Controlling the Narrative on Syria: Turkish Aggression, Kurdish Independence, and Honouring the White Helmets

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After nearly eight and a half years of conflict, the Syrian government and the country’s armed forces finally seems to be consolidating a victory over the Islamic State and other opposition forces that had formerly dominated the bulk of the land area of the West Asian country.

By the end of August, the Syrian military forces’ had recaptured a former rebel stronghold – the strategic town of Khan Sheikhoun in Idlib province – a major victory in its efforts to re-establish control of Syrian territory.

Shortly after, at the beginning of October, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced that his country’s military would be launching a military assault in the northeast section of Syria, a region controlled by U.S.-backed Kurdish militia. The Trump Administration then announced it would be withdrawing troops stationed in the region in the face of bipartisan outrage and concern that America’s allies in the area, the Syrian Kurds, would be left at the mercy of the attacking Turkish army.

As of this writing, a new peace agreement, secured by Russian President Putin and Turkish President Erdogan, has halted the Turkish offensive.

The larger picture, however, is that Syria, like Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya before it, has been targeted by the U.S. for regime change. A sophisticated propaganda apparatus has concealed this agenda of conquest behind the benign aphorism of ‘humanitarian intervention’ – protecting vulnerable freedom loving Syrians from a brutal dictatorial leader.

Consequently, elements of the anti-imperialist Left have accepted the demonization of Assad, and have condemned Trump’s U.S. troop withdrawal even though U.S. Force presence in Syria is illegal. The Kurds, for their part have attracted the sympathies of the American mainstream, as well as the anarchist and feminist Left.

Debunked claims about the use by Assad of chemical weapons against his own people or the ‘heroic’ White Helmets rescuing civilians from the rubble of the Syrian war go unchallenged.

This week’s Global Research News Hour radio program examines and deconstructs some leading pro-war Syrian narratives as the Russia-Turkish peace deal takes effect.

In our first half hour, we hear from Laith Marouf. This political commentator and Middle East analyst provides some historical context for the recent Turkish incursion and the agreement brokered recently to resolve that situation. We next hear from a member of the Syrian diaspora in Canada, Majd Zooda, about the removal of Waseem Ramli from a high profile Syrian representative post in Montreal and what it means for Syrian and non-Syrian Canadians. Finally, we re-air part of an interview by Chris Cook of CFUV’s Gorilla-Radio with Journalist Vanessa Beeley about her August article on Canadian human rights lawyer Irwin Cotler and his championing of the White Helmets.

Laith Marouf is a long time multimedia consultant and producer and currently serves as Senior Consultant at the Community Media Advocacy Centre (www.cmacentre.org) and the coordinator of ICTV, a project to secure a national multi-ethnic news television station in Canada (www.tele1.ca). Laith derives much of his understanding of Middle Eastern Affairs from his ancestral background of being both of Palestinian and of Syrian extraction. He is currently based in Beirut.

Majd Zooda is a Ph.D. Candidate in science education at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at the University of Toronto. She was born in Kuwait but moved to Damascus in 2005 where she lived until 2012 before moving to Canada.

Vanessa Beeley is an independent investigative journalist and photographer. She is associate editor at 21st Century Wire. She is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

(Global Research News Hour Episode 274)

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