“the reality on the ground is far from the picture imposed by dis-information in Western media… Peace in Syria could be saved if everyone told the truth.”
– Bishop Philip Tournyol Clos
A competent eyewitness has suggested that the prime agents of change in Syria are not genuine FSA troops and irregulars but “foreign fighters, mercenary Libyans, Lebanese, militants from the Gulf, Afghans, Turks.”
So says one angry French Bishop after a recent visit to three Syrian cities, in an article June 4 in the Vatican’s online journal Agenzia Fides.
The worst violence in Syria is characterized by the Bishop as “the bloody work of adventurers who are not Syrian… armed groups independent of each other, heavily armed and bankrolled by Qatar and Saudi Arabia.”
NOT SYRIAN? INDEPENDENT OF EACH OTHER? This could mean two things.
(1) If civilians are being attacked by outsiders, there is no ‘civil war’ in Syria in the normal sense, which would require that Syrians are fighting fellow Syrians. But somebody’s trying to make it look like civil war.
(2) If the killers are foreigners and “independent of each other” then some or all of them are outside the control of the FSA (in fact, no outside group is likely to be receiving orders or arms or paychecks from the FSA). But if that is true, then there is no real freedom fighting going on in the worst pockets of violence – since we cannot speak of the presence of the FSA in areas where there are no forces they actually control.
The outside fighting groups singled out by the Bishop for greatest condemnation are Sunni Salafists – whose actions have caused him to conclude that this sect is now pursuing a very open and obvious jihad against non-Sunnis in that nation, “especially against the Alawites.”
The Bishop tells how the Salafist fighters administer a kind of trial-by-catechism to a captive citizen suspected of being Alawite:
“They ask him to cite the genealogies dating back to Moses. And they ask to recite a prayer that the Alawites removed. The Alawites have no chance to get out alive.”
While in Homs, the Bishop visited the only two areas in that city which contain Christian churches – Diwan Al Bustan and Hamidieh – and reports that these are among the areas hardest hit by the depredations of the outsiders.
“The picture for us – he continues – is utter desolation: the church of Mar Elian is half destroyed and that of Our Lady of Peace is still occupied by the rebels. Christian homes are severely damaged due to the fighting and completely emptied of their inhabitants, who fled without taking anything.”
The Bishop is defiant and is naming names: “The enemies of Syria have enlisted some of the Muslim Brotherhood in order to destroy the brotherly relations that traditionally existed between Muslims and Christians: Yet, to date, they are not able to: they have provoked a contrary reaction and the two communities are more united than before.”
Read the article in English translation, here
MY COMMENT: The Muslim Brotherhood is a natural pick for this kind of insane proxy war against fellow Muslims, because they are still a little deranged by the thought of revenge for a 30-year old defeat which their group suffered in Hama, Syria, when their violent uprising there was ruthlessly suppressed by troops of the regime of Assad’s father in 1982.
But what about al-Qaeda? There can be no doubt that the black-banner dudes are also there, and that they are also foreigners, and deranged enough to kill fellow Muslims, and that they are not Muslim Brotherhood. The Brotherhood is propped up by the Gulfies, according to the Bishop’s article, but al-Quaeda is more likely being supported by our clever/stupid Western intelligence agencies (because they don’t trust the GCC’s proxies to get the job done right).
Caught in the middle, naturally, are the honest citizens of Syria.