The Syrian people have won two successive wars in four years. Yet the country does not yet know peace. Not only are Washington “liberal hawks” doing everything in their power to prolong the crisis, but they have devised a plan to prepare a third war. Thierry Meyssan reveals here how they intend to use to their advantage the peace conference planned to be held in Moscow in late January 2015.
When, in 2001, President George W. Bush decided to place Syria on his list of targets to destroy, he had three objectives:
Breaking the “Axis of Resistance” and encouraging Israeli expansion;
Laying hands on the huge gas reserves;
Reshaping the “Broader Middle East”.
The war plans failed in 2005 and 2006, eventually taking the form of the “Arab Spring” in 2011: a 4th generation type of warfare which was to carry the Muslim Brotherhood to power. However, after a year of media manipulation, the Syrian people came out of their torpor and supported their army. France withdrew from the game after the release of Baba Amr, while the United States and Russia shared the region at the Geneva 1 Conference (June 2012). But to everyone’s surprise, Israel managed to upset the negotiating table by leaning on the new French president, Francois Hollande, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and CIA Director David Petraeus. A second war, of a Nicaraguan type this time (that is to say, fuelled by the continual arrival of new mercenaries) again bloodied the region. Anyway, this second war also failed without leading to lasting peace. On the contrary, John Kerry changed the format of the Geneva 2 conference two days before and tried to turn it into a pro-Saudi forum. In this disorder came the third war, that of Daesh: suddenly a small group of a few hundred jihadists turned into a vast army of over 200,000 well equipped men and launched an attack on the Sunni part of Iraq and the Syrian Desert.
Several months ago, I explained that the Daesh project corresponds with the new US map of the division of the Middle East, published by Robin Wright in The New York Times in 2013 [1]. In continuation of the Sykes-Picot, the US plan aimed to further drastically reduce Syria. Also, when the US – after having waited for Daesh to complete the ethnic cleansing in Iraq for which they had been created – began bombing the jihadists, the question arose as to whether the liberated areas of Daesh would or would not be returned to Baghdad and to Damascus.
As the United States has refused to coordinate its military action against Daesh with Syria, and in view of the fact that Russia is preparing a peace conference, “liberal hawks” in Washington have set new goals.
Since the Syrian people did not believe in the “revolution” as staged by al-Jazeera and company, and since they refused to support the Contras against the Republic, it is not possible to “change the regime” in the short term. It is clear that the new constitution, though imperfect, is both republican and democratic; and that President Bashar al-Assad was elected by 63% of the electorate (88% of the vote!). Thus, the United States must adapt its rhetoric to reality.
The “peace” plan of the “liberal hawks” consists therefore in achieving the original goals by dividing Syria in two: an area governed by Damascus and another by “moderate rebels” (read: the Pentagon). The Republic is to have the capital and the Mediterranean coast; the Pentagon: the Syrian desert and gas reserves (that is to say the Daesh zone liberated by the bomber raids of General John Allen). According to their own records, “liberal hawks” would leave only 30% of the territory to the Syrian People!
The principle is simple: at present, the Republic controls all major cities except Rakka and a small part of Aleppo, but no one can claim to control a vast desert, neither the government nor the jihadists. So the Pentagon suggests that what is not clearly governed by Damascus rightfully belongs to its mercenaries!
This is not all. Since the Syrians have elected Bashar Assad, he will be allowed to stay in power, but not his private consultants. Indeed, everyone knows that the Syrian state has managed to resist foreign aggression because it includes a secret part, difficult to identify and therefore to eliminate. This opacity was intended by the founder of modern Syria, President Hafez al-Assad, in order to resist Israel. The constitutional reform of 2012 did not make it disappear, but made the elected president responsible to the nation. Although it is regrettable that, in the past, some people have abused this opacity for their own private profit, to part with it now would be to abandon independence at term.
Of course, some will say, “liberal hawks” cannot hope to achieve this plan as a whole. But accomplishing just one hundredth of it would make a new war inevitable.
That is why Syria must ask as a prerequisite for any new peace conference that the country’s territorial integrity will not be up for discussion.
Thierry Meyssan – a french intellectual, founder and chairman of Voltaire Network and the Axis for Peace Conference. His columns specializing in international relations feature in daily newspapers and weekly magazines in Arabic, Spanish and Russian. His last two books published in English : 9/11 the Big Lie and Pentagate.