(Article republished from MoonofAlabama.org)
In a review of the U.S. war on Syria Aaron Maté details how the Obama/Biden team empowered terrorist networks in Syria:
Based on declassified documents, news reports, and scattered admissions of U.S. officials, this overlooked history of how the Obama-Biden team's effort to oust the Assad regime – in concert with allies including Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Turkey – details the series of discrete decisions that ultimately led the U.S. to empower terror networks bent on its destruction.
The U.S. pushed an enormous amount of weapons into Syria. Those weapons did not end up with the 'moderate rebels' the U.S. propaganda had elevated but in the hands the most ideological committed and most brutal actors on the ground:
Although the Obama administration claimed that the weapons funneled to Syria were intended for "moderate rebels," they ultimately ended up in the hands of a jihadi-dominated insurgency. Just one month after the Benghazi attack, the New York Times reported that "hard-line Islamic jihadists," including groups "with ties or affiliations with Al Qaeda," have received "the lion’s share of the arms shipped to the Syrian opposition.
In a repeat of that 'strategy' the U.S. is currently pushing an enormous amount of weapons as well as mercenaries into Ukraine. The bigger stuff it delivers is not of much concern. But the huge amount of small arms and small ammunition, the anti-tank weapons and the handheld anti-air systems are of serious, long term danger. These fit into a car trunk and can easily be smuggled across boarders.
As I explained previously the rightwing ideology that is nurtured in Ukraine will become a danger primarily to European countries but also beyond:
Whitney Webb writes that the CIA is creating a new al-Qaeda. This time as a white supremacist rightwing militia. A part of these are mercenaries currently getting recruited by western 'security' companies. These militia will use all the 'small' weapons NATO countries are now delivering to the Ukraine to attack Russian troops and their supporters.
This will have serious backlashes in Poland and Romania from where these troops get deployed. In the longer run it will lead to rightwing terror coming back to those countries who are now supporting these forces. It will also help the long-term trend of rightwing parties increasing their share of votes.
Together with the economic devastation that U.S. and European sanctions on Russia are causing in their own economies this will end in regime-changes in several European countries. The U.S. is of course again protecting itself from as much as it can at the cost of others.
If there is a lesson to learn from Syria it is that the most ideological committed and most brutal people on the ground will not only proliferate their ideology into other countries. They are also the groups which inevitably end up holding the most dangerous weapons. They will give some to those groups in other countries which have the same ideology.
The fascist groups in Ukraine are not a Russian propaganda invention or just 'nationalist'. Back in 2018 even the NATO lobbyists at the Atlantic Council called them a dangerous threat:
Last week Hromadske Radio revealed that Ukraine’s Ministry of Youth and Sports is funding the neo-Nazi group C14 to promote “national patriotic education projects” in the country. On June 8, the Ministry announced that it will award C14 a little less than $17,000 for a children’s camp. It also awarded funds to Holosiyiv Hideout and Educational Assembly, both of which have links to the far-right. The revelation represents a dangerous example of law enforcement tacitly accepting or even encouraging the increasing lawlessness of far-right groups willing to use violence against those they don’t like.
Since the beginning of 2018, C14 and other far-right groups such as the Azov-affiliated National Militia, Right Sector, Karpatska Sich, and others have attacked Roma groups several times, as well as anti-fascist demonstrations, city council meetings, an event hosted by Amnesty International, art exhibitions, LGBT events, and environmental activists. On March 8, violent groups launched attacks against International Women’s Day marchers in cities across Ukraine. In only a few of these cases did police do anything to prevent the attacks, and in some they even arrested peaceful demonstrators rather than the actual perpetrators.
International human rights groups have sounded the alarm. After the March 8 attacks, Amnesty International warned that “Ukraine is sinking into a chaos of uncontrolled violence posed by radical groups and their total impunity. Practically no one in the country can feel safe under these conditions.” Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Freedom House, and Front Line Defenders warned in a letter that radical groups acting under “a veneer of patriotism” and “traditional values” were allowed to operate under an “atmosphere of near total impunity that cannot but embolden these groups to commit more attacks.”
Over the last eight years those groups in Ukraine have had lots of contacts with similar groups in other countries. They have invited foreigners to fight with them on the frontline with the Donbas republics. These are potential buyers for the weapons that are now being delivered to the Ukraine.
The U.S. has no idea who ends up with the ten thousands of weapons it is now providing:
The US has few ways to track the substantial supply of anti-tank, anti-aircraft and other weaponry it has sent across the border into Ukraine, sources tell CNN, a blind spot that's due in large part to the lack of US boots on the ground in the country -- and the easy portability of many of the smaller systems now pouring across the border. It's a conscious risk the Biden administration is willing to take.In the short term, the US sees the transfer of hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of equipment to be vital to the Ukrainians' ability to hold off Moscow's invasion. A senior defense official said Tuesday that it is "certainly the largest recent supply to a partner country in a conflict." But the risk, both current US officials and defense analysts say, is that in the long term, some of those weapons may wind up in the hands of other militaries and militias that the US did not intend to arm.
Transparency International ranks Ukraine as number 122 out of 180 countries. The lower the rank on that list the worse the corruption. Whoever officially gets handed the weapons in Ukraine will likely put a part of the stash aside to later sell it to whomever may be interested in them. That will be easy to do:
"I couldn't tell you where they are in Ukraine and whether the Ukrainians are using them at this point," a senior defense official told reporters last week. "They're not telling us every round of ammunition they're firing and who and at when. We may never know exactly to what degree they've using the Switchblades."The Defense Department doesn't earmark the weapons it sends for particular units, according to Pentagon press secretary John Kirby.
Trucks loaded with pallets of arms provided by the Defense Department are picked up by Ukrainian armed forces -- primarily in Poland -- and then driven into Ukraine, Kirby said, "then it's up to the Ukrainians to determine where they go and how they're allocated inside their country."
One can not trust Ukrainian officials who claim that these weapons will only be used for good purposes:
Privately, officials recognize that Ukraine has an incentive to give only information that will bolster their case for more aid, more arms and more diplomatic assistance."It's a war -- everything they do and say publicly is designed to help them win the war. Every public statement is an information operation, every interview, every Zelensky appearance broadcast is an information operation," said another source familiar with western intelligence.
Zelensky constantly demands more weapons and no one has an idea where they end up. How many will he himself set aside to later sell and who will buy those?
The experience from the war on Syria tells us that the weapons that 'fell off a truck' in Ukraine will eventually end up with the most ideological committed and most brutal people. In the Ukraine those are the fascists. Some international criminals gangs who want to eliminate rivals might also be interested.
How long will it take until a Switchblade suicide drone will drop on a police car in Poland? How long until an anti-tank weapon will be used in a gang fight in Paris? How long until a Stinger anti-air missile will down civil airplane in Rome?
One, three or five years?
It is a danger we will now all be living with.
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