Tag: regime change

The curiously evolving relationship between Russia and the terrorist group that took control of Syria

Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (“HTS”) is a coalition of Sunni Islamist insurgent groups in northern Syria. It evolved from Jabhat al-Nusra which was al-Qaeda’s former branch in Syria. In an effort to appear moderate, HTS cut ties with al-Qaeda in 2016. Despite these efforts, HTS remains listed as a terrorist organisation due to its history and ongoing activities.

HTS is designated as a terrorist organisation by the US, Russia, Turkey, the United Kingdom and other states.  But since HTS took control of Syria at the end of last year, it seems Russia, along with other governments, is willing to consider removing HTS from the terrorist list, even though there is no evidence that HTS has changed its ways.

We don’t have any answers, only questions.  Questions such as: Was the takeover of Syria agreed upon between powerbrokers in Syria, including Russia and the United States, before HTS launched their offensive?  Were groups such as HTS used to give the appearance of a takeover while, in reality, it was a changing of the guard?  

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US helps Syria’s ruling Al Qaeda offshoot while punishing its people

In his memoir of his time as a senior aide to President Obama, Ben Rhodes recalled one of the administration’s top quandaries in Syria.

Back in late 2012, the CIA was waging a multi-billion dollar covert war to help insurgents topple then-Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. By that point, Al Qaeda had established a powerful franchise in Syria known as Jabhat al-Nusra, which international actors were promptly designating as a terrorist organization.

Yet for a US government seeking regime change in Damascus, adding al-Nusra to the State Department terror list posed a problem. On the ground, Rhodes acknowledged, al-Nusra “was probably the strongest fighting force” against the Syrian government. Moreover, rather than coming into conflict with one another, it was “also clear that the more moderate opposition” favored by the US was in fact “fighting side by side with al-Nusra.” Therefore, Rhodes recalled arguing to his colleagues, designating al-Nusra as a terrorist organization “would alienate the same people we want to help.”

Rhodes and his compatriots ended up losing that debate. Yet while the State Department designated al-Nusra in December 2012, it turns out that the US still found a way to help. By placing Nusra on the terrorist list, the New York Times explained that month, the Obama administration hoped “to remove one of the biggest obstacles to increasing Western support for the rebellion: the fear that money and arms could flow to a jihadi group that could further destabilize Syria and harm Western interests.”

In other words, designating al-Nusra as a terrorist group was a toothless move that helped the Obama administration continue arming the insurgency that the Nusra militants dominated. The notion that US sanctions would force an Al Qaeda-dominated rebellion to abandon its leading fighting force was a fantasy – if not a deliberate ruse — that ensured that US weapons would continue to flow.

And that they did: three months after Nusra’s terrorist designation, the Associated Press reported that the US and its proxy war allies had “dramatically stepped up weapons supplies to Syrian rebels” to help them “seize Damascus.” Despite the Obama administration’s public opposition to Nusra, “there is little clear evidence from the front lines that all the new, powerful weapons are going to groups which have been carefully vetted by the U.S.” Instead, insurgents “including Jabhat al-Nusra” had been seen “with such weapons.” Once U.S. weapons arrived in Syria, the Obama administration quietly acknowledged that it had no way of controlling who would use them. “We needed plausible deniability in case the arms got into the hands of al-Nusra,” a former senior administration official explained in 2013.

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Pretending Your Partners Aren’t Who They Are

Maybe Abu Mohammad al-Jolani, the leader of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), who is now the leader of Syria, really has changed. Maybe he has matured, as he told CNN, as if his years as an al-Qaeda terrorist leader were a youthful indiscretion.

But the world cannot simply take the pragmatic rebel at his word. On December 8, after Asaad fell and Jolani took over control of Syria, U.S. President Joe Biden said “We’ve taken note of statements by the leaders of these rebel groups in recent days and they’re saying the right things now. But as they take on greater responsibility, we will assess not just their words but their actions.”

But judge them just by their words is precisely what the Biden administration did. HTS is designated as a Foreign Terrorist Organization, and the State Department has a $10 million reward for information leading to the capture of Jolani. Despite the designation and the bounty, U.S. State Department officials met with Jolani on December 20, at which time, Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Barbara Leaf told Jolani that “based on our discussion,” the U.S. “would not be pursuing the Rewards for Justice reward offer that has been in effect for some years.” The decision was based, not on Jolani’s actions, but on his words, on “our discussion.”

In proxy wars and regime changes, there are always three parties: the country undertaking the action, the government or country the action is aimed at, and the domestic group that is being used or that is intended to replace the current regime. The history of overt and covert U.S. operations is littered with disasters that resulted from a third party that was as, or more, nefarious than the regime it replaced. In order to avoid immersing itself in the turbulent seas of direct action, the U.S. has dipped its toes into some pretty fetid proxy waters. The challenge after is to rebrand the proxy group to sell it to the international community.

Abu Mohammad al-Jolani has traded his al-Qaeda name for his given name, Ahmed al-Sharaa, and his rebel clothes for Western style clothes. The founder of the al-Nusra Front, the Syrian branch of Al-Qaeda, has renamed and rebranded his organization. He has made politically pragmatic promises to the United States. But terrorists are not always to be trusted. And whether he is al-Jolani or al-Sharaa, must be judged by his actions, as Biden and Leaf insist, and not by his words.

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Sorry, But The Russian ‘Caesar’ Is Not Going To Bring Down Putin

At CDM, we strive for truth in our reporting, no matter where that truth lands, or whose ox it gores.

For instance, we were the first to verify the attempted coup against Russian President Vladimir Putin by Wagner leader Yevgeny Prigozhin was indeed a coup; Prigozhin did indeed lead troops against Putin to Moscow. Other ‘Conservative Inc’ personalities came up with wild theories as to why the Wagner movement of forces from Donbass on the Russian capital was an elaborate ruse, to move mercenaries to Belarus.

Anyone with sources on the ground, like CDM has, would have known this not to be true, and farcical.

Prigozhin was murdered shortly after the coup ended, when his plane was shot out of the sky by Russian military elements, verifying the veracity of our analysis.

The legacy media is now pushing a new theory, that a Russian national with the war name – Caesar – is going to bring down the Putin regime, leading a band of Russian national mercenaries, numbering a few thousand at best, against the Russian army to defeat Putin.

In a video posted by ‘The U.S. Sun’, ‘Caesar’ tells of how the ‘man on the street’ in Russia is talking about his efforts and a movement is spreading to create a new Russia, without Putin at the helm.

Once again, anyone with sources on the ground in Ukraine, and Russia, would understand this is ridiculous — no one is talking about ‘Caesar’ on the streets of Russia.

In fact, the situation is just the opposite – Russians believe Putin has outfoxed NATO and the West, and will ultimately be victorious in Russia’s goals for the ‘special military operation’ in East Ukraine.

On another note, anyone with knowledge of Russian history, would know ‘Caesar’ is pronounced ‘Tsar’ in Russian. No one in a Slavic population would use the word ‘Caesar’.

In addition, Russian military members do not speak English, especially those fighting at the grunt level on the ground. If they do speak English, it means they have studied at Moscow universities and have status in society. If they go to Moscow to study and gain status, they would not be a grunt in the army at the front.

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Al Qaida Is Winning – The New Caliphate In Syria

Biden began his term in office by abandoning Afghanistan to the Taliban and allowing the creation of a new terrorist super state. He is finishing his time in the Oval Office by watching helplessly as a new Caliphate is formed in the rubble of what was once Syria. Divorced from reality as always, his hapless State Department now calls the jihadi ruler of Damascus Al-Jolani a “pragmatist” and talks mindlessly about accommodation and cooperation with mass murderers and rapists.

Meanwhile, inside Syria, the new Islamic rulers are losing no time in consolidating their rule and making clear their intentions. On 26 December, Al-Jolani appointed former Al-Qaeda commander and Nusra Front co-founder Anas Hassan Khattab as the head of the country’s general intelligence agency. Khattab was designated a “terrorist” by the United Nations a decade ago. According to the UN, he was involved “in the financing, planning, facilitating, preparing, or perpetrating of acts or activities by, in conjunction with, under the name of, on behalf of, or in support of” and “otherwise supporting acts or activities of” the Nusra Front. This Al-Qaeda offshoot was rebranded as Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) in 2017.

Those are the guys who now run Syria.

As the head of intelligence Khattab’s job will not be to prepare detailed analyses of foreign developments. He will be in charge of domestic security. His job will be to crush any dissent and guarantee Al-Jolani stays in power. He has already been performing that function in the areas that HTS has controlled for years, where torture and murder are common tactics used to stifle dissent.

Last week, Asaad Hassan al-Shibani, a founding member of Al-Qaeda in Syria, was appointed foreign minister for the new terrorist state being created in Syria.

Meanwhile, more information is becoming available on the composition of the jihadist forces that drove Assad from power. Contrary to press reports that want to characterize the ousting of Assad as some sort of liberal, democratic, populist movement, the reality appears to be that substantial numbers of fighters from outside of Syria are present on the ground. Just before Christmas, a video surfaced of a Christmas tree in a town in Syria being burned by Islamists. It now appears the terrorists who carried out this action were Uzbek fighters fighting with Al-Jolani’s forces.

In fact, substantial numbers of Central Asians are in Syria and serving the new Caliphate. According to the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI),

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U.S. Media Ignored How CIA’s Operation Timber Sycamore Paved the Way For the Syrian “Revolution”

On December 8, 2024, Syria’s long-standing ruler Bashar al-Assad fled to Russia after being deposed by Sunni militia forces in what New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman called the “biggest…most game-changing event in the Middle East in the last 45 years.”[1]

Friedman was enthusiastic about the regime change, though Syria’s new head of state, Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, had a $10 million bounty placed on his head by the U.S. State Department in 2017 as a wanted terrorist.[2]

The “blazer-wearing revolutionary,” as CNN called him,[3] had been imprisoned from 2006 to 2011 at Abu Ghraib and other U.S. military prisons for supporting al-Qaeda in Iraq.

Colin P. Clarke, a counterterrorism analyst at a security consulting firm in New York was quoted in The New York Times as stating that, under Jolani’s rule, northwest Syria was “a harsh place where critics are silenced, tortured, jailed and disappeared.”[4] Hookahs and music were also banned, as they were under the Taliban in Afghanistan.[5]

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Leaked files show secret UK Syria project boosted Jolani’s HTS 

In the name of building a “moderate opposition,” London established a social service and media network in areas controlled by HTS, benefitting the group it branded as a dangerous Al Qaeda affiliate.

Leaked British intelligence files reviewed by The Grayzone raise grave questions about whether London has aided the rise of Hayʼat Tahrir al-Sham, the Islamist group which was proscribed by Western governments until it seized power in Syria this December. 

Prime Minister Keir Starmer has stated it is “too early” to remove HTS from Britain’s list of proscribed terrorist organizations. When the group was added in 2017, its entry stated it should be considered among “alternative names” for Al Qaeda. It was therefore illegal for British government officials to meet with HTS representatives while its status endured.

However, on December 16, British diplomats including Ann Snow, London’s special representative for Syria, convened a summit with Jolani and other HTS leaders in Damascus.

That same day, The Times of London granted Jolani a sympathetic interview, during which he called for an end to Western sanctions on the country, promising Syria would not be a “launchpad for attacks on Israel” under his watch. This followed a fawning BBC profile intended to highlight Jolani’s “rebranding” of HTS. The stage now appears set for HTS’ proscription to be rescinded, and London to recognize the group as legitimate rulers of post-Assad Syria. 

The UK’s embrace of HTS represents the culmination of a long and secretive process which began when the group’s leadership was still closely aligned with Al Qaeda’s Syrian branch, Jabhat Al Nusra, and even the Islamic State. While British intelligence once embarked on a campaign to undermine HTS in opposition-controlled areas of Syria, while cultivating supposedly “moderate” factions, leaked files reviewed by The Grayzone reveal the clandestine efforts wound up strengthening Jolani’s organization, helping pave its path to power. More troublingly, these documents suggest that, contrary to mainstream accounts of the group’s split from Al Qaeda, the pair remain close collaborators in Syria.

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Black Money, Black Flags: How USAID Paved the Way for Syria’s Militant Takeover

As the designated terrorist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) establishes its proto-government in Idlib, notoriously corrupt NGOs are stepping in to fill the gaps in public services, with some even defecting to work alongside the group.

The United States, which spent two decades and $5.4 trillion overthrowing governments hostile to al-Qaeda, now finds itself in a paradoxical position. Modern al-Qaeda has carved out its own quasi-state in Syria, yet remains on the U.S. list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations. To characterize this as a foreign policy misstep would be reductive; the U.S. has actively facilitated HTS’s conquest of parts of Syria while maintaining its official terrorist designation.

For the past five years, HTS, an al-Qaeda offshoot, has sought to rehabilitate its image. Its leader, Abu Mohammad al-Jolani—a former high-ranking member of both ISIS and al-Qaeda—has led a calculated charm offensive, attempting to rebrand the group from one focused on violence and minority persecution to a more palatable local governance entity.

Since establishing HTS and a proto-government called the Syrian Salvation Government, or SSG, the group’s leader, al-Jolani has expended a good deal of energy talking about topics intended to normalize the idea of a-Qaeda’s statehood; things like ‘institutions,’ and ‘structures.’ This, coupled with al-Jolani’s sudden embrace of Syria’s diverse tapestry of minority groups, has made up the main pillars of the terror group’s rebrand. Al-Jolani himself credits the establishment of quasi-state structures for the group’s sudden success in taking over Syria.

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Privatising Syria: US Plans Post-Assad Selloff

Following the abrupt fall of Bashar Assad’s government in Syria, much remains uncertain about the country’s future – including whether it can survive as a unitary state, or will splinter into smaller chunks in the manner of Yugoslavia in the 1990s. For the time being at least though, members of ultra-extremist Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) appear highly likely to take key positions in whatever administrative structure sprouts from Bashar Assad’s ouster, after a decade-and-a-half of grinding Western-sponsored regime change efforts.

As Reuters reported December 12th, HTS is already “stamping its authority on Syria’s state with the same lightning speed that it seized the country, deploying police, installing an interim government and meeting foreign envoys.” Meanwhile, its bureaucrats – “who until last week were running an Islamist administration in a remote corner of Syria’s northwest” – have moved en masse “into government headquarters in Damascus.” Mohammed Bashir, head of HTS’ “regional government” in extremist-occupied Idlib, has been appointed the country’s “caretaker prime minister”.

However, despite the chaos and precariousness of post-Assad Syria, one thing seems assured – the country will be broken open to Western economic exploitation, at long last. This is clear from multiple mainstream reports, which state HTS has informed local and international business leaders it will “adopt a free-market model and integrate the country into the global economy, in a major shift from decades of corrupt state control” when in office.

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US Had Foreknowledge Of HTS Offensive To Topple Assad, Prepped Its Proxies To Join

The US had foreknowledge of the offensive led by the al-Qaeda-linked Hayat Tahrir al-Sham that ousted former Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and helped another rebel group join the fight, The Telegraph reported this week.

The report said the US notified the Revolutionary Commando Army (RCA), a US-funded militia based out of a US base at Al Tanf in southern Syria, to “be ready” for an attack that could lead to the end of Assad’s rule.

“They did not tell us how it would happen,” Bashar al-Mashadani, an RCA commander, told The Telegraph. “We were just told: ‘Everything is about to change. This is your moment. Either Assad will fall, or you will fall.’ But they did not say when or where, they just told us to be ready.”

In October, the US brought several other Sunni Muslim militias under the command of the RCA, swelling the force from 800 fighters to about 3,000. All of the fighters are armed by the US, and the US pays their salaries of $400 per month. The US also backs the Kurdish-led SDF in eastern Syria, but the RCA is a separate force.

When the HTS-led force began its offensive from Syria’s northwest Idlib province and advanced south toward Damascus, the RCA headed north.

According to The Telegraph, the US-funded group now controls about one-fifth of Syria’s territory. Mashadani spoke to the paper from a former Syrian government air base that was used by Russia outside of the city of Palmyra.

Mashadani said RCA and HTS were cooperating during the offensive and that the US coordinated the communication between the two groups from Al Tanf. The US has celebrated the overthrow of Assad and made clear it’s willing to work with HTS despite the fact that the group is an offshoot of al-Qaeda and designated by the State Department as a foreign terrorist organization.

The Telegraph report makes clear that the US was aware of the planned HTS offensive. RCA members said the US told them about the opportunity to overthrow Assad in early November, about three weeks before the offensive started. Mashadani said the US wanted his group to capture territory to keep it out of the hands of ISIS, which RCA has helped the US fight in the past.

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