I actually forced myself to watch the
documentary The White Helmets, which is available on Netflix. It is
40 minutes long, is of high quality cinematographically speaking, and tells a
very convincing tale that was promoted as “the story of real-life
heroes and impossible hope.” It is overall a very impressive piece of
propaganda, so much so that it has won numerous awards including the Oscar for
Best Documentary Short this year and the White Helmets themselves were
nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. More to the point, however, is the
undeniable fact that the documentary has helped shape the public understanding of
what is going on in Syria, delivering a Manichean tale that depicts the
“rebels” as always good and Bashar al-Assad and his government as un-redeemably
evil.
It has been reliably reported that celebrities
like George Clooney, Justin Timberlake and Hillary Clinton really like the
White Helmets documentary and have promoted it with the understanding that it
represents the truth about Syria, but it is, of course, not the whole story.
The film, which was made by the White Helmets themselves without any external
verification of what it depicts, portrays the group as “heroic,” an “impartial,
life-saving rescue organization” of first responders. Excluded from the scenes
of heroism under fire is the White Helmets’ relationship with the al-Qaeda
affiliated group Jabhat al-Nusra and its participation in the torture and
execution of “rebel” opponents. Indeed, the White Helmets only operate in rebel
held territory, which enables them to shape the narrative both regarding who
they are and what is occurring on the ground. Because of increasing awareness
of the back story, there is now a growing movement to petition the Academy of
Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to revoke the Oscar based on the complete and
deliberate misrepresentation of what the White Helmets are all about.
Exploiting their access to the western media,
the White Helmets have de facto become a major source of
“eyewitness” news regarding what has been going on in those many parts of Syria
where European and American journalists are quite rightly afraid to go. It is
all part of a broader largely successful “rebel” effort to
manufacture fake news that depicts the Damascus government as engaging in war
crimes directed against civilians.
The White Helmets have certainly saved some
lives under dangerous circumstances but they have also exaggerated their
humanitarian role as they travel to bombing sites with their film crews
trailing behind them. Once at the sites, with no independent observers, they
are able to arrange or even stage what is filmed to conform to their selected
narrative. They have consistently promoted tales of government atrocities
against civilians to encourage outside military intervention in Syria and bring
about regime change in Damascus. The White Helmets were, for example, the
propagators of the totally false but propagandistically
effective claims regarding the government use of so-called “barrel bombs”
against civilians.
The White Helmets were a largely foreign
creation that came into prominence in the aftermath of the unrest in Syria that
developed as a result of the Arab Spring in 2012. They are currently largely funded by a number of
non-government organizations (NGOs) as well as governments, including Britain
and some European Union member states. The United States has directly provided
$23 million through the USAID (US Agency for International Development) as of
2016 and almost certainly considerably more indirectly. Max Blumenthal
has explored in some detail the various
funding resources and relationships that the organization draws on, mostly in
Europe and the United States.
Former weapons inspector Scott Ritter has described how the White Helmets
are not actually trained to do the complicated rescue work that they depict in
their self-made videos, which have established their reputation by ostensibly
showing them in action inside Syria, rescuing civilians from bombed out
structures, and providing life-saving emergency medical care. As an expert in
Hazardous Materials handling with New York Task Force 2 USAR team, Ritter
reports that “these videos represent de facto evidence of dangerous
incompetence or, worse, fraud… The bread and butter of the White Helmet’s
self-made reputation is the rescue of a victim—usually a small child—from
beneath a pile of rubble, usually heavy reinforced concrete… The techniques
used by the White Helmets are not only technically wrong, but dangerous to
anyone who might actually be trapped… In my opinion, the videos are pure theater,
either staged to impress an unwitting audience, or actually conducted with
total disregard for the wellbeing of any real victims.”
Ritter also cites the lack of training in
hazardous chemicals, best observed in the videos provided by the White Helmets
regarding their activity at Khan Sheikhun on April 4th. He notes “As was the case with their
‘rescues’ of victims in collapsed structures, I believe the rescue efforts of
the White Helmets at Khan Sheikhun were a theatrical performance designed to
impress the ignorant and ill-informed… Through their actions…the White Helmets
were able to breathe life into the overall narrative of a chemical weapons
attack, distracting from the fact that no actual weapon existed….”
But perhaps the most serious charge against
the White Helmets consists of the evidence that they actively participated in the atrocities,
to include torture and murder, carried out by their al-Nusra hosts. There have
been numerous photos of the White Helmets
operating directly with armed terrorists and also celebrating over the bodies
of execution victims and murdered Iraqi soldiers. The group has an excellent
working relationship with a number of jihadi affiliates and is regarded by them
as fellow “mujahideen” and “soldiers of the revolution.”
So by all means let’s organize to revoke the
White Helmets’ Oscar due to misrepresentation and fraud. It might even serve as
a wake-up call to George Clooney and his fellow Hollywood snowflakes. But the bigger take-away from
the tale of the White Helmets would appear to be how it is an unfortunate
repeat of the bumbling by a gullible U.S. government that has wrecked the
Middle East while making Americans poorer and less safe. A group of “moderates,”
in this case their propagandists, is supported with weapons and money to
overthrow a government with which Washington has no real quarrel but it turns
out the moderates are really extremists. If they succeed in changing regime in
Damascus, that is when the real nightmare will begin for minorities within
Syria and for the entire region, including both Israel and Saudi Arabia, both
of which seem intent on bringing Bashar al-Assad down. And the truly
unfortunate fact is that the Israelis and Saudis apparently have convinced an
ignorant Donald Trump that that is the way to go so the situation in Syria will
only get worse and, unless there is a course correction, Washington will again
richly deserve most of the blame.