By Finian Cunningham
Source: Strategic Culture
Now we know how France secured a $3 billion arms deal from Saudi Arabia – by bestowing a senior Saudi prince with the Legion of Honor. For many French citizens the Legion of Honor symbolizes France’s national soul. And now the French government has put a grubby price tag on it.

The move by Paris to grasp the chance of selling weapons to Saudi Arabia also comes a week after the European Union parliament voted for an embargo on weapons supply to the kingdom over mounting human rights concerns.

Again, the French authorities – despite lofty proclamations about human rights and international law – don’t seem to have any scruples when it comes to clinching a $3 billion arms contract.

That contract was reportedly in the balance last week because of a diplomatic spat between Saudi Arabia and Lebanon, where the French weapons, paid for by the Saudis, were destined for.

Then, to the relief of the French government, the Saudis announced that they were going ahead with the arms purchase. In the new arrangement, the Saudis said that they would be taking consignment of the weapons supply from France – for their own use, thus cutting out the Lebanese national army, which had been originally designated as the beneficiary of the defense upgrade.

A day later, on Friday, Saudi deputy crown prince Mohammed bin Nayef is received in Paris at the French presidential Élysée Palace and duly awarded the Legion of Honor.

To ascribe coincidence to these developments would be impossibly naive. The quiet, almost secretive, way in which the heir to the Saudi throne was awarded the honor shows that the Paris authorities knew that granting of the medal could prove to be embarrassing.

News of the accolade only came out through reports that were carried in the Saudi official media outlet, whose House of Saud rulers were of course delighted with the grand French «honor».

France’s presidential office was obliged to confirm the award two days later – on Sunday – after the news had been broken by the Saudi media. Why the coy official French manner? No doubt, Paris was all too aware that it would appear that the gong was bestowed because it was a tawdry pay-off to the Saudis for their arms purchase going through.

The awarding of the prestigious French medal – considered to be the nation’s highest honor – has sparked public furor in France and around the world because of Saudi Arabia’s horrendous human rights record. «Disgraceful», «Shame», «Worthless», are just a few of the words of condemnation to have erupted across news and social media.

On the same weekend that the Saudi minister – a nephew of King Salman – received his French honor, the absolute, unelected rulers executed the 70th person so far this year from among the country’s burgeoning prison population. Most executions in the oil-rich kingdom are carried out by beheading with a sword. Often the decapitated corpse is subsequently hung by crucifixion in public view as a macabre warning to would-be offenders.

There is also widespread public outrage over Saudi Arabia’s ongoing bombardment of neighboring Yemen where thousands of civilians have been killed in Saudi-led air strikes over the past year. The Saudi campaign – supported by the US, British and French governments – claims to be aimed at putting down an «Iranian-backed rebellion» led by Houthi fighters.

But those claims are dubious. Yemen looks to many observers like a case of illegal foreign aggression by the Saudis on the poorest country in the Arab region. In any case, as the United Nations has declared in several dire humanitarian warnings, most of Yemen’s 24 million population are suffering from a Saudi military blockade, with reports of children starving from lack of food, water and medicines.

Furthermore, while the French presidency claimed that the Legion of Honor was awarded to Mohammed bin Nayef, the country’s interior minister, for his role in the fight against terrorism, the official citation strains credibility and contempt.

There is abundant evidence to show that the Wahhabi Islamist Saudi rulers have been prominent financial and ideological sponsors of al-Qaeda-linked terror groups over many years. Former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton admitted the Saudi terror connection back in 2009 in diplomatic cables leaked by whistleblower source Wikileaks. These same Saudi-backed terror groups are a central element in the Western-backed covert war for regime change in Syria since March 2011.

But getting back to the French-Saudi arms deal. Only last week that deal looked set to be cancelled after the Saudi rulers announced that they were not going ahead with a $4 billion aid grant to Lebanon’s government. That offer was reportedly made to Lebanon back in November 2014 by Saudi Arabia. Most of it – some $3 billion – was slated to be spent on French weapons and other military equipment in order to upgrade the Lebanese national army.

Last month, the Saudis backed away from the grant to Lebanon because they claimed that the Beirut-based Hezbollah Shia resistance movement was exerting too much influence over the Lebanese government, of which it is an elected coalition party.

The Saudis were irked, for instance, after the Lebanese government declined to support Riyadh in denouncing Iran over an attack by protesters on its embassy in Tehran. That incident followed the execution by Saudi Arabia of Shia cleric Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr in January this year, along with 46 other prisoners.

The real reason for Saudi petulance is that Hezbollah militia fighting in Syria have been a major military factor in why Syrian president Assad’s army has managed to turn the strategic tables on the anti-government insurgents there. Russian air power and Syrian army ground forces backed by Hezbollah and Iranian militia have salvaged Syria from a proxy war for regime change that Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey and Western governments had fomented over the past five years.

Cancellation of the military grant to Lebanon by the Saudis was also accompanied by other diplomatic slights towards Beirut, including travel warnings and a fresh declaration by Saudi Arabia and its Persian Gulf cronies against Hezbollah as a «terrorist organization».

Thus there can be little question that the abrupt Saudi cut-off of military aid to Lebanon is part of its proxy war in Syria.

That cut-off, however, appeared to leave France out in the cold as the weapons supplier. Until, that is, Saudi Arabia subsequently announced that it was going ahead with the French arms purchase, with the equipment being shipped to Saudi Arabia instead of Lebanon.

With the French economy languishing under sluggish growth, sagging trade and budget deficits and record unemployment, the news of the Saudi $3 billion arms deal would have been met with intense relief in Paris.

And so the red carpet at the Élysée Palace was rolled out – «discreetly» mind you – for the Saudi dictator’s nephew.

The Legion of Honor is supposed to be France’s highest national accolade, awarded to outstanding citizens and foreign dignitaries. It was created in 1802 by emperor Napoleon Bonaparte.

At the same time that Saudi deputy crown prince Mohammed bin Nayef received his medal from French president Francois Hollande in Paris, the Legion of Honor was also awarded separately to British veterans of the Second World War for their courage during the D-Day landings in 1944.

No wonder then that the juxtaposition of the awards has sparked public anger in France and England, with protesters claiming that the accolade has been grossly devalued for those deserving recipients – men and women who gave their lives to save France and Europe from fascist despotism.

If the Legion of Honor is taken as a symbol of French national soul, then it is understandable that many are disgusted that France’s soul is flogged for an arms deal with the one of the world’s most despotic regimes.

It should not be surprising, too, that French president Hollande and his government are viewed with such increasing contempt, both nationally and internationally.

Hollande’s corroding credibility is a problem that is shared by other Western governments, Washington and London in particular, who are likewise seen to be corrupt. Because, like Paris, they are consorting with despotic regimes for the same sordid self-interests of selling weapons and trying to destabilize foreign states.

By Wayne Sonter
Source: The Guardian – The Workers’ Weekly
The war on Syria is a covert CIA-managed war the USA and its allies have initiated to overthrow the Syrian government. The Syrian adventure was to be a relatively brief regime change exercise, camouflaged by the social unrest of the Arab Spring and a step in re-ordering the Middle East in the interest of the US and its allies.

This accorded with the US global strategic objective of remaining the world’s ‘first, last and only’ truly global empire, despite a declining economic base relative to rest of the world.

Five years later the US-led War on Syria is showing itself to be one more brutal, costly and disastrous venture into which the US state has dragged much of the world.

The plan was to trigger the collapse of the Syrian government, through inciting sectarian war, mainly used foreign gangs paid, armed, trained and logistically supported by US and its allies, as the CIA itself disclosed to a US congressional budget committee in 2015.

Not only did the CIA train and equip nearly 10,000 fighters out of its own budget in the previous few years, as part of a broader, multi-billion dollar effort involving Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey, it also managed a sprawling logistics network to move fighters, ammunition and weapons into the country.

The process of grinding Syrian society into subjugation, at the cost of hundreds of thousands of Syrian lives, creation of millions of refugees and destruction of the country’s heritage and civil infrastructure, was suddenly interrupted by Russia’s intervention last October, at the invitation of Syria’s government.

Russia’s serious concern with jihadi terrorism and its joint efforts with the Syrian army have rapidly collapsed the anti-Syrian, fundamentalist militias. It has disrupted ISIS’s multi-million dollar oil trade with Turkey, previously untouched by the US-led “war on ISIS”. The joint forces are set to lift the siege on Aleppo, Syria’s largest city and cut the ISIS/Al-Qaeda supply lines between Syria and Turkey. They are preparing to take Raqqa, the ISIS “capital”.

At this rate peace could be restored in Syria within a few months and the Syrian people could start to rebuild their lives. The destruction of ISIS and Al-Qaeda related terrorist forces and the end of this cruel war should be welcome.

However, the US and its allies are portraying the Syrian and Russian gains as a disaster, a narrative a compliant media unrelentingly transmit to Western audiences.

The “disaster” is that those military assets the US-led coalition created to directly subjugate or dismember Syria are being destroyed “in the field” before they can be used to enforce a regime “transition” “at the table”.

Instead, the US is warning it will create a “quagmire” for Russia in Syria if it does not disengage, and Turkey and Saudi Arabia are openly preparing to invade Syria if Assad is not promptly despatched at peace talks.

Russia has warned that the US and its allies risk “a new world war” if they send troops into Syria. If the outside powers seeking regime change in Syria do not back off, but instead escalate the war, then Syria could suck the world’s two main nuclear powers into direct conflict.

At this stage it is only a matter of whether this is what the US wants – a war with Russia to permanently relegate it to economic colony status – or whether the US has already lost control of what it has set in train, and is being dragged towards disaster.

US society itself is under tremendous duress, and both Turkey and Saudi Arabia are riven by internal tensions. These are regimes whose policies are driven by desperation, as well as imperialist ambitions.

Ultimately the war on Syria will need a political solution – not the one of imposed regime change, but the one where the democratic and progressive forces within the countries aiding the US to prosecute this war demonstrate that they know what their governments are up to and act forcefully to rein them in.

This includes Australia – whose government has moved in lockstep with the US in all its imperialist ventures, obligingly breaking diplomatic relations with Syria, participating in a US-initiated sanctions regime against Syria and deploying military forces to the Middle East to participate in the US pseudo-war against ISIS.

Source: Press TV
Press TV has conducted an interview with Ali al-Ahmed, director of the Institute for [Persian] Gulf Affairs (IGA) from Washington, on a long-awaited report by Human Rights Watch over the use of cluster bombs during the Saudi military aggression against Yemen.

The following is a rough transcription of the interview.

Press TV: The use of cluster munitions has been reported throughout Saudi Arabia’s onslaught on Yemen, why is Human Rights Watch choosing to report on it now?

Ahmed: Cluster bomb usage [was reported] before, a few months ago, and also Amnesty International did the same. The problem is that these are human rights organizations with no power. We were looking for some people in the UN Security Council or in the International Criminal Court. These are the important people who should come forward and put a stop to the use of cluster bombs and bring those responsible to account. Unfortunately, the international community, the Western governments who are supporting the Saudi war on the Yemeni people, [are] allowing the Saudi monarchy to commit war crimes. That goes without doubt.

Press TV: Right now, Mr. al-Ahmed, it’s not only just about those who are using these munitions, it’s also about those who are supplying these munitions, the US is aware of what is happening in Yemen, it’s even helping the Saudi forces in choosing its targets. So, the US is in the dark just as much as Saudi Arabia when it comes to these human rights violations.

Ahmed: It’s true that since day one, since before the war was launched, American forces, British officers and American officers, were part of the operation; they planned, they provided logistics, they provided satellite and drone footage and information to the bombing campaign and they provided rescue and other logistical support. So, they are involved and they do admit to that role.

Press TV: The use of these internationally banned weapons on the part of Saudi Arabia, do you think it’s an indication of its desperation to get this aggression at some point where Saudi Arabia can say it has actually achieved something?

Ahmed: Well absolutely, they are using everything they can and they are ignoring the supposed international law, but again the problem with international law, it’s only applied on the weak not those who are protected by major powers like the United States.

By Sharmine Narwani
Source: RT
Syrian peace talks have already stalled. The opposition refused to be in the same room as the government delegation, while the latter blamed opposition ‘preconditions’ and the organizers’ inability to produce a ‘list of designated terrorists’.

The UN’s special envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura has now promised talks will reconvene on February 25, but how will he achieve this?

So much has shifted on the global political stage and in the Syrian military theater since this negotiation process first began gaining steam.

In just the past few weeks, the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) and its allies have recaptured key areas in Latakia, Idlib, Daraa, Homs and Aleppo, and are making their way up to the Turkish border, cutting off supply lines and exits for opposition militants along the way.

While analysts and politicians on both sides of the fence have warned that a ‘military solution’ to the Syrian crisis is not feasible, the SAA’s gains are starting to look very much like one. And with each subsequent victory, the ability for the opposition to raise demands looks to be diminished.

Already, western sponsors of the talks have as much as conceded that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad will continue to play a role in any future government – a slap in the face to the foreign-backed Syrian opposition that have demanded his exit.

And the long list of deliverables in peace talks yet to come – transitional governance, ceasefires, constitutional reform, and elections – are broad concepts, vague enough to be shaped to advantage by the dominant military power on the ground.

The shaping of post-conflict political landscapes invariably falls to the victor – not the vanquished. And right now, Geneva looks to be the place where this may happen, under the watch of many of the states that once threw their weight – weapons, money, training, support – behind the Syrian ‘opposition.’

So here’s a question: As the military landscape inside Syria continues to move in the government’s favor, will a final deal look very much different than the 2011 reforms package offered by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad?
Assad’s 2011 reforms

In early 2011, the Syrian government launched a series of potentially far-reaching reforms, some of these unprecedented since the ascendance of the Baath party to power in 1963.

Arriving in Damascus in early January 2012 – my third trip to Syria, and my first since the crisis began – I was surprised to find restrictions on Twitter and Facebook already lifted, and a space for more open political discourse underway.

That January, less than ten months into the crisis, around 5,000 Syrians were dead, checkpoints and security crackdowns abounded, while themes such as “the dictator is killing his own people” and “the protests are peaceful” still dominated western headlines.

Four years later, with the benefit of hindsight, many of these things can be contextualized. The ‘protests’ were not all ‘peaceful’ – and casualties were racking up equally on both sides. We see this armed opposition more clearly now that they are named Jabhat al-Nusra, Ahrar al-Sham and ISIS. But back in early 2012, these faces were obfuscated – they were all called “peaceful protestors forced to take up arms against a repressive government.”

Nevertheless, in early 2011, the Syrian government began launching its reforms – some say only to placate restive populations; others saw it as an opportunity for Assad to shrug off the anti-reform elements in his government and finish what he intended to start in 2000’s ‘Damascus Spring.’

Either way, the reforms came hard and fast – some big, some small: decrees suspending almost five decades of emergency law that prohibited public gatherings, the establishment of a multi-party political system and terms limits for the presidency, the removal of Article 8 of the constitution that assigned the Baath party as “the leader of state and society,” citizenship approval for tens of thousands of Kurds, the suspension of state security courts, the removal of laws prohibiting the niquab, the release of prisoners, the granting of general amnesty for criminals, the granting of financial autonomy to local authorities, the removal of controversial governors and cabinet members, new media laws that prohibited the arrest of journalists and provided for more freedom of expression, dissolution of the cabinet, reducing the price of diesel, increasing pension funds, allocating housing, investment in infrastructure, opening up direct citizen access to provincial leaders and cabinet members, the establishment of a presidential committee for dialogue with the opposition – and so forth.

But almost immediately, push back came from many quarters, usually accompanied by the ‘Arab Spring’ refrain: “it’s too late.”

But was it?

Western governments complained about reforms not being implemented. But where was the time – and according to whose time-frame? When the Assad government forged ahead with constitutional reforms and called for a nationally-held referendum to gain citizen buy-in, oppositionists sought a boycott and US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called the referendum “phony” and “a cynical ploy.”

Instead, just two days earlier, at a meeting in Tunis, Clinton threw her significant weight behind the unelected, unrepresentative, Muslim Brotherhood-dominated Syrian National Council (SNC): “We do view the Syrian National Council as a leading legitimate representative of Syrians seeking peaceful democratic change.”

And when, in May 2012, Syria held parliamentary elections – the first since the constitution revamp – the US State Department called the polls: “bordering on ludicrous.”

But most insidious of all the catch-phrases and slogans employed to undermine the Syrian state, was the insistence that reforms were “too late” and “Assad must go.” When, in the evolution of a political system, is it too late to try to reform it? When, in the evolution of a political system, do external voices, from foreign capitals, get to weigh in on a head of state more loudly than its own citizens?

According to statements made by two former US policymakers to McClatchy News: “The goal had been to ‘ratchet up’ the Syria response incrementally, starting with U.S. condemnation of the violence and eventually suggesting that Assad had lost legitimacy.”

“The White House and the State Department both – and I include myself in this – were guilty of high-faluting rhetoric without any kind of hard policy tools to make the rhetoric stick,” confessed Robert Ford, former US Ambassador to Syria.

An analysis penned by veteran Middle East correspondent Michael Jansen at the onset of the talks in Geneva last week ponders the point: “The Syrian crisis might have been resolved in 2011 if US president Barack Obama had not declared on August 18th that year that his Syrian counterpart Bashar al-Assad had to ‘step aside.’”

Were the additional 250,000 Syrian deaths worth those empty slogans? Or might reforms, in Syrian hands, have been worth a try?
Domestic dissent, Assad and reforms

The story inside Syria, within the dissident community, still varied greatly during my January 2012 trip. But with the exception of one, Fayez Sara, who went on to eventually leave the country and join the SNC, Syrian dissidents with whom I met unanimously opposed sanctions, foreign intervention and the militarization of the conflict.

Did they embrace the reforms offered up in 2011? Mostly not – the majority thought reforms would be “cosmetic” and meaningless without further fundamental changes, much of this halted by the growing political violence. When Assad invited them to participate in his constitutional reform deliberations, did these dissidents step up? No – many refused to engage directly with the government, probably calculating that “Assad would go” and reluctant to shoulder the stigma of association.

But were these reforms not a valuable starting point, at least? Political systems don’t evolve overnight – they require give-and-take and years of uphill struggle.

Aref Dalila, one of the leaders of the ‘Damascus Spring’ who spent eight years in prison, told me: “The regime consulted with me and others between March and May and asked our opinion. I told them there has to be very serious reforms immediately and not just for show, but they preferred to go by other solutions.”

Bassam al-Kadi, who was imprisoned for seven years in the 1990s, managed to find one upside to reforms:

Speaking about the abolishment of the state security courts in early 2011, Kadi said: “Since 1973 until last May, it was actually a court outside of any laws and it was the strong arm of the regime. All trials held after abolishing this court have taken place in civilian courts. Sometimes the intelligence apparatus intervenes but in most cases the judge behaves according to his or her opinion. Hundreds of my friends who were arrested in the past few months, most were released within one or two weeks.”

This reform, by the way, took place a mere few months before Jordan’s constitutional reforms added another security layer – the state military courts – for which it was promptly lauded.

Hassan Abdel Azim, head of the National Coordination Committee (NCC) which included 15 opposition parties, took a different view: “Our point of view is that such reforms can only take place when violence stops against protestors…But since the regime tries to enforce its reforms, the result will only be partial reforms that enhances its image but not lead to real change.”

The NCC went on to have a short-lived alliance with the foreign-based SNC which fell apart over disagreements on “non-Arab foreign intervention.”

Louay Hussein who headed the Tayyar movement and spent seven years in prison when he was 22 (and recently as well), told me that January: “We consider Assad responsible for everything that’s happened but we are not prepared to put the country in trouble…In March, we wanted what the regime is giving now (reforms). But when the system started using live bullets we wanted to change it and change it quickly. But after all this time we have to reconsider our strategy.”

And the list goes on. The views ranged from dissidents who “like Assad, but hate the system” to those who wanted a wholesale change that was arrived at through a consultative process – but definitely not foreign intervention. Eighteen months later when I revisited some of these people, their views had transformed quite dramatically in light of the escalation of political violence. Even the ones who blamed the government for this escalation seemed to put their arms around the state, as nationalists first and foremost.

Had the conflict not taken on this stark foreign-backed dimension and become so heavily militarized, they may have expended their energies on pushing at the limits of reforms already on the table.
How can Geneva transform Syria?

First on the table in Geneva is the establishment of a transitional process that gets the two sides working on common governance. On a parallel track, demilitarization is on the menu – which basically consists of organizing ceasefires throughout Syria. The transitional team will then work on hammering out a new constitution, with elections to be held within 18 months.

That sounds a bit like the process already underway in Syria in 2011 and 2012.

Certainly, the opposition believes it has a stronger hand today than back in 2011, supported as it is by the UN-sponsored Geneva process. But the difficulties will start the moment decisions need to be made about which opposition participates in the transitional body, if they can even manage to convince the Syrian government – now racking up military victories every week – that it needs to relinquish a chunk of its authority to this new entity.

It is the kind of ‘opposition’ that eventually enters the transitional process that will help ultimately determine its outcome. Look for some Riyadh- and Turkish-backed opponents to be tossed by the wayside during this process.

With the introduction of Russian air power and qualitative military hardware last autumn, the Syrian army and its allies have gained critical momentum in the field.

So why would the Syrian state backtrack on that momentum to give up authority in Geneva? Even the expectation of this is illogical.

There is a growing consensus among Syria analysts that the Americans have ceded the Syrian theater to the Russians and Moscow’s allies. Washington has barely registered any meaningful objections to Russian airstrikes over the past months, apart from some sound bites about hitting ‘moderate rebels’ and not focusing enough on ISIS.

Part of the US problem is that, without any clear cut Syria strategy, it has found itself neck-deep in this crisis without any means to extricate itself from the uncomfortable dependencies of thousands of rebel militants, and the demands of increasingly belligerent allies like Turkey and Saudi Arabia.

They Russians offer that opportunity – like they did in 2013 by taking the Syrian chemical weapons program off the table – and it looks like Washington is grabbing it with both hands right now. It is likely that Moscow waited to intervene in the Syrian quagmire only when it was absolutely sure the US needed an exit – any earlier, and the Americans were still playing both sides and all cards.

For Geneva to move forward, the participants are going to have to make some awkward commitments. Firstly, the batch of Islamists-for-hire that currently makes up the opposition will need to be finessed – or torn apart – to include a broad swathe of Syrian ethnic groups, sects, political viewpoints and… women.

Secondly, all parties to the talks need to agree on which militants in the Syrian theater are going to make that “terrorist list.” This was a clear deliverable outlined in Vienna, and it hasn’t been done. This all-important list will make clear which militants are to be part of a future ceasefire, and which ones will be ‘fair game.’

After all, there can be NO ceasefires until we know who is a designated terrorist and who can be a party to ground negotiations.

I suspect, however, that this terrorist list has been neglected for good reason. It has spared western rebel-sponsors the discomfort of having to face the wrath of their militants, while allowing time for the Russians and Syrians to mow these groups into the ground. Hence the stream of recent victories – and the accompanying timid reaction from Washington.

As the balance of power shifts further on the ground, we may see a much-altered ‘Geneva.’ Will it genuinely beget a political process, will the players at the table change, will the ‘political solution’ be entirely manufactured behind the curtains… only to be offered up to an unsuspecting public as a victory wrenched from a ‘bad regime?’

Because, right now, Syria would be fortunate to have those 2011 reforms on that table, the rapt attention of the global community encouraging them forward, weapons at rest. A quarter million Syrians could have been spared, hundreds of towns, cities and villages still intact, millions of displaced families in their own homes.

Perhaps Geneva can bring those reforms back, wrapped in a prettier package this time, so we can clap our hands and declare ourselves satisfied.

Sharmine Narwani is a commentator and analyst of Middle East geopolitics. She is a former senior associate at St. Antony’s College, Oxford University and has a master’s degree in International Relations from Columbia University. Sharmine has written commentary for a wide array of publications, including Al Akhbar English, the New York Times, the Guardian, Asia Times Online, Salon.com, USA Today, the Huffington Post, Al Jazeera English, BRICS Post and others. You can follow her on Twitter at @snarwani

Source: RT
A center for the blind in Yemen’s capital of Sanaa was hit in an airstrike that was presumably carried out by a Saudi-led coalition targeting Houthi forces, locals told media.

Residents said the air-strikes targeting Houthi forces intensified on Tuesday before a care center for the blind was hit, Reuters reports.

The third floor of the Noor Center for the Blind in the Safiah district was damaged in the 1 a.m. incident, according to the Middle East Eye. No casualties in the bombing were reported.

Noor Center is one-of-a-kind in Yemen, receiving funding from one of the World Bank’s projects in the country.

After the airstrike, the center’s deputy manager, Mohammed Daylami, blamed Saudi Arabia and its allies for “having no clue about the rules and ethics of war.”

“What did the disabled children do to do deserve being hit by an air strike? Where are the NGOs? Where is the UN?” Daylami told Saba news agency.

Saudi-led airstrikes resumed in Yemen as a formal ceasefire agreed on 15 December between the coalition and the Houthi rebels expired over the weekend.

However, the Saudi-Arabian coalition kept violating Yemeni air space even during the formal ceasefire, Sanaa-based political analyst Hassan Al-Haifi told RT. Air raids often hit civilians with weapons prohibited under the rules of engagement, he added.

“They are continuing [to bomb]. They have never stopped,” Haifi said. “There are literally hundreds of air raids not just in Sanaa but around the country.”

“They are using every kind of weapon available to them. The military targets are far fewer than civilian targets,” Haifi told RT, adding that the Saudis have recently bombed a Coca-Cola factory and a dairy farm, in addition to numerous schools and hospitals.

The coalition has been heavily criticized for the way it conducts its airstrikes, with Human Right Watch saying that “their disregard for the safety of civilians is appalling.”

The coalition was also blamed for hitting a Doctors Without Borders hospital in Sanaa in December.

The instability in Yemen started in 2011 when President Ali Abdullah Saleh was toppled during Arab Spring protests. In 2014, Houthi Shia rebels supported by pro-Saleh forces rose in rebellion and seized big territories of Yemen, including Sanaa.

By Tony Cartalucci
Source: New Eastern Outlook
The terrorist attacks carried out in the heart of the French capital, either coincidentally or intentionally, have served as the perfect point of leverage for the West on the very eve of the so-called “Vienna talks” regarding Syria.

With its serendipitously strengthened hand and with France taking a more prominent role, the West is attempting to reassert not only its narrative, but its agenda regarding the ongoing conflict in Syria, an agenda that has – as of late – been derailed by Russia’s military intervention and recent gains made on the battlefield by Syrian military forces. The London Guardian stated in its article “Paris attacks galvanise international efforts to end Syria war” that:

The Isis attacks in Paris have galvanised international efforts to end the war in Syria, with a new deadline set for negotiations between the warring parties and for a country-wide ceasefire.

There is still no sign of agreement, however, on the key question of the future of the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad.

It should seem extraordinary to the global public that even after the attacks in Paris, the West still insists on undermining the Syrian government toward its goal of “regime change,” which includes continued material support to armed militants – all of which are extremists, and many of which have either coordinated with, or fought under the banner of Al Qaeda and even the self-proclaimed “Islamic State” (ISIS).

This is also considering the fact that the Syrian government is now currently engaged in battle with ISIS in and around Aleppo, and is currently threatening to sever its supply lines leading out of NATO-member Turkey’s territory.

Regarding this point, the Guardian would even report:

It was clear, however, that Russia and the US have again had to agree to disagree about Assad. The Paris attacks “show that it doesn’t matter if you’re for Assad or against him,” said the Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov. “Isis is your enemy.”

However, to explain the West’s apparent failure to prioritize, the Guardian claims:

Isis, in their [the West’s] view, is a symptom of political failings in both Iraq and Syria. The Vienna participants are to meet in Paris before the end of the year to review progress toward a ceasefire and the selection of delegations for the Syrian talks.

In reality, ISIS is not a “symptom of political failings.” It is the result of concerted, immense, multinational state-sponsorship. Entire armies of the immense scale ISIS operates on do not rise out of “political failings,” they rise from huge, preexisting financial networks, region-wide logistical support, multinational political support, intelligence networking, and experienced military planning and organizational skills.

The West and its regional allies, namely Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Turkey, clearly constitute this immense multinational state-sponsorship ISIS has so far enjoyed. A look at any map depicting the Syrian conflict shows ISIS supply lines running directly out of NATO-member Turkey’s territory and in numerous reports, even out of the West’s most prominent papers, it is even admitted that ISIS is supplied in Syria, via Turkey.

It is clear then that “political failings” are not the “cause” of ISIS except only in the sense that the “failure” to exact regime change in Syria has prompted the West to continue propping up ISIS and other terrorist groups until the government in Damascus falls – and only when Damascus’ regional and global allies abandon it.

The West Got What it Wanted in Libya – And Created ISIS in the Process

The West’s claims during the Vienna talks that if only they get their way in Syria, the threat of ISIS will subside, is betrayed by the events surrounding the very rise of ISIS in Syria in the first place.

Just before the conflict reached critical mass in Syria during 2011, the US, UK, France, other NATO members, as well as Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), were already in the process of fully dividing and destroying Libya in pursuit of regime change.

They insisted that regime change was the only way to end the bitter fighting that had swept the country – regime change that just so happened to fulfill the long-held desire by Washington and Europe to see Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi ousted from power.

Through arming what the West called “rebels,” and through direct military intervention which included large-scale, nationwide airstrikes, naval bombardments, and even special forces, NATO devastated the country and turned it over literally to Al Qaeda. The West’s “rebels” turned out to be sectarian extremists all along, and in fact – with NATO’s help – they promptly took their weapons, fighters, and cash to begin the invasion of northern Syria via Turkey later that year.

The Business Insider would report in its article, “REPORT: The US Is Openly Sending Heavy Weapons From Libya To Syrian Rebels,” that:

The administration has said that the previously hidden CIA operation in Benghazi involved finding, repurchasing and destroying heavy weaponry looted from Libyan government arsenals, but in October we reported evidence indicating that U.S. agents — particularly murdered ambassador Chris Stevens — were at least aware of heavy weapons moving from Libya to jihadist Syrian rebels.

There have been several possible SA-7 spottings in Syria dating as far back as early summer 2012, and there are indications that at least some of Gaddafi’s 20,000 portable heat-seeking missiles were shipped before now.

On Sept. 6 a Libyan ship carrying 400 tons of weapons for Syrian rebels docked in southern Turkey. The ship’s captain was “a Libyan from Benghazi” who worked for the new Libyan government. The man who organized that shipment, Tripoli Military Council head Abdelhakim Belhadj, worked directly with Stevens during the Libyan revolution.

Belhadj, it should be mentioned, was the commander of US State Department-listed foreign terrorist organization, the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) – which is literally Al Qaeda in Libya – and was so before, during, and after the 2011 Libyan war. Belhadj was also reportedly aligned with ISIS as it officially established itself in the shattered North African state. Fox News would report in its article, “Herridge: ISIS Has Turned Libya Into New Support Base, Safe Haven,” that:

[Catherine] Herridge reported that one of the alleged leaders of ISIS in North Africa is Libyan Abdelhakim Belhadj, who was seen by the U.S. as a willing partner in the overthrow of Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi in 2011.

“Now, it’s alleged he is firmly aligned with ISIS and supports the training camps in eastern Libya,” Herridge said.

It is clear that despite Western claims that regime change in Libya would be the beginning of the end for Libya’s violence and instability, it was only the end of the beginning – and not only for chaos in Libya – but for other nations across North Africa and in Syria itself.

Using Another 9/11 to Justify Creating Another Libya

NATO’s intervention and regime change in Libya did not avert a refugee crisis, it helped create one. NATO’s intervention and successful regime change in Libya did not make the region or the world safer, it turned the entire nation into a breeding ground for terrorist organizations with so-far unprecedented reach and operational capacity. NATO’s goals in Libya did not prevent the refugee crisis, it helped start it. And with all of this in mind, having seen this and taken full stock of Libya’s outcome, the West has nonetheless moved forward with precisely the same agenda in Syria.

In all reality, the West has no intention of bringing peace or stability to Syria. Their goal is to leave Syria as divided and destroyed as Libya, and to use the chaos and instability fostered there as a springboard for other targets of the West’s proxy warfare – most likely Iran, Russia, and targets deeper in Central Asia.

The West promises that it will end the chaos in Syria, just like they promised it would end in Libya. It will not end in either.

With Libya’s fate in mind, and a repeat performance clearly taking shape in Syria should the West get its way, it must be made clear that no matter how many innocent people are killed by terrorists the West itself helped create and perpetuate, they will not get an opportunity to turn Syria into the “Libya of the Levant,” no matter how convenient and well-timed these killings are, no matter how deep they are within the heart of Europe or North America, and no matter how tragic and regrettable the aftermath is.

Tony Cartalucci, Bangkok-based geopolitical researcher and writer, especially for the online magazine“New Eastern Outlook”.