Who is US Ambassador to Syria Robert S. Ford? The Covert Role of the US Embassy in Supporting an Armed Insurrection

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky
Global Research, September 30, 2011
30 September 2011

In recent developments the US Ambassador to Syria Robert S. Ford has been “attacked” by “pro-regime demonstrators”.

Described as an act of violence and aggression by the Western media, Ambassador Robert S Ford was pelted with eggs and tomatoes in Damascus on Thursday. 

“We condemn this unwarranted attack in the strongest possible terms,” Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said in a statement. “Ambassador Ford and his aides were conducting normal embassy business, and this attempt to intimidate our diplomats through violence is wholly unjustified.” (NYT, September 29, 2011) 

Early in the week, government supporters also threw tomatoes, eggs and stones at France’s ambassador to Syria Eric Chevalier. 

Who is Robert Stephen Ford? 

Is his mission to Damascus one of peace and reconciliation?

Ambassador Robert S. Ford is no ordinary diplomat. He was U.S. representative in January 2004 to the Shiite city of Najaf in Iraq. Najaf was the stronghold of the Mahdi army

A few months later he was appointed “Number Two Man” (Minister Counsellor for Political Affairs), at the US embassy in Baghdad at the outset of John Negroponte’s tenure as US Ambassador to Iraq (June 2004- April 2005).

Since his arrival in Damascus in late January 2011, Ambassador Robert S. Ford played a central role in laying the groundwork for the development of an armed insurgency directed against as the government of Bashar al Assad.

US Ambassador Robert Ford arrived in Damascus in late January 2011 at the height of the protest movement in Egypt. 

America’s previous Ambassador to Syria was recalled by Washington following the 2005 assassination of former Prime minister Rafick Hariri, which was blamed, without evidence, on the government of Bashar Al Assad.

The author was in Damascus on January 27, 2011 when Washington’s Envoy presented his credentials to the Al Assad government. (See photo below).

At the outset of my visit to Syria in January 2011,  I reflected on the significance of this diplomatic appointment and the role it might play in a covert process of political destabilization. I did not, however, foresee that this process would be implemented within less than two months  following the instatement of Robert S. Ford as US Ambassador to Syria.

The reinstatement of a US ambassador in Damascus, but more specifically the choice of Robert S. Ford as US ambassador, bears a direct relationship to the onset of the protest movement in mid-March against the government of Bashar al Assad.

Robert S. Ford was the man for the job. As “Number Two” at the US embassy in Baghdad (2004-2005) under the helm of Ambassador John D. Negroponte, he played a key role in implementing the Pentagon’s “Iraq Salvador Option”. The latter consisted in supporting Iraqi death squadrons and paramilitary forces modelled on the experience of  Central America. 

The Western media has misled public opinion on the nature of the Arab protest movement by failing to address the support provided by the US State Department as well as US foundations (including the National Endowment for Democracy (NED)) to selected pro-US opposition groups. Known and documented, the U.S. State Department “has been been funding opponents of Syrian President Bashar Assad, since 2006. (U.S. admits funding Syrian opposition – World – CBC News April 18, 2011)

The protest movement in Syria was upheld by the media as part of the “Arab Spring”, presented to public opinion as a pro-democracy protest movement which spread spontaneously from Egypt and the Maghreb to the Mashriq. The fact of the matter is that these various country initiatives were closely timed and coordinated. Michel Chossudovsky, The Protest Movement in Egypt: “Dictators” do not Dictate, They Obey Orders, Global Research, January 29, 2011)

There is reason to believe that events in Syria, however, were planned well in advance in coordination with the process of regime change in other Arab countries including Egypt and Tunisia.

The outbreak of the protest movement in the southern border city of Daraa was carefully timed to follow the events in Tunisia and Egypt.

It is worth noting that the US Embassy in various countries has played a central role in supporting opposition groups. In Egypt, for instance, the April 6 Youth Movement was supported directly by the US embassy in Cairo

Ambassador Robert S Ford presents his credentials to President Bashar al Assad, January 2011

Ambassador Robert S Ford and President Bashar Al Assad, January 2011

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The Pentagon’s “Salvador Option”: The Deployment of Death Squads in Iraq and Syria

by Prof. Michel Chossudovsky

The original source of this article is Global Research
Copyright © Prof Michel Chossudovsky, Global Research, 2011

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Articles by: Prof Michel Chossudovsky

About the author:

Michel Chossudovsky is an award-winning author, Professor of Economics (emeritus) at the University of Ottawa, Founder and Director of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG), Montreal, Editor of Global Research. He has undertaken field research in Latin America, Asia, the Middle East, sub-Saharan Africa and the Pacific and has written extensively on the economies of developing countries with a focus on poverty and social inequality. He has also undertaken research in Health Economics (UN Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), UNFPA, CIDA, WHO, Government of Venezuela, John Hopkins International Journal of Health Services (1979, 1983) He is the author of 13 books including The Globalization of Poverty and The New World Order (2003), America’s “War on Terrorism” (2005), The Globalization of War, America’s Long War against Humanity (2015). He is a contributor to the Encyclopaedia Britannica. His writings have been published in more than twenty languages. In 2014, he was awarded the Gold Medal for Merit of the Republic of Serbia for his writings on NATO’s war of aggression against Yugoslavia. He can be reached at [email protected]

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