Melkite Catholic Priest on the War in Syria: It's Christians and Ordinary Muslims vs. Al Qaeda and Other Terrorists Funded by the West

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This comes from the Flemish language Algemeen Dagblad via the Ron Paul Institute and The Muslim Issue. I've seen other stories and interviews like it, often from Catholic religious inside Syria. One notable claim is that "ordinary" Christians and Muslims are now (and to some extent always were) largely on the same side, fighting mainly foreign-born and foreign-funded terrorist groups.

Some might dismiss Father Maes when he says about the pre-war Assad regime, "It was . . . not possible to freely express your political views. But most people did not care about that.” After all, doesn't that mark him off as some kind of reactionary whose views deserve no credence? It's easy for Westerners to engage in virtue-signaling from afar about aspects of liberal democracy that we take for granted. But when you're, say, squatting in the ruins of a once-vibrant and modern city such as Aleppo, with hundreds of thousands dead and millions displaced, I assume things look a bit different.

It's only been fifteen years since 9/11 and President Bush's determination to fight a "war on terror" centered largely on the Middle-East and South Asia and featuring military action against Al Qeada and its affiliates. If you believe the accounts of those such as Father Maes, then it took only a few short years to affect an almost complete switch in sides. Or at least such seems to be the case in Syria as a result of an unholy alliance between the pro-Muslim Obama and some hawkish but blinkered Republicans. Few seemed to notice, I suppose partly because the transition was so bizarre. From the standpoint of the grim but determined days of late 2001, this is shocking, sad and absurd.   

Flemish Father Daniël Maes (78) lives in Syria in the sixth-century-old Mar Yakub monastery in the city of Qara, 90 kilometers north of the capital Damascus. Father Daniel has been a witness to the “civil war” and according to him, Western reports on the conflict in Syria are very misleading. In short: “the Americans and their allies want to completely ruin the country.”

Interviewer: You are very critical of the media coverage on Syria. What is bothering you?

Father Daniel: “The idea that a popular uprising took place against President Assad is completely false. I’ve been in Qara since 2010 and I have seen with my own eyes how agitators from outside Syria organized protests against the government and recruited young people. That was filmed and aired by Al Jazeera to give the impression that a rebellion was taking place. Murders were committed by foreign terrorists, against the Sunni and Christian communities, in an effort to sow religious and ethnic discord among the Syrian people. While in my experience, the Syrian people were actually very united.

Before the war, this was a harmonious country: a secular state in which different religious communities lived side by side peacefully. There was hardly any poverty, education was free, and health care was good. It was only not possible to freely express your political views. But most people did not care about that.”

Interviewer: Mother Agnès-Mariam, of your Mar Yakub (“Saint Jacob”) monastery, is accused of siding with the regime. She has friends at the highest level.

Father Daniel: “Mother Agnès-Mariam helps the population: she has recently opened a soup kitchen in Aleppo, where 25,000 meals are prepared five times a week. Look, it is miraculous that we are still alive. We owe that to the army of Assad’s government and to Vladimir Putin, because he decided to intervene when the rebels threatened to take power.

When thousands of terrorists settled in Qara, we became afraid for our lives. They came from the Gulf States, Saudi Arabia, Europe, Turkey, Libya, there were many Chechens. They formed a foreign occupation force, all allied to al-Qaeda and other terrorists. Armed to the teeth by the West and their allies with the intention to act against us, they literally said: “This country belongs to us now.” Often, they were drugged, they fought each other, in the evening they fired randomly. We had to hide in the crypts of the monastery for a long time. When the Syrian army chased them away, everybody was happy: the Syrian citizens because they hate the foreign rebels, and we because peace had returned.”

Interviewer: You say that the Syrian Army protects civilians, yet there are all sorts of reports about war crimes committed by Assad’s forces, such as the bombardments with barrel bombs.

Father Daniel: “Do you not know that the media coverage on Syria is the biggest media lie of our time? They have sold pure nonsense about Assad. It was actually the rebels who plundered and killed. Do you think that the Syrian people are stupid? Do you think those people were forced to cheer for Assad and Putin? It is the Americans who have a hand in all of this, for pipelines and natural resources in this region and to thwart Putin.”

Saudi Arabia and Qatar want to establish a Sunni state in Syria, without religious freedom. Therefore, Assad must go. You know, when the Syrian army was preparing for the battle in Aleppo, Muslim soldiers came to me to be blessed. Between ordinary Muslims and Christians, there is no problem. It is those radical Islamic, Western-backed rebels who want to massacre us. They are all al Qaeda and IS. There are not any moderate fighters anymore.”

Interviewer: You once mentioned Hillary Clinton to be a “devil in holy water,” because as Secretary of State she deliberately worsened the conflict.

Father Daniel: “I am happy with Trump. He sees what every normal person understands: That the United States should stop undermining countries which possess natural resources. The Americans’ attempt to impose a unipolar world is the biggest problem. Trump understands that radical Islam is a bigger threat than Russia.

What do I care whether he occasionally takes off his pants? If Trump practices geopolitics the way he has promised to do so, then the future looks bright. Then it will become similar to Putin’s approach. And hopefully then, there will be a solution for Syria, and peace will return.”

Interviewer: You understand that your analysis is controversial and will encounter much criticism?

Father Daniel: “I speak from personal observation. And no one has to believe me, right? But I know one thing: The media can either contribute to the massacre of the Syrian people or help the Syrian people, with their media coverage. Unfortunately, there are too many followers and cowards among journalists.”

Reprinted with author’s permission from Algemeen Dagblad. Translation: SOTT. Photo: Sjoerd Mousse.

"You're like, f**k this." The Obama/Clinton Policies in Syria Aren't a Failure, They're a Fraud

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Who are these guys, again?

I assume one of the reasons the Trump/Pence campaign isn't talking about this is because many Republicans themselves bought into the fraud and were even partly responsible for it, quickly identifying Assad as the primary villain in Syria and then continuing to double down on that beyond all reason.

From SOFREP News by way of Consortiumnews and Creeping Sharia:

US Special Forces sabotage White House policy gone disastrously wrong with covert ops in Syria (Jack Murphy, SOFREP News):

“Nobody believes in it. You’re like, 'Fuck this,’” a former Green Beret says of America’s covert and clandestine programs to train and arm Syrian militias. “Everyone on the ground knows they are jihadis. No one on the ground believes in this mission or this effort, and they know they are just training the next generation of jihadis, so they are sabotaging it by saying, ‘Fuck it, who cares?’” 

“I don’t want to be responsible for Nusra guys saying they were trained by Americans,” the Green Beret added. A second Special Forces soldier commented that one Syrian militia they had trained recently crossed the border from Jordan on what had been pitched as a large-scale shaping operation that would change the course of the war. Watching the battle on a monitor while a drone flew overhead, “We literally watched them, with 30 guys in their force, run away from three or four ISIS guys.” 

How the US Armed-up Syrian Jihadists ("Alistair Crooke", Consortiumnews): 

In a detailed report, US Special Forces Sabotage White House Policy gone Disastrously Wrong with Covert Ops in Syria, Jack Murphy, himself a former Green Beret (U.S. Special Forces), recounts a former CIA officer having told him how the “the Syria covert action program is [CIA Director John] Brennan’s baby …Brennan was the one who breathed life into the Syrian Task Force … John Brennan loved that regime-change bullshit.” 

Murphy states bluntly: 

“distinguishing between the FSA and al-Nusra is impossible, because they are virtually the same organization. As early as 2013, FSA commanders were defecting with their entire units to join al-Nusra. There, they still retain the FSA monicker, but it is merely for show, to give the appearance of secularism so they can maintain access to weaponry provided by the CIA and Saudi intelligence services. The reality is that the FSA is little more than a cover for the al-Qaeda-affiliated al-Nusra. … 

“The fact that the FSA simply passed American-made weaponry off to al-Nusra is also unsurprising considering that the CIA’s vetting process of militias in Syria is lacklustre, consisting of little more than running traces in old databases. These traces rely on knowing the individuals’ real names in the first place, and assume that they were even fighting-age males when the data was collected by CTC [Counterterrorism Centre] years prior.” 

Nor, confirms Murphy, was vetting any better with the 5th Special Forces operating out of Turkey: 

“[It consisted of] a database check and an interview. The rebels know how to sell themselves to the Americans during such interviews, but they still let things slip occasionally. ‘I don’t understand why people don’t like al-Nusra,’ one rebel told the American soldiers. Many had sympathies with the terrorist groups such as Nusra and ISIS.” 

Others simply were not fit to be soldiers. “They don’t want to be warriors. They are all cowards. That is the moderate rebel,” a Green Beret told Murphy, who adds: 

“Pallets of weapons and rows of trucks delivered to Turkey for American-sponsored rebel groups simply sit and collect dust because of disputes over title authorities [i.e. Presidential authorities] and funding sources, while authorization to conduct training for the militias is turned on and off at a whim. One day they will be told to train, the next day not to, and the day after only to train senior leaders. Some Green Berets believe that this hesitation comes from the White House getting wind that most of the militia members are affiliated with Nusra and other extremist groups.” 

Murphy writes: 

“While the games continue on, morale sinks for the Special Forces men in Turkey. Often disguised in Turkish military uniform, one of the Green Berets described his job as, ‘Sitting in the back room, drinking chai while watching the Turks train future terrorists’ … 

“Among the rebels that U.S. Special Forces and Turkish Special Forces were training, ‘A good 95 percent of them were either working in terrorist organizations or were sympathetic to them,’ a Green Beret associated with the program said, adding, ‘A good majority of them admitted that they had no issues with ISIS and that their issue was with the Kurds and the Syrian regime.’” 

What Damascus Looks Like, Four Years After the Arab Spring

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Not all of Damascus looks like this but much of it does.

This is the Jobar neighborhood, close to the center of the city. Before the Syrian Civil War it was home to 300,000 residents, though the area looks larger than that figure would imply, with utter devastation seemingly stretching as far as the eye can see.

The photographs were recently taken by a Russian drone and re-posted in a number of news sites including the Daily Mail. There is also a haunting aerial video on RT News.

Note the dishes. I assume that means there are people (fighters?) still living there.

At one point Jobar also had a thriving Jewish community centered around the ancient Eliyahu Hanavi Synagogue (not to be confused with the Eliyahu Hanavi Synagogue in Alexandria, which has apparently been partially closed down). During the war, the synagogue was allegedly first looted and burned by Al-Qaeda and the Free Syrian Army. It was then mostly destroyed--by the government (according to the rebels) or the rebels (according to the government).

The Jobar area is still contested, with Islamist forces dug into a network of tunnels, though the government may now have the upper hand.

For what it's worth.

Whatever one thinks of the refugee crisis, this at least provides some perspective on it. Some of the residents were killed. Some joined one of the warring factions. But presumably, most of them simply fled.