ISIS: Region-wide Genocide Portended in 2007 Now Fully Realized

Global Research, August 20, 2014

Dead American Journalist: The Latest Ploy to Cover-up Regional Genocide Years in the Making

American journalist James Wright Foley was allegedly brutally murdered on video by terrorists of the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq (ISIS). The development would at first appear to portray a terrorist organization openly declaring itself an enemy of the West, but in reality, it is the latest attempt by the West itself to cover up the true genesis of the current region-wide catastrophe of its own creation now unfolding in the Middle East.

As early as 2007, the stage was being set for the regional genocide now unfolding from Syria and Lebanon along the Mediterranean to northern Iraq. The “sudden” appearance of the Islamic State of Syria and Iraq, otherwise known as ISIS, betrays years of its rise and the central part it played in Western-backed violence seeking to overthrow the government of Syria starting in 2011 amid the cover of the so-called “Arab Spring.”

While the “Free Syrian Army” brand was created and used to obfuscate the hardcore, sectarian extremism that pervaded mercenary forces raised against Damascus, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad had warned starting in 2011 that it was neither a pro-democratic uprising, nor a moderate, secular rebellion – but rather hordes of foreign-backed terrorists with ties to Al Qaeda.

The US State Department itself would admit that Al Qaeda’s Syrian franchise, Jabhat al-Nusra (an offshoot of ISIS), was among the most prominent armed militant groups fighting the Syrian government, beginning in 2011 onward. The US State Department’s official press statement titled, “Terrorist Designations of the al-Nusrah Front as an Alias for al-Qa’ida in Iraq,” stated explicitly that:

Since November 2011, al-Nusrah Front has claimed nearly 600 attacks – ranging from more than 40 suicide attacks to small arms and improvised explosive device operations – in major city centers including Damascus, Aleppo, Hamah, Dara, Homs, Idlib, and Dayr al-Zawr. During these attacks numerous innocent Syrians have been killed.

It was clear that the nationwide, extensive operations of al-Nusra were more than an apparition – instead they constituted the true nature of the armed conflict ravaging Syria – an armed enterprise that was clearly state-sponsored and the realization of long-laid plans by the West to reorder the region through chaos.

Rise of ISIS Portended in 2007

But even before 2011, analysts and journalists warned of an impending regional sectarian war being intentionally engineered by the United States, Saudi Arabia, Israel, and other regional partners. The goal was to undermine and overthrow the government of Iran by first using covert violence to eliminate its arc of influence from Baghdad to Damascus, and of course in Lebanon.

Image: The war in Syria was always against foreign-backed sectarian extremists – just as was warned by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in 2011. The reason why despite hundreds of millions of dollars in cash, weapons, and equipment flowing to “moderates,” Al Qaeda has still managed to become the most prominent militant group now on both sides of the Syrian-Iraqi border, is because there were never any “moderates” to begin with.

To undermine Iran, which is predominantly Shiite, the Bush Administration has decided, in effect, to reconfigure its priorities in the Middle East. In Lebanon, the Administration has coöperated with Saudi Arabia’s government, which is Sunni, in clandestine operations that are intended to weaken Hezbollah, the Shiite organization that is backed by Iran. The U.S. has also taken part in clandestine operations aimed at Iran and its ally Syria. A by-product of these activities has been the bolstering of Sunni extremist groups that espouse a militant vision of Islam and are hostile to America and sympathetic to Al Qaeda.

Veteran journalist and Pulitzer Prize-winner Seymour Hersh warned in a prophetic 2007 New Yorker article titled, “The Redirection Is the Administration’s new policy benefitting our enemies in the war on terrorism?” that (emphasis added):

Also in Hersh’s 2007 article, was mentioned ongoing support by the US, Saudi Arabia, and Israel to the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood for the purpose of creating the networks necessary to execute the coming violence that would be unleashed in 2011. He reported (emphasis added):

There is evidence that the Administration’s redirection strategy has already benefitted the Brotherhood. The Syrian National Salvation Front is a coalition of opposition groups whose principal members are a faction led by Abdul Halim Khaddam, a former Syrian Vice-President who defected in 2005, and the Brotherhood. A former high-ranking C.I.A. officer told me, “The Americans have provided both political and financial support. The Saudis are taking the lead with financial support, but there is American involvement.” He said that Khaddam, who now lives in Paris, was getting money from Saudi Arabia, with the knowledge of the White House. (In 2005, a delegation of the Front’s members met with officials from the National Security Council, according to press reports.) A former White House official told me that the Saudis had provided members of the Front with travel documents.

Both the “Arab Spring” cover, and the networks of armed extremists were being built simultaneously in 2007, and unleashed in earnest in 2011 amid a regional political conflagration.

Image: Just as was predicted, the West’s premeditated plan to arm and back sectarian extremists would cause regional genocide. Also predicted was that these targeted minorities would seek Hezbollah, Syrian, and Iranian protection.

Hersh would also touch upon the coming sectarian nature of the West’s designs, noting that even former CIA officers knew it would be precisely the Iranian arc of influence that would end up protecting religious minorities from the legions of terror the West was preparing to unleash. Hersh reported:

Robert Baer, a former longtime C.I.A. agent in Lebanon, has been a severe critic of Hezbollah and has warned of its links to Iranian-sponsored terrorism. But now, he told me, “we’ve got Sunni Arabs preparing for cataclysmic conflict, and we will need somebody to protect the Christians in Lebanon. It used to be the French and the United States who would do it, and now it’s going to be Nasrallah and the Shiites.

It would be difficult for anyone today to read Hersh’s 2007 report and interpret as anything less than a verbatim outline of what the West had planned and now, since 2011, fully executed. It would also be difficult to claim that the regional presence of ISIS is not the full realization of the conflict Hersh warned the world of in 2007.

ISIS’ Multinational Military Force the Product of Years of Western State-Sponsorship

It is confirmed that since 2011, the United States, Turkey, France, the United Kingdom, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar have been heavily arming terrorists along both Syria’s border with Turkey in the north and with Jordan in the south. While official speeches from behind podiums have expressed a reluctance to assist militants fighting in Syria, the presence of the militants are entirely a product of foreign backing.

Image: ISIS began its invasion into Iraqi territory from NATO-member Turkey, through Syria and riding in Toyota Hilux trucks – identical to those provided to “moderates” by the US State Department as part of multi-million dollar “non-lethal” aid packages. ISIS did not take these trucks from “moderates,” the moderates never existed to begin with. From the beginning, it was the West’s plan to raise a mercenary army of sectarian extremists operating under the banner of Al Qaeda.

…3,000 tons of weapons dating back to the former Yugoslavia have been sent in 75 planeloads from Zagreb airport to the rebels, largely via Jordan since November. In the Telegraph’s 2013 article titled, “US and Europe in ‘major airlift of arms to Syrian rebels through Zagreb’,” it is reported:

The story confirmed the origins of ex-Yugoslav weapons seen in growing numbers in rebel hands in online videos, as described last month by The Daily Telegraph and other newspapers, but suggests far bigger quantities than previously suspected.

The shipments were allegedly paid for by Saudi Arabia at the bidding of the United States, with assistance on supplying the weapons organised through Turkey and Jordan, Syria’s neighbours. But the report added that as well as from Croatia, weapons came “from several other European countries including Britain”, without specifying if they were British-supplied or British-procured arms.

British military advisers however are known to be operating in countries bordering Syria alongside French and Americans, offering training to rebel leaders and former Syrian army officers. The Americans are also believed to be providing training on securing chemical weapons sites inside Syria.

Additionally, The New York Times in its article, “Arms Airlift to Syria Rebels Expands, With C.I.A. Aid,” admits that:

With help from the C.I.A., Arab governments and Turkey have sharply increased their military aid to Syria’s opposition fighters in recent months, expanding a secret airlift of arms and equipment for the uprising against President Bashar al-Assad, according to air traffic data, interviews with officials in several countries and the accounts of rebel commanders.

The airlift, which began on a small scale in early 2012 and continued intermittently through last fall, expanded into a steady and much heavier flow late last year, the data shows. It has grown to include more than 160 military cargo flights by Jordanian, Saudi and Qatari military-style cargo planes landing at Esenboga Airport near Ankara, and, to a lesser degree, at other Turkish and Jordanian airports.

The US State Department had also announced it was sending hundreds of millions of dollars more in aid, equipment and even armored vehicles to militants operating in Syria, along with demands of its allies to “match” the funding to reach a goal of over a billion dollars. The NYT would report in their article, “Kerry Says U.S. Will Double Aid to Rebels in Syria,” that:

With the pledge of fresh aid, the total amount of nonlethal assistance from the United States to the coalition and civic groups inside the country is $250 million. During the meeting here, Mr. Kerry urged other nations to step up their assistance, with the objective of providing $1 billion in international aid.

The US has also admitted that it was officially arming and equipping terrorists inside of Syria. The Washington Post’s article, ”U.S. weapons reaching Syrian rebels,” reported:

The CIA has begun delivering weapons to rebels in Syria, ending months of delay in lethal aid that had been promised by the Obama administration, according to U.S. officials and Syrian figures. The shipments began streaming into the country over the past two weeks, along with separate deliveries by the State Department of vehicles and other gear — a flow of material that marks a major escalation of the U.S. role in Syria’s civil war.

More recently, scores of Toyota Hilux pick-up trucks were delivered to terrorists along the Turkish-Syrian border, which would later be seen among ISIS convoys invading northern Iraq. In a PRI report titled, “This one Toyota pickup truck is at the top of the shopping list for the Free Syrian Army — and the Taliban,” it stated:

Recently, when the US State Department resumed sending non-lethal aid to Syrian rebels, the delivery list included 43 Toyota trucks.

Hiluxes were on the Free Syrian Army’s wish list. Oubai Shahbander, a Washington-based advisor to the Syrian National Coalition, is a fan of the truck.

It is clear that ISIS did not materialize from sand dunes in Iraq’s northern region, nor are they procuring immense armories of weaponry by picking Kalashnikovs from date trees. They are the visible materialization of years of material support openly reported by the Western media allegedly sent to “moderate rebels” who do not exist. If they did exist, there has been no plausible explanation to account for how ISIS has managed to procure more weapons, cash, fighters, and influence throughout the region than “moderates” receiving backing from the combined resources of the US, Europe, Turkey, the Saudis, Qataris, and Jordanians.

Maintaining Plausible Deniability

Image: American journalist James Wright Foley was allegedly beheaded by ISIS terrorists. Before his execution, a masked terrorists with a British accent threatened the US, the same US that in fact has created, armed, funded, directed, and to this day perpetuates ISIS’ activities across the region. The depraved propaganda ploy is designed to create plausible deniability for the West, creating the illusion that ISIS and the US are enemies, not allies.

To deflect the general public from ever arriving at this obvious conclusion, a myriad of public relations ploys have been designed to portray ISIS not as the armed fist of Western hegemony in the Middle East, but a villain not only beyond its control, but posing as a direct threat to the West itself. Token bombing in northern Iraq and the arming of Kurds served dual purposes. The bombings made it appear that the US was fighting, not backing ISIS, while arming the Kurds helped further Balkanize Iraq as part of the classic hegemonic stratagem of “divide and conquer.”The logical conclusion to be drawn by those observing the last 3 years of immense funding, weapon deliveries, political, diplomatic, and even military training for terrorists fighting in Syria and now in Iraq, is that there were never any “moderates” to begin with. It was, as veteran journalist Seymour Hersh had warned in 2007, always sectarian extremists ideologically aligned with Al Qaeda that the West had planned to utilize against its enemies in the Middle East.

More recently, in what is obvious propaganda, American journalist James Wright Foley was allegedly abducted,then murdered on video by ISIS terrorists. Throughout the video, before the alleged execution, a man’s voice, apparently the masked individual about to carry out the execution, speaks with a British accent, condemning the United States, threatening US President Barack Obama, and promising retaliation against the West.

Regardless of the veracity of the events portrayed in the video, the fact that it was created in the first place indicates a need by the West and those directly handling, arming, and funding ISIS’ activities both in Syria and in Iraq, to create “distance” between the West and the ISIS mercenaries executing their foreign policy in their long-planned regional sectarian bloodbath. Videos like those featuring Foley, splashed sensationally across the front pages of Western websites and newspapers when US casualties in wars gone bad are otherwise buried, indicate a concerted propaganda campaign aimed at manipulating public perception, not honest, responsible reportage.

The predictable reaction of Americans is to recoil at ISIS’ barbarism, despite similar barbarism being carried out for years in Syria and Iraq by Western-backed terrorists. With the apparent death of Foley, the US has created in the minds of many, plausible deniability regarding its well-documented role in the premeditated creation and continued perpetuation of ISIS. For Western special interests willing to lie to invade and occupy Iraq at the cost of over a million lives, including thousands of Americans, what would one more murdered American mean in an attempt to continue advancing its destructive, misanthropic agenda?

It should be remembered that Western designs in the Middle East are but one stage of a greater agenda. The reordering of the Middle East with immense standing armies of terrorists answering to Western dictates, will be used to move against Russia in the Caucasus region, and against China within and along the boundaries of Xinjiang province.