Response to BBC Documentary Hit Piece on Syria

The recent BBC documentary on Syria is a good case study on how Western propaganda works. It's a lie and there are many good investigative journalists who have in the years since 2011 unpacked the propaganda and exposed the lie. A good detailed example would be Eva Bartlett who in an article in Dissident Voice presents an alternative evidence-based view of events in Syria.

The wider context is crucial here. In an interview way back in 2007 General Wesley Clarke listed seven countries he was told by another general the U.S. intended to 'take out' in five years. The list included Iraq, Libya, Syria, Somalia, Sudan, Lebanon and Iran. He learned this 10 days after 9/11. Since then Iraq and Libya have been destroyed but due to support from Lebanon, Iran and Russia, Syria has survived.

The two countries where the U.S. intervened militarily, Iraq and Libya, have been 'Balkanised' and no longer pose a threat to U.S. foreign policy interests. It is ironic that in Libya for example during the presidency of the first Black American president in history slavery has again returned to Africa. And in a U.N. poll after the invasion of Iraq the majority of Iraqis voiced opposition to U.S. interference. These humanitarian interventions are not executed for the benefit of the local people despite what propaganda arms like the BBC said at the time.

The BBC documentary on Assad fits the pattern of character assassination of the leader prior to and intimately integrated with military action. Western liberal media have shown themselves to be the effective propaganda arm of Western military humanitarian intervention in these countries for years. Way back in 2001 and prior to the Iraq invasion the incomparable Media Lens website was noting how the "The mainstream media plays a large role in the demonisation of western 'enemies'" such as Saddam Hussein and Muammar Qadaffi. The name of Bashar Assad can now be added to that list.

None of these leaders are or were angels. But the point of the demonisation is not to express moral outrage at their activities but to soften up public opinion prior to and during a military intervention. Documentary hit pieces like this BBC one are usually accompanied by newspaper articles, like this one in the Guardian, scolding the West for 'doing nothing' and 'failing to act'. The overall and intended effect is to facilitate military action in a Third World country in which hundreds of thousands of innocent lives are lost as in Iraq and Libya and Syria.

We are never treated to similar BBC documentary hit pieces on Prince Mohammed Bin Salman of Saudi Arabia or articles in The Guardian scolding us for 'doing nothing' and 'failing to act' on Saudi Arabia. The butchering of Jamal Khashoggi in Istambul or the Saudi attacks on schoolchildren in Yemen don't seem to move the BBC or Guardian journalists to quite the same extent but then Saudi Arabia is 'our friend'.

There are so many lies and half-truths in the documentary I won't go through them all but to take just two. The narrative suggested by this BBC documentary is that an 'Arab Spring' uprising spread to Syria where the mass of the people rose up against dictator Assad and they were brutally cut down in response.

OK but there is another narrative that better fits the evidence. A reform movement within Syria demanding change such as an end to corruption and a more equal distribution of wealth arose in early 2011. This movement did not want Assad removed but rather radical change of the current set up. Western countries such as the U.S., U.K. and France along with Turkey and two gulf states Saudi Arabia and Qatar used the opportunity to organise foreign jihadist mercenaries to travel to Syria and destabilise the country in the hope of getting rid of Assad.

Evidence for this latter narrative comes from U.S. Intelligence. In 2012 the Defense Intelligence Agency issued a report on Syria which had the following sentence: "The Salafists, the Muslim Brotherhood and al-Qaeda in Iraq are the major forces driving the insurgence in Syria." It emerged in an interesting Al-Jazeera interview with former general Michael Flynn who was director of the agency at the time. So the Americans knew as early as 2012 that this wasn't a popular uprising against Assad it was foreign backed jihadists trying to unseat Assad.

Operation Timber Sycamore was the name of the C.I.A. operation which funded, armed and trained the jihadists in Syria to unseat Assad. In a rare moment of truth-telling on MSNBC professor Jeffrey Sachs of Columbia University admits the Syrian war was started by the U.S. and not the Syrian opposition. He says the U.S. should get out of Syria and gives the human cost of this 7 year war as 500,000 people dead. Nowhere in the BBC propaganda piece does the finger wagging point in the U.S. direction holding the U.S. regime responsible for the war crime of aggression against a sovereign country.

So not alone did the Americans know that the jihadists were the backbone of the opposition but they funded and trained them. A key American who was instrumental to getting aid to these head-choppers was Robert Ford, the former U.S. ambassador to Syria, who was interviewed in this BBC documentary. This salient fact was completely ignored by the documentary but other journalists, most notably Vaneesa Beeley, have successfully challenged Ford around his role as U.S. ambassador in Syria during this time.

Finally another Ford, Peter Ford, former British ambassador to Syria recently mentioned 'an upcoming panel discussion on Syria in the House of Lords' to explain why the BBC propaganda piece might have been re-aired now. Ford was responding to criticism by a Times editorial and full page articles of 'a group of clerics who had the temerity to visit Syria and not join in the usual Assad-bashing'. His criticism of the Times and the FCO is quite withering and worth a read:

"The game being played here is the establishment attempt to close down all discussion of Syria which might veer away from the official narrative. It is bullying and it stinks."

Dave Donnellan