By
Thomas Gaist
1
July 2015
Turkish
and Jordanian military forces, including tens of thousands of ground troops,
are preparing to invade Syria, with the aim of establishing militarized buffer
zones in the northern and southern areas of the country, according to media
reports Tuesday.
The
Jordanian-occupied area would include large areas of Syria's southern Deraa and
Suweida provinces, as well as Deraa city. The Turkish zone would be established
along Syria's northern border. It was explicitly authorized by Turkish
President Reccep Tayyip Erdogan in the name of blocking the formation of a
Kurdish state in the area, "no matter what it costs."
The
possible Jordanian operation was reported by the Financial Times and other
media outlets, but there was no official declaration or actual movement of
troops across the border. US officials denied that Washington had approved
either a Jordanian or a Turkish ground intervention.
Turkish
media reports said that Erdogan had chaired a national security meeting on
Monday that approved the deployment of 18,000 Turkish troops to secure
territory along the Turkish-Syrian border.
The
Turkish move would be a direct response to the recent victory of US-backed
Syrian Kurdish militia forces, the YCP, which captured the border town of Tal
Abyad. The political party which directs the YCP, the PYD, is affiliated to the
PKK in Turkey, which has conducted a prolonged guerrilla war against the
government seeking the establishment of a separate Kurdish state.
Capture
of Tal Abyad by the YCP creates the possibility of forming a contiguous
Kurdish-ruled area in northern and northeastern Syria, stretching from Kobane,
the focus of fighting between Kurdish forces and ISIS last winter, through Tal
Abyad to the predominately Kurdish-populated province of Hazakah.
The
Turkish government regards such a region in Syria, linked to the autonomous
northern Iraqi region of Kurdistan, as the next step in the formation of an
independent Kurdish state claiming territory in Turkey and Iran as well. Some
30 million Kurds live as minorities in the four countries.
A
Turkish intervention in northern Syria would give the lie to US government
claims that the main concern of American imperialism and its allies is the
growth of ISIS and Islamic terrorism. The Turkish government has tacitly aided
ISIS by facilitating the entry of Islamic radicals through its territory into
Syria. After the fall of Tal Abyad, the pro-government Turkish newspaper Sabah
ran a headline that declared bluntly, “The [Kurdish] PYD is more dangerous than
ISIS.”
The
reported Jordanian intervention would have as its purpose the establishment of
a “buffer zone” in the southern Syrian provinces of Suweida and Deraa, where
the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is fighting the only
significant rebel force not linked either to ISIS or the al-Nusra Front, the
al-Qaeda affiliate in Syria.
Any
Jordanian intervention in Syria would require US approval, given the close
links between Jordan's military and the Pentagon. The Financial Times reported
that the intervention would include both regular Jordanian troops and Syrians
being trained by the CIA in camps in Jordan. The CIA operation is the largest
operation currently mounted by the agency, accounting for $1 billion out of its
$15 billion budget, according to press reports of congressional hearings in
Washington.
State
Department spokesman Mark Toner would not confirm the reports of plans for
intervention in Syria by either Turkey or Jordan. He said at a press conference
Monday that there was “no solid evidence” of operations to create buffer zones.
However, he did indicate the real target of such actions, saying that
intervention would mean that regional powers no longer believed the Assad
government could survive.
“The
moment you set up a humanitarian safe zone you’re opening the door to
conversations about splitting Syria into different entities,” he said. “We’d
essentially be opening the door to the dissolution of the Syrian nation-state.
Of course, a lot of people say that’s already a done deal.”
The
real purpose of the new "security" and "humanitarian" areas
will be to serve as staging areas for expanded military operations throughout
Syria, directed at the overthrow of Assad.
The
new military interventions are being launched in flagrant violation of Syrian
sovereignty, without even the fig leaf of a UN resolution.
Such
moves would represent a watershed escalation of the war in Syria, which has
already claimed some 250,000 dead and displaced 12 million people since being
instigated by US imperialism and its regional allies some four years ago.
Having
failed to remove Assad using proxy militia forces alone, Washington is now
contemplating the direct invasion of Syria by outside military forces for the
purpose of carving out a large area of the country to be subsequently occupied
by US and NATO troops.
Plans
for a new imperialist division of Syria and the broader Middle East have been
brewing within the US ruling elite for decades.
The
US elites seized on the dissolution of the Soviet Union to realize their
longstanding plans to reimpose colonial forms of rule across Africa, Asia and
the Middle East.
Within
the past week, leading officials from the US Defense Department, the military
brass and the State Department have stated that Washington plans to restore
"stability" to Iraq and Syria by overseeing the creation of new
mini-states ruled by tribal and sectarian forces.
Congressional
testimony by Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter and General Martin Dempsey, the
chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, in mid-June, indicated that the US was
now basing its strategy on the assumption that "Iraq as a unified
state" would likely no longer exist.
Washington
is moving to bypass the central government in Baghdad and recruit Sunni tribal
militias to serve as US proxies in a future political order, according to
Dempsey's testimony.
Last
week, Deputy Secretary of State Anthony Blinken made clear that the break-up of
Iraq is only one aspect of a broader US agenda to reorganize the politics of
the entire Middle East
"The
greater Middle East is witnessing a period of tectonic change that has brought
the entire regional order to the brink of collapse," Blinken said in
comments to the Center for a New American Security (CNAS) last week.
Under
conditions of "historic transitions" in the region, the US must
embrace "decentralization of power" and "political
accommodation" with sub-national actors, Blinken argued.
Underscoring
that the US-led redivision and partition of the region is being pursued as part
of a pressure campaign aiming to exert pressure upon and ultimately shatter
Washington's two main rivals, Blinken's comment came moments after the
second-ranking State Department official accused China and Russia of seeking to
"unilaterally and coercively change the status quo" in eastern
Ukraine and the South China Sea.
In
a brief published Tuesday, "Deconstructing Syria: A new strategy for
America's most hopeless war," the Brookings Institution detailed the
application of this neocolonial strategy in Syria.
The
report's publication coincided with the publication of media reports announcing
the planned establishment of the new "safe zones" in Syria by the
Turkish and Jordanian militaries.
The
Brookings report argued that a "comprehensive, national-level
solution" is no longer possible, and called for the carving out of
"autonomous zones."
"The
only realistic path forward may be a plan that in effect deconstructs
Syria," the report argued. The US and its allies should seek "to
create pockets with more viable security and governance within Syria."
"The
strategy could develop further in a type of 'ink-spot' campaign that eventually
sought to join the various local initiatives into a broader and more integrated
effort," the report explained.
This
"confederal Syria" would be composed of "highly autonomous
zones," the report said, and would be supported militarily by the
deployment of US-NATO forces into the newly carved-out occupation areas, including
deployment of "multilateral support teams, grounded in special forces
detachments and air-defense capabilities."
"Past
collaboration with extremist elements of the insurgency would not itself be
viewed as a scarlet letter," the Brookings report argued, making clear the
extremist militant groups which have served as US proxy forces against the
Assad government will not be excluded from the new partition of Syria.
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