Wildfires Rage Across Syria in Wake of Increased US-Led Economic Warfare
The combination of a ten year military war, maximum pressure economic
sanctions, the deliberate destruction of essential civilian infrastructure
and the blatant scorched earth policies of the American neocolonialist
foreign policy-managers are designed to reduce Syria to another failed state
following NATO's Libya blueprint.
by Vanessa Beeley
September 15th, 2020
By Vanessa Beeley
For nearly two weeks, Syria has been battling a new wave of fires that have
engulfed much of the agricultural and forest-rich mountainous areas of
western Syria. Thanks to a corporate media blackout, very few in the West
are aware of the devastation that is affecting the Syrian people already
crippled by U.S.-led economic sanctions, recently magnified by the criminal
"Caesar Law" which is inhibiting reconstruction aid for Syria.
Any allies who would offer help to Syria will be economically punished for
doing so by the US Global police state. The following video footage shows
many of the fires:
Western Syria is burning or as a young Syrian in Lattakia, one of the areas
affected, told me "please ask people to save green Syria. We are tired of
hearing we are burning or we are dying. Please help us to live, please help
Syria to renew itself". Syria has been experiencing temperatures as high as
51 degrees celsius with strong winds and the fire has taken hold with an
unprecedented ferocity. It is estimated that even in the first few days
several thousand hectares of land have been incinerated across forests near
Latakia and Hama governorates. The north western areas of Homs City have
also been badly affected.
Previous fires deliberately started by the US occupying forces and their
allies had decimated wheat and barley crops pushing Syria further into food
insecurity in addition to the US-induced freefalling economy.
I was in Al Sqeilbiyyeh, a Syrian Christian town in northern Hama on the
night of the 5th September. We could see the fires snaking down the
mountainside around 20km to the north. The sound of sirens filled the night
air but the fire was spreading at an alarming rate, almost impossible to
extinguish from the ground alone.
Over the next two days, the local volunteer National Defence Forces joined
the Syrian Arab Army, REAL Syrian Civil Defence teams and local fire
brigades to battle the fires and to provide assistance for displaced
civilians driven from their homes by the advancing inferno. Russian
fire-fighting teams from the military base in Hmeimim, Tartous, also came to
their aid.
The REAL Syrian Civil Defence are not the terrorist-linked, US
Coalition-funded White Helmets - they are the genuine fire-fighters and
civil defence units established inside Syria in 1953 and the only civil
defence recognised by the Geneva-based International Civil Defence
Organisation (ICDO). While the White Helmets receive accolades and praise
from western media, UN agencies and interventionist governments, the Syrian
Civil Defence and fire brigades are working under crushing sanctions that
ensure their equipment is outdated and literally falling apart. Many of the
vehicles are European and parts are impossible to secure under sanctions.
Equipment is maintained by local engineers who do their best to repair and
restore machinery which is old and tired. Much of their equipment was stolen
by the terrorist groups and the White Helmets when they invaded and occupied
areas of Syria from 2011 onwards. These invading groups included Al Qaeda,
Ahrar Al Sham, Jaish Al Islam, ISIS and various other offshoots of these
dominant extremist factions. Groups which were proven to be financed and
armed by the US alliance following the publication of a 2012 declassified
Intelligence Department report which identified these hardline terrorist
groups as the vanguard of the insurgency in Syria endorsed and supported by
the West and their allies, including the Gulf States.
Under the sanction regime imposed by the US Coalition, it has been
impossible for the authentic Syria Civil Defence to replace the stolen
equipment. Meanwhile the western-backed White Helmets receive a regular
supply of state-of-the-art equipment via the Turkish border, much of it
coming from Europe and the UK.
Entire forests and outstanding-natural-beauty conservation areas have been
consumed by the flames in Slunfeh, the Masyaf mountains, Lattakia and Al
Ghab, Hama even extending as far as north-west Homs. The fires have raged
across agricultural land, destroying many of the prized and ancient Olive
trees only a few weeks before harvest.
Vanessa-fires-map
Map of fires affecting wheat and barley crops in July 2020. Credit | Ibrahim
Mohammad
Previously, deliberately started fires had destroyed vast swathes of Syrian
wheat and barley crops just prior to harvest. An estimated 130,000 hectares
of wheat and 180,000 hectares of barley were destroyed by those fires. The
US Coalition, Israel and their proxy forces, occupying the areas that were
torched, were responsible for this deliberate scorched earth policy designed
to ensure food insecurity for the besieged Syrian people. The fact that the
most recent fires have targeted the Olive plantations must lead to
speculation that these latest fires are another element of the US-led hybrid
war strategy in Syria. Particularly as many of the areas burning are close
to areas controlled and occupied by the extremist armed groups.
Currently, half the productive areas for olives and olive oil are under
control of the Turkish-controlled Al Qaeda-led groups. Turkish traders are
making huge profits from buying olive oil at low prices from their client
militia, blending with lower quality Turkish oil and exporting to Europe for
high prices. A local doctor in Masyaf informed me that on the 6th September,
3 fires started in the mountains behind his home, each one ignited about an
hour apart. He said "this is deliberate, it is not accidental". With half
the Syrian olive production under the control of terrorist groups, providing
a lucrative market for NATO-member Turkey, the burning of sections of the
remaining olive groves would have a devastating impact upon the Syrian
economy and food security for the coming winter.
The aftermath of one of the fires in western Syria. The smouldering remains.
Photo | Ibra Joudeh.
Syria is already suffocating under sanctions. One week ago we were informed
that fuel would only be available in Damascus and the surrounding
countryside. Since then fuel supplies have almost dried up in Damascus. The
quality of fuel is so poor it is destroying the car engines over time. The
queues for fuel are up to two kilometers long, most stations are now closed.
Electricity is constantly rationed, in my area of Damascus we have
electricity for three hours, cut for three hours. Many in the surrounding
village are lucky to have supply for more than a few hours per day. Syrian
people generally make food during the summer to freeze for the winter
months. Much of this precious food supply has been destroyed in the soaring
heat of the last few months, with freezers not able to function.
On the 23rd August, a huge explosion tore into a gas pipeline between the
towns of Al-Dhumayr and Adra. Syrian Oil Minister, Ali Ghanem, told local
media that it had been caused by "a terrorist act". The 1,200 kilometre Arab
Gas Pipeline which transports natural gas from Egypt into Jordan, Lebanon
and Syria supplies three electrical power stations in Syria's south,
including Damascus. This led to increased outages for the days leading up to
the repair of the damage caused. This was the latest in a long history of
sabotage of Syrian infrastructure, electrical power grids, power stations,
oil pipelines, supply pipelines which combined with the occupation of Syrian
oil fields by US Coalition proxy forces, the Kurdish separatist groups
(SDF), has maximised the pressure brought to bear upon the Syrian people
making life for many unbearable.
Who is helping Syria during a humanitarian crisis?
Few in the west are registering their government's role in the US Coalition
military and economic rapacious campaign to destroy Syria. They are
distracted by the draconian measures being introduced globally on the back
of Covid-19 narratives produced by the Big Pharma corporatocracy and aligned
governmental or UN agencies. While aid is facilitated, by US officials and
the UN, into the terrorist held areas of Idlib via two Turkish border
crossing points that double up as Al Qaeda trading hubs, no international
assistance from the imperialist axis has been forthcoming for Syria during
this humanitarian crisis.
An Iranian fire-fighting plane assists Syrian Air-force helicopters in
battling fires. Photo: SANA.
Iran has come to the aid of the Syrian air-force helicopters from Hama
airport that were transporting water from Sourani Dam in Tartous to limit
the expansion of the fires burning in the inaccessible mountain ranges,
impossible to reach with fire brigade vehicles. The risk for Iran to assist
Syria in this campaign is huge. The terrorist groups are equipped with the
US-manufactured ground to air missile launchers which have been used in the
past to bring down Syrian aircraft. Fire-fighting planes must necessarily
fly low and slow to be most effective which makes them a relatively easy
target for the Al Qaeda-linked armed groups armed by the US Coalition
members.
Are these fires a deliberate policy orchestrated by the US Coalition?
Local media have been reporting the arrest of people suspected of starting
some of the fires that have raged across western Syria. However, many I have
spoken to, including officials and local farmers, have confirmed my
suspicions that the fires were deliberately started by groups or individuals
hostile to the Syrian government and state. It is too early to say whether
members of the US Coalition have issued instructions to their proxies to
carry out these criminal acts but preceding involvement in similar acts of
savagery can lead to the conclusion that their influence may well be behind
this latest ruination of Syrian territory and livelihoods.
The US-led consortium which includes the UK, EU, Israel, Turkey, Gulf States
and Australia has effectively been increasing maximum pressure on Syria
incrementally since the war against this non-aligned nation began, in
earnest, in 2011. The Syrian people have endured untold misery, poverty,
insecurity, starvation and displacement ever since the criminal campaign to
impose regime change began.
A recent Watson Institute report - "Creating refugees: Displacement caused
by the United States post 9/11 wars" has estimated conservatively that at
least 37 million people have been displaced globally since 2001 as a result
of the endless American "wars on terror". Renowned journalist, John Pilger,
described them more accurately as "wars of terror".
The combination of a ten year military war, maximum pressure economic
sanctions, the deliberate destruction of essential civilian infrastructure
and the blatant scorched earth policies of the American neocolonialist
foreign policy-managers are designed to reduce Syria to another failed state
following NATO's Libya blueprint. The Syrian people will not capitulate to
any amount of pressure to enable their colonisation by predatory and hostile
rogue states but they are suffering and they are being slowly suffocated by
these sadistic measures.
Modern day "shock and awe" is the slow trickle of death under the
US-manufactured economic jack-boot exacerbated by the accompanying
multi-spectrum war tactics which are intended to decimate the State's
ability to provide for its people. Washington's vision is that this will
foment chaos and dissent among a beleaguered population and pressure them to
rise up against a government that has withstood 10 years of such schemes.
The fires are a symbol of this insatiable globalism and military-complex
supremacist policies engulfing non-aligned prey-nations. A ban on economic
sanctions must be campaigned for to bring an end to these barbaric measures
and to allow the Syrian people to breathe and Syria to recover its
equilibrium, stability and security.
