Over the last seven years,
several billion dollars’ worth of armament has been illegally introduced into
Syria – a fact which in itself is enough to disprove the myth according to
which this war is a democratic revolution. Numerous documents attest to the fact
that the traffic was organised by General David Petraeus, first of all in
public, via the CIA, of which he was the director, then privately, via the
financial company KKR with the aid of certain senior civil servants. Thus the
conflict, which was initially an imperialist operation by the United States and
the United Kingdom, became a private capitalist operation, while in Washington,
the authority of the White House was challenged by the deep state. New elements
now show the secret rôle of Azerbaïdjan in the evolution of the war.
During the liberation of Aleppo and the capture of the Saudi
military staff who were on site, Bulgarian journalist Dilyana Gaytandzhieva
noted the presence of weapons from her country in nine warehouses abandoned by
the jihadists. She carefully noted the information on the boxes, and once she
returned home, she investigated the way in which the weapons had been delivered
to Syria.
Since 2009 – with the short exception of the period between
March 2013 to November 2014 – Bulgaria has been governed by Boïko Borissov, a
highly colorful character from one of Europe’s main criminal organisations, the
SIC. Let’s remember that Bulgaria is a member of both NATO and the European
Union and that neither of these two organisations offered the slightest
criticism concerning the accession to power of a Mafia lord who had been
identified as such a long time previously by the international police services.
It is
therefore clearly at the risk of their lives that Dilyana Gaytandzhieva
uncovered the organisation, and the editors of the Sofia daily, Trud, published
her article [1]. While Bulgaria was one of the main arms
exporters to Syria, it received help from Azerbaïdjan.
The
gigantic CIA arms traffic against Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria and India
Since the beginning of the Arab Springs, a gigantic arms traffic
was organised by the CIA and the Pentagon in violation of a number of
resolutions by the UNO Security Council. All the operations that we will be
mentioning here are illegal under international law, including those organised
publicly by the Pentagon.
As far as arms traffic is concerned, even when individuals or
private companies are used as shields, it is impossible to export sensitive
equipment without the authorisation of the governments concerned.
All the weapons we will be mentioning, apart from the electronic
intelligence systems, are ’Soviet-type’. By definition, even if we pretend that
the armies supplied with NATO-type weapons are indeed the final recipients,
this is an impossibility. These armies serve only to cover the traffic.
We already
knew that the CIA had contacted the SIC, and that Boïko Borissov had been
called upon to manufacture an emergency quantity of Captagon destined for the
jihadists, first in Libya, then in Syria. Since Maria Petkova’s investigation,
which was published in the Balkan Investigative Reporting
Network(BIRN), we knew that between 2011 and 2014, the CIA and the
SOCOM (Pentagon Special Operations Command) had bought 500 million dollars’
worth of weapons from Bulgaria on behalf of the jihadists. Then, later, we
learned that other weapons were paid for by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab
Emirates and transported by Saudi Arabian Cargo and Etihad Cargo [2].
According
to Krešimir Žabec, of the Zagreb daily Jutarnji list, at
the end of 2012, Croatia delivered 230 tons of weapons to the Syrian jihadists
for a value of 6,5 million dollars. The transfer to Turkey was handled by three
Ilyushins from Jordan International Air Cargo, and the weapons were then
parachuted by the Qatar Army [3]. According to Eric Schmitt of the New York Times, the whole system had been created by
General David Petraeus, director of the CIA [4].
In 2012, when Hezbollah attempted to unearth the CIA / SOCOM
network, an attack was perpetrated against a number of Israëli tourists at
Burgas airport, the nerve center of the traffic. Ignoring the Bulgarian police
inquiry and the report of the medical examiner, the Borisov government blamed
the crime on Hezbollah, and the European Union labeled the Lebanese Resistance
as a « terrorist organisation » (sic). We had to wait for the provisional fall
of Borisov before the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Kristian Vigenine, pointed
out that this accusation is without foundation.
According to a source close to the PKK, in May and June 2014,
the Turkish secret services chartered special trains to deliver Ukranian
weapons to Rakka – which was then called the Islamic Emirate in Iraq and Syria
and is now known as Daesh. The weapons were paid for by Saudi Arabia, as were
more than a thousand Hilux vehicles (double cabin pickups) specially altered to
resist desert conditions. According to a Belgian source, the purchase of the
vehicles had been negotiated with the Japanese firm Toyota by the Saudi company
Abdul Latif Jameel.
According
to Andrey Fomin of the Oriental Review,
Qatar, which did not want to be left out, bought the most recent version of the
Air Missile Defense Complex “Pechora-2D” from the Ukranian state company
UkrOboronProm, for the jihadists. The delivery was made by the Cypriot company
Blessway Ltd [5].
According
to Jeremy Binnie and Neil Gibson of the professional arms magazine Jane’s, the US Navy Military Sealift Command launched
two tenders in 2015 for the transport of arms from the Romanian port of
Constanta to the Jordanian port of Aqaba. The contract was won by Transatlantic
Lines [6]. It was implemented on 12 February 2016,
just after the signature of the cease-fire by Washington, in violation of its
engagement.
According
to Pierre Balanian of Asia News, this system was extended in March 2017 with
the opening of a regular maritime line by the US company Liberty Global
Logistics, linking Livorno (Italy) / Aqaba (Jordan) and Jeddah (Saudi
Arabia) [7]. According to geographer Manlio Dinucci, it
was mainly used to deliver tanks to Syria and Yemen [8].
According
to Turkish journalists Yörük Işık and Alper Beler, the last contracts of the
Obama era were implemented by Orbital ATK, who organised, via Chemring and
Danish H. Folmer & Co, a regular line between Burgas (Bulgaria) and Jeddah
(Saudi Arabia). For the first time, we are now talking not only about weapons
produced by Vazovski Machine Building Factory (VMZ) (Bulgaria) but also by
Tatra Defense Industrial Ltd. (Czech Republic) [9].
Many other
operations took place in secret, as demonstrated by the affairs of the
cargo Lutfallah II, inspected by the Lebanese Navy on 27
April 2012, or the Togolese cargo the Trader, inspected by
Greece on 1 May 2016.
The total
of these operations represent hundreds of tonnes of weapons and ammunition,
perhaps even thousands, mainly paid for by the absolute monarchies of the Gulf,
allegedly to support a « democratic revolution ». In reality, these
petro-dictatorships only intervened to dispense the Obama administration with having
to explain themselves to the US Congress (Operation Timber Sycamore) and cement their belief that the moon
is made of green cheese [10]. All of this traffic was under the personal
control of General David Petraeus, first of all via the CIA, of which he was
the director, then via the financial investment company KKR, for which he
worked thereafter. He benefited from the assistance of senior civil servants,
sometimes under the presidency of Barack Obama, and then – massively – under
that of Donald Trump.
The
secret rôle – until now – of Azerbaïdjan
According
to Sibel Edmonds – ex-FBI agent and founder of the National Security
Whistleblowers Coalition – Azerbaïdjan, under President Heydar Aliyev, from
1997 to 2001 hosted in Bakou the number 2 of Al-Qaïda, Ayman el-Zawahiri. This
was done at the request of the CIA. Although officially wanted by the FBI, the
man who was then the number 2 of the international jihadist network traveled
regularly in NATO planes to Afghanistan, Albania, Egypt and Turkey. He also
received frequent visits from Prince Bandar ben Sultan of Saudi Arabia [11].
To its security relations with Washington and Riyadh,
Azerbaïdjan – whose population is nonetheless mainly Shiite – adds Sunni
Ankara, which supports it in its conflict with Armenia concerning the secession
of the Republic of Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh).
Heydar Aliyev died in the United States in 2003 and was
succeeded by his son Ilham Aliyev. The USA-Azerbaïdjan Chamber of Commerce thus
moved into Washington’s backyard, with, alongside President Aliyev, stood
Richard Armitage, James Baker III, Zbigniew Brzeziński, Dick Cheney, Henry
Kissinger, Richard Perle, Brent Scowcroft and John Sununu.
According to Dilyana Gaytandzhieva, in 2015, Minister of
Transport Ziya Mammadov placed the state company Silk Way Airlines at the
disposition of the CIA, at the expense of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab
Emirates. The Minister for Foreign Affairs, minimally scrupulous Elmar
Mammadyarov, sent requests for official recognition of « diplomatic flights »
to several of his embassies, which protected the flights from being searched
under the Vienna Convention. In less than three years, more than 350 flights
benefited from this extraordinary privilege.
Although according to the international treaties, neither civil
nor diplomatic flights are authorised to carry military material, requests for
recognition as « diplomatic flights » require the explicit detailing of the
cargo transported. However, at the request of the US State Department, at least
Afghanistan, Germany, Saudi Arabia, Bulgaria, Congo, the United Arab Emirates,
Hungary, Israël, Pakistan, Poland, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, the Czech Republic,
Turkey and United Kingdom closed their eyes to this violation of international
law, just as they had ignored the CIA flights to and from their secret prisons.
In less than three years, Silk Way Airlines transported at least
one billion dollars’ worth of armament.
One thing leading to another, journalist Dilyana Gaytandzhieva
uncovered a vast system which also supplied the jihadists not only in Iraq and
Syria, but also in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Congo – also paid for by the
Saudis and the Emiratis. Some of the arms delivered in Arabia were redirected
to South Africa.
The arms transported to Afghanistan were delivered to the
Talibans, under the control of the US, which is pretending to fight them. Those
delivered to Pakistan were probably destined to commit Islamist attacks in
India. We do not know who were the final recipients of the arms delivered to
the Republican Guard of President Sassou N’Guesso in the Congo, or those
delivered to South Africa under President Jacob Zuma.
The main arms dealers were the US firms Chemring (already
mentioned), Culmen International, Orbital ATK (also mentioned) and Purple
Shovel.
Apart from the Soviet-type arms produced by Bulgaria,
Azerbaïdjan, under the responsibility of Minister of the Defence Industry Yavar
Jamalov, bought stocks in Serbia, the Czech Repûblic and also in other states,
declaring each time that Azerbaïdjan was the final recipient of the
merchandise. Concerning the electronic intelligence material, Israël placed at
their disposition the firm Elbit Systems, which pretended to be the final
recipient, since Azerbaïdjan does not have the right to buy this type of
equipment. These exceptions attest to the fact that the Azerbaïdjani system,
although requested by the United States and Saudi Arabia, was controlled from
start to finish from Tel-Aviv.
The Hebrew state, which pretended to be neutral during the whole
of the Syrian conflict, nonetheless bombed the Syrian Arab Army on many
occasions. Each time Tel-Aviv recognised the facts, it pretended that it had
destroyed the arms destined for the Lebanese Hezbollah. In reality, all these
operations, with perhaps a single exception, were coordinated with the
jihadists. So today we learn that Tel-Aviv supervised the deliveries of arms to
these same jihadists so that although Israël limited itself to the use of its
air force to support them, it did, in fact, play a central rôle in the war.
According to the
international conventions, the falsification of certificates of final delivery,
and the supply of weapons to mercenary groups who overthrow legitimate
governments, or destroy recognised states, are considered to be international
crimes.
Operation Timber Sycamore, in its
various aspects, is the most important criminal case of arms trafficking in
history. In the updated parts, it involves at least 17 states and represents
several tens of thousands of tons of weapons.
French
intellectual, founder and chairman of Voltaire Network and the Axis for Peace
Conference. His columns specializing in international relations feature in
daily newspapers and weekly magazines in Arabic, Spanish and Russian. His last
two books published in English : 9/11 the Big Lie and Pentagate.
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on Voltaire Network may be freely reproduced provided the source is cited,
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