Syria
intervention plan fueled by oil interests, not chemical weapon
concern
Massacres
of civilians are being exploited for narrow geopolitical competition
to control Mideast oil, gas pipelines
Nafeez
Ahmed
30
August, 2013
On
21 August, hundreds - perhaps over a thousand - people were killed in
a chemical weapon attack in Ghouta, Damascus, prompting the U.S., UK,
Israel and France to raise the spectre of military strikes against
Bashir al Assad's forces which, they say, carried out the attack.
To
be sure, the latest episode is merely one more horrific event in a
conflict that has increasingly taken on genocidal
characteristics. The case for action at first glance is indisputable.
The UN now confirms a death toll over 100,000 people, the vast
majority of whom have been killed by Assad's troops. An estimated 4.5
million people have been displaced from their homes. International
observers have overwhelmingly
confirmed
Assad's complicity in the preponderance of war crimes and crimes
against humanity against the Syrian people. The illegitimacy of his
regime, and the legitimacy of the uprising against it, is clear.
But
the interests of the west are a different matter.
Chemical
confusion
While
the U.S. and Israel have taken a lead in claiming firm evidence that
the latest attack was indeed a deployment of chemical weapons by
Assad's regime, justifying a military intervention of some sort,
questions remain.
The
main evidence cited by the U.S. linking the attacks to Syria are
intercepted phone calls among other intelligence, the bulk of which
was provided by Israel.
"Last Wednesday, in the hours after a horrific chemical attack
east of Damascus," reported Foreign
Policy,
"an official at the Syrian Ministry of Defense exchanged
panicked phone calls with a leader of a chemical weapons unit,
demanding answers for a nerve agent strike that killed more than
1,000 people."
This
account is hardly decisive proof of Assad's culpability in the attack
- what one can reasonably determine here is that Syrian defense
officials do not seem to have issued specific orders for such a
strike, and were attempting to investigate whether their own chemical
weapons unit was indeed responsible.
On
the attack itself, experts are unanimous that the shocking footage of
civilians, including children, suffering the effects of some sort of
chemical attack, is real - but remain divided on whether it involved
military-grade chemical weapons associated with Assad's arsenal, or
were a more amateur concoction potentially linked to the rebels.
Many
independent chemical weapons experts point out the
insufficiency of evidence
to draw any firm conclusions. Steven
Johnson,
chemical explosives experts at Cranfield Forensic Institute, pointed
to inconsistencies in the video footage and the symptoms displayed by
victims, raising questions about the nature of the agents used.
Although trauma to the nervous system was clear: "At this stage
everyone wants a ‘yes-no’ answer to chemical attack. But it is
too early to draw a conclusion just from these videos."
Dan
Kaszeta,
a former officer of the U.S. Army’s Chemical Corps, said: "None
of the people treating the casualties or photographing them are
wearing any sort of chemical-warfare protective gear, and despite
that, none of them seem to be harmed... there are none of the other
signs you would expect to see in the aftermath of a chemical attack,
such as intermediate levels of casualties, severe visual problems,
vomiting and loss of bowel control."
Gwyn
Winfield
of chemical weapons journal CBRNe World said it was difficult to pin
down a specific chemical from the symptoms seen in footage, but
suggested it could be either a chemical weapon or a riot control
agent: "The lack of conventional munition marks does suggest
that it was a non-conventional munition, or an RCA (riot control
agent) in a confined space, but who fired it and what it was has yet
to be proved."
Other
experts cited by Agence
France Presse
(AFP) concur with these assessments - either disagreeing that the
footage proved military-grade chemical weapons, or noting the
inadequacy of evidence implicating a specific perpetrator.
What
little evidence is available in the public record on past deployment
of chemical agents has implicated both Assad and the rebels - not the
Free Syrian Army (FSA) as a whole, but rather militant jihadist
factions linked to al-Qaeda and funded by the likes of Saudi
Arabia and Qatar.
In
March this year, a major attack on the predominantly Shi'a town of
Khan al-Assal killing 26 people including civilians and Syrian
soldiers was apparently committed by rebels "with al-Qaeda
sympathies." U.S. weapons experts suspected that the victims
were exposed to a "caustic" agent such as chlorine, not a
military-grade chemical weapon but "an improvised chemical
device." As the Telegraph
reports: "There has been extensive experimentation by insurgents
in Iraq in the use of chlorine."
Indeed,
in May 2007, al-Qaeda in Iraq had attempted a
series of suicide attacks
using bombs built from chlorine gas containers. Last year, Syrian
jihadist groups led by the al-Qaeda affiliated al-Nusrah Front,
linked to Iraqi al-Qaeda forces, captured several
Syrian military bases
stocking Scud and anti-aircraft missiles, as well as a chlorine
factory
near Aleppo.
Just
three months before the most recent attack, however, former war
crimes prosecutor Carla
del Ponte,
an independent UN war crimes investigator on Syria, told Channel 4
that evidence derived from interviews with victims, doctors and field
hospitals confirmed that rebels had used the nerve agent sarin:
"I
have seen that there are concrete suspicions if not irrefutable proof
that there has been use of sarin gas... This use was made by the
opponent rebels and not from the governmental authorities."
According
to Channel 4, "she had not found evidence of sarin's use by
President Bashar al-Assad's regime."
Meanwhile,
the latest
UN report
released in June 2013 confirms several allegations of chemical
weapons attacks but concludes it:
"...
has not been possible, on the evidence available, to determine the
precise chemical agents used, their delivery systems or the
perpetrator."
Further
complicating the matter, Dave
Gavlak,
a veteran Middle East correspondent for Associated Press, cites
interviews with "doctors, Ghouta residents, rebel fighters and
their families" who believe that "certain rebels received
chemical weapons via the Saudi intelligence chief, Prince Bandar bin
Sultan, and were responsible for carrying out the gas attack."
The arms were reportedly given by al-Nusrah fighters to ordinary
rebels without informing them of their nature. "More than a
dozen rebels interviewed reported that their salaries came from the
Saudi government." Gavlak's report comes with the caveat that
some of its information "cannot be independently verified."
Could
it be disinformation planted by Assad agents in Damascus, as happened
with the
Houla massacre?
We
will have to wait for the findings of UN weapons inspectors to see
whether any further clarity can be added with regards to the latest
attack. In the words of Foreign
Policy magazine:
"Given
that U.N. inspectors with a mandate to investigate chemical weapons
use were on the ground when the attack happened, the decision to
deploy what appears to have been a nerve agent in a suburb east of
Damascus has puzzled many observers. Why would Syria do such a thing
when it is fully aware that the mass use of chemical weapons is the
one thing that might require the United States to take military
action against it? That's a question U.S. intelligence analysts are
puzzling over as well. 'We don't know exactly why it happened,' the
intelligence official said. 'We just know it was pretty fucking
stupid.'"
Imperial
pretensions from Syria to Iran
U.S.
agitation against Syria began long before today's atrocities at least
seven years ago in the context of wider operations targeting Iranian
influence across the Middle East.
In
2006, a little-known State Department committee - the Iran-Syria
Policy and Operations Group
- was meeting weekly to "coordinate actions such as curtailing
Iran's access to credit and banking institutions, organizing the sale
of military equipment to Iran's neighbors and supporting forces that
oppose the two regimes." U.S. officials said "the
dissolution of the group was simply a bureaucratic reorganization"
because of a "widespread public perception that it was designed
to enact regime change."
Despite
the dissolution of the group, covert action continued. In May 2007, a
presidential
finding
revealed that Bush had authorized "nonlethal" CIA
operations against Iran. Anti-Syria operations were also in full
swing around this time as part of this covert programme, according to
Seymour Hersh, reporting for the New
Yorker.
A range of U.S. government and intelligence sources told him that the
Bush administration had "cooperated with Saudi Arabia’s
government, which is Sunni, in clandestine operations" intended
to weaken the Shi'ite Hezbollah in Lebanon. "The U.S. has also
taken part in clandestine operations aimed at Iran and its ally
Syria," wrote Hersh, "a byproduct" of which is "the
bolstering of Sunni extremist groups" hostile to the United
States and "sympathetic to al-Qaeda." He noted that "the
Saudi government, with Washington’s approval, would provide funds
and logistical aid to weaken the government of President Bashir
Assad, of Syria," with a view to pressure him to be "more
conciliatory and open to negotiations" with Israel. One faction
receiving covert U.S. "political and financial support"
through the Saudis was the exiled Syrian Muslim Brotherhood.
A
year later, Alexander
Cockburn
revealed that a new finding authorized covert action undermining Iran
"across a huge geographical are - from Lebanon to Afghanistan",
and would include support for a wide range of terrorist and military
groups such as Mujahedin-e-Khalq and Jundullah in Balochistan,
including al-Qaeda linked groups:
"Other
elements that will benefit from U.S. largesse and advice include
Iranian Kurdish nationalists, as well the Ahwazi arabs of south west
Iran. Further afield, operations against Iran’s Hezbollah
allies in Lebanon will be stepped up, along with efforts to
destabilize the Syrian regime."
It
is perhaps not entirely surprising in this context that according to
former French foreign minister Roland
Dumas,
Britain had planned covert action in Syria as early as 2009: "I
was in England two years before the violence in Syria on other
business", he told French television:
"I
met with top British officials, who confessed to me that they were
preparing something in Syria. This was in Britain not in America.
Britain was preparing gunmen to invade Syria. They even asked me,
although I was no longer minister for foreign affairs, if I would
like to participate."
"After
a couple hours of talking, they said without saying that SOF
[Special Operations Forces] teams (presumably from U.S., UK,
France, Jordan, Turkey) are already on the ground focused on
recce [reconnaissance] missions and training opposition forces... I
kept pressing on the question of what these SOF teams would be
working toward, and whether this would lead to an eventual air
campaign to give a Syrian rebel group cover. They pretty quickly
distanced themselves from that idea, saying that the idea
'hypothetically' is to commit guerrilla attacks, assassination
campaigns, try to break the
back of the Alawite forces, elicit collapse from within...
They don’t believe air intervention would happen unless there was
enough media attention on a
massacre,
like the Gaddafi move against Benghazi. They think the
U.S. would have a high tolerance for killings
as long as it doesn't reach that very public stage."
"Collapsing"
Assad's regime is thus a final goal, though military intervention
would only be politically feasible - read domestically palatable for
western populations - in the context of "a massacre" so
grievous it would lead to a public outcry.
In
another
email to Stratfor executive Fred Burton
from James F. Smith, former director of Blackwater and current CEO of
another private security firm SCG International, Smith confirmed that
he was part of "a fact finding mission for Congress" being
deployed to "engage Syrian opposition in Turkey (non-MB and
non-Qatari)." The "true mission" for the "fact
finding" team was how:
"...
they can help in regime change."
The
email added that Smith intended to offer "his services to help
protect the opposition members, like he had underway in Libya."
He also said that Booz Allen Hamilton - the same defence contractor
that employed Edward Snowden to run NSA surveillance programmes - "is
also working [with] the Agency on a similar request."
Grand
strategy: shoring up Gulf oil autocracies, "salafi jihadism"
and sectarian violence
So
what is this unfolding strategy to undermine Syria, Iran and so on,
all about? According to retired NATO
Secretary General Wesley Clark,
a memo from the Office of the U.S. Secretary of Defense just a few
weeks after 9/11 revealed plans to "attack and destroy the
governments in 7 countries in five years." A Pentagon officer
familiar with the memo told him, "we’re going to start with
Iraq, and then we’re going to move to Syria, Lebanon, Libya,
Somalia, Sudan and Iran." In a subsequent interview, Clark
argues that this strategy is fundamentally about control of the
region's
vast oil and gas resources.
As
Glen Greenwald pointed out:
"...
in the aftermath of military-caused regime change in Iraq and
Libya... with concerted regime change efforts now underway aimed at
Syria and Iran, with active and escalating proxy fighting in Somalia,
with a modest military deployment to South Sudan, and the active use
of drones in six - count ‘em: six - different Muslim countries, it
is worth asking whether the neocon dream as laid out by Clark is dead
or is being actively pursued and fulfilled, albeit with means more
subtle and multilateral than full-on military invasions."
Indeed,
much of the strategy currently at play in the region was candidly
described in a 2008 U.S.
Army-funded RAND report,
Unfolding
the Future of the Long War.
The report noted that "the economies of the industrialized
states will continue to rely heavily on oil, thus making it a
strategically important resource." As most oil will be produced
in the Middle East, the U.S. has "motive for maintaining
stability in and good relations with Middle Eastern states." The
report further acknowledges:
"The
geographic area of proven oil reserves coincides with the power base
of much of the Salafi-jihadist network. This creates a linkage
between oil supplies and the long war that is not easily broken or
simply characterized... For the foreseeable future, world oil
production growth and total output will be dominated by Persian Gulf
resources... The region will therefore remain a strategic priority,
and this priority will interact strongly with that of prosecuting the
long war."
In
this context, the report identitied many potential trajectories for
regional policy focused on protecting access to Gulf oil supplies,
among which the following are most salient:
"Divide
and Rule focuses on exploiting fault lines between the various
Salafi-jihadist groups to turn them against each other and dissipate
their energy on internal conflicts.
This
strategy relies heavily on covert action,
information
operations (IO), unconventional warfare, and support
to
indigenous security forces... the United
States
and its local allies could use the nationalist jihadists to launch
proxy
IO campaigns to discredit the transnational jihadists in the eyes of
the local populace... U.S. leaders could also choose to
capitalize on the 'Sustained Shia-Sunni Conflict' trajectory by
taking the side of the conservative Sunni regimes against Shiite
empowerment movements in the Muslim world.... possibly supporting
authoritative Sunni governments against a continuingly hostile Iran."
Exploring
different scenarios for this trajectory, the report speculated that
the U.S. may concentrate "on shoring up the traditional Sunni
regimes in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Pakistan as a way of containing
Iranian power and influence in the Middle East and Persian Gulf."
Noting that this could actually empower al-Qaeda jihadists, the
report concluded that doing so might work in western interests by
focusing jihadi activity on internal sectarian rivalry rather than
targeting the U.S., thus bogging down both Iranian-sponsored groups
like Hezbollah and al-Qaeda affiliated networks in mutual conflict:
"One
of the oddities of this long war trajectory is that it may actually
reduce the al-Qaeda threat to U.S. interests in the short term. The
upsurge in Shia identity and confidence seen here would certainly
cause serious concern in the Salafi-jihadist community in the Muslim
world, including the senior leadership of al-Qaeda. As a result, it
is very likely that al-Qaeda might focus its efforts on targeting
Iranian interests throughout the Middle East and Persian Gulf while
simultaneously cutting back on anti-American and anti-Western
operations."
The
RAND document contextualised this strategy with surprisingly
prescient recognition of the increasing vulnerability of the U.S.'s
key allies and enemies - Saudi Arabia, the Gulf states, Egypt, Syria,
Iran - to the converging crises of rapidly rising populations, a
'youth bulge', internal economic inequalities, political
frustrations, sectarian tensions, and water shortages, all of which
could destabilize these countries from within or exacerbate
inter-state conflicts.
The
report noted especially that Syria is among several "downstream
countries that are becoming increasingly water scarce as their
populations grow", increasing a risk of conflict. Drought in
Syria due to climate change, impacting food prices, did indeed play a
major role
in sparking the 2011 uprisings. Though the RAND document fell far
short of recognizing the prospect of an 'Arab Spring', it
illustrates that three years before the 2011 uprisings, U.S. defense
officials were alive to the region's growing instabilities, and
concerned by the potential consequences for stability of Gulf oil.
Pipeline
politics
These
strategic concerns, motivated by fear of expanding Iranian influence,
impacted Syria primarily in relation to pipeline geopolitics. In 2009
- the same year former French foreign minister Dumas alleges the
British began planning operations in Syria - Assad refused
to sign
a proposed agreement with Qatar
that would run a pipeline
from the latter's North field, contiguous with Iran's South Pars
field, through Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Syria and on to Turkey, with a
view to supply European markets - albeit crucially bypassing Russia.
Assad's rationale was "to protect the interests of [his] Russian
ally, which is Europe's top supplier of natural gas."
Instead,
the following year, Assad pursued negotiations for an
alternative $10 billion pipeline plan with Iran,
across Iraq to Syria, that would also potentially allow Iran to
supply gas to Europe from its South Pars field shared with Qatar. the
Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) for the project was signed by in
July 2012 - just as Syria's civil war was spreading to Damascus and
Aleppo - and earlier this year Iraq signed a
framework agreement for construction of the gas pipelines.
The pipeline would potentially allow Iran to supply gas to European
markets.
The
Iran-Iraq-Syria pipeline plan was a "direct
slap in the face"
to Qatar's plans. No wonder Saudi Prince Bandar bin Sultan, in a
failed attempt to bribe Russia to switch sides, told President
Vladmir Putin that "whatever regime comes after" Assad, it
will be "completely"
in Saudi Arabia's hands
and will "not sign any agreement allowing any Gulf country to
transport its gas across Syria to Europe and compete with Russian gas
exports", according to diplomatic sources. When Putin refused,
the Prince vowed military action.
Israel
also has a direct interest in countering the Iran-brokered pipeline.
In 2003, just a month after the commencement of the Iraq War, U.S.
and Israeli government sources told The
Guardian of
plans to "build a pipeline to siphon oil from newly conquered
Iraq to Israel" bypassing Syria. The basis for the plan, known
as the Haifa project, goes back to a 1975 MoU signed by then
Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, "whereby the U.S. would
guarantee Israel's oil reserves and energy supply in times of
crisis." As late as 2007, U.S.
and Israeli government officials were
in discussion on costs and contingencies for the Iraq-Israel pipeline
project.
All
the parties intervening in Syria's escalating conflict - the U.S.,
Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey, Israel on one side providing limited
support to opposition forces, with Russia, China and Iran on the
other shoring up Assad's regime - are doing so for their own narrow,
competing geopolitical interests.
Supporting
al-Qaeda
Certainly,
external support for the rebels funneled largely through Saudi Arabia
and Qatar has empowered extremists. The New
York Times
found that most of the arms supplied with U.S. approval "are
going to hard-line Islamic jihadists, and not the more secular
opposition groups" - a process which continues.
The support for militants is steadily transforming the Syrian
landscape. "Across Syria, rebel-held areas are dotted with
Islamic courts staffed by lawyers and clerics, and by fighting
brigades led by extremists", reported NYT
in April:
"Even
the Supreme Military Council, the umbrella rebel organization whose
formation the West had hoped would sideline radical groups, is
stocked with commanders who want to infuse Islamic law into a future
Syrian government. Nowhere in rebel-controlled Syria is there a
secular fighting force to speak of."
And
there are even questions about the U.S.' purported disavowal of the
al-Qaeda affiliated al-Nusra. NYT reports that "Nusra’s hand
is felt most strongly in Aleppo", where it has established in
coordination with other rebel groups "a Shariah Commission"
running "a police force and an Islamic court that hands down
sentences that have included lashings." Nusra fighters also
"control the power plant and distribute flour to keep the
city’s bakeries running." Additionally, they "have seized
government oil fields" in provinces of Deir al-Zour and Hasaka,
and now make a "profit from the crude they produce."
The
problem is that al-Nusra's bakery and oil operations are being
supported by the U.S. and the European Union (EU) respectively. In
one disturbing account, the Washington
Post
reports on a stealth mission in Aleppo "to deliver food and
other aid to needy Syrians - all of it paid for by the U.S.
government", including the supply of flour. "The bakery is
fully supplied with flour paid for by the United States", the
report continues, noting that local consumers, however, "credited
Jabhat al-Nusra - a rebel group the United States has designated a
terrorist organization because of its ties to al-Qaeda - with
providing flour to the region, though he admitted he wasn’t sure
where it comes from." Similarly, the EU's
easing of an oil embargo
to allow oil imports from rebel-controlled oil fields directly
benefits al-Nusra fighters who control those former government
fields.
No
wonder Saudi Prince Bandar bin Sultan, in a failed attempt to bribe
Russia to switch sides, told President Vladmir Putin that "whatever
regime comes after" Assad, it will be "completely"
in Saudi Arabia's hands
and will "not sign any agreement allowing any Gulf country to
transport its gas across Syria to Europe and compete with Russian gas
exports", according to diplomatic sources. When Putin refused,
the Prince vowed military action.
It
would seem that contradictory Saudi and Qatari oil interests are
pulling the strings of U.S. policy in Syria, if not the wider region.
It is this - the problem of establishing a pliable opposition which
the U.S. and its oil allies feel confident will play ball,
pipeline-style, in a post-Assad Syria - that will determine the
nature of any prospective intervention. As Chairman of the Joint
Chiefs of Staff, Gen.
Martin Dempsey,
said:
"Syria
today is not about choosing between two sides but rather about
choosing one among many sides. It is my belief that the side we
choose must be ready to promote their interests and ours when the
balance shifts in their favor."
What
is beyond doubt is that Assad is a war
criminal
whose government deserves to be overthrown. The question is by whom,
and for what interests?
