At least four years into the crisis in Syria, “most people have no idea how this war even got started,” Mnar Muhawesh reported for MintPress News in September 2015. In 2011–12, after Syrian president Bashar al-Assad refused to cooperate with Turkey’s proposal to create a natural gas pipeline between Qatar and Turkey through Syria, Turkey and its allies became “the major architects of Syria’s ‘civil war.’” The proposed pipeline would have bypassed Russia to reach European markets currently dominated by Russian gas giant Gazprom. As a result, Muhawesh wrote, “The Middle East is being torn to shreds by manipulative plans to gain oil and gas access by pitting people against one another based on religion. The ensuing chaos provides ample cover to install a new regime that’s more amenable to opening up oil pipelines and ensuring favorable routes for the highest bidders.” In 2012, the US, UK, France, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia, along with Turkey, began to organize, arm, and finance rebels to form the Free Syrian Army, consistent with long-standing US plans to destabilize Syria. These nations formed a pact, “The Group of Friends of the Syrian People,” that implemented a sectarian divide and conquer strategy to overthrow President Assad. “It’s important to note the timing,” Muhawesh wrote. “This coalition and meddling in Syria came about immediately on the heels of discussions of an Iran-Iraq-Syria gas pipeline that was to be built between 2014 and 2016 from Iran’s giant South Pars field through Iraq and Syria. With a possible extension to Lebanon, it would eventually reach Europe, the target export market.” As MintPress News reported, access to oil and gas—not sectarian differences—is the underlying cause of the violent conflict and humanitarian disaster in Syria. “The war is being sold to the public as a Sunni-Shiite conflict” by the Friends of Syria because, if the public understood the economic interests at stake, “most people would not support any covert funding and arming of rebels or direct intervention.” Based on secret US cables revealed by WikiLeaks, Muhawesh reported that “foreign meddling in Syria began several years before the Syrian revolt erupted.” US State Department cables from 2006 documented plans to instigate civil strife that would lead to the overthrow of Assad’s government. The leaks revealed the United States partnering with nations including Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Qatar, and Egypt to fuel Sunni-Shiite sectarianism to divide Syria. Although there is plenty of coverage in US corporate media about the violence in Syria and the refugee crisis that is sweeping Europe and reaching North America, this coverage has failed to address the economic interests, including control of potentially lucrative gas pipelines, that motivate the US and its allies. (US corporate news coverage of the Ukraine crisis was comparable in that it too downplayed geopolitical oil interests as a source of tension among Russia, the US, and their respective allies, as Nafeez Ahmed has reported. See “US Media Hypocrisy in Covering Ukraine Crisis,” Censored story #9 from Censored 2015.) Instead, corporate news coverage has characterized the conflict in Syria as a battle for democracy that has been hijacked by Sunni-Shiite interests. For example, Oren Dorell of USA Today identified “a mind-boggling and dangerous stew of shifting and competing alliances” involved in the Syrian conflict—including groups categorized as progovernment, antigovernment, anti-Islamic State, and “other fighters”—but he did not address the gas interests that, according to Muhawesh’s reporting, ultimately underpin the conflict. Instead, much of what passes for news coverage in the corporate press adheres to a pattern that Muhawesh identified and critiqued as simplistic and “Orientalist,” framing conflict in the Middle East and especially Syria as sectarian in order “to paint the region and its people as barbaric.” http://projectcensored.org/8-syrias-war-spurred-contest-gas-delivery-europe-not-muslim-sectarianism/
Here's an idea, why don't we just stay the fuck out of the middle east? No troops in Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan. Hell, how about we stop selling arms to the middle east too? If we really want to fuck with the middle east why not do something that will help, Qatar was almost 2 million foreign workers building infrastructure for the 2022 World Cup. The vast majority are from India, Nepal and the Philippines. Why not put political pressure, maybe even sanctions, until they start hiring Syrians?
That is us staying out of the middle east, that is also helping to keep the middle east out of here and Europe. I think I might have read a couple of times on here that we should keep muslims out of here. They gotta go somewhere. Qatar seems like as good of place as any.
but how will we make Syria great again? our taxes should rebuild their infrastructure so our fabulous companies can get those contracts and tax breaks damnit!
According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), 4.8 million have fled to Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt and Iraq, and 6.6 million are internally displaced within Syria. Meanwhile about one million have requested asylum to Europe. Over 12 million people displaced by a war over a pipeline. Thanks Obama!
It's not as simple as you put it. Obama armed rebels who were being chlorine gassed. What would you have done? Sit and watch them be gassed and bombed? Put "boots on the ground"? Create a "no fly zone" with Russian planes in the air? (Hillary's solution i.e. WWIII) Get all buddy buddy with Putin? What's your solution?
We started arming rebels to destabilize the country in 2012. The first chemical attack happened in 2013. My solution? Stop fucking around in the middle east!
It wasn't just chemical attacks. Assaad has been bombing his own people for years. Committing genocide. It's funny to me how we'll fight a world War over genocide of Jews and how that is to be revered, but when genocide of brown people happens we're supposed to stay out of it and put our heads in the sand.
We didn't go to war with Germany over what they were doing to the Jews. The full horror of that didn't come into view until we were liberating the death camps. Much of what was known during the war was kept away from the American people. We bombed some of the camps holding Jews because they were involved in Germany's war effort manufacturing. As far as this being some act against brown people, maybe you have a point but look at the history of the region and how we meddle in it. The CIA helped to put Assad's father into power in 1970. We used Syria for rendition after 9/11. But more importantly, we didn't fund and arm the rebels to help them, we did it to help get an oil pipeline built. Look at Iran's history, they had a democratically elected president who we overthrew and installed the Shah. They overthrow the Shah so we buddy up with Saddam and fund their side of the war with Iran. We invade Afghanistan and Iraq, both are Iran's neighbors, say that Iran is part of the Axis of Evil and then get all surprised when Iran decides to build nukes. We fuck around too much in the middle east.
