The Western-Backed Murder Of Syria, With Guest Kevork Almassian
For at least 14 years the US and its Western allies have been actively engaged in overthrowing Syria's Bashar al-Assad. Opponents of the "regime change" plotters warned that Syria would become another Libya, rocked with murderous sectarian violence, if they succeeded. In December Assad was finally overthrown by a former senior al-Qaeda leader, as western governments cheered. Sectarian violence commenced. Thousands of religious and ethnic minorities have been slaughtered. Geopolitical analyst Kevork Almassian joins today's Liberty Report to explain how we got to this point, who are the main players, and what we might expect.
Hello, everybody, and thank you for tuning into the Liberty Report.
Dr. Paul is taking the day off today.
But we will not be alone because I've got a great guest, someone I've known for quite some time, someone whose analysis of the Middle East region I respect enormously, someone who you will benefit from hearing about if you don't know him already.
My guest today to discuss the situation in Syria is Kevork Al-Masian.
Kevork, where are you there?
I'm here.
Thank you very much for having me.
Greetings to you and greetings to your respected audience.
Welcome to the show.
Kevorg is a geopolitical analyst and the host of Syriana Analysis, which is a podcast I highly recommend if you want to understand what's going on.
Now, Kevork, I'd rather talk about things that are more fun, but unfortunately, we have to talk about what's happening in Syria.
We don't want to get too far into the weeds, but I remember from back in 2011 understanding what the U.S. was trying to do with its allies to overthrow Assad in the context of the so-called Arab Spring.
At the time, I probably expended 100,000 words on what a phony the Arab Spring was.
Did you agree with that at the time?
Did you see this wonderful uprising that Hillary Clinton and others were touting as something completely cooked up and fake, or that would ultimately lead to where we are now with countries like Syria and Libya and the others absolutely destroyed?
What was your view back then of the so-called Arab Spring?
Well, Daniel, I'm only 36 years old.
So in 2011, I didn't have your wisdom and I didn't have your knowledge.
So I would like to say that at the beginning, I was caught with the hype.
And we thought that this is a real true Arab Spring, which will bring democracy, which will democratize our countries, free speech, press, and etc.
And when it came to Syria in the first three months, this is something that many people do not know.
I supported the political opposition and one of which was Haisem Manna.
And I was on the side of the reforms.
I wanted for my country to become in a better position, especially that I used to study back then.
It was the first and second year of international relations and diplomacy or political science.
So I would have benefited from the, let's say, democratization of Syria.
But it didn't take me long to understand because I had a very, let's say, obsession with watching and listening to the videos coming from the opposition side, those who were protesting on the ground.
I want to listen to their demands and what they are calling for and what are their slogans.
And then I noticed that, yes, on TV outlets, if you turn on your Al Jazeera, they're talking about a democratic wave in the region, which is sweeping all the region and all the tyrants are fleeing their positions.
But then when I listen what the organizers of the protests were calling for, they were calling exactly the opposite of what democracy is and means.
Therefore, I started to really doubt the core of the so-called Syrian revolution.
And I started to do investigations, noticing that it is not a peaceful revolution, and it is definitely not a democratic revolution.
It is a regressive uprising.
And the people who were calling for the overthrow of Assad, they were doing it based on their hatred towards the Alawite sect, for example, because Bashal Assad was from an Alawite sect, which is a small domination inside Islam.
And they wanted to establish al-Qaeda-type rule in Syria.
So I still remember one of the first demands was the segregation or the separation of males and females in secondary and elementary school, which in Syria it was mixed.
And we were more secular in Syria, but they didn't want a secular system or progressive.
They wanted more, I don't want to call it a conservative, but rather, let's say, a regressive approach in a state approach towards its citizens, like as I mentioned, segregation of genders in school, in addition to other demands, for example, more Islamizing, let's say, the Syrian constitution and creating a state that is not truly democratic.
So I started to doubt and I pushed against it.
And since then, I also noticed that the foreign intervention, like the foreign intervention, now that after 14 years, it's quite obvious.
And myself, I dug in and digged in a lot into Operation Timber Sikkimer.
For your respected audience, in 2011, Barack Obama put his signature on a secret covert operation by the CIA to destabilize and remove Assad from power.
And therefore, he funneled around $1 billion per year in order to train and arm an army of Takfiris.
And the Takfiris belong to the Al-Qaeda ideology, basically, in order to oust Assad.
And now, after 14 years of this operation, Assad fled.
And ironically enough, the leader of or the founder of Al-Qaeda in Syria, Abu Muhammad Edjolani, has become the president of Syria.
He selected himself to become a president.
But you remember well, a few years ago when we used to say that if Assad is gone, then al-Qaeda will become to power.
They used to say this is an Assadist talking point.
This is a conspiracy theory.
Well, it happened now.
Yeah, and you know, it's interesting to see Tulsi Goward, who's now the director of our national intelligence, talk about Timber Sycamore and what a disaster it was.
I wonder, at least there's one person there that understands it.
Now, maybe you can explain this to me, Kevark, because on the surface, it seems like a bad movie.
I mean, how is it that the U.S. neocons, who have been obsessed since 9-11 with hating Muslims, with deporting Muslims, with all of this sorts of things, were actually backing extremist al-Qaeda types, the same people who took down the towers, backing them in the Middle East, and are now hailing them as great Democrats.
I guess all you have to do is shave a part of your beard and put on a suit, and there you go.
You're a Democrat.
You don't have to be elected anymore.
Yeah, I mean, so many examples from Afghanistan to Libya to Syria, where in these countries al-Qaeda fought, and also in Yemen, Al-Qaeda fought on the side of the U.S. Empire in these countries and against, or at least against the enemies of the United States.
I still remember Professor Mikhail Hudson from the US, he called Al-Qaeda the contract army of the U.S.
And I think that Al-Qaeda is infiltrated.
And many of these militants in Al-Qaeda don't know that they're serving the interests of the U.S. deep state in this case.
So they serve as pawn as geopolitical idiots in these conflicts.
So just notice the irony in Syria.
Israel is, after the fall of Assad, they have advanced and they have occupied a big chunk of territories inside Syria.
The size of the territory they occupied is larger than the Gaza strip.
They couldn't occupy the entire Gaza Strip after one year of, let's say, bombardment, but they were able to advance and occupy territories bigger than Gaza in a matter of two weeks.
Jolani's army didn't fire one bullet against the occupying forces from Israel, but he sent his tens of thousands of multinational Takfiri terrorists to the coastal cities, to Latakia, Tartus, Jablé, and Banias, and he somewhat executed thousands of Syrian civilians only because they belonged to the Alawite sect.
So he has committed heinous crimes and with the intent of committing genocide, because if you listen to the militants who say they're going to Latakia and they're posting their own videos, they say they're going to eliminate and purify Syria from the heretics.
This is what they say.
And the question here is, who gave them all these weapons?
Who gave them the training?
Who gave them the pickup trucks?
And who supported them financially?
Because every soldier in this al-Qaeda army receives $1,000 per month.
Who is paying for the 40,000 terrorists in Syria $1,000 per month?
This is a serious question.
I mean, who in the region has all this money?
It's Qatar, right?
And Turkey is logistic intelligence, and Qatar is the money.
But this is happening with the blessing in Washington, definitely.
And I think the Syrian army loyal to Bashar Assad was making a small fraction of that, right?
A couple of hundred dollars a month or something like that.
It's even less than that.
The officer used to make a $50 per month and the soldier is $30 per month.
And then in Al-Qaeda, they receive a thousand dollars per month with a good gear and good weapons.
Yeah, well, remember the famous saying from Jake Sullivan, who was working for Hillary Clinton at the time, who then became Biden's national security advisor.
As you know very well, Kabork, he wrote in a memo, Al-Qaeda is on our side in Syria.
So he was honest at least once.
Now, you touched on the recent event, and I want to go a little bit more into it.
But I would like to, if you don't mind before that, take us back to December.
Now, I read so many accounts of how the Assad government fell, just seemingly melted away.
What were your thoughts at the time, and what do you think ultimately happened?
How did something that seemed like it had been rescued from the edge of the abyss by the Russians?
What was it back in 17 or 18, maybe earlier?
15, I guess, rescued from the edge of oblivion and now somehow disappear.
How would such a thing happen, do you think?
I can assure you, Daniel, that if the Russian Air Force intervened, all these forces couldn't have advanced 400 kilometers from the north to the south without any detection because they were driving on a highway.
It's an open air, it's a highway during daylight.
So they could have eliminated everything if they wanted to.
But there are many multiple factors.
First things first, this was a joint Turkish-Israeli operation.
So both sides, Netanyahu and Erdogan, agreed to remove Assad from power for different reasons.
And when they started this, unleashed this terrorist army in Idlib against the Syrian army positions, the Syrian army was caught off guard.
That's true.
They were surprised and shocked.
I don't know how, because I was warning about this for a long time.
But when Aleppo fell and the Syrian army did the redeployment to other cities, Assad flew to Moscow and he met with Putin.
We don't know what happened in this meeting, but when he came back, he claimed that he received the support from Putin that Putin will intervene and they will bomb these terrorists.
But that never came.
Because during this time, it seems that Erdogan and Israel have intervened and they have talked to Putin and told him that they will keep his interests untouched in Syria.
And Assad's regime is going to crumble and Russia can keep its fleet in the Mediterranean.
So Russia didn't intervene in this case.
But this has come only two weeks before or three weeks before Trump came to presidency.
So the timing was very crucial because in Trump's team, they were anticipating for RFK, they were anticipating for Tulsi Gabriel, as you mentioned, and other personalities who wanted to withdraw the US forces from Syria.
And Israel didn't like that idea at all.
And in 2017, it was Israel which lobbied against Trump to not withdraw the forces from Syria.
So in this case, they speculated that if Trump comes and he wants to impose compromises in the Middle East, this could not serve 100% the interests of Israel or Turkey.
So they have accelerated this regime change operation and they have done this coup d'état in Damascus in order to create new realities before Trump comes to power.
Because when he comes and there are new realities, he has to deal with the new realities and he cannot impose certain conditions or compromises on the Syrian scene.
One of which is the withdrawal of the US forces before the Balkanization of Syria, because this is the end goal of the Israeli project in Syria, and that is to divide the Syrian nationhood into different meaning states, which is part of the divide and conquer strategy for a very long time, and then open up to the minorities like the Druze, like the Kurds, like the Alawites and the Christians, basically telling them, look, this Jolani is a terrorist guy and he's slaughtering you, so I'm here to protect you.
But let's remember, Israel supported this al-Qaeda militants and given them medical support, cash, and light weapons in the past years.
So they have participated in creating the problem and then they're proposing the solution to the people.
But the people don't have the privilege to choose now under such circumstances.
You have a militant outside your home going to kill you because you opened your eyes and you were born as a Christian or as an Alawite, or you accept foreign help in order to save your lives.
So they put the Syrian people between really hard choices.
Yeah, and now what about this deal with the STF, the Kurds signing a deal with the HTS?
What will that lead to?
It seems like they're consolidating their power.
This seems an American broker deal because STF is supported directly by the US and all its training and weapons come from the US.
And Jolani, after all these massacres that happened in Syria, it seems somebody wants to re-legitimize Jolani after this genocidal campaign against the Allies in the coast.
Therefore, they brought these two sides together in order to sign, I don't know if you can call it a peace, but it's a compromise at the end of the day.
But this will, let's say, it will give or it will give Jolani more time in the next few years.
And today, Jolani appointed himself as the president, interim president of Syria for another five years without elections.
And during this time, they will draft the constitution.
And after five years, he will held elections, which means from now on to five years, he is basically the god, you know, because he's not responsible for anything.
And he's not responsible in front of a parliament or in front of a cabinet or a constitution because he abolished everything and he appointed himself as the tsar of the country for another five years.
And I mean, what could happen in five years?
I mean, things are developing very fast.
China's Uyghur Problem00:07:55
In one week, he lost his legitimacy in a very important region in Syria, the coastal line.
And the people there just are, I'm talking to them daily.
We just want for the killing to stop and we want to leave the country.
Like we can't live with al-Qaeda, the government in Syria.
Yeah, I don't think anyone would want that.
Well, let's go back to this last weekend because I think this is where a lot of people who had not been paying attention or who had believed the mainstream media who have been telling us for a decade that as soon as Assad is gone, it's going to be, you know, land of milk and honey over there.
Well, over the weekend, things were a little bit different.
Now, of course, the mainstream media here in the U.S., and my guess is probably in Europe as well, portrayed this as being started by remnants of the Assad regime.
They came out in the coastal areas and they started attacking the HTS government.
They were preventing them from consolidating their control and putting a democratic government in place in Syria.
So it was all the fault of the Assadists is what we were told.
That's not exactly what happened, is it, Kevor?
First of all, I would like to say that the media is manipulating the people because the former Syrian army soldiers or officers, if you ask them today that Assad is returning tomorrow, do you accept him again?
They will say, I will kill him.
Like these soldiers that they call them Assad regime remnants, they are the ones who will kill Assad if he returns to Syria because in their eyes, Assad fled the country and he left them for this destiny.
So they don't want for Assad to return.
They're not loyalists to Assad.
However, since Jolani came to power, he alienated an entire two, three million Syrian citizens, and those are the Alawites.
He kicked out every, like in hospitals, in the public sector.
The Alawites all lost their jobs.
He is sending the provocators to their areas.
They take the men out of their houses and they humiliate them in the streets.
Like, for example, a man in his 60 years old man, they take him out of his apartment.
They ask him to crawl on the floor in the street and bark.
And if you don't bark, you die.
But this has been happening for many months now without the killing.
So when the former Syrian soldiers, who are Syrians basically, they started fighting back against them, Jolani sent a big reinforcement from all around Syria.
And we watched all the footage.
You watched it.
I watched it.
Thousands of trucks.
Yeah, thousands of pickup trucks.
But who did they kill?
Like, when we watched this footage, they are not killing soldiers.
They're not killing Assad regime remnants.
They're just killing ordinary civilians.
They're taking out all the men, humiliating them and executing them.
And then they're also killing the women and children.
So they're not fighting against a militia or an army or a military unit.
No.
They're fighting against the people.
So they have massacred thousands of civilians in the most heinous way and barbaric way, let's say.
And this will only lead into more divisions in the country.
And there is no one saying in Syria would accept Jolani any longer.
And especially if you belong, if you're a Christian or if you're an ally.
Like probably you may have to, you're forced to accept the rule because what can you do about it?
But if you had the opportunity to fight against it, they will fight.
And if you had the opportunity to leave the country, they will leave.
So in this case, Jolani already lost his legitimacy over the population in that region.
So Jolani prefers killing women and children and civilians.
Who does he think he is?
Netanyahu?
Right?
He's he's, I mean, for your respected audience, who is the president of Syria nowadays?
He joined al-Qaeda in 2003.
He was fighting in Iraq.
He was responsible for sending car bombs into civilian neighborhoods, especially to the Shia neighborhoods.
Then he ended up in a Buka camp, which is a CIA-operated camp alongside Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.
And both of them left this camp in 2011.
One formed ISIS, the second one formed Al-Nusrafund, which is the offshoot of Al-Qaeda.
It's coincidence that both of them became leaders of al-Qaeda basically groups.
And they have basically destroyed the country in the past years.
They have invited tens of thousands of multinational Takfiris from all around the world.
Now, Jolani's army, at least 30% of them are multinational.
According to Central Asian intelligence agencies, 25,000 of them are multinational, including from Qingyang, Uyghurs, Uzbeks, Tajiks, Saudis, Turks.
And worse still, he's giving them Syrian citizenship and giving them a Syrian passport, appointing them in the Syrian security forces, in the Syrian armed forces.
So someone from Tajikistan could come to Syria, settle here, and get a Syrian passport and become an official in the Syrian army.
I mean, where have I heard that before?
I think it's also in Israel.
Like somebody can come from Poland and claim Israeli citizenship and becomes an official there, right?
But in Syria, these people are very, they're dangerous to the Syrians.
Like I myself, I'm a Syrian now, and I'm threatened every day.
I received hundreds of comments and the DMs, people threatening me with murder.
But if I go to Syria, I would get killed, right?
So these people are basically taking my place as a Syrian inside Syria, and they're threatening my life.
And I can't go back to Syria now because of this terrorism.
I think that's an important point that a lot of people in the US don't understand, is that this is not Syrians taking back their country from Assad.
These are people, as you say, from Central Asia.
This is a worldwide jihadist movement who settled in Syria and is taking it over.
And I don't think Americans truly understand what that means.
And what it also means is that countries like China and Russia, who have large Muslim populations, have got to be very concerned as well that these people will go back home after this and start lots of trouble that these countries don't need.
They should be worried, especially China, because the next target on the US list is China.
And the CIA, in collaboration with the Qatari and Turkish intelligence, they have been trying to radicalize the Qingyang or the Uyghurs of Xinyang.
And the Chinese were very, they were advanced, like they have foreseen it because this model has been copied in Afghanistan, Libya, Syria.
So they didn't want for such a scene to be created again in Xinjiang.
And they have created this de-radicalization schools.
But now China has a big problem because they have around 15,000 Uyghurs in Syria, armed to teeth, and they would like to go back to Qingyang and they would like to go back to remove Qi Chinping from power.
So who also has the interest in transferring these people to China?
It's the US, it's Qatar, it's Turkey, to destabilize the Silicon Road initiative in this case, right?
So this, as we started this conversation together, it looks like these brainless Takfiri jihadists, they are like a contract army.
They take them from one place to another to fight the enemies of the US, basically.
So China should be terrified about this.
I'm sure they already know about it.
And the numbers are huge.
They created them training camps for kids in Syria.
So even the kids are radicalized.
Lindsey Graham's Worries00:04:38
Well, Lindsey Graham is worried, Kavor.
He said over the weekend, he said, I've never been so worried about the deterioration of Syria than I am now.
He's worried.
Well, I was going to say he was singing a different tune back in 2012.
Thanks to an article of the Libertarian Institute.
He said, I cannot say with certainty what will follow Assad, but I can say that Assad must go.
And he also said replacing Assad is critical to regional stability.
Lindsey Graham, the guy who's always in the middle of these regime chains.
He was in the Maidan in Ukraine.
He was very, very much in favor of the destruction and murder of Libya.
He's very much in favor of the destruction and murder of Iraq.
This guy is one of the most evil people on earth.
Is that right?
Am I right?
Or am I right?
I mean, when was the last time Lindsey Graham or Chomma came before him were right on anything?
And the thing is, in the United States, these career politicians, they say things turn out to be untrue.
They do things that they say they're doing the right things, and then these things turn out to be untrue.
And you see that it's counterproductive, not once, not twice, not the third time, not the fourth time, but many, many times.
But then they stay in the position of power.
What does that tell you about these personalities?
Like, I assume that at least these people should serve the interests of the American people, but I don't see them serving the interests of the people, but rather the interests of the military-industrial complex, the bankers, and the defense contractors, because this type of wars, it gives them the opportunity to sell billions of dollars worth of weapons and it is recycling back into their pockets.
But on the expense of people like us, right?
Like, because we paid half a million deaths in this war.
Yes, exactly.
Well, we're going to have to end this conversation, Kevorka.
I really appreciate your insights.
But if you can just take a couple of minutes to do two things.
First of all, to let us know what you think is going to happen in Syria.
What would be a best case scenario or a worst case scenario?
Also, you can tell our viewers where they can follow your work, whether it be on X or elsewhere.
So take a couple of minutes and do that if you don't mind.
Sure.
Like before the fall of Assad, I used to be against the federal system for Syria.
I was for federalism between different countries in the region to create economic integration, let's say between Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, etc., for the independence of these countries and for the development of these countries.
But now this is over.
So we are talking about federalism inside Syria.
So in the best case scenario, if Syria stays united, but federalized between different components based on the components of the Syrian society, but there is a centralized government in Damascus, this is the best case scenario.
The worst case scenario is the balkanization of Syria, which means Syria could be divided into like a Sunni state, Allowed Christians together, Druze and the Kurds.
So like four mini-states or four different mini-states in Syria.
This is of course a nightmare and this will create more conflicts than stability, not what Lindsey Graham and his likes say and preach for the American people.
Exactly the opposite is the truth.
Now for the people who want to know more about what's going on in Syria, they can see my regular updates on my X account, on my personal name, Kevark Almasian.
I'm posting mostly now the atrocities happening in Syria to document them.
And the longer format videos I'm posting all on my YouTube and Rumble Syriana analysis.
Great.
Thanks very much.
And I want to thank our viewers for watching today's show.
I want to do one final thing because this will be my last day of the week.
I mean, if we can put on that clip, I just want to let you guys know that our good friends over at antiwar.com are doing their spring fundraiser.
We work closely together with antiwar.com.
They do tremendous reporting.
They've done great reporting on Syria, by the way.
We turn to them as a valued source.
And listen, guys, they need support.
All the groups that are challenging the dominant narratives need support.
So I would urge you to go over to anti-war.com.
Help them stay alive because if they went dark, if they went silent, there's so many places like Syria we just wouldn't know the truth about.
So head over to antiwar.com.
And I want to thank all of you for tuning in today to the Liberty Report.