Syrian Dirty War's Secret Origins [Kit Klarenberg]

On November 27th, ultra-extremist militants Hayat Tahrir al-Sham launched a vast offensive in Syria. Within days, the Turkey-backed faction seized significant swaths of Aleppo, the country’s second-largest city, and advances elsewhere continue. While disinformation on the scale and success of HTS’ incursions abounds on social media, establishment news outlets remain the primary source of manipulation and deceit. No context to the current upsurge of violence is provided, although reference has been widely made to supposedly “peaceful” protests in 2011 that produced the decade-long Syrian civil war.

According to this narrative, pro-democracy demonstrators were brutally attacked by Syrian authorities for taking a righteous, public stand. Yet, the reality of what happened during that fateful time is amply documented in the Syrian government’s own internal documents. Namely, records of the Central Crisis Management Cell, created in March 2011 by Damascus to manage official responses to mass rioting that began weeks earlier.

Mainstream outlets have previously reported on this trove, dubbing them The Assad Files. However, reporters and rights groups have universally misrepresented, distorted or simply falsified their contents, in order to wrongfully convict Syrian officials of horrific crimes. In some instances, quite literally. In reality, the documents show Assad and his ministers struggled valiantly to prevent the upheaval from escalating into violence on either side, protect demonstrators, and keep the situation under control.

Meanwhile, sinister, unseen forces systematically murdered security service officials, pro-government figures, and protesters to foment catastrophe in a manner similar to many CIA regime change operations old and new. This shocking story has never before been told. Now, with dark insurrectionary clouds again pullulating over Damascus, it must be.

On the alleged Syrian Douma chemical attack:

• Aaron Maté, Oct. 2020: Chomsky: OPCW cover-up of Syria probe is ‘shocking’
• Klarenberg, Feb. 2022: Propagandist for Syria terror proxies compromised Amnesty International, leaked docs show
• Maté, Sep. 2022: Chain of corruption: how the White Helmets compromised OPCW investigations in Syria
• Maté, Mar. 2023: In Douma cover-up, OPCW’s new smoking gun backfires
• Klarenberg, Sep. 2023: UK intelligence spun 2013 Syria chemical attack, leaked docs show