Deconstructing the Syrian War

The Syrian civil war is not just another random war in the Middle East. It’s a gold mine of riveting insights into history, geography, geopolitics, competition over oil/gas pipelines, religious conflicts, Islamic fundamentalism, Islamic terrorism, proxy wars, propaganda tools, Machiavellian alliances amongst nations, and even aspirations of the most powerful elites on earth.

The Syrian war is the most consequential war of the 21st century so far. It involved the biggest CIA operation (named Operation Timber Sycamore) as well as the most expensive proxy war that drew in more than a dozen countries as conspirators. The war created a horrific haven of Islamic terrorists and mercenaries, incomparably worse than the Mujahedeen and Al Qaeda of the 1980s. The human catastrophe from this war is also heartbreaking – 11 million people forced to flee their homes and more than a million stuck in refugee camps in lamentable squalor. With terrorists posing as refugees, Europe became a victim of this war as well.

The Syrian war created moral hazards by encouraging both proxy wars as well as provocation of sectarian conflicts, which are all against international laws. As for unintended consequences, the war on Syria has resulted in seismic shifts in geopolitics. Many established international alliances have weakened or collapsed, and unexpected new ones have formed. Years from now, this war might even be seen as the Waterloo for the globalists, and as the phenomenon that created a multipolar world.

After six years of repeating, Assad must go, western elites have now grudgingly accepted that Assad will remain as Syria’s leader. Even backstabbing neighbors – Turkey and Jordan – are reaching out to Syria in 2017, after being conduits for terrorists and weapons for six years. Post-war reconstruction has now begun and refugees are slowly returning to their battle-scarred homeland. It was also poetic justice that Syria defeated Qatar in the World Cup soccer qualifying match in August 2017 – Qatar had funded and armed many of the Syrian rebel groups during the last six years.

In spite of all the tragedy, the war was also an inspiring illustration of resolve, loyalty and patriotism of a tiny nation that has withstood the onslaught of ferocious attacks from every direction for six years.

Syria’s name is said to come from the Assyrian Empire that flourished 4000 years ago! Syria’s resilience might be in its DNA as it has been invaded by foreigners for thousands of years. Many empires desired Syria because of its strategic location on the Mediterranean Sea, making it the trade hub that links three continents – Asia, Africa and Europe. The constant influx of people and ideas created chaos as well as a multicultural and prosperous region over time. Hence the lure of Syria that has amazing 3000-year-old Babylonian temples, stunning Roman architecture, awe-inspiring 1000-year-old Christian monasteries, magnificent mosques, and picturesque Arabic buildings and art.

Syria has been a pagan, Jewish, Christian and an Islamic country over the last 10,000 years. This is why Syria is relatively the most secular and westernized country in the Middle East, even though Sunni fundamentalists such as the Muslim Brotherhood have been trying for the last 60 years to subvert the fundamentally tolerant and egalitarian society.

Modern Syria as a sovereign nation was born in 1946, but alas, peace was not to come so easily. The founding of Israel in 1948 ruined the Syria-US relationship and created a chain of events that are still reverberating. When Israel stopped the U.S. from selling weapons to the Syrian military, Syria turned to the USSR. The CIA panicked and staged a coup in Syria in 1949 – it also happened to be CIA’s first coup.

However, the guy that the U.S. overthrew came back to power five years later. If you think the U.S. would then try a new strategy, you would be wrong. Befriending the Muslim Brotherhood, the U.S. tried another coup in 1956, which turned out to be a fiasco. Then another attempt in 1982. Needless to say, Syria totally gave up on America and aligned itself with the USSR.

As we will see later, this regime change drama never stopped, and it only became crazier and more violent, with numerous other countries – many of them totally undemocratic – jumping into the disastrous and obsessive project of regime change in Syria.

There is a lot to cover about this terrible and tragic six-year-long war that’s still going on. At the outset, it may seem overwhelming to comprehend all the intricacies of geopolitics, Syrian politics, the numerous warring parties, the sectarian differences, the covert actions and goals of numerous conspirators, and all the lies, deceptions and war propaganda.

However, this book will make it easy for you to understand all those complex topics. If you go through the chapters in sequence, everything will make sense. We will start with the 60,000-foot big picture and then narrow it down. There are a couple of chapters that present the war with emphasis on different facts. There may be some repetition, but it only helps the reader master the concepts and details. The last few chapters in the book have some shocking revelations, but don’t jump to them without reading all the previous chapters!

Understand the war in (on) Syria, you will gain the insight to understand many conflicts of the past, present and the future.

As an introduction to Syria, here’s a quick slideshow of Syria’s beauty and magnificence reflected through historical monuments, spell-bounding homes, romantic streets, secular lifestyle, and its cosmopolitan environment.

There are numerous links in this book – about 450+ links to various articles and 130+ links to pictures and short video clips. Unless you’re genuinely curious about a particular topic, you can skip the links to the articles. However, please take a moment to view all the pictures, since they convey extremely valuable information. There are also links to short video clips (30 seconds to 2 min) that present facts and perspectives you’ll never come across in the mainstream narrative.

Let’s jump right in!

Chapter 2: Jesus in Syria

Some quick relevant facts about Syria: it has five neighbors – Iraq, Jordan, Israel, Lebanon and Turkey; and more than half of Syria is a desert (See map). It had a population of about 20 million before the war started, and 11 million are now internally displaced or have become refugees in other countries (including being stuck in refugee camps). Half of those refugees are children. For 70 years before the war, Syria was a stable and magnanimous country that accepted refugees from Palestine, Lebanon, Iraq etc.

Here are some historical tidbits about Syria:

1. The oldest alphabet in the world was found in Syria. Known as Ugarit, the language had 30 letters. Ugarit Tablets from 1500 BC were found near the current city of Latakia. To put the historic significance in perspective, the tablets were made 800 years before Latin had its own alphabet.

2. There still are remains of palaces, temples and stadiums built during the Phoenician empire from 1500 BC to 300 BC.

3. Jesus spent a lot of time preaching in Syria. After Jesus, his disciples established some of the first churches in Syria. Even the word Christian was supposed to have originated in Syria. One can still visit churches that were built in the first century in Syria.

4. There is only one place in the world where people still speak Aramaic, the language that Jesus spoke. And that’s the city called Maaloula in Syria. During the war, the moderate rebels invaded Maaloula, killed many Christians, kidnapped nuns and destroyed centuries-old churches. Assad eventually liberated the city and then personally visited the city and has been helping rebuild the city and the churches. Assad’s wife is also a secular and a well-educated woman who was born and raised in England.

Below: Asma Assad, Syria’s First Lady, visiting nuns at a church.

5. John the Baptist, who baptized Jesus, is buried in Syria. His tomb is in Damascus inside the famous Ummayad mosque (which used to be a church).

6. Syria was a Christian country for about 500 years until the Islamic conquest in the 7th century. (In 2010, about 10% of Syria were Christians. About 2 in 3 Christians were persecuted and driven out of their homes in the last six years.)

7. Aleppo, made famous during the war, and Damascus are among the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world, going back 8000 years.

8. Syria was an important region of the Roman/Byzantine Empire, and Antioch was the second largest city in the Roman Empire. A Syrian even got to become the Roman emperor.

Chapter 3: The Really Really Big Picture

This is a short chapter that presents the big picture. There are many links to photos, please take the time to view them.

Here is the truth about Syria. Assad has not been fighting civilians, he has been fighting well-armed terrorists for the last six years. These rebels have armored vehicles, tanks, heavy machine guns, grenade launchers, mortars, rockets, anti-tank missiles, chemical weapons and more. Here is a slideshow of various weapons that Al Qaeda and moderate rebels used in Syria.

Thus, billions of dollars were spent arming these rebels (who ironically get paid about $100 a month)!

Who paid for these weapons? Mainly Saudi Arabia & Qatar. Most of these weapons were shipped to Turkey and then sneaked into Syria. An image from a New York Times article clearly depicted the flow of arms:

Although the US officials claimed they were only arming moderate rebels, the facts on the ground revealed that there was practically no difference between the rebels and Al Qaeda or ISIS. For example, these pictures below show the moderate rebels (Free Syrian Army or FSA) marching with Al Qaeda and ISIS flags. The FSA flag is the one with three red stars.

Here’s a simple Venn diagram that shows how the FSA, Al Qaeda and ISIS overlap with one another and how they are armed and funded by various countries.

After six years of lies and spins, the US government stopped its support of the Syrian rebels in 2017:

A German journalist went to Syria and met with Al Qaeda leaders who told him plainly that they received weapons from the US and just wished that the US would send more!

However, by that time the support ended in 2017, the CIA and the Pentagon had spent billions of US taxpayers’ money to arm and train the bad guys in Syria. The CIA program was called Operation Timber Sycamore; the Pentagon program actually still continues and has switched its support to Kurds – better than Al Qaeda, but it serves the same purpose of destabilizing and chopping up Syria into smaller regions:

Several US Green Berets soldiers have also spoken about how the so-called Free Syrian Army was indistinguishable from Al Qaeda (a.k.a Al Nusra):

An Arab journalist, Jenan Mousa, who sent her undercover team into rebel-occupied territories released astonishing videos and facts. The entire region of Idlib was controlled by Al Qaeda (also known as Al Nusra or HTS – Hayat Tahrir al-Sham).

The term Syrian rebels itself is often a misnomer since it includes tens of thousands of foreign fighters. A Washington Post article in 2014 showed the flow of foreign mercenaries into Syria:

By 2016, this number had more than doubled. Thus, this war is really not about Syrians fighting Assad.

From a social and cultural point of view also, the rebels are far from moderate. They are fundamentalists like the Taliban, or worse. The rebels use billboard signs and a graffiti art to tell women how to dress.

Arab journalists who sneaked into the rebel-held areas found signs everywhere with messages such as Democracy is a religion of the West; Democracy is polytheism/sin; Shiite Muslims are enemies of Islam.

Many rebels also have indoctrination camps that turn little kids into jihadists:

As we will see later, there are also numerous examples of rebels participating in beheadings, mass executions, suicide bombings, destruction of churches and Shiite shrines, and targeted killing of Christians and Shiite Muslims.

Syria under Assad was secular, quite westernized, safe and prosperous. Under Assad, Syria’s GDP tripled (in US dollars) from 2000 to 2010. At the same time, Assad reduced the debt-to-GDP ratio from 150% to 30%. The inflation rate was low – 4.4% in 2010; and the Syrian Pound was strong and steady. Women enjoyed full rights, and minorities – Christians, Shiites, Kurds, Armenians and others – were protected and guaranteed equal rights. Millions of tourists visited Syria every year because it was beautiful, historic and safe.

Here are two pictures that summarize what’s at stake: secular schools in Assad’s Syria v. Syrian rebels’ Wahhabi schools where little girls in niqabs memorize the Quran all day long.

So what’s the rationale behind the desperate and disastrous regime change attempts? Well, it’s got to do with geopolitics, oil and religion.

Qatar wanted a gas pipeline through Syria to Europe; Saudi Arabia wants to stop the so-called Shiite Crescent: Iran-Iraq-Syria-Lebanon; Israel wants to grab Golan Heights which has a huge oil reserve; the U.S. wanted to get rid of Russia’s military bases in Syria; and Muslim Brotherhood has been trying to take over Syria for over 50 years.

In conclusion, the war that has been ravaging Syria for the last six years is a proxy war that is being waged on Syria by outsiders using Islamic extremists. As George Orwell said, War against a foreign country only happens when the moneyed classes think they’re going to profit from it.

Chapter 4: Echoes of Afghanistan in Syria

This film is dedicated to the brave Mujahideen fighters of Afghanistan. That was a movie credit shown at the end of Rambo III. Until 9/11, that is. Then the studios quietly dropped it.

When Islamic fundamentalists fight on our behalf, they get glorified and turned into moderate rebels and freedom fighters.

Thus, it is déjà vu in Syria. As we will see later, the playbook in Afghanistan is exactly the same what was used in Syria and many other places around the world since the 1990s.

The CIA program in Syria was the largest covert operation since Afghanistan. Astonishingly, some of the top rebel leaders in Syria were the original Mujahideen who had fought in Afghanistan and Central Asia. One of the biggest rebel groups in Syria is even called the Army of Mujahideen, and it got training and anti-tank missiles from the CIA.

The US foreign-policy elites never learn.

Chapter 5: Syrian War For Dummies

Although Syria was once the epicenter of a great civilization and powerful empires, it is now a tiny country that most Americans can’t identify on a map. However, Syria surprisingly took a disproportionate role in geopolitics, even possibly becoming the flashpoint for a new world war involving the US, NATO, Russia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Turkey etc. What happened?

Three versions of the conflict are presented here and the reader can choose the one that makes the most sense to him/her.

Disney Version

Once upon a time, a country called Syria was ruled by a ruthless dictator named Bashar Al-Assad. He was a cruel man who gassed his own people. His actions caused a civil war in Syria. America and Europe tried their best to stop the devastating civil war, and even generously accepted many Syrian refugees. America then invaded Syria to save the Syrian people.

This above version is quite popular among many Americans and Europeans.

High School Version

Oppressed by Assad’s brutal regime, the Syrian people longed for freedom and democracy. One day, people started protesting in a small city. In response, Assad killed many peaceful protesters. However, this backfired and the entire country was engulfed in protests. Soon a civil war broke out, which led to millions of refugees fleeing Syria.

America was appalled and, for humanitarian reasons, decided to