Fourth Anniversary of War in Syria + CIA Funds Al Qaeda

A number of interesting stories appeared over the weekend that reaffirm the idea that the future is one of perpetual war.

First, there was Ben Hubbard's marking of the four-year anniversary of the war in Syria, "An Ever-Bleaker Syria, From All Vantage Points":

. . . [O]ne of the starkest indications of what four years of conflict have done to Syria came from space, with new satellite images showing that mass destruction and displacement have extinguished more than four-fifths of the country’s lights, according to an analysis by Xi Li of Wuhan University in China and the University of Maryland at College Park. 

The Syria conflict began four years ago this week with protests calling for political reforms inspired by the Arab Spring uprisings elsewhere in the Middle East.

Since then, it has repeatedly metastasized: President Bashar al-Assad unleashed soldiers and thugs to quell the unrest; the opposition spawned armed rebel groups; foreign powers poured in military aid; and the resulting violence spread chaos in increasingly large expanses of territory, allowing extremist groups to establish footholds and increase their power.

Syria enters its fifth year of conflict with few signs that the war will end soon. International efforts to bring the warring parties together for peace talks have fallen dormant, and the United Nations envoy, Staffan de Mistura, has made little progress on even his modest goal of a short-term cease-fire in only one of Syria’s many battleground cities. 

Instead, international attention has shifted to military action against the extremists of the Islamic State, who control parts of Syria and Iraq and have shocked the world by beheading their foes and demolishing historical sites.

You'll notice that Hubbard never directly mentions the United States as a "foreign power" that fanned the conflict in Syria (which used to be uniformly referred to as a "civil war," but an undeniable influx of jihadis from abroad, an influx aided by the Gulf monarchies, Turkey, the U.S. and U.K., made that designation impossible even for the purveyors of crass propaganda).

The U.S. role has not gone unmentioned in the "newspaper of record." The CIA runs covert operations in both Jordan and Turkey to rid Syria of its Baathist government. This has been reported by the Gray Lady in the past, as has the U.S. high-tech weapons transfers to the "good" Syrian rebels which always manage to find their way to the "bad" jihadis (for a helpful roundup of evidence of an Islamic State-U.S. linkage, see Tim Anderson's "The Relationship between Washington and ISIS: The Evidence.")

Now that we are at the fourth anniversary of the cracking of Syria, to get a sense of the U.S. role in that cracking, we should all again read Seymour Hersh's "The Red Line and the Rat Line," something to keep in mind as Hubbard ticks off the toll of Syria's destruction:

Aid organizations say that the rise of the Islamic State, also known as ISISor ISIL, has not only inflicted deprivation and violence on the communities it conquers, but has also siphoned international attention from a growing humanitarian crisis that is echoing increasingly far from Syria’s borders. Last year, for example, brought a record high for illegal migration across the Mediterranean to Europe. Many of those taking the often-lethal trips were Syrian.

Humanitarian organizations issued a barrage of reports for the anniversary of the war’s beginning that quantify how hard life has become for Syrians.

About half of the country’s prewar population has fled from home, according to the United Nations, and nearly four million people have become refugees abroad, putting large burdens on neighboring countries like Turkey, Jordan and Lebanon.

A report by the Syrian Center for Policy Research said that education was in a “state of collapse”; that 6 percent of Syrians had been killed or wounded; and that life expectancy had dropped by 20 years since 2010.

“The numbers are staggering,” said Valerie Amos, the departing emergency relief coordinator for the United Nations. “They are so staggering that they have become almost meaningless to people.” 

For Syrian civilians in the country, the war has meant a downward spiral of death, uncertainty, poverty and displacement.

***

Hopes that the situation would improve rose briefly a year ago when the United Nations Security Council passed its first resolution on Syria, calling for free access to humanitarian aid. Another resolution authorized aid shipments across borders not controlled by the Syrian government.

But last week, a coalition of 21 aid groups released a harsh report saying that the resolutions had failed to make much difference.

“There is more death, more displacement, an increase in restrictions by neighboring countries and a more desperate situation for the refugees and for those displaced inside Syria,” said Daniel Gorevan, who handles Syria policy for Oxfam, one of the groups that participated in the report.

In countries bordering Syria, the flood of refugees has put a heavy burden on economies and budgets. In Lebanon, where about one in five residents is a refugee, some communities have been transformed by the human tide.

There you have it. Another Palestinian-like diaspora in the Middle East, with all misery and conflict that entails for the future.

One wonders why if the U.S. accepted the rehabilitation in Egypt of the old guard Mubarak forces in a bloody display of despotic force, peace can't made with Assad. But judging from the State Department's quick walk back of Kerry's statement that peace can be negotiated with Assad, "Kerry Suggests There Is a Place for Assad in Syria Talks," the war in Syria will grind on until there is some sort of region-wide collapse. Why? Because U.S. policy answers to the Saudis and Israelis, and this is the way they want it.

The Obama administration is slowing its troop withdrawal schedule in Afghanistan. This story appeared the same day as The New York Times spotlighted Matthew Rosenberg's bombshell, "C.I.A. Cash Ended Up in Coffers of Al Qaeda," which is actually a follow up to a story he wrote nearly two-years ago about the slush fund the Central Intelligence Agency set up for then president Hamid Karzai. That was the fund tapped to pay Al Qaeda ransom money for a Afghan diplomat, Abdul Khaliq Farahi, son-in-law to a powerful advisor of Karzai.

As Rosenberg reports, the CIA's slush fund practices continue under current president Ashraf Ghani:

The cash flow has slowed since a new president, Ashraf Ghani, assumed office in September, Afghan officials said, refusing to elaborate. But they added that cash was still coming in, and that it was not clear how robust any current American constraints on it are. 

“It’s cash,” said a former Afghan security official. “Once it’s at the palace, they can’t do a thing about how it gets spent.”

This how the "Great Game" works. It is money for war, and it is war all the time.