On Sunday April 15th, Britain’s Guardian bannered “OPCW inspectors set to investigate site of Douma chemical attack” and pretended that there was no question that a chemical attack in Douma Syria on April 7th had actually occurred, and the article then went further along that same propaganda-line, to accuse Syria’s Government of having perpetrated it. This ‘news’…
What happened in Syria on April 7 had been expected. While raising hue and cry over the alleged chemical attack in Douma, a rebel-held suburb of the capital, Western officials and media wasted no time to put the blame on the Assad government. The US State Department issued a statement saying that by shielding Damascus Moscow has breached its international commitments….
All battles and bombardments share their secrets one by one. Eastern Ghouta is no different. Why the sudden, savage bombardment of these Syrian towns and villages more than three weeks ago? Why the wasteland of homes and streets—and how did so many of the civilians survive along with hundreds of Islamist gunmen? You can do…
Syrian forces have liberated all militant-held settlements in the Damascus suburb of Eastern Ghouta, the military command said in a televised statement. A major Syrian motorway has been unblocked for the first time in seven years. “After a set of carefully planned battles and operations carried out by our armed forces in cooperation with loyal…
“Will the war in Syria ever end?” After seven years of conflict, the same question is being asked by politicians, diplomats, fighters in the front line, and families cowering in unlit basements to escape devastating bombardments from Ghouta to Afrin. When I asked Aldar Khalil, a top Syrian Kurdish leader whose forces control a quarter…
Fifteen years ago, “Shock and Awe” was unleashed over Baghdad as the preferred method of bombing Mesopotamia into “democracy” – thus fashioning what would later be hailed as the birth pangs of a New Middle East. I tried, in a report for Asia Times in 2003, to explain the geopolitical power play behind the US invasion of…
