The quite frankly disastrous results following military interventions by the United States and its closest allies from Western Europe in Afghanistan, Libya, Iraq, and Syria have made information warfare one of the main tools used by the West, a type of combat operation in which the key instrument to exert an impact has become targeted, propagandistic information. In recent years, the use of these methods (information warfare) on the part of the United States and Great Britain has been particularly noticeable in Syria, where attempts to replace the current regime by military means, and create and then subsequently prop up opposition forces, and even terrorist groups such as Al-Qaeda and DAESH (both organizations are banned in Russia), have not yielded the desired outcomes for either Washington or London for many years.
And Germany decided to lend its support to this “relay race”, strenuously nudging German media outlets that get their funding from the US into the abyss of fake propaganda that somehow serves to justify Washington’s militaristic policy in the Middle East – and this is especially true on the eve of the next presidential elections in the United States. One of these “fake news mouthpieces” is the Süddeutsche Zeitung, having already shouted itself hoarse from disseminating this kind of “information”, which once again tried to accuse the Syrian authorities of allegedly “systematically concealing banned chemical warfare agents from international monitoring”.
However, by listing the “Open Society Justice Initiative” from New York as its “primary information sources”, an organization that is one of the flagship offshoots of the well-known – and discredited by its fake, paid-for propaganda – Soros Foundation Open Society Foundations (OSF), this publication for hire has already shown its true colors. Along with that, the German publication did not even bother, instead of publishing materials fabricated by Soros’s minions, to get acquainted with the process of destroying Syria’s chemical weapons, something which was carried out in close cooperation by the countries involved, including the United States, and under extremely strict international control – incidentally, this was something that Washington publicly gave an account of before the international community!
In addition, the German publication, in the apparent excitement following the publishing of a paid-for article, forgot to call upon the United States itself to focus on destroying its chemical arsenal, instead of accusing Syria of not completely eliminating its chemical weapons.
When preparing its “news story”, this German publication did not familiarize itself with a very detailed journalistic investigation published by the American outlet The Grayzone about a large-scale propaganda operation in Syria: this was conducted by Western companies and the media to malign the current government in this Arab country while simultaneously supporting the political and the armed opposition in a place that has become the base today for many jihadists with Al-Qaeda and DAESH (both terrorist groups are banned in Russia – ed.) that have become infamous for their crimes. This was a glaring omission on the part of the German publication, because this investigation showed in detail how the public in the West and the Arab world became the targets of manipulation by the media at the expense of taxpayers in Britain, the EU, and the United States, whose money was used by several Western organizations to train reporters they could use for these propaganda provocations.
The German publication Süddeutsche Zeitung kept silent, yet that same publication The Grayzone revealed to the international community why the former OPCW Director-General José Maurício de Figueiredo Bustani was not allowed by the United States, Great Britain, France, and their allies to tell the UN Security Council about covering up the real results of the investigation following the “chemical weapons attack” in the Syrian city of Douma in 2018, which became one of the tools in the West’s information war against Syria. The Grayzone website published the full text of Bustani’s appeal, in which he calls upon the current OPCW leadership to listen to its staff, who are raising doubts about the official findings on the events in Syria. In his address, Bustani frankly regrets that, through the efforts of Washington, London, and some of their allies, the OPCW is also not turning into an arbitrator in the very important issue of assessing whether various countries are using banned chemical weapons, but rather an instrument for political games and information warfare. As Jose Bustani stressed, “the OPCW was once a great organization. And even if it has “stumbled”, it still has a chance to recover and become even better. The world needs a reliable authority to monitor chemical weapons.”
However, unfortunately, to date the calls made by Bustani have not been duly noted in the West.
And nobody listened to the warnings issued by the Russian Center for the Reconciliation of Opposing Sides in Syria in early October about how it was not Damascus that was making preparations to launch another provocation using toxic chemical agents in the southern part of the Idlib de-escalation zone, but militants from illegal armed groups. In particular, the then-deputy head of the center, Rear Admiral Alexander Grinkevich, said that terrorists had delivered several barrels of chlorine to the vicinity of Sfukhon village, and representatives of the pseudo-humanitarian organization “White Helmets Commission” arrived in that settlement in three cars to stage giving assistance to the victims.
Despite this warning, another wave of fake accusations leveled against Damascus about the supposed use of chemical weapons was inspired by a number of participants in the Western propaganda campaign. However, this propaganda campaign by the West completely failed after an explosion occurred at a stockpile with ammunition and chlorine-containing substances that had been prepared by terrorists for provocations involving chemical attacks in the area of the village of Maaret al-Ihuan (13 km north of the city of Idlib) on October 11. Militants that had citizenship in European and North African countries perished following the blast.
In this regard, one question involuntarily arises: why do Western propagandists like to keep falling into the same trap of making fake accusations about the alleged use of chemical weapons on the part of Damascus? Wouldn’t it be better if we all bolster our cooperation together in the fight against international terrorism and the actions taken by jihadists in Syria and the Middle East?
Vladimir Odintsov, a political observer, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.
