2016-12-20T13:04:00-08:00
This is an important article by Robert Kennedy – nephew of former US President John Kennedy, published by Al-Diyar newspaper:
Robert F. Kennedy, a university professor and environmental activist, son of former Senator Robert Kennedy and nephew of former US President John F. Kennedy, wrote an article reviewing the reasons for the Arabs’ rejection of US intervention in Syria, the history of the CIA’s machinations in the Middle East in order to control oil, and the vocabulary of geography. Political.
On this page, we review the most important contents of Kennedy’s article, which was published on the website of the American magazine Politico.
Since my father was killed by an Arab, I have made an effort to understand the impact of American policy in the Middle East, specifically the factors that sometimes lead to bloodthirsty reactions from the Muslim world against our country. As we focus on the prosperity of ISIS and search for the source of the brutality that claimed the lives of so many innocent people in Paris and San Bernardino, we may want to look beyond explanations related to religion and ideology. Instead we can examine the complex rationale of history and how much oil is often blamed on our own hands.
America’s abhorrent record of violent interventions in Syria – about which Americans know little but Syrians know well – has provided fertile ground for “violent Islamic jihad” that currently complicates any effective response by our government to confront the challenge of ISIS. As long as the American people and decision makers remain unaware of this past, any further intervention is likely to complicate the crisis.
US Secretary of State John Kerry announced a “temporary ceasefire in Syria.” But since the influence and prestige of the United States inside Syria is limited and the ceasefire does not include major fighters such as Al-Nusra and ISIS, it is bound to be a fragile truce at best.
This is similar to President Obama’s decision to intervene militarily in Libya, where it is likely to strengthen radicals rather than weaken them. On December 8, 2015, the New York Times published on its front page a story about ISIS political leaders and the organization’s strategic planners working to provoke American military intervention in Libya. They realize from previous experience that this would attract a flood of volunteer fighters, drown out the voices of moderation, and unite the Islamic world against America.
To understand this dynamic, we need to look at history from the Syrian point of view, specifically the seeds of the current conflict. For many years before our occupation of Iraq in 2003 sparked the “Sunni uprising” that has now turned into the Islamic State, the CIA nurtured “violent jihad” as a weapon in the Cold War and loaded US-Syrian relations with poisonous loads.
This did not happen without controversy at home. In July 1957, in the wake of a failed CIA-sponsored coup in Syria, my uncle, Senator John F. Kennedy, stirred up the Eisenhower administration, the leaders of the Democratic and Republican parties, and our European allies by delivering an important speech in support of the right to self-government for the Arab world and an end to American imperial intervention in the Arab countries.
Throughout my life, and specifically during my frequent trips to the Middle East, many Arabs have fondly reminded me of that speech as the clearest statement of the idealism they expect from the United States. Kennedy’s speech was a call for America to recommit to the higher values that our country supported in the Atlantic Charter, that is, the solemn pledge that all former European colonies had the right to self-government in the wake of World War II. Former US President Franklin Roosevelt pressured former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and other allies to sign the Atlantic Charter in 1941 as a precondition for obtaining American support in the European war against fascism.
But thanks to former CIA Director Allen Dulles and the agency’s practices, whose foreign policy machinations often ran counter to the state’s stated policies, the ideal path outlined in the Atlantic Charter was never taken.
In 1957, my grandfather, Ambassador Youssef P. Kennedy, was a member of a secret committee tasked with investigating CIA misconduct in the Middle East. The report, entitled “The Bruce Lovett Report,” which my grandfather signed, described the coup plans drawn up by the CIA in Jordan, Syria, Iran, Iraq, and Misr, all of which were known to the Arab street but were in fact unknown to American citizens who believed their government’s denials.
The report blamed the CIA for the spread of anti-American sentiment that has mysteriously begun to take root “in many countries of the world today.” The report indicated that such interventions contradict American values, expose the United States’ international leadership to danger, and threaten its moral authority without the knowledge of the American people.
The report also made clear that the CIA never thought about how such interference would be dealt with in the event that a foreign country carried it out in our country.
This is the bloody history that contemporary interventionists like George W. Bush, Ted Cruz, and Marco Rubio do not recognize as they repeat their narcissistic trope that Middle Eastern nationalists “hate us for our freedoms.”
For the most part, Arabs do not hate us for that. Rather, they hate us because of the way we betrayed those freedoms – our ideals – within their borders.
In order for Americans to understand the truth of what is happening, it is necessary to review some of the details of that “despicable” history, which is rarely remembered.
During the 1950s, President Eisenhower and the Dulles brothers (CIA Director Alan Dulles and Secretary of State John Foster Dulles) rejected proposals to leave the Middle East as a neutral zone and let the Arabs rule their countries. Instead, they waged a covert war against Arab nationalism – which Allen Dolls equated with communism – precisely when Arab autonomy began to threaten oil settlements.
The CIA began its active intervention in Syria in 1949, less than a year after the agency was established.
The Syrian nationalists had declared war on the Nazis, expelled the Vichy colonial rulers, and established a fragile secular democracy based on the American model. But in March 1949, the democratically elected Syrian President Shukri al-Quwatli hesitated to approve an American pipeline project that aimed to connect the oil fields in Saudi Arabia to the ports of Lebanon via Syria.
In his book “Legacy of Ashes,” CIA historian Tim Weiner points out that in qisas for Al-Quwatli’s lack of enthusiasm for the American pipeline project, the CIA engineered a coup to replace Al-Quwatli with a subordinate dictator and a convicted fraud named Hosni al-Zaim. As soon as the leader dissolved Parliament and approved the pipeline, the Syrians overthrew him only four and a half months after assuming power.
After several hostile coup attempts in the unstable country, the Syrians tested democracy again in 1955 and re-elected Al-Quwatli and his party, the National Party. Although Al-Quwatli was committed to a neutral position towards the Cold War, as a result of American involvement in his overthrow, he began to lean towards the Soviet camp. This trend prompted CIA Director Allen Dulles to announce that “Syria is ready for a coup” and to send coup experts Kim Roosevelt and Rocky Stone, who had planned the coup against President Mohammad Mossadegh in Iran, to Damascus.
Stone arrived in Damascus in April 1957 with $3 million to arm and incite Islamic militants and bribe Syrian army officers and politicians to overthrow the elected secular Al-Quwatli regime, according to the book “Safe for Democracy: The CIA’s Secret Wars” by John Prados.
By cooperating with the Muslim Brotherhood and using millions of dollars, Rocky Stone planned to assassinate the head of Syrian intelligence, the commander of its armed forces, and the head of the Communist Party, as well as engineering “various nationalist conspiracies and military provocations in Iraq, Lebanon, and Jordan,” the consequences of which could be directed at the Syrian Baath Party.
But all the CIA’s money failed to corrupt the Syrian army officers, as the Syrian military informed the ruling Baathist regime about bribery attempts by the agency. In response, the Syrian army stormed the American embassy and arrested Stone. After a harsh investigation, Stone made a television confession to his role in the Iranian coup and the CIA’s failed attempt to overthrow the legitimate Syrian government. Stone and other employees of the American embassy were expelled, and it was the first time that an American diplomat was prevented from entering an Arab country.
The Eisenhower administration dismissed Stone’s confession as fabrications and slander. The American press, led by the New York Times, swallowed the denial and was believed by the American people, who shared Mosaddeq’s ideal vision of the American government. Syria eliminated all politicians sympathetic to the United States and executed all officers involved in the coup attempt.
In qisas, the United States moved the Sixth Fleet to the Mediterranean, threatened war, and encouraged Turkey to invade Syria. Turkey mobilized fifty thousand soldiers on the border with Syria and retreated only after a unified position from the Arab League, as the American intervention angered Arab leaders.
Even after being expelled from Syria, the CIA continued its secret efforts to overthrow the democratically elected Syrian Baath government. The agency planned with the British intelligence service MI6 to form the “Free Syria Committee” and armed the Muslim Brotherhood to assassinate three Syrian government officials who helped uncover the American coup attempt, according to Matthew Jones’ book The Favorite Plan: Report of the British-American Working Group. About the secret mission in Syria in 1957.
Misconduct by the CIA pushed Syria further away from the United States and toward an extended alliance with Russia and Misr. After the second coup attempt in Syria, anti-American demonstrations swept the Middle East from Lebanon to Algeria. Among the echoes was the coup of July 14, 1958, which was led by a group of Iraqi officers hostile to America to overthrow the pro-American King Nouri al-Said. The coup leaders published secret government documents revealing that Nouri al-Saeed was a paid puppet for the CIA. In response to American betrayal, the new Iraqi government invited Soviet diplomats and economic advisors to come to Iraq and turned its back on the West.
After inciting the wrath of Iraq and Syria, Kim Roosevelt fled the Middle East to work as an executive in the oil sector, which served him well during his work at the CIA. James Critchfield, Roosevelt’s successor at the CIA, attempted to assassinate the new Iraqi president using a poisoned handkerchief, but failed, according to Weiner. After five years, the CIA finally succeeded in getting rid of the Iraqi president and pushing the Baath Party to power. Saddam Hussein, a young, charismatic assassin, became one of the most prominent leaders of the CIA’s Ba’ath team. Ali Saleh Saadi, Secretary of the Baath Party, who later assumed the presidency alongside Saddam Hussein, said: Saddam came to power aboard the CIA train, according to what was stated in the book: A Brutal Friendship: The West and the Arab Elite, by the writer and journalist Saeed Abu Rish. Abu Rish points out that the CIA provided Saddam and his aides with an assassination list that included the names of people required to be eliminated immediately to ensure success… Tim Weiner wrote that Critchfield later admitted that the CIA had created Saddam Hussein.
During Reagan’s rule, the CIA provided Saddam Hussein with billions of dollars to train special forces, spend on armament, and collect intelligence information, despite knowing that he was using poisonous mustard, nerve gas, and biological weapons, as well as anthrax, which he obtained from the American government in his war on Iran.
Reagan and Bill Casey, director of the CIA at the time, viewed Saddam Hussein as a potential friend of the American oil sector and a strong barrier to the spread of the Iranian Islamic revolution.
At the same time, the CIA was illegally supplying thousands of anti-tank and anti-aircraft missiles to Iran (Saddam’s enemy) to fight Iraq, a crime that was exposed during the Iran-Contra scandal. Jihadists on both sides directed those weapons provided by the CIA toward the American people.
As the United States contemplates another violent intervention in the Middle East, most Americans do not realize how the CIA’s past mistakes contributed to creating the current crisis.
But the CIA stories are well known to the people of Syria and Iran, who usually interpret talk about American intervention within the framework of this history.
While the American press parrots the narrative that our military support for the rebels in Syria is for a humanitarian purpose, many Arabs see the current crisis as a proxy war over pipelines and geopolitics. Before we rush to get more involved in the furnace, it may be wise to examine the many facts that support this perspective.
From the Arab point of view, our war against Bashar al-Assad did not begin with the peaceful civil protests within the framework of the Arab Spring in 2011. Rather, it began in 2000 when Qatar proposed constructing a 1,500-kilometre-long pipeline at a cost of ten billion dollars that would pass through Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Syria and Turkey. Qatar participates with Iran in a gas field that is considered one of the richest natural gas fields in the world. The economic sanctions imposed on Iran prohibited Tehran from selling gas abroad. At the same time, Qatari gas cannot reach European markets unless it is liquefied and shipped by sea, a method that imposes volume restrictions and thus raises the cost. The proposed pipeline would have linked Qatar to European energy markets directly via distribution lines in Turkey.
The European Union, which gets 30 percent of its gas needs from Russia, was equally thirsty for the pipeline as it would provide its member states with cheap fuel and relief from Vladimir Putin’s economic and political influence. Turkey, the second largest consumer of Russian gas, was eager to end its dependence on Russia, its historical opponent
Of course, Russia, which sells 70 percent of its gas exports to Europe, considered the Qatari-Turkish pipeline an existential threat. From Putin’s perspective, the Qatari pipeline is a conspiracy by NATO to change the status quo, deprive Russia of its only foothold in the Middle East, stifle the Russian economy, and end Russian influence in the European energy market. In 2009, Al-Assad announced that he would refuse to sign the agreement that would allow the pipeline to pass through Syria – to protect the interests of the Russian ally.
Intelligence reports indicate that at the moment when Assad rejected the Qatari pipeline, intelligence planners reached a consensus that a Sunni rebellion in Syria to overthrow the uncooperative Bashar al-Assad was the practical path to achieving the common goal of completing the Qatari-Turkish pipeline.
In 2009, according to WikiLeaks leaks, and after Assad rejected the Qatari gas pipeline, the CIA began funding opposition groups in Syria. It is necessary to mention that this was some time before the outbreak of the Arab Spring.
The idea of creating a civil war between Sunnis and Shiites to weaken the Syrian and Iranian regime in order to tighten control over the petrochemical supplies in the region is not an abstract literary idea. In 2008, the RAND Corporation prepared a report in which it suggested steps for what would happen. The report noted that control of oil and gas reserves in the Arabian Gulf region would remain a strategic priority for the United States. RAND proposed using indirect intervention and information operations to activate and strengthen the divide-and-rule strategy.
As expected, the exaggerated reaction by Bashar al-Assad to this crisis fabricated by the West, such as dropping explosive barrels on Sunni areas and killing civilians, entrenched the Sunni-Shiite division and allowed American policy makers to promote to American citizens the idea that the conflict over oil is a humanitarian war. When Sunni soldiers began to defect from the Syrian army in 2013, Western powers armed the Free Syrian Army to create further instability in Syria. It has become clear that the image presented by the press of the Free Army as homogeneous units of moderate Syrians is an illusion. These units formed hundreds of independent militias, most of which were led or allied with jihadist militias, who are the most committed and effective fighters. At that time, Sunni ISIS fighters crossed the border from Iraq into Syria and joined groups of defectors from the Free Syrian Army, most of whom received training and arming from the United States.
This is exactly what happened, and it is not a coincidence that the Syrian areas occupied by ISIS completely include the route of the proposed Qatari gas pipeline.
Throughout the Arab world, Arab presidents have become accustomed to accusing the United States of creating the Islamic State. To most Americans, such accusations seem crazy. However, to most Arabs, the evidence of American involvement is clear and does not require proof to the point of concluding that our role in sponsoring the organization The state was intentional.
In fact, most of ISIS fighters and their leaders are intellectual and ideological successors to the jihadists who were sponsored by the CIA for more than 30 years and sent from Syria and Misr to Afghanistan and Iraq.
Before the US invasion, there was no Al-Qaeda presence in Iraq during Saddam Hussein’s rule. George Bush destroyed Saddam’s government, and Paul Bremer ran Iraq very poorly, creating the so-called Sunni army, which later turned into the Islamic army. Bremer escalated the Shiites to power and dissolved the Baath Party, which was founded by Saddam Hussein. He also dismissed about 700,000 party members affiliated with the Iraqi government and transferred them to civilian jobs. Then he dissolved the Iraqi army, which included about 380,000 people, 80% of whom were Sunnis.
Those actions taken by Bremer stripped more than a million Iraqi Sunnis of their property, power, wealth, and positions, leaving a desperate and angry Sunni community with nothing to lose, who later called themselves “Al-Qaeda in Iraq.”
Tim Clement, former head of the FBI’s Joint Task Force, said that the difference between the crises in Iraq and Syria are the millions of fighters fleeing the battlefield and fleeing to Europe instead of remaining in their countries.
The obvious explanation is that the moderates in the country see that they are fleeing from a war that is not their war. They simply want to escape the Al-Jibt (Egypt) of Bashar al-Assad, supported by Russia, and the brutality of Sunni jihadists, who have had the upper hand in this global battle.
The Syrian people cannot be blamed for not adopting a position for their country, whether toward Moscow or Washington. The great powers have left no ideal options for the future for moderates in Syria to fight for. No one wants to die for oil.
what is the answer? If the goal is long-term peace in the Middle East, autonomy for the Arab countries, and national security at home, we must intervene in a new way in the region, with a focus on history and a desire to learn from the lessons of the past. This will happen when we Americans understand the historical and political context of this conflict and carefully investigate the decisions of our leaders.
Using the same imagery and language that underpinned our 2003 war against Saddam Hussein, American political leaders led the public to believe that our intervention in Syria was an ideal war against Al-Jibt (Egypt), terrorism, and religious fanaticism.
We tend to refuse to ridicule the views of Arabs who see the current crisis as a reproduction of past conspiracies about oil and geopolitics, but if we want to have an effective foreign policy, we must acknowledge that the war in Syria is a war to control resources, and it is not much different. About the countless previous secret wars, about the oil that we have been fighting for in the Middle East for 65 years.
Only when we see that this war is a proxy war over oil do the events become understandable and clear. It is only the model that explains why the Republican Party, Congress, and Obama want to change the Syrian regime more than they care about regional stability in the region. Why do the Americans not find Syrian moderates to fight the war? Why did the Islamic Army organization in Iraq and Syria blow up the Russian passenger plane? Why did Turkey shoot down the Russian plane? The million refugees who are now fleeing to Europe are refugees because of the oil war, and the CIA’s confusion.
Once we acknowledge that the war in Syria is a war for oil, our foreign policy strategy becomes clear. Like the Syrians fleeing to Europe, Americans do not want to send their children to fight for oil. Instead, it should be our first priority, which no one has ever mentioned. We would exclude our interest in Middle East oil, and the United States would become more independent in energy production. We would also like to greatly reduce our military presence in the Middle East, and allow the Arabs to run their countries, in addition to ensuring Israel’s security borders, and the United States would be without a legitimate role in this problem. . While the facts prove that we played a major role in creating this problem, history proves that we do not have the power or ability to solve it.
When we contemplate history, we look with astonishment at how every intervention by the United States to prevent any violence has led to a miserable failure and a frighteningly negative reaction, since World War II until now.
The only winners in these wars are the oil companies and mercenary soldiers, who have huge profits in their pockets. In addition, intelligence agencies have grown dramatically in both influence and power, at the expense of our freedoms and the jihadists who have used our interventions.
It is time for Americans to distance the United States from neo-colonialism and return to the path of idealism and democracy. We must let the Arabs rule their countries, and shift our energy to building the nation from within. We need to begin this process, not by invading Syria, but by ending the destructive addiction to oil, which has distorted American foreign policy for half a century.
Article link
http://www.politico.eu/article/why-the-arabs-dont-want-us-in-syria-mideast-conflict-oil-intervention/