’s suggestion that it will improve relations with Syria will likely be taken forward – with Russian help. And relations with Iran – with whom there is already booming trade – will also likely improve.
A key question relates to the seeming intelligence failure that allowed the plot to proceed as far as it did. Erdogan’s irritation at the lack of intelligence has been plain. Fidan’s role as MIT head will likely be reviewed, with questions already raised about why, if Fidan’s office had information about the plot, it was not timeously directed to the presidency.

The instability in the intelligence sector and armed forces will definitely impact upon Turkey’s war on the PKK, with the Kurdish group being handed an opportunity as a large number of senior officers are removed from the army. As the instability is exploited by Turkey’s southern nemesis, Syria’s president, Bashar al-Asad, matters will be further complicated for Turkey by the PKK’s links to the Syrian Democratic Union Party (PYD). Syria has, previously, successfully used Kurdish grievances against the Turkish state.

Domestically, the AKP will use the fallout from the attempted coup to its advantage. With Erdogan riding a wave as a saviour of Turkish democracy, it is possible that at the end of the state of emergency there will be either a snap election or a constitutional referendum on the question of a presidential system, which Erdogan could not have won before the coup attempt but which could now turn out favourably for him. Already there are indications that most opposition parties will support constitutional amendments, although it is unclear what precise amendments they are referring to.

Conclusion

There is no doubt that after the dust has settled in the squares and the sense of unity that is generally being felt across the country in response to the coup becomes less tangible, Turkey will be faced with greater challenges than the overt violence of a week ago. The Turkish state is fragile, and state institutions could either be stabilised or could further weaken as a result of the current purges. Should the Gulen movement be legally charged with subversion, its networks in Turkey and globally could be seriously affected. This could have implications for Turkey’s foreign relations, especially its policy towards countries that maintain links with the Hizmet movement, and, in particular, with the USA where Gulen resides. Turkey’s view of and its role within NATO could also be considered more carefully, given that no assistance was given to a member whose institutions were being attacked from the air by hostile forces. Whether Turkey will be able to weather the storm in the long term will depend on the willingness of all political forces to cooperate in the best interests of the broader society, and whether the government considers the rights of its citizens as important as it does the security of the state. Of course, as long as the legitimate grievances of its Kurdish population are not addressed, the Turkish state will remain in a state of uncertainty and instability. It also remains to be seen whether Turkey decides to reprioritise its domestic and regional imperatives over those of its global alliances.

28 July 2016