1. Home
  2.  » 
  3. "The War on Terror"
  4.  » 
  5. Syria
  6.  » Syrian president Bashar al-Assad vows to retake whole country

Introduction — Feb 12, 2016

Assad: West will pay for supporting al Qaeda. Click to enlarge

It has long been suspected that at least some journalists in the corporate media were in the employ of Western intelligence. Even if they aren’t paid a regular salary by the spooks they get tip-offs and access to inside information they wouldn’t normally be privy to. In return they are expected to toe the line whenever Western intelligence wants things portrayed in a certain way.
Saddam Hussein and his mythical Weapons of Mass Destruction are a prime example of this relationship at work. For months prior to the 2003 invasion of Iraq the Western media went into overdrive with reports about Saddam’s WMD.
In the aftermath of the invasion no WMD were found but the Western corporate media had done its job. It had helped pave the way for the invasion with numerous speculative stories about the threat Saddam posed. No matter that the threat was largely fictitious; for a while at least those stories helped persuade an otherwise reluctant Western public of the need to invade.
Now it seem the Western media is doing the same with President Assad. In fact it has been doing this for some time; as with reports about the al-Ghouta poison gas attack, which was initially blamed on Assad’s forces but later turned out to have been carried out by “Syrian rebels”.
This is now routine for the Western corporate media. So although the ink has hardly dried on the latest tentative peace accord, they are already writing it off — and blaming Assad for its failure.
According to the Guardian, by vowing to recapture all of Syria President Assad now threatens the entire peace accord.
It’s worth noting that the Guardian makes a distinction between “Syria’s moderate, Western-backed opposition” and al-Qaida’s affiliate in Syria, when there is little to distinguish them. For instance it has been alleged that the “Syrian Rebels” were behind the al-Ghouta attack.
The only real difference between the Syrian rebels the Guardian quotes and the al-Qaida affiliates is that the rebels are linked to Western intelligence while the latter are backed by Saudi Arabia, which is also ostensibly aligned with the West. Meaning that there is little real difference between the two.
The fact that the Guardian quotes extensively representatives from the Southern Front is the final giveaway. While it’s true that they are not linked to al-Qaeda, they are being backed by big money interests in the West. Such as the Carnegie Endowment which is promoting the Southern Front as “Syria’s Last Best Hope”.
Either way powerful big money interests appear to be behind both Western backed rebels and the al-Qaeda affiliates in Syria

Syrian president Bashar al-Assad vows to retake whole country

Ian Black, Kareem Shaheen — The Guardian Feb 12, 2016

A frame grab taken from video released by the Russian Defence Ministry October 1, 2015, shows Russian jets hitting a target in Syria, which the Kremlin says includes a list of well-known militant organizations and not only Islamic State. REUTERS/Ministry of Defence of the Russian. Federation/Handout. Click to enlarge

A frame grab taken from video released by the Russian Defence Ministry October 1, 2015, shows Russian jets hitting a target in Syria, which the Kremlin says includes a list of well-known militant organizations and not only Islamic State. REUTERS/Ministry of Defence of the Russian. Federation/Handout. Click to enlarge

Bashar al-Assad has dealt a blow to international efforts to secure a ceasefire and promote a negotiated solution to the war in Syria, vowing to regain control of the entire country and warning that it could “take a long time”.

The Syrian president was speaking to the AFP news agency in Damascus on Thursday, just hours before an agreement was reached in Munich on arranging cessation of hostilities and the urgent delivery of humanitarian aid to hundreds of thousands of civilians in besieged areas.

Assad said his armed forces would try to retake all of Syria “without any hesitation”, but that the involvement of regional players “means that the solution will take a long time and will incur a heavy price”. He warned of the possibility of intervention by Turkey and Saudi Arabia, who back the rebels.

The Syrian leader affirmed his readiness to talk – but he offered nothing to the forces who have been seeking to overthrow him since 2011. “We have fully believed in negotiations,” he said. “However, if we negotiate, it does not mean that we stop fighting terrorism. The two tracks are inevitable in Syria.”

The defiant tone does not augur well for the speedy implementation of the fragile and tentative agreement drawn up by the International Syria Support Group, comprising the US, Russia, Britain, Iran, Saudi Arabia and others.

Initial efforts to plan aid deliveries were under way on Friday at the UN headquarters in Geneva, where a new Task Force on Humanitarian Access in Syria was being chaired by Jan Egeland, adviser to the UN’s Syria envoy, Staffan de Mistura.

“The purpose of this initial meeting is to agree on how the taskforce and its members can contribute to ensuring that immediate access is granted to the civilian populations in besieged and hard to reach areas,” the UN said.

Members of Syria’s moderate, western-backed opposition earlier reacted with guarded optimism to the agreement to pause hostilities, but said they did not trust Russia to keep its end of the bargain and halt an intense aerial campaign responsible for the most significant advances by forces loyal to Assad since the start of the civil war.

The advance has so far displaced 51,000 civilians and placed 300,000 more at risk of being placed under siege in Aleppo, according to UN officials, who described the humanitarian situation there as grotesque.

Rebels questioned the real impact of the deal on the ground, since it excludes the al-Nusra Front, al-Qaida’s affiliate in Syria, which operates in large swaths of the country’s territory.

Issam al-Reis, a spokesman for the Southern Front, a western-backed opposition alliance fighting close to the Jordanian border, said: “We greet this announcement with tentative optimism. However, we are sceptical that Russia will hold to these commitments when its current policy is to indiscriminately bomb all parties in Syria into the dust, in particular civilians and moderate opposition, and with complete impunity, while saying they are bombing terrorists.

“We are waiting for real action, we have now lost faith in words without real action.”

Syria’s main opposition group welcomed the plan, its spokesman, Salim al-Muslat, told reporters. However, he warned that the agreement must show effects before his group would join political talks with government representatives in Switzerland.

“If we see action and implementation, we will see you very soon in Geneva,” he said.

The Southern Front says Russia has conducted about 50 airstrikes a day on its positions since the end of November, a pace unparalleled since the start of the war, and Moscow’s intervention last autumn – advertised as a campaign against Islamic State – has mostly targeted the mainstream opposition.

Source