In
a major revelation which FRN has confirmed, the Dutch government has
engaged in assistance to terrorist groups in Syria, such as Al-Qaeda,
that has been used for military purposes, although the government has
claimed otherwise, a joint investigation of the Dutch daily Trouw and
Nederlandse Omroep Stichting (NOS) has revealed.
The
Trouw newspaper reported late on Wednesday that the Dutch government
had issued documents proving that the groups used “almost all
equipment” provided by the government in its military operations.
The documents were allegedly published at the request of the Dutch
media, but were unavailable for public viewing shortly after
publication.
The
documents also revealed the previously hidden names of two jihadist
groups that received assistance from the Dutch government.
According
to the Trouw-NOS investigation, the terrorist groups used cars
offered by the Dutch government in attacks, as well as laptops, to
set targets.
The
investigation pointed out that these data contradict recent
statements by Dutch Foreign Minister Stef Blok that the government
had been providing only “non-military” assistance.
The
lower house of the Dutch parliament asked for explanations from the
cabinet.
In
September, the Dutch government announced that it would stop
providing assistance to opposition groups and other organizations
operating in Syria due to the inefficiency of the aid program. The
government said at the time that the program did not bring the
expected results, as the Syrian government was close to declaring
victory in the conflict.
Since
May 2015, the Netherlands has transferred some 70 million euros (US
$79.8 million) in assistance to 22 groups, including various
opposition groups such as the Free Syrian Police and Al-Qaeda
affiliated White Helmets. However, it is well established that all
so-called “rebel” groups in Syria are in one way or another
associated with Al-Qaeda or other jihadist groups that have extremist
ideology. Despite this knowledge, it is clear Amsterdam in a crazed
frenzy have wasted taxpayer money on attempting to overthrow a
foreign leader.
Seventeen
years after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the US government and media
outlets have decided that Al-Qaeda is now a rebel group worthy of our
sympathy. The cynical narrative change is par for the course, experts
told RT.
As
somber newspaper headlines mark the anniversary of the devastating
attacks, some commentators have pointed out that the terrorist group
accused of murdering 3,000 Americans seventeen years ago is now
occupying northeastern Syria – with the US threatening to take
military action if the "rebels" are
evicted from the region by the Syrian army and its allies.
It’s the 17th anniversary of 9/11 and the media has honored it by referring to Al Qaeda’s largest affiliate in history in Syria’s idlib as “rebels” and mourning their looming defeat. So weird
The
United States has spent an
estimated $1.5 trillion on its Global War Against Terrorism, launched
in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks, but the United States
now seems to find itself providing diplomatic cover – not to
mention excellent press – to the terrorists that it once vowed to
eradicate.
The
majority of Syria's Idlib province is controlled by Hayat Tahrir
al-Sham (HTS), a State
Department-designated terrorist
group that is regarded as indistinguishable from Al-Qaeda. But the US
has signaled that it will respond militarily to any efforts by
Damascus to evict the internationally-recognized terrorist group from
its last stronghold in Syria, with the New York Times
even fawning over
the jihadists as "a
de facto governmental authority, facilitating trade across the long
border with Turkey and organizing aid deliveries." What
happened?
Never
forget?
Even
as social media fills up with maudlin GIFs vowing to "Never
Forget" the
September 11 attacks, one of the reasons that Al-Qaeda has been able
to remain in Idlib is because Americans have
actually "forgotten," analysts
say.
"A
lot of time has passed since 9/11. They got Osama bin Laden and
people have moved on, and they have other issues that they're
focusing on," former
Pentagon official Michael Maloof told RT. According to Maloof, many
Americans are now preoccupied with domestic scandals like "Russian
collusion," and
they're "not
focused on the extent to which the Trump administration is providing
backing and support to Al-Qaeda today in Syria. And it's really
tragic."
However,
those who are paying attention are "tired
of the lies," Willy
Wimmer, a former state secretary to the German defense minister, told
RT.
"I
think the public in the West is tired of the lies of their own
government concerning Al-Qaeda, or other terrorists groups." He
noted that it's an open secret that the US, UK, France, Saudi Arabia
and Gulf states provide direct and indirect support to "rebel" groups
that under normal circumstances would be considered terrorists.
What's
the endgame?
But
what does the United States hope to gain from deterring an attack on
Al-Qaeda's last enclave in Syria?
Washington's
threats of military action are a way of preserving a "modicum of
influence" in Syria, Maloof said. "The
US is looking at Idlib and support for Al-Qaeda to maintain influence
and try to deflect attention away from domestic problems."He
added that the US is using the excuses of "humanitarian
disaster and chemical weapons" to
justify its military activity in the country.
"They're
going to go kinetic if there's an attack in Idlib," Maloof
predicted.
Wimmer
warned against trying to overthink Washington's shocking change of
heart concerning Al-Qaeda. "You
can't look at US foreign policy under logical terms," he said.
"These
groups are used to topple whole regions, not only Syria but also
other countries, and at the end we fight against a threat that was
organized by our own governments. And I think people are tired of
this."
He
noted that the US has "danced
on its own argument" by
accusing Russia of using anti-terrorism operations as a false pretext
for getting militarily involved in Syria, adding that unlike Russia
and Iran's presence in the country, "under
all legal terms, there is no justification for a US presence in Syria
under international law."
Finally, a journalist for a mainstream UK media outlet is methodically tracking weapons shipment serial numbers and English-language paperwork recovered from al-Qaeda groups in Syria, and he’s literally showing up at arms factories and questioning arms dealers, including officials at the Saudi Embassy in London, asking: why are your weapons in the hands of terrorists?
Veteran Middle East war correspondent Robert Fisk recently published a bombshell report entitled, I traced missile casings in Syria back to their original sellers, so it’s time for the west to reveal who they sell arms to. In it Fisk recalls a bit of detective sleuthing he’s lately been engaged in after stumbling upon a batch of missile casings and shipment paperwork last year hidden in what he describes as “the basement of a bombed-out Islamist base in eastern Aleppo” with the words “Hughes Aircraft Co/Guided Missile Surface Attack” emblazoned on the side of the spent tubes.
I
traced missile casings in Syria back to their original sellers, so
it’s time for the west to reveal who they sell arms to
I
don’t think either Nato or the EU has the slightest interest in
chasing the provenance of weapons in the hands of Islamist fighters
in Syria or anywhere else in the Middle East
Readers,
a small detective story. Note down this number: MFG BGM-71E-1B. And
this number: STOCK NO 1410-01-300-0254. And this code: DAA A01
C-0292. I found all these numerals printed on the side of a spent
missile casing lying in the basement of a bombed-out Islamist base in
eastern Aleppo last
year. At the top were the words “Hughes Aircraft Co”, founded in
California back in the 1930s by the infamous Howard Hughes and sold
in 1997 to Raytheon, the massive US defence contractor whose profits
last year came to $23.35bn (£18bn). Shareholders include the Bank of
America and Deutsche Bank. Raytheon’s Middle East offices can be
found in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Israel, Egypt,
Turkey and Kuwait.
A prior spent missile tube in Syria with “Hughes Aircraft Company” listed as manufacturer which surfaced in 2014 (not part of the same batch of weapons analyzed in Fisk’s report). Notice the attempt to scratch off the serial numbers. ViaArmament Research Services
There
were dozens of other used-up identical missile casings in the same
underground room in the ruins of eastern Aleppo, with sequential
codings; in other words, these anti-armour missiles –
known in the trade as Tows, “Tube-launched, optically tracked and
wire-guided missiles” – were not individual items smuggled into
Syria through the old and much reported CIA smugglers’ trail from
Libya. These were shipments, whole batches of weapons that left their
point of origin on military aircraft pallets.
Some
time ago, in the United States, I met an old Hughes Aircraft
executive who laughed when I told him my story of finding his
missiles in eastern Aleppo. When the company was sold, Hughes had
been split up into eight components, he said. But assuredly, this
batch of rockets had left from a US government base. Amateur sleuths
may have already tracked down the first set of numbers above. The
“01” in the stock number is a Nato coding for the US, and the
BGM-71E is a Raytheon Systems Company product. There are videos of
Islamist fighters using the BGM-71E-1B variety in Idlib province two
years before I found the casings of other anti-tank missiles in
neighbouring Aleppo. As for the code: DAA A01 C-0292, I am still
trying to trace this number.
Even
if I can find it, however, I can promise readers one certain
conclusion. This missile will have been manufactured and sold by
Hughes/Raytheon absolutely legally to a Nato, pro-Nato or “friendly”
(i.e. pro-American) power (government, defence ministry, you name
it), and there will exist for it an End User Certificate (EUC), a
document of impeccable provenance which will be signed by the buyers
– in this case by the chaps who purchased the Tow missiles in very
large numbers – stating that they are the final recipients of the
weapons.
The Independent haspublishedover a dozen items of paperwork recovered from al-Nusra (Syrian al-Qaeda) positions in Aleppo.
There
is no guarantee this promise will be kept, but – as the arms
manufacturers I’ve been talking to in the Balkans over the past
weeks yet again confirm – there is neither an obligation nor an
investigative mechanism on the part of the arms manufacturers to
ensure that their infinitely expensive products are not handed over
by “the buyers” to Isis, al-Nusra/al-Qaeda – which was clearly
the case in Aleppo – or some other anti-Assad Islamist group in
Syria branded by the US State Department itself as a “terrorist
organisation”.
Of
course, the weapons might have been sent (illegally under the terms
of the unenforceable EUC) to a nice, cuddly, “moderate” militia
like the now largely non-existent “Free Syrian Army”, many of
whose weapons – generously donated by the west – have fallen into
the hands of the “Bad Guys”; i.e. the folk who want to overthrow
the Syrian regime (which would please the west) but who would like to
set up an Islamist cult-dictatorship in its place (which would not
please the west).
Thus
al-Nusra can be the recipients of missiles from our “friends”
in the region – here, please forget the EUCs – or from those
mythical “moderates” who in turn hand them over to Isis/al-Nusra,
etc, for cash, favours, fear or fratricidal war and surrender.
It
is a fact, I’m sorry to recall, that of all the weapons I saw used
in the 15-year Lebanese civil war (1975-1990), not one was in the
hands of those to whom those same weapons were originally sold.
Russian and Bulgarian Kalashnikovs sold to Syria were used
by Palestinian guerrillas, old American tanks employed by the
Lebanese Christian Phalange/Lebanese forces were gifts from the
Israelis who received them from the US.
These
outrageous weapons shipments were constantly recorded at the time –
but in such a way that you might imagine that the transfers were
enshrined in law (“American-made, Israeli-supplied” used to
be the mantra). The Phalange, in fact, also collected bunches of
British, Soviet, French and Yugoslav armour – the Zastava arms
factory in the Serbian city of Kragujevac, which I have just visited,
featured among the latter – for their battles.
In
eastern Aleppo, who knows what “gifts” to the city’s surviving
citizens in the last months of the war acquired a new purpose?
Smashed Mitsubishi pick-up trucks, some in camouflage paint, others
in neutral colours, were lying in the streets I walked through. Were
they stolen by al-Nusra? Or simply used by NGOs? Did they
arrive, innocently enough, in the lot whose documents, also found in
Aleppo, registered “Five Mitsubishi L200 Pick Up” sent by
“Shipper: Conflict, Humanitarian and Security Department (Chase),
Whitehall SW1A SEG London”?
Of
course they did – alongside the Glasgow ambulance I found next to a
gas canister bomb dump on the Aleppo front line at Beni Zeid in 2016,
whose computer codings
I reported in The
Independent at
great length –
five codings in all – and to which the Scottish Ambulance Authority
responded by saying they could not trace the ambulance because they
needed more details.
But
back to guns and artillery. Why don’t Nato track all these weapons
as they leave Europe and America? Why don’t they expose the real
end-users of these deadly shipments? The arms manufacturers I spoke
to in the Balkans attested that Nato and the US are fully aware of
the buyers of all their machine guns and mortars. Why can’t the
details of those glorious end user certificates be made public – as
open and free for us to view as are the frightful weapons which the
manufacturers are happy to boast in their catalogues.
It
was instructive that when The
Independent asked
the Saudis last week
to respond to Bosnian weapons shipment documents I
found in eastern Aleppo last year (for 120mm mortars) – which the
factory’s own weapons controller recalled were sent from Novi
Travnik to Saudi Arabia – they replied that they (the Saudis) did
not provide support of any kind “to any terrorist organisation”,
that al-Nusra and Isis were designated “terrorist
organisations” by Saudi Royal Decree and that the “allegations”
(sic) were “vague and unfounded”.
But
what did this mean? Government statements in response to detailed
reports of arms shipments should not be the last word – and there
is an important question that remained unanswered in the Saudi
statement. The Saudis themselves had asked for copies of the shipment
documents – yet they did not specifically say whether they did or
did not receive this shipment of mortars, nor comment upon the actual
papers which The
Independent sent
them.
These
papers were not “vague” – nor was the memory of the Bosnian
arms controller who said they went with the mortars to Saudi Arabia
and whose shipment papers I found in Syria. Indeed, Ifet Krnjic, the
man whose signature I found in eastern Aleppo, has as much right to
have his word respected as that of the Saudi authorities. So what did
Saudi Arabia’s military personnel – who were surely shown the
documents – make of them? What does “unfounded” mean? Were the
Saudis claiming by the use of this word that the documents were
forgeries?
These
are questions, of course, which should be taken up by the
international authorities in the Balkans. Nato’s and the EU’s
writ still runs in the wreckage of Bosnia and both have copies of the
documents I found in Aleppo. Are they making enquiries about this
shipment, which Krnjic said went to Saudi Arabia, and the shipping
documents which clearly ended up in the hands of al-Nusra – papers
of which Nato and the EU had knowledge when the transfer was
originally made?
I
bet they’re not. For I don’t think either Nato or the EU has the
slightest interest in chasing the provenance of weapons in the hands
of Islamist fighters in Syria or anywhere else in the Middle East –
certainly not in the case of Damascus, where the west has just given
up its attempt to unseat Assad.
Indeed,
in a political landscape where “regime change” has become a
moral, ethical objective, there can be no moral, ethical
investigation of just how the merchants of death (the makers) manage
to supply the purveyors of death (the killers) with their guns and
mortars and artillery. And if any end user says that “allegations”
of third parties are “vague and unfounded” – always supposing
that the persons saying this are themselves “end users” – this,
I promise you, must be accepted as true and unanswerable and as solid
as the steel of which mortars are made
"A
top-secret Government strategy, codenamed Operation Constrain, could
even allow fanatics to jump to the top of council house waiting
lists."
Can
you imagine people who went to fight with the nazis being welcomed
back and even offered council flats.
People
were hanged for that.
Putin
was right. These terrorists should be followed into the dunny and
eliminated – one bullet a piece.
This
is yet more evidence that the 'fight against ISIS' is a fiction.
Nomalising
Isis: Returning Isis fighters could be given council houses
This
has been covered in the Times and the tabloid press. I presume the
liberal press is all in favour.
Council
house 'bribes' for UK terror suspects: Returning ISIS fighters are to
be offered taxpayer-funded homes and counselling to stop them
carrying out attacks in Britain
Operation
Constrain could allow fanatics to jump council house waiting lists
Up
to 20,000 extremists previously investigated by MI5 will be
targeted
The
highly contentious nationwide programme is due to start next year
Terror suspects
including jihadis returning from fighting in Syria are
to be offered taxpayer-funded homes, counselling and help finding
jobs to stop them carrying out attacks in Britain.
The
top-secret Government strategy, codenamed Operation Constrain, could
even allow fanatics to jump to the top of council house waiting
lists.
Official
documents seen by The Mail on Sunday reveal that up to 20,000
extremists previously investigated by MI5 will be targeted with what
critics last night described as ‘bribes’ aimed at turning them
away from extremism.
The
highly contentious nationwide programme is due to start next year,
with police and cash-strapped councils hoping the Home Office will
pay for it out of its £900 million counter-terrorism budget.
Last
night, terrorism expert Professor Anthony Glees, of Buckingham
University, said: ‘You can’t bribe people not to be terrorists.’
And
Tory MP Andrew Bridgen added: ‘This sounds like a reward for being
on a list of potential terrorists. You can’t buy people’s loyalty
to this country.’
The
move comes amid growing concern at the huge number of radical
Islamists living in Britain who the security services are unable to
track effectively.
Fanatics
who had been under surveillance by MI5 in the past were among the
perpetrators of the two terror attacks in London and one in
Manchester this year that left 35 people dead.
The
intelligence agencies fear as many as 20,000 former ‘subjects of
interest’ – people who had been monitored but later dropped off
the radar – could be plotting fresh atrocities. It is this group
that will be targeted by the new scheme.
A
fierce debate has also raged about how to deal with the estimated 360
battle-hardened jihadis who have returned to Britain after fighting
with Islamic State in Syria and Iraq and the ones who may come back
now after the fall of the so-called caliphate.
Terror
law watchdog Max Hill QC caused a storm earlier this month when he
said ‘naïve’ teenagers should be allowed to reintegrate into
society, while Foreign Office Minister Rory Stewart said most
followers of IS’s ‘hateful doctrine’ posed a ‘serious danger’
to the UK and should be killed.
But
the MoS can reveal that the Home Office, police and local authorities
have been secretly drawing up plans for a massive increase in
attempts to turn vulnerable individuals away from terrorism.
Under
the existing deradicalisation programme Prevent, teachers, doctors
and social workers can refer people they fear may turn to extremism.
The new Operation Constrain scheme, however, will involve police and
social workers contacting people already on MI5’s databases to
assess what danger they pose and what it would take to integrate them
into society.
A
Whitehall source said: ‘We are planning a number of pilots to
explore the best way to diverting such people from terrorism and
extremist activity.’
In
hotspots for terror suspects such as Birmingham, Manchester and
London, local police will be handed details of potential terrorists
by counter-terrorism police and MI5 and will visit them in person. A
local panel will then decide what interventions could work.
If
the extremists do not have suitable accommodation, the council’s
housing department will try to put them in social housing and may pay
their rent if they are poor. They could also be given priority on
waiting lists.
If
the terror suspect is unemployed or lacks qualifications, they could
be helped into education or training, then found a job with public
bodies or charities.
And
if they have mental health problems they will be referred to
appropriate charities or the NHS.
Sources
said the interventions will mean police and Prevent officers being
able to send back assessments about the risk the extremists pose.
But
critics are likely to question the value of Operation Constrain,
given that many known terrorists already enjoyed generous benefits or
came from comfortable backgrounds, even using state welfare payments
to fund their plots.
The
Home Office said: ‘We are reviewing our counter-terrorism strategy
to make sure we respond to the evolving threat in the most effective
way we can.’
Meanwhile
al-Qaeda which allegedly attacked America on 9/11/2001 has reinvented
itself and to this semi-official publication is an acceptable
counterbalance to the “brutal regime of Bashar al-Assad”.
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