THE BAGHDAD SYNDROME

What has happened in Syria we have already seen in Iraq and then in Libya, but what is already happening in Damascus reminds me very much of the fall of Saddam Hussein, which leads me to ask: A new bloody campaign of terror to de-Baathify Syria?

 

By Sir Charlattam 

What can I say about those moments when already in 2002 Tony Blair was grovelling at the feet of George Bush and his neo-conservative thugs to indulge in the charade that would entail a bloody scam against international legality and worse, a continuing massacre for the Iraqis. When one of my sources on the evening of 7 December sent me a message saying ‘Al Bushir's jihadists are entering Damascus unopposed’ I could not help but think of Baghdad in April 2003.

Apparently, these armed gangs managed to advance rapidly along the M4 highway without the checkpoints and defensive positions surrounding the capital making the slightest effort to stop them. How much did the CIA and MI6 pay and what promises did they offer the officers in charge of those positions? If you think these guys got by without payment, welcome to reality.

But let's not be unfair to these mere middle officials. I have no doubt that these bribes were paid and accepted by the military leadership of the Syrian forces and even at the highest levels of government. How else, ask yourself, could Al Assad and his family have escaped with such haste? It is possible that Bashar himself was betrayed by his entourage who, with their deep pockets and safe-conducts, pressured him to leave. The rest is history.

So far. I have not contacted my colleague again, but from this colleague's cryptic message and what open sources reveal, Al Assad's forces simply lowered their weapons, or fled (like the Tiger forces) or sold out is another very possible option. A detail that is not minor and that could have played a role was the ageing regular army equipment that Assad did not want to modernise despite Russia's offer to do so in instalments and with facilities. Assad must have remembered the words of Mohammad Gaddafi when he warned everyone before the Arab League back in 2008 that they would end up like Saddam Hussein. It is quite possible that petrodollars had something to do with this. However, the commanders of these jihadist groups were able to walk as if on a stroll into the main government buildings and even show up and enter the Umayyad Mosque without a single commotion.

Here in Britain at the moment there are mixed feelings, especially in the local Islamic community. For some Muslims (not to say many) there is a positive expectation of what has happened, believing that ‘Sharia’ will be the law in Syria and so all will be for the better for Syrians. For others what has happened is very murky and even more so when it is no longer concealable how guys like Erdogan and Netanyahu have started to take pieces of what until a few days ago was a country.

For others like me, all this is nothing more than a revamped set-up in which the CIA and the MI6 and MI5 guys are heavily involved, and from now on they will have a lot more work to do to control the extremist tide they have been nurturing for the past decades.

As happened in Baghdad after the 2003 invasion and in 2014 we will see the last thing in Damascus will be security. The executions that have been taking place in the last week against soldiers and prisoners accused of being from the Ba'ath party are a carbon copy of what ISIS carried out in its incursion into Iraq in 2014. So, as is already happening, masked gunmen will take to the streets, storm buildings, raid homes, execute people and many will disappear without anyone saying a word, but with a veiled aim: to sow discord among Syrians. That is what Blair and Bush caused and allowed in Baghdad throughout the occupation and as a way of sustaining it over time the intelligence agencies manufactured their own militias both Shia and some former officers of Saddam's ‘Ba'ath’ party who in order not to lose their privileges, played dirty for MI6 by bleeding their own fellow citizens.

What do you think is happening in Damascus today? Already there have been assaults, executions and raids on Christian churches and Alawite mosques as apostates. Who do you think would benefit from creating inter-religious hatred? The same people who planned and carried out the invasion and occupation of Iraq. Or ask yourself why the occupation of Afghanistan failed? Because the Taliban was persistent and was able to dismantle Western tricks, especially the CIA-implanted hoax of ‘ISIS-Khorasan’. 

As at that time, silence and disinformation play a central role on the part of the Western media. While testimonies of groups celebrating the fall of Al Assad are shown, bloody crimes and abuses are being covered up across the territory. While Israel is seizing territories in the north and negotiating free passage and cooperation with some terrorist gangs, Turkey is doing its part to crush Kurdish groups and seize part of the oil and gas fields in Deir Ezzor, although this may be made difficult by the presence of the Americans.

As I said at the beginning, all this reminds me of Baghdad under occupation and the Syrians who saw what was happening to their neighbours then will now have to experience it themselves.