Syria: The West’s ‘Red Line’ Fiction – Think Tanks, Jihadists and the White Helmets

Sheri Laizer | Exclusive to iKurd.net

Bashar al-Assad was not deploying chemical weapons in Syria. The United States, Britain, the Gulf States and Turkey, collectively strengthened ISIS and Al Qaeda’s proxies and covered up jihadists’ use of banned weapons

The aim of the Western players in backing ISIS and Al Qaeda offshoots in Syria was to undermine the alliance between Damascus, Moscow, Tehran, and Lebanese Hezbollah.

Even as the religious and jihadist extremist groups strengthened their grip on the country and proliferated across the Levant and into Iraq, Western governments overlooked – and underestimated – the threat the extremist groups posed to regional security and the economy. As many analysts have since agreed, it has been mainly United States’ neo-imperialist ambitions that have kept the war in Syria alive as Washington, supported by London, rejected various peace initiatives one after the other.

The Obama administration had declared that if Damascus ever used chemical weapons, the United States would intervene militarily, declaring this to be an uncrossable ‘red line.’ Ultimately, the decision to use military might fell to his successor, the former TV showman, tycoon Donald Trump.

Two alleged chemical weapons attacks – the first faked in Douma, outside Damascus, and the next in April 2018 in Khan Shaykun in Al Qaeda dominated Idlib provided the US with the excuse it wanted to go after Bashar al Assad militarily but the culprit was not the Syrian government – it was the very ‘rebel’ groups they were backing against him.

The pivotal ‘chemical weapon’ events were timed just as the Western-backed jihadists had begun to lose territory to the Syrian government and thereby provided the new US president with the opportunity to unleash ballistic missiles against Syrian government-controlled areas. Trump ordered the strikes without any hard evidence, assisted in part by staged photographs and videos. Some of these were reportedly provided by the US and UK- funded White Helmets. Members of the White Helmets members had also been videotaped attending Al Nusra’s beheadings and celebrating the victories of the jihadists since 2013. Not only were members shown amidst the jihadists, but they were also seen at execution sites before rushing site with stretchers to recover the freshly slain victims. These images helped bring the organization into disrepute and question why they were really there.

The BBC eventually had to confirm that there existed an unfortunate overlap of White Helmets personnel with jihadist groups. In a retrospective article published on February 27, 2021 Mayday: How The White Helmets and James Le Mesurier got pulled into a deadly battle for truth, it is conceded: “Nevertheless, there are other photographs and videos online that seem to show individual White Helmets supporting jihadists – from the so-called Islamic State group or the al-Nusra Front (al-Qaeda’s representatives in Syria) – either cheering their arrival in an area, or appearing to assist in an execution by removing the body afterwards…’There’s no way to deny it,’ says Nur (not his real name) who helps manage the White Helmets’ media online. “Former volunteers were in pictures waving flags.”

The White Helmet’s local mouthpiece explained how early on, “in a few isolated cases” the rescue volunteers had signed up with his group after leaving jihadist organisations but claimed that any recruit exhibiting such sympathies lost his job. James Le Mesurier was credited with helping put a code of conduct into action to stop this from continuing.1 (It did not, alas, spare him from losing his life, despairing in Istanbul in November 2019.)

Back in July 2018, after the routing of ISIS, and other jihadist factions in southern Syria, 422 “self -identified” White Helmets members were evacuated by the Israeli army through the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights into Jordan while an estimated 300 others were still trapped there.

The Syrian government denounced the evacuation as a “criminal process” that had “smuggled terrorists” whom it blamed for undermining the country’s security for years. A Syrian Foreign Ministry official repeated his government’s accusations that the White Helmets staged and executed chemical attacks so as to blame Damascus. [2]

February 2023 “UK gives 3.8 million more to the White Helmets”

The UK Minister of State for the Middle East, Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon announced earlier this year on February 7, that: “Given the difficulties in accessing affected areas in north west Syria, the UK will be providing additional funding to aid major search-and-rescue operations.”

It did not explain how if access to this region still largely held by various rivalrous jihadists including a great number of Turkish proxy groups – the money could overcome such difficulties. The formal cover went as follows:

Additional Funding to the White Helmets Search & Rescue Efforts

•  Increased support to provide life-saving Search and Rescue and emergency relief operations in North West Syria.
• At least an additional £3m funding, bringing our total to £3.8m, which will enable enhanced operational capacity of the White Helmets (Syria Civil Defence)
• This will support recovery projects including assessing building safety, reopening roads and reconnecting utilities.
• Over 2,500 White Helmets volunteers are involved in the response across some 40 communities in northwest Syria, the Minister claimed.

Lord Ahmad went on to add: “The UK is proud of our longstanding partnership with the White Helmets, (who) throughout the conflict, have demonstrated unwavering commitment and dedication. This has included saving over 115,000 lives and providing essential services to more than four million Syrians...” [3]

Brief background to Syrian regime-change sponsors

Pro- military interventionist in both Iraq and Syria, Hillary Clinton, and the UK’s former Prime Minister, David Cameron did all in their power to bring about regime change in Syria even after the disaster unleashed upon Iraq, prolonging the suffering of Syrian civilians trapped by the rival factions. Their interventionism caused a massive refugee exodus despite which mainstream media sympathy for fleeing Syrians did not exist. Far right-wing immigration policies disseminated largely by think tanks and their complicit media effectively dealt with that.

Think tanks behind policy makers pushing for regime change in Syria

Among the various think tanks responsible for perpetuating the war and backing Salafist jihadist groups for political ends were several working closely with US and UK intelligence agencies and their proxies. In the UK, London-based Policy Exchange, has perpetuated Neo-Con sympathies and anti-profound Muslim rhetoric.4 Chatham House is among the most prominent peddlers of UK government policy. There is a very large number of them, often neutral sounding in name but far from being neutral in remit. [5]

The media front, Bellingcat, is accused of promoting a CIA and MI6 agenda in Syria circulated information trying to tie the Syrian government to the Douma incident, promoted by Elliot Higgins. Bellingcat was a partner to the OPCW (Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons) and the ChemTech Center. The latter project is “partially sponsored by the Cooperative Threat Reduction Program of the United States Department of Defense”. [6]

It is now widely accepted that Bellingcat operates as Max Blumenthal, editor of The Grayzone, labels ‘intel by proxy’ rather than being as claimed, an open-source media organization. Blumenthal detailed Bellingcat’s links and sham stories in a You Tube discussion with Grayzone colleague, Canadian writer and journalist, Aaron Maté. Documents produced on the Tube show how Bellingcat – and various associated entities and individuals – were effectively funded by ‘spook funds’. [7] The short video makes good viewing – and good sense.

Among the many hundreds of US think tanks, not forgetting the traditional heavyweights like the Rand Corporation, the Brookings Institute Doha Center, the American Enterprise Institute, and Washington Institute for Near East Policy are many others active that have specifically promoted and influenced the United States regime change policy agenda in Syria like the US Institute of Peace and some of the most prominent below. They generally claim to be independent. [8]

The National Endowment for Democracy (NED) is shown to be the ‘regime change’ component of the US government, and is funded also by Chemonics, dubbed a British ”intel cut out”, the Zinc Network, and the OSCE etc. A full list is shown on Blumenthal’s informative YouTube clip. NED links up with the Intercept. It was pushed by the British FCO to the UN. Blumenthal also noted that Human Rights Watch, has been “completely co-opted”. [9] He reveals how a mercenary cum spy, named Matthew van Dyke, was imbedded with Jabhat al Nusra and confirmed to Bellingcat’s Elliot Higgins they had Sarin. Higgins then helped cover up the fact that insurgents inside Syria had chemical weapons. Seymour Hersh had also confirmed that Al Qaeda in Syria had Sarin but they wanted to blame al-Assad and then incentivized a false flag attack based on Obama’s earlier ‘red line’ policy.

The Carnegie Endowment – Jake Sullivan, a former Senior Fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, became Joe Biden’s National Security Advisor. [10]

The Hudson Institute – Mike Pompeo joined along with other Trump Administration officials. [11]

The Atlantic Council, that enjoys Salafist sponsor, President Erdogan’s hospitality in Turkey, and which is funded by NATO. Despite Erdogan’s working with the extremists, NATO has not sanctioned Turkey.

Center for New American Security, CEO John Podesta, from Center for American Progress (CAP)

The Institute for the Study of War (ISW) is a Washington-based think tank, founded by Kimberley Kagan, the daughter in law of a seminal Neocon ideologist, Donald Kagan. It has been funded by the arms industry as well as private security and surveillance firms. It is considered by some to be responsible for the expanded US presence in Afghanistan and as advisor to General Petraeus during the Iraq surge, as well as promoting the Syrian Salafist opposition in the guise of ‘moderates.’ [12]

The Project for the New American Century (PNAC) was based in the offices of the American Enterprise Institute and became a base for neocon ideologues and followers and was led by Donald Kagan and Willian Kristol.

American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) responsible for pushing the Clinton administration to fund the Shi’a and Kurdish armed enemies of Saddam Hussein, and imposing sanctions on Iraq. Sanctions was viewed as a useful tactic to bring down the Ba’ath government backed by regular bombing and climaxing in the signing of the Iraq Liberation Act of 1998. Along with JINSA it also drove Islamophobia forward.

Human Rights Watch funded by the US government became part of the Syrian regime change lobby.

There are far too many to name and detail them all.

The West’s Foreign Policy elites backed the Islamist extremists in Syria

A great number of the Washington foreign policy elites supported extremist groups like Jaysh al-Islam, Jabhat al Nusra and the Harakat Nour al-Din Al Zenki militia claiming they were ‘moderates’. They received billions of dollars to topple Bashar al-Assad. Some 100,000 fighters were still operative with the Syrian National Army in 2022 thanks largely to NATO’s Islamic State member, Erdoğan’s Turkey. [13]

A list of the so-called Syrian ‘rebels’ or ‘moderates’ had been drawn up by UK Conservative Party’s former intern, Charles Lister, who had created a prominent position for himself at the Brooking’s Institute, Doha Center wing, of the think tank. This was set up according to the designs of the Qatari royals. He also supported the Turkish-backed, Salafist militia, Ahrar al-Sham. Lister’s reporting influenced a British Joint Intelligence Committee internal report influencing the views of former PM David Cameron towards groups active in Syria at the time.

The CIA had equipped many of them with TOW missiles and communications equipment “part of a $500 million authorization request sent by Obama to Congress in June 2014.” [14] The bad timing was in tandem with ISIS swiftly seizing control of Mosul in Iraq. The Al-Zenki militia was also in receipt of these American missiles after it helped gain control of eastern Aleppo and were channeled via the CIA’s Turkish warehouse.

The Washington and New York based think tank, Century Foundation’s senior fellow, Sam Heller, argued for US backing of “Al Zenki and groups like it”.

In an August 2016 Century Foundation editorial, In Syrian Proxy War, America Can Keep Its Hands Clean or It Can Get things Done, the think tank argued for massive weapons supplies to be sent to al-Zenki. Heller had urged: “If the United States cannot absorb its proxies’ bad behavior, on and off camera, then its strategy in Syria is likely untenable. If, on the other hand, the United States really is serious about pursuing a two-pronged strategy—challenging the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad militarily while backing rebel allies to counterbalance jihadists within the Syrian opposition—well, then it will have to back Zinki and other groups like it…

Al Zinki’s support from the Müşterek Operasyon Merkezi (MOM – Joint Operation Center)—joint operations room in Turkey is said to include the CIA and allied intelligence services—was said to have been cut off in August or September but had been negotiating with state backers, including the United States, over restoration of its support. ” [15] Sam Heller acknowledged that al-Zenki had been fighting alongside Al Nusra (later Fateh al-Sham) Al Qaeda’s Syrian partner, around Aleppo. Al Zenki also ran a propaganda office in the Kurdish town of Reyhanli on the Turkish border with Syria.

In a July 2016 beheading video, Al Zenki militants call out Allah Akhbar as they saw off the head of a young captive positioned on the back of a pickup truck. Heller went on to claim that al Zinki was a counterweight to ISIS although its goals and methods were the same. [16]

Heller also publishes with the International Crisis Group (ICG).

The International Crisis Group was founded in 1995 as an international body, according to its own website by Morton Abramowitz (former U.S. Ambassador to Turkey and Thailand, then President of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace), Mark Malloch-Brown (former head of the UN Development Programme, then UN Deputy Secretary-General and UK Minister and World Bank Vice President for External Affairs), and its first Chairman, U.S. Senator George Mitchell.” [17]

Calling itself an independent NGO it is in fact run by former political actors and was initially funded among others by George Soros with Stephen Solarz doing further fundraising trips. After 9/11: “the organisation embarks on a major series of new terrorism-related reports around the world…A major influx of funding allows Crisis Group to open a new field office in Islamabad to cover both Pakistan and Afghanistan. In addition, major new projects are launched in the Horn of Africa and Kashmir, as well as in the Middle East, where analysts based in Amman cover a range of issues in Iran, Iraq, Israel-Palestine, Syria, Lebanon and the Gulf States. A New York advocacy office opens alongside the UN. By year end, annual expenditure has grown to $6.7 million and staff size to 75.” [18]

The Open Society Institute led by George Soros and backed by the US government sought to topple former Soviet satellite state governments in concert with the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) that was also backed by the US government and had funded the Afghanistan Relief Committee (ARK) in promoting the mujahedin against the Soviets as ‘freedom fighters.’ ARK was supervised by John Train, the founding editor of the CIA-backed journal, Paris Review. [19] The Bush administration gave the organization its endorsement.

Of related interest, in 2004, a letter on NED’s letterhead opposing Vladimir Putin was written by the heads of the neocon movement, Robert Kagan, William Kristol, then senator, Joe Biden, Madeleine Albright and Tom Malinowski, a Human Rights Watch lobbyist, agitating about a new Russian menace under Putin. [20]

Sheldon Adelson and the think tanks he funded led the Trump administration to set up an Iran Action Group like George W. Bush’s Pentagon Office of Special Plans to fake intelligence like occurred under Douglas Feith with Ahmed Chalabi to try to link Saddam Hussein to Al Qaeda. [21]

Serena Shim’s death: a road accident?

Of Lebanese-American origin, Iranian Press TV journalist, Serena Shim became a victim of the disinformation war propelled by militarist think tanks in Washington and London. She was killed in a mysterious accident with a concrete mixer in the Kurdish border area when returning to the Syrian Kurdish town of Kobani. [22] The crash happened just two days after she reported for Iran’s English Press TV about the Turkish Intelligence Apparatus’s (MIT) collusion in arming Al Nusra and arms transfers being made from the US base at Incirlik.

The Guardian stated how Shim had reported that “Islamic State militants had crossed from Turkey into Syria on trucks bearing the symbols (logo) of the World Food Organisation and other NGOs. Shim, an American citizen of Lebanese origin, told Press TV viewers she was “a bit frightened” by what Turkish intelligence “might use against me.” [23]

The rental car Shim was travelling in was hit by the Turkish vehicle on October 19, 2014, killing her but sparing her cousin, Judy Irish who had been driving. She refuted the official account saying: “I was driving in the fast lane on a three-lane, one-way highway,” she told WhoWhatWhy. “The semi-truck was behind me in the middle lane. He sped up very quickly and cut in front of me and made me crash into him.” ‘No photographs or CCTV footage of Shim or Irish at the scene of the crash have ever been released…’ [24]

MIT

In her final live broadcast, Shim had described how MIT (Millî İstihbarat Teşkilatı) operatives had been asking questions about her movements while she was covering the siege of Kobani by ISIS militants. The Turkish intelligence agency had labeled her a “spy,” she said, and pressed locals to “give them a phone call” if they saw her.” [25] The lorry driver was not tried.

In the later investigative paper it reveals how when reporting from Turkey she had highlighted the Turkish government’s eagerness to invade Syria and said, “There’s promises and negotiations that have been made under the table between Recep Tayyip Erdogan and the West,” Shim explained during an interview in early 2013. “He wants to get the job over with,” she added. [26]

Can Dündar, editor in chief of Cumhuriyet, had also published pictures of MIT lorries carrying arms into Syria. Gültekin Avcı of Bugün (Today) had published similar reports over the active connections between MIT and Islamic extremists and was arrested and charged with subversion.

Anyone in Turkey reporting on this issue would face visits from MIT and surveillance. One reporter had been told directly by a Turkish Intelligence officer: “Either you take a flight home or we’ll put you across the border into IS territory.”

The New Arab added “What Shim reported was not so unusual. Barzan Iso, a Syrian Kurdish journalist, showed that a Qatari charity had used the Jarabulus crossing to get aid to IS-controlled areas. There were also reports on airports that had been used by ISIS and he claimed: “Oğuzeli Airport in Gaziantep had come to resemble the old airport in Pakistan’s Peshawar.” 27

Kidnap of Elizabeth Tsurkov in Baghdad after militia research

Elizabeth Tsurkov was kidnapped in Iraq in the spring of 2023 by pro-Iran Shi’a militia, Kata’ib Hezbollah on allegations of working as an Israeli spy. [28] She had been writing articles for both Israeli and Washington outlets while working on a degree at Princeton.

Back in November 2019, Tsurkov had met Turkish-run jihadists in an office in Urfa. She had written in one article how Mazen, a Levant Front fighter, used the third person to describe his faction’s participation in Turkey’s Syrian intervention saying “They [the SNA fighters] are employees of the Turkish state to protect its border.” Then he had switched to the first person: “The Turks are using us as cannon fodder. We’ve become mercenaries… All decisions, big and small, in the ‘National Army’ are made by the operations room run by Turkish intelligence”. He was echoing all my interviewees in admitting that decision-making was out of the hands of the Syrian commanders themselves. Mazen underwent training by Turkish military personnel in Turkey and Syria.” [29]

Tsurkov had also noted how the Levant Front (Al Jabha al-Shamiya) and Hamza Brigade (later Hamza Division) had once received support from the CIA-led Military Operations Command, or the Department of Defense’s Train and Equip Programme. (The CIA-run programme, codenamed Timber Sycamore, was shut down in late 2017, while the Train and Equip Program in northwestern Syria had failed back in 2015). Turkey then took over the payment of fighters’ salaries prior to the 2016 operation and significantly augmented their ranks.” [30]

The Washington Kurdish Institute (WKI) reported on August 17, 2023 that (belatedly): “The U.S. Department of the Treasury released a statement announcing sanctions on two Turkish-affiliated Free Syrian Army (FSA) militias, the Suleiman Shah Brigade and the Hamza Division, for severe human rights violations in northern Syria (Rojava). The crimes cited … include torture, extortion, kidnapping, robbery, sexual assault, and murder. Three members of the organizations’ leadership structures, Muhammed Hussein al Jasim (Abu Amsha), Hussein al Jasim, and Sayf Boulad, were also sanctioned…At the same time, sanctions were levied against a business owned by Abu Amsha known as Al Safir Oto. Al Safir Oto is headquartered in Istanbul, operates a network of car dealerships run by members of the Suleiman Shah Brigade in southern Turkey, and has been used to launder money from criminal activities in Afrin.” [31]

Rojava Information Center reports

According to other sources like the Rojava Information Center’s highly detailed bulletins, Al-Jabha al-Shamiya (as also accused by Amnesty International) was guilty of carrying out summary executions through its system of Shari’a courts in the Turkish controlled zone. In 2018, the Netherlands government had declared it to be a “criminal organization of terrorist intent” and a “Salafist and jihadistic” group that “strives for the setting up of the caliphate”. The Dutch government had been among its former backers. Some Al Jabha al-Shamiiya militiamen had also been recruited to go to fight in Libya.¹¹⁸ According to records collected by the RIC throughout 2021, al-Jabha al-Shamiya was one of the groups with the highest number of rights violations with multiple cases of gender-based violence and unlawful arrests. [32]

Tsurkov for her part had said plainly that “Factions…bearing Ottoman or Turkish names, were created in anticipation of the 2016 operation whilst another recruitment drive was carried out before the 2018 invasion of Afrin (Efrîn).” According to her sources that were active inside the groups, Turkey would pay the commanders approximately $300 a month, such as in the case of the al-Mu’tasim Brigade, whereas regular fighters having first been recruited on similar pay levels saw their wages fall to about $50 a month so they increased their earnings through looting, pillaging and property confiscation. These crimes went unpunished by Turkey in its deeper drive for demographic change in indigenous Kurdish areas of Syria. The commanders were said to be more powerful than the Military Police put in charge by Turkey of its occupied areas.

Tsurkov had noted that a Mafia style enterprise took over SNA-controlled areas characterized by extortion, racketeering, bribes and tolls imposed by various militias at checkpoints, along with kidnapping for ransom.

The insightful Rojava Information Center Report bulletins offered further detail, explaining how a high-ranking officer in the Syrian National Army (SNA) said, “The Turkish intelligence service directly studies the files of officers who are nominated to assume leadership positions in the region and appoints the leaders directly. All current commanders in the SNA and its affiliated agencies, including civil police, military police and others, have been approved by the same service.” [33]

Hayat Tahir al-Sham (HTS) took over much of Idlib from Turkish proxies recently with Ankara’s collusion and acquiescence. They proclaimed formal governance in the name of the Syrian Salvation Government. HTS first came into existence as an ISIS proxy deployed from Iraq into Syria. The group then formally switched allegiance to Al Qaeda, breaking its ties with ISIS. Turkey supports HTS despite having declared it to be a terrorist organisation, as did the West, but at the same time Turkish Foreign Minister, Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu, has a backup plan to seek rapprochement with Damascus and defeat the autonomous Kurdish region forces and end the SDF.

Should the Turkish military presence in the northwest be withdrawn – along with its deployment of jihadist proxies – Damascus could move back in and re-establish its authority there – something the United States and United Kingdom have all along sought to prevent.

Related posts:

Sabotaging Syria Business with ISIS – Updated Syria: The Truth Lies Buried beneath an Edifice of Lies Martyrs for Millionaires: The Black-Market Politics behind the Theft of Syria’s Oil What makes a good NATO ally? The Case of Turkey Turkey: Nato’s Islamic State Member The Resurrection (Ba’ath) Party – Before the Iran-Iraq War Syria: A ‘Caliphate’ by Any Other Name — Would Smell the Same Iraqi Kurdistan – “Sold Out!” – Part II Syria: Revisiting The Caesar Torture Victim Photographs