Terrorism with a “Human Face”: Rebranding the Public Image of Syria’s Al Qaeda Brigades
Western corporate media, its Oil and Gas counterparts (GCC), and the various acolytes and paid-propagandists in the “tailored analysis” industry, are once again attempting to bolster and rebrand the public image of the fundamentalist rebels in Syria.
In the space of a week, two
new formations of armed rebels mysteriously appeared across the
mass-media lexicon and declared war on the dominant extremists through
the usual “activist” social media accounts. The new brigades have
virtually no historical record in the conflict, and appear to be largely
a creation of the impotent exile opposition and its western sponsors.
An abundance of reports relay stories of the Islamic State of Iraq and ash-Sham (ISIS) simply abandoning their posts and being turned over by this supposedly “moderate” new force.
Yet, in reality, the most predominant militia in Syria – those of a
Salafi-Wahhabi fundamentalist bent, who now fight under the umbrella of
the Islamic Front (IF), and are led by Hassan Abboud of Ahrar al-Sham, and Zahran Alloush of Liwa al-Islam – have made a concerted effort to avoid sowing discord between themselves and the overt Al Qaeda affiliates of ISIS and Jabhat al-Nusra (JaN).
The new narrative emerging
draws heavily from the Sahwa (Awakening) in Iraq, in which Sunni tribes
from the western province of Anbar took up arms against, and eventually
defeated, the Al Qaeda insurgency that followed the US invasion and
occupation of that country. Western and Gulf media are now attempting to
reinvigorate the rebels’ public image by concocting a portrayal of
brave “moderates” taking on the extremists within ISIS. Yet contrary to
the Syria-Sahwa narrative, the vast majority of opposition forces, as
much as one can generalise, have in fact been shown to share far more in
common with their extremist equivalents than they have differences,
particularly in regards to their reciprocal – and sectarian-laden –
religiopolitical ideologies.
According to Western and
Gulf propagandists, Jabhat al-Nusra ostensibly represent the “homegrown”
Syrian Al Qaeda branch. Whereas in actual fact, the claim is entirely
false; JaN’s militia hold a distinct foreign contingent and many of its
commanders have also been found to be of foreign descent – particularly
Iraqi. Jabhat al-Nusra, therefore, should be correctly viewed as a
semi-Syrian militia at most, built and sustained by ISIS and its former incarnation: the Islamic State of Iraq, (ISI) also formerly known as Al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI).
The ideologically aligned
Salafi-Jihadists of Ahrar al-Sham, Jabhat al-Nusra, and more recently
ISIS, have formed the spearhead of the insurgency throughout the entire
Syrian crisis, leading offensives against Syrian army installations,
whilst also having enough manpower, funds & materiel to attack,
encamp and militarily fortify civilian areas across the country. Most
notably in Raqqah, which has become a virtual Al Qaeda statelet under
the control of either Jabhat al-Nusra or ISIS.
Examples of the dominant role fundamentalists have played in the insurgency are abundant, during an interview with TIME magazine,
Ahrar al-Sham fighters – who, as we have seen through a plethora of
evidence, are inextricably linked to Jabhat al-Nusra – freely admit they
were planning a violent insurgency in Syria well before any peaceful
protests occurred in 2011, and that recruits with underlying sectarian
agendas made efforts to sanitize and mask their true Jihadist cause
during the earlier phases of the conflict in order to win over the
Syrian population. Whats more, a recent report in the National relayed much the same admissions from supposed “FSA” rebels operating in the south of Syria around Dar’aa.
The rebels interviewed admitted that“They [JaN] offer their services and cooperate with us, they are better armed than we are, they have suicide bombers and know how to make car bombs,” rebel sources went on to say that “the FSA and Al Nusra join together for operations but they have an agreement to let the FSA lead for public reasons, because they don’t want to frighten Jordan or the West,”.During the interview rebels further elaborate on the efforts made to boost the public image of the western-backed imaginary moderates saying that “operations that were really carried out by Al Nusra are publicly presented by the FSA as their own,” and that supposed moderate FSA fighters “say that Al Nusra fighters are really from the FSA to enable them to move more easily across borders,”. The reports bolster earlier analyses that contradict the dominant narrative, often dismissed as “conspiracy theory”, which indicated such actions were being undertaken, and that the armed groups responsible for the initial violence in March-April 2011 were indeed religious fundamentalists, not the secular “freedom fighters” endlessly lionized by the lackeys of western governments and media.
Such candid rebel
admissions once again expose the falsehoods that liberal opportunists
rely on when blindly repeating the Imperialist narrative of a peaceful
protest movement simply morphing into an Al Qaeda-led insurgency. In
reality, the generally small and legitimate protests calling for reform
were used as a fig leaf by Syria’s various internal and external enemies
to hide the extremist-led militant insurgency they were orchestrating
and colluding with.
As evidenced in numerous interviews and statements from Abboud and Alloush,
the Islamic Front is not by any stretch of the imagination a “moderate”
force opposed to JaN, ISIS, or Al Qaeda ideology in general (unless one
utilises the doublespeak of the US State Department when describing
their “moderate” Wahhabi-Salafi monarchical clients in the Gulf). Ahrar
al-Sham, Liwa a-Islam and other various proto-Salafi militia operating
under the umbrella of the Islamic Front have repeatedly fought alongside
Jabhat al-Nusra and ISIS, and taken part in offensives that have
targeted towns and villages on the specific criteria of the sect of the
civilian inhabitants. The massacres committed upon the civilian residents of Latakia
provide just one recent example of such sectarian barbarity – committed
not only by the extreme elements, but with the full cooperation and
participation of supposed moderate “FSA” militia. A more recent example
of the Islamic Front cooperating with its Al Qaeda-affiliates came in
December, when the IF took part in the attack and ensuing massacre of civilians
in the workers district of Adra, Damascus – another rebel war-crime
almost totally omitted from western media, regardless of the fact the
BBC’s chief foreign correspondent was a mere 20 miles away while the
massacres were occurring.
When framed in the correct
context, it becomes clear that the vast majority of rebels in Syria are
in fact ideologically allied to the very Al Qaeda affiliates the media
is trying to portray them as opposed to. A recent communique from
the political head of the IF, and leader of Ahrar al-Sham, Hassan
Abboud, was disingenuously portrayed as a Islamic Front “warning” to
ISIS. Opposition-friendly media outlets and analysts are in effect
conflating the Islamic Front with imaginary “moderates” and in turn
attempting to portray them as ideological opponents to their more
extreme Al Qaeda counterparts. This narrative is turning reality on its
head, as Abboud’s recent statement is actually a “warning” against
discord with ISIS. Abboud encourages the Syrian population to treat the
Muhajirin (foreign jihadists busy murdering Syrians) “kindly”, and
further encourages ISIS to emulate the “more healthy” manner of their
supposed “home-grown” incarnation Jabhat al-Nusra. Accordingly, one can
safely conclude that Abboud, Ahrar al-Sham, Liwa al-Islam, and the
various Salafi militia operating under the umbrella of the Islamic Front
– the largest militant force of the opposition – have close to zero
ideological disparity with ISIS or JaN.
Even if what seem to be
inflated reports of discord and infighting between the Islamic Front and
the supremacist ideologues in ISIS were to result in a considerable
loss for the latter, it would simply be replaced at the top of the
fundamentalist food-chain by the next militia willing to impose its
barbarity and coercion in the most effective way. This is ultimately the
inherent nature of fundamentalist militant insurgencies, they are
designed, indoctrinated, equipped, and funded to impose upon states and
peoples through murder, coercion and fear, not through the appeal of a
popular political doctrine and the mass support of the people. The
simple facts that the insurgency as a whole is under no central
hierarchy, and holds little to-no support inside Syria and is therefore
susceptible to becoming reliant and subordinate to its foreign patrons,
are clear indications that it will not be cohesive, regardless of the
varying shades of fundamentalism the dominant groups have attempted to
enforce.
The historical record of
Western-GCC-backed insurgencies in the Arab and Muslim world provides
copious amounts of evidence to show that invariably the United States
and its Saudi partners have always utilised, fomented, and sponsored
reactionary forces to meet geopolitical ends, particularly when
subverting or attacking nationalist governments that refuse to abide by
the Anglo-American capitalist order – with disastrous consequences for
the countries in which the fundamentalist proxies are set upon.
One needs only to glance at the very recent history of Libya
to negate the establishment falsehood that if the Syrian government had
been overthrown quickly the fundamentalists would not have gained in
strength. Again, this is turning the historical record on its head, as
the joint NATO-Al Qaeda war on Libya has once again shown; the swift
overthrow of a state’s government and leadership inevitably results in
reactionary fundamentalists taking advantage of the power vacuum left
behind. The US-Saudi-backed insurgency in Afghanistan during the 1980′s,
which fought against the Soviet-backed Communist government, provides
perhaps the definitive example of the type of proxies the United States
and Saudi Arabia choose to employ to destroy target states. As with
Syria and Libya, the original “Afghan Arab” insurgency – which helped to
create and empower Al Qaeda, Bin Laden, Hekmatyar, the Haqqani network
and a host of other fundamentalist militancy – was wrought with
infighting, extremism, warlordism, and reaction, this trend has
continued in virtually every state the US and its GCC partners have
targeted for “liberation” via jihadist proxies.
Perpetual infighting
evidenced throughout the Syrian insurgency is in fact a result of the
long-standing fragmentation of the various opposition forces, their
varying degrees of fundamentalism, and the battle to win influence,
arms, and funds through foreign donors and exploitation.
The evidence-free
narratives of supposed existential disparity between what actually
represent ideological allies, the patterns of ever-changing nomenclature
and rebel rebranding, and the efforts to scapegoat the most overtly
extreme elements for the systematic crimes of the opposition as a whole,
are nothing more than public relations exercises, designed to whitewash
the massive crimes of the “rebels”, whilst extricating the Western
Elite and their GCC partners from the criminal act of sponsoring
extremists for geopolitical ends.
Phil Greaves is a UK based writer on UK/US Foreign Policy, with a focus on the Arab World, post WWII. http://notthemsmdotcom.wordpress.com/
Related content:
Disclaimer: The contents of this article are of sole
responsibility of the author(s). The Centre for Research on
Globalization will not be responsible for any inaccurate or incorrect
statement in this article. The Center of Research on Globalization
grants permission to cross-post original Global Research articles on
community internet sites as long as the text & title are not
modified. The source and the author's copyright must be displayed. For
publication of Global Research articles in print or other forms
including commercial internet sites, contact: publications@globalresearch.ca
www.globalresearch.ca contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available to our readers under the provisions of "fair use" in an effort to advance a better understanding of political, economic and social issues. The material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving it for research and educational purposes. If you wish to use copyrighted material for purposes other than "fair use" you must request permission from the copyright owner.
For media inquiries: publications@globalresearch.ca
www.globalresearch.ca contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available to our readers under the provisions of "fair use" in an effort to advance a better understanding of political, economic and social issues. The material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving it for research and educational purposes. If you wish to use copyrighted material for purposes other than "fair use" you must request permission from the copyright owner.
For media inquiries: publications@globalresearch.ca
Copyright © Phil Greaves, Global Research, 2014
No comments:
Post a Comment