Massacre Proves Turk, Washington Complicity in Syria Terror
| Finian CUNNINGHAM | 03.12.2015 | 00:00 |
On
the morning of March 21, 2014, the Syrian village of Kessab was
attacked with a combined force of Islamist jihadists and the Turkish
army. Among the irregular militia were brigades belonging to the Free
Syrian Army, Turkmen tribes and Al Qaeda-linked Al Nusra and the
self-proclaimed Islamic State. All were working in tandem in the
resulting massacre. And the evidence shows that the Ankara and
Washington governments were fully complicit in the atrocity.
The dawn assault on the mainly Armenian Christian village of 2,000 inhabitants
began with heavy artillery fire from Turkish army positions across the
border in Turkey’s Hatay Province. Turkish army helicopters were also
used to strafe Kessab homes and farms. The village is located in the
Jebel Al-Aqra mountains overlooking the Mediterranean Sea only a few
kilometres from the Turkish border in Syria’s Latakia Province.
After
the initial salvos from the Turk army, the village was then attacked
with thousands of militants who streamed across the border in pick-up
trucks. Among the assault force were nationals from Chechnya,
Afghanistan, Tunisia, Morocco, Saudi Arabia – as well as British and
Australian, according to survivors.
Most
of the Kessab residents managed to escape in panic from the advancing
jihadists in cars and other vehicles to the southern city of Latakia,
which is about an hour’s drive away and is under the control of the
Syrian government.
But
what transpired in the next days was a massacre of villagers who were
left stranded. In total, 88 mainly elderly residents were slaughtered.
Thirteen of the victims were beheaded. One young man, 21-year-old Kevork
Djurian, was executed in front of his parents. The killers just laughed
at his father Papken’s anguish. The jihadists refused to let the father
bury his son, saying that he was «an Armenian dog».
Kessab was occupied by the jihadists for nearly three months before theSyrian
Arab Army finally routed the militants and retook the village in
mid-June 2014. Today, it still remains under Syrian government control.
Two
witnesses to the slaughter have separately told this author of the
event and its aftermath. One is an American citizen who has lived in
Syria for more than 20 years. She is a medical professional who has a
family home in Kessab. On the morning of the opening assault, she was in
Latakia, but she tended to the survivors who fled to the main Armenian
church in Latakia for sanctuary. As well as caring for the traumatised
people, some of whom were her neighbours
and friends, she carefully noted their accounts of how the initial
attack unfolded. When the Syrian army later retook Kessab in June, the
American medic returned to the village and witnessed the devastation
that the jihadists had inflicted on homes, public buildings and
churches.
Another
witness is Irish peace activist, Dr Declan Hayes. He also managed to
reach Kessab in the days following its recapture by the Syrian army.
Hayes interviewed survivors and recorded the scenes of looting and destruction left behind by the fleeing anti-government militia.
«I
interviewed the man whose son was slain in front of his eyes», says
Hayes. «The jihadists left the young man’s bloodied corpse lying on the
ground for three days outside the family home just to torment his
parents».
Without
exception, all the villagers said that the assault began with artillery
fire and raids by helicopter gunships from Turk territory. «The border
is heavily
militarised with Turk army positions everywhere on the Turkish side.
There is no doubt that this attack was launched with the direct
involvement of the Turkish government in Ankara», adds Hayes.
Kessab
is in the same mountainous location where Turkish F-16 fighter jets
last week shot down a Russian Su-24 bomber, which had been carrying out
raids on jihadist groups. The Russian plane came down in Syrian
territory and one of its pilots was murdered as he parachuted to the
ground by Turkmen militants. The Turkmen are Syrian citizens who are
ethnically related to Turks across the border.
The
American-Syrian woman (whose name has been withheld by this author on
request) says that the Turkmen played an important role in the slaughter
of Kessab. «They know all the roads, trails and paths into and out of
Kessab. They were the ones who led the attackers into the village», she
says.
Churches
and a cultural centre in the village were desecrated. The attackers
moved from house-to-house killing terrified dwellers and then they
looted everything
that was not nailed down or even those possessions that were nailed
down. Money, jewellery, televisions, fridges, doors, windows, furnishings
and farm equipment were systematically plundered and hauled back in
trucks to be sold off across the border in Turkey.
Adding to the crimes, a group of about 30 elderly village folk were then abducted
by the marauders and taken to the Turkish town of Vakifli some 20
kilometres across the border. They were held there by armed militants
for several weeks before they were flown by the Turk authorities to the
city of Tripoli in Lebanon. From there the people were able to make
their way back to the sanctuary of Latakia. The circuitous route was
chosen by the Turk regime in order to conceal its involvement in the
crime.
During their abduction, the group was visited by an official American delegation
that included the then US ambassador to Turkey, Francis Ricciardone.
Ricciardone introduced himself through an interpreter. The
petrified
Kessab folk pleaded with the American official to intervene for their
release. But he left them in their plight. What he wanted to know
through his questioning was if any of the people from Kessab were
American citizens.
As the American medic pointed out to this author: «There are a few US citizens like me who live in Kessab. There is a big diaspora community of Armenian
Syrians in the United States and many of them have homes back in Syria.
It seems that the American ambassador was worried that if any US citizens were among the Kessab survivors this would rebound badly for the American government if that news got out».
As
noted, once the US ambassador established that there were apparently no
American citizens involved in the aftermath of the Kessab assault, he
duly left them to their fate of captivity in Turkey.
What
that encounter illustrates is that Washington must have been fully
aware of what went down in Kessab. How else would the US diplomat know
to show up to question the abducted villagers?
In the days following the attack on the village, Samantha Power, the US ambassador
to the United Nations, issued a perfunctory, bland statement about
Washington’s «concern» over the violence. But Washington did not specify
who the guilty parties were, nor did it issue any censure of the Turk
government of Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who was the prime minister at that
time. He is now the president.
In
fact, a subsequent statement issued by State Department official
Victoria Nuland claimed that the Turk government had no involvement in
the Kessab incident. However, the Russian, Syrian and Armenian governments did make explicit condemnations of the massacre.
The Turkish government claimed that it had no role in the attack. In an official
release, the Erdogan regime said: «The allegations by some circles that
Turkey is providing support to the opposition forces by letting them
use its territory or through some other ways during the conflict which
have intensified recently in the Latakia/Kessab region are totally unfounded and untrue».
But
the testimonies cited in this article show that the Turk authorities
were directly involved in the military assault and the orchestration of
jihadist militants. The Ankara government’s denials of what happened in Kessab are thus barefaced lies.
On
April 1, 2014, 12 days after the assault began, Ahmed Jarba, the leader
of the Western-backed Syrian National Council (SNC), arrived in Kessab.
The SNC is the exiled political wing of the Free Syrian Army. Jarba,
who is a protégé of the Saudi regime, went there to inspect the
occupation and congratulate the militants on their successful breach of government-held territory
in Latakia. The breach of territory to the Mediterranean coast was
considered a significant victory for the militants. The following month,
in May, Jarba was received in the White House by President Barack
Obama. He was also greeted by Obama’s National Security advisor, Susan
Rice.
The
«rape of Kessab», as Dr Declan Hayes has called it, was fully conducted
by fighters belonging to the Western-backed FSA, along with jihadist
brigades comprising Turkmen tribesmen and Al Qaeda-linked Al Nusra and
Islamic State.
The incident serves as a microcosm of the entire four-and-a-half-year-old Syria
On the morning of March 21 last year, the community of Kessab was plunged into an orgy of barbarism carried out by Western, Turk and Saudi-backed jihadists.
The whole notion contrived by Western governments and their mainstream
media that the West is backing «secular, moderate rebels» in Syria
fighting against a sectarian, despotic regime is thus exposed as a vile
charade, as the carnage at Kessab shows.
Of
particular import is the criminal role played by the Turk government of
Recep Tayyip Erdogan, not only in the orchestration of the slaughter at
Kessab, but, more generally, throughout the entire Syrian conflict.
Erdogan
has this week flatly denied claims made by Russian President Vladimir
Putin that Ankara is complicit in fuelling the conflict in Syria by supporting
terrorists through an industrial-scale campaign, involving the
smuggling of oil for weapons. Erdogan has even said that he will resign
if it is proven that his regime is complicit. His arrogant confidence
seems to stem from his regime’s brutal suppression of Turk media
publishing verifiable articles that Turkish state intelligence has indeed been running truck-loads of weapons into Syria.
Previously, by way of attempting to absolve the Turk state from charges of terrorist
collusion, Erdogan claimed that weapons were being sent to help Turkmen
«brothers» to defend themselves from the Syrian army. Following the
brutal murder of the Russian pilot by Turkmen jihadists last week, Erdogan
this week changed his tune and claimed that weapon convoys into Syria
were allegedly being sent to the «Free Syrian Army».
But,
as the Kessab massacre demonstrates, the so-called «moderate» FSA is an
integral and indistinguishable component of the proxy terrorist army
that Ankara and its Washington ally are supporting to overthrow the
elected government of President Assad. Any difference is patently just a figment of imaginative propaganda.
Obama,
while at the Paris climate change summit this week (appropriately, a
«hot-air» conference of world leaders), has this week reiterated calls
on Russia to focus its military campaign on the Islamic State and to
halt its aerial attacks on «moderate rebels».
The American president and his Turk ally are in no position to lecture anybody
about «terrorists» and «moderates». They are all part of the same
criminal gang, and that gang includes Obama and Erdogan.
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