A huge propaganda campaign is demonising the Syrian government at the behest of Western interests, writes James Petras* There is clear and overwhelming evidence that the uprising to overthrow President Bashar Al-Assad of Syria is in fact a violent power-grab led by foreign-supported fighters who have killed and wounded thousands of Syrian soldiers, police and civilians, partisans of the government and its peaceful opposition. The outrage expressed by politicians in the West and the Gulf states and in the mass media about the "killing of peaceful Syrian citizens protesting against injustice" is cynically designed to cover up the documented reports of violent seizures of neighbourhoods, villages and towns by armed bands brandishing machine guns and planting road-side bombs. The assault on Syria is backed by foreign funds, arms and training. However, due to a lack of domestic support to be successful direct foreign military intervention will be necessary. For this reason, a huge propaganda and diplomatic campaign has been mounted to demonise the legitimate Syrian government. The goal is to impose a puppet regime in Syria and strengthen Western imperialist control in the Middle East. In the short run, this will further isolate Iran in preparation for a military attack by Israel and the US, and in the long run it will eliminate another independent, secular regime friendly to China and Russia. SERIAL AGGRESSION: The current Western campaign against the independent Al-Assad regime in Syria is part of a series of attacks against pro-democracy movements and independent regimes from North Africa to the Persian Gulf. The imperialist-militarist response to the Egyptian democracy movement that overthrew the Mubarak dictatorship was to back the military junta's seizure of power and its campaign to jail over 10,000 pro- democracy protesters. Faced with similar mass democratic movements in the Arab world, the Western-backed Gulf dictators crushed the uprisings in Bahrain, Yemen and Saudi Arabia. The assaults extended to the secular government in Libya, where NATO powers launched a massive air and sea bombardment in support of armed bands of mercenaries, thereby destroying Libya's economy and civil society. The unleashing of these armed gangster-mercenaries led to the savaging of urban life in Libya and devastation in the countryside. The NATO powers eliminated the secular regime of former Libyan leader colonel Gaddafi, along with having him murdered and mutilated by its mercenaries. NATO oversaw the wounding, imprisonment, torture and elimination of tens of thousands of civilian Gaddafi supporters and government workers. It backed the puppet regime as it embarked on a bloody pogrom against Libyan citizens of sub-Saharan African ancestry, as well as sub-Saharan African immigrant workers -- groups that had benefited from Muammar Gaddafi's generous social programmes. This imperialist policy of ruin and rule in Libya serves as the model for Syria: creating the conditions for a mass uprising led by Muslim fundamentalists, funded and trained by Western and Gulf mercenaries. FROM DAMASCUS TO TEHRAN: According to the US state department, "the road to Tehran passes through Damascus". Thus, the strategic goal of NATO is to destroy Iran's principal ally in the Middle East. For the Gulf absolutist monarchies, the goal is to replace a secular republic with a theocratic dictatorship. For the Turkish government, the purpose is to foster a regime amenable to the dictates of Ankara's version of Islamist capitalism. For Al-Qaeda and Salafi and Wahabi fundamentalists, a theocratic Sunni regime, cleansed of secular Syrians, Alevis and Christians, will serve as a trampoline for projecting power in the Islamic world. For Israel, a blood-drenched and divided Syria will further ensure its regional hegemony. It was not without foresight that the Zionist US Senator Joseph Lieberman demanded days after the attacks of 11 September, 2001, that "first we must go after Iran, Iraq and Syria" before considering the actual authors of the deeds. An objective analysis of the political and social composition of the main armed combatants in Syria refutes any claim that the uprising is in pursuit of democracy for the people of that country. Authoritarian fundamentalist fighters form the backbone of the uprising. The Gulf states financing these combatants are themselves absolutist monarchies. The West, after having foisted a gangster regime on the people of Libya, can make no claim of "humanitarian intervention". The armed groups infiltrate towns and use population centres as shields from behind which they launch attacks on government forces. In the process, they force thousands of citizens from their homes, stores and offices, which they use as military outposts. The destruction of the neighbourhood of Baba Amr in the Syrian city of Homs is a classic case of armed gangs using civilians as shields and as propaganda fodder in demonising the government. These armed mercenaries have no credibility with the mass of the Syrian people. One of their main propaganda mills is located in the heart of London, the so-called "Syrian Human Rights Observatory," which coordinates closely with British intelligence in turning out lurid atrocity stories designed to whip up sentiment in favour of a NATO intervention. The Gulf states bankroll these fighters. Turkey provides military bases and controls the cross-border flow of arms and the movement of the leaders of the so-called "Free Syrian Army". The US, France and England provide the arms, training and diplomatic cover. Foreign jihadist- fundamentalists, including Al-Qaeda fighters from Libya, Iraq and Afghanistan, have entered the conflict. NO CIVIL WAR: This is an international conflict pitting an unholy alliance of NATO imperialists, Gulf state despots and Muslim fundamentalists against an independent secular nationalist regime. The foreign origin of the weapons, propaganda machinery and mercenary fighters reveals the sinister imperialist and multi-national character of the conflict. Ultimately, the violent uprising against the Syrian state represents a systematic imperialist campaign to overthrow an ally of Iran, Russia and China, even at the cost of destroying Syria's economy and civil society, fragmenting the country and unleashing sectarian wars against the Alevi and Christian minorities, as well as secular government supporters. The killings and mass flight of refugees is not the result of gratuitous violence committed by a bloodthirsty Syrian state. The Western- backed militias have seized neighbourhoods by force of arms, destroyed oil pipelines, sabotaged transportation and bombed government buildings. In the course of their attacks, they have disrupted basic services critical to the Syrian people, including education, access to medical care, security, water, electricity and transportation. As such, they bear most of the responsibility for this "humanitarian disaster," which their imperialist allies and UN officials blame on Syrian security and armed forces. The Syrian security forces are fighting to preserve the national independence of a secular state, while the armed opposition commits violence on behalf of their foreign pay-masters -- in Washington, Riyadh, Tel Aviv, Ankara and London. HEADING FOR CATASTROPHE: The Al-Assad regime's referendum last month drew millions of Syrian voters out to vote in defiance of Western imperialist threats and terrorist calls for a boycott. This clearly indicated that a majority of Syrians prefer a peaceful, negotiated settlement and reject mercenary violence. The Western-backed Syrian National Council and the Turkish and Gulf states-armed Free Syrian Army has flatly rejected Russian and Chinese calls for open dialogue and negotiations, which the Al-Assad regime has accepted. NATO and the Gulf states are pushing their proxies to pursue violent "regime change", a policy which has already caused the deaths of thousands of Syrians. US and European economic sanctions are designed to wreck the Syrian economy, in the expectation that acute deprivation will drive an impoverished population into the arms of their violent proxies. In a repeat of the Libyan scenario, NATO proposes to "liberate" the Syrian people by destroying their economy, civil society and secular state. A Western military victory in Syria will merely feed the rising frenzy of militarism. It will encourage the West, Riyadh and Israel to provoke a new civil war in Lebanon. After demolishing Syria, the Washington-EU-Riyadh-Tel Aviv axes will move on to a far bloodier confrontation with Iran. The horrific destruction of Iraq, followed by Libya's post-war collapse, provides a terrifying template of what is in store for the people of Syria: a precipitous collapse of their living standards, the fragmentation of their country, ethnic cleansing, rule by sectarian and fundamentalist gangs, and insecurity of life and property. Just as the "left" and the "progressives" declared the brutal savaging of Libya to be the "revolutionary struggle of insurgent democrats" and then walked away, washing their hands of the bloody aftermath of ethnic violence against black Libyans, they are now repeating the same calls for military intervention against Syria. These same liberals, progressives, socialists and Marxists who are calling on the West to intervene in Syria's "humanitarian crisis" from their offices in Manhattan and Paris will lose all interest in the bloody orgy of their victorious mercenaries after Damascus, Aleppo and other Syrian cities have been bombed by NATO into submission. * The writer is an emeritus professor of sociology at Binghamton University, New York.
