Terrorism with a “Human Face”:
The History of America’s Death Squads
Death Squads in Iraq and Syria. The Historical Roots of US-NATO's Covert
War on Syria
Image: El Salvador Death squads
The recruitment of
death squads is part of a well established US military-intelligence agenda.
There is a long and gruesome US history of covert funding and support of
terror brigades and targeted
assassinations going back to the Vietnam war.
As government forces
continue to confront the self-proclaimed “Free Syrian Army” (FSA), the
historical roots of the West’s covert war on Syria –which has resulted in
countless atrocities– must be fully revealed.
From the outset in
March 2011, the US and its allies have supported the formation of death squads
and the incursion of terrorist brigades in a carefully planned
undertaking.
The recruitment and
training of terror brigades in both Iraq and Syria was modeled on the “Salvador
Option”, a “terrorist model” of mass killings by US sponsored death
squads in Central America. It was first applied in El Salvador, in the
heyday of resistance against the military dictatorship, resulting in an
estimated 75,000 deaths.
The formation of
death squads in Syria builds upon the history and experience of US
sponsored terror brigades in Iraq, under the Pentagon’s “counterinsurgency”
program.
The
Establishment of Death Squads in Iraq
US sponsored death squads were
recruited in Iraq
starting in 2004-2005 in an initiative launched under the helm of the US
Ambassador John Negroponte, [image: right] who
was dispatched to Baghdad by the US State Department in June 2004.
Negroponte was the “man
for the job”. As US Ambassador to Honduras from 1981 to 1985. Negroponte played
a key role in supporting and supervising the Nicaraguan Contras based in
Honduras as well as overseeing the activities of the Honduran military death
squads.
“Under the rule of
General Gustavo Alvarez Martinez, Honduras’s military government was both a
close ally of the Reagan administration and was “disappearing” dozens of
political opponents in classic death squad fashion.”
In January 2005, the
Pentagon, confirmed that it was considering:
” forming hit squads of Kurdish and Shia fighters to target leaders of the Iraqi
insurgency [Resistance] in a strategic shift borrowed from the American
struggle against left-wing guerrillas in Central America 20 years ago”.
Under the so-called “El
Salvador option”, Iraqi and American forces would be sent to kill or
kidnap insurgency leaders, even in Syria, where some are thought to shelter. …
Hit squads would be
controversial and would probably be kept secret.
The experience of the
so-called “death squads” in Central America remains raw for many even now and
helped to sully the image of the United States in the region.
Then, the Reagan
Administration funded and trained teams of nationalist forces to neutralise
Salvadorean rebel leaders and sympathisers. …
John Negroponte, the US
Ambassador in Baghdad, had a front-row seat at the time as Ambassador to
Honduras from 1981-85.
Death squads were a
brutal feature of Latin American politics of the time. …
In the early 1980s
President Reagan’s Administration funded and helped to train Nicaraguan contras
based in Honduras with the aim of ousting Nicaragua’s Sandinista regime. The Contras
were equipped using money from illegal American arms sales to Iran, a scandal
that could have toppled Mr Reagan.
The thrust of the Pentagon proposal in Iraq, … is to
follow that model …
It is unclear whether the main aim of the missions
would be to assassinate the rebels or kidnap them and take them away for
interrogation. Any mission in Syria would probably be undertaken by
US Special Forces.
Nor is it clear who would
take responsibility for such a programme — the Pentagon or the Central
Intelligence Agency. Such covert operations have traditionally been run by the
CIA at arm’s length from the administration in power, giving US officials the
ability to deny knowledge of it. (El
Salvador-style ‘death squads’ to be deployed by US against Iraq militants –
Times Online, January 10, 2005, emphasis added)
While the stated
objective of the “Iraq Salvador Option” was to “take out the insurgency”, in
practice the US sponsored terror brigades were involved in routine killings of
civilians with a view to fomenting sectarian violence. In turn, the CIA and MI6
were overseeing “Al Qaeda in Iraq” units involved in targeted
assassinations directed against the Shiite population. Of significance, the
death squads were integrated and advised by undercover US Special Forces.
Robert Stephen Ford –subsequently appointed US
Ambassador to Syria– was part of Negroponte’s team in Baghdad in 2004-2005. In
January 2004, he was dispatched as U.S. representative to the Shiite city of
Najaf which was the stronghold of the Mahdi army, with which he made
preliminary contacts.
In January 2005, Robert
S. Ford’s was appointed Minister Counselor for Political Affairs at the US
Embassy under the helm of Ambassador John Negroponte. He was not only part of
the inner team, he was Negroponte’s partner in setting up the Salvador
Option. Some of the groundwork had been established in Najaf prior to
Ford’s transfer to Baghdad.
John Negroponte and
Robert Stephen Ford were put in charge of recruiting the Iraqi death squads.
While Negroponte coordinated the operation from his office at the US
Embassy, Robert S. Ford, who was fluent in both Arabic and Turkish, was
entrusted with the task of establishing strategic contacts with Shiite and
Kurdish militia groups outside the “Green Zone”.
Two other embassy
officials, namely Henry Ensher (Ford’s Deputy) and a
younger official in the political section, Jeffrey Beals,
played an important role in the team “talking to a range of Iraqis, including
extremists”. (See The New Yorker,
March 26, 2007). Another key individual in Negroponte’s team was James
Franklin Jeffrey, America’s ambassador to Albania (2002-2004).
In 2010, Jeffrey was appointed US Ambassador to Iraq (2010-2012).
Negroponte also brought
into the team one of his former collaborators Colonel James Steele
(ret) from his Honduras heyday:
Under the “Salvador
Option,” “Negroponte had assistance from his colleague from his days in Central
America during the 1980′s, Ret. Col James Steele.
Steele, whose title in Baghdad was Counselor for
Iraqi Security Forces supervised the selection and training of members of the
Badr Organization and Mehdi Army, the two largest Shi’ite
militias in Iraq, in order to target the leadership and support networks of a
primarily Sunni resistance. Planned or not, these death squads promptly
spiralled out of control to become the leading cause of death in Iraq.
Intentional or not, the
scores of tortured, mutilated bodies which turn up on the streets of Baghdad
each day are generated by the death squads whose impetus was
John Negroponte. And it is this U.S.-backed sectarian violence which largely
led to the hell-disaster that Iraq is today. (Dahr Jamail, Managing Escalation:
Negroponte and Bush’s New Iraq Team,. Antiwar.com, January 7, 2007)
“Colonel Steele was
responsible, according to Rep.
Dennis Kucinich for implementing “a plan in El Salvador under which
tens of thousands Salvadorans “disappeared” or were murdered, including
Archbishop Oscar Romero and four American nuns.”
Upon his appointment to
Baghdad, Colonel Steele was assigned to a counter-insurgency unit known as the
“Special Police Commando” under the Iraqi Interior Ministry” (See ACN, Havana, June 14,
2006)
Reports confirm that “the
US military turned over many prisoners to the Wolf Brigade,
the feared 2nd battalion of the interior ministry’s special commandos” which so
happened to be under supervision of Colonel Steele:
“US soldiers, US
advisers, were standing aside and doing nothing,” while members of the Wolf
Brigade beat and tortured prisoners. The interior ministry
commandos took over the public library in Samarra, and turned it into a
detention centre, he said. An interview conducted by Maass [of the New
York Times] in 2005 at the improvised prison, accompanied by the Wolf Brigade’s
US military adviser, Col James Steele, had been interrupted by the terrified
screams of a prisoner outside, he said. Steele was reportedly previously
employed as an adviser to help crush an insurgency in El Salvador.” (Ibid, emphasis
added)
Another notorious figure
who played a role in Iraq’s counter-insurgency program was Former New York
Police Commissioner Bernie Kerik [image: Bernie
Kerik in Baghdad Police Academy with body guards] who in 2007 was
indicted in federal court on 16 felony charges.
Kerik had been appointed
by the Bush administration at the outset of the occupation in 2003 to assist in
the organization and training of the Iraqi Police force. During his short
stint in 2003, Bernie Kerik –who took on the position of interim Minister of
the Interior– worked towards organizing terror units within the Iraqi Police
force: “Dispatched to Iraq to whip Iraqi security forces into shape, Kerik
dubbed himself the “interim interior minister of Iraq.” British
police advisors called him the “Baghdad terminator,” (Salon, December 9, 2004,
emphasis added)
Under Negroponte’s helm
at the US Embassy in Baghdad, a wave of covert civilian killings and
targeted assassinations had been unleashed. Engineers, medical doctors,
scientists and intellectuals were also targeted.
Author
and geopolitical analyst Max Fuller has documented in detail the atrocities
committed under the US sponsored counterinsurgency program.
The appearance of death squads
was first highlighted in May this year [2005], …dozens of bodies were found
casually disposed … in vacant areas around Baghdad. All of the victims had been
handcuffed, blindfolded and shot in the head and many of them also showed signs
of having been brutally tortured. …
The evidence was
sufficiently compelling for the Association of Muslim Scholars (AMS), a leading
Sunni organisation, to issue public statements in which they accused the
security forces attached to the Ministry of the Interior as well as the Badr
Brigade, the former armed wing of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in
Iraq (SCIRI), of being behind the killings. They also accused the Ministry of
the Interior of conducting state terrorism (Financial Times).
The Police Commandos as
well as the Wolf Brigade were overseen by the US counterinsurgency
program in the Iraqi Ministry of the Interior:
The Police Commandos were formed under the
experienced tutelage and oversight of veteran US counterinsurgency fighters, and from the outset conducted
joint-force operations with elite and highly secretive US special-forces
units (Reuters,
National
Review Online).
…A key
figure in the development of the Special Police Commandos was James Steele,
a former US Army special forces operative who cut his teeth in Vietnam before
moving on to direct the US military mission in El Salvador at the height of
that country’s civil war. …
Another US contributor
was the same Steven Casteel who as the most
senior US advisor within the Interior Ministry brushed off serious and
well-substantiated accusations of appalling human right violations as ‘rumor
and innuendo’. Like Steele, Casteel gained considerable experience in Latin
America, in his case participating in the hunt for the cocaine baron Pablo
Escobar in Colombia’s Drugs Wars of the 1990s …
Casteel’s background is
significant because this kind of intelligence-gathering support role and the
production of death lists are characteristic of US involvement in counterinsurgency
programs and constitute the underlying thread in what can appear to be random,
disjointed killing sprees.
Such centrally
planned genocides are entirely consistent with what is taking
place in Iraq today [2005] …It is also consistent with what little we know
about the Special Police Commandos, which was tailored to provide the Interior
Ministry with a special-forces strike capability (US
Department of Defense). In keeping with such a role, the Police Commando
headquarters has become the hub of a nationwide command, control,
communications, computer and intelligence operations centre, courtesy of the
US. (Max Fuller, op cit)
This initial groundwork
established under Negroponte in 2005 was implemented under his successor
Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad. Robert Stephen Ford ensured the continuity
of the project prior to his appointment as US Ambassador to Algeria in
2006, as well as upon his return to Baghdad as Deputy Chief of Mission in
2008.
Operation “Syrian Contras”: Learning from the Iraqi
Experience
The gruesome Iraqi
version of the “Salvador Option” under the helm of Ambassador John Negroponte
has served as a “role model” for setting up the “Free Syrian Army” Contras.
Robert Stephen Ford was, no doubt, involved in the implementation of the Syrian
Contras project, following his reassignment to Baghdad as Deputy Head of
Mission in 2008.
The objective in Syria
was to create factional divisions between Sunni, Alawite, Shiite, Kurds, Druze
and Christians. While the Syrian context is entirely different to that of Iraq,
there are striking similarities with regard to the procedures whereby the
killings and atrocities were conducted.
A report published by Der Spiegel pertaining to atrocities
committed in the Syrian city of Homs confirms an organized sectarian process of
mass-murder and extra-judicial killings comparable to that conducted by the US
sponsored death squads in Iraq.
People in Homs were
routinely categorized as “prisoners” (Shia, Alawite) and
“traitors”. The “traitors” are Sunni civilians within the rebel
occupied urban area, who express their disagreement or opposition to the
rule of terror of the Free Syrian Army (FSA):
“Since last summer [2011], we have executed slightly
fewer than 150 men, which represents about 20 percent of our prisoners,” says Abu Rami. … But the
executioners of Homs have been busier with traitors within their own ranks than
with prisoners of war. “If we catch a Sunni spying, or if a citizen betrays the
revolution, we make it quick,” says the fighter.
According to Abu Rami, Hussein’s burial brigade has put between 200 and
250 traitors to death since the beginning of the uprising.” (Der
Spiegel, March 30, 2012)
The project required an
initial program of recruitment and training of mercenaries. Death squads
including Lebanese and Jordanian Salafist units entered Syria’s southern border
with Jordan in mid-March 2011. Much of the groundwork was already in
place prior to Robert Stephen Ford’s arrival in Damascus in January 2011.
Ambassador Ford in Hama in early July 2011
Ford’s appointment as
Ambassador to Syria was announced in early 2010. Diplomatic relations had been
cut in 2005 following the Rafick Hariri assassination, which Washington blamed
on Syria. Ford arrived in Damascus barely two months before the onset of the
insurgency.
The Free
Syrian Army (FSA)
Washington
and its allies replicated in Syria the essential features of the “Iraq Salvador Option”,
leading to the creation of the Free Syrian Army (FSA) and its various terrorist
factions including the Al Qaeda affiliated Al Nusra brigades.
While the creation of the
Free Syrian Army (FSA) was announced in June 2011, the recruitment and training
of foreign mercenaries was initiated at a much an earlier period.
In many regards, the Free
Syrian Army is a smokescreen. It is upheld by the Western media as a bona fide military entity established
as a result of mass defections from government forces. The number of
defectors, however, was neither significant nor sufficient to establish a
coherent military structure with command and control functions.
The FSA is not a
professional military entity, rather it is a loose network of separate
terrorist brigades, which in turn are made up of numerous paramilitary cells
operating in different parts of the country.
Each of these terrorist
organizations operates independently. The FSA does not effectively exercise
command and control functions including liaison with these diverse paramilitary
entities. The latter are controlled by US-NATO sponsored special forces and
intelligence operatives which are embedded within the ranks of selected
terrorist formations.
These (highly trained)
Special forces on the ground (many of whom are employees of private security
companies) are routinely in contact with US-NATO and allied
military/intelligence command units (including Turkey). These embedded Special
Forces are, no doubt, also involved in the carefully planned bomb attacks
directed against government buildings, military compounds, etc.
The death squads are
mercenaries trained and recruited by the US, NATO, its Persian Gulf GCC allies
as well as Turkey. They are overseen by allied special forces (including
British SAS and French Parachutistes), and private security companies on
contract to NATO and the Pentagon. In this regard, reports confirm the
arrest by the Syrian government of some 200-300 private security company
employees who had integrated rebel ranks.
The Jabhat Al
Nusra Front
The Al Nusra Front –which
is said to be affiliated to Al Qaeda– is described as the most effective “opposition” rebel fighting
group, responsible for several of the high profile bomb attacks. Portrayed as
an enemy of America (on the State Department list of terrorist organizations),
Al Nusra operations, nonetheless, bear the fingerprints of US paramilitary
training, terror tactics and weapons systems. The atrocities committed against
civilians by Al Nusra (funded covertly by US-NATO) are similar to those
undertaken by the US sponsored death squads in Iraq.
In the words of
Al Nusra leader Abu Adnan in Aleppo: “Jabhat al-Nusra does count Syrian
veterans of the Iraq war among its numbers, men who bring expertise —
especially the manufacture of improvised explosive devices (IEDs) — to the
front in Syria.”
As in Iraq, factional
violence and ethnic cleansing were actively promoted. In Syria, the Alawite,
Shiite and Christian communities have been the target of the US-NATO sponsored
death squads. The Alawite and the Christian community are the main
targets of the assassination program. Confirmed by the Vatican News Service:
Christians in Aleppo are
victims of death and destruction due to the fighting which for months, has been
affecting the city. The Christian neighborhoods, in recent times, have been hit
by rebel forces fighting against the regular army and this has caused an exodus
of civilians.
Some groups in the rugged
opposition, where there are also jiahadist groups, “fire on Christian houses
and buildings, to force occupants to escape and then take possession [ethnic
cleansing] (Agenzia Fides. Vatican News, October 19, 2012)
“The Sunni Salafist
militants – says the Bishop – continue to commit crimes against civilians, or
to recruit fighters with force. The fanatical Sunni extremists are fighting a
holy war proudly, especially against the Alawites. When terrorists seek to
control the religious identity of a suspect, they ask him to cite the
genealogies dating back to Moses. And they ask to recite a prayer that the
Alawites removed. The Alawites have no chance to get out alive.” (Agenzia
Fides 04/06/2012)
Reports confirm the
influx of Salafist and Al Qaeda affiliated death squads as well as brigades
under the auspices of the Muslim Brotherhood into Syria from the inception of
the insurgency in March 2011.
Moreover, reminiscent
of the enlistment of the Mujahideen to wage the CIA’s jihad (holy
war) in the heyday of the Soviet-Afghan war, NATO and the Turkish High
command, according to Israeli intelligence sources, had initiated”
“a campaign to enlist
thousands of Muslim volunteers in Middle East countries and the Muslim world to
fight alongside the Syrian rebels. The Turkish army would house these
volunteers, train them and secure their passage into Syria. (DEBKAfile, NATO to give rebels
anti-tank weapons, August 14, 2011).
Private
Security Companies and the Recruitment of Mercenaries
According to reports, private security companies operating out of Gulf
States are involved in the recruiting and training of mercenaries.
Although not specifically
earmarked for the recruitment of mercenaries directed against Syria, reports
point to the creation of training camps in Qatar and the United Arab
Emirates (UAE).
In Zayed Military City
(UAE), “a
secret army is in the making” operated by Xe Services, formerly
Blackwater. The UAE deal to establish a military camp for the training of
mercenaries was signed in July 2010, nine months before the onslaught of the
wars in Libya and Syria.
In recent developments,
security companies on contract to NATO and the Pentagon are involved in
training “opposition” death squads in the use of chemical weapons:
“The United States and some European allies are
using defense contractors to train Syrian rebels on how to secure chemical
weapons stockpiles in Syria, a senior U.S. official and several
senior diplomats told CNN Sunday. ( CNN Report, December 9, 2012)
The names of the
companies involved were not revealed.
Behind Closed
Doors at the US State Department
Robert Stephen Ford was
part of a small team
at the US State Department team which oversaw the recruitment and training
of terrorist brigades, together with Derek
Chollet and Frederic C. Hof,
a former business partner of Richard Armitage, who served as Washington’s
“special coordinator on Syria”. Derek Chollet has recently been appointed to
the position of Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security
Affairs (ISA).
This team operated under
the helm of (former) Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern
Affairs Jeffrey Feltman.
Feltman’s team was in
close liaison with the process of recruitment and training of mercenaries out
of Turkey, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Libya (courtesy of the post-Gaddafi regime,
which dispatched six
hundred Libya Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) troops to Syria, via Turkey in
the months following the September 2011 collapse of the Gaddafi government).
Assistant Secretary of
State Feltman was in contact with Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud
al-Faisal, and Qatari Foreign Minister
Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim. He was also in charge of a
Doha-based office for “special security coordination” pertaining to
Syria, which included representatives from Western and GCC intelligence
agencies well as a representative from Libya. Prince Bandar bin Sultan.
a prominent and controversial member of Saudi intelligence was part of this
group. (See Press Tv, May
12, 2012).
In June 2012, Jeffrey Feltman
(image: Left) was appointed UN Under-Secretary-General for Political Affairs, a
strategic position which, in practice, consists in setting the UN
agenda (on behalf of Washington) on issues pertaining to “Conflict Resolution”
in various “political hot spots” around the world (including Somalia, Lebanon,
Libya, Syria, Yemen and Mali). In a bitter irony, the countries for UN
“conflict resolution” are those which are the target of US covert
operations.
In liaison with the US
State Department, NATO and his GCC handlers in Doha and Riyadh, Feltman is
Washington’s man behind UN special envoy Lakhdar Brahmi’s “Peace Proposal”.
Meanwhile, while paying
lip service to the UN Peace initiative, the US and NATO have speeded up the
process of recruitment and training of mercenaries in response to the
heavy casualties incurred by “opposition” rebel forces.
The US proposed “end
game” in Syria is not regime change, but the destruction of Syria as a Nation
State.
The deployment of
“opposition” death squads with a mandate to kill civilians is part of this
criminal undertaking.
“Terrorism with a Human
Face” is upheld by the United Nations Human Rights Council, which constitutes a
mouthpiece for NATO “Humanitarian Interventions” under the doctrine of
“Responsibility to Protect” (R2P).
The atrocities committed
by the US-NATO death squads are casually blamed on the government of Bashar Al
Assad. According to UN Human Rights Council High Commissioner Navi Pillay:
“This massive loss of
life could have been avoided if the Syrian Government had chosen to take a
different path than one of ruthless suppression of what were initially peaceful
and legitimate protests by unarmed civilians,” (quoted in Stephen Lendman, UN
Human Rights Report on Syria: Camouflage of US-NATO Sponsored Massacres,
Global Research, January 3, 2012)
Washington’s “unspeakable
objective” consists in breaking up Syria as a sovereign nation –along ethnic
and religious lines– into several separate and “independent” political
entities.
From Global Research @ http://www.globalresearch.ca/terrorism-with-a-human-face-the-history-of-americas-death-squads/5317564
For more information
about warmongers and war profiteers see http://nexusilluminati.blogspot.com/search/label/warmongers
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