Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed's Blog, page 3

Zero Point

I'm excited to announce that my forthcoming novel ZERO POINT, a political science fiction thriller, is due out on 18th August 2014 from Curiosity Quills Press. Below is the spanking new cover. 


Looks cool, huh? ZERO POINT is inspired by true events - stuff that's actually happened, and stuff that plausibly could happen. Rounded off with stuff that's clearly blatantly insane. 

It's a serious reflection on how real-world crises could unravel our societies and radicalise politics. It's also action-packed, bloody, violent and fun. 

And it's got swearing.

Do I need to stick a parental guidance sticker on there or something?

Anyway, here's the story:

===
Mass riots
Economic meltdown
BlackoutsAnd a new oil war in Iraq to keep the world economy afloatFourth Iraq War veteran & war crimes whistle-blower, David Ariel, is sick of violence, and trying to make ends meet working for police specialist  protection. But after Prime Minister Carson is brutally assassinated by extremists on Ariel’s watch, he is covertly targeted by a compromised police investigation.When forensics discover that Carson’s assassination inexplicably defied the very laws of physics, bodies drop like flies. Key witnesses are murdered in impossible circumstances.Fleeing for his life while London is locked-down under martial law, Ariel gets a phone call from Iraq he will never forget: his estranged girlfriend, journalist Julia Stephenson, warns that the Carson killing is just the beginning of a wider plot to bring the west to its knees.Then she disappears.Ariel’s blood-soaked race against time to track the terror cells behind Carson’s death tumbles into the cross-fire of a hidden battle between mysterious rogue intelligence agencies. Their goal: to monopolise black budget technologies which could unlock the universe’s darkest, arcane secrets.As the world he thought he knew unravels, Ariel faces off against bent coppers, double-crossing agents, psychic killers and super soldiers to complete a black ops mission like no other: Stop Quantum Apocalypse==
If this sounds like your kind of thing, hook up with me on Goodreads, Facebook and/or Twitter to keep abreast of updates. I'll be posting cool stuff, and maybe even some spoilers if you're lucky, related to the book all the way up to launch :)

The "Nasa collapse study" controversy: some thoughts

After my article on a new study of civilisational collapse part-funded by NASA went viral and global last week, the web has been afire with all sorts of controversy and debate, some useful, some not so.
Lessons learned?
Clearly, the mere mentioning of a "Nasa-funded study" of "civilisational collapse" in my headline was enough to spark massive interest, but also didn't help with the ensuing headlines off the back of my original piece, to the effect that the study - an independent research project - was assumed by many to be a NASA directed project.
As I pointed out here, the creation of the HANDY model designed to explore various scenarios of civilisational collapse, integral to the new study, was indeed pursued with NASA funding. This certainly added credibility to it in my eyes.
However, as a fellow environment journalist Stephen Leahy pointed out to me the other day on Twitter, although he agreed with the substance of my articles on this, he felt it was inaccurate to refer to the study simply as "NASA-sponsored" - he would've specified, "partly sponsored by NASA."
So while it seemed reasonable to me at the time to abbreviate this into "NASA-funded study", I recognise how not being specific on the nature of this funding allowed other outlets to conflate the story into reports about Nasa. I didn't exactly help by excitedly tweeting out all the headlines that ensued, many of which simply stated "Nasa says", or "Nasa study finds" blah blah - and a couple of times I got carried away and put out a few tweets to the same effect myself. I went back and deleted those one or two tweets I could find where I referred offhand to "Nasa study" in my own words. As of today, the original Guardian article has been amended to more clearly state the independent nature of the study and its relationship to Nasa.
Lessons I've learned. Be specific, be clear. Don't RT uncritically - just because RT's don't automatically equal endorsement, it can sure look like that to others. And don't get yourself carried away in the tidal wave of media self-replication.
Was the HANDY model newsworthy?
Of course the other issue is the credibility of the study, and of the HANDY model. I stand by the scholarly importance of the study (see my expert source cited below, a Stanford University sociologist) and in particular I stand by its news value, which some have questioned on the basis that the study is some form of 'junk science'.
In fact, a few people have been very, very unscrupulous in the way they've decided to attack me, as well as attack this article. There are lessons to be learned on a number of sides.
Keith Kloor's insertion into this, backed up by his erstwhile blogger Robert Wilson (an obscure research student of Mathematical Ecology who models Plankton), has been an enlightening experience. I've been attacked, smeared, defamed and muddied before online - so it's nothing new to me and not really a big deal. But when that sort of behaviour ends up being effectively endorsed or carried out by a journalist who writes for a reputable science publication, and someone doing scientific research at a university, it deserves highlighting and exposure.
Kloor and Wilson
Both Wilson and Kloor, together, seem to have an ideological aversion to reporting of, or discussion around, peak oil, which recognises that the plateauing of conventional oil production is in part responsible for escalating oil prices which will be increasingly debilitating for economic growth - certainly as long as we remain largely dependent on fossil fuels. Here, we find Wilson and Kloor responding in the following manner to my story based on the work of a former BP geologist, Richard Miller, who had just given an academic presentation at UCL on oil and gas supply forecasting, and had also co-edited a recently released special edition of the peer-reviewed Proceedings of the Royal Society B on oil and energy issues:


Rather than engaging with the actual arguments - arguments here which are not mine, but those of Dr. Richard Miller and contributors to one of the most prestigious journals in the world - Kloor and Wilson instead engage in some generic banter to misrepresent me as a 'doomer'. As if the mere mention of a break on economic growth due to looming energy challenges constitutes a forecast of doom (it doesn't - it's known as "risk analysis")I cite this merely to indicate the kind of childish ad hominem attacks Kloor and Wilson routinely indulge in, often together.
Kloor then ran this piece highlighting my article on a Nature Communications study documenting declining rate of growth in crop yields in key food basket regions around the world. Once again rather than engaging with the issues raised in the paper, Kloor wrote:


























Equating the thesis of my book and film with that of the Collapse movie illustrates disinterest in simple fact-checking. Even the link to my film that Kloor supplies explains further:

"The film reveals how a failure to understand the systemic context of these crises, linked to neoliberal ideology, has generated a tendency to deal not with their root structural causes, but only with their symptoms. This has led to the proliferation of war, terror, and state-terror, including encroachment on civil liberties, while accelerating global crises rather than solving them... 

The real solution, Nafeez argues, is to recognise the inevitability of civilizational change, and to work toward a fundamental systemic transformation based on more participatory forms of living, politically, economically and culturally."

Only someone functionally illiterate, plain dumb, or deliberately obtuse would interpret this as meaning that I predict unequivocal doom. And as these reviews indicate, my book, A User's Guide to the Crisis of Civilization: And How to Save It, is ultimately optimistic in tone.
This essentially seems to sum up how Kloor often deals with issues or subjects - or people - that he disagrees with: character assassination, scorn, mockery etc., etc., but sadly, at least in my case, not much meaning argument, or counter-evidence.
Kloor and Wilson, however, hit a record when they apparently began collaborating on a response to my part-Nasa-funded civilisational collapse story.
Faux Modellers
In his critique of this story, Kloor sets the tone by painting me as a 'doomer', and a liar: 

"Since joining the Guardian’s blogging network in 2013, Ahmed has carved out what I would call the doomsday beat...  A good example, of course, is the collapse paper he disingenuously hyped as being 'NASA-sponsored.' (You’ll soon understand why that was deceptive.)" 

Of course, Kloor isn't actually in a position to know my motives, but goes ahead and asserts a deliberate deception on my part in "hyping" a Nasa link. Kloor then cites as his basis for further scepticism of the study itself, and of my alleged "conspiratorial leanings", the following:

"There were a couple of skeptical outliers, some folks who know about mathematical models and were incredulous after reading both the study and the Guardian story. One is Robert Wilson, a UK Mathematical Ecology PhD Student who wrote up his impressions at his personal blog. Another is the U.S. science journalist David Appell, who offered his thoughts on the study’s model and (like Wilson) also took note of Ahmed’s conspiracy theorist leanings."

The first notable problem here is that, although Kloor cites Wilson and Appell as if they are independent experts whose perspectives on the credibility of the study's model is relevant, this is untrue. Although both Wilson and Appell have academic experience of mathematical modelling, neither have any clue about modelling in the context of social phenomena - see Wilson's and Appell's resumes. As said before, Wilson models Plankton, and Appell worked as a physicist decades ago.
While obviously there are overlaps, social modelling is a different ballgame, and unless you've actually modelled sociological variables, you won't necessarily get it. Attempting to model social and physical systems together is a specialised discipline that requires inputs of expertise from both social and natural sciences. Someone who doesn't understand this should simply be ignored. Kloor doesn't - he apparently seeks them out purely because they back up his desire to lambast the HANDY model, regardless of whether they actually have the relevant academic knowhow to comment.
9/11.... wtf?
Wilson's first blogpost on the subject referenced by Kloor is a highly defamatory screed replete with misrepresentations and outright falsehoods.
Like Kloor, he opens with character assassination:

"I cannot claim to know how much the Guardian pay their in house apocalypse merchant Nafeez Ahmed, but I hope it is not much. Not really a regular journalist, Mr. Ahmed runs the Earth Insight blog 'hosted' (does 'hosted' mean the Guardian get the stuff for nothing?) by the Guardian. If your idea of journalism is someone waking up each morning and then doing a Google Scholar search and credulously reporting every piece of half-baked research that backs up that journalist’s prejudices then Mr. Ahmed is your guy."

No substance here except it's clear that Wilson, like Kloor, doesn't agree with my take on things. He continues by claiming that I'm a 9/11 conspiracy theorist:

"Mr. Ahmed spent a large part of the 2000s going around concocting conspiracy theories about September 11th [update: the link to Mr. Ahmed's crackpot conspiracy theories has been removed from his website in the day since I posted this (you don't need to be a conspiracy theorist to draw a conclusion). Fortunately you can still read it using the archive.is website here.], telling us that the US government was partly behind the whole thing. Back then he was doing the rounds of 9/11 truth conferences, today, sadly, the Guardian has been foolish enough to give him a platform."

The post Wilson links to is working now for anyone to peruse at their heart's desire. After I realised that Wilson was using it to discredit my work, I archived it temporarily as a sort of sociological experiment to test how Wilson and Kloor would react, and whether either of them would demonstrate any academic/journalistic integrity. As suspected, Wilson went bonkers with rather embarrassing results, and Kloor eagerly followed him down the rabbit hole. In almost every blogpost Wilson writes about me (many cited and tweeted by Kloor), he references the "conspiracy" of the missing "9/11 conspiracy" article in an exercise of triumphant disclosure. It would be funny, if it weren't so feeble.
I was hoping that before promoting Wilson's allegations, Kloor would at least follow his own advice re: 'fact checking' and 'journalism 101' - y'know, maybe drop me an email or a call to find out the state of play. He didn't do that. Instead, he preferred to drop conspiratorial insinuations about my deceptive nature (and clearly ignored the tweet on 17th March where I'd actually publicly acknowledged deleting the post precisely to annoy them):

















So, let's just get this non-issue out the way.
As long-time readers of my work here will know, the idea that I'm a 9/11 conspiracy theorist is patently absurd - whether you agree or disagree with my arguments. As an international security scholar, my first book, The War on Freedom, raised fundamental questions about the role of US-UK foreign, defence, intelligence and other policies in facilitating the activities of Islamist terrorist groups in the decades leading up to the 9/11 terrorist attacks, and on the day itself in relation to the emergency response of the national security system. The book was mandatory reading for the 9/11 Commissioners, and was also used by the 9/11 Family Steering Committee to inform their lines of inquiry in demanding an independent investigation. My testimony in US Congress about my work related to my third book, The War on Truth, was filmed by C-Span and can be viewed here.
Wilson writes:

"anyone familiar with Mr. Ahmed’s approach will note that he likes to put high emphasis on credentials, in this case Nasa, as Christopher Hitchens delightfully mocked here.)"

Unfortunately, neither Wilson, nor Kloor who cites/tweets him so copiously, saw fit to do sufficient fact-checking to identify my rebuttal of Hitchens in the Independent on Sunday, which pretty much demolishes Hitchens while setting out my actual perspective on 9/11 quite clearly.
Along these lines, in a separate blog post where Wilson declares - "Fact checking however should never get in the way of a good story" - he claims:

"However trumping up credentials is something he is rather fond of. Just read the About section of his personal website. There he gives a rather lengthy resume. This includes a boast about how his work was discussed in Vanity Fair by Christopher Hitchens. Hitchens however was not exactly praising Mr. Ahmed, instead he was calling him a 'contemptible' man who concocts half-baked conspiracy theories.

Similarly he talks about how his conspiracy theorist utterings about terrorist bombings were 'used' by various investigations. By 'used' he means that he sent them a copy of his work, which anyone is free to do. Whether they used them for anything other than recycled paper is unclear."

Of course, readers of my blog will note that Hitchens' description of me is described right here on these pages on the right-hand side, six quotes down. Yes right over there. Can you see it? This website wears that quote rather proudly :) So much for fact-checking Mr Wilson (and Kloor).
The inadequacy or non-existence of Wilson's research skills are on display again when he suggests that the "use" of my work by various official investigations is a fraud. In yet another post, he describes for me this reason as an "intellectual charlatan" - that is even after someone called Gareth post in the comments the link (already on my bio) to the National Archives in DC which lists the 9/11 Commission 'Special Collection' - yes, a copy of my book is archived in DC as part of an official collection of 99 books that were "made available to members of the Commission to use during its activities." If Wilson is unclear how these 99 books were selected for 9/11 Commission investigators (no, they didn't read everything they were sent in the post by random members of the public from around the world), he should do a bit of journalism and fact-check it himself. Perhaps call up the National Archives in DC?
*sigh*
The main problem seems that Wilson's capacity for sociological or political analysis is rather thin. He appears incapable of recognising the distinction between asking questions on the basis of factual anomalies, and positing a theory. I've never posited a "theory" about 9/11, least of all a "conspiracy theory" - the most I've argued is that the US and the West's unsavoury geopolitical relationship with Islamists over the last three or more decades has functioned to impede intelligence agencies, and undermine national security, in quite fundamental ways that dramatically increase the risk of terrorism at home and abroad. I see no particular ideological reason why such questions shouldn't be asked, if available evidence calls for it - without, however, getting involved in spurious speculation (and indeed such questions were asked by the 9/11 Family Steering Committee in quite reasonable fashion).
Indeed, my views about the sorry state of the so-called 9/11 "truth" movement are well-known. I'm on record in a number of places pointing out that simple physical anomalies cannot be used to justify conclusions of a government conspiracy (for instance, see my observations in Channel 4's eye-opening documentary "Conspiracy - Who Really Runs the World" on the WTC collapses, about 25 min in). So I kind of end up pissing off basically everyone, 'troofers', 'anti-troofers', and a lot in between.
But this is the problem with people like Wilson and Kloor - their idea of "journalism 101" doesn't seem to involve engaging directly and fully with people's actual writing/arguments, or even speaking to them properly. If they disagree with it at face value, it must be wrong, and it must be ridiculed. Fact-checking goes out the window.
Lies and Ignorance
After smearing me - a smear which Kloor repeats with reference to my alleged "conspiracy leanings" - (which he also sources to David Appell, who however merely references Wilson's blog) Wilson proceeds to 'dissect' my article:

"There appears to be no evidence that the paper in question has been peer-reviewed. Mr. Ahmed claims it has been accepted for publication by Ecological Economics.  Yet, the paper is not on the Ecological Economics website, although it is in submission. This kind of thing should be unacceptable from a reputable newspaper like the Guardian."

Sadly, Wilson didn't bother actually speaking to the authors of the study, as I had, who had confirmed the paper's acceptance for publication and peer-review.

"... I do not model human civilization as my day job. Instead I model plankton. If you want to do a half adequate job of modelling plankton populations you will probably need more than eight equations. And I think humans are more complex than plankton, but some times I have doubts. 

A model with this few equations will always provide egregious predictions about 'industrial collapse'. Anyone who spends more than two minutes looking on Gapminder will recognise that inter-country differences are so vast that using eight equations to accurately model humanity is like replicating the Sistine Chapel using a crayon."

Here, Wilson's ignorance of the nature and purposes of social modelling is embarrassing - equally so for Kloor's uncritical dependence on Wilson as one of his sources of expert authority.
According to Dr. Deborah S. Rogers of Stanford University's Institute for Research in the Social Sciences, who is a leading expert in modelling inequality and social stratification:

"Models do not prove hypotheses, nor do they replicate reality. Rather, models are useful because they give us some insight into possible mechanisms and possible consequences. These new insights, then, feed into the iterative process of hypothesis-testing that underlies good science. 

There is no problem with models that are 'simplistic' – they are supposed to be. A model is an abstraction from – a simplification of – reality. The objective is to see if you can understand the essential mechanism(s) that drive the system, and what some possible consequences of this mechanism might be. If the model results give you valuable insights into certain real-world trends, then maybe you have managed to capture the essence of the mechanism. If not, then you probably haven't, and you will need to either revise your model or add components to it. 

There is no particular value to making a model complex...you add just enough complexity until you are convinced that you have captured the essence of the mechanisms you are trying to understand. Meanwhile, it is fully acknowledged that there are many other things also going on in reality, that are not captured by the model...

Likewise, a demography/resources model that predicts collapse given certain relationships between the population and their resource base does not need to include the complexities of political, economic and social adjustments made in response to the situation. It merely shows us the possible outcomes, and leaves it to the archaeologists, anthropologists, social scientists, political scientists, economists, and policy-makers to debate the actual and hypothetical responses to these possibilities, and how they altered (or will alter) the outcomes...

The HANDY model finds that unequal populations collapse, although they apparently attribute this to the lack of labor as the working class dies off. Again, without commenting on the adequacy of the specifics of the HANDY formulation, I find the simplicity of the model useful and the results plausible. 
If we want to criticize the HANDY model, and by the same token our Spread of Inequality model, let’s focus on the specific mechanisms that are postulated – not on the simplicity of the model, and not on the lack of exact parallels with past events."

This illustrates just how ridiculous and unscientific are the responses of not just Wilson, but also Kloor's apparently partisan effort to discredit the HANDY model. 
But Wilson doesn't stop there. He proceeds to misrepresent the paper as follows:

"Most problematic is that they only model renewable resources. Modern civilization is fundamentally dependent on the provision of non-renewable resources on a huge scale."

This characterisation of the paper is simply untrue. Either Wilson hasn't read the paper properly, or wilfully misinterprets it to make his point. The paper says (p. 7):

"In reality, natural resources exist in three forms: nonrenewable stocks (fossil fuels, mineral deposits, etc), regenerating stocks (forests, soils, animal herds, wild fish stocks, game animals, aquifers, etc), and renewable ows (wind, solar radiation, precipitation, rivers, etc). Future generations of the model will disaggregate these forms. We have adopted a single formulation intended to represent an amalgamation of the three forms, allowing for a clear understanding of the role that natural resources play in collapse or sustainability of human societies."

He then ignores the study's reservations about technology in the context of carrying capacity:

"It also assumes that there is a fixed carrying capacity for populations. Carrying capacity itself is a deeply problematic concept. Think about Britain prior to the Industrial Revolution. If Britain had attempted to power the Industrial Revolution with wood it would have rapidly run out of trees. As Tony Wrigley argued in his fine book on the subject the transition to coal allowed Britain to escape the limits of a purely organic society. This makes it clear that this model, in its current form, offers limited insights into whether civilization will persist over the twenty first century."

But the study itself takes note of the pace of technological progress against the pace of resource consumption, with respect to a concept of carrying capacity rooted precisely in our contemporary understanding of the earth's available renewable, nonrenewable and renewable stocks. The transition from wood to coal happening in the past, is no guarantee that a similar transition will necessarily occur in the future. It might do, but that all depends on the natural resources actually available, a factor the model at least attempts to account for - a matter Wilson simply overlooks.
Kloor attempts to dignify Wilson's feeble posts with the following recommendation (among many others):
























Following this post, Wilson managed to generate upward of five further blog posts on the grand old topic of little ol' me (within a space of about 24 hours I imagine... scary). His last post is a slightly deranged discovery of how I have been surreptitiously deleting tweets "to cover" my "tracks." He didn't bother asking me about it - if he had, he would've learned that deleting one's tweets can actually be a way of acknowledging and correcting inaccuracies once recognised (which once again, I've acknowledged openly on Twitter).
I can't claim to fully understand their motives - one can only guess. But it appears that Wilson and Kloor are focused not on doing good journalism/scholarship to explore a controversial issue, but on muddying journalism/scholarship to score points on ideological and personal grounds. As my writing ranges over major global challenges, crises and risks which they find unpalatable for whatever reason, their approach appears to be one of simply defaming and slandering - to the point of conspiratorially turning every triviality into hard evidence of disingenuous deception. That much, it seems, has now been proven.
Yet both pontificate like authorities on the standards of journalism and academic research. Unfortunately, they seem to have little regard for either in practice.

The Triple Crunch - Facing Our Climate, Food, and Energy Challenges

The idea of a 'triple crisis' or 'perfect storm' of environmental, energy and economic problems which could pose a serious risk to the stability of our civilization as we know it is nothing new. Last year, the IMF chief warned that without a more "sustainable" approach to growth, the world risked a convergence of environmental damage, declining incomes and social unrest. 

That sort of warning is in fact derived from some of the best interdisciplinary science. In 2009, the UK government's then chief scientific adviser Professor John Beddington declared based on cutting-edge research by the Government Office for Science by 2030 (that's 16 years away), the world would face a "perfect storm" of food shortages, water scarcity, and insufficient energy in the context of a business-as-usual scenario.

Followers of my work know that since my work on the Crisis of Civilization, I've been tracking these issues very closely. Over the last week or so, I've put out three major stories in the Guardian on climate change, the global food crisis, and our looming energy challenges. Each of these stories in themselves points to significant challenges in the year's ahead under a business-as-usual scenario. But together, they underscore the little-acknowledged systemic synergies between climate, food, energy - and of course economic - crises, and their mutual propensity to generate social and political instability. And of course, they raise fundamental questions about the sustainability of our current trajectory, and the urgent need to begin implementing meaningful alternatives towards new forms of post-carbon prosperity. 

The first story covers a major new set of studies published in a special feature of the authoritative journal, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, which together show that a range of climate change impacts - droughts, famine, epidemics - are likely to overlap in ways that may have been previously underestimated; at worst (though least probable), they could potentially escalate to a planetary scale.

The second story covers another peer-reviewed study published by the multidisciplinary journal, Nature Communications, which raises hard questions about the capacity of industrial agriculture in its current form to continue to raise yields. In recent years, the study shows, the rate of growth of yields for major food crops has plummeted dramatically and in some cases it seems likely that maximum yield plateaus have already been reached. 

The third story is a major exclusive. I interviewed a former British Petroleum (BP) geologist, Dr. Richard Miller, who was responsible for producing internal oil supply forecasts for the corporation. Miller believes that for all intents and purposes, peak oil has already arrived and is likely to exacerbate the probability of ongoing recession and resource wars. He most recently articulated this perspective at a lecture at University College London as part of a postgraduate course on Natural Hazards for Insurers, as well as in a co-edited special edition of the Royal Society journal - Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A - focused on the future of oil. This development represents one of the most compelling and authoritative verdicts so far on the reality of a peak of conventional oil production and a future of high oil prices with debilitating economic and geopolitical consequences, unless appropriate mitigating measures are pursued.

This sort of reporting and analysis I'm doing at the Guardian is certainly upsetting certain apple carts. One self-styled "journalist" who really appears to be more of a closet climate-denying troll who voluntarily shills for the GM industry by misrepresenting science, pinpointed the above piece on food as a core example of unscientific "Doomer" narratives in a screed at his blog here:

"Once someone starts down this civilization-is-collapsing road, like Guardian blogger Nafeez Ahmed, it’s hard to stop.  If you want a tour guide to the apocalypse, Ahmed is your guy." 

He quickly followed up by surfacing on Twitter and repeatedly characterising me as a "Doomer" - albeit, without any actual substantiation or argument as to why anything I've written is actually wrong. 

Under Kloor's highly flexible definition of "Doomers", it would seem the US National Academy of Sciences, Nature, and the Royal Society, are in fact arch-peddlers of "eco-doomery" - an accusation he touts in the name of defending science.

It would actually be funny if it wasn't so pathetic. 

The reality is that these three pieces I've put out this December underscore the fact that cutting edge science demonstrates the unsustainability of our current business-as-usual trajectory, and highlights that without a transition to more viable alternatives, we are in for a rough ride involving more of what we've already seen in the last few years - escalating social unrest, state-failure, economic crisis, extreme weather, geopolitical tension and conflict. We can expect food and energy prices to continue to rise and contribute to social volatility as well as intensifying inequality - and as Beddington and others have warned, we can expect that at some point, a worst case scenario would involve us facing a systemic convergence of crises that undermines the capacity of our social institutions to deliver critical functions.

There's no need for things to get to that point - and there's lots of great things happening which are already playing a mitigating role: the rise of renewable energy systems, new and exciting food production practices, innovative economic models, and so on. But much more needs to happen... And we're certainly not going to solve our global challenges by laughing scornfully at the science that is warning us to change course, now.

EXCLUSIVE: Former govt adviser believes warnings of extremist attacks were ignored (Independent on Sunday)

Following from my exclusive investigative report for Le Monde diplomatique, one of my sources was willing to speak on the record. I and journalist Chris Stevenson put together the following investigative exclusive for the Independent on Sunday:

A former government adviser has hit out at the security agencies and the way they assessed potential extremist threats on British soil in the months and years before the killing of Lee Rigby.

Days after the conviction of Michael Adebolajo and Michael Adebowale for the murder of the Fusilier Lee Rigby, Jahan Mahmood, a former adviser to the Office for Security and Counter-Terrorism (OSCT) in the Home Office, has decided to speak out over warnings of potential extremist attacks on British soldiers in the UK that he believes went unheeded.

Mr Mahmood, a historian and former lecturer at the University of Birmingham, specialising in the martial traditions of Afghan and Pakistani diaspora communities, had contact with the OSCT between 2009 and 2010 on a volunteer basis. He remembered one particular meeting on 27 January 2010 at a mosque in Birmingham, which involved five young Muslim men as well as the director of the OSCT, Charles Farr, and what Mr Mahmood called "another OSCT civil servant".
See more here.

EXCLUSIVE: UK Govt warned of Woolwich-style attack 3 years ago - Whitehall insiders reveal Quilliam Foundation's secret relationship with official "fundamentally flawed" counter terrorism strategy

I've been working on the below investigative story for more than a few years, gathering bits and pieces of evidence as I go along. A couple of months ago, a lot of things came together. It went up last week. It's an important and highly revealing piece - please do share widely.

Published by Le Monde diplomatique (9.12.13)

Government advisers, counter-extremism officials, and (current and former) civil servants confirm that the UK government’s counter-terrorism strategy is failing to tackle the danger of violent extremism; rather, it is exacerbating the threat of domestic terrorism. These officials attribute the failure to a “fundamentally flawed” approach to counter-terrorism strategy inspired by a UK anti-extremism think tank, the Quilliam Foundation.
An adviser to Charles Farr, director of the Office for Security and Counter-Terrorism (OSCT) in the Home Office, said that Farr was warned three years ago of the possibility of an attack in the UK, similar to the killing of soldier Lee Rigby in Woolwich, southeast London, that later took place on 22 May 2013.
The OSCT adviser, an independent counter-radicalisation expert who has worked with many government agencies, wrote on 31st May 2013 to General Sir David Richards — then chief of the defence staff and the most senior military adviser to the defence secretary and prime minister. In his letter he describes a meeting in Birmingham on 27th January 2010 he organised between Farr, other OSCT officials and five young Muslims who were “amongst those most at risk of radicalisation.” The letter describes how Farr asked the young men about their “feelings and aspirations”: “One of the young men responded by saying he was angered by the death of women and children in Afghanistan and if given half a chance he would go abroad to fight British soldiers in Afghanistan. Another member of the group intervened and said, why do you want to go abroad when you can kill them here.”

The letter criticised the government’s decision to cut funding to STREET (Strategy to Reach Empower & Educate Teenagers), a south London counter-radicalisation organisation engaging alienated young Muslims outside mainstream institutions, especially those involved in gang culture: “Some of the blame has to be levelled at the new [coalition] government, they revised the agenda and cut funding to STREET, a credible outreach project assisting and guiding black converts and Muslim gang members. Ostensibly one of the Woolwich perpetrators were known to them... I strongly believe had their programme been operational the Woolwich incident could have been averted.”
As early as January 2010, the same counter-radicalisation adviser warned Farr and other OSCT officials of the circulation of “jihadi and Taliban propaganda videos” among “younger members of the community” that “need looking into.” He said a senior OSCT official “was completely unaware of the circulation of such material. The security services need to improve the way they engage with the community and need to implement better practice.”
The adviser emphasised in the letter that government departments were not properly accounting for “the link between gang culture and jihadi culture. There has been a disproportionate focus on ideology which isn’t actually the main motivational force attracting young Muslim and non-Muslim males to a violent interpretation of Islam.”
Foreign policy grievances and social alienation are the real drivers, he said. “Islamist ideology is just the icing on the cake” that comes later.
Whitehall’s hand in QuilliamFormer Whitehall officials confirm that the failure to understand the role of gang culture and foreign policy grievances in radicalisation is linked to the government’s relationship with the Quilliam Foundation, a counter-extremism think tank founded by former Muslim extremists Ed Husain and Maajid Nawaz in 2008. The foundation is known for its focus on the problem of “non-violent extremism”, which it characterises as a necessary pre-condition for terrorism.A leaked Quilliam briefing paper to Charles Farr in June 2010, reviewing the government’s Preventing Violent Extremism (“Prevent”) policies, claimed: “The ideology of non-violent Islamists is broadly the same as that of violent Islamists; they disagree only on tactics.” The paper was “particularly critical of the view that government partnerships with non-violent yet otherwise extreme Islamists were the best way to fend off jihadism.” Among those Quilliam flagged up as sharing the ideology of terrorists were grassroots organisations like STREET, peaceful Muslim groups like the Islamic Society of Britain, politicians like Salma Yacoub, and even Scotland Yard’s Muslim Contact Unit.
According to a former senior research officer at the Home Office and ministry of justice, Ed Husain’s bestselling book, The Islamist, was “effectively ghostwritten in Whitehall.” Husain’s book recounts his recruitment into and transition from Hizb ut-Tahrir, a group which calls for the establishment of a global Islamic caliphate.
The former Home Office official said that he was told in 2006 by a colleague “with close ties to two senior figures in the Labour Party, namely Jack Straw and Gordon Brown” that “the draft was written by Ed but then ‘peppered’ by government input — not explicitly, but implicitly.” The civil servant told him “he had seen ‘at least five drafts of the book, and the last one was dramatically different from the first.’ I asked, ‘How do you mean?’ He responded ‘It got peppered with names and aspects of their profiles as people seen as either a friend of or a thorn in the side of New Labour.’” The official explained that his colleague “was someone who had a reasonable sense of what was happening, but was way down the food chain, and merely enacting the will of senior policy makers driving the agenda. These were likely to be in No. 10, Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre, the intelligence services, Foreign & Commonwealth Office and the Home Office.”
In turn, civil servants were told by superiors to ensure they read Husain’s book. In 2008 BBC News reported that: “One government official e-mailed scores of colleagues inside Whitehall late last year, effectively instructing them to read it.” Husain could not be reached for comment.Continuing influence under CameronAlthough the present coalition government no longer funds the Quilliam Foundation, sources said that its co-founder and incumbent director, Maajid Nawaz, continues to have inordinate influence on policymakers.
One former senior OSCT director responsible for Prevent said that in the run-up to prime minister David Cameron’s Munich speech in February 2011 criticising “state multiculturalism” as a cause of radicalisation, Whitehall advisers with relevant expertise were inexplicably sidelined in favour of input from Nawaz. “I and other counter-terrorism experts were telling the coalition cabinet that non-violent extremism is not a factor in the real threat, but they weren’t listening,” said the director. “I found myself and my staff being systematically frozen out, ignored in briefings, and sometimes not even invited to meetings that I was supposed to chair.”The former OSCT official said of the Cameron’s Munich speech: “It was a complete shock to us. Members of my team were already working with his speechwriter on his Munich presentation weeks in advance. We had a very clear idea of what the focus of the speech should be, and we had nothing in there about non-violent extremism. So when we were all tuning in to listen to the prime minister’s speech weeks later, I was gobsmacked. The things he’d said about multiculturalism being a problem, about the need to focus on non-violent extremists, were totally new. We hadn’t agreed on these things before, and hadn’t even heard about them. The speech had been modified in certain small but important ways that completely transformed the overall message. I was told by colleagues that the prime minister was bringing in his own advisers to work on his security policy. It makes sense, because there were times when I and others were just pushed aside.”
According to a senior Foreign Office official, Maajid Nawaz was among the outside advisers brought in to brief Cameron in advance of the drafting of his Munich speech. That is confirmed by Nawaz himself in his memoirs, Radical. The official, however, downplayed the extent of Nawaz’s influence on the text of the speech: “No single person had overwhelming influence on the Munich speech, which went through many drafts. Yes, other civil servants may have been sidelined in the process, but Nawaz is exaggerating the extent of his impact.”Nawaz was also invited to brief Cameron’s Task Force on Tackling Radicalisation and Extremism before the release of its report last week. The report calls for new anti-terror powers against extremist preachers, filters to block extremist websites, and more support for the Home Office’s Channel Project, among other measures.Government overlooks extremistsThe Channel Project is an early intervention programme coordinated by the police to identify vulnerable people at risk of radicalisation, and provide preventive support services in partnership with local authorities and community service providers. The new Task Force report urges Channel to be made a legal requirement across England and Wales.But the Channel Project is “fundamentally flawed” according to insiders familiar with the government programme. A senior Prevent practitioner, who worked as a regional manager with multiple London authorities for several years until 2012, criticised the Channel Project for using “vague assessment criteria” of vulnerability to violent radicalisation focusing on “issues that don’t necessarily pose a potential security threat, such as a person’s views about democracy or foreign policy, for instance.”
The biggest problem with Channel, said the former Prevent manager, was that it fails to target those most at risk of radicalisation: “To deliver an intervention, you need the consent of the person referred. But people who are genuinely radicalised, highly socially excluded, and engaged in activity making them vulnerable to violent extremism or condoning of terrorism, would never give their consent to a Channel intervention, due precisely to their distrust of government. Whereas people who don’t really pose a danger and are offered the intervention are more likely to be open to receiving an intervention. So the overwhelming majority of people who receive an intervention under the Channel project are not actually likely to become involved in terrorism.”According to a Channel Project “Statement of Organisational Values” which prospective service providers are supposed to fill out and sign, individuals who might be eligible to receive an intervention could include someone “who supports armed resistance” in Muslim countries and “believes there is a religious justification for this”, or someone “who believes that national governments should be replaced by a Caliphate and Sharia law, without advocating violent revolt.”
Such vague criteria might unjustifiably demonise and alienate already marginalised young Muslims who are sceptical of British democratic institutions and foreign policy. Dr. Anthony Richards, a British terrorism expert at the University of East London, points to empirical research by the think tank Demos on “non-violent” extremists, finding much evidence of widespread support among young Muslims for Iraqi and Afghan people “defending themselves” from “invaders”, but little or no support for terrorism inside Britain or the West.A study of the views of British Pakistani, Bangladeshi and Somali individuals by OSCT’s own Research, Information and Communications Unit (RICU), found that “whilst they might reject the means adopted by terrorists, they sympathised with the causes [injustice and oppression faced by Muslims around the world] allegedly espoused by terrorists and felt they had legitimate grievances.”
Those most at risk of violent radicalisation are being pushed further underground beyond the reach of counter-radicalisation efforts. According to the former Prevent official: “My concern is that the Channel Project system is simply not working. It’s not dealing with the real hotbeds of extremism that could pose a potential danger to Britain, and instead is structured to do the opposite. Huge amounts of taxpayers’ money are wasted on delivering interventions which are hardly countering terrorism at all.”Covert spy operationThe official also contradicted the assertion that the Channel Project is not a surveillance programme, and does not hold the names of any referrals on a database. The Guardian reported in 2009 that the Channel Project is an intelligence gathering programme primarily targeting Muslim communities; since then, Home Office spokespeople have strenuously denied the existence of any storage mechanism for Channel referrals. “The official line is that the Channel Project does not hold the names of referrals on any database to guarantee against allegations that the project is about spying,” said the former Prevent manager. “However, during my tenure, I was told by a senior SO15 officer that this isn’t true. He confirmed that there is in fact a logging system of some kind which does store the names of all referrals.”
The allegations raise serious questions about the effectiveness of UK counter-terrorism strategy, including the new measures being recommended by the government’s latest extremism task force report. The emphasis on wholesale surveillance-oriented approaches and non-violent Islamism could serve to stigmatise and alienate already excluded Muslim communities, while undermining efforts to identify those most at risk of radicalisation.

Greetings earthlings

So I haven't updated this blog in a long while - apologies for that. Much of the reason is to do with having two little girls and a 7 month old baby to deal with! 

Have been working on lots of interesting stuff and have a few announcements to make in due course, but for now am dropping bye to say hi and promise I'm going to be back updating this blog more regularly. 

While I've been neglecting this website, I've been beavering away primarily at the Guardian on a range of important environment stories. From the Arctic methane time-bomb debate, to accumulating evidence that climate change is happening faster and more intensely than conventional models project; from the problems with Tory and Labour energy proposals, to the World Health Organisation's cover-up of Iraq's environmental health nightmare due to depleted uranium; from Russell Brand's notorious BBC Newsnight interview on the death of mainstream politics, to the imminence of peak oil; from corporate espionage against activists, charities and NGOs, to today's big story on the US Navy's prediction that the Arctic summer sea ice could collapse by 2016. 

If any of these sound up your street, you can check out these stories via my Guardian blog, Earth Insight.

Special Report: "Fixing" intelligence on Syria? Deciphering the propaganda war to "hemorrhage" both sides

Published in Ceasefire Magazine





U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, left, and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, shake hands after making a deal over Syrian chemical weapons




If there is anything to learn from the Syrian conflict, it is that, in the fog of war, truth really is the first casualty. Narratives and counter-narratives of the conflict have plagued media accounts and the blogosphere ever since peaceful protests erupted on the streets of Syria over two years ago, and increasingly so in the wake of the Ghouta chemical weapons attack of the 21st August.


While the West’s case against Assad in this respect appears politicised and less than conclusive, the same, if not worse, can be said about the case against the rebels. Almost every single piece of evidence that has been put forward to support that case has been disputed at the very least, or proved entirely false. And the politicisation of Russian and Iranian intelligence, the role of Assad in spearheading propaganda, has been overlooked. 

From the White House dossier to the United Nations report, from Syrian nuns to revelations from former and active intelligence officials, the propaganda war between pro and anti-interventionists to control the paradigm through which we understand the conflict – manifesting itself in Bashar al-Assad’s latest call for a ceasefire –  may be feeding into little-known strategic imperatives that see the Syrian people as mere pawns in a wider gambit. 

READ MORE










UPDATE:



Following is my detailed response to the first comment on my Ceasefire report by a "Harel B":




@HarelB begins his comment with a veiled ad hominem: 'Ahmed
was in such a rush to dismiss this report that he didn’t even take 10 seconds
to find out Gavlak is a she and not a “he”... While Gavlak’s gender is not
central, it illustrates the glee with which evidence pointing at rebel use of
chemical weapons (CW) is dismissed with no more than a cursory glance.'




That error has been corrected. It seems the aim here is to
imply that I had a pre-ordained stance on the Mint Press News article which
caused me to "rush" into dismissing it.




I think anyone with a half a brain reading this piece will
quickly realise 1) I am not particularly gleeful about anything going in Syria,
nor any arguments either way 2) I did not rush into any conclusions but rather
have conducted a painstaking investigation of the arguments and
counterarguments. 3) my critique of the Mint Press News report claiming that
the Ghouta attack was carried out by rebels is based fundamentally on the fact
that firstly the account is disputed by a far more reputable newspaper
publication (let's note that The Independent is also owned by a Russian
oligarch), and secondly that the physical evidence at the multiple sites of the
attack completely contradicts the therefore implausible scenario put forth in
this article, which HarelB bends over backwards to try to rehabilitate.




In any case, I was in no "rush" to dismiss the
Mint Press article. This could have been verified by a quick google of my
writings on Syria such as here:




http://www.nafeezahmed.com/2013/08/special-report-syria-intervention-plans.html




where early after the attack I have referenced multiple
sources raising questions about the official account., including keeping an
open mind about the Mint Press News report.




@HarelB says: "Those who click the link Ahmed provides,
discover it is in fact not a direct statement by Gavlak but a page by a blogger
who claims to be sharing an email sent by Gavlak. It might be true but is
unverified."




That's a bit of a rich observation coming from someone
clinging obsessively to an article which itself says some of its contents
(without specifying which contents exactly) "cannot be independently
verified."




As for the blog where Dale Gavlak's statement is posted (and
I am about to notify you of some interesting updates in this regard), for those
who don't know, the Brown Moses blog is highly regarded and is a reliable
source of coverage on Syria by a citizen journo with a pretty decent track record. 




@HarelB: "Even if true, the fact is that several others
have posted copies of their own emails form Gavlak, two weeks ago, and she told
them she helped Ababneh write the article and said not one word to distance
herself from co-authorship. She is believed to have known Ababneh (which
MintPress made clear was responsible for the interviews) for some three years
at the time, so presumably her choice to help him write it up was based on
respect for his work she had by them developed. It speaks volumes that Gavlak
remained silent for 3 weeks and even more, what the alleged recent statement
does not say. Does Gavlak say the story isn’t true? No. Does she say she has
reason to doubt Ababneh or his interviewing? No. Does she say she has reason to
doubt what the Ghouta residents testified to Ababneh? Again, no. Sympathies are
due Gavlak; it does not take great imagination to see the immense pressure
anyone is under when an article they helped someone else write goes viral which
reports unpleasant things Ghouta residents have said about a Saudi Billionaire
prince, let alone one which questions the narrative of the world’s most
powerful state. Understandable if true, that she wishes her name was not on the
piece she helped Ababneh write; the issue for those who claim to care about the
victims remains elsewhere: the testimonies Ghouta area rebels and residents gave,
pointing at rebel use of CW."




What HarelB doesn't seem to understand, is that for any
impartial observer, there is simply no way to take the Mint Press News article
seriously anymore. The idea that we can rely on this report as a credible
source is just silly.




More than that, the totality of the information revealed
about the report clearly and consistently raises a whole host of disturbing
questions about the origins of the whole story. Mint Press News is continuing
to claim that Gavlak "wrote the article in it’s entirety as well as
conducted the research." 




Note how carefully worded this is - now compare it to
Gavlak's further statement which clarifies her exact role in the piece:

"Email correspondence between Ms. Gavlak and Mint Press
News that began on August 29 and ended on September 2 clearly show that from
the beginning Ms. Gavlak identified the author of the story as Yahya Ababneh, a
Jordanian journalist. She also made clear that only his name should appear on
the byline and the story was submitted only in his name. She served as an
editor of Ababneh’s material in English as he normally writes in Arabic. She
did not travel to Syria and could not corroborate his account.

 "Dale Gavlak specifically stated in an email dated
August 29 'Pls find the Syria story I mentioned uploaded on Google Docs. This
should go under Yahya Ababneh's byline. I helped him write up his story but he
should get all the credit for this.'

 "Ms. Gavlak supplied the requested bio information on
Mr. Ababneh later that day and had further communications with Mint Press News’
Mnar Muhawesh about the author's background. There was no communication by Mint
Press News to Ms. Gavlak that it intended to use her byline.  Ms. Muhawesh took this action unilaterally
and without Ms. Gavlak's permission.

 "After seeing that her name was attached to the
article, Dale Gavlak demanded her name be removed. However, Ms. Muhawesh
stated: 'We will not be removing your name from the byline as this is an
existential issue for MintPress and an issue of credibility as this will appear
as though we are lying'."

So it does seem that Gavlak made clear her byline shouldn't
be on the piece. It also seems that she admits to helping write up the story as
a friend to Ababneh, and even pitching the piece - and it's plausible that she
might have tried to check with colleagues and officials as Mint Press News
claims to see if there was any corroboration of Ababneh's reporting. Either
way, what does seem clear is that Gavlak was not responsible for the fundamental
content of the piece, and the attribution to her is dishonest, against her clearly stated wishes from the outset.




While I have no doubt that Gavlak probably is under immense
pressure, her specific account that she had from the beginning made clear to
not use her byline because she was not responsible for the content of the piece
seems increasingly plausible in the context of new evidence of Mint Press News'
dubious background, along with the dubious behaviour of the other primary
author of the piece Yahya Ababneh.




The New York Times has investigated the issue further and
discovered that Mint Press News' financial backers and advisers included the
website editor's father, an ethnic Jordanian of Shi'a persuasion.  Now that in itself would not be important except 1) sectarian issues have
become extremely polarised and polarising with respect to the Syrian conflict
and stances supporting and opposing intervention and 2) the NYT found evidence
of vehemently sectarian and anti-Saudi anti-Wahabi sentiments linked to her
father's role in Mint Press News. So Mint Press News. For a news site that is
supposed to have a semblance of impartiality doing exclusive reporting on
Syria, I'm sorry but this is pretty fatal. (also see this)




It gets worse. An investigation by Brian Whitaker, former
Mideast editor at the Guardian, has found compelling circumstantial evidence
that Ababneh's real name is Yan Barakat, has lied about his journalistic
credentials, and that the whole story blaming rebels for the chemical weapons
attack may have derived from a Russian source in Damascus.




No wonder "some" of the information "could
not be independently verified." Anyone claiming that we should now
continue to applaud this article and, on its basis, call for an investigation
due to its "testimonies", should take a good look in the mirror to
admire their ability to undertake the most profound sorts of mental gymnastics.




HarelB says: "Aside: Mother Agnes who Ahmed tells us ”
has long openly supported Assad” is on record calling the Assad government
“totalitarian” This is hardly “supporting” Assad, and that fact is not changed
by the fact that her own experiences and those testimonies given to her suggest
many of the rebels are as or more totalitarian and brutal."




More admirable mental gymnastics follows as HarelB
completely ignores all the evidence I've provided proving quite clearly that
"Mother Agnes" is utterly compromised, demonstrably close to
"Assad's security forces", and lauded his so-called
"reforms", not to mention, according to independent journalists,
apparently worked with Assad's forces to have a bunch of them exterminated
(successfully). She denies this, unsurprisingly, but the journalists on the
ground who witnessed it with their own eyes hold fast to their very plausible
and harrowing account.




Harel B ignores all of that, and misquotes "Mother
Agnes'" by quoting, not Mother Agnes, but an article by Robert Moynihan,
who writes, "Yes, Syria’s president Assad is no democrat; he is a powerful
totalitarian leader." Moynihan then cites an interview in Ha'aretz with
the nun titled 'On visit to Israel, Syrian-based nun backs beleaguered
President Assad', where she says:

"She believes the Assad regime is the only thing that
can save Syria from a takeover by Al-Qaida, and that most Syrians support the
present regime."

I have not found a single source where the nun actually
describes Assad as "totalitarian" herself.




I myself was taken in by the nun and quoted her in the past.
But we do not need "Mother Agnes'" discredited pro-Assad ramblings and
unverifiable claims of rebel atrocities to be aware of the danger of the
Islamist forces therein, and the atrocities they have carried out, a matter I
have documented at length elsewhere, and which have been well-documented by both independent human rights observers, journalists, and by multiple UN war crimes inquiries.




@HarelB says: "Most stunning is Ahmed’s dismissal of
what two pro-rebel journalists held hostage by rebels overheard, in English, in
an adjacent room to where they were held.... The fact that they can’t be 100%
sure of it as proof, is apparently reason enough to dismiss it entirely, and
move on to other matter, rather than to call for a vigorous
investigation."




I should call for a vigorous investigation into what
exactly? Into a skype conversation overheard by journalists where one of them
explicitly admits that he wasn't sure whether the conversation was about
something that had actually happened, or was a conversation about a rumour about what may have happened, and that even if the conversants were clearly amongst
the rebel forces, the journo wasn't sure precisely who they actually were?




An investigation by the UN is already underway. I'd suggest
waiting for the results of that before jumping up and down about the allegedly
groundbreaking implications of a vague report such as this in the hope it might
prove one's suspicions. People are free to make up their own minds, but this
report, again, offers no firm ground to draw any meaningful conclusions either
way to the available evidence. NOTE: I have not said the account is false. Just
that with added caveats, it's no longer compelling.




HarelB says: "One can imagine in some 'opposite' parallel universe,
in which two pro-Assad journalists are taken hostage, clearly held by Assad
forces, and overhear such a conversation with direct CW admission by an Assad
commander. Perhaps some pro-Assad hack journalist would say it’s not
“compelling”, after all, since the former hostages cannot “even” be 100%
certain of the identities of their captors and it “might be” a rumor – surely
no one else, certainly no serious journalist, no Western journalist, would
react the same way – demands for a full investigation (if not dropping bombs)
would be step 1."




Interesting that HarelB thinks we should adhere to the
standards of the Western journos and govts who might demand "dropping
bombs" on Assad on the basis of such poor evidence. He completely ignores
the fact that I've already looked at the dubious and politicised nature of
the way the US government has utilised "intelligence" in relation to
the CW issue. So no, we shouldn't adopt that standard in this case and use it
as a basis to think such thin evidence justifies jumping to conclusions the opposite way either.




HarelB: "Surely at the very least if we care about the dead
children, we should demand an investigation into these testimonies."




Again, difficult to understand what is being expected here.
We should all start "demanding" investigation "into these
testimonies"? What HarelB clearly fails to grasp from the article is that
these testimonies are a dead-end. They do not offer or open up lines of inquiry
in themselves that actually lead anywhere. They are vacuous. They might be
true. They might not be true. We don't know. We might never know. 




Because in
one case - e.g. Mint Press News - we now have a body of compelling evidence
that the "report" is just garbage Russian propaganda swallowed by an
amateur overly-credulous Jordanian journo looking for a scoop, and backed up by
a somewhat foolish AP correspondent who tried to help him get it published
without wanting to sully her name with such an evidently dubious piece. As for the Belgian and Italian journos' story, it is inherently unverifiable because we can't track
down the rebels that took them hostage to ask them what they were conversing
about and whether or not they were discussing rumours and who exactly they
were. We are simply left suspended with the possibility that it might be true, while noting the evidence that it might just be nonsense.




HarelB: "In the actual universe, they will be brushed under the
rug –what Piccinin and Quirico overheard, what Ghouta rebels and family told
Ababneh– unless the public bands together to insist on an impartial inquiry
into the many lines of evidence pointing at rebel use of chemical weapons. The
victims deserve nothing less."




What the victims deserve is not to have the public trumping
up bullshit lines of inquiry as if they are made of evidentiary gold.






I remain open-minded about the CW issue and as the article
above shows, have drawn no specific conclusions either way. But what I have
done is shown how all parties, even so-called anti-war activists and journos
who really should know better, are politicising the facts.




The Syrian people deserve better.

Special Report: "Fixing" intelligence on Syria? Deciphering the propaganda war to "hemorrhage" both sides

Published in Ceasefire Magazine





U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, left, and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, shake hands after making a deal over Syrian chemical weapons




If there is anything to learn from the Syrian conflict, it is that, in the fog of war, truth really is the first casualty. Narratives and counter-narratives of the conflict have plagued media accounts and the blogosphere ever since peaceful protests erupted on the streets of Syria over two years ago, and increasingly so in the wake of the Ghouta chemical weapons attack of the 21st August.


While the West’s case against Assad in this respect appears politicised and less than conclusive, the same, if not worse, can be said about the case against the rebels. Almost every single piece of evidence that has been put forward to support that case has been disputed at the very least, or proved entirely false. And the politicisation of Russian and Iranian intelligence, the role of Assad in spearheading propaganda, has been overlooked. 

From the White House dossier to the United Nations report, from Syrian nuns to revelations from former and active intelligence officials, the propaganda war between pro and anti-interventionists to control the paradigm through which we understand the conflict – manifesting itself in Bashar al-Assad’s latest call for a ceasefire –  may be feeding into little-known strategic imperatives that see the Syrian people as mere pawns in a wider gambit. 

READ MORE










UPDATE:



Following is my detailed response to the first comment on my Ceasefire report by a "Harel B":




@HarelB begins his comment with a veiled ad hominem: 'Ahmed
was in such a rush to dismiss this report that he didn’t even take 10 seconds
to find out Gavlak is a she and not a “he”... While Gavlak’s gender is not
central, it illustrates the glee with which evidence pointing at rebel use of
chemical weapons (CW) is dismissed with no more than a cursory glance.'




That error has been corrected. It seems the aim here is to
imply that I had a pre-ordained stance on the Mint Press News article which
caused me to "rush" into dismissing it.




I think anyone with a half a brain reading this piece will
quickly realise 1) I am not particularly gleeful about anything going in Syria,
nor any arguments either way 2) I did not rush into any conclusions but rather
have conducted a painstaking investigation of the arguments and
counterarguments. 3) my critique of the Mint Press News report claiming that
the Ghouta attack was carried out by rebels is based fundamentally on the fact
that firstly the account is disputed by a far more reputable newspaper
publication (let's note that The Independent is also owned by a Russian
oligarch), and secondly that the physical evidence at the multiple sites of the
attack completely contradicts the therefore implausible scenario put forth in
this article, which HarelB bends over backwards to try to rehabilitate.




In any case, I was in no "rush" to dismiss the
Mint Press article. This could have been verified by a quick google of my
writings on Syria such as here:




http://www.nafeezahmed.com/2013/08/special-report-syria-intervention-plans.html




where early after the attack I have referenced multiple
sources raising questions about the official account., including keeping an
open mind about the Mint Press News report.




@HarelB says: "Those who click the link Ahmed provides,
discover it is in fact not a direct statement by Gavlak but a page by a blogger
who claims to be sharing an email sent by Gavlak. It might be true but is
unverified."




That's a bit of a rich observation coming from someone
clinging obsessively to an article which itself says some of its contents
(without specifying which contents exactly) "cannot be independently
verified."




As for the blog where Dale Gavlak's statement is posted (and
I am about to notify you of some interesting updates in this regard), for those
who don't know, the Brown Moses blog is highly regarded and is a reliable
source of coverage on Syria by a citizen journo with a pretty decent track record. 




@HarelB: "Even if true, the fact is that several others
have posted copies of their own emails form Gavlak, two weeks ago, and she told
them she helped Ababneh write the article and said not one word to distance
herself from co-authorship. She is believed to have known Ababneh (which
MintPress made clear was responsible for the interviews) for some three years
at the time, so presumably her choice to help him write it up was based on
respect for his work she had by them developed. It speaks volumes that Gavlak
remained silent for 3 weeks and even more, what the alleged recent statement
does not say. Does Gavlak say the story isn’t true? No. Does she say she has
reason to doubt Ababneh or his interviewing? No. Does she say she has reason to
doubt what the Ghouta residents testified to Ababneh? Again, no. Sympathies are
due Gavlak; it does not take great imagination to see the immense pressure
anyone is under when an article they helped someone else write goes viral which
reports unpleasant things Ghouta residents have said about a Saudi Billionaire
prince, let alone one which questions the narrative of the world’s most
powerful state. Understandable if true, that she wishes her name was not on the
piece she helped Ababneh write; the issue for those who claim to care about the
victims remains elsewhere: the testimonies Ghouta area rebels and residents gave,
pointing at rebel use of CW."




What HarelB doesn't seem to understand, is that for any
impartial observer, there is simply no way to take the Mint Press News article
seriously anymore. The idea that we can rely on this report as a credible
source is just silly.




More than that, the totality of the information revealed
about the report clearly and consistently raises a whole host of disturbing
questions about the origins of the whole story. Mint Press News is continuing
to claim that Gavlak "wrote the article in it’s entirety as well as
conducted the research." 




Note how carefully worded this is - now compare it to
Gavlak's further statement which clarifies her exact role in the piece:

"Email correspondence between Ms. Gavlak and Mint Press
News that began on August 29 and ended on September 2 clearly show that from
the beginning Ms. Gavlak identified the author of the story as Yahya Ababneh, a
Jordanian journalist. She also made clear that only his name should appear on
the byline and the story was submitted only in his name. She served as an
editor of Ababneh’s material in English as he normally writes in Arabic. She
did not travel to Syria and could not corroborate his account.

 "Dale Gavlak specifically stated in an email dated
August 29 'Pls find the Syria story I mentioned uploaded on Google Docs. This
should go under Yahya Ababneh's byline. I helped him write up his story but he
should get all the credit for this.'

 "Ms. Gavlak supplied the requested bio information on
Mr. Ababneh later that day and had further communications with Mint Press News’
Mnar Muhawesh about the author's background. There was no communication by Mint
Press News to Ms. Gavlak that it intended to use her byline.  Ms. Muhawesh took this action unilaterally
and without Ms. Gavlak's permission.

 "After seeing that her name was attached to the
article, Dale Gavlak demanded her name be removed. However, Ms. Muhawesh
stated: 'We will not be removing your name from the byline as this is an
existential issue for MintPress and an issue of credibility as this will appear
as though we are lying'."

So it does seem that Gavlak made clear her byline shouldn't
be on the piece. It also seems that she admits to helping write up the story as
a friend to Ababneh, and even pitching the piece - and it's plausible that she
might have tried to check with colleagues and officials as Mint Press News
claims to see if there was any corroboration of Ababneh's reporting. Either
way, what does seem clear is that Gavlak was not responsible for the fundamental
content of the piece, and the attribution to her is dishonest, against her clearly stated wishes from the outset.




While I have no doubt that Gavlak probably is under immense
pressure, her specific account that she had from the beginning made clear to
not use her byline because she was not responsible for the content of the piece
seems increasingly plausible in the context of new evidence of Mint Press News'
dubious background, along with the dubious behaviour of the other primary
author of the piece Yahya Ababneh.




The New York Times has investigated the issue further and
discovered that Mint Press News' financial backers and advisers included the
website editor's father, an ethnic Jordanian of Shi'a persuasion.  Now that in itself would not be important except 1) sectarian issues have
become extremely polarised and polarising with respect to the Syrian conflict
and stances supporting and opposing intervention and 2) the NYT found evidence
of vehemently sectarian and anti-Saudi anti-Wahabi sentiments linked to her
father's role in Mint Press News. So Mint Press News. For a news site that is
supposed to have a semblance of impartiality doing exclusive reporting on
Syria, I'm sorry but this is pretty fatal. (also see this)




It gets worse. An investigation by Brian Whitaker, former
Mideast editor at the Guardian, has found compelling circumstantial evidence
that Ababneh's real name is Yan Barakat, has lied about his journalistic
credentials, and that the whole story blaming rebels for the chemical weapons
attack may have derived from a Russian source in Damascus.




No wonder "some" of the information "could
not be independently verified." Anyone claiming that we should now
continue to applaud this article and, on its basis, call for an investigation
due to its "testimonies", should take a good look in the mirror to
admire their ability to undertake the most profound sorts of mental gymnastics.




HarelB says: "Aside: Mother Agnes who Ahmed tells us ”
has long openly supported Assad” is on record calling the Assad government
“totalitarian” This is hardly “supporting” Assad, and that fact is not changed
by the fact that her own experiences and those testimonies given to her suggest
many of the rebels are as or more totalitarian and brutal."




More admirable mental gymnastics follows as HarelB
completely ignores all the evidence I've provided proving quite clearly that
"Mother Agnes" is utterly compromised, demonstrably close to
"Assad's security forces", and lauded his so-called
"reforms", not to mention, according to independent journalists,
apparently worked with Assad's forces to have a bunch of them exterminated
(successfully). She denies this, unsurprisingly, but the journalists on the
ground who witnessed it with their own eyes hold fast to their very plausible
and harrowing account.




Harel B ignores all of that, and misquotes "Mother
Agnes'" by quoting, not Mother Agnes, but an article by Robert Moynihan,
who writes, "Yes, Syria’s president Assad is no democrat; he is a powerful
totalitarian leader." Moynihan then cites an interview in Ha'aretz with
the nun titled 'On visit to Israel, Syrian-based nun backs beleaguered
President Assad', where she says:

"She believes the Assad regime is the only thing that
can save Syria from a takeover by Al-Qaida, and that most Syrians support the
present regime."

I have not found a single source where the nun actually
describes Assad as "totalitarian" herself.




I myself was taken in by the nun and quoted her in the past.
But we do not need "Mother Agnes'" discredited pro-Assad ramblings and
unverifiable claims of rebel atrocities to be aware of the danger of the
Islamist forces therein, and the atrocities they have carried out, a matter I
have documented at length elsewhere, and which have been well-documented by both independent human rights observers, journalists, and by multiple UN war crimes inquiries.




@HarelB says: "Most stunning is Ahmed’s dismissal of
what two pro-rebel journalists held hostage by rebels overheard, in English, in
an adjacent room to where they were held.... The fact that they can’t be 100%
sure of it as proof, is apparently reason enough to dismiss it entirely, and
move on to other matter, rather than to call for a vigorous
investigation."




I should call for a vigorous investigation into what
exactly? Into a skype conversation overheard by journalists where one of them
explicitly admits that he wasn't sure whether the conversation was about
something that had actually happened, or was a conversation about a rumour about what may have happened, and that even if the conversants were clearly amongst
the rebel forces, the journo wasn't sure precisely who they actually were?




An investigation by the UN is already underway. I'd suggest
waiting for the results of that before jumping up and down about the allegedly
groundbreaking implications of a vague report such as this in the hope it might
prove one's suspicions. People are free to make up their own minds, but this
report, again, offers no firm ground to draw any meaningful conclusions either
way to the available evidence. NOTE: I have not said the account is false. Just
that with added caveats, it's no longer compelling.




HarelB says: "One can imagine in some 'opposite' parallel universe,
in which two pro-Assad journalists are taken hostage, clearly held by Assad
forces, and overhear such a conversation with direct CW admission by an Assad
commander. Perhaps some pro-Assad hack journalist would say it’s not
“compelling”, after all, since the former hostages cannot “even” be 100%
certain of the identities of their captors and it “might be” a rumor – surely
no one else, certainly no serious journalist, no Western journalist, would
react the same way – demands for a full investigation (if not dropping bombs)
would be step 1."




Interesting that HarelB thinks we should adhere to the
standards of the Western journos and govts who might demand "dropping
bombs" on Assad on the basis of such poor evidence. He completely ignores
the fact that I've already looked at the dubious and politicised nature of
the way the US government has utilised "intelligence" in relation to
the CW issue. So no, we shouldn't adopt that standard in this case and use it
as a basis to think such thin evidence justifies jumping to conclusions the opposite way either.




HarelB: "Surely at the very least if we care about the dead
children, we should demand an investigation into these testimonies."




Again, difficult to understand what is being expected here.
We should all start "demanding" investigation "into these
testimonies"? What HarelB clearly fails to grasp from the article is that
these testimonies are a dead-end. They do not offer or open up lines of inquiry
in themselves that actually lead anywhere. They are vacuous. They might be
true. They might not be true. We don't know. We might never know. 




Because in
one case - e.g. Mint Press News - we now have a body of compelling evidence
that the "report" is just garbage Russian propaganda swallowed by an
amateur overly-credulous Jordanian journo looking for a scoop, and backed up by
a somewhat foolish AP correspondent who tried to help him get it published
without wanting to sully her name with such an evidently dubious piece. As for the Belgian and Italian journos' story, it is inherently unverifiable because we can't track
down the rebels that took them hostage to ask them what they were conversing
about and whether or not they were discussing rumours and who exactly they
were. We are simply left suspended with the possibility that it might be true, while noting the evidence that it might just be nonsense.




HarelB: "In the actual universe, they will be brushed under the
rug –what Piccinin and Quirico overheard, what Ghouta rebels and family told
Ababneh– unless the public bands together to insist on an impartial inquiry
into the many lines of evidence pointing at rebel use of chemical weapons. The
victims deserve nothing less."




What the victims deserve is not to have the public trumping
up bullshit lines of inquiry as if they are made of evidentiary gold.






I remain open-minded about the CW issue and as the article
above shows, have drawn no specific conclusions either way. But what I have
done is shown how all parties, even so-called anti-war activists and journos
who really should know better, are politicising the facts.




The Syrian people deserve better.

Special Report: Syria intervention plans fueled by oil interests, not chemical weapon concerns

On 21
August, hundreds - perhaps over a thousand - people were killed in a chemical weapon attack in Ghouta, Damascus, prompting the U.S., UK, Israel and
France to raise the spectre of military strikes against Bashir al Assad's
forces which, they say, carried out the attack.




To be
sure, the latest episode is merely one more horrific event in a conflict that
has increasingly taken on genocidal characteristics. The case for
action at first glance is indisputable. The UN now confirms a death toll over
100,000 people, the vast majority of whom have been killed by Assad's troops.
An estimated 4.5 million people have been displaced from their homes.
International observers have overwhelmingly
confirmed Assad's
complicity in the preponderance of war crimes and crimes against humanity
against the Syrian people. The illegitimacy of his regime, and the legitimacy
of the uprising against it, is clear.




But
the interests of the west are a different matter.







Chemical confusion




While
the U.S. and Israel have taken a lead in claiming firm evidence that the latest
attack was indeed a deployment of chemical weapons by Assad's regime,
justifying a military intervention of some sort, questions remain.




The
main evidence cited by the U.S. linking the attacks to Syria are intercepted
phone calls among other intelligence, the bulk of which was provided by Israel. "Last Wednesday, in the
hours after a horrific chemical attack east of Damascus," reported Foreign Policy, "an official at the
Syrian Ministry of Defense exchanged panicked phone calls with a leader of a
chemical weapons unit, demanding answers for a nerve agent strike that killed
more than 1,000 people."




This
account is hardly decisive proof of Assad's culpability in the attack - what
one can reasonably determine here is that Syrian defense officials do not seem
to have issued specific orders for such a strike, and were attempting to
investigate whether their own chemical weapons unit was indeed responsible.




On the
attack itself, experts are unanimous that the shocking footage of civilians,
including children, suffering the effects of some sort of chemical attack, is
real - but remain divided on whether it involved military-grade chemical
weapons associated with Assad's arsenal, or were a more amateur concoction
potentially linked to the rebels.




Many
independent chemical weapons experts point out the insufficiency of
evidence to
draw any firm conclusions. Steven Johnson, chemical explosives experts
at Cranfield Forensic Institute, pointed to inconsistencies in the video
footage and the symptoms displayed by victims, raising questions about the
nature of the agents used. Although trauma to the nervous system was clear:
"At this stage everyone wants a ‘yes-no’ answer to chemical attack. But it
is too early to draw a conclusion just from these videos."




Dan Kaszeta, a former officer of the U.S. Army’s Chemical
Corps, said: "None of the people treating the casualties or photographing
them are wearing any sort of chemical-warfare protective gear, and despite
that, none of them seem to be harmed... there are none of the other signs you
would expect to see in the aftermath of a chemical attack, such as intermediate
levels of casualties, severe visual problems, vomiting and loss of bowel
control."




Gwyn Winfield of chemical weapons journal CBRNe World said it
was difficult to pin down a specific chemical from the symptoms seen in
footage, but suggested it could be either a chemical weapon or a riot control
agent: "The lack of conventional munition marks does suggest that it was a
non-conventional munition, or an RCA (riot control agent) in a confined space,
but who fired it and what it was has yet to be proved."




Other experts cited by Agence France Presse (AFP) concur with these assessments - either
disagreeing that the footage proved military-grade chemical weapons, or noting
the inadequacy of evidence implicating a specific perpetrator.




What
little evidence is available in the public record on past deployment of
chemical agents has implicated both Assad and the rebels - not the Free Syrian
Army (FSA) as a whole, but rather militant jihadist factions linked to al-Qaeda
and funded by the likes of Saudi Arabia and
Qatar.




In
March this year, a major attack on the predominantly Shi'a town of Khan
al-Assal killing 26 people including civilians and Syrian soldiers was
apparently committed by rebels "with al-Qaeda sympathies." U.S.
weapons experts suspected that the victims were exposed to a
"caustic" agent such as chlorine, not a military-grade chemical
weapon but "an improvised chemical device." As the Telegraph reports: "There has been
extensive experimentation by insurgents in Iraq in the use of chlorine."




Indeed,
in May 2007, al-Qaeda in Iraq had attempted a series of suicide
attacks using
bombs built from chlorine gas containers. Last year, Syrian jihadist groups led
by the al-Qaeda affiliated al-Nusrah Front, linked to Iraqi al-Qaeda forces,
captured several Syrian
military bases
stocking Scud and anti-aircraft missiles, as well as a chlorine factory near Aleppo.




Yet eyewitness reports
from victims and doctors
have also alleged many other instances of chemical weapons attacks attributed
by locals to Syrian government forces.




Just
three months before the most recent attack, however, former war crimes
prosecutor Carla del Ponte, an independent UN war crimes
investigator on Syria, told Channel 4 that evidence derived from interviews
with victims, doctors and field hospitals confirmed that rebels had used the
nerve agent sarin:

"I
have seen that there are concrete suspicions if not irrefutable proof that
there has been use of sarin gas... This use was made by the opponent rebels and
not from the governmental authorities."

According
to Channel 4, "she had not found evidence of sarin's use by President
Bashar al-Assad's regime."




Meanwhile,
the latest UN report released in June 2013 confirms
several allegations of chemical weapons attacks but concludes it: 

"... has not
been possible, on the evidence available, to determine the precise chemical
agents used, their delivery systems or the perpetrator."

Further
complicating the matter, Dave Gavlak, a veteran Middle East
correspondent for Associated Press, cites interviews with "doctors, Ghouta
residents, rebel fighters and their families" who believe that "certain
rebels received chemical weapons via the Saudi intelligence chief, Prince
Bandar bin Sultan, and were responsible for carrying out the gas attack."
The arms were reportedly given by al-Nusrah fighters to ordinary rebels without
informing them of their nature. "More than a dozen rebels interviewed
reported that their salaries came from the Saudi government." Gavlak's
report comes with the caveat that some of its information "cannot be
independently verified." 




Could it be disinformation planted by Assad
agents in Damascus, as happened with the Houla massacre?




We
will have to wait for the findings of UN weapons inspectors to see whether any
further clarity can be added with regards to the latest attack. In the words of
Foreign Policy
magazine:

"Given
that U.N. inspectors with a mandate to investigate chemical weapons use were on
the ground when the attack happened, the decision to deploy what appears to
have been a nerve agent in a suburb east of Damascus has puzzled many
observers. Why would Syria do such a thing when it is fully aware that the mass
use of chemical weapons is the one thing that might require the United States
to take military action against it? That's a question U.S. intelligence
analysts are puzzling over as well. 'We don't know exactly why it happened,'
the intelligence official said. 'We just know it was pretty fucking
stupid.'"

Imperial pretensions from Syria
to Iran




U.S.
agitation against Syria began long before today's atrocities at least seven
years ago in the context of wider operations targeting Iranian influence across
the Middle East.




In
2006, a little-known State Department committee - the Iran-Syria Policy
and Operations Group
- was meeting weekly to "coordinate actions such as curtailing Iran's
access to credit and banking institutions, organizing the sale of military
equipment to Iran's neighbors and supporting forces that oppose the two
regimes." U.S. officials said "the dissolution of the group was
simply a bureaucratic reorganization" because of a "widespread public
perception that it was designed to enact regime change."




Despite
the dissolution of the group, covert action continued. In May 2007, a presidential finding revealed that Bush had
authorized "nonlethal" CIA operations against Iran. Anti-Syria
operations were also in
full swing around this time as part of this covert programme, according to
Seymour Hersh, reporting for the  New Yorker . A range of U.S. government
and intelligence sources told him that the Bush administration had
"cooperated with Saudi Arabia’s government, which is Sunni, in clandestine
operations" intended to weaken the Shi'ite Hezbollah in Lebanon. "The
U.S. has also taken part in clandestine operations aimed at Iran and its ally
Syria," wrote Hersh, "a byproduct" of which is "the
bolstering of Sunni extremist groups" hostile to the United States and
"sympathetic to al-Qaeda." He noted that "the Saudi government,
with Washington’s approval, would provide funds and logistical aid to weaken
the government of President Bashir Assad, of Syria," with a view to
pressure him to be "more conciliatory and open to negotiations" with
Israel. One faction receiving covert U.S. "political and financial
support" through the Saudis was the exiled Syrian Muslim Brotherhood.




A year
later, Alexander Cockburn revealed that a new finding
authorized covert action undermining Iran "across a huge geographical are
- from Lebanon to Afghanistan", and would include support for a wide range
of terrorist and military groups such as Mujahedin-e-Khalq and Jundullah in
Balochistan, including al-Qaeda linked groups:

"Other
elements that will benefit from U.S. largesse and advice include Iranian
Kurdish nationalists, as well the Ahwazi arabs of south west Iran. 
Further afield, operations against Iran’s Hezbollah allies in Lebanon will be
stepped up, along with efforts to destabilize the Syrian regime."

It is
perhaps not entirely surprising in this context that according to former French
foreign minister Roland Dumas, Britain had planned covert
action in Syria as early as 2009: "I was in England two years before the
violence in Syria on other business", he told French television:

"I
met with top British officials, who confessed to me that they were preparing
something in Syria. This was in Britain not in America. Britain was preparing
gunmen to invade Syria. They even asked me, although I was no longer minister
for foreign affairs, if I would like to participate."

Leaked
emails from the private intelligence
firm Stratfor
included notes from a meeting
with Pentagon officials
confirming U.S.-UK covert operations in Syria since 2011:

"After
a couple hours of talking, they said without saying that SOF [Special
Operations Forces] teams (presumably from U.S., UK, France, Jordan,
Turkey) are already on the ground focused on recce [reconnaissance]
missions and training opposition forces...  I kept pressing on the
question of what these SOF  teams would be working toward, and whether
this would lead to an eventual air campaign to give a Syrian rebel group cover.
They pretty quickly distanced themselves from that idea, saying that the idea 'hypothetically'
is to commit guerrilla attacks, assassination campaigns, try to break the back
of the Alawite forces, elicit collapse from within... They don’t believe air
intervention would happen unless there was enough media attention on a
massacre, like the Gaddafi move against Benghazi. They
think the U.S. would have a high tolerance for killings as long as it
doesn't reach that very public stage."

"Collapsing"
Assad's regime is thus a final goal, though military intervention would only be
politically feasible - read domestically palatable for western populations - in
the context of "a massacre" so grievous it would lead to a public
outcry.




In another email to
Stratfor executive Fred Burton from James F. Smith, former director of Blackwater and
current CEO of another private security firm SCG International, Smith confirmed
that he was part of "a fact finding mission for Congress" being
deployed to "engage Syrian opposition in Turkey (non-MB and
non-Qatari)." The "true mission" for the "fact
finding" team was how:

"...
they can help in regime change."

The
email added that Smith intended to offer "his services to help protect the
opposition members, like he had underway in Libya." He also said that Booz
Allen Hamilton - the same defence contractor that employed Edward Snowden to
run NSA surveillance programmes - "is also working [with] the Agency on a
similar request."







Grand strategy: shoring up Gulf oil autocracies, "salafi jihadism" and sectarian violence




So
what is this unfolding strategy to undermine Syria, Iran and so on, all about?
According to retired NATO Secretary
General Wesley Clark,
a memo from the Office of the U.S. Secretary of Defense just a few weeks after
9/11 revealed plans to "attack and destroy the governments in 7
countries in five years." A Pentagon officer familiar with the memo told
him, "we’re going to start with Iraq, and then we’re going to move to
Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Iran." In a subsequent
interview, Clark argues that this strategy is fundamentally about control of
the region's vast oil
and gas resources.




As
Glen Greenwald pointed out:

"...
in the aftermath of military-caused regime change in Iraq and Libya... with
concerted regime change efforts now underway aimed at Syria and Iran, with
active and escalating proxy fighting in Somalia, with a modest military
deployment to South Sudan, and the active use of drones in six - count ‘em: six
- different Muslim countries, it is worth asking whether the neocon dream as
laid out by Clark is dead or is being actively pursued and fulfilled, albeit
with means more subtle and multilateral than full-on military invasions."

Indeed,
much of the strategy currently at play in the region was candidly described in
a 2008 U.S. Army-funded
RAND report, Unfolding the Future of the Long War.
The report noted that "the economies of the industrialized states will
continue to rely heavily on oil, thus making it a strategically important
resource." As most oil will be produced in the Middle East, the U.S. has
"motive for maintaining stability in and good relations with Middle
Eastern states." The report further acknowledges:

"The
geographic area of proven oil reserves coincides with the power base of much of
the Salafi-jihadist network. This creates a linkage between oil supplies and
the long war that is not easily broken or simply characterized... For the
foreseeable future, world oil production growth and total output will be
dominated by Persian Gulf resources... The region will therefore remain a
strategic priority, and this priority will interact strongly with that of
prosecuting the long war."

In
this context, the report identitied many potential trajectories for regional
policy focused on protecting access to Gulf oil supplies, among which the
following are most salient:

"Divide and Rule focuses on exploiting fault
lines between the various Salafi-jihadist groups to turn them against each
other and dissipate their energy on internal conflicts. This strategy relies heavily on
covert action, information operations (IO), unconventional warfare, and
support to indigenous security forces... the United States and
its local allies could use the nationalist jihadists to launch proxy IO
campaigns to discredit the transnational jihadists in the eyes of the local
populace...  U.S. leaders could also choose
to capitalize on the 'Sustained Shia-Sunni Conflict' trajectory by taking the
side of the conservative Sunni regimes against Shiite empowerment movements in
the Muslim world.... possibly supporting authoritative Sunni governments
against a continuingly hostile Iran."

Exploring
different scenarios for this trajectory, the report speculated that the U.S.
may concentrate "on shoring up the traditional Sunni regimes in Saudi
Arabia, Egypt, and Pakistan as a way of containing Iranian power and influence
in the Middle East and Persian Gulf." Noting that this could actually
empower al-Qaeda jihadists, the report concluded that doing so might work in
western interests by focusing jihadi activity on internal sectarian rivalry
rather than targeting the U.S., thus bogging down both Iranian-sponsored groups like Hezbollah and al-Qaeda affiliated networks in mutual conflict:

"One
of the oddities of this long war trajectory is that it may actually reduce the
al-Qaeda threat to U.S. interests in the short term. The upsurge in Shia
identity and confidence seen here would certainly cause serious concern in the
Salafi-jihadist community in the Muslim world, including the senior leadership
of al-Qaeda. As a result, it is very likely that al-Qaeda might focus its
efforts on targeting Iranian interests throughout the Middle East and Persian
Gulf while simultaneously cutting back on anti-American and anti-Western
operations."

The
RAND document contextualised this strategy with surprisingly prescient
recognition of the increasing vulnerability of the U.S.'s key allies and
enemies - Saudi Arabia, the Gulf states, Egypt, Syria, Iran - to the converging
crises of rapidly rising populations, a 'youth bulge', internal economic
inequalities, political frustrations, sectarian tensions, and water shortages,
all of which could destabilize these countries from within or exacerbate
inter-state conflicts.




The
report noted especially that Syria is among several "downstream countries
that are becoming increasingly water scarce as their populations grow",
increasing a risk of conflict. Drought in Syria due to climate change,
impacting food prices, did indeed play a major role in sparking the 2011 uprisings.
Though the RAND document fell far short of recognizing the prospect of an  'Arab Spring', it illustrates that three
years before the 2011 uprisings, U.S. defense officials were alive to the
region's growing instabilities, and concerned by the potential consequences for
stability of Gulf oil.







Pipeline politics




These strategic concerns, motivated by fear of expanding
Iranian influence, impacted Syria primarily in relation to pipeline
geopolitics. In 2009 - the same year former French foreign minister Dumas
alleges the British began planning operations in Syria - Assad refused
to sign a proposed agreement with Qatar
that would run a pipeline from the latter's North field, contiguous with
Iran's South Pars field, through Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Syria and on to Turkey, with
a view to supply European markets - albeit crucially bypassing Russia. Assad's
rationale was "to protect the interests of [his] Russian ally, which is
Europe's top supplier of natural gas."




Instead, the following year, Assad pursued negotiations for an
alternative $10 billion pipeline plan with Iran, across Iraq to Syria, that
would also potentially allow Iran to supply gas to Europe from its South Pars
field shared with Qatar. the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) for the project was
signed by in July 2012 - just as Syria's civil war was spreading to Damascus
and Aleppo - and earlier this year Iraq signed a framework
agreement for construction of the gas pipelines. The pipeline would
potentially allow Iran to supply gas to European markets.









The Iran-Iraq-Syria pipeline plan was a "direct
slap in the face" to Qatar's plans. No wonder Saudi Prince Bandar bin
Sultan, in a failed attempt to bribe Russia to switch sides, told President
Vladmir Putin that "whatever regime comes after" Assad, it will be "completely"
in Saudi Arabia's hands and will "not sign any agreement allowing any
Gulf country to transport its gas across Syria to Europe and compete with
Russian gas exports", according to diplomatic sources. When Putin refused,
the Prince vowed military action. 




Israel
also has a direct interest in countering the Iran-brokered pipeline. In 2003,
just a month after the commencement of the Iraq War, U.S. and Israeli
government sources told The Guardian of plans to "build a
pipeline to siphon oil from newly conquered Iraq to Israel" bypassing
Syria. The basis for the plan, known as the Haifa project, goes back to a 1975
MoU signed by then Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, "whereby the U.S.
would guarantee Israel's oil reserves and energy supply in times of
crisis." As late as 2007, U.S. and Israeli
government officials were
in discussion on costs and contingencies for the Iraq-Israel pipeline project.




All
the parties intervening in Syria's escalating conflict - the U.S., Saudi
Arabia, Qatar, Turkey, Israel on one side providing limited support to
opposition forces, with Russia, China and Iran on the other shoring up Assad's
regime - are doing so for their own narrow, competing geopolitical interests.







Supporting al-Qaeda




Certainly,
external support for the rebels funneled largely through Saudi Arabia and
Qatar has empowered extremists. The New York Times found that most of the arms
supplied with U.S. approval "are going to hard-line Islamic jihadists, and
not the more secular opposition groups" - a process which continues. The support for militants is
steadily transforming the Syrian landscape. "Across Syria, rebel-held
areas are dotted with Islamic courts staffed by lawyers and clerics, and by
fighting brigades led by extremists", reported NYT in April:

"Even
the Supreme Military Council, the umbrella rebel organization whose formation
the West had hoped would sideline radical groups, is stocked with commanders
who want to infuse Islamic law into a future Syrian government. Nowhere in
rebel-controlled Syria is there a secular fighting force to speak of."

And
there are even questions about the U.S.' purported disavowal of the al-Qaeda
affiliated al-Nusra. NYT reports that "Nusra’s hand is felt most strongly
in Aleppo", where it has established in coordination with other rebel
groups "a Shariah Commission" running "a police force and an
Islamic court that hands down sentences that have included lashings."
Nusra fighters also "control the power plant and distribute flour to
keep the city’s bakeries running." Additionally, they "have seized
government oil fields" in provinces of Deir al-Zour and Hasaka, and now
make a "profit from the crude they produce."




The
problem is that al-Nusra's bakery and oil operations are being supported by the
U.S. and the European Union (EU) respectively. In one disturbing account, the Washington Post reports on a stealth mission
in Aleppo "to deliver food and other aid to needy Syrians - all of it paid
for by the U.S. government", including the supply of flour. "The
bakery is fully supplied with flour paid for by the United States", the
report continues, noting that local consumers, however, "credited Jabhat
al-Nusra - a rebel group the United States has designated a terrorist
organization because of its ties to al-Qaeda - with providing flour to the
region, though he admitted he wasn’t sure where it comes from." Similarly,
the EU's easing of an
oil embargo to
allow oil imports from rebel-controlled oil fields directly benefits al-Nusra
fighters who control those former government fields.




No
wonder Saudi Prince Bandar bin Sultan, in a failed attempt to bribe Russia to
switch sides, told President Vladmir Putin that "whatever regime comes
after" Assad, it will be "completely"
in Saudi Arabia's hands
and will "not sign any agreement allowing any Gulf country to transport
its gas across Syria to Europe and compete with Russian gas exports",
according to diplomatic sources. When Putin refused, the Prince vowed military
action.

It
would seem that contradictory Saudi and Qatari oil interests are pulling the
strings of U.S. policy in Syria, if not the wider region. It is this - the
problem of establishing a pliable opposition which the U.S. and its oil allies
feel confident will play ball, pipeline-style, in a post-Assad Syria - that
will determine the nature of any prospective intervention. As Chairman of the
Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Martin Dempsey, said:

"Syria
today is not about choosing between two sides but rather about choosing one
among many sides. It is my belief that the side we choose must be ready to
promote their interests and ours when the balance shifts in their favor."

What
is beyond doubt is that Assad is a war criminal whose government deserves to
be overthrown. The question is by whom, and for what interests?






Dr. Nafeez Ahmed is
a bestselling author, investigative journalist and international security
scholar. He is executive director of the Institute
for Policy Research & Development, and author of A User's Guide to the Crisis of
Civilization: And How to Save it among other books. He writes for The Guardian on the geopolitics of
environmental, energy and economic crises via his Earth insight blog.

EXCLUSIVE: Ex NASA chief climate scientist James Hansen warns fossil fuel addiction could trigger runaway global warming

My latest report in The Guardian is based on a startling new peer-reviewed scientific paper by James Hansen (et. al), widely recognised as the 'founding father' of climate science. I also interviewed him on the findings of his paper. It's a very sobering read. The upshot is that if we don't reign in our fossil fuel addiction now, then we're on course to trigger a runaway greenhouse effect that will lead to an inhabitable planet for future generations, for centuries to come.



See below.










James Hansen: Fossil fuel addiction could trigger runaway global warming

Without full decarbonisation by 2030, our global emissions pathway guarantees new era of catastrophic climate change
The world is currently on course to exploit all its remaining fossil fuel resources, a prospect that would produce a "different, practically uninhabitable planet" by triggering a "low-end runaway greenhouse effect." This is the conclusion of a new scientific paper by Prof James Hansen, the former head of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies and the world's best known climate scientist.