Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi endorse Trump’s attack in Syria

April 7, 2017 6:51 pm By Robert Spencer

That in itself ought to give Trump pause. They haven’t suddenly decided to become generous and bipartisan. They are, if anything, consistent. Trump is now working from the Obama playbook, aiding jihad groups as he did, and so the Democrats couldn’t be more pleased. At last he is presidential. But he is betraying the promises he made that propelled him into the White House.





“Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi endorse Trump’s attack in Syria,” by Anna Giaritelli, Washington Examiner, April 7, 2017:

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi broke with fellow Democrats who had criticized President Trump’s military action against Syria to endorse the move late Thursday.
“Making sure Assad knows that when he commits such despicable atrocities he will pay a price is the right thing to do,” Schumer said in a statement released late Thursday. “I salute the professionalism and skill of our Armed Forces who took action today.”
“Tonight’s strike in Syria appears to be a proportional response to the the regime’s use of chemical weapons,” Pelosi said in a statement.
Following the missile launch at 8:40 p.m. Thursday, some Democratic lawmakers criticized Trump for not asking Congress’ permission before choosing to launch 59 Tomahawk missiles at an airbase in west Syria where it’s believed Tuesday’s chemical weapon attack originated….

https://www.jihadwatch.org/2017/04/chuck-schumer-nancy-pelosi-endorse-trumps-attack-in-syria
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France, Qatar, and the New World Disorder

by Gearóid Ó Colmáin / January 25th, 2013

According to investigative journalist Silvia Cattori, the barbaric bombing of Aleppo University on January 15 has been officially claimed by the terrorist group the Al Nousra Front. This confirmation should not come as a surprise to those who have been following closely events in the Levant since March 17, 2011, when unknown snipers opened fire in the Southern Syrian town of Deraa killing several policemen and innocent protestors.

Since then, snipers and jihadist death squads from Libya, Chechnya, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Jordan, and even France and the UK inter alia, backed by Nato intelligence and Gulf petro-monarch cash, have waged a genocidal non-conventional war upon the Syrian people which has relied heavily on a sophisticated international disinformation campaign in the corporate controlled press, whereby all crimes committed by the terrorists are systematically blamed on the Syrian government.

Eighty-two students in Aleppo University were murdered on Tuesday January 15 from a missile launched by the Western media’s beloved “rebels”: these gangs of convicts, drug-smugglers, rapists, child abusers, and common thugs presented to the gullible Western public as “revolutionaries.”

Since 2011, over 2000 schools and educational centres in Syria have been destroyed by the Western-backed jihadists, who are attempting to annihilate the Syrian state in order to construct a “New Middle East” that accords with Nato and Gulf state geopolitical objectives. When will this nightmare of terrorism end?

Meanwhile, there was an icy silence in Paris, London, and Washington, not a word of condemnation after last week’s Aleppo atrocity.

Unlike the Houla Massacre last year, committed by the rebels but blamed on the Syrian government, there were no calls from Paris, London and Washington for an international investigation after the Aleppo bombing. Everybody knows who the perpetrators are. So there is silence. Cowards hide. Cowards prey on the weak and defenseless. Cowards dissemble and use cover for their actions. The Western military-intelligence establishment are despicable cowards. They hide behind pompous newspeak about human rights and democracy while committing the most heinous crimes known to man. They bomb other countries while pushing buttons in computers, thousands of miles from the action. They send in drugged psychopaths to kill, rob and destroy the people of countries who get in their way.

The callous silence of the Western governments at the massacre in Aleppo contrasted sharply with the strong and unequivocal condemnations that came from Brazil, Venezuela, Russia, and China. The emerging powers in the world are bearing witness to the self-destruction of Western civilization through an excess of hubris, greed and megalomania.

There are no words in any language to describe the atrocities NATO‘s contras are committing against the people of Syria. But the world is looking on in horror and outrage. Large parts of Latin America know what is going on. Large parts of Asia and Russia too, know who is behind the violence in Syria. The truth will out in time. The balance of power in the world is shifting and sooner or later, the criminals behind these neo-colonial wars and their vast network of collaborators will be brought to justice. There are signs that Jordan may realign itself with Iraq, Iran, and Syria after signing new energy deals with Iraq on January. This could be fatal for the terrorists in Western Syria, as Jordan has hitherto been used as a base for the terror campaign. The Syrian state is strong enough to survive. The spirit of the Syrian people is indomitable. The illusions of the Arab Spring have faded. No one can argue now that the Arab Spring was about democracy and human rights. The Muslim Brotherhood have taken power in Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya with Western support. No one can pretend any more that the conflict in Syria is about democracy.

The French military-industrial-media complex is currently buzzing with orgiastic delight as French troops re-conquer mineral and gas-rich Mali, under the pretext of fighting terrorism, while French Special Forces train and facilitate Al Qaeda affiliated terrorists in Syria — a geopolitical theatre of the absurd worthy of Ionescu!

France is one of the most culturally and politically literate civilizations in the world, and has a long and militant left-wing tradition. Yet, the only cause that rallies the official “left-wing” intelligentsia in Paris today is gay marriage. The French “left” are due to march on the streets of Paris soon in support of a new law permitting gay marriage. The French government bombed and destroyed two African countries in 2011. France is engaged in an endless colonial war in Afghanistan, while the “patrie de droits de l’homme” has been conducting a covert war in Syria since last year and is now attempting to bomb its way back into Mali with a view to destroying Algeria. Uranium-rich Niger will be next. In short, neo-colonial aggression by the French government has led to the deaths of thousands of innocent people and has ruined the lives of millions of others; it is complicit in war crimes and crimes against humanity and is leading us closer to world war, yet the French “left “are only concerned about gay marriage rights! Furthermore, domestic repression in France is on the increase with more and more troops being brought out onto the streets of Paris to “protect” the population from potential “Islamists” the French government’s Gulf friends are financing, while France’s African and Magreb immigrant minorities are constantly stopped and harassed for no reason by the police. But who cares, as long as homosexuals can marry!

On a more positive note, there are some encouraging signs of increasing political dissent emanating from the more moderate officials of French imperialism. It would appear that the US strategy of chaos, the nihilistic policy of supporting Islamic terrorists in order to destroy one state while claiming to fight them in another is becoming impossible to ignore. Former French foreign minister Dominique De Villepin told radio France Inter on January 18 that the cause of the destabilisation in Mali was Nato’s war on Libya in 2011. De Villepin conceded that Libya is now overrun by jihadist militia.

Responding to a question from a caller concerning Qatar’s role in funding Islamist groups, De Villepin seemed to indicate that it was possible that “certain Gulf states” were financing Islamist extremist groups in Mali and Syria. It is unfortunately impossible to reproduce De Vilepin’s exact response to the question concerning Qatar’s role in Syria and Mali as France Inter edited this from their podcast version. They also edited out De Villepin’s highly significant suggestion that France should enter into negotiations with Russia in an effort to resolve the geopolitical impasse in Syria. In short, the three most important contributions by the former French foreign minister were edited outby the war propagandists running France’s state radio. In these strange, belligerent times even the voices of moderate imperialism are anathema to the roaring dogs of war.

Qatar’s financing of Islamist terror in Mali, Libya, Syria, and elsewhere and the incestuous relationship between the absolutist Gulf emirate and the Quai d’Orsay is now no secret to the more informed sections of the French public. Marine Le Pen, president of France’s far right party Front National told France Info on January 18: “I would like to point out an incoherence here. We are allies of Qatar, a country which is arming terrorists all over the world.” As I pointed out in previous articles, the absence of a genuine, anti-imperialist Left is opening the door to far right opportunism. Marine Le Pen is a clever operator. She understands that a significant portion of the French public are baffled by Quai d’Orsay’s love affair with the Gulf despots. Le Pen alludes to this but does not explain the real reasons for this relationship. The real reasons for the French elite’s love affair with gulf despotism has to do with the convergence of class interests. The Gulf despots support neo-liberal capitalism. They are authoritarian and neo-feudal. There is nothing Western capitalists love more than authoritarian regimes who comply with western economic interests and crush all dissent. For example, Qatari poet Mohammed Al-Ajami was imprisoned for life recently for the crime of criticizing the Emir of Qatar.

The Far Right will never explain the class basis for the West’s alliance with Wahhabite terrorism. That is because the Far Right represents the same class as their “moderate” Right and “Centre” Left opponents. Therefore, Le Pen will use her access to mainstream media to hoodwink disaffected French citizens into supporting her candidacy for the next presidential election. By then, the chaos wrought by Hollande’s government in the Middle East and throughout Africa will set the stage for Le Pen’s fascist programme to “restore order.” Once in power, the true nature of the Front National’s tyranny will be unleashed on what is left of genuine left-wing opponents in France.

As in the 1930s, a weak “social democracy” paves the way for the ascendance of the Far Right. Only this time there is no communist party to fight them.

Instead there are farcical characters such as Jean-Luc Mélanchon, leader of the “left-wing” coalition known as Front de Gauche. Mélanchon also spoke toFrance Inter on January 18, where he simple expressed reserve at the legitimacy of the French intervention. However, when asked if he agreed with ultra-conservative Gisgard d’Estaing’s comment that the French intervention was “neo-colonialism,” Mélanchon said he would not use such terms. One should not forget that Mélanchon supported France’s bombing of the Libyan people in 2011 and also supports France’s covert war on Syria. Yet, this is a man who claims to be “left-wing” and an admirer of genuine anti-imperialist leaders such as Hugo Chavez of Venezuela! Cherchez l’erreur!

This is not the first time Qatar’s funding of Islamic terrorism has been admitted by the mainstream French media. The widely read satirical journal Le Canard Enchainé published an article in June 2012 confirming the fact long exposed by the alternative media that France’s closest “partner” in the Middle East was in fact a state-sponsor of Islamist terrorism. Alain Chouet, the former chef de service of the French intelligence agency has also confirmed the role of Qatar in financing Islamic terrorism in Syria and Mali. It is now becoming impossible to ignore the horrible reality behind France’s foreign wars, as more and more officials and mainstream journalists are exposing the French government’s complicity in terrorism. Using the Special Forces and terrorist groups of the petro-monarchies to destabilize resource rich nations and attain geo-political objectives; only fools and simpletons could fail to see the devastating reality of this insane quest for global hegemony.

After the repression of the Paris Commune in 1871, the reactionary French government of Adolphe Thiers promoted the Catholic religion in education as a means of deflecting the desires of the French working class away for social justice towards piety and obedience to the bourgeois state. A similar policy was adopted in Ireland by the British imperial state after the failure of the Young Irelander uprising of 1848. Catholic seminaries proliferated and Irish workers were told to put up with their fate in this life in order to secure deliverance in the next. This is the current policy of many European governments, who are allowing the feudal monarchies of the Gulf to take control of their Muslim populated, proletarian suburbs. Thus Qatar is now the chief foreign investor in France’s poor suburbs where young, ignorant Muslims are indoctrinated in neo-feudalist obscurantism, thereby deflecting them from the path of class struggle and social liberation.

The absurdity of current French foreign policy becomes glaringly apparent when one considers the fact that secular, Baathist Syria, more than any other country in the Middle East, has deep cultural ties with France. Until last year, French tourists flocked to Syria’s hundreds of breath-taking historical and archeological sites. The Syrian government has always been a keen promoter of French culture. Syria is one of the few Arab countries where books by atheist authors are widely read. Secularism is as fundamental to modern Syria as it is to France.

In this sense, Bachar Al-Assad’s Syria is ironically the most pro-Western country in the Middle East and France could have no greater ally against Islamist terrorism than the Syrian Arab Republic, yet Paris backs the Islamists! Both the Syrian president and the Syrian UN Ambassador Dr. Bashar Ja’afari speak French. In spite of this, Dr. Ja’afari has never been invited to speak on French TV or radio. Not once has the Syrian government been allowed to present its side of the story to the French public. Paris’s corrupt elites are only interested in talking to the semi-literate thugs of the Gulf States who keep their own people in ignorance, while promoting the most barbaric form of anti-Islam around the world. After all, the state of bondage which subjects of these countries experience represents a model society for the degenerate transatlantic oligarchs.

Notwithstanding the efforts of some of France’s most authoritative Arabists such as world-renowned Franco-Syrian scholar Bassam Tahhan to inform the French public about the true nature of events in Syria, the French ruling elite continues to mask its crimes in palid pronouncements on human rights and democracy. Blogger Alain Jules puts it eloquently when he writes:

Storm and fury lurk behind a kneaded facade of goodness. The permanent refusal to shake hands, the dictat, the violence and the perpetual, morbid and mortifying logos.

Describing the French political scene in Paris during the 1930’s, Micheal Jabara Carley writes: “This was the “Republic of Pals” where “rigorously honest men were on good terms with fairly honest men who were on good terms with shady men who were on good terms with despicable crooks.”¹

Despicable crooks are still running this world and as Malcolm X understood too well, their media servants in all languages work over time to make us love the crooks and hate their victims.

1. Carley, Micheal Jabara, 1939: The Alliance That Never Was And the Coming of World War II, Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 1999) p.15. [↩]

Gearóid Ó Colmáin was born in Cork, Ireland, and is currently based in Paris. He is a former bilingual columnist with Metro Eireann. His interests include geopolitcs, globalisation, philosophy and the arts. He is a member of Pôle de renaissance communiste en France (PRCF) a political movement which advocates Marxism-Leninism and the formation of a revolutionary communist party in France. Read other articles by Gearóid, or visit Gearóid's website.

Syrian civil war: No end in sight

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By Gwynne Dyer, Special to the BDN

Posted Jan. 14, 2013, at 11:22 a.m.
Last modified Jan. 14, 2013, at 12:41 p.m.

The most frustrating part of covering the Lebanese civil war (1975-90) was that after a while, there was nothing left to say. Syria is starting to feel just the same. It’s horrible, but atrocities are a daily event in all civil wars. It’s not going to stop any time soon, but you can only say that so many times before people get bored and move on. Except for the people who actually live near Syria’s borders, the audience for “news” about Syria has already moved on.

Consider, for example, last week’s exhaustive study by the United Nations Human Rights Commission concluding that 60,000 Syrians have been killed in the civil war since March, 2011. That’s considerably higher than the previous estimates of deaths in the war, which were running around 40,000, and the UNHRC hoped that this new number would finally galvanise the rest of the world into action, but it changed nothing.

Last month’s “news” was that the Russians were on the brink of abandoning their Syrian ally, President Bashar al-Assad, which would surely bring about his rapid downfall. “One must look the facts in the face,” said Mikhail Bogdanov, Russia’s deputy foreign minister and Middle Eastern envoy. “Unfortunately, the victory of the Syrian opposition cannot be ruled out.”

However, Bogdanov did not actually say that a rebel victory was desirable. On the contrary, he said that it would not happen for a long time, if ever, and that such a victory would ruin Syria. Then, the spokesman of the Russian foreign ministry, Alexander Lukashevich, announced that the media had simply misunderstood Bogdanov: “We have not changed our position, and we will not change it.”

And so to this week’s piece of theatre: a widely touted speech in Damascus in which President al-Assad would propose a way to end the conflict peacefully. He did no such thing, of course, instead declaring his eternal refusal to negotiate with the “terrorists” who are fighting his army. He will only talk to the “puppet-masters” (an unholy alliance, he claims, between Israel, Western governments and al-Qaeda), not to the puppets.

Well, what did you expect? He and his Alawite sect are convinced that they must go on ruling Syria or face destruction. He’s not actually losing the war, either. Syrians are deeply divided by sect and ethnicity and class, and enough of those groups are on Assad’s side that he can probably hold out for a very long time. By the time he finally loses (or wins), perhaps years from now, Syria will indeed be ruined.

So why doesn’t everybody else “do something about it”? Because what “everybody else” really means is “somebody else, but not me.” No government is going to order its soldiers to risk their lives in a military intervention abroad unless it has reasonable confidence that their sacrifice will not be futile. That assurance is simply not available to governments that might contemplate intervention in Syria.

It has been a quarter-century since the first dictatorial regimes were overthrown by non-violent revolutions, and the remaining ones have all had time to study the phenomenon. They have unanimously and quite correctly concluded that their best chance of survival is to push the protesters into violence. In a civil war, everybody is in the wrong, and the side with the greatest ability to inflict violence (the regime) may win.

Some regimes, like the Communists in eastern Europe or the apartheid regime in South Africa, decided that they would not impose a civil war on the country even if the alternative was losing power. Others, like the Egyptian regime two years ago, could not trust the army to fight a civil war on their behalf. But the senior commanders of the Syrian army are almost all Alawites, and they were actually willing to fight rather than surrender power.

Now they have their war, and it will go on for a long time. By the end, there may not even be a unified Syrian state any more. And no outside force is going to stop it.

Gwynne Dyer is a London-based independent journalist whose commentary is published in 45 countries.

Iraq sends crucial fuel oil to Syria

Iraq sends crucial fuel oil to Syria

By Lina Saigol in London and Michael Peel

October 8, 2012 Iraq is quietly shipping vital supplies of fuel oil to Syria in a deal that has triggered concern in Washington and exposes Damascus’s difficulties keeping its economy afloat in the face of a growing civil war and economic sanctions. Nouri al-Maliki’s Baghdad government agreed in June to supply 720,000 tons of fuel oil to Syria in monthly shipments as part of a one-year, renewable supply contract, according to commercial documents seen by the Financial Times. In June and July, Baghdad’s oil ministry delivered two shipments of fuel oil, which is used for power generation, worth US$14m in total, to President Bashar al-Assad’s regime. Syria paid in cash, the documents show. While the figures to date are relatively small, the deal highlights the ad hoc efforts Mr Assad’s embattled regime is having to make to keep shortages at bay as the war spreads. It also underlines the more active role Iraq is now playing in the region. The revelations come a month after US officials complained publicly that Baghdad was allowing aircraft carrying Iranian arms to fly over its territory en route to Syria. A state department official said the fuel shipment did not violate US and EU sanctions but he indicated surprise at Iraq’s involvement. Iraq abstained from an Arab League vote in 2011 to suspend Syria’s membership and impose sanctions; it has also rejected attempts to bring down the Syrian regime by force, fearing a wider crisis in the region. Iraq’s Shia-dominated government is close to Iran. Tehran is the Syrian regime’s chief Middle Eastern ally. "Perceptions matter, so we encourage countries trading with Syria to be open about their legal and non-sanctionable exchanges," a US state department official said. "If this is going to continue, we think the Iraqis should be up front about it." The deal showed the Syrian regime was desperate for fuel and was depleting what is left of its hard currency cash reserves to import it, the official added. The documents show that the state-backed Syria Trading Oil Company (Sytrol), which handles Syria’s fuel imports, agreed to pay cash into an account with the Trade Bank of Iraq before each delivery, or provide an irrevocable letter of credit. Iraq offered Syria a discount of 50 per cent below the market price, plus a $5 discount per metric ton, according to the contract. Syria paid $505.909 per ton for the fuel, compared with today’s market price of $800 per ton. Mr Alaa Kidher Kadhum, one of the signatories for Baghdad’s state oil marketing organisation, or SOMO, sits on the board of the Trade Bank of Iraq, according to the documents. Mr Kadhum did not respond to questions from the FT nor did any official from the Iraqi oil ministry. Hoshyar Zebari, the foreign minister, said he did not know of any such deal. Syrian officials also did not comment. The contract, dated June 28 and written in Arabic on Iraqi oil ministry letterhead, specifies the fuel oil would be loaded in trucks at Iraq’s North Refinery Company, via Syria’s western border. The EU and the US have had sanctions against Sytrol since 2011, which bar any EU or US company from importing, purchasing or transporting Syrian oil, including refined products. The US imposed fresh sanctions on Sytrol in July 2012, specifically for having provided gasoline to its strategic ally Iran.

Robert Fisk: 'Rebel army? They're a gang of foreigners'

Our writer hears the Syrian forces' justification for a battle that is tearing apart one of the world's oldest cities

Damage at the gate of Citadel in Aleppo 

A victorious army? There were cartridge cases all over the ancient stone laneways, pocked windows, and bullet holes up the side of the Sharaf mosque, where a gunman had been firing from the minaret. A sniper still fired just 150 yards away – all that was left of more than a hundred rebels who had almost, but not quite, encircled the 4,000-year-old citadel of Aleppo.
"You won't believe this," Major Somar cried in excitement. "One of our prisoners told me: 'I didn't realise Palestine was as beautiful as this.' He thought he was in Palestine to fight the Israelis!"

Do I believe this? Certainly, the fighters who bashed their way into the lovely old streets west of the great citadel were, from all accounts, a ragtag bunch. Their graffiti – "We are the Brigades of 1980", the year when the first Muslim Brotherhood rising threatened the empire of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's father, Hafez – was still on the walls of the Syrian-Armenian hotels and silver shops. A 51-year-old general handed me one of the home-made grenades that littered the floor of the Sharaf mosque; a fluffy fuse poking from the top of a lump of shrapnel, coated in white plastic and covered in black adhesive tape.

Inside the mosque were bullets, empty tins of cheese, cigarette butts and piles of mosque carpets, which the rebels had used as bedding. The battle had so far lasted 24 hours. A live round had cut into the Bosnian-style tombstone of a Muslim imam's grave, with a delicate stone turban carved on its top. The mosque's records – lists of worshippers' complaints, Korans and financial documents – were lying across one room in what had evidently marked the last stand of several men. There was little blood. Between 10 and 15 of the defenders – all Syrians – surrendered after being offered mercy if they laid down their arms. The quality of this mercy was not, of course, disclosed to us.

The Syrian soldiers were elated, but admitted that they shared immense sadness for the history of a city whose very fabric was being torn apart, a world heritage site being smashed by rockets and high-velocity rounds. The officers shook their heads when they led us into the ramparts of the immense citadel. "The terrorists tried to capture it 20 days ago from our soldiers who were defending it," Major Somar said. "They filled gas cylinders full of explosives – 300 kilos of it – and set them off by the first entrance above the moat."

Alas, they did. The huge medieval iron and wooden gate, its ornamented hinges and supports – a defence-work that had stood for 700 years – has been literally torn apart. I clambered over carbonized wood and hunks of stone bearing delicate Koranic inscriptions. Hundreds of bullet holes have pitted the stonework of the inner gate. Below, I found a T-72 tank whose barrel had been grazed by a sniper's bullet which was still lodged in the sheath, its armour broken by a grenade. "I was inside at the time," its driver said. "Bang! – but my tank still worked!"

So here is the official scorecard of the battle for the eastern side of the old city of Aleppo, the conflict amid narrow streets and pale, bleached stone walls that was still being fought out yesterday afternoon, the crack of every rebel bullet receiving a long burst of machine-gun fire from Major Somar's soldiers. As the army closed in on the gunmen from two sides, 30 rebels – or "Free Syrian Army" or "foreign fighters" – were killed and an undisclosed number wounded. According to Major Somar's general, an officer called Saber, Syrian government forces suffered only eight wounded. I came across three of them, one a 51-year-old officer who refused to be sent to hospital.

Many of the rebels' weapons had been taken from the scene by the military "mukhbarat" intelligence men before we arrived: they were said to include three Nato-standard sniper rifles, one mortar, eight Austrian machine-pistols and a host of Kalashnikovs, which may well have been stolen by Syrian deserters. But it is the shock of finding these pitched battles amid this world heritage site which is more terrible than the armaments of each side. To crunch over broken stone and glass with Syrian troops for mile after mile around the old city, a place of museums and Mosques – the magnificently minareted Gemaya Omayyad stands beside yesterday's battleground – is a matter of infinite sorrow.

Many of the soldiers, who were encouraged to speak to me even as they knelt at the ends of narrow streets with bullets spattering off the walls, spoke of their amazement that so many "foreign fighters" should have been in Aleppo. "Aleppo has five million people," one said to me. "If the enemy are so sure that they are going to win the battle, then surely there's no need to bring these foreigners to participate; they will lose."

Major Somar, who spoke excellent English, understood the political dimension all too well. "Our borders with Turkey are a big problem," he admitted. "The border needs to be closed. The closure of the frontier must be coordinated by the two governments. But the Turkish government is on the enemy side. Erdogan is against Syria." Of course, I asked him his religion, a question that is all innocence and all poison in Syria these days. Somar, whose father was a general, his mother a teacher, and who practices his English with Dan Brown novels, was as quick as a cat. "It's not where you are born or what is your religion," he said. "It's what's in your mind. Islam comes from this land, Christians come from this land, Jews come from this land. That is why it is our duty to protect this land."

Several soldiers believed the rebels were trying to convert the Christians of Aleppo – "a peaceful people", they kept calling them – and there was a popular story doing the rounds yesterday of a Christian storekeeper who was forced to wear Muslim clothing and announce his own conversion in front of a video camera. But in wartime cities, you find talkative soldiers. One of the men who recaptured the entrance to the citadel was Abul Fidar, famous for walking between Aleppo, Palmyra and Damascus over 10 days at the start of the current conflict last year to publicise the need for peace. The president, needless to say, greeted him warmly at his final destination.

And then there was Sergeant Mahmoud Dawoud from Hama, who had been fighting in Hama itself, Homs, Jebel Zawi and Idlib. "I want to be interviewed by a reporter," he announced, and of course, he got his way. "We are sad for the civilians of this land," he said. "They were in peace before. We promise as soldiers that we will make sure a good life returns for them, even if we lose our lives." He does not mention all those civilians killed by army shellfire or by the "shabiha", or those thousands who have suffered torture in this land. Dawoud has a fiancée called Hannan who is studying French in Latakia, his father is a teacher; he says he wants "to serve his homeland".

But the thought cannot escape us that the prime purpose of men like Sergeant Dawoud – and all his fellow soldiers here – was not, surely, to liberate Aleppo but to liberate the occupied Golan Heights, right next to the land which the "jihadis" apparently thought they were "liberating" yesterday – until they discovered that Aleppo was not Jerusalem. 

Robert Fisk: The bloody truth about Syria's uncivil war

Those trying to topple Assad have surprised the army with their firepower and brutal tactics

A few hours after the ferocious attack on Damascus by the Free Syrian Army began last month, the new Syrian minister of information, Omran Zouhbi, turned on journalists in the capital. "What are you doing here in Damascus?" he roared. "You should be out with our soldiers!" And within a day, tired images of a primly smiling President Bashar al-Assad and pictures of Syrian troops happily kissing children were replaced by raw – and real – newsreel footage of commandos fighting their way across Baghdad Street under fire from the rebel opponents of the regime, grimy-faced, running from street corners, shooting from the cover of walls and terraces. "We've cleaned up here," one tired but very angry officer said. "So now we're going to get the rest of those bastards." Never before – not even in the 1973 war when the Syrian army stormed Observatory Ridge on the heights of the Golan – had the Syrian public witnessed anything as real as this on their television sets.
And – despite all the mythical tales of its presence in every smashed village – the battle for Damascus really was fought by Maher al-Assad's ruthless 4th Division. The soldiers loyal to Bashar's younger brother gave no quarter. "It was a slaughter, a massacre," a Syrian with expert knowledge of the military told me. "A lot of the corpses were already bloated within hours, but you could tell some of them weren't Syrian; there were Egyptians, Jordanians, Palestinians, one Turk, Sudanese …" He counted 70 bodies at one location, 42 of them non-Arab. The FSA said it lost only 20 men, and claimed that the Syrians emphasised the number of "foreign fighters" they found among the dead. "Syrian soldiers don't like to think that they are shooting at fellow Syrians – they feel much more comfortable if they believe they are shooting at foreigners," the young man said.

The statistics of the Syrian war will always be in dispute – both sides will minimise their losses while they are fighting and exaggerate the number of their "martyrs" once the conflict is over; nor will we ever know the true number of the civilian dead, nor the exact identity of their killers. Given unprecedented access last week to majors and generals whom the West accuses of war crimes, I found only one officer who would partially admit the existence of the murderous shabiha militia credited with atrocities in largely Sunni Muslim towns and villages. "The shabiha doesn't exist," he told me. "It is a figment of imagination. There are village 'defenders' who guard some areas …"

And that, of course, is exactly what the shabiha claim to be, local Syrian civilians protecting their homes from the government's enemies. They existed in Algeria during that country's barbaric conflict between the dictatorship in Algiers and the Islamist rebels in the 1990s, protecting their families while committing atrocities in towns and villages believed to be used by – or sympathetic to – their "terrorist" Muslim enemies. In Algeria, too, the government's opponents were called foreign fighters, men who had fought in the Afghan war against the Russians and who had returned to continue their holy war against the secular regime in France's former colony. Now another former French colony's secular – albeit Alawite-dominated – leadership says it is fighting men from Afghanistan, making no distinction between Unity Brigades or Muslim Brothers or Salafists or just plain Free Syrian Army. No one will be surprised to learn that there has always been the closest military-intelligence relationship between Algiers and Damascus.

But the government army's battle with its Syrian and foreign antagonists has not always gone as smoothly as the regime would like the world to believe. Despite the narrative now peddled in the West, armed men were present on the streets of Syrian cities and villages since the very early days of the Syrian awakening 18 months ago. True, the Arab Spring initially took the form of demonstrations by tens of thousands of unarmed protesters in the great cities of Syria, but an Al Jazeera camera crew captured film of gunmen attacking Syrian soldiers near the village of Wadi Khallak in May 2011. That same month, Syrian television obtained tape of men armed with Kalashnikovs near crowds of unarmed Syrian protesters in Deraa, where the revolt began after secret police officers tortured to death a 13-year-old boy.

Yet when they first entered Deraa, it appears, Syrian officers and their soldiers did not themselves believe they were facing armed opponents. "Sixty per cent of the city was secured by us in just one day," a Syrian familiar with the operation says. "We sent in only 1,100 soldiers – this would never happen now – because they did not think there were any armed groups there. But by the time we had recovered the rest of the city in the next five days, we had lost 17 of our men dead to sniper fire." This was not the only surprise: once pitched battles began later in the year, the Syrian military was amazed by the firepower of its opponents.

"In Homs, the army was inside a building that received hundreds – literally hundreds – of rocket-propelled grenades," a Syrian familiar with the operation says. "There were thousands of explosions, and eventually we had to evacuate the entire building because it was going to crumble. When the soldiers were out, they had to explode the whole place before it crashed to the ground." And for an army condemned for its own cruelty in battle, the Syrians were astonished by the ruthlessness of those opposed to them.

In Andan, a heavily defended army checkpoint was wiped out last year when the Liwa Tawhid, the Unity Brigade, assaulted the position and killed all 75 soldiers and four officers. In a later ambush at Shughour, 120 soldiers were killed. Army files record nine security officers murdered at a police station at al-Hadr in Hama province, eight policemen at another office in the same province. In Salkin, another town in Hama, an ex-army civilian lorry driver employed by the Army's Vehicle Service Station 5036 was assaulted by civilian crowds. Abdul Fatah Omar Abdul Fatah was accused of being a member of the shabiha, stripped naked and hanged, then his corpse was pelted with shoes and decapitated. In Duma, a mosque leader told worshippers: "Among us, there is an Awaini," – a traitor. The man was beaten to death. His name is recorded as Abu Ahmed Akera.

When the Free Syria Army followed up its attack on Damascus with an assault on Aleppo, the authorities found that the first target of their enemies was the artillery school. More than 70 cadets managed to resist until reinforcements reached them. Word has it that all anti-aircraft missile crews at the school were hastily taken out of Aleppo to save them from capture and help protect the country's tactical missile defences from possible Israeli or Nato attack.

Syrian soldiers fighting their way through the winding, narrow streets of Aleppo's old city this week might choose to remember a young Egyptian student who spent months in Aleppo in the 1990s, working on an urban planning thesis that included the very battlefield in which the army is now fighting: Mohamed Atta, the leader of the 9/11 hijackers in the US. Some of the attacks on Syrian officials have been planned with great care; scientists at the Scientific Research Centre outside Damascus have been murdered. Long before the air force was first used in the war – the army claims this was in June – seven pilots were killed by rebels last year. The military says that it began using artillery – as opposed to mortars – only in February.

For the government, the outlook appears harsh. The army believes Idlib – reported to be an al-Qa'ida stronghold – will be one of the most critical battles in the war. There are reports of fearful conscripts seized from a civilian bus in central Syria and given an option: either their parents hand over 450,000 Syrian pounds (£7,000) to the Free Syrian Army or the young men must join the rebels. In the village of Rableh near al-Qusayr, a largely Christian population of 12,000 is said to be held hostage by rebels as human shields, although the army has apparently decided it would be too costly to take the village.

Bashar al-Assad's government faces a resourceful, well-armed and ruthless enemy whose Islamist supporters are receiving help from the West – just as the Islamist mujahedin fighters were funded and armed by the West when they fought the Russians in Afghanistan during the 1980s. With up to 50,000 men under arms and perhaps 4,000 battle tanks, the Syrian army, per se, cannot lose. But can they win?

ROBERT FISK-Assad's Foreign Minister gives his first interview to a Western journalist since the conflict began

ROBERT FISK

Exclusive: ‘We believe that the USA is the major player against Syria and the rest are its instruments’

Assad's Foreign Minister gives his first interview to a Western journalist since the conflict began

The battle for Damascus could be heard inside the Foreign Minister's office yesterday, a vibration of mortars and tank fire from the suburbs of the capital that penetrated Walid Muallem's inner sanctum, a dangerous heartbeat to match the man's words.

America was behind Syria's violence, he said, which will not end even after the battle for Aleppo is over. "I tell the Europeans: 'I don't understand your slogan about the welfare of the Syrian people when you are supporting 17 resolutions against the welfare of the Syrian people'. And I tell the Americans: 'You must read well what you did in Afghanistan and Somalia. I don't understand your slogan of fighting international terrorism when you are supporting this terrorism in Syria'."

Walid Muallem spoke in English and very slowly, either because of the disconcerting uproar outside or because this was his first interview with a Western journalist since the Syrian crisis began. At one point, the conflict between rebels and government troops in the suburbs of Douma, Jobar, Arbeen and Qaboun – where a helicopter was shot down – became so loud that even the most phlegmatic of Foreign Ministers in a region plagued by rhetoric glanced towards the window. How did he feel when he heard this, I asked him?

"Before I am a minister, I am a Syrian citizen, and I feel sad at seeing what's happening in Syria, compared with two years ago," he said. "There are many Syrians like me – eager to see Syria return to the old days when we were proud of our security."

I have my doubts about how many Syrians want a return to "the old days" but Muallem claims that perhaps 60 per cent of the country's violence comes from abroad, from Turkey, from Qatar and Saudi Arabia, with the United States exercising its influence over all others.

"When the Americans say, 'We are supplying the opposition with sophisticated instruments of telecommunications', isn't this part of a military effort, when they supply the opposition with $25m – and much more from the Gulf and Saudi Arabia?"

A year ago, I told Muallem, I lunched with the Emir of Qatar, and he was enraged at what he called Bashar al-Assad's lies, claiming that the Syrian President had reneged on a deal to allow Muslim Brotherhood members to return home.

Muallem nodded. "If you met the same Emir two years ago, he was praising Assad, and considered him a dear friend. They used to have family relations, spending family holidays in Damascus and sometimes in Doha. There is an important question: what happened? I met the Emir in Doha in, I think, November 2011, when the Arab League started their initiative [resulting in the sending of League observers to Syria] and we reached agreement … The Emir told me: 'If you agree to this initiative, I will change the attitude of Al Jazeera and I will tell [Sheikh] Qaradawi [a popular prelate with a regular slot on the television chain] to support Syria and reconciliation, and I have put down some billions of dollars to rebuild Syria…' .

Of America's power, Walid Muallem had no doubt. The Americans, he says, succeeded in frightening the Gulf countries about Iran's nuclear capabilities, persuaded them to buy arms from the US, fulfilling Franklin Roosevelt's 1936 dream of maintaining bases for oil transportation.

"We believe that the US is the major player against Syria and the rest are its instruments." But wasn't this all really about Iran? I asked, a dodgy question since it suggested a secondary role for Syria in its own tragedy. And when Muallem referred to the Brookings Institution, I groaned.

"You are laughing, but sometimes when you are Foreign Minister, you are obliged to read these things – and there was a study by the Brookings Institute [sic] called The Road to Tehran, and the result of this study was: if you want to contain Iran, you must start with Damascus…

"We were told by some Western envoy at the beginning of this crisis that relations between Syria and Iran, Syria and Hezbollah, Syria and Hamas are the major elements behind this crisis. If we settle this issue, they [the Americans] will help end the crisis. But no one told us why it is forbidden for Syria to have relations with Iran when most if not all the Gulf countries have very important relations with Iran."

For the Syrian Foreign Minister, the crisis started with "legitimate demands" subsequently addressed by "legislation and reforms and even a new constitution". Then along came "foreign elements" who used these legitimate demands "to hijack the peaceful agenda of the people".

There followed a familiar tale. "I don't accept as a citizen to return back centuries to a regime which can bring Syria backwards. In principle …no government in the world can accept an armed terrorist group, some of them coming from abroad, controlling streets and villages in the name of 'jihad'."

It was the duty of the Syrian government to "protect" its citizens. Assad represents the unity of Syria and all Syrians must participate in creating a new future for Syria. If Syria falls, its neighbour countries will fall. Muallem travels to the non-aligned summit in Iran tomorrow to burnish what he calls their "constructive efforts" to help Syria.

I asked about chemical weapons, of course. If Syria had such weapons, they would never be used against its own people, he said. "We are fighting armed groups inside Aleppo, in the Damascus suburbs, before that in Homs and Idlib and this means fighting within Syrian cities – and our responsibility is to protect our people."

And the infamous Shabiha militia blamed for atrocities in the countryside? Walid Muallem doesn't believe in them. There might be local unarmed people defending their property from armed groups, he says. But pro-regime, paid militiamen? Never. No war crimes charges against the Syrian Foreign Minister, then. But the guns still thunder away outside his windows.

Saturday 1 September 2012

Robert Fisk: Another week in the violent, murderous and divided world of Syria

Christians and Armenians among latest to die

A week is a long time in violence. It seems only yesterday – five days ago, in fact – that armed men shot Sheikh Abu Haitham al-Bortawi outside the el-Noor mosque in the Rukenadin suburb of Damascus. Went to the scene. Middle class area. Tree shaded, clean street. Ten in the morning. Turns out he was the cleric who knelt right next to Bashar al-Assad for the Eid prayers at the end of Ramadan. A dagger to the heart of the body politick.
I meet an old friend the next day at a café in Mezzeh, and he's crying. His dentist lived in Zabadani, in the hills near the Lebanese border, in Free Syria Army country. His son was warned the family home was unsafe because of incoming fire. From the army? No one's sure. But a shell hit the house and the dentist has just arrived at the French Hospital. Dead, his grieving family still at the morgue.

Then there's the two Christian guys outside town. One runs a DVD store, the other a pharmacy. Murdered. Next day, their funeral cortege is car-bombed. Twelve dead, at least 40 wounded. Turns out they had brothers in the Syrian army, apparently conscripts. Hardly a sin. But the opposition says the two men were "connected to the military".

A Syrian journalist calls me. Six Armenians have been "slaughtered with knives" in their homes. I race to the Armenian church and there is brown-robed Bishop Armesh Nalbandian next to the ancient chapel of Saint Sarkis – he has around 6,500 parishioners in Damascus – and only a few metres from the memorial to the 1915 Armenian genocide. Many of those one and a half million victims of Ottoman Turkish slaughter were put to death in the deserts north of Damascus, now the scene of another Calvary.

But the "six-dead" story is untrue, Armesh says. Good news. But no. Three Damascus Armenians have just been murdered, apparently shot. Thirty-nine-year-old Bedros Matosian died along with his younger brother Kevork and the son of one of them – the bishop isn't sure which – called Levon, who was only 22. Armed men. No identity. But the Matosians had Alawite and Sunni neighbours who were also massacred, because, so the local story goes, they refused to join the Free Syria Army.

The story depends on where you go in this divided capital. Yesterday, I take another prowl, through the Damascus suburbs; Malayha, Harasta, Zamalka, Bab Shawkeh. Thirty government checkpoints, maybe 40, but in Harasta, the Syrian Arab Republic has no sway. There are dozens of painted green, white and black FSA flags on the walls. "The free people of Harasta are denied their liberty," a slogan informs us. "Assad should go." There's a mosque so packed that the crowds have spilled on to the boiling roadway; a guy in a pick-up tells us it's safe to head for the motorway. An opposition man. A Syrian soldier in sunglasses waves us back to the autostrade of the Syrian Arab Republic.

We drive through the Assad Suburb, government housing, though some home-owners have rented to people from Zabadani – maybe a little security problem? – and just past the Tishreen military hospital (former student, one Bashar al-Assad), there's an explosion and a car with headlights zipping the street dust under its shrieking tyres and a pulverised dead dog lying inside a garage.

Up to the Kassioun mountain overlooking Damascus for lunch at Al Montagna – the only guests, save for three tired Syrian officers – and we look across at the Omayad mosque and there's a roar from the government guns on the other side of the jebel and a rumble of sound relayed mountain-to-mountain on the other side of the city. Fifteen seconds later, there's a pop far away on the edge of the Palestinian camp at Yarmouk and a smudge of grey smoke. Then another report and another rumble and another pop a bit to the right, four miles away through the heat haze. Palestinians. I close my notebook for the week.

U.S. Ambassador to Syria in charge of recruiting Arab/Muslim death squads

U.S. Ambassador to Syria in charge of recruiting Arab/Muslim death squads

12. Sep, 2011 by Wayne Madsen

WMR has been informed by reliable sources that the U.S. ambassador to Syria, Robert S. Ford, is the key State Department official who has been responsible for recruiting Arab "death squads" from Al Qaeda-affiliated units in Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, and Chechnya to fight against Syrian military and police forces in embattled Syria. Ford served as the Political Officer at the U.S. embassy in Baghdad from 2004 to 2006 under Ambassador John Negroponte, the U.S. ambassador to Honduras from 1981 to 1985. Negroponte was a key figure in the covert U.S. program to arm the Nicaraguan contras and his support for vicious paramilitary units in El Salvador and Honduras earned him the nickname of "Mr. Death Squad."
Negroponte tasked Ford with implementing the "El Salvador option" in Iraq, the use of Iraqi Shi'a irregulars and Kurdish Pesh Merga paramilitary forces to target for assassination and kidnapping/torture Iraqi insurgency leaders in Iraq and across the border in Syria. The operation was named for Negroponte's death squad operation in Central America in the 1980s.
Ford has become the point man in the recruitment of Arabs and Muslims from the Middle East and beyond to battle against the security forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar Assad. The U.S.-backed terrorists have not only carried out attacks on Syrian security forces but have also massacred civilians in "false flag" operations later blamed on Syrian government forces. WMR has been informed that Ford's operations in Syria are being carried out with the assistance of Israel's Mossad.
The "El Salvador" option has also been used in Libya, where Al Qaeda irregulars, drawn from Iraq, Afghanistan, and Yemen, have been carrying out murders of Libyan civilians, especially black Libyans and African guest workers, on behalf of the Libyan rebel government. Some of the murders of civilians have been blamed on pro-Muammar Qaddafi forces but they have, in fact, been carried out by Al Qaeda units fighting with the rebels and which are being directed by CIA and MI-6 advisers. Ford has been providing advice to the Libyan rebels on how to carry out their death squad attacks.
From 2006 to 2008, Ford served as U.S. ambassador to Algeria, a nation that opposes the Libyan rebel government and a nation that has begun to see a re-surgence of "Al Qaeda" terrorist attacks against Algerian government targets. In fact, Algeria is viewed as the next domino to fall as the U.S. seeks to establish total military and political hegemony over North Africa.
WMR has learned from a source who was recently in Libya that the Libyan rebel transitional government has agreed to allow the U.S. to establish permanent military bases in Libya, including on the Algerian border. The rebels have also agreed to permit an American to serve as the chief political officer for the planned Libyan transitional advisory body due to be organized by NATO and the United Nations. The body will be modeled on the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq.

http://www.opinion-maker.org/2011/09/u-s-ambassador-to-syria-in-charge-of-recruiting-arabmuslim-death-squads/#

THE HOULA MASSACRE: Opposition Terrorists "Killed Families Loyal to the Government"

THE HOULA MASSACRE: Opposition Terrorists "Killed Families Loyal to the Government" Detailed Investigation   By Marat Musin

Global Research, June 1, 2012

ANNA NEWS (Original Russian) and syrianews.cc

URL of this article: www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=31184

Global Research Editor's Note This incisive report by independent Russian journalist Marat Musin dispels the lies and fabrications of the Western media.  The report is based on a chronology of events as well as eyewitness accounts.  Entire pro-government families in Houla were massacred. The terrorists integrated by professional mercenaries were not pro-government militia as conveyed in chorus by the mainstream media, they were in large part mercenaries and professional killers operating under the auspices of the self-proclaimed Free Syrian Army (FSA): "When the rebels seized the lower checkpoint in the center of town and located next to the local police department, they began to sweep all the families loyal to the authorities in neighboring houses, including the elderly, women and children. Several families of the Al-Sayed were killed, including 20 young children and the family of the Abdul Razak. The people were killed with knives and shot at point blank range. Then they presented the murdered to the UN and the international community as victims of bombings by the Syrian army, something that was not verified by any marks on their bodies." We call on our readers to forward this report far and wide. The massacre in Houla is being blamed on the Syrian government without a shred of evidence. The objective is not only to isolate Syria but to develop a pretext and a justification for waging an R2P humanitarian war on Syria. It is essential to reverse the tide of war propaganda which uses civilian deaths as a pretext to wage war, when those civilians deaths were carried out not by the government but by professional terrorists operating under the helm of the US-NATO supported Free Syrian Army. Michel Chossudovsky, Global Research, Montreal, June 1, 2012 In the weekend of May 25, 2012, at about 2 PM, big groups of fighters attacked and captured the town of Al – Hula of the Homs province. Al-Hula is made up of three regions: the village of Taldou, Kafr Laha and Taldahab, each of which had previously been home for 25-30 thousand people. The town was attacked from the north-east by groups of bandits and mercenaries, numbering up to 700 people. The militants came from Ar-Rastan (the Brigade of al-Farouk from the Free Syrian Army led by the terrorist Abdul Razak Tlass and numbering 250), from the village of Akraba (led by the terrorist Yahya Al-Yousef), from the village Farlaha, joined by local gangsters, and from Al Hula. The city of Ar-Rastan has long been abandoned by most civilians. Now Wahhabis from Lebanon dominate the scene, fueled with money and weapons by one of the main orchestrators of international terrorism, Saad Hariri, who heads the anti-Syrian political movement “Tayyar Al-Mustaqbal” (“Future Movement”). The road from Ar-Rastan to Al-Hula runs through Bedouin areas that remain mostly out of control of government troops, which made the militant attacks on Al Hula a complete surprise for the Syrian authorities. When the rebels seized the lower checkpoint in the center of town and located next to the local police department, they began to sweep all the families loyal to the authorities in neighboring houses, including the elderly, women and children. Several families of the Al-Sayed were killed, including 20 young children and the family of the Abdul Razak. Many of those killed were “guilty” of the fact that they dared to change from Sunnis to Shiites. The people were killed with knives and shot at point blank range. Then they presented the murdered to the UN and the international community as victims of bombings by the Syrian army, something that was not verified by any marks on their bodies. The idea that the UN observers had heard artillery fire against Al-Houla in the Safir Hotel in Homs at night I consider nothing short of a bad joke. 50 kilometers lie between Homs and Al-Houla. What kind of tanks or guns has this range? Yes, there was intensive gunfire in Homs until 3 am, including heavy weapons. But, to give an example, on the night of Monday to Tuesday shooting was due to an attempt by law enforcement to regain control for a security corridor along the road to Damascus, Tarik Al-Sham. After a visual inspection of Al Hula it is impossible to find traces of any of fresh destruction, bombing and shelling. During the day, several attacks by gunmen are made on the last remaining soldiers at the Taldou checkpoint. Militants used heavy weapons and snipers made up of professional mercenaries were active. Note that once, the exactly same provocation failed at Shumar (Homs) and 49 militants and women and children were killed, when it was organized just before a visit of Kofi Annan. The last provocation was immediately exposed as soon as it became known that the bodies of the previously kidnapped belonged to Alawites. This provocation also contained serious inconsistencies – the names of those killed were from people loyal to the authorities, there were no traces of bombings, etc. However, the provocation machine is running all the same. Today, the NATO countries directly threat to bomb Syria, and a simultaneous expulsion of Syrian diplomats has begun As of today, there are no troops within the city of Al Hula, but there are regularly heard bursts of automatic fire, nonetheless. Moreover, it is unclear whether the militants are fighting with each other, or whether supporters of Bashar al-Assad are being cleaned out. Militants opened fire on virtually everyone who tries to get closer to the border town. Before us a UN convoy was fired upon and two armored jeeps of the UN observers were damaged, when they tried to drive up to an army checkpoint in Tal Dow. In the attack on the convoy a twenty-year-old terrorist was spotted. The fire was directed on the unprotected slopes of the first jeep, the back door of the second armored car was hooked by a fragment. There are wounded among those accompanying. According to a wounded soldier: “The next day, UN observers came to us at the checkpoint and as soon as they arrived, gunmen opened fire on them. And three of us were injured. One was wounded in the leg, the second – in the back, and I was hit in the hip. When the observers came, they could hear a woman who was standing next to them and cried, the woman stood and pleaded the observers’ help – to protect her from the bandits. When I was wounded, the observers watched as I fell, but none of them tried to help. Our checkpoint no longer exists. There are no civilians any longer in Taldou, only militants remain. Our relationship to the locals was excellent. They are very good to us; they called on the army to enter Taldou. We were attacked by snipers.” Unfortunately, many of the militants are professional snipers. 100-200 meters from our group TV-crew, militants attacked a BMP that went to replace soldiers at the checkpoint. During this a soldier – draftee got a concussion and slight tangential wound in the head by a sniper bullet. Looking at the pierced Kevlar helmet, it seems he did not even realize that he survived by a miracle. Snipers kill up to 10 soldiers and policemen at checkpoints each day. It is true, that the daily casualties of law enforcement agencies in Homs were dozens of victims daily. But, unfortunately, at 10 am, six dead soldiers were taken to the morgue. Most were killed by a shot in the head. And the day had just begun So, these are the names of those were killed by snipers in the early morning hours of May 29: 1. Sergeant Ibrahim Halyuf 2. Sergeant Salman Ibrahim 3. Policeman Mahmoud Danaver 4. Conscript Ali Daher 5. Sergeant Wisam Haidar 6. the dead soldier’s family name could not be clarified The bandits even fired an automatic burst on our group of journalists, although it was clear that this is a normal filming crew, consisting of unarmed civilians. HOW THE ATTACK BEGAN After Friday prayers at about 2 PM on May, 25th a group from the Al Aksh clan started firing on a checkpoint of law enforcement officers from mortars and rocket-propelled grenades. Returning fire from a BRDM hit the mosque, and this was the very aim to lead to a bigger provocation. Then, two groups of militants led by the terrorist Nidal Bakkour and Al-Hassan from the Al Hallak clan, supported by a unit of mercenaries, attacked the upper checkpoint on the eastern outskirts of the city. At 15.30 the upper checkpoint was taken, and all the prisoners executed: a Sunni conscript had his throat cut, while Abdullah Shaui (Bedouin) of Deir-Zor was burned alive. During the attack on the upper checkpoint in the east the armed men lost 25 people, which were then submitted to the UN observers, together with the 108 dead civilians – “victims of the regime”, allegedly killed by bombing and shelling of the Syrian army. As for the remaining 83 bodies, including 38 young children, they were from the families that were executed by militants. These families were all loyal to the government of Syria. Interviews: with a law enforcement officer:  “My name is Al Khosam, I am a law enforcement officer. I served in the village of Taldou, the district of Al-Hula, a province of Homs. On Friday, our checkpoint was attacked by a large group of militants. There were thousands. Q: How do you protect yourself? Answer: A simple weapon. We had 20 people, we called support, and when they were coming for us, I was wounded, and regained consciousness in the hospital. The attackers were from Ar-Rastan and Al-Hula. Insurgents control Taldou. They burned houses and killed people by the families, because they were loyal to the government. Raped the women and killed the children.” Interview with a wounded soldier:  “I am Ahmed Mahmoud al Khali. I’m from the city Manbej. Was wounded in Taldou. I come from a support group that came to the aid of our comrades, who were stationed at the checkpoint. Militants destroyed two infantry fighting vehicles and one BRDM standing at our checkpoint. We moved out to Taldou in a BMP, to pick up our wounded comrades from the checkpoint within the city. We drove them back in the BMP, and I filled in their place. And after a while the UN observers came. They came to us, we led them to the homes of families who were cut by thugs. I saw a family of three brothers and their father in the same room. In another room we found dead young children and their mother. And another one- an old man killed in this house. Only five men, women and children. The woman raped and shot in the head, I covered her with a blanket. And the commission had seen them all. They put them in the car and drove away. I do not know where they took them, probably for burial.” A resident of Taldou on the roof of the police department: “On Friday afternoon I was home. Hearing the shots, I came out to watch what was happening and saw that the fire came from the north side, towards the location of army checkpoint. As the army did not respond, they started to approach the homes, were subsequently the family was killed. When the army started to return fire, they used the women and children as human shields and continued firing at the checkpoint. When the army began answered, they fled. After that, the army took the surviving women and children and brought them into safety. At this time, Al Jazeera aired pictures and said that the Army committed the massacre at Al Hula. In fact, they killed the civilians and children in Al-Hula. The bandits did not allow anyone to carry out their work. They steal everything that they can get their hands on: wheat, flour, oil and gas. Most of the fighters are from the city of Ar Rastan.” After they captured the city, they carried the bodies of their dead comrades, as well as the bodies of people and the children they killed to the mosque. They carried the bodies in KIA pickups. On May, 25th, at around 8 PM, the corpses were already in the mosque. The next day at 11 o’clock in the morning the UN observers arrived at the mosque. Media Disinformation To exert pressure on public opinion and change the positions of Russia and China, texts and subtitles in Russian and Chinese languages were prepared in advance, reading: “Syria – Homs – the city of Hula. A terrible massacre perpetrated by the armed forces of the Syrian regime against civilians in the town of Hula. Dozens of victims and their number is growing, mainly women and children, brutally killed by indiscriminate bombing of the CITY.” Two days later, on May 27, after the residents’ stories and video recordings made showed that the facts do not support the allegation of shelling and bombing, the bandits’ videos had undergone significant changes. At the end of the text appeared this postscript: “And some were killed with knives.” Marat Musin, Olga Kulygina, Al-Hula, Syria Original text / source: http://maramus.livejournal.com/86539.html