According to a Reuters report on Aug. 1, based on information provided by government sources, the Obama administration signed a secret order earlier in the year authorizing support for Syrian opposition groups. Known as an “intelligence finding,” the order authorizes the CIA and other U.S. agencies to provide tactical and financial assistance to opposition groups in an effort to overthrow the Syrian government.
The same order also provided for collaboration with a secret command center close to the Syrian border in Adana, Turkey, with the aim of providing military, communication and coordination support to opposition groups.
While the order does not explicitly authorize U.S. agencies to arm the opposition, U.S. and NATO forces have been involved in the conflict militarily from the very outset. The main armed group, the Free Syrian Army, has been operating as a proxy force of NATO from the beginning of the uprising in 2011, funded, armed and trained by Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey, the regional U.S. client states. Meanwhile, many foreign intelligence agencies, including the CIA, have helped to plan and coordinate terrorist attacks in Syria. The FSA has also enjoyed direct assistance from NATO special operations forces on the ground.
While Qatar and Saudi Arabia have been providing the payroll for FSA mercenaries, the U.S. Treasury Department confirmed that it had granted authorization to the Syrian Support Group, a Washington-based representative of the FSA, to conduct financial transactions on the group’s behalf. According to another statement by the U.S. State Department the same day, the U.S. government had also set aside a total of $25 million for “non-lethal” assistance to the Syrian opposition for military communications equipment.
UN peace envoy Annan resigns
Meanwhile on Aug. 2, U.N. envoy Kofi Annan announced his resignation due to the failure of what he called an “impossible mission,” referring to his U.N. peace plan. In his resignation statement he made at the U.N. headquarters, Annan said: “At a time when we need—when the Syrian people desperately need action—there continues to be finger-pointing and name-calling in the Security Council.”
In other words, Annan, the main author of the “Responsibility to Protect” doctrine, which advocates the “right” of imperialist powers to engage in armed intervention for “humanitarian” purposes, is frustrated because the Russian and Chinese governments have vetoed three separate Security Council resolutions that would have opened the door to direct military intervention in Syria.
His frustration may also be related to the fact that while his peace plan was a diplomatic method of legitimizing the rebels and opening the way for the U.N. and the Arab League to intervene in Syria’s internal affairs, the United States and its imperialist allies had no patience for any diplomatic process, preferring outright regime change, which they see as within reach. In parallel with Annan’s frustration, White House spokesman Jay Carney noted that Annan’s resignation showed the failure of Russia and China to act at the U.N. Security Council.
Annan, having resigned as envoy and without the mask of U.N. neutrality, wrote an article on the Financial Times website that was much more straightforward in revealing the R2P-style “peace” he had in mind all along. Revealing which side (imperialist) he has really been on all along, Annan writes: “Military means alone will not end the crisis. It is clear that President Bashar al-Assad must leave office.” Totally ignoring the role the United States, United Kingdom, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar have been playing in stoking a destructive civil war while his peace plan was in effect, the only advice he had for the imperialist front was to press the opposition to embrace a political process.
It is important to note that throughout Annan’s peace process, Syrian opposition groups including the FSA had categorically refused to accept any peace resolution that did not enforce Assad’s removal.
What does the disclosure of US secret order really reveal?
Shortly after Annan’s resignation, the U.N. General Assembly passed a non-binding resolution, authored by Saudi Arabia, demanding that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad transfer power to a transitional government. Syrian envoy Bashar Jaafari pointed out that the countries supporting the resolution, specifically Saudi Arabia and Qatar, were not exactly paragons of human rights. Russia and China voted against the resolution. The Russian ambassador to the U.N. noted that the resolution was written as if there was no armed opposition at all, adding that the most active backers of the resolution are actively supporting and financing the opposition and giving them mercenaries and arms.
The secret Obama order for U.S. involvement in Syria in itself does not reveal anything new as far as U.S. policy toward the region is concerned. What is truly revealed by the combination of this secret order, the resignation of Annan due to the failure of his so-called peace plan, and the subsequent U.N. resolution by the oppressive Saudi Arabian monarchy is the utter hypocrisy of imperialist diplomacy and its mouthpieces like Annan, as well as the total mockery of international law that has transpired in the process.
It is a reminder of how the real plan on the table has never had anything to do with peace and everything to do with the destruction, by any means possible, of an independent state that stands in the way of imperialist plans to secure more resources to exploit. It is also a reminder of the danger of a military escalation of the conflict.
Civil war and Syrian society
Syria is a secular state with a population made up largely of Sunnis, Alawites and Christians. The Alawites are a sect of Shi’a Islam, as distinct from the majority of the Syrian population, who are Sunni Muslims. There is also a sizeable Christian population. While the Assad family and some in the ruling circle are Alawites and the rebels are mostly Sunnis, the dividing line among the population is not simply one of Christians and Alawites on the government’s side, versus Sunnis on the rebel side. There are definitely many Sunnis who support the government. But with the opposition led by the FSA, the Muslim Brotherhood and Al Qaeda, which are mainly Sunni extremists opposed to the secular orientation of the Syrian state, sectarian divisions have been accentuated over the course of the civil war.
Syria’s pluralistic society that once transcended sectarian divisions is now facing total disintegration and ethnic cleansing, reminiscent of Libya. Throughout the course of the conflict, Christians and other minorities have been targeted by the opposition forces simply because of their religious identity. About 80,000 Christians are estimated to have been displaced from their homes just in Homs province in March by the FSA, a preview of the terror that would likely be unleashed against the sectors that opposed the revolt and foreign intervention, if the opposition forces were to come to power in Syria.
Speaking to The New York Times, a Syrian Christian states that he used to see himself primarily as “Syrian” and that religious identity, in political terms, was an idea that never occurred to him—until an opposition gang attacked his family earlier this year in Homs. “It’s a label they pinned on us, if their revolution is for everyone, as they keep insisting it is, why are Christians being targeted? It is because what they are waging is not a struggle for freedom, and it’s certainly not for everyone.”
Were it not for the overt or covert military, financial and logistic support by the U.S. and its regional client states of the opposition forces, were it not for their direct or indirect involvement in the conflict in Syria, these reactionary, sectarian forces would have likely been defeated long ago by the Syrian government with its military superiority and its mass support from many sectors of the Syrian society, despite the relentless demonization and isolation campaign against it. The conflict would likely have ended before reaching the current level of destruction and sectarian violence. Just this fact alone makes the U.S. government and its client states in the region directly responsible for the carnage and destruction in Syria. They are guilty of war crimes against the Syrian people.
Hands off Syria!
