[Photo above: President Obama, 2014, in White House Situation Room where US voted to arm Syrian jihadists rebels ]]
When in early December 2025 US and Zionist financed, armed and directed jihadist “rebels,” who The New York Times in 2016 explicitly designated as CIA-organized terrorists, took over much of the Syrian state, The Times was dead silent as to their origins and politics, indeed treating them as nothing less than democratic forces aimed at restoring democracy to the now exiled in Russia, former President Bashar Al Assad’s Syria. We reprint below major excerpts from the NYT a decade ago documenting with precision the central role of the CIA/US and its Gulf State allies and Turkey in their failed attempt to overthrow the Assad government.
We have bulleted The Times revealing 2016 accounts.
• “The rebels involved in the operation [in northern Syria] appeared to be mainly from the groups fighting to unseat Mr. Assad that the United States, Turkey and other allies support through a covert operations center in Turkey…” This Aug. 24, 2016 Times article continues: “Turkish officials were adamant that they would continue operations in Syria until they had neutralized what they see as threats against its national security.”
Months earlier, The Times reported Pentagon figures that the flow of foreign [ISIS] fighters into Syria via Turkish-abetted corridors had been 2,000 monthly. Turkey, in collaboration with the U.S., then sought the removal of the Syrian government of Bashar Assad.
• ‘“The fighters attacking the [Syrian] regime from inside and outside Aleppo fought fiercely, knowing that this battle was a fateful one and would lift the siege on their families and children,’ said Zakaria Malahifji, the political chief of a rebel group backed by the C.I.A. and its counterparts in European and Arab states” (New York Times, Aug. 12, 2016, emphasis added).
• “But spearheading the rebel effort were hard-line Islamist groups including the Levant Conquest Front, which has been affiliated with Al Qaeda for years and only recently changed its name and claimed to have become independent. While American officials dismissed the rebranding, saying the group did not change its ideology or its goal of establishing an Islamic emirate [caliphate] in Syria, analysts said it allowed the jihadists to work more closely with other rebel groups, blurring the lines between them (New York Times, Aug. 25, 2016, emphasis added).
• “The jihadists’ prominent role in the Aleppo offensive showed that they remain militarily indispensable to the wider rebel movement and increased their popularity at time when many Syrians [unnamed] criticize the United States for not doing more to protect Syrian civilians [against the jihadists, Editor].” (New York Times, Aug. 25, 2016).
• “The Nusra Front has been one of the most effective anti-Assad forces, and because of that United States-backed rebel groups often coordinate their activities with its units. Russia has argued that means that Washington is effectively supporting Nusra, and that the American-backed groups are legitimate targets. So a joint campaign against Nusra would not only appear to concede Russia’s point, but could also bring American firepower to bear against the strongest anti-Assad military force and a sometime partner of Washington’s allies” (New York Times, July 14, 2016).
• “Up to now, the United States has carried out occasional strikes against what have been described as senior Qaeda figures in Syria. But it has refrained from systematic attacks against the Nusra Front, whose ranks are heavily Syrian, including many who left less extreme rebel groups because Nusra was better armed and financed.” (New York Times, July 14, 2016).
• “The Syrian government and its allies have often referred to all rebel fighters as belonging to the Nusra Front, while opposition fighters have said that they will not renounce tactical alliances with the Qaeda-linked group without new arms [from the U.S., Turkey and the Gulf State monarchies] or guarantees” (New York Times, Oct. 18, 2016).
• “The new offensive [in Aleppo] was a strong sign that rebel groups vetted by the United States were continuing their tactical alliances with groups linked to Al Qaeda, rather than distancing themselves as Russia has demanded and the Americans have urged. … The rebels argue that they cannot afford to shun any potential allies while they are under fire, including well-armed and motivated jihadists, without more robust aid from their international backers. … Those taking part in the offensive include the Levant Conquest Front, a militant group formerly known as the Nusra Front that grew out of Al Qaeda; another hard-line Islamist faction, Ahrar al-Sham; and other rebel factions fighting Mr. Assad that have been vetted by the United States and its allies.” (See: “Syrian Rebels Launch Offensive to Break Siege of Aleppo,” by Hwaida Saad and Anne Barnard, New York Times, Oct. 28, 2016, emphasis added).
• The same article reports, “Eleven of the roughly 20 rebel groups conducting the offensive have been vetted by the C.I.A. and have received arms from the agency, including anti-tank missiles, said Charles Lister, a senior fellow and Syria specialist at the Middle East Institute in Washington.”
And further: “A spokesman for the C.I.A. declined to comment on any armed assistance to the rebels, which, although it has been well publicized, is also still technically a covert program” (Emphasis added). … “Mr. Lister and other analysts said the vast majority of the American-vetted rebel factions in Aleppo were fighting inside the city itself and conducting significant bombardments against Syrian government troops in support of the Qaeda-affiliated fighters carrying out the brunt of front-line fighting.”
And again, the same article states, citing Genevieve Casagrande, a Syria research analyst at the Institute for the Study of War in Washington: “The unfortunate truth, however, is that these U.S.-backed groups remain somewhat dependent upon the Al Qaeda linked groups for organization and firepower in these operations. In addition to arms provided by the United States, much of the rebels’ weaponry comes from regional states, like Turkey, Qatar and Saudi Arabia.”
The article concludes with Charles Lister affirming that such aid to the Al Qaida rebels includes, “truck-borne multiple-rocket launcher systems and Czech-made Grad rockets with extended ranges.”
• A June 26, 2016 New York Times article entitled “C.I.A. Arms for Syrian Rebels Supplied Black Market, Officials Say” asserts: “The theft of only a small portion of the U.S. weapons bound for Syria and stolen by corrupt Jordanian officials highlights… the messy, unplanned consequences of programs to arm and train rebels—the kind of programs the C.I.A. and Pentagon have conducted for decades—even after the Obama administration had hoped to keep the training program in Jordan under tight control.” The Times continued, “The United States and Saudi Arabia are the biggest contributors [in Syria], with the Saudis contributing both weapons and large sums of money, and with C.I.A. paramilitary operatives taking the lead in training the rebels to use Kalashnikovs, mortars, antitank guided missiles and other weapons.”
And further, “The existence of the program is classified as are all details about its budget. American officials say that the C.I.A. has trained thousands of rebels in the past three years, and that the fighters made substantial advances on the battlefield against Syrian government forces until Russian military forces —launched last year in support of Mr. Assad—compelled them to retreat.” The Times added, “The training program is based in Jordan because of the country’s proximity to the Syrian battlefields. From the beginning, the C.I.A. and the Arab intelligence agencies relied on Jordanian security services to transport the weapons, many bought in bulk in the Balkans and elsewhere around Eastern Europe.”
The Times continues, “The program is separate from one that the Pentagon set up to train rebels to combat Islamic State fighters, rather than the Syrian military. That program was shut down after it managed to train only a handful of Syrian rebels.” Indeed, in a hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee, the figure was estimated by General Lloyd Austin, then head of U.S. Central Command and now Secretary of Defense, as “four or five!” Nearly every one of these U.S.-trained anti-ISIS fighters literally turned over their U.S. weapons to ISIS and groups fighting Assad. Others just quit or joined ISIS or the Al Qaeda-affiliated Nusra Front. Further exploding the myth that “Syrian moderates” were leading the fight against Assad, The Times revealed that “President Obama authorized the covert arming program in April 2013, after more than a year of debate inside the administration about the wisdom of using the C.I.A. to train rebels trying to oust Mr. Assad.”
And finally, “The decision was made in part to try to gain control of a chaotic situation in which Arab countries were funneling arms into Syria for various rebel groups with little coordination. The Qataris had paid to smuggle shipments of Chinese-made FN-6 shoulder-fired weapons over the border from Turkey, and Saudi Arabia sent thousands of Kalashnikovs and millions of rounds of ammunition it had bought, sometimes with the C.I.A.’s help. By late 2013, the C.I.A. was working directly with Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and other nations to arm and train small groups of rebels and send them across the border into Syria.”
With regard to bombing the ISIS-controlled oil refineries in northeast Syria, The Times delicately noted and with perhaps an ounce of disbelief, “Concerns about leaving local citizens without crucial refining facilities and with the daunting job of rebuilding them later may be tempering the American [bombing] approach, some experts say.” The word “tempering” was in fact a euphemism for leaving these oil facilities largely intact in order to support, in a “tempered” manner to be sure, ISIS’s anti-Assad objectives.
• A few years later, top U.S. military officials announced policy changes with regard to bombing these ISIS-controlled oil refineries. Until mid-November the “official” U.S. policy was to limit bombing or degrading of these facilities to inflicting minor damage only –damage that could be easily repaired within a matter of weeks or months. “Until Monday,” according to The New York Times of Nov. 16, 2015, “the United States refrained from striking the fleet used to transport oil, believed to include more than 1000 tanker trucks, because of concerns about causing civilian casualties. As a result, the Islamic State’s distribution system for exporting oil had remained largely intact.”
Need we say more to refute the baseless assertions that the U.S. is largely uninvolved in Syria?
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