Both International Business Times and Russia Today have joined The Sun and Daily Mirror in reporting that British Special Forces are secretly training ‘New Syrian Army’ (NSA) rebels in Jordan. It was not a story which found a place in the BBC.
IBTimes says the aim of the Marine Commandos and SAS is to equip and empower the US-backed NSA to fight Islamic State or ‘Daesh’ (why do American officials pronounce it ‘Dash’? for that matter, why do they pronounce ‘Putin’ as ‘Putn’)?. Those who join the NSA are supposed to sign a pledge only to fight IS and not the Syrian Army. But don’t let us be surprised if they do turn their fire on Syrian regular forces.
Just days ago, American-led aircraft deliberately attacked a Syrian army unit, resulting in 62 deaths. According to The Independent, The Ministry of Defence confirmed British jets were involved. So 62 sons – and maybe husbands and fathers – died by the hand of UK Defence Secretary the Rt Hon Michael Fallon MP. Hours after the attack, IS forces over-ran the Syrian defences in the same area. What a coincidence.
MONEY DOWN THE DRAIN
Previous attempts by the US to train Syrian rebels have met with disaster. The Pentagon wasted $500 million training just four or five men in 2015. Rebels even handed vehicles and ammunition over to extremists. The programme was shut down in October of that year. In March of this year President Obama said he was starting up a new version of the scheme.
Earlier this month, RT somewhat gleefully reported that US-trained jihadists chased their American special forces mentors out of the northern Syrian town of Al-Rai. It was claimed, very plausibly, the jihadists chanted ‘crusaders’, ‘dogs’, ‘infidels’ after them.
Does anyone in the Pentagon or Ministry of Defence seriously think current training operations will do any better? From all the talk of ‘lessons being learned’, it appears they do. Our money is going down the drain, or worse. If it ends up being used to attack President Assad’s forces, it will be simply prolonging the conflict.
WHY WESTERN MEDIA SAYS ASSAD CAN DO NOTHING RIGHT
There is one reason and one reason only why the United States wants ‘regime change’ in Syria. It is because President Bashar al Assad is an ally of Russia’s President Putin. Russia has both air bases and a sea port (Tartus) in Syria. The US and its NATO allies, including France and the UK, seek to weaken Russia. Replacing Assad with a puppet regime drawn from Syrian ‘exiles’ would do the job nicely.
If we view the news which comes out from Western media about alleged atrocities committed by ‘the Syrian regime’, ‘Assad’ or ‘Russia’ with this ‘regime-change’ purpose in mind, every negative story will make sense.
Do we believe the Americans or the British are above ‘false-flag’ operations designed to discredit the Syrian Government? Sadly, no, we don’t. Do we believe they would happily blame atrocities committed by their jihadist allies on President Assad? Sadly, yes we do.
BORIS JOHNSON ‘GOES NATIVE’
Our hopes were high (well not that high) that the appointment of Rt Hon Boris Johnson MP as Foreign Secretary in July might bring with it a change of attitude towards Russia and Syria. From the backbenches, Mr Johsnon had publicly advocated that the UK should work with Vladimir Putin and Bashar al-Assad against ISIS, which as Tim Eaton pointed out on the Chatham House website was at odds with current government policy.
Sadly, it did not take long for the ‘Sir Humphreys*’ (led by the PUS, Simon McDonald) at the Foreign Office to put the new Secretary of State in his place. Two months later Boris was hosting exiled Syrian opposition figures, those described to the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Select Committee as ‘a busted flush’. Asked on BBC news if the meeting would have any positive effect, the BBC’s Jeremy Bowen almost laughed before saying the leaders and their demands were irrelevant.
Among those demands is that President Assad step down within six months as part of any settlement. Not even the US Secretary of State John Kerry says that any more. But that did not stop Boris repeating it a day or so ago. Now he is blaming Russia for everything from running a ‘proxy war’ (as if they are the only ones) to destroying aid convoys (as if the rebels would never do that) to bombing hospitals (ibid) to protracting the violence.
WHO IS RESPONSIBLE FOR THE SYRIAN CRISIS?
If anyone is responsible for what Boris Johnson now describes as “a cynical and barbaric protraction of violence and it is tragic,” it is the US and the UK. The reality is President Assad is the only guarantor of stability in Syria. It’s Assad or the deluge. He is the only one who will defend the rights of religious minorities including Christians. (The UK’s jihadist clients have destroyed churches). Russia will not let him fall and nor should they.
Those perpetuating the violence in Syria are the US and the UK, namely Boris Johnson, his understudy Alan Duncan MP, his predecessors Philip Hammond and William Lord Hague and Defence Secretary Michael Fallon. By encouraging, training and funding the armed insurgency Her Majesty’s ministers and their civil servants can take full responsibility for the destruction of Syrian infrastructure, the deaths of civilians, loss of property and businesses, persecution of Christians in rebel areas and the waves of Syrian migrants flooding across Europe, with IS sleepers among them. (View my video, ‘Syria Sense and Compassion‘.)
And the UK is doing it just in the vain hope that Russia might lose its bases in Mediterranean. It is a scandal.
As Baroness Cox said earlier this month, peace in Syria cannot be reached through Western interference.
PLEASE PRAY that the UK Government will support or at least get out of the way of the Syrian Government as it tries to regain control and establish peace. Pray for the remaining Christians in Syria as they try to hold their communities together and rebuild their lives. Pray for the time when bricks will take the place of bombs.
Please leave other prayer points as comments below.
- In the TV comedy ‘Yes Minister‘ the character of Permanent Under-Secretary (he’s the top civil servant in the department) Sir Humphrey Appleby (played by Nigel Hawthorne) was constantly ensuring the new minister Jim Hacker (Paul Eddington) kept to the department’s official line.
Ephesians 6:12 For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.
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Boris Johnson recently wrote an article for The Times in which he blamed all the ills of Syria on President Assad. It was a simplistic argument where Assad, as the scapegoat, was to bear away all the sins of all the factions, and hence, by removing him, peace and harmony would be restored. If Boris thinks the British public will swallow that, he underestimates our intelligence. He has also been cosying up to Saudi Arabia in some sort of alliance against the Assad regime. I hope he is not unaware that the undercurrent in all this conflict is between Sunni vs Shia (Alawi) Islam, and that the Saudis are motivated by that issue rather than any desire to see an end to the violence.
I support fully the delegation led by Baroness Cox in their quest to find a more balanced report of the narrative in Syria. The media coverage is, as usual, extremely biased against the Assad regime. What is totally forgotten is the plight of Christians who were relatively free and protected before the troubles began, and who are now caught in the crossfire between the two sides.
All good points. And who do you think wrote Boris’s article for The Times? Step forward, Sir Humphrey.
Romans 13:1-5
My post last evening was too brief.
Is not the support of rebel groups in Syria contrary to Romans 13:1-5? The Syrian people, especially the Christian population, have really suffered and Europe has a refugee problem. Russia has helped the legitimate ruler and this may explain why God has allowed Putin to do so well politically.
As far as Assad is concerned, it is a case of ‘My enemy’s enemy (Assad) is my friend’. In what could be the most remarkable coalition of western forces and those of Russia – since we stood together against Nazism over seventy years ago – united to support Assad against ISIS (as who or what could take his place were he to fall?), the West should be working to ensure ISIS’ defeat while keeping Assad’s rebels in safe camps, so as to a) guard against him bombing his own people and b) to ease up the refugee pressure happening in Europe.
Or Poon even. I sympathise.
Supposing in a Walt Disney film, Winnie the Pooh had a special tin to keep his treasures in, then Walt Disney might very well market copies of it as a Pooh Tin. I don’t think Americans would have any difficulty at all saying that.
So why can’t they say Putin ? It’s exactly the same.
In reference to the comment above, why indeed has “God allowed Putin to do so well politically” and sound more moral than most of our Western leaders? Perhaps we should look back to1917, when the Blessed Virgin Mary appeared to 3 little children in the small village of Fatima in Portugal, and in the course of those 6 apparitions, (culminating in the great miracle of the Sun on October 13th 1917 – well documented in the local Portuguese press at the time), she warned about Russia spreading her errors (communist ideology) throughout the whole world (effectively prophesying the Russion revolution), about wars and persecutions, about nations being annihilated, unless people stopped offending God. She then affirmed that God wanted Russia consecrated specifically to her immaculate heart by the Pope in union with all the bishops in the world. Alas Popes from Pope XII onwards have failed to do this consecration to the letter, exactly as requested by the Mother of Our Lord Jesus Christ, and we are paying the penalty for the failure of these Popes to fullfil, with Roman officials preferring to use a false diplomacy to the point of undermining itself in those communist countries, and worrying about not offending the Russians at the time. Undeniably, the Catholic church has been infiltrated by the very freemasons and communists who have wanted to destroy Christ’s church or at least subvert and hijack it to further their designs to establish the New World Order. What a turnaround, that Russia under Putin should now appear to be defending Christians from Islam and from the masonic forces. Certainly Catholic prophecy suggests that Russia will be used as God’s instrument to chastise mankind for generally turning its back on God but that the consecration of Russia to the immaculate heart, will be eventually done as prophesied by our Lady. Russia will be converted and will play an important part in realising God’s peace plan for the world, through our Lady. But it will require much prayer and sacrifice of all of us christians to win this grace from God.
OK. We don’t do sectarian arguments here, but you raise an interesting point.
Whichever way one looks at it, it is indeed paradoxical, ironic, or whatever, that the Soviet Union put so much effort into destroying the moral foundations of the West, financing gay groups and so on, and now the Russian Federation appears as the guardian of the Christian faith, banning homosexual propaganda at home and supporting the protectors of Christianity in the Middle East.
Equally, the West, supposed guardians of a rich Christian heritage, are now financing jihadist Muslims abroad and secularists at home (Stonewall and the abortionists only exist with public money) all bent on eradicating Christianity.
Whether the Russian Orthodox Patriarchs would be cool with the Pope of Rome pitching up and consecrating their land to Mary is of course a moot point and one we are not going to enter into!
Thank you for allowing my comment to be posted notwithstanding our sectarian differences.But I do admire you for your strong christian stance and the great work you are doing and I read your articles with much interest. Certainly let us continue to pray for each other in this battle “against principalities and power, against the rulers of the world of this darkness, against the spirits of wickedness in the high places.” God bless.
I was very pleased to find a Christian who not only knows a lot about what is going on in Syria, but who speaks out about it. One point I would disagree on is that it is not ALL about Assad being an ally of Russia, but there are also important oil and gas pipeline routes, and of course the general destabilising of the whole Muslim Middle East (and North African) countries.
Here are a few articles/videos which are extremely important; I don’t know if you allow links, so I will just put a brief description of the info, and the title of the article or video, which if entered in the search engine should come up with the article/video:
Videoed interviews of ex-French Foreign Minister Roland Dumas saying when he visited Britain in 2009 he was approached by ‘high British officials” who told him Britain was going to overthrow Assad with the use of mercenaries – two years before the armed insurgency began:
‘Roland Dumas: The British prepared for war in Syria 2 years before the eruption of the crisis’:
‘France’s Former Foreign Minister: UK Government Prepared War in Syria Two Years Before 2011 Protests’:
‘Former French Foreign Minister: The War against Syria was Planned Two years before “The Arab Spring”:
4* General (Retd.) Wesley Clark’s testimony that in 2001 he was told the US was going to overthrow the Syrian government (and six more)(Clark had also been Supreme Allied Commander – Europe):
‘General Wesley Clark: Wars Were Planned – Seven Countries In Five Years’:
‘General Wesley Clark: The US will attack 7 countries in 5 years’:
‘Global Warfare: “We’re going to take out 7 countries in 5 years: Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan & Iran..”:
‘WikiLeaks Reveals How the US Aggressively Pursued Regime Change in Syria, Igniting a Bloodbath’:
‘Iraqi army downs two UK planes carrying weapons forISIL’:
‘Iraq’s Popular Forces Release Photo of Downed US Chopper Carrying Arms for ISIL’:
As a Christian, I wholeheartedly agree with Jesus’ statement about ‘The Truth shall set you free’; in this case, it will also hopefuly help to avoid another bloody awr based on lies, and with the intention of ‘Regime Change’, with no care for the deaths, atrocities and destruction we have seen all too much of in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria (with others on the horizon).
Another point is, the SAS also trained Pol Pot’s murderous ‘troops’ after they had been kicked out of Cambodia by the Vietnamese. So, like the SS, they tend to ‘obey orders’, no matter how repugnant.