Syria: NATO Sets its Sights on Gas Pipeline

Tuesday, 16 October 2012

Syria: NATO Sets its Sights on Gas Pipeline

It is as a geographer that Manlio Dinucci scrutinizes the war in Syria: the deployment of NATO forces, the ad hoc coalition that the Alliance put together and, especially, the strategic motive. What is really at stake in this conflict is not regime change, but shutting down the Mediterranean outlet for Iranian gas and controlling Syria’s gas reserves.

A declaration of war today would be incongruous. But to make one all it would take is a casus belli. Such as the mortar projectile which departed from Syria and made five victims in Turkey. Ankara retaliated with cannon fire, while the parliament authorized the Erdogan government to launch military operations in Syria. A blank check for war that NATO is prepared to pick up.

The Atlantic Council denounced the “Syrian regime’s recent aggressive acts at NATO’s southeastern border“, itching to trigger Article 5, stating that an attack on one member is viewed as an attack on all. But, as it is, “non-Article 5” is already in effect: introduced during the war against Yugoslavia and applied against Afghanistan and Libya, it allows for operations not covered by Article 5, outside the territory of the Alliance.

Indeed, the images of the buildings in Damascus and Aleppo devastated by powerful explosives leave no doubt that it was not the work of mere rebels, but that of infiltrated professional soldiers.

Approximately 200 specialists of the British SAS and SBS elite forces -reports the Daily Star- have been operating for months inside Syria, alongside U.S. and French units. The shock troops are composed by a gaggle of armed Islamist groups (until yesterday labeled by Washington as “terrorists“) from Afghanistan, Bosnia, Chechnya, Libya and other countries. In the group of Abu Omar al-Chechen -reports theGuardian correspondent in Aleppo- the orders are given in Arabic, but have to be translated into Chechen, Tajik, Turkish, Saudi dialect, Urdu, French and other languages.
Carrying false passports (a CIA specialty), the fighters flock into the Turkish provinces of Adana and Hatay, bordering Syria, where the CIA has opened military training centers. The weapons come mostly from Saudi Arabia and Qatar which, as in Libya, also provides special forces. The operations command is located aboard NATO ships in the port of Alexandretta. Meanwhile, on Mount Cassioum, bordering Syria, NATO has built a new electronic espionage base, in addition to the Kisecik radar base and the Incirlik air base.

In Istanbul a propaganda center was opened, where Syrian dissidents formed by the U.S. State Department, fabricate news and videos that are broadcast by satellite networks. The NATO war against Syria is already taking place, predicated on the need to unshackle the country from the Assad regime. As in Libya, internal divisions were exacerbated in order to cause the collapse of the state, by exploiting the tragedy engulfing the population.

The goal is the same: Syria, Iran and Iraq signed an agreement in July 2011 for a gas pipeline that, by 2016, should connect the Iranian South Pars field, the largest in the world, to Syria and thus to the Mediterranean. Syria, where another large deposit has been discovered near Homs, can become a hub of alternative energy corridors to those going through Turkey and to other routes controlled by U.S. and European companies. This is the reason why they want to attack and occupy her.
In Turkey, it is very clear to the 129 MP’s (one-fourth) who are against the war and to the thousands of people who marched chanting “No to imperialist intervention in Syria.”
How many Italians can also see it, in parliament and among the population?

Manlio Dinucci