Regular hate offender group Hindu Sena on March 6, 2022 supported a hate-crime of international proportions by supporting Russia in its invasion of Ukraine. Members chanted a mix of slogans like ‘Jai Shri Ram’, ‘Bharat-Russia Dosti Zindabad’ with singular explanations for their stand.

Amidst conflict in Ukraine, a right wing group,Hindu Sena(Hindu Army)rallied in support of Russia on Sunday in heart of India’s capital New Delhi.

“Whenever India was in trouble at international level Russia has supported us..if needed Hindu Sena soldiers will fight for Russia” pic.twitter.com/AUyIaFwqj0

— Zafar Aafaq (@ZafarAafaq) March 6, 2022

The RSS-affiliated organisation marched in Connaught Place, central Delhi with saffron, Indian and Russian flags in hand. One Hindu Sena member speaking to local mediapersons, said, “India and Russia are good friends. Whenever India was in trouble at the international level Russia has supported us. If needed, Hindu Sena soldiers will fight for Russia. And Ukraine has always voted against us. India should help Russia in every way.” He went on to say that NATO countries are those of western nations that hinder the progress of Asian countries, completely oblivious to what NATO is and what its objectives are.

As per the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) website, the organisation’s purpose is to guarantee the freedom and security of its members through political and military means. Established after World War II, the NATO has not caused any explicit suffering to Asian countries as implied by the Hindu Sena member.

However, the attack on Ukraine by Russia has been condemned by many countries fearing a third world war following a global pandemic. This includes Russian television channel TV Rain (Dozhd) whose staff resigned on-air, declaring “no to war” in its final live telecast.

Meanwhile, when asked about the students stuck in Ukraine, the member said that all children are in contact with the Indian government and are safe. Again, this is at odds with news reports, stating that over 600 Indian students are stranded at Sumy State University, close to the Russian border. Students have complained that the Indian Embassy in Ukraine neither evacuated them nor gave any assurance to that effect.

Yet, when Ivano Frankivsk National Medical University MBBS student Vaishali Yadav asked for help from the Government of India, was trolled by right-wing media. All of this, after the Ministry of external Affairs reported the death of final year medical student Naveen Shekarappa Gyanagoudar on March 1.

Despite such circumstances, the Hindu Sena maintains its support for Russia with slogans like, “Russia tum sangharsh karo, hum tumhare saath hai (Russia fight, we are with you).”

Already on Tuesday, the same group stuck posters on Russian poet Alexander Pushkin’s statue in Delhi that said “Indian Hindus are with Putin and Russia in establishing the Soviet Union. Jai Ho Akhand Russia, Jai Bharat – Hindu Sena”.

The right-wing organisation repeatedly supports instances of aggression. Before the Russia-Ukraine war, it supported the ban of hijab inside classrooms, a controversy that hindered education in Karnataka for at least a month. Before this in 2019, the Hindu Sena even celebrated Queen Victoria’s birth anniversary stating the Britishers brought India together as a nation.

Related:

Russian TV Staff says “no to war”, quits on-air
Why is Prime Minister Modi claiming in UP, Indians evacuated from Ukraine?
Trolls hound UP village leader stuck in Ukraine for asking GoI for help
Ukraine invasion: Indian student killed in Kharkiv, right-wing blames the victim!

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At the same time when the conference was hosted in Moscow, however, the Taliban mounted concerted attacks in the northern Baghlan province, the Jaghori district in central Ghazni province and the western Farah province bordering Iran.

In fact, according to a recent report by the US Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR), the US-backed Afghan government only controls 55% of Afghanistan’s territory. It’s worth noting that SIGAR is a US-based governmental agency that often inflates figures. Factually, the government’s writ does not extend beyond a third of Afghanistan. In many cases, the Afghan government controls city-centers of districts and rural areas are either controlled by the Taliban or are contested.

If we take a cursory look at the insurgency in Afghanistan, the Bush administration toppled the Taliban regime with the help of the Northern Alliance in October 2001 in the aftermath of the 9/11 terror attack. Since the beginning, however, Afghanistan was an area of lesser priority for the Bush administration.

The number of US troops stationed in Afghanistan did not exceed beyond 30,000 during George Bush’s tenure as president, and soon after occupying Afghanistan, he invaded Iraq in March 2003 and American resources and focus shifted to Iraq.

It was the Obama administration that made Afghanistan the bedrock of its foreign policy in 2009 along with fulfilling then-President Obama’s electoral pledge of withdrawing the US troops from Iraq in December 2011. At the height of the surge of the US troops in Afghanistan in 2010, they numbered around 140,000 but still did not manage to have a lasting effect on the relentless Taliban insurgency.

The Taliban are known to be diehard fighters who are adept at hit-and-run guerilla tactics and have a much better understanding of the Afghan territory compared to foreigners. Even by their standards, however, the Taliban insurgency seems to be on steroids during the last couple of years.

They have managed to overrun and hold vast swathes of territory not only in the traditional Pashtun heartland of southern Afghanistan, such as Helmand, but have also made inroads into the northern provinces of Afghanistan which are the traditional strongholds of the Northern Alliance comprising Tajiks and Uzbeks.

In October 2016, for instance, the Taliban mounted brazen attacks on the Gormach district of northwestern Faryab province, the Tirankot district of Uruzgan province and briefly captured [1] the city-center of the northern Kunduz province, before they were repelled with the help of US air power.

This outreach of the Taliban into the traditional strongholds of the Tajiks and Uzbeks in northern Afghanistan bordering the Russian satellite states Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan has come as a surprise to perceptive observers of the militancy in Afghanistan.
It is commonly believed that the Taliban are the proxies of Pakistan’s military which uses them as “strategic assets” to offset the influence of India in Afghanistan. The hands of Pakistan’s military, however, have been full with a homegrown insurgency of the Pakistani Taliban (TTP) since 2009 when it began conducting military operations in Swat and the tribal areas.

Although some remnants of the Taliban still find safe havens in the lawless tribal areas of Pakistan, the renewed vigor and brazen assaults of the Taliban, particularly in the Afghanistan’s northern provinces as I described earlier, cannot be explained by the support of Pakistan’s military to the Taliban.

In an August 2017 report [2] for the New York Times, Carlotta Gall described the killing of the former Taliban chief Mullah Akhtar Mansour in a US drone strike on a tip-off from Pakistan’s intelligence in Pakistan’s western Balochistan province in May 2016 when he was coming back from a secret meeting with Russian and Iranian officials in Iran. According to the report, “Iran facilitated a meeting between Mullah Akhtar Mansour and Russian officials, Afghan officials said, securing funds and weapons from Moscow for the insurgents.”

It bears mentioning that the Russian support to the Taliban coincides with its intervention in Syria in September 2015, after the Ukrainian Crisis in November 2013 when Viktor Yanukovych suspended the preparations for the implementation of an association agreement with the European Union and tried to take Ukraine back into the folds of the Russian sphere of influence by accepting billions of dollars of loan package offered by Vladimir Putin to Ukraine, consequently causing a crisis in which Yanukovych was ousted from power and Russia annexed the Crimean peninsula.

Although the ostensible reason of Russia’s support – and by some accounts, Iran’s as well – to the Taliban is that it wants to contain the influence of the Islamic State Khorasan Province in Afghanistan because the Khorasan Province includes members of the now defunct Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU), Russia’s traditional foe, the real reason of Russia’s intervention in Syria and support to the Taliban in Afghanistan is that the Western powers are involved in both of these conflicts and since a New Cold War has started between Russia and the Western powers after the Ukrainian crisis, hence it suits Russia’s strategic interests to weaken the influence of the Western powers in the Middle East and Central Asian regions and project its own power.

In order to grasp the significance of the New Cold War between Russia and the Western powers, on March 4, Sergei Skripal, a Russian double agent working for the British foreign intelligence service, and his daughter Yulia were found unconscious on a public bench outside a shopping center in Salisbury. A week later, another Russian exile Nikolai Glushkov was found dead in his London home.

Skripal was recruited by the British MI6 in 1995, and before his arrest in Russia in December 2004, he was alleged to have blown the cover of scores of Russian secret agents. He was released in a spy swap deal in 2010 and was allowed to settle in Salisbury. Theresa May’s government concluded that Skripal and his daughter were poisoned with a Moscow-made, military-grade nerve agent, Novichok, and expelled 23 Russian diplomats. In a tit-for-tat move, Kremlin also expelled a similar number of British diplomats.

Emmanuel Macron and Donald Trump assured their full support to Theresa May and also expelled scores of Russian diplomats. Thus, the relations between Moscow and the Western powers have reached their lowest ebb since the break-up of the former Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War in December 1991.

Although Russia might appear as an aggressor in these instances, in order to understand the real casus belli of the New Cold War between Russia and the Western powers, we must recall another momentous event that took place in Deir al-Zor province of Syria a month before the poisoning of Skripals who have since recovered.

On February 7, the US B-52 bombers and Apache helicopters struck a contingent of Syrian government troops and allied forces in Deir al-Zor that reportedly killed and wounded scores of Russian military contractors working for the Russian private security firm, the Wagner group. The survivors described the bombing as an absolute “massacre” and Kremlin lost more Russian citizens in one day than it had lost during its entire military campaign in support of the Syrian government since September 2015.

The reason why Washington struck Russian contractors working in Syria was that the US-backed and Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) – which is mainly comprised of Kurdish YPG militias – had reportedly handed over the control of some areas east of Euphrates River to Deir al-Zor Military Council (DMC), which is the Arab-led component of SDF, and had relocated several battalions of Kurdish YPG militias to Afrin and along Syria’s northern border with Turkey in order to defend the Kurdish-held areas against the onslaught of the Turkish armed forces and allied Free Syria Army (FSA) militias in their “Operation Olive Branch” in Syria’s northwest.

Syrian forces with the backing of Russian contractors took advantage of the opportunity and crossed the Euphrates River to capture an oil refinery located east of Euphrates River in the Kurdish-held area of Deir al-Zor.

The US Air Force responded with full force, knowing well the ragtag Arab component of SDF – mainly comprised of local Arab tribesmen and mercenaries to make the Kurdish-led SDF appear more representative and inclusive – was simply not a match for the superior training and arms of Syrian troops and Russian military contractors. Consequently, causing a carnage in which scores of Russian citizens lost their lives, an incident which became a trigger for the beginning of a New Cold War which is obvious from the subsequent events.

Sources and links:
[1] Concerted Taliban onslaughts on Kunduz, Faryab, Uruzgan, Farah and Helmand:
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2016/10/afghanistan-taliban-captures-ghormach-district-161011141613477.html
[2] In Afghanistan, U.S. Exits, and Iran Comes In:
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/05/world/asia/iran-afghanistan-taliban.html

Nauman Sadiq is an Islamabad-based attorney, columnist and geopolitical analyst focused on the politics of Af-Pak and Middle East regions, neocolonialism and petro-imperialism.

Courtesy: https://countercurrents.org/
 

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The tussle between Moscow and Constantinople is over Ukraine, and Constantinople’s declaration on October 15 that the Ukrainian church is no longer part of Moscow’s patrimony. And behind this is Ukraine’s divided national identity – and the woes of its current president.

There have long been two main Ukrainian identities: Eastern Slavic (or Little Russian) and Ukrainian. The first stresses the common origins and culture of Ukraine and Russia. An important element of this common heritage rests on the 988AD baptism of Rus in Kiev, the capital of Ancient Rus, seen in Russia as the crucible of the Russian people.

Indeed, the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, stresses today that Russians and Ukrainians are practically one people, a sentiment that inspired the concept of the “Russian World” and was used to justify Russia’s 2014 aggression in Ukraine.
 

Political response

Unsurprisingly, the Ukrainian authorities are worried about this potential threat to Ukrainian statehood. In response, they turn to Ukrainian nationalism with its insistence on the inherent antipathy between Russians and Ukrainians, and the view of Russophone Ukrainians as an artificial product of Russian colonialism.

A corollary to this has been the desire for a Ukrainian church independent from the Moscow Patriarchate. The current drive for an independent church began on April 17, 2018 – with an announcement by Ukraine’s president, Petro Poroshenko.

Ukrainian president Petro Poroschenko: can an independent church save him? Shutterstock

Poroshenko faces reelection in 2019 and his ratings are dismal. A large part of his problem is that many of his earlier promises have fallen flat. He promised to win the war against separatists in the Donbas region, but suffered a humiliating defeat by them and Russian regulars in September 2014. The economic renaissance he promised through an association agreement with the EU didn’t materialise and in 2018 Ukraine became the poorest country in Europe. Membership of the EU and NATO looks more remote than ever. And his fight against corruption has got nowhere with Poroshenko himself marred in scandals.

And so Poroshenko desperately needs to boost his ratings with something quick, tangible and appealing to the nationalist/patriotic electorate. Consequently, he has staked everything on securing independence for a Ukrainian national church, and turning himself into a Ukrainian Henry VIII.
 

Problems with unification

But Ukraine has an extremely diverse religious life, with three main rival Orthodox churches. First is the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate (UOC MP), the largest church by parishes, priests and monks. Ukrainian nationalists accuse it of being Moscow’s fifth column, but it’s been independent in its finances, how it appoints priests and bishops, and in its relations with the Ukrainian and Russian authorities.
Then there is the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Kyiv Patriarchate (UOC KP), a self-proclaimed church since 1992. Until recently, it was not recognised by other Orthodox churches, but always enjoyed support from pro-Ukrainian politicians. It is about a third the size of the UOC MP with about 5,600 parishes, though it has only 3,500 priests, mostly concentrated in Western Ukraine.

Finally, there is the Ukrainians Autocephalous Orthodox Church (UAOC), founded in 1917 and continued in the Ukrainian diaspora, before reestablishing itself in post-Soviet Ukraine. This is the smallest of the three, with less than a thousand active parishes, again mostly in Western Ukraine.

So how would a new, national church fare? The Moscow-aligned UOC MP is by far the largest church with 12,000 parishes and around 10,000 priests. So, without a major defection from it to the new church, of which there is scant evidence so far, the whole exercise will be futile – especially as there is no indication yet that the two pro-Ukrainian churches will merge into the new church either.
 

A new church in Ukraine?

Then there’s the role of the Patriarchate of Constantinople, under its head Bartholomew I. The Patriarchate of Constantinople has the status of the “first among equals” as the main church of the old Christian Byzantine Empire. However, this doesn’t give it ultimate authority among the 15 independent Orthodox Churches.

Since 1453, it’s been situated in a predominantly Muslim country (first the Ottoman empire and then Turkey), and it controls relatively few parishes (it doesn’t even control most of Greece). Extending its influence into Ukraine at the expense of the rival Moscow Patriarchate, therefore, must be a tempting prospect, even if it creates a powerful enemy in Russia.

An Orthodox church in Kiev, Ukraine. Shutterstock

Given this, it was an easy sell for Poroshenko, particularly if you look carefully at what the Patriarchate of Constantinople has done so far. First, it did not actually grant independence to a Ukrainian national church. Instead, it lifted the excommunication from the heads of the two “rebel” Ukrainian churches – the UOC KP and the UAOC. It also rescinded the letter of 1686 which authorised the Moscow Patriarch to appoint the Metropolitan of Kiev, thereby assuming that power itself. Finally, it promised to “proceed” to the granting of “Autophecaly” (independence) to a unified Ukrainian church – this makes granting independence a process, rather than a definitive result.

In the meantime, the Ukrainian authorities granted the Patriarchate of Constantinople rights to a major cathedral in Kiev.

The Patriarchate of Constantinople is the clear winner so far. It has assumed leadership over two Ukrainian churches – the UOC KP and the UAOC – roughly equal in size to all its other parishes, and secured valuable property in Ukraine. It can now “proceed” towards granting independence while waiting for the outcome of the presidential elections. Indeed, this “proceeding” may last indefinitely now the CP has got all it wanted from Poroshenko.
 

Future tensions

In the absence of a large voluntary defection from the Moscow-aligned UOC MP, it is unclear what the authorities will do next. New laws are about to be passed giving local authorities, rather than parishioners, the right to determine which church a parish belongs to. This might lead to forceful changes of affiliation and potentially bloody conflicts over church properties.

Revolution on the streets of Ukraine. Shutterstock

All this raises a bigger question about Ukraine’s future. It has traditionally been a diverse, equally balanced society. But the pro-Europe 2014 Maidan revolution and the Russian aggression that followed – including the loss of Crimea and half of the Donbas region to Russia and separatists aligned to it – changed the balance.

The country is torn between its Russophile population (now reduced in size and political influence); those hoping for a more liberal, open society with closer ties to Europe; and, aligned with them, the Ukrainian nationalists. The government’s nationalist tendencies have driven it to launch restrictive policies on Russian and other minority languages, create laws to eradicate Soviet memory – and now attempt to force a new church on the country’s Orthodox believers. These policies might strengthen the Ukrainian state by creating a consolidated identity by force, but equally weaken it by alienating Ukraine’s large minority groups. What it certainly won’t do is create the open, liberal society which was one of the aims of 2014 revolution.

To make a success of it, the demand for independence should come from within the church, not be imposed upon it by the state. And at the moment, the vast majority of the UOC MP are determined to maintain their traditional affiliation with Moscow. Above all, they are unwilling to be a pawn in the reelection campaign of an extremely unpopular president – and attempts by the Patriarchate of Constantinople to increase its power.
 

Alexander Titov, Lecturer in Modern European History, Queen’s University Belfast

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Moldovan President Igor Dodon surrounded by speakers inside the Palace of the Republic.

Politicians and religious leaders met with die-hard anti-abortion and anti-LGBT rights activists in the Moldovan capital of Chișinău for the World Congress of Families (WCF) this month. Organised by US activists, it was heavily attended by Russian politicians, including members of President Putin’s inner circle.  

The US-based International Organization for the Family (IOF) organised the event. It’s designated an anti-LGBT extremist hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC). This was their 12th annual congress, the third consecutive year held in eastern Europe, and the second attended by 50.50.

This year’s theme was “East and West coming together around the beauty of the family.” The event began with a high octane theatrical dance culminating in an incredibly well-behaved baby held in the air and bobbed across the stage.

White dancers in white dresses and bridal veils swayed in rhythm whilst a man and woman performed a duet about “love, your motherland and you,” accompanied by a live orchestra.

Presidential troops guarded the entrance to the World Congress of Families.

Moldova’s President Igor Dodon received the most applause of the opening ceremony when he suggested banning “propaganda festivals” that promote “sexual minorities” – how LGBT individuals were described throughout the event, though some speakers also used terms like “transgressions” and “perversions.” These festivals “should be restricted, or even outlawed,” he said.

Moldova is perhaps best-known internationally for its role in a number of post-Soviet money-laundering scandals, and Russian speakers and ideologues crowded the schedule. According to the SPLC, the WCF’s Russian representative Alexey Komov has “long networked with various extreme-right factions in Europe” and has brought the “Russian Orthodox oligarchs he is close to” into the WCF fold in recent years.

One such oligarch, Konstantin Malofeev, is thought to be a key funder of Russia’s annexation of Crimea and is rumoured to have footed some of the cost of this year’s glitzy WCF. He runs Russia’s largest Orthodox charity, St Basil the Great.

Dodon’s wife’s foundation Din Suflet (‘From the Heart’) was the WCF’s official sponsor; its funding is “completely non transparent” according to Mihai Popsoi at the Washington DC-based Jamestown Foundation.

“President Igor Dodon only acknowledged the Turkish and Chinese embassies as WCF sponsors, but Kremlin and Russian affiliated businesses are believed to provide the bulk of the funds,” said Popsoi, noting that Dodon has made more than a dozen official trips to Russia since taking office but only one to an EU country (Hungary, where he attended last year’s WCF in Budapest).

Russian politician and member of Putin’s inner-circle Elena Mizulina was among several WCF delegates sanctioned by the EU and US amidst the Crimea crisis, and there was some head-jerking praise for Putin alongside repeated claims about the ‘natural family’ being the “backbone” of every society.

Mizulina is a bit of a WCF hero for introducing Russia’s anti-LGBT ‘propaganda’ laws that rights activists say led to a doubling of hate crimes against LGBT individuals. She also sponsored a law to decriminalise ‘moderate’ domestic violence, arguing that previous legislation was “interfering with families”.

Georgian businessman Levan Vasadze struck a surreal note at the event when he called for action to defeat the “aggressive invasion of radical liberalism,” including de-urbanisation so that men and women can escape “their tiny apartments, the cages of concrete” that apparently erode their “natural” roles.

“We need to go back to the beauty of our lands in order to repopulate”, Vasadze said. “If we want to save the culture of a place, we need to start wanting more children, and this is not possible in the city.”

He ended his rousing speech on what emerged as a clear theme of the conference: a call for political action. In his case, he advocated for nothing less than “to enshrine the rights of the family in every constitution.”

there was some head-jerking praise for Putin alongside repeated claims about the ‘natural family’ being the “backbone” of every society.

Organisers claimed there were 2,000 attendees from 50 countries but a count of seats in the opulent Palace of the Republic, where opening and closing ceremonies took place, suggested only hundreds attended. Plenary sessions had even smaller audiences, with several scheduled speakers also absent.

Panel sessions focused on how to roll back women’s reproductive rights; fight efforts for comprehensive sexual education (CSE) for young people; defeat ”gender ideology”; achieve success in political campaigns; and how to use social and online media to recruit and radicalise new audiences who can “stand for the natural family.”

Dimitry Smirnov, a representative of Russian Orthodox Patriarch, addressing delegates.

Attendees’ idea of the ‘natural family’ was summed up by Dimitry Smirnov, a representative of Russian Orthodox Patriarch.

“There must be a husband who is intelligent, hardworking, a teacher for his children, a wife that he carries in his arms, which helps him to nurture children,” he told Russian website Zairul de garda, promoting “as many [children] as God will give” and calling LGBT people “demonic” and “enemies of God”.

Sharing a stage with Smirnov was Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Vatican’s secretary of state and most senior official after the pope. 

Other speakers this year demonstrated how the event is “slipping ever more to the far right” according to the SPLC, which has followed the WCF for years.

“Ideology is political – it is not cultural. We have to recognise that it’s not about culture, it’s about power – it’s about political power, it’s not about equality and it’s not about freedom, it’s power”, said Stephen Baskerville to delegates at a panel session on ‘gender ideology’.

Baskerville is a professor at Patrick Henry College in the US, also previously addressed the white nationalist Mencken Club along with white supremacist and Donald Trump cheerleader Richard Spencer.

Also on this panel was Benjamin Harris-Quinney, president of the UK’s oldest conservative think tank the Bow Group, which made headlines last year for offering discounted tickets to their events to members of Traditional Britain Group – which called for the repatriation of black people to their “natural homelands”.

Ideology is political, it is not cultural. We have to recognise that it’s not about culture, it’s about political power. It’s not about equality and it’s not about freedom. It’s about power.

During plenary sessions, speakers shared terrifying stories of success in their fights against sexual and reproductive rights.  

Malawian MP Justin Majawa talked about standing “against the new phenomena of the moral decay and new behaviours that we see in the world today” and boasted that his party has “protected” the country against same-sex marriage (which is illegal in Malawi) against pressure from “bilateral [aid] donors”.

Croatian Zeljka Markic discussed successes she has had at the helm of ‘citizen organisation’ In the Name of the Family. These included banning CSE that taught “alternative lifestyles” of ‘sexual minorities’ in schools, in 2012, and organising a referendum to declare marriage as a union between a man and a woman in 2013.

“The state wants to use education to impose ideology”, she told delegates. “They try to impose new ideas through the education system. And I think in former communist eastern European countries, we recognise this problem faster than in some western countries because we had this experience that in school they teach you lies.”

Brian Brown, President of the International Organisation for the Family (IOF), speaking at the World Congress of Families.

Mexican politician Rodrigo Ivan Cortez spoke of ordinary people “rising up” against “attacks of degeneracy that try to impose its agenda in a global way”. Political rallies for the family are “a very important new reality that we have to see. Because it’s not only Mexico; it’s Costa Rica, it’s Panama, it’s Paraguay, it’s Colombia,” he said. 

Back in Europe, Slovakian MEP Anna Zaborska, who previously described AIDS as “God’s vengeance for homosexuality” spoke in the closing ceremony on the existential threat “the demographic change” in family life poses to the “basic principles and values that enable the construction of the welfare state.”

Brian Brown, the new president of the IOF, ended the festivities with a call for friendship as much as a call to arms, heaping more gushing praise on the Moldovan president and Russia in particular.

“Over 20 years ago, our founder Dr. Allan Carlson was in Moscow and the whole idea of the World Congress of Families occurred to him and I feel like this conference and other conferences are bringing us back to our roots”, he said.

“Back at the end of the Cold War, I think many folks in the United States would have said: “I don’t think I’m ever going to be traveling to eastern Europe and Russia and making new friends who believe the same thing that I do about family.” But the world has changed,” he said. “In so many ways we’re similar.”

Lara Whyte is a reporter and award-winning documentary and news producer focusing on issues of youth, extremism and women’s rights. Originally from Belfast in northern Ireland, Lara is based in London. She is 50.50’s special projects editor working with our feminist investigative journalism fellows and tracking the backlash against sexual and reproductive rights. Find her on Twitter: @larawhyte.

Courtesy: https://www.opendemocracy.net/
 

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Anti-Trump protesters float a giant “baby Trump” in London. (Shutterstock)

Donald Trump didn’t fly to Europe to meet with NATO, European leaders, and Russian President Vladimir Putin. He got there by stepping through the looking glass.

Once on the other side, Trump made a series of extraordinary statements that have effectively turned U.S. foreign policy upside down. He accused Germany of being “totally controlled by Russia.” He declared that the European Union is a “foe” of the United States. He told British Prime Minister Theresa May that she should forget about negotiating with the EU and sue the institution instead.

And, just days after the U.S. intelligence community and special counsel Robert Mueller confirmed once again that the Russian government interfered in the 2016 elections, Trump said that he believed in Putin’s claims of Russian innocence.

Why on earth would Trump embark on this surrealistic misadventure in foreign policy? True, his first instinct seems to be to disrupt. His statements also reveal his preference for “strong” leaders over “weak.” Perhaps, as some intelligence community insiders claim, the Russian president even has some dirt with which to blackmail Trump.

In fact, Trump’s statements and actions on this European trip aren’t just his own idiosyncratic style. Trump’s erratic behavior reflects a very specific worldview. Trump is attacking Europe and siding with Russia for political — and not just personal — reasons.

A segment of the U.S. right wing, which has now coalesced around Trump, has always been skeptical about Europe. It has long decried the social democratic ideals baked into the European system, at both a national and a European Union level. Indeed, any U.S. politician that leans in that direction inevitably gets branded a European socialist, as John McCain accused Barack Obama of being in the 2008 presidential campaign.

Then there are the more pacifist inclinations of Europe. Donald Rumsfeld famously divided the continent between “old Europe” and “new Europe,” with the former refusing to back the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Support for the U.S. misadventure largely came from East-Central Europe, while EU stalwarts France and Germany expressed the greatest skepticism.

These trends converge in the Euroskepticism expressed by the American Enterprise Institute and media outlets like Fox News and The Weekly Standard, a sentiment that gathered strength in the 1990s and heavily influenced the George W. Bush administration. The European Union represented, in their criticisms, a kind of super-socialism that was spreading eastward and threatening U.S. global dominance.

The other major contribution to Trump’s worldview comes from Europe itself. Right-wing nationalist movements and governments throughout the continent have tried to unravel the European Union. The movement scored its first victory with the Brexit referendum in 2016. But Euroskeptic governments have also taken over in Hungary, the Czech Republic, Austria, and Italy.

These Euroskeptics view Brussels as an outside force trying to impose foreign customs on nations — unacceptable economic policies, unacceptable numbers of immigrants, unacceptable political requirements. The Polish and Hungarian governments are establishing illiberal regimes that challenge freedom of the press, judicial independence, and the free functioning of civil society. The two countries are risking all-out conflict with the EU.

But there’s another strong Euroskeptic voice: Vladimir Putin.

Under Putin, Russia has supplied rhetorical and financial support for far-right wing parties throughout Europe — the National Front in France, the Freedom Party in Austria, the Northern League in Italy. There is considerable issue overlap. Putin and the Euroskeptics are anti-immigrant and anti-liberal and favor nationalist and law-and-order policies.

But Putin also sees opportunity in Euroskepticism. A weaker EU won’t be able to attract new, post-Soviet members like Ukraine or Moldova. A weaker EU will be more dependent on Russian energy exports. A weaker EU would have less power to criticize Russia’s political and foreign policy conduct.

Which brings us back to Donald Trump. The president has declared Europe an enemy because of its trade policies. But that’s just a red herring. He actually has a more systemic critique of the EU that coincides with the worldview of Vladimir Putin, Europe’s right-wing nationalists, and Euroskeptics among America’s conservatives.

This is very bad news. If the crisis in transatlantic relations were just about trade, it could be handled by some hardnosed negotiating. If the disputes with the EU and NATO were simply about Trump’s disruptive style, then everything could be resolved by a regime change at the polls in 2020.

But Trump has launched a much larger, ideological assault on European institutions and values. What’s worse: It’s part of the same attack on liberal values here in the United States.

Forget about NATO: Maybe we need a transatlantic alliance against Trump.

John Feffer is the director of Foreign Policy In Focus and the author of the dystopian novel Splinterlands.

Courtesy: https://fpif.org
 

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Civil war has raged in Syria for seven years. AAP/ Youssef Badawi

Journalist Adam Johnson analysed US mainstream coverage and reported that:
 

major publications take the bulk of the premises for war for granted — namely the US’s legal and moral right to wage it — and simply parse over the details.

The air strike proceeded without publication of proof that Syria was responsible for the alleged atrocity in Douma. Reports are emerging that cast doubt on the official narrative.

Regardless, swift action was demanded and taken. Inspectors from the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons are only now gaining access “to establish facts around the allegations of chemical weapons use in Douma”.
 

Strikes illegal under international law

Alongside claims for justification from the Trump administration, similar rhetoric featured in statements from French and British leaders. French President Emmanuel Macron claimed there was no doubt Syria was responsible for a chemical attack on civilians, in gross violation of international law. He said:
 

We cannot tolerate the trivialisation of chemical weapons, which is an immediate danger for the Syrian people and our collective security.

British Prime Minister Theresa May agreed, saying “we cannot allow the erosion of the international norm that prevents the use of these weapons”. May identified the lack of consensus in the UN Security Council as a driving factor in the joint military action.
 

Even this week the Russians vetoed a resolution at the UN Security Council which would have established an independent investigation into the Douma attack. So there is no practicable alternative to the use of force to degrade and deter the use of chemical weapons by the Syrian regime.

The United Nations Charter contains a prohibition on the threat or use of force against another state. Exceptions to this rule of international law are tightly constrained:
 

• Under Article 51 of the Charter, states retain a right to individual and collective self-defence in the case of an armed attack.
• Under Chapter VII of the Charter, the Security Council may authorise military force to restore international peace and security, if non-forceful measures have failed.

The British government has published a brief asserting the legality of the air strike on Syria as an exercise of “humanitarian intervention” (effectively invoking the doctrine of the “Responsibility to Protect” or R2P, without explicitly mentioning it).

The argument is that the UK and its allies were entitled to use force against Syria because:
 

• there was convincing evidence of large-scale and extreme humanitarian distress;
• there was no practicable alternative to using force in order to save lives; and
• the use of force in response was proportionate and time-limited to relieve humanitarian suffering.

Yet the R2P doctrine does not establish a new legal basis for the use of force. It allows for the use of force as “humanitarian intervention” only within the provisions of Chapter VII of the Charter, in the case of grave international crimes.

The Labour opposition in the UK has released its own legal opinion, sharply contradicting the government and asserting that the strikes were illegal.

Illegal but legitimate?

The allies responsible for this week’s air strike have not claimed explicit authorisation under the Charter. Instead, their aim has been to establish the legitimacy of the strike. This approach was endorsed by the European Union and Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull.
According to President Trump:
 

The nations of Britain, France, and the United States of America have marshalled their righteous power against barbarism and brutality.

The Assad regime cannot be absolved of its brutality. Indeed, it is a fundamental objective of the post-second world war international legal order to save humanity from the “scourge of war” and promote human rights.

And there can be little doubt that the international legal system is far from perfect, having failed to protect populations around the world from gross violations of humanitarian and human rights law.

In Syria, hundreds of thousands have been killed over seven years of civil war, and millions are now refugees or internally displaced. The complexity of the conflict has seen monitors cease to estimate a death toll.

However, efforts to establish an alternative foundation for military action, beyond what is currently legal, pose risks that must be grappled with.

If states are permitted to determine when force is warranted, outside the existing legal framework, the legitimacy of that framework may be fatally undermined. How could any consistency of response be ensured? By what standard will states distinguish between benevolent and “rogue” regimes?

Leader of the UK opposition, Jeremy Corbyn, challenged Prime Minister May on these grounds:
 

Does the humanitarian crisis in Yemen entitle other countries to arrogate to themselves the right to bomb Saudi positions in Yemen, given their use of cluster bombs and white phosphorous?

Jeremy Corbyn | Response to Prime Minister’s Syria Statement.

It is relevant in this context that Saudi Arabia is a highly valued client of the British arms industry. According to War Child UK, total sales to the kingdom have topped £6 billion since the conflict in Yemen began. The UK has refused to support a proposed UN inquiry into allegations of Saudi war crimes in Yemen.

Meanwhile, crimes against humanity and gross human rights violations are alleged against Myanmar, the Philippines and Israel, among other states, without attracting the kind of “humanitarian intervention” undertaken in Syria.
 

Humanitarian intervention or regime change

Jeremy Corbyn has made the case for diplomacy as the only reasonable way forward. Syria should not be a war theatre in which the agendas of external actors take precedence, he argues.

The US has long envisaged regime change in Syria, and stepped up sponsorship of opposition groups since 2009.

Robert Kennedy Jr. traced the history of US intervention in Syria from the first CIA involvement in 1949. He argues that this is another oil war, and says of broader interventionism in the Middle East:
 

The only winners have been the military contractors and oil companies that have pocketed historic profits, the intelligence agencies that have grown exponentially in power and influence to the detriment of our freedoms and the jihadists who invariably used our interventions as their most effective recruiting tool.

Central to US strategic thinking is the relationship between Syria and Iran. US Ambassador to the UN, Nikki Haley, seemed to say that a condition for US withdrawal is that Iran cease to function as an ally of Syria.

With the US gaze so firmly fixed on Iran and Russia, the rationale for “humanitarian intervention” can and should be more firmly critiqued.
 

Amy Maguire, Senior Lecturer in International Law and Human Rights, University of Newcastle and Jason von Meding, Senior Lecturer in Disaster Risk Reduction, University of Newcastle

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

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We fired 105 missiles on April 14. That’s 10 times the number of Syrian refugees we’ve taken all year.

U.S. strikes over Syria, 2014 (Shutterstock)

Just after midnight on April 14, the U.S. and its allies bombed three Syrian regime targets. The reason, they said, was to punish Syria’s alleged use of chemical weapons in the town of Douma.

Now, the Syrian regime’s brutality has been well documented. Maybe the allegations are true. But there’s a lot about this that’s simply fishy.

Only days before the strikes, U.S. Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis admitted that the U.S. was “still assessing” whether chemical weapons were used. Veteran journalist Robert Fisk has since spoken to local doctors there who cast doubt on the claims.

There’s been no independent international investigation. In fact, the U.S. started bombing the day before international investigators were slated to arrive in Douma.

President Trump, of all people, insists there was a humanitarian imperative to skip the fact-finding. “This is about humanity,” he said. But if we look at his response to other regional catastrophes, that doesn’t even begin to add up.

For one thing, NPR reports, Trump’s all-out war on refugees, especially Muslim ones, has meant that just 11 — eleven — Syrian refugees have been admitted to the U.S. this year. We fired about 10 times that many missiles the night of the 14th alone.

Ten missiles for every refugee doesn’t strike me as terribly humanitarian. Especially when, as AirWars.org reports, U.S. coalition strikes have killed a minimum of 6,200 civilians between Syria and Iraq.

And just look at what U.S. allies are doing.

Around the same time as the fighting in Douma, Israeli soldiers were firing on nonviolent Palestinian protesters in Gaza. They killed at least 17 and injured over 1,000 in what Human Rights Watch calls a “calculated” assault on civilians.

Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia was dropping more bombs on Yemen. The Saudi-led war and blockade there have killed perhaps tens of thousands and put millions more at risk of starvation and disease. The UN calls Yemen the worst humanitarian crisis in the world.

Far from running to the ramparts, the U.S. has abetted these crimes at every stage. After the Gaza killings, the Trump administration vetoed a UN resolution affirming Palestinians’ “right to peaceful protest” and urging an investigation.

In Yemen, the U.S. is actually refueling the Saudi planes dropping the bombs. And American moguls, celebrities, and politicians — including Trump — lined up to celebrate the war’s architect, Saudi crown prince Mohammad bin Salman, throughout his tour of the U.S. this month.

Our strikes on Syria, which ran completely afoul of both U.S. and international law, aren’t about helping people. They won’t end the war, and they may not even stop future chemical attacks.

It’s more like Trump’s putting on a big show. Like he had to do it just because he tweeted he would. “These strikes are like when a fistfight breaks out on the reality show Big Brother,” writes regional expert Juan Cole.

Unlike Big Brother or Celebrity Apprentice, innocent people will die as a result. In addition to killing more Syrians, escalating now could put the U.S. into direct conflict with Russia — Syria’s nuclear-armed ally. All for an ineffectual response to an unconfirmed attack.

No wonder some senators are finally discussing reining in the president’s war-making authority. I hope they cut it down to nothing.
 

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(Both these photographs are from the Daily Mail , dated April 14)  

With the Syrian missile attacks being declared as a one-of-action by the US, the immediate threat of further escalation has receded. The catch is in the premise of the strike: it was a punitive action by France, UK and the US – FUKUS – in response to Assad government’s alleged chemical attack on Ghouta. This means that if the strike was indeed engineered by Jaish al Islam, or al Qaeda lite—as has been claimed by the Syrian and Russian governments—the promise of such a response from the US/NATO will act as an incentive for rebels to stage similar chemical attacks. A collision course between the Russian-China-Iranian and NATO has now been set, with the control of the future in the hands of the ISIS, al Qaeda and similar forces. 

Russia has made clear that any future attack will have major consequences, and also has promised to arm the Syrian forces with more advanced S-300 and S-400 anti-missile batteries to stop any such strikes. 

There are three questions that need to be addressed. One is whether the Russians were informed of the impending strikes and targets. Second is the number of sites targeted by the US. The third is, how many missiles were interdicted by the Syrian anti-missile batteries, and if indeed 60 per cent of missiles were shot down, how could Syrian air defence, which is of Soviet vintage, i.e. pre 1990’s, be so effective? 

We will deal with the allegations of Syria’s chemical weapons use separately. For all, who follow what is happening in Syria, it is beyond belief that the Assad government, which is clearly winning the war against the US and its “rebels”, should use chemical weapons at this juncture. This is even less believable, when we see that the Ghouta rebels were on the verge of surrendering their arms in lieu of a safe passage. Why would Syrian government forces take such a step, which would not only have international repercussions, but also invite the US to intervene? That too, specifically after Trump’s statement that he wanted to withdraw all US troops from Syria . 

If we go by who has benefitted from the crime of the use of chemical weapons, it is certainly the rebels; or the proxy warriors for the US and its allies. If indeed chemical weapons were really used, and the Ghouta incident is just not a video production by the White Helmets, the group funded and trained by British intelligence . 

The US and its allies launched – according to the briefing given by General Kenneth McKenzie, the Director of the Joint Staff – 105 missiles. All the missiles performed as planned, and hit three targets, one in Damascus and two in Homs. All the three are supposed to be chemical weapon development or storage sites. 

The Russians and Syrians have contested the claims that only three sites were attacked, and said that a number of other targets such as Damascus airport, and critical installations were also attacked, but these missiles were brought down by the Syrian air defence.  

The cruise missiles were launched by three US ships, one US submarine, and aircrafts. The aircrafts used were US B-1B strategic bombers, French Rafaeles and British Tornadoes. From the routes of the missiles, and the airports from which the aircrafts took off, it is clear that Turkey, Qatar, Gulf Emirates and Jordan have cooperated with the US and its allies. Turkey, used to a number of flip flops on Syria, again executed another flop ; they announced that their cooperation with the US forces in carrying out strikes was due to Syria’s use of chemical weapons. 
The Joint Chief of Staff of US Armed Forces General Dunford, in his press conference with General Mathis, the US Secretary of Defence, held that the US did not “ … do any coordination with Russia on these strikes, and neither did we pre-notify them”. Answering a specific question, General Dunford said that only “the normal deconfliction of the airspace” information was shared with the Russians. 

Is this simply Orwellian doublespeak, meaning that the only difference between “deconfiction information” and “sharing information regarding strikes” is the information on specific targets? The rest is the same, meaning the Russians would have known well in advance when the strikes would take place, from where they would originate and the air path that would be followed. From this, the targets – or at least the broad areas being targeted would be easy to deduce. 

There is evidence that the Russians did inform the Syrians of the impending strikes five hours before they took place. The Russians and the Syrians pulled out men and materials from possible strike sites. That would explain why the only casualties in this high visibility exercise are three Syrians being wounded, and three buildings and two bunkers being demolished.

The site Sic Semper Tyrannis say s:
Russia was told where we were going to strike. Russia in turn warned the Syrians. Both the Syrians and the Russians evacuated key personnel and equipment from the target sites. Any claim by the United States that we caused devastating damage or destroyed essential capabilities is total fantasy.

The Dunford and Mathis briefing also talked about how every missile hit its target. The above article continues on how many of the 105 missiles hit their targets:

The second issue concerns the imagined success of the U.S. TLAM strike. Before General Mattis (retired) approached the podium Friday night, he knew full well that a significant number of the inbound missiles had been shot down inside Syria…The Russians and Syrians were not lying when they claimed to have downed more than 70 of the U.S., UK and French missiles.

The Russians and the Syrians have said that the bulk of the missiles – more than 70 – were shot down by the anti-missiles defences of the Syrian forces. Most were shot down by missiles using 1970’s Soviet technology. For those who believe in the technical superiority of the west, which includes Indian defence “experts”, this must be an unwelcome shock. 

The US has also released pictures of the strikes. Such pictures are available from satellite imagery as well. Again, defence experts seem to concur that the amount of damage – three buildings and two bunkers – do not amount to more than a 100 missiles hitting such targets. 

The US has also claimed that this time, they were targetting chemical weapon production and storage sites, not the delivery systems. There are pictures of people without any protective clothing and masks looking at or wandering around such bombed “chemical weapon” sites. We give below pictures, carried by UK’s Daily Mail , of the Barzah Research Centre in Damascus, struck by missiles on Saturday morning, and photographed a few hours later.

If indeed this was a chemical weapons site, such pictures, with people going about without any protection, is unbelievable. Similar pictures are also available for the other two sites near Homs that were hit.  All these indicate that Syrians are right when they say these are not functioning chemical weapons sites.

The Syrians have said that these sites were dismantled as chemical weapon manufacture or storage sites in 2013. OPCW has verified periodically that these facilities are no longer in operation. Therefore, the story that the US and its allies are presenting to the world of the Assad government still continuing its chemical weapons program has no basis. At least on the basis of any evidence that the US and its allies have been able to produce.

Courtesy: Newsclick.in
 

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Image: Kobani during bombing by US-led coalition in 2014. PA Images/Depo photos/ABACA, all rights reserved.

Despite all the moral hand-wringing, international law forbids nations from attacking each other, outside of Security Council approval or in self-defence, and alleged use of chemical weapons is no exception. Western media and politicians are once again calling for our governments to commit what Nuremberg Judges labelled the “supreme international crime”. They risk further escalating the conflict despite a lack of independent verification as to what actually happened in Douma, eastern Ghouta.

Something must be done
We once again find ourselves surrounded by a hypocritical, self-righteous and war-mongering echo chamber. Liberals and Conservatives, with few exceptions, all appear to agree the question is not whether the UK and US shall be launching military strikes against Syria, but rather when, and with what level of payload.

The scene is all too familiar. Unverified (though certainly possible) use of chemical weapons. Crying children. Pictures and videos of people being hosed off in medical facilities. How can anyone not be moved to “do something” rather than “stand by and do nothing”?

Unfortunately, the only “something” being offered to the British, American and French public is the launching of a military assault (of an unspecified nature) inside Syria – a sovereign state – which has attacked neither Britain, America or France. Humanitarian options like taking in refugees beyond the measly 11,000 or so that Britain has grudgingly accepted thus far, are not on the table. The only response by an apparent use of violence by the Syrian government is even more violence by the self-proclaimed leaders of the “free world”.

The situation has reached boiling point with Russia officially stating that they will “[shoot] down” US missiles and “even the sources from which the missiles were fired”. The state of Israel has already launched strikes within Syria, also without any legal justification whatsoever, apparently killing 14 Iranians. Iran has vowed to retaliate against the attack. Now it appears May won’t even seek permission from parliament before she drags the country further into the war in Syria, having been pushed relentlessly by the British press and political class to “act” now.

This already multi-layered conflict risks snowballing even further, without any concrete evidence as to what exactly happened, as former Marine Corps intelligence officer and weapons inspector, Scott Ritter outlines in his important piece for the American Conservative.

The supreme international crime
For the avoidance of any doubt or confusion, attacking a foreign country without legal basis under international law represents the “supreme international crime”. The launching of an “aggressive war” is the “supreme crime” because it is the overarching offense which contains within itself “the accumulated evil of the whole” (e.g. rape, torture, murder, mass murder, ethnic cleansing, etc).

People were tried, convicted and hung at Nuremberg for the crime of waging wars of aggression (as well as crimes against humanity).

Regardless of how unpalatable we may find it, even the verified use of chemical weapons -be they by state or non-state actors – is not a legal basis to attack a country, any country.

As Phyllis Bennis, Fellow and Director of the New Internationalism Project at the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, D.C., clearly explained (following the last alleged use of chemical weapons by the Syrian government, and subsequent military strike on the Syrian air base ordered by President Trump):

“The UN Charter is very vague about a lot of things, but it’s very clear about one thing, and that is, when is it legal to go to war? When is it legal to use a military strike? There’s only two occasions according to the UN Charter…The UN Charter says, “A country can use military force under two circumstances: Number one, if the Security Council authorizes it.”…Number two, Article 51 of the UN Charter, which is about self-defence. But it’s a very narrowly constrained version of self-defence… It says very explicitly, “If a country has been attacked.”…”until the Security Council can meet, immediate self-defence is allowed.” Neither of those two categories applied here. So, it was clearly an illegal act.”

We find ourselves once again in the exact same situation.

We have been here before
In July 2017 award winning investigative journalist Seymour Hersh discussed with The Real News Network his article published by the German Die Welt, describing the claims that Trump ignored warnings by US intelligence that there was “no evidence that” Assad used chemical weapons in Kan Sheikhoun on 04 April 2017.

A subsequent UN report concluded (well after the strikes were conducted) in September 2017 that there “reasonable grounds to believe” that the Syrian government was responsible for a chemical attack on Kan Sheykhoun on 04 April 2017 along with two chlorine attacks on 25 and 30 March in Al-Latamneh this was well after the strikes.

US Secretary of Defense James Mattis would then, five months later, go on to tell reporters that the US still “had no evidence” that the Syrian government used Sarin gas.

Irrespective of the UN findings, or Mattis’ subsequent bombshell, as Phyllis Bennis pointed out, the strike was illegal.

Yet, despite the illegality of the 2017 US strikes, despite the death toll that followed (nine Syrian soldiers and nine civilians including four children according to Syrian state television), and despite the lack of conclusive proof at the time that there even was a chemical attack, let alone verification as to what party or parties were responsible, Donald Trump received strong bi-partisan support for the strikes. The “liberal” press, including outlets such as MSNBC and CNN, along with the Democratic Party establishment supported the attack.

“I am tempted to quote [singer and songwriter] Leonard Cohen” said MSNBC News Anchor, who proceeded to then quote Leonard Cohen: “I am guided by the beauty of our weapons”.

Influential commentator (and protégé of the late Samuel Huntington) Fareed Zakaria told CNN, “I think Donald Trump became president of the United States last night. I think this was actually a big moment.” Apparently the killing of twenty five men, women and children in Yemen by US special forces four months earlier wasn’t enough to establish Trump’s “presidential” bona fides.

This one minute video by CNBC of a list of “experts” on their view of the value of the Syria strikes is also well worth watching, if only to belabour the unanimity of the views on this missile strike.

The constant blasting of Trump as being a “Putin puppet” puts immense pressure on the US President to prove otherwise. Launching military strikes against the Russian backed Syrian government delivers Trump bi-partisan establishment praise. It appears to be a lesson he has learned well.

Media manipulation
All of this seems to be of little concern to the British establishment and their compliant press. The former British Prime Minister Tony Blair told Sky News that the UK will have to intervene in Syria or give “cart blanche” for the further use of chemical weapons.
Conveniently left out by Sky News is that Blair himself is guilty of deceiving parliament and the international community about “weapons of mass destruction” possessed by Iraq, and pushed an illegal invasion of the country that has killed hundreds of thousands, led to mass ethnic cleansing, the rise of Al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) and ISIS, along with other sectarian death squads.

All water under the bridge apparently.

Another example of the press cultivating a climate conducive to a British attack on Syria is ITV’s Good Morning Breakfast show asking its followers on Twitter:

“After horrendous chemical attack in Syria, should British forces hit back?”
As the conservative commentator Peter Hitchens once noted, opinion polls are more often about manufacturing opinion than they are about gauging it.

Attempting to bring attention to the manipulative nature of the “poll” I replied:
“No such poll for “striking back” against Turkey’s illegal invasion of Northern Syria, or Israel’s massacre of unarmed Palestinian protesters in Gaza, or the use of White Phosphorus (a chemical weapon) by the US in Raqqa or allied forces in Mosul or Saudi’s carpet bombing of Yemen.”

Neutral bystanders?
Also conveniently left out of mainstream media discussion over “what to do about Syria” is that the United Kingdom, France, Turkey, the US, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the UAE have all been inflaming the civil war, and keeping it going since it broke out in 2011. These governments are not now, nor have they ever been, neutral or innocent bystanders.

On the contrary, they have been funnelling billions of dollars’ worth of conventional weapons, rocket launchers, assault rifles, anti-tank missiles and the like. Britain is already neck deep in this conflict, as are its “allies”, a point that award winning investigative journalist Gareth Porter illustrates in frightening detail in his article “How America armed terrorists in Syria”. Porter describes a declassified US Defense Intelligence Agency report that revealed:

“that the [Saudi funded and CIA facilitated] shipment [into Syria] in late August 2012 had included 500 sniper rifles, 100 RPG (rocket propelled grenade launchers) along with 300 RPG rounds and 400 howitzers. Each arms shipment encompassed as many as ten shipping containers, it reported, each of which held about 48,000 pounds of cargo. That suggests a total payload of up to 250 tons of weapons per shipment. Even if the CIA had organized only one shipment per month, the arms shipments would have totalled 2,750 tons of arms bound ultimately for Syria from October 2011 through August 2012. More likely it was a multiple of that figure” 

The same declassified report described the main armed opposition backed by “the west” to be highly sectarian in nature and seeking to create a “Salafist Principality” or “state”.

The criminality of these actions and their destructive effect on the people of Syria is difficult to overstate.

Relearning the lessons of the past
It seems every generation must be perpetually (re)educated as to the extent to which truths, half-truths and outright lies are repeated daily by their politicians, governments and media, particularly in matters of war and peace.

Perhaps chemical weapons were used in eastern Ghouta and perhaps not. Hersch and others have suggested that there is some evidence of discussions about “false flag” operations to justify incursions into Syria in the past. The timing now is noteworthy – President Trump has publicly stated that he wants to bring US troops “back home” from Syria, and eastern Ghouta is falling into government control, according to Reuters reports. 

Or perhaps the Syrian government did use chemical weapons simply to crush any last hope among the rebels.

Unfortunately the proposed military strikes will have nothing to do with exposing the truth or holding anyone accountable. They will be purely for show, by self-interested parties that are themselves deeply implicated in crimes against humanity and war crimes being committed in Syria. And as was outlined at the beginning of this article, military strikes by Britain, France or the US into Syria would not only continue to destabilise the country and risk direct confrontation with Russia they would also be wholly illegal.

We cannot hold people to account for committing alleged war crimes by committing further actual war crimes.

Unlike citizens in many other parts of the world, those of us in self-proclaimed liberal democracies have the ability – however limited – to assert pressure to curtail our governments’ use of violence. I would go further and say we have the obligation to do so.

We may not be able to stop all the horrors going on in Syria but we can certainly reduce them by calling out and pressuring our governments to cease and desist in their complicity in crimes against humanity and war crimes, including the arming (directly or indirectly) of Salafi-jihadist groups, their support for the unlawful Turkish invasion of Northern Syria, as well as opposing any military strikes against the country.

Write to your local paper, contact your political representatives, and tell them you oppose any further involvement in Syria, other than providing humanitarian aid and support to civilian victims of the war in a manner that is transparent and verifiable.

Mohamed Elmaazi obtained an LLB from SOAS and Masters in International and Comparative law from AUC. He volunteers with the Campaign Against Criminalising Communities and researches for The Real News Network. He tweets at @MElmaazi.

Courtesy: https://www.opendemocracy.net/
 

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Al-Tbahi Visam Mohamed Farhat with two of his daughters.

Al-Tbahi Visam Mohamed Farhat, born in Hebron, Palestine, is fighting for his right to live and bring up his children in Nizhny Novgorod. But as this story shows, the Russian regional authorities’ decision to revoke his Russian citizenship is tied to a long-standing terrorism investigation that is more than dubious.
 

Coincidence

In 2001, Al-Tbahi Visam Mohamed Farhat married Karina, a resident of Nizhny Novgorod, whom he met at a local mosque while visiting friends in the city. That same year, Visam received Russian citizenship and, together with Karina, built a family of seven children. But now, 16 years later, the Russian police have told Visam that he’s not a Russian citizen (and never was), confiscating his internal and external passports.

When Visam left the migration service office on 14 December 2017, he noticed police officers standing near his car. As he wrote to the regional human rights ombudsperson:

“They asked me to present documents confirming my identity. I explained that my Russian passport had just been confiscated by the migration service, and showed them documentation to that effect. They replied that that wasn’t a [genuine] document, and that they had to detain and transport me to Police Station No.4. I was treated very rudely at the station, officers asked me many questions about my documents, unlawfully took my fingerprints and conducted a personal search. They treated me like a criminal.”

In her response, ombudsperson Nadezha Otdelkina stated her support for the Nizhny Novgorod police.
 

Negligence

Visam appealed to the courts with a request to recognise the actions of the police as unlawful and have a new Russian passport issued.

As the court established, Nizhny Novgorod police, carrying out a check on the request of the regional FSB, discovered that the documentation relating to Visam’s original 2001 citizenship application was lacking the signature of a police division chief. At the time, the division bureau nevertheless confirmed that Visam had received Russian citizenship to the district migration office “on the basis of a decision by the Main Directorate of Nizhny Novgorod Interior Ministry” — and this was signed by the chief of the passport and visa service. That is, Visam had done nothing unlawful. Rather, this was a case of negligence (if not intent) by high-ranking police officers.

Moreover, Visam changed his Russian passport several times, including when he lost it 2010. On each occasion, the police failed to find reasons to refuse a new passport. But there’s no one to blame at the police, and the authorities have demanded that Visam leave the Russian Federation on the grounds that he is not a Russian citizen.

On 12 February, the city’s Sormovsky district court refused to approve Visam’s request to recognise the police actions’ towards him as unlawful. But the court did oblige Russian law enforcement to once again examine Visam’s original 2001 application for citizenship. Without waiting for the court’s decision to come into force, the police made a new application — to revoke Visam’s registration at his place of residence.  
 

Fabrication

Of course, there’s a question about why the regional FSB became interested in Visam’s citizenship application. And here, I would suggest, it’s important to remember that Visam acted as a defence witness in the prosecution of Tagir Khasanov, who, in 2016, was convicted of terrorism offences on the accusation of the FSB.

Tagir Khasanov in court.

I’ve written about Khasanov’s case in detail before, indicating facts that suggest that the case against this 70-year-old man, who died in a Saratov prison in January 2017, was fabricated.

The charge against Khasanov stated that he persuaded Bagdan Umarov, a resident of Ingushetia in Russia’s North Caucasus, to smuggle himself to Syria and join “Islamic State”. Aside from the testimony of witnesses (whom, it seems, were dependent on Russian law enforcement), the prosecution also presented five cartridges, which were allegedly found in Khasanov’s apartment during a search, as evidence. Khasanov claimed that he saw these bullets for the first time when FSB officers finished their search of his apartment and removed the black plastic bag from over his head. But the investigation also presented forensic analysis that stated there were traces of Khasanov’s blood on the cartridges.

Indeed, Visam gave evidence in court that explained where the defendant’s blood could have come from. Visam regularly performed hijama (blood-letting) on Khasanov, and the older man kept a jar in his bathroom, where the blood was collected. It’s hard to imagine why a 70-year-old man would need five random bullets, but the FSB’s intentions are understandable if the cartridges really were planted. The jar of blood, it seems, was needed to cement the connection between the bullets and Khasanov.  

Could Nizhny Novgorod’s security services commit a crime in order to secure a conviction against an innocent man? Before we answer this, remember that Nizhny Novgorod FSB shot two young men on a crowded city street in October 2016 — and two weeks later, another man in a village south of the city. The dead men, supposedly members of IS, were accused of preparing a terrorist act. A year later, the investigation was closed “in connection with the death of accused” — no evidence indicating the guilt of these men was ever presented to the public. The bodies were issued to the families for burial, although Russian federal law states that bodies of people who die as a result of anti-terrorist operations are not handed over to their families, and the place of burial is not revealed.

The apartment block in Yakovskoye, 200km from Nizhny Novgorod, where Tagir Khasanov allegedly persuaded migrant workers from Tajikistan to join “Islamic State”. Source: Irina Slavina.

But this isn’t even the most important part. The third man who was shot, as I found out later, had been living in an apartment belonging to Gulnoz Artikova, the wife of Abdurafik Artikov, a witness in the prosecution of Tagir Khasanov. This cannot be a coincidence.
 

Torture

Marat Ashimov, legal counsel to Tagir Khasanov, believes that in Russia today believing in Islam is an “extenuating circumstance”. Under constant influence of propaganda in the media, many Russian citizens believe that being a Muslim is the same as being a terrorist. The same can be said for members of the security agencies, including their managers, who for some reason suddenly became interested Visam’s passport nearly 20 years after it was issued and right before the football World Cup (Nizhny will host six matches).

Visam, Karina and family at their son’s football match. Source: Irina Slavina.

Visam has suffered at the hands of the Russian security services before. In 2004, he was arrested after the Beslan massacre. According to court documents in my possession, he was suspected of involvement in the Hizb ut-Tahrir organisation, which was banned in Russia in 2003. Visam was held in detention for eight months, as the security services tried to get him to confess (including via illegal methods). In effect, the security services had both a pretext and the opportunity to check if Visam had acquired citizenship illegally. It seems this issue wasn’t relevant then.

Despite being tortured, Visam did not incriminate himself in 2004, and the investigation turned up no evidence against him

Despite being tortured, Visam did not incriminate himself in 2004, and the investigation turned up no evidence against him. He was eventually released, though he didn’t wish to apply for rehabilitation or compensation — understandably, he didn’t believe in the possibility of justice. All his energy was directed at his son and wife. This incident took a tragic toll on the family: Karina lost two children during pregnancy. Later, they gained three sons and three daughters — Karina, as she tells me, had always dreamed of having many children.
 

New tests

This new “test” has hit Karina hard again, she’s lost her breast milk. Her son Amal, who will be a year old in April, will have to go onto formula instead. But Karina, like Visam, is holding strong:

“Before the regional FSB’s request to the Interior Ministry regarding the legality of my husband’s passport, our family came into conflict with a man whose child goes to the same football club as us. He said that he’d help to make sure that we left RUssia. And he said to us: ‘Get out of Russia!’ — if you’re not Russian, if you don’t celebrate 23 February [a public military holiday], if you don’t live like us. To this, I responded: ‘This is my land, my homeland, my grandfather fought in the war, I’m proud of my family.’”

According to Karina, people have really changed in recent years, they’ve become more angry. Once, she remembers, a woman saw her wearing hijab and called her a shakidka, or terrorist. Karina blames the media for this.

Karina, Visam’s wife. Source: Irina Slavina.

“A person who really believes [in God] would never take up arms, they live with good,” Karina explains. “It doesn’t matter what a person believes, if they’re black or white, a believer expresses love towards all living beings. The Quran teaches mercy, kindness, but people don’t know that because they’re unfamiliar with it. And to change people’s ideas about Islam, I have to become an example, I should be a model to show what kind of people Muslims are. I should show people my love and respect for them. This is what I teach my children, for them to become believers, for them to become righteous.”

Visam views the situation optimistically, and says that despite what happens, everything is for the best. For Nizhny Novgorod, the population of which is falling by the year, this means that the city could lose a large, successful family. Their sons are actively involved in sport: Bassam, the middle one, is the captain of his sports team; and in their apartment, the children’s room is full of sports medals and certificates. Meanwhile, after the authorities have built a 45,000-seater stadium for the football World Cup, they don’t know what to do with it afterwards — the old stadium, with 18,000, was rarely full.

These parents and their children are the pride of Nizhny Novgorod, at least that’s what some city residents are saying on Facebook. But while we wait for the decision of the appeal court, it seems that Russian law enforcement has its own idea of what the city needs.

Irina Slavina is a Russian journalist and editor-in-chief of the internet publication Koza.Press. She lives in Nizhny Novgorod.

Courtesy: Open Democracy
 

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