And the confusion in the “battlespace” fails to recognize the true oppositions in the Syrian Conflict and Tragedy.
The correct framing: the 25th anniversary (Dec. 26) of the dissolve of the Soviet Union.
The correct opposition:
“Medieval Political Absolutism” vs “Modern Democratic Distributions of Power”
The medieval axis: Moscow-Damascus-Tehran + others who invest themselves in authoritarian politics. Fair slogan for the kleptocratic dictatorships: “Different Talks — Same Walk!”
The dictators are those who walk all over their own constituents (or subjugated populations).
The modern axis: the United States, NATO, the open democracies of the west and worldwide.
There are a lot of fence sitters — Pakistan may be one — but the medieval world is on full display between Putin, Assad, Khamenei, AND Baghdadi.
I don’t know when the perception of the witness of the “Syrian Conflict and Tragedy” will kick in, grow, and align within the lovers of broadly distributed freedom and prosperity worldwide, but this blog has been working on that for a while.
By now, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi may know the extent to which his enterprise had been enabled in its infancy to service to serve in these ways:
A collector of “jihadist” passion;
An organization suiting the blackmailing of the west in a political theatrical one might call “Assad OR The Terrorists” — never mind the both operating as tyrants;
A goad to the west, especially mixed in with the hapless of Syria’s mass migration;
An excuse to destroy (“Assad or We Burn It”) Syria and depopulate the region for the greater political control of the despotic powers.
Those who merely follow each day’s headlines (and Russian post-Soviet disinformation) will not “see” the political reality that is Syria. They will see the glorious “Assad vs The Terrorist” and witness Moscow’s latest in military technology set loose on the landscape, while those who dig, and those who have memory — all the way back to Daara, 2011 — will get the whole story, understand it, and perhaps be enraged by what it represents.
Related
Like Syria itself, Daraa has been ripped apart by five years of conflict. What began as a local protest movement against the Assad political dynasty slowly morphed into an international proxy war that’s drawn in the United States, Russia, Iran and nearly all of Syria’s neighbors. Hundreds of thousands are dead, millions are displaced. While it’s difficult to find a Syrian who honestly believes there’s an end in sight, there’s some agreement about where it all began: with Omar’s friends. The graffiti they dared to paint on the schoolyard walls has become an origin myth for Syria’s tragic conflict — not just for the citizens of Daraa, but for the entire country.
By some accounts, the schoolkids were deeply political; they painted dozens of political slogans that day, and eventually set fire to a police kiosk to express solidarity with anti-police protests erupting across the Arab world. Omar remembers his friends a little differently. Sure, they had an eye on Egypt and Tunisia, but Omar says they defaced the school wall because they were teenagers, and it was the rebellious thing to do, not because they were die-hard revolutionaries.
U.S. intelligence officials described the covert influence campaign here as “ambitious” and said it is also designed to counter U.S. leadership and influence in international affairs.
With even a little looking into “Russian influence operations”, one finds gems.
Here’s one from France:
The French Coordination Council of Compatriots is a subsidiary of the International Council of Russian Compatriots established in October 2003, the Putin equivalent of the Ausland Organization (AO) created by the Nazi Party in 1931 in order to mobilize the German diasporas to serve the Reich. This network now relies on the “Russian world” (Russkiy mir), an organization founded in 2007, which signed a collaboration agreement with the Orthodox Church in November 2009.[2] The first Forum of Russian Compatriots was held in France in September 2011 at the Russian Embassy. At the 3rd Forum organized in October 2013, French citizens of Russian origin were explicitly invited by the attending representatives of the Russian authorities to become vectors of the Kremlin’s policy in France.[3] In France the role of the Moscow Patriarchate in the seduction of the conservative right should not be underestimated. Since 2000 the Moscow Patriarchate has been taking over Russian Orthodox parishes formerly in the jurisdiction of the Patriarchate of Constantinople, reportedly with the occasional help of the Russian special services.
From UK Scotland comes an account of “framing”, a technique that takes a given reality but sets out to cast the same in a disparaging manner:
It was a moment in which the people of Scotland were vulnerable, says independence campaigner Douglas Daniel, who was present at the vote count and wrote about it for the political website Wings Over Scotland.
At the time, he says, he knew nothing about the ROIIP team.
“It wasn’t until the articles speaking about ‘Russia’ and saying the process was flawed [appeared] that I became aware of their existence,” says Daniel.
Sure enough, by the end of the day after the vote, the ROIIP delegation’s damning verdict was all over the British and Russian press.
The vote in Scotland “[did] not conform to generally accepted international principles of referendums,” said Borisov, the delegation’s head.
In the above cited quotation and article, the “ROIIP” was Russia’s “election monitoring” organization that ended up predictably devising and promoting criticism certain to cause dissension in the Scottish electorate.
Again (if you’re a BackChannels regular, you seen this point made many times), the purpose of the spin appears to be that of sowing discord and conflict in Moscow’s target states.
The point was writ large with the January 2016 announcement of a Congressionally-backed mission to review of clandestine Russian funding of European parties over the last decade:
A dossier of “Russian influence activity” seen by The Sunday Telegraph identified Russian influence operations running in France, the Netherlands, Hungary as well as Austria and the Czech Republic, which has been identified by Russian agents as an entry-point into the Schengen free movement zone.
The US intelligence review will examine whether Russian security services are funding parties and charities with the intent of “undermining political cohesion”, fostering agitation against the Nato missile defence programme and undermining attempts to find alternatives to Russian energy.
As I remember it, the first signs of danger started appearing close to ten years ago, when, after the breakup of the Soviet Union, many people in Russia and in former Soviet republics started expressing their discontent about the poor economic situation, social inequality, and political chaos. The post-Soviet emphasis on developing democracy gradually started to fade, replaced with other concerns, above all a critical attitude toward the United States and the West in general, which was considered to be responsible for the decline of Russia. The message of the Russian powers had changed, and everything from television and large-scale events to daily interactions and personal attitudes reflected this. The Soviet Union and its World War II victory became more hallowed; red flags, red stars, and portraits of Lenin and Stalin reappeared. So too did the glorification of the Russian Empire. Drivers in Ida-Viru County, for example, decorated their cars with the orange-and-black Ribbon of St. George, a symbol of military valor in czarist Russia. In an attempt to show pride in their Russian heritage by supporting both czarist and Soviet imperialism, these patriots seemed to forget that the Bolsheviks oppressed recipients of the Order of St. George and executed many of them.
Works by energy consultant Agnia Grigas always prove enlightening as regards Russian influence and policy in its foreign relations.
Ten days ago, yet another far-right party supporting Russia gained a foothold in an EU country, this time Slovakia. People’s Party, Our Slovakia won 8% of the vote in national elections, joining a burgeoning club including Hungary’s Jobbik, Greece’s Golden Dawn and Marine Le Pen’s National Front in France.
The far-right parties, which often stem from neo-Nazi groups and sport crypto-fascist insignia, are the most visible layer of the pro-Russia camp in Europe. With Europe engulfed in a migrant crisis sparked by the war in Syria, their anti-immigrant and anti-EU rhetoric is in hot demand across the continent, particularly in the east. Party leaders are frequent guests in Moscow, and many of them are closely linked to Russia’s own reactionary networks. Together, they are nudging the political mainstream toward radical nationalism, which these days often comes hand in hand with pro-Russian sentiment.
“Intelligence officers under diplomatic cover were active also at the embassies of other states; however, the number of Russian intelligence officials was much higher. Unlike intelligence officials of partner states, Russian (and some other) intelligence officers did not declare their status to the BIS”, it added.“Such clandestine behaviour, concealing the affiliation to an intelligence service, clearly signals activities threatening the security and other interests of the Czech Republic”.
When Syrian President Bashar al-Assad elected to bomb noncombatants and combat then moderate revolutionary forces like the Free Syrian Army (FSA) in preference to eliminating at the outset the al-Qaeda-type organizations (like al-Nusra), Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi could not have known his own enterprise, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) was being groomed to first blackmail the western powers (political theatrical: “Assad Or The Terrorists”) and would later (about now: “Assad vs The Terrorists”) become exposed to Moscow’s most advanced, devastating, and lethal conventional firepower.
When in 1964, the Soviet KGB established Yassir Arafat and the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), the refugees of 1948, first caught between armies and then abandoned between states, could not have known of the Soviet mechanics behind what they would perceive as their own deeply anti-Semitic and violent “Palestinian” liberation movement, nor could they have known then that another 52 years of wasting enslavement to the Middle East Conflict, which they themselves have been made to sustain, would lay ahead of them.
The hidden hand in the more dramatic and recent history of despotism turns out that of a dark “privileged of the Party” (the Soviet State then) or “new nobility” (Putin’s state now) intent on producing conflict that it may then claim to control.
Between them, Moscow and Tehran appear to advise, fund, or otherwise influence Hamas and Hezbollah, whose leaders have done well for themselves — Ismael Haniyeh and Khaled Mashaal have developed reputations as billionaires — while those they purport to represent continue to suffer their constraints and their plundering.
In the medieval mode, power may be expected to be capricious and self-aggrandizing.
In reference, the reader will find a BBC Radio piece by Alex Last telling of the Soviet urging Somali militia in the 1970s into war with Ethiopia, then an American client state, over possession of the Ogaden. While doing that, Moscow was developing influence in Ethiopia, and as it succeeded in that purpose, it chose to betray Somalia, which troops had by then effectively conquered 90 percent of the contested space. Backing Ethiopia, its new client state, Moscow then produced for it a greater and more powerful army, one including thousands of Cuban troops and all the hardware necessary to push Somalia’s military out of the Ogaden.
Why?
Arms sales?
The pleasure of having displaced American influence in Ethiopia (for a while)?
For the pleasure of feeling in control?
While Moscow today may claim to be more concerned with Syria than with Jerusalem, Gaza, and Ramallah, one may ask to what extent Moscow appears concerned with the suite of UN-acknowledged human rights and values, for in Syria and just as with the “Palestinian Liberation Struggle” (and in the 1970s, Somali justice in the Ogaden), Moscow’s genuine concern seems very small for those whose interests it claims to have taken to heart.
It was revealed today (Thursday) that for the first time, pilots from the Israeli Air Force participated in a training exercise with military pilots from Pakistan and the UAE. The joint-drill was conducted during Exercise Red Flag that ended last week in Nevada, US. Fighter aircraft from the US and Spain also participated in the drill. Exercise Red Flag is a unique training drill during which air forces from all over the world work together in several types of missions.
After the Gaza war in 2014, the Jewish community all around the world especially in the UK was targeted by extremists. Some cases were highlighted in the media and many disappeared as usual but the Police tried hard to bring the offenders to justice. One of the cases was about 52 year old Mr. Yisro’el Shalom, who brought his case to me. Mr. Shalom had been living in the Borough of Newham in East London for nearly 22 years and in the last three years, he was attacked 340 times and verbally abused nearly 60 times. He was physically tortured, kicked and punched in his face by a gang of Asians (most probably Pakistanis) because he was a Jew living within the Muslim community.
“I don’t know if these people are acting on orders from Russia, but they are clearly what Lenin called ‘useful idiots,’” said Mika Pettersson, the editor of Finland’s national news agency and an organizer of the editors’ open letter. “They are playing into Putin’s pocket. Nationalist movements in Finland and other European countries want to destabilize the European Union and NATO, and this goes straight into Putin’s narrative.”
It plays this way (excerpted from the above cited article by Higgins):
Mr. Backman, who also represents the Donetsk People’s Republic, the breakaway state set up with Russian support in eastern Ukraine, denied targeting Ms. Aro as part of any “information war.” Rather, he insisted that Russia was itself the victim of a campaign of disinformation and distortion conducted by the West.
Also in The New York Times (published two days ago):
STOCKHOLM — With a vigorous national debate underway on whether Sweden should enter a military partnership with NATO, officials in Stockholm suddenly encountered an unsettling problem: a flood of distorted and outright false information on social media, confusing public perceptions of the issue.
The claims were alarming: If Sweden, a non-NATO member, signed the deal, the alliance would stockpile secret nuclear weapons on Swedish soil; NATO could attack Russia from Sweden without government approval; NATO soldiers, immune from prosecution, could rape Swedish women without fear of criminal charges.
This report analyses Russian propaganda and disinformation – here collectively called strategic deception – concerning the conflict in Ukraine. The strategic deception is not exclusively a Russian term, but it does capture what we think is an essential feature of the current Russian foreign and security policy. It is driven by attempts to put the adversary into a defensive posture and off balance, and thus, to create conditions for surprise.
The methods utilized in contemporary Russian strategic deception are partly the same that were already used in Soviet propaganda. But where Soviet propaganda was anchored in ideological truth claims, the contemporary Russian variant can be compared to a kaleidoscope: a light piercing through it is instantly transformed into multiple versions of reality.
The rise of Novorossya is the most significant political development since the collapse of the USSR. It is a new politics, one that combines nationalism and socialism into a Christian, humane and just political order that has not been seen before. That it rises on the ashes of “independent Ukraine” and on Orthodox territory is no accident.
Posted to YouTube by DailyMilitary.News, Feb. 16, 2016.
Addenda
The characteristics of Russian propaganda are: generating very strong emotions, aggression, and a dramatic departure from reality. Russian television stations, with very few exceptions, create a more and more complicated and unpredictable reality, ‘generate fears, bringing people to the brink of chaos and panic’. Once created, the huge stress damages the mechanism of rational thinking, people are herded into a crowd, where archaic instincts take over, triggered by the simplest of emotions’.[1]
In Russia, whoever is not with the Kremlin, whoever criticizes Putin, or even doubts the righteousness of his policies, is considered a traitor and an enemy. Against the very few who dare express minimal reservations towards official policy, a movement formed recently, with the blessing of power, the Anti-Maidan movement, with the express objective to combat any position, to wipe out the smallest trace of doubt towards Putin’s wisdom. Anti-Maidan fights against the ‘5th column’, the enemy within.[2]
A surprise combat-readiness check of the Russian Armed Forces began on August 25 and is due to finish on August 31. As part of the exercises, the southern district troops, part of the troops of the western and central districts, as well as the northern fleet, the Russian Aerospace Forces, and the high command of the Airborne Troops were put in full combat-readiness mode.
BackChannels 