With The Fall Of Damascus Western Warhawks Jump For Joy
Following the Al-Qaeda led coup in Syria, the US empire is one step closer to total domination of the Middle East.
By Don Via Jr
12/09/2024
(The Free Thought Project)
Damascus has fallen. Assad is in exile. The power structure of the Middle East has changed over night.
As The Free Thought Project reported over the weekend, beginning in late November Salafi-jihadist militant group Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), a newly rebranded contingent of the Al-Nusra Front, itself a rebranded variant of al-Qaeda, began making advancements in Syria as the group launched a new series of attacks throughout the country.
In what can be described as a blitzkrieg pace, the jihadist group began their advancements from their stronghold in Syria's northwestern Idlib province, quickly taking the northern city of Aleppo before continuing their assault, pivoting south and seizing Syria's fourth largest city of Hama in just over a week as they began their march toward the capital.
Early Sunday morning the HTS militants continued their advance quickly capturing control of the capital city of Damascus, forcing president Bashar al-Assad and his family to flee seeking refuge in Moscow as fighters stormed the presidential palace. Effectively completing the coup and overthrowing Syria's government which has been a prominent fixture in the region's politics for over 50 years.
In just 11 days the entire geopolitical structure of the Middle East has changed forever.
In the US, the Biden administration has celebrated the fall of Assad calling it a "fundamental act of justice", highlighting some of the ways in which his administration and Israel has worked to undermine the Syrian government over the last four years. Acknowledging that the ousting of Assad would not have been possible without the ever escalating regional tensions of Israel's genocide in Gaza and conflicts with Hezbollah in Lebanon, along with the US / NATO backed proxy war in Ukraine against Russia bogging down Syria's allies.
The US praise for Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham has rightly drawn criticism. In May 2018 the State Department officially designated the al Qaeda offshoot as a terrorist organization, and at the time of this writing still maintains a $10 million bounty on the head of its leader Abu Mohammad al-Julani.
In the wake of the coup, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has also publicly praised the jihadist militants, hailing the takeover as a "historic day for the Middle East" and personally taking credit for their ability to seize control of Damascus so quickly.
The significance of the power shift in the region was elaborated by Murad Sadygzade, President of the Middle East Studies' Center in Moscow —
The fall of Damascus is a turning point in Middle Eastern politics, signaling not only the collapse of Assad’s rule but also a significant weakening of Iran, which had spent years building its influence through its alliance with Syria. Tehran had regarded Syria as a vital link in the Axis of Resistance, encompassing Lebanon, Yemen, and Palestinian groups. Syria served as a crucial logistical hub for arming Hezbollah and providing both political and economic support. However, the collapse of the Syrian capital and the ensuing chaos shattered these supply chains. Capitalizing on the situation, Israel deployed forces into the buffer zone on the Golan Heights, effectively expanding its occupied territory. This move not only bolstered Israel’s strategic position but also deprived Iran of the ability to counteract its actions effectively in the region.
Speaking from Beirut on Sunday, former British diplomat Craig Murray illustrated more concisely how the fall of Damascus fits firmly within the context of Israel's expansionist ambitions.
Meanwhile in Syria, HTS leader al-Julani delivered a victory speech from Umayyad Mosque, claiming “Today, Syria is purified, thanks to God almighty, thanks to God almighty, then thanks to the heroic mujahideen.”
The historical relevance and irony of al-Julani referring to his forces as the "Mujahideen" should not be lost on anyone.
Amid the Cold War policies of the Carter and Reagan administrations, the Mujahideen was a group of Afghani extremist militants who, through a covert CIA program known as Operation Cyclone, was funded, armed, and trained by the American government to oppose Soviet expansion into Afghanistan. Following the withdrawal of Soviet troops in 1989, Afghanistan would descend into a civil war whereupon the Mujahideen would split into two separate factions; al Qaeda, and the Taliban.
In fact, the secret history of the US government's creation and facilitation of terrorist groups is nothing new. As long time readers of The Free Thought Project will recall, from the creation of al Qaeda and the Taliban, to the clandestine use of notorious terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi as an intelligence asset and beyond, the US government has a sordid track record as the world's most prolific sponsor of terrorism going back over a century as a means of destabilizing its geopolitical rivals and establishing the hegemonic superiority of US imperialism.
In Syria, too, this is no different. The history of covert US intervention in Syria stretches back to 1949, with the first plot for regime change hatched by the Eisenhower administration followed by a series of failed coup attempts and other interference throughout the Cold War.
Furthermore, a 1986 CIA memo declassified in 2017 lays out a distinct analysis for Washington's regime change ambitions in Syria, one in which the planners envision a pliant “Sunni regime” serving US economic interests. Notably, the upheaval and unrest outlined as the desired outcome for the drafters of the memo mirror almost exactly the real world fate that has befallen Syria over the last two decades.
As it relates to the present conflict, modern attempts to unseat the Assad government stretch back to the days of the Bush administration. US diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks show that between the years of 2005 to 2010 both the Bush and Obama administrations frequently provided support to Syrian opposition elements deliberately inflaming sectarian tensions with the goal of destabilizing the Syrian government.
What's more, internal files obtained from Syria's own Central Crisis Management Cell indicate that, contrary to western narratives, during the 2011 crisis the Assad government worked painstakingly to avoid violence and bloodshed with demonstrators. While further analysis shows how opposition groups hijacked the protests to foment a color revolution, inevitably igniting the Syrian civil war and subsequent proxy war, exacerbated by the US government's continued deliberate support for terrorist groups.
Plans for destabilizing Syria and the greater Middle East as a whole gained new momentum with the backing of so-called "moderate" jihadist rebels culminating in the creation of the Islamic State terror group. With the helping hand of US intelligence, the terrorists that would go on to form ISIS rose to prominence with the help of a clandestine arm and equip program known as Operation Timber Sycamore. With funding from Saudi Arabia and Qatar, the CIA ran point on the operation funneling weapons to jihadist fighters — All the while, western governments and media outlets consistently spun propaganda narratives falsely implicating the Assad government for a series of chemical attacks waged throughout Syria to justify further intervention and occupation.
Fulfilling the dirty war in Syria has long been on the US empire's bucket list of governments to topple in order to maintain its regional supremacy. With the fall of Damascus it is yet one more piece on the chess board that moves the western colonial powers that much closer to total regional domination of the Middle East.
Speaking at The Commonwealth Club in 2007, former NATO supreme allied commander U.S. Army general Wesley Clark revealed the overarching agenda of the ruling elite in what he describes as a "foreign policy coup". Recounting a conversation with an officer from the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the Pentagon in September of 2001 shortly after 9/11, Clark recalls being informed of the decision to topple the governments of seven nations in five years with the intended targets being Iraq, Syria, Sudan, Somalia, Libya, Lebanon, and finally Iran.
Although the initial five year time frame ultimately proved unattainable, in the last 20 years much of that plan has come to fruition.
Sudan has been completely fractured, ravaged by civil war and facing the world's worst humanitarian hunger crisis.
Libya is a failed state, turned into a hub for terrorism and open air slave trading following the US / NATO led assassination of its president Muammar Gaddafi in 2011.
Similarly, Somalia has all but collapsed. A haven for piracy and CIA backed terrorists.
And now Syria is gone, too.
With the mounting tensions brought about by the increasing hostilities of the genocidal Israeli regime and the ardent Zionism of the incoming Trump administration in the United States it isn't too much of a stretch of the imagination to envision a scenario, likely sooner than later, where Lebanon is next on the chopping block.
Likewise, we can expect Trump to keep his promise of reinstituting his "maximum pressure" campaign on Iran, continuing to do the military industrial complexes bidding by stoking decades of unjust hostilities. And while toppling Tehran will likely still prove to be a very tall order, with the rest of their allies effectively subdued the potential for regime change is still much closer within reach then it has been before. Only time will tell.