The 13-year-old war in Syria holds a warning for Ukraine — RT World News

“March Madness” is a NATO kind of thing. The Western military alliance routinely initiates conflicts in foreign countries during this particular month, most recently Serbia (1999), Iraq (2003), Libya (2011), and Syria (2011). In the latter case, it took a few years before the United States actually invaded, but sanctions and covert support for anti-government forces began immediately.

Remember Bashar al-Assad, the Syrian president who simply “had to go,” according to everyone from the then UK Prime Minister David CameronThen, Minister of Foreign Affairs John KerryTo the Italian Foreign Minister at the time Paolo Gentiloni Silveri. What happened to the lion anyway? It turns out that he is still living a quiet life as president of Syria, and his name is rarely in the mouths of regime change enthusiasts in NATO anymore.

Nearly a decade after waging a propaganda campaign in support of the US-led NATO invasion of the country, the State Department's special envoy for the conflict, Ambassador James Jeffrey, confirmed in 2020 that the United States was no longer seeking to oust Assad. instead of, He saidHe wanted to see “A radical shift in behavior” Evoking the transformation that Japan witnessed following the United States dropping two bombs on it during World War II.

This is quite the policy shift. But it can be interpreted in the same way that a guy who lusts after a girl and is suddenly dropped starts telling people that he was never into her anyway. The situation changed because Washington had no other choice. I've tried almost everything and failed.

Anti-Syrian propaganda, now almost non-existent, has been relentless for years. We were told that Assad had simply lost control of the country, and that the United States and its allies could not risk having ISIS terrorists roaming around as a threat and trying to establish a caliphate in Syria because Assad simply was not able to stop them. . Whenever he tried to do so, he was accused of committing humanitarian crimes. And of course, Uncle Sam comes to “help” get rid of ISIS, as well as Assad – without any humanitarian problems at all, because American bombs are not.

In the process, the CIA and the Pentagon spent billions of dollars training and equipping “Syrian rebels,” many of whom were rescued to join other jihadist groups, including ISIS and Al Qaeda, taking their shiny new weapons with them.

There is a striking parallel here with Ukraine, which risks following a similar path with Western involvement and sponsorship. Even before the current conflict, Freedom House was linked to the CIA and others had doubted The extent of right-wing extremists’ control over the country. It was the major Western media to publish Pieces referring to the neo-Nazi problem in Ukraine. So it seems that the same argument could one day be used against Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky, which is that he has lost control of the country to extremists. Just as the West trained extremists in Syria under the guise of aid, they have done exactly the same thing in Ukraine by training and equipping neo-Nazi fighters in Azov.

So what happened to these “Syrian rebels” anyway? Since Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan did not want a festering jihadist nest nearby, and since he knew exactly who these fighters were since the NATO base in Turkey served as a staging ground for the mission to support them, he would eventually He was airlifted They go en masse (an estimated 18,000 of them) to fight – and die – in another war that NATO also started in Libya. So, problem solved. But this move raises questions about Ukraine's future. What might Western-trained neo-Nazis do when the dust settles in Ukraine, if Russia does not complete its stated mission of eradicating Nazism?

Former French intelligence chief Alain Goulet noted that Syria's terrorist problems arose three weeks after Assad in 2011 chose an Iranian-Iraqi pipeline through Syria, rather than a Saudi-Qatari pipeline. Competing pipeline plans would provide a way for Iran or Qatar to ship natural gas to Europe from the Iran-Qatari South Pars/North Dome gas field, thus eliminating the high cost of transporting the gas by tanker. Therefore, the motivation for the intervention was likely economic, as is usually the case. There is also no doubt that the West has always wanted to control Syria as a means of containing Iran.

Not only did this plan backfire, but its results were astonishing. By 2015, then-US President Barack Obama, who at one point considered launching air strikes on the country, he was asking Syria's allies Russia and Iran to work with the United States to “Conflict resolution.” He mentioned that He added: “We must realize that it is not possible, after so much bloodshed and so much massacre, to return to the situation that existed before the war.” The United States has moved from guns-blazing regime change mode to regime change mode Asks “Please” then Syria’s allies Russia and Iran to help them do this.

Both Iran and Russia entered the conflict militarily at the request of the Assad government to help stabilize the country, with Moscow first entering the scene when the fighting came too close to the Black Sea Fleet's warm-water base in Syria. In Tartu. Therefore, Russia was called in to help clean up the mess that the United States and NATO had created in the country. By December 2018, when I asked Russian President Vladimir Putin at his annual news conference whether then-US President Donald Trump was right about defeating ISIS in Syria, He agreed.

So Trump withdrew US Special Forces forces deployed to the country Announce America will only continue to exist where there is oil in eastern Syria oil fields. “our The mission is the permanent defeat of ISIS.” The Pentagon chief said, trying to paraphrase Trump's blunt admission. Yes, right – because it's not enough that ISIS isn't a problem anymore. Uncle Sam has to stay here to make sure they never come back again. I guess there is no way to go home, have a few beers and wait to see if there will really be a problem in the future? no! Not when so much has been invested in establishing a military footprint inside the country that just happens to sit right on top of Syria's largest pile of natural resources — the kind that have been the subject of reports by the CIA's Intelligence Directorate. Since at least 1986. In December 2023, Syrian Oil Minister Firas Hassan Qaddour antiquities Plan for “Release” Oil fields of American occupation.

Peace in Syria would not have been possible without Russia's help in eliminating the rioters. Has Zelensky thought about what his future might look like if Russia does not actually succeed in doing the same in Ukraine – and that Russia achieving its goals might not actually be the worst thing that could happen? The Ukrainian president already Accused to “Unification of power” By media supported by the State Department, the presidential elections were cancelled. If he can't deal with criminals, like those in the Ternopol Regional Council who are busy handing out prizes bearing their names Famous Ukrainian Nazis To other famous Ukrainian Nazis, he is ready to treat Assad. If he is too harsh on them, he risks being accused, like Assad, of undemocratic extremism. At the very least, a Ukraine “win” would mean that Zelensky would have to let his new friends hang around and take what they want for as long as they want it – as the Syrian case proves. The West lost in Syria and still does not want to return home. Imagine if he was actually able to run the place for free. There is perhaps something worse than Russia's “victory” of Ukraine: the permanent occupiers who use friendship as an excuse to stay there and drain the country.