Australia’s Double Game on Terrorism, by Prof. Tim Anderson
Global Research, June 26, 2015
The Australian Government is wrestling with a double game it has created
by backing sectarian terrorists in Syria, encouraging the export of young
Australians to these groups, then entering into a fake war against terrorism
and ringing alarm bells over the threat of them returning home.
In the name of anti-terrorism Canberra has cancelled dozens of passports
and, more recently, passed a law to strip citizenship from dual citizens
believed to be involved with some of the armed groups plaguing Syria and Iraq.
Since 2012 about 200 Australian citizens are thought to have joined these
groups and several dozen have been killed.
Prime Minister Tony Abbott recently attacked the state-owned Australian
Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) for allowing Zaky Mallah, a notorious supporter
of anti-Syrian Islamists, to speak on national television. Yet Mallah, who
boasts of his close relations Australia’s domestic intelligence, has enjoyed
substantial media attention in recent years.
His media status is part of a wider pattern. The western media has
carried many stories about the ‘family man turned suicide bomber’ or the
Islamist ‘humanitarian workers’ who travelled to Syria, supposedly to help
children and refugees. If the humanitarian story did not fit they were said to
have been backing ‘moderate’ armed groups.
It is the Australians of Syrian origin who have been frozen out of the
national media. The great majority of them backed the Syrian Government against
western backed terrorism. Their impassioned demonstrations in Australian
cities, over 2011-2013, were mostly ignored. In face of a propaganda war, with
a string of stories falsely implicating the Syrian Army in massacres and
chemical weapons attacks, very few pro-Syrian voices have been permitted.
This effective media blockade has banished voices who might challenge
the latest ‘chemical weapons’ or ‘barrel bombing’ story, churned out against
‘the regime’ year after year. Considerable evidence has accumulated on these
fabrications. Much of it has to do with sectarian Islamists either blaming the
Syrian Army for their own atrocities or rebadging their own casualties as
‘civilians’. Yet vigorous self-censorship has meant that very few exposés
appear in the Australian media.
Dissidents have faced ferocious attacks. Reme Sakr, a young
Syrian-Australian who visited her father in Syria in late 2013, was vilified by
the ABC program Media Watch in early 2014. The ABC condemned the Good Weekend
magazine for running a sympathetic profile of someone who was clearly
pro-Syrian. They falsely accused her of supporting war crimes. She is now suing
the ABC.
Throughout 2012-2013 Australia’s Labor Government was an active
collaborator with Washington over the ill-fated ‘regime change’ plan for Syria.
Canberra backed a series of absurd exile groups set up by the US and the Gulf
monarchies as the ‘legitimate representatives of the Syrian people’. Along with
a number of European states, Australia also expelled the Syrian Ambassador,
after it was falsely claimed the Syrian Army had murdered pro-Government
villagers at Houla.
Some ‘government massacre’ claims were even debunked in the western
media. The Aqrab massacre, very close to Houla and also of pro-government
villagers, was blamed on the Army but exposed by Alex Thompson. The Daraya
massacre of civilians, kidnapped as part of a failed prisoner exchange, was
also blamed on the Army but debunked by Robert Fisk. Both were carried out by
groups of the western backed ‘Free Syrian Army’.
Such exposures were exceptions to the rule. The western propaganda
offensive encouraged extremists to join in a virtual holy war against Syria. No
Australian was detained or deterred from travelling to Syria in the first two
years of the crisis. The first few killed were often praised as ‘humanitarian
workers’ or victims of the regime’s ‘indiscriminate bombing’.
Yet in August 2012 a US intelligence report (DIA) noted two things, at
odds with Washington’s public position. First, the ‘Syrian Revolution’ had been
dominated by sectarian Islamists from the beginning: ‘the Salafists, the Muslim
Brotherhood and AQI (al Qaeda in Iraq, later ISIS) are the major forces driving
the insurgency in Syria’. Second, the idea of a sectarian Islamic State was
anticipated and thought to suit western purposes. AQI wanted a sectarian war in
Syria, which could lead to ‘a Salafist principality in Eastern Syria … exactly
what the supporting powers to the opposition ['the West, Gulf Countries and
Turkey'] want, in order to isolate the Syrian regime … ISI could also declare an
Islamic State through its union with other terrorist organisations’.
US intelligence did not waste time with the political ‘for public
consumption’ statements. They knew were working with terrorist groups in yet
another Middle Eastern ‘regime change’ operation.
Australia’s home-grown terrorists must have been further emboldened in
their belief that Canberra shared their aims when, in October 2012, Foreign
Minister Bob Carr told national television that resolution of the Syrian crisis
needed ‘an assassination’ and ‘major defections’ from the Syrian Army. This
very un-diplomatic (and probably criminal) statement signalled to the fanatics
that they could travel to Syria to attack and kill, imagining they had
Canberra’s blessing.
But it was not so simple. In late 2013 events forced a change in US
strategy. First, a Russian initiative on chemical weapons (the Syrian
Government maintains it had never used them) defused a planned US missile
strike on Syria. Second, the Syrian Government began to gain the upper hand in
the populated areas of western Syria, securing a number of towns along the
Lebanese border with the help of the Lebanese resistance movement, led by
Hezbollah. Third, the open sectarianism and well publicised atrocities of
‘rebel’ groups, particularly the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS),
attracted worldwide attention. The previous talk of ‘humanitarian intervention’
was displaced by western ‘anti-terrorist’ intervention, aimed at ISIS.
Yet the ‘moderate rebel’ myth persists and the western attacks on ISIS
have been ‘cosmetic’. (The Syrian and Iraqi Armies, backed by Hezbollah and
Iran, remain the main forces combating ISIS.) There are obvious reasons for
this. US leaders including Vice President Joe Biden and Armed Forces Chief
Martin Dempsey have admitted that their ‘major allies’ back ISIS. The evidence
is quite clear that US regards ISIS and other al Qaeda factions as strategic
assets.
Nevertheless, designation of significant sections of the Syrian and
Iraqi insurgency as ‘terrorists’ has unsettled US collaborators, including
Australia. Reinforcing this is the recognition that the ‘Syrian regime’ is not
going away, and that many foreign terrorists are trying to return home. What
this might mean is well illustrated by the videos of terrorist head-chopping
and throat cutting.
Those who were happy to foment terrorism against others have become
worried that the proverbial ‘chickens’ are coming home to roost. Caught in
their own double game they are blaming everyone but themselves.
Disclaimer: The contents of this article are of sole responsibility of the
author(s). The Centre for Research on Globalization will not be responsible for
any inaccurate or incorrect statement in this article.
Copyright © Prof. Tim Anderson, Global Research, 2015
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