According to comments made for the Business Insider by Iam Bremmer, director of Eurasia Group, which is one of the world’s largest consulting and research companies, France, which has declared war on ISIS, is now searching for partners. “There are no good partners among Syrian militia; their absence now is as obvious as it was before the explosions in France,” says Ian Bremmer. Moreover, there is no support from Western troops, for France to start a war on its own”. According to experts, this puts Russia and Iran in a very strong position; in view of the current environment, it is highly likely that France will start cooperating with them, not with America.
Still, the incidents so typical from the West and their clearly propagandistic distortions are once again present here. The respectable French newspaper Le Monde has recently published an editorial saying that “as soon as Francois Holland announced his intention to set up an international coalition for combating ISIS, Russia immediately adjusted in order to fit in the new configuration”. We are sorry for the French, because their popular newspaper does not read anything except for its own editorials and has not even heard that this so-called, “intention” was announced two months ago by Vladimir Putin at the UN General Assembly. This means that it was not Putin, but Holland who decided (according to Le Monde’s wording) “to adjust in order to fit in the new configuration” and in this way to improve his falling national rating which grew 8 points in the last few days only and reached 33%.
However, the distortions and bare-faced misleading of the general public are intrinsic not only to French, but also to American mass media. On 19 November, the American RBS accompanied its material about the Islamic State terrorist group with a video showing the attacks made by the Russian air-space forces on combatants’ positions; this video had been earlier released by the Russian Defence Ministry. But the American journalists passed the attacks off as “the actions of American Air Force which destroyed over one hundred of trucks intended for oil transportation”. A video showing the air strike by the Russian air-space forces on one of the ISIS oil processing plant and a column of trucks transporting oil products to Turkey was used as supporting material. The newscaster commented on the video with gusto: “the USA is launching the first strike on trucks transporting oil”.
As concerns their own would-be achievements in terms of bombing the ISIS oil facilities, American mass media does not publish any other video evidence, except for the Russian one. At the same time, the video provided by the Russian Air Force clearly shows zero harm from Obama’s “air war” on the ISIS oil sector, which is mentioned even by Breitbart London, the international news portal of the Great Britain. . In particular, it states that the weakness of American air strikes on the Islamic State in Northern Syria is distinct on the video which was released by the Russian Air Force on November 18. It shows hundreds of the ISIS untouched oil trucks standing in lines on a parking close to a slightly damaged oil refinery. The trucks seemed to be unprotected and parked without any concern about potential attacks by the American Air Force. As early as May, senator John McCain revealed that three out of four planes taking part in Syrian missions return home without having dropped a single bomb.
Surely, everybody understands that trucks are vitally important for ISIS, because they carry oil for buyers in Turkey. And the Islamic State needs financial inflow to pay to its combatants, buy weapons, bribe enemies and finance jihadist attacks in other locations, as it happened on 13 November in Paris where more than 120 civilians were killed. In view of this, the importance of air strikes specifically on the ISIS funding source should not be put in question and the attacks should be performed, as long as any state declares its readiness to take part in anti-terrorist war with the Islamic State.
The false nature of this anti-terrorist war is clearly demonstrated by the actions of the coalition headed by the USA. The intelligence service does not report to President Obama on the actual situation in Iraq and Syria, which was recently mentioned by Devin Nunes, head of the intelligence service committee of the House of Representatives (republican from California). At least, this was exactly the way he commented on the article, which was published by New York Times on 21 November and stated that US CENTCOM had deliberately concealed the real power of the Islamic State terrorist group and the weakness of Iraq’s army training in its secret report last year.
As we know, the US and some of their allies have been making air strikes on the ISIS positions since August last year in Iraq and September last year in Syria. However, according to the statement made on 30 September by Walid Muallem, head of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Syria, actions carried out by the US-headed coalition in Syria run counter to the international law, violate the sovereignty of the Syrian Arab Republic and have not brought any results, failing to undermine ISIS fighting potential last year.Alternatively, Russia fights ISIS in Syria on a legal basis, and this should be understood by everybody through joining its activities in the region.
In this connection, many clear-headed politicians in the US and beyond do not understand the position of the White House concerning Syria and the role of Russia in the fight with ISIS. Thus, a member of the House of Representatives, republican Dana Rohrabacher in a column for Investor’s Business Daily urges to avoid the second Benhgazi in Syria and asks not to forget that enemy number one for the USA is ISIS, not Asad.
On the whole, it seems that today’s situation copies the opening of a “second front” in the fight with ISIS, as it was during World War II. Both then and now, certain political forces took part in creating and strengthening the world chimera positions by concluding informal secret contracts with it for the achievement of targets beneficial for some Western groups. As concerns the opening of the “second Western front” in the form of a broad coalition, both then and now there is hardly any progress beyond general statements. The change of the situation will be obvious as soon as Russia (like USSR in the last century) will be close to winning a victory over ISIS; at this point Western hawks will joint the fight actively, in hopes of walking the red carpet to victory and preventing Moscow from strengthening its regional and global authority.
Valeriy Kulikov, expert politologist, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook“.
