Hersh, Gauthier, and the Coming of Terror in Xinjiang

Seymour Hersh created a stir with his most recent piece in the London Review of Books, Military to Military.

Hersh reported that the Joint Chiefs of Staff under General Dempsey had actively sabotaged President Obama’s Syria policy in 2013, when they took issue with the White House’s apparent acquiescence to Turkey secretly funneling support to unvetted Islamist militants.

The anti-Hersh forces have been in full cry but his claims appears credible.  Quite possibly, the Pentagon has fallen out of love with wonk-warrior COIN fetish for the umpteenth time, and has returned to the reassuring “massive use of conventional forces in pursuit of explicit US goals” Powell Doctrine.  Anyway, plenty of grist for the mill.

My interest, naturally, was attracted to Hersh’s description of a “Uyghur rat-line” organized by Turkey to funnel militants from the PRC’s Xinjiang Autonomous Region into Syria:

The analyst, whose views are routinely sought by senior government officials, told me that ‘Erdoğan has been bringing Uighurs into Syria by special transport while his government has been agitating in favour of their struggle in China. Uighur and Burmese Muslim terrorists who escape into Thailand somehow get Turkish passports and are then flown to Turkey for transit into Syria.’ He added that there was also what amounted to another ‘rat line’ that was funnelling Uighurs – estimates range from a few hundred to many thousands over the years – from China into Kazakhstan for eventual relay to Turkey, and then to IS territory in Syria.

Hersh also quoted Syria’s ambassador to the PRC:

‘China is concerned that the Turkish role of supporting the Uighur fighters in Syria may be extended in the future to support Turkey’s agenda in Xinjiang. We are already providing the Chinese intelligence service with information regarding these terrorists and the routes they crossed from on travelling into Syria.’

Hersh also consulted analyst Christina Lin (who quotes me! In her pieces) on the Uyghur issue.

So the Uyghur angle in the LRB article leans on “the analyst”, a source Hersh has relied on since 9/11 and whose conspicuous single-sourciness has been a constant complaint of critics seeking to impugn Hersh’s reporting; a Syrian official perhaps happy to add to Erdogan’s woes by hanging the Uyghur issue around his neck; and an analyst dealing to a certain extent in open source information.

Therefore, I paid attention to a statement Hersh made during an interview with Democracy Now!, describing a study by the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Defense Intelligence Agency in 2013:

The third major finding [in the study] was about Turkey. It said we simply have to deal with the problem. The Turkish government, led by Erdogan, was—had opened—basically, his borders were open, arms were flying. I had written about that earlier for the London Review, the rat line. There were arms flying since 2012, covertly, with the CIA’s support and the support of the American government. Arms were coming from Tripoli and other places in Benghazi, in Libya, going into Turkey and then being moved across the line. And another interesting point is that a lot of Chinese dissidents, the Uyghurs, the Muslim Chinese that are being pretty much hounded by the Chinese, were also—another rat line existed. They were coming from China into Kazakhstan, into Turkey and into Syria. So, this was a serious finding.

Unless Hersh is carelessly interpolating a non-sequitur about the Uyghurs in his remarks, it looks like his source told him there was a JCS/DIA finding, based on classified sigint/humint, about Erdogan playing footsie with Uyghur militants.

This is something I am inclined to believe, given the public record concerning the Turkey-Uyghur special relationship, and also the bizarre role of illicit Turkish passports in the travel of Uyghur refugees from Xinjiang, through Southeast Asia, and to their publicly acknowledged safe haven in Turkey.  I’ve written about the Turkey/Uyghur issue several times in 2015 including my July piece Uyghurs Move Edge Closer to Center of Turkish Diplomacy, Politics, and Geostrategic Calculation.

 The other Uyghur related furor in the news concerns Ursula Gauthier, the Beijing correspondent for L’Obs.  It is speculated that Gauthier will not get her journalist’s visa extended by the PRC, in retaliation for an article she wrote pouring scorn on the PRC’s attempts to invoke a massacre of ethnic-Han security personnel and miners, apparently by Uyghurs, at Baicheng in Xinjiang, to claim “war on terror” parity with the November 13 Paris attack.

Details of the Baicheng case don’t quite support Gauthier’s indignation:

The attack occurred on Sept. 18, when a group of knife-wielding suspects set upon security guards at the gate of the Sogan Colliery in Aksu (in Chinese, Akesu) prefecture’s Bay (Baicheng) county, before targeting the mine owner’s residence and a dormitory for workers.

When police officers arrived at the mine in Terek township to control the situation, the attackers rammed their vehicles using trucks loaded down with coal, sources said.

…

Ekber Hashim, a police officer who inspected the mine’s dormitory following the incident, told RFA that “nearly all the workers who were not on shift at the time were killed or injured.”

“Some workers were sleeping while others were preparing to work when the attackers raided the building after killing the security guards,” he said.

…

Terek township deputy police chief Kurbanjan and his assistant “survived the incident by throwing themselves into the river next to the colliery.”

“They went [to the mine] as part of a second team after five police officers, including police chief Wu Feng, were killed,” said the officer, who also declined to provide his name.

“The second team had no idea everyone in the first team had been killed when they left the station. They turned their motorcycles around and fled when they saw the dead and injured, but the attackers pursued them in trucks and they were forced to drive the bikes into the river to escape.”

…

Another officer from Bulung named Tursun Hezim said police had received a notice from higher level authorities warning them to keep a lookout for a group of people wearing “camouflage”—a tactic allegedly employed by suspects in other recent attacks in the Uyghur region.

“Based on this guidance, I assume the suspects attacked while wearing uniforms, which allowed them to catch the guards at the colliery and police on the road when they were unaware and successfully make their escape,” he said.

One can’t believe everything one hears in the paper or on RFA, but the Baicheng attack, though executed with primitive implements, does not appear to have been the “Hulk Smash!” explosion of righteous rage by innocent Uyghurs driven to vent their grievances against their oppressors.  It was a careful, pre-meditated attack that involved gulling mine security with the use of fake uniforms, murdering dozens of peasant miners, then setting an ambush for two sets of cops as they rushed to the scene.

Understandably, the PRC was keen to label this outrage terrorism.  The Western media, apparently led by Gauthier, not so much. 

Beleaguered journalists in the PRC may not appreciate my opinion, but I considered Gauthier’s framing quite wrong-headed.  Baicheng and Paris are, in my view, strikingly similar in ways that Gauthier appeared unable to appreciate, as blowback against ham-fisted government policies, as I wrote here.

Fact is, the Baicheng outrage appears to come uncomfortably close to a very particular kind of “terrorism-that-we-don’t-want-to-call-terrorism”: political violence committed as part of a decolonization/national liberation struggle.

There is a sizable list of ethnic groups getting brutalized by central government cum occupying forces: Palestinians, Chechens, Kashmiris, Uyghurs…to name a few.  Resistance by local ethnic/national/religious movements may involve acts of violence intended to bring attention to the cause, demoralize the occupiers, chip away at the resolve of the central government and, in a rather less savory aspect, elicit a violent crackdown that will escalate and spread the violence so local unrest is transformed into a pervasive security and political crisis.

The history of efforts to define “terrorism” is darkly amusing but a consistent theme has been attempts to carve out exemptions for national liberation struggles, not just to soothe the consciences of conflicted liberals, but also to protect overseas supporters from legal sanction.

But openly claiming “national liberation struggle” classification for Uyghur violence (instead of “localized inchoate fury”) would involve acknowledging that some sort of movement with separatist aims exists and poses a security threat to the PRC and its rule in Xinjiang.  This would buttress PRC state propaganda, contribute to the idea that there is something to all the ETIM talk, highlight the existence of Uyghur militants embedded in Islamist groups in Afghanistan and western Pakistan, and direct more professional interest to the efforts of Turkey to exploit refugee Uyghurs as a paramilitary resource in Syria—as described in Hersh’s article-- and potentially across Central Asia and into Xinjiang.

And it would involve Western media outlets giving up on the “PRC is just making up ‘terrorism’/we can’t credence these reports until our reporters can investigate freely” dodge, which is exemplified by a recurring phrase in RFA reporting on Uyghur-related violence that slides along the explaining/excusing/condoning spectrum in reminding the reader that the Uyghurs of Xinjiang suffer under continual, grinding repression.

 “…experts outside China say Beijing has exaggerated the threat from Uyghur “separatists” and that domestic policies are responsible for an upsurge in violence that has left hundreds dead since 2012.”

It would also make life awkward for the World Uyghur Congress and the Uyghur American Association which have carefully positioned themselves as “not separatists” in order to obtain a platform in the West as the voices of peaceful civil society and human rights aspirations of the Uyghur people, for which they received grants of $275,000 and $295,000, respectively from the National Endowment for Democracy in 2014 (the NED classifies this area of activity as “Xinjiang/East Turkistan” which is, given the supposed non-existence of the “East Turkistan Independence Movement”, somewhat interesting).

Fact is, the PRC is not interested in creating a Palestine-type situation in Xinjiang, with a non-violent/democracy inclined opposition attracting sympathy and some diplomatic and material support from the West.  That’s probably why Ilham Tothi, who had aspirations to serve as a secular/democratic voice of Uyghurs within the autonomous region, is in jail.  The PRC, relying on its military and economic power and, most importantly, the demographic advantage it gains from submerging Uyghurs under a tide of Han immigration (something the Baicheng attack was perhaps meant to discourage), is probably willing to polarize the situation in Xinjiang through oppressive policies and deal with whatever militancy its brutality throws up.   

In my opinion, the CCP sees Chechnya as the worst-case template/resolution: a national liberation struggle co-opted and discredited by an influx of Islamist-tinged terrorists who are, in turn, destroyed by the state in a brutal, prolonged war, shattering the secular/moderate independence movement in the process.

I expect this scenario will drive PRC diplomacy and security policy throughout Central and South Asia in the foreseeable future; and the politically-inflected debate over the existence of “terrorism” in the western reaches of the PRC will be remembered with bitter nostalgia.

Turkish Whistleblowers Corroborate Seymour Hersh Report of False Flag Sarin Gas Attack in Syria

This is quite the bombshell delivered by two CHP deputies in the Turkish parliament and reported by Today's Zaman, one of the top dailies in Turkey.

It supports Seymour Hersh's reporting that the notorious sarin gas attack at Ghouta was a false flag orchestrated by Turkish intelligence in order to cross President Obama's chemical weapons "red line" and draw the United States into the Syria war to topple Assad.

If so, President Obama deserves credit for "holding the line" against the attack despite the grumbling and incitement of the Syria hawks at home and abroad.

And it also presents the unsavory picture of an al-Qaeda operative colluding with ISIL in a war crime that killed 1300 civilians.

I find the report credible, taking into full account the fact that the CHP (the rival left-center Kemalist party) and Today's Zaman (whose editor-in-chief, Bulent Kenes was recently detained on live TV for insulting Erdogan in a tweet) are on the outs with Erdogan.

Considering the furious reaction it can be expected to elicit from Erdogan and the Turkish government, the temerity of CHP and Today's Zaman in running with this story is a sign of how desperate their struggle against Erdogan has become.  Note that the author is shown only as "Columnist: Today's Zaman".

I expect the anti-Erodgan forces hope this will be a game changer in terms of U.S.and European support for Erdogan.

It will be very interesting to see if and how the media in the U.S. covers this story.  In case it doesn't acquire enough "legs" to make into US media, here are some choice bits from the Zaman piece:

CHP deputies: Gov’t rejects probe into Turkey’s role in Syrian chemical attack

Two deputies from the main opposition Republican People's Party (CHP) have claimed that the government is against investigating Turkey's role in sending toxic sarin gas which was used in an attack on civilians in Syria in 2013 and in which over 1,300 Syrians were killed.

CHP deputies Eren Erdem and Ali Şeker held a press conference in İstanbul on Wednesday in which they claimed the investigation into allegations regarding Turkey's involvement in the procurement of sarin gas which was used in the chemical attack on a civil population and delivered to the terrorist Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) to enable the attack was derailed.

Taking the floor first, Erdem stated that the Adana Chief Prosecutor's Office launched an investigation into allegations that sarin was sent to Syria from Turkey via several businessmen.

...

"The MKE [Turkish Mechanical and Chemical Industry Corporation] is also an actor that is mentioned in the investigation file. Here is the indictment. All the details about how sarin was procured in Turkey and delivered to the terrorists, along with audio recordings, are inside the file," Erdem said while waving the file.

Erdem also noted that the prosecutor's office conducted detailed technical surveillance and found that an al-Qaeda militant, Hayyam Kasap, acquired sarin, adding: "Wiretapped phone conversations reveal the process of procuring the gas at specific addresses as well as the process of procuring the rockets that would fire the capsules containing the toxic gas. However, despite such solid evidence there has been no arrest in the case. Thirteen individuals were arrested during the first stage of the investigation but were later released, refuting government claims that it is fighting terrorism," Erdem noted.

Over 1,300 people were killed in the sarin gas attack in Ghouta and several other neighborhoods near the Syrian capital of Damascus, with the West quickly blaming the regime of Bashar al-Assad and Russia claiming it was a "false flag" operation aimed at making US military intervention in Syria possible.

...

The purpose of the attack was allegedly to provoke a US military operation in Syria which would topple the Assad regime in line with the political agenda of then-Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and his government.

CHP deputy Şeker spoke after Erdem, pointing out that the government misled the public on the issue by asserting that sarin was provided by Russia. The purpose was to create the perception that, according to Şeker, “Assad killed his people with sarin and that requires a US military intervention in Syria.”

He also underlined that all of the files and evidence from the investigation show a war crime was committed within the borders of the Turkish Republic.

"The investigation clearly indicates that those people who smuggled the chemicals required to procure sarin faced no difficulties, proving that Turkish intelligence was aware of their activities. While these people had to be in prison for their illegal acts, not a single person is in jail. Former prime ministers and the interior minister should be held accountable for their negligence in the incident," Şeker further commented.

Erdem also added that he will launch a criminal complaint against those responsible, including those who issued a verdict of non-prosecution in the case, those who did not prevent the transfer of chemicals and those who first ordered the arrest of the suspects who were later released.

...

Seymour Hersh, Sarin, Syria and, Maybe, a Missing Saudi Arabia Connection?

Seymour Hersh has an important piece up at the London Review of Books implicating Turkey in the August 2013 sarin gas incident that almost triggered a US attack on Syria.  I wonder how much traction it will get.  

Specifically, will it get more traction than the recent clandestine Youtube release of the confab between the Turkish foreign minister and the spooks concerning the mechanics of manufacturing a false flag operation in northern Syria to justify a Turkish incursion?  In response the Turkish government banned Youtube, a ban that has attracted considerably less attention than its ban on Twitter.

Hersh states that Turkey, as a NATO member, gets special treatment that other Muslim states do not:

Barring a major change in policy by Obama, Turkey’s meddling in the Syrian civil war is likely to go on. ‘I asked my colleagues if there was any way to stop Erdoğan’s continued support for the rebels, especially now that it’s going so wrong,’ the former intelligence official told me. ‘The answer was: “We’re screwed.” We could go public if it was somebody other than Erdoğan, but Turkey is a special case. They’re a Nato ally. The Turks don’t trust the West. They can’t live with us if we take any active role against Turkish interests. If we went public with what we know about Erdoğan’s role with the gas, it’d be disastrous. The Turks would say: “We hate you for telling us what we can and can’t do.”’

The story is highly significant in that it gives the imprimatur of Hersh’s insider sources to what was widely bruited by Bernard at Moon of Alabama, myself, and some other commentators, namely that the sarin gas incident was a false flag operation intended to stampede the US into an Assad-destroying attack.

A couple quibbles.

Hersh reports the Joint Chiefs of Staff opposed the attack because the intel was weak.  Are the JCS really so bogus-intel averse after Iraq?  The Syria operation, after all, was envisioned as an airpower exercise with no boots on the ground that would presumably weaken if not depose Assad while yielding few if any US casualties.  And there’s plenty of war crimes allegations to justify R2P, get Assad to The Hague, and tie up any “good war” loose ends even if the US turned out to be “heroes in error” and thumped Assad on the basis of incorrect intelligence. 

The real reason that President Obama has shrunk from taking “all means necessary” to implode the Syrian regime and instead reconciled himself to years of murderous equivocation has yet to be told.  Given the Syrian catastrophe of 150,000 deaths, millions of refugees, and the destruction of Syria’s cities and economy, I hope he doesn’t think he’s holding off for humanitarian reasons. 

Second, the sarin gas false flag is presented as strictly a Turkish show.  I had hypothesized that Saudi Arabia’s Prince Bandar was behind the attack.  I wonder if Hersh’s account is complete, not just because I hate to be wrong, but also because it doesn’t make sense that Turkey would execute a murderously risky stunt like this without Saudi foreknowledge and backup.  

Given the Turkish dithering over minor false flag exploits revealed in the Youtube audio (like manufacturing a threat to the tomb of a progenitor of the Ottoman empire, Shah Suleyman, which is inside Syria but claimed as sovereign territory by Turkey and protected by Turkish special forces), I tend to think that Saudi Arabia may have been on hand to provide Turkey with a little backbone for the sarin attack.

Saudi Arabia and Turkey are Sunni frenemies, divided about democratically tinged political Islam, support for the Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt, and Erdogan’s addiction to playing footsie with Iran; but they still share a desire to destroy the Assad regime.  In 2013 the Saudis under Prince Bandar were pursuing a hyper-aggressive strategy in Syria (remember, Bandar allegedly raised the specter of Chechen attacks against the Sochi Olympics if Putin persisted in his Assad-supporting ways), and the KSA was all-in on a US attack against Assad for crossing the chemical weapons red line.  If Turkey indeed executed the false-flag attack and Saudi Arabia instantaneously called for a US attack on Syria in retaliation, this would imply an admittedly rare but not unexpected area of cooperation between Turkey and Saudi Arabia. 

Hersh’s story links the sarin false flag attack to Erdogan’s frustration that the US had cut off the “rat line” running arms from Libya through Turkey and into Syria after the Benghazi assault, thereby giving the advantage to Assad and driving Erdogan to consider how to get US power to bear.  Again, I wonder if the Turkey’s support for the Syrian insurrection (2000 truckloads of materiel, according to the Youtube release) really relied on a CIA/MI6-managed flow of Libyan weapons.  Prince Bandar bragged that he had arranged a large shipment of arms for the insurgents from Croatia, and perhaps Saudi Arabia would have been ready to make up whatever shortfall emerged after the “rat line” was cut.

So maybe Hersh’s sources are shielding Saudi Arabia by leaking half the story, the Turkish half, and hanging Erdogan out to dry.  In other words, in the passage above substitute “Saudi Arabia” for “Turkey” and you might have a more persuasive picture of the Muslim power that the US security establishment doesn’t want to embarrass.

I might point out also that Erdogan was responsible for an attempt to procure a Chinese missile defense system (the announcement was made just after the Syria attack fell apart, perhaps as an expression of Turkish pique), a decision that infuriated NATO and apparently caused it to encourage extensive opposition to the deal within Turkey’s defense establishment.  So maybe the decision was made to give Erdogan a comeuppance by hanging the sarin false flag fiasco around his neck.

As for the “rat line” from Libya, that had been chugging along even before the CIA's involvement which, according to Hersh's article, was approved in early 2012.  What might have cut the “rat line” and forced Bandar to turn to Croatia was the fact that Saudi Arabia pushed Qatar out of the leadership of the GCC anti-Assad initiative and Libya—a close Qatar ally—declined to play ball with Riyadh, and it would have been up to Prince Bandar to work out new supply channels, and a modus vivendi with Erdogan.

I wrote about the Qatari precursor of the “rat line” in November 2011.  If I may be excused for patting myself on the back, it is a rather prescient piece, both about the mechanics of outside support for the insurgents, and for its bleak view of the fate of the domestic Syrian revolutionary movement.  For bonus points, it also highlights the involvement of an enthusiastic State Department regime-changer, Victoria Nuland, who was very much in the news recently for her encouragement of the ruckus in Ukraine.

The piece in full follows below.

Tuesday, November 29, 2011

The Syrian Revolution Hijacked

The Syrian revolution—a broad-based, non-sectarian, democratic anti-despot national movement—has failed.

Mass demonstrations never materialized in Damascus and Aleppo.  The military and security forces didn’t crack.  The Alawite on Sunni crackdown (Alawites form the backbone of the army/security forces/irregular goon squads) fomented sectarian divisions, with most non-Sunnis minorities cleaving desperately to the Assad regime.  Prosperous Sunnis have presumably been hedging their bets by donating to the anti-government cause in recent days but have not explicitly abandoned the regime.

The Gulf powers and the West would have welcomed a Ba’athist regime collapse at the hand of domestic anti-government demonstrations.

That didn’t happen.

As the peaceful democratic movement has faltered, there has been no move from the Western/Gulf powers to encourage reconciliation and reforms.

Quite the contrary, in fact.

Whenever Assad makes an offer of reform, the Western powers dismiss it as too late and/or insincere.

Victoria Nuland, the State Department spokesperson, counseled Syrian dissidents to defy the Assad regime’s offer of an amnesty in return for handing in illegal weapons, as the LA Times reported:

Syria accused Washington of "inciting sedition, supporting the acts of killing and terrorism," the official Syrian news agency said, quoting an official source at the Foreign Ministry.

…
The comments came a day after State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland declared that she would counsel Syrians to reject the amnesty, in which those the government terms arms violators were asked to turn themselves in with their weapons "to the nearest police station" during a one-week period that began Saturday. Those who surrender and have not killed anyone "will be released soon," the Interior Ministry vowed.

"I wouldn't advise anybody to turn themselves in to regime authorities at the moment," Nuland told reporters in Washington.

Nuland, by the way, is married to PNACer and neocon pundit Robert Kagan.  Recalling Dick Cheney's enthusiasm for driving to Damascus post-Iraqi Freedom, maybe we should call the Syria enterprise Clean Break II: The Do-Over.

Anyway, democracy didn't work.  Time for Plan B.

The foreign powers interested in Assad’s fall—and stripping Iran of a regional ally--have made the decision to piggyback a foreign-supported, foreign-funded insurrection on the faltering anti-government movement.  

More accurately, the democratic revolution is now an uncertain and unwilling passenger on the Gulf-funded military machine rumbling toward Damascus.

Havens for anti-Assad fighters have materialized in Turkey, and arms and money are flooding in from all over the place.

Weapons and money for anti-Assad insurrectionists has been trickling in for months, to the blissful disregard of western news outlets fixated on the images of democracy demonstrators struggling against oppression.

Now that the political option is sliding off the table and it is clear a foreign-funded insurrection is needed to remove the Assad regime, the gusher of arms and cash has become too big to ignore.

But the story doesn’t require old-fashioned reporting anymore.


Just go down to a Turkish foreign ministry presser for tea, cookies, and a targeted backgrounder.

Turkey has positioned itself as the indispensable Western/Gulf proxy on Syria’s northern border.

Iran’s IRNA news agency passed on a report in Turkey’s Millyet tabloid, a major Turkish news outlet.  IRNA is sometimes selective and/or inaccurate in its presentation of international news, so I’m passing it on with a caveat, but the report as presented passes the smell test for me:

According to Milliyet, as cited by IRNA, France has sent its military training forces to Turkey and Lebanon to coach the so-called Free Syrian Army -- a group of defectors operating out of Turkey and Lebanon -- in an effort to wage war against Syria's military.

The report added that the French, British, and Turkish authorities “have reached an agreement to send arms into Syria.”

The Turkish daily said that the three have informed the US about training and arming the Syrian opposition.

According to Milliyet, a group of armed rebels are currently stationed in Turkey's Hatay Province near the border with Syria.

The report comes as an earlier report had revealed that the British and French intelligence agencies have reportedly tasked their agents with contacting Syrian dissidents based in the northern Lebanese town of Tripoli in order to help fuel unrest in Syria.

Reports also said that French intelligence agents have been sent to northern Lebanon and Turkey to build the first contingents of the Free Syrian Army out of the deserters who have fled Syria.

For those of you who prefer to get your Turkey/Syria news from a reliable Crusader source, here’s an eyebrow-raising item from the Daily Telegraph, albeit via Hurryet on November 27:

Syrian dissidents held secret talks Nov. 25 with Libya’s new authorities and Turkish authorities in Istanbul with the aim of securing weapons and money for their insurgency against Damascus, the Daily Telegraph has reported.

Syrian opposition group requested “assistance” from the Libyan representatives and were offered arms, and potentially volunteers, during the meeting, the daily reported Nov. 25.

“There is something being planned to send weapons and even Libyan fighters to Syria,” a Libyan source said on condition of anonymity. “There is a military intervention on the way. Within a few weeks you will see.”

Preliminary discussions about arms supplies took place when members of the Syrian National Council (SNC) – the country’s main opposition movement – visited Libya earlier this month, said the daily.

“The Libyans are offering money, training and weapons to the Syrian National Council,” said Wisam Taris, a human rights campaigner with links to the SNC. Last month, Libya’s interim government became the first in the world to recognize Syria’s opposition movement as the country’s “legitimate authority.”

Large shipments of weapons have not yet been sent, said activists, mainly because of logistical difficulties.

But proposals for a “buffer zone” inside Syria, monitored by the Arab League, or the likely emergence of an area inside the country controlled entirely by rebels, could solve this problem. “The [Libyan] council’s offer is serious,” said Taris.

Sources in the Libyan town of Misrata suggested that some weapons may already have been sent. Some smugglers were caught selling small arms to Syrian buyers in Misrata, said a man who trafficked guns to Libya’s rebels during the country’s civil war.

Libyans feel closely aligned to the Syrian cause, said Hameda al-Mageri, from the Tripoli Military Council.


The Tripoli Military Council is the creature of Islamist strongman Abdelhakim Belhadj.

Belhadj is the preferred in-Libya muscle of the Gulf States—“proxy” is perhaps not too strong a term.  He recently found it expedient to issue a non-denial denial that Qatar had dispatched nine planeloads of arms to Tripoli for the exclusive use of his forces.

Belhadj was denied a seat in the new Libyan cabinet thanks to Western anxiety over any overtly Islamist tinge to the proceedings. In an inspiring demonstration of the give-and-take of new Libyan democracy, a representative from Zintan was able to leverage his town’s continued and suspiciously prolonged local custody of Saif Qaddafi into a winning bid for the defense slot.

Instead, Belhadj now has the opportunity to pursue profitable mischief in Syria on behalf of the Gulf states and their anti Sh’ia/anti-Iranian counter revolution (and perhaps dissipating the intimidating shadow of Belhadj and a number of his well-trained and hardened fighters from the streets of Tripoli).

In an amusing sideline, Belhadj--presumably on his way to the Istanbul meeting--got a friendly hazing at the airport from his Zintan buddies.  The brief detention was noted by the local Libyan press; the thing about the money was apparently glossed by a pro-Gaddafi website (they still exist!):

The battalion of Zintan men has arrested him after the discovery that the passport is registered with the competent authorities and carrying fake name. 

After the arrest the rebels received a call from the President of the Council Mustafa Abdul Jalil asking the Alzentan and officials at the airport in Tripoli to allow Hakim Belhaj to leave the country, this has been found on the large sum of money inside the bag Khuwaildi Belhadj.

The democratic revolution ship has sailed.  What’s going on today is a foreign-supported insurrection.

The Chinese and the Russians have a clear-eyed understanding of what’s going on.

The PRC is loath to get on the wrong side of Saudi Arabia, its largest energy supplier, by going too far to defend Syria.

Moscow, which has a real stake in its Iran alliance and cares about the fate of Assad’s regime, has shown no such qualms.

A selection of headlines from RIA Novosti gives an idea of what a responsible multi-lateral response on Syria—as opposed to a hurried military ass-kicking enabled by global anti-Iranian forces meant to obscure the failure of a peaceful "color revolution"—would have looked like:

Syria welcomes Russia as intermediary in reconciliation talks 

Syrian opposition should not boycott reforms—Russian FM 

Moscow calls on Arab League to work for peace in Syria


None of this is happening, of course.

As to where this all ends up, I will outsource the increasingly plausible endgame--Turkey is ready to invade Syria--to the estimable M. Badhrakumar of Asia Times (and his personal blog, Indian Punchline):


Turkey and its western allies are transferring the Libyan fighters whom they trained and armed to depose Muammar Gaddafi to Syria. Around 600 Libyan ‘volunteers’ have entered Syria. Daily Telegraph reported that secret meetings were held on Friday in Istanbul between the Turkish officials and the Syrian opposition representatives and the Libyan fighters. Large-scale infiltration of weapons from Turkey and Jordan have been going on for months to create civil-war conditions in Syria, but this is the first move to introduce ‘volunteers’.  

The move is necessitated by the failure to induce defections form the Syrian armed forces, except a mere handful. Turkey and the western powers are desperate to create the myth of a ‘Syrian resistance’ force without which their blatant aggression will be in full display. 

…

Things seem to be heading for a flash point, indeed. The sure sign is that US V-P Joseph Biden is heading for Ankara in the weekend. It is a major signal of the US giving the go-ahead to Turkey to act on Syria without fear. Again, Jordanian King, Abdullah, travelled to israel. He is Saudi Arabia’s ‘back channel’ to Israel and a key regional ally for the western intelligence. 

Turkey is indeed shedding its fear of the unknown and is coming out into the open on the Syrian situation. Turkish FM Ahmet Davitoglu indicated today for the first time that Turkey is all set for invasion of Syria once it gets the green signal from its western allies. He said this before heading for the combined meeting of EU foreign ministers and Arab League representatives (read Saudi Arabia and Qatar).  

The day Davutoglu spoke, November 29, will stand out as a notable date in the chronicle of the Turkish Republic that Kemal Ataturk founded. Ataturk’s ‘red line’ used to be that Turkey should never get entangled in the affairs of the Muslim Middle East but should instead concentrate on its own ‘modernization’. Evidently, the Islamist government in power today thinks Turkey is today ‘modern’ enough already and can now go back and reclaim its Ottoman legacy. 

A Turkish army moving into an Arab country - it is a historic point. It is a century after the Turks were driven out by the ‘Arab revolt’. The matrix is dripping with irony. The Arab revolt against the Turks was instigated by Great Britain. And Britain, although a far weaker power today, is still playing a seminal role - except, it is encouraging the Turks to return to the Arab world. One hundred years ago, Britain successfully pitted the Arabs against the Turks. Today, Turks join hands with some Arabs who have a grouse against some other Arabs.  

The Syrian revolutionaries were too weak to get the nation they wanted.

They’ll have to make do with whatever state that Turkey, the Gulf powers, and the western democracies decide to give them.