Blueprint for a Syria takeover

by Felicity Arbuthnot writing in the Morning Star

For anyone in two minds about what is really going on in Syria, here is a salutary tale from modern history. Recently discovered US-British government papers, which have since been omitted from even BBC timelines on Syria, have sinister echoes of current sabre-rattling.

In late 2003, the year of the Iraq invasion, Royal Holloway University historian Matthew Jones discovered some “frighteningly frank” documents – the 1957 agreement between prime minister Harold Macmillan and president Dwight Eisenhower endorsing “a CIA-MI6 plan to stage fake border incidents as an excuse for an invasion (of Syria) by Syria’s pro-Western neighbours.”

At the heart of the plan was the assassination of the perceived power behind then president Shukri al-Quwatli.

Also targeted were head of military intelligence Abd al-Hamid Sarraj, chief of Syrian general staff Afif al-Bizri and Khalid Bakdash, the general secretary of the Syrian Communist Party and first ever communist to be elected to an Arab parliament.

The document was drawn up in Washington in September 1957.

“In order to facilitate the action of liberative (sic) forces, reduce the capabilities of the regime to organise and direct its military actions … to bring about the desired results in the shortest possible time a special effort should be made to eliminate certain key individuals,” it says.

“Their removal should be accomplished early in the course of the uprising and intervention and in the light of circumstances existing at the time.”

In the light of President Bashir Assad’s allegations of intervention and cross-border incursions by foreign forces some of the plans’ phraseology is fascinating.

“Once a political decision has been reached to proceed with internal disturbances in Syria, CIA is prepared and (with) SIS (MI6) will attempt to mount minor sabotage and coup de main (sic) incidents within Syria working through contacts with individuals.

“Incidents should not be concentrated in Damascus … care should be taken to avoid causing key leaders of the Syrian regime to take additional personal protection measures.”

It further states that a “necessary degree of fear … frontier incidents and (staged) border clashes,” would “provide a pretext for intervention,” by Iraq and Jordan – then still under British mandate.

Syria was to be “made to appear as sponsor of plots, sabotage and violence directed against neighbouring governments … the CIA and SIS should use … capabilities in both psychological and action fields to augment tension.”

Incursions into Iraq, Jordan and Lebanon involving “sabotage, national conspiracies, and various strong-arms activities” were to be blamed on Damascus, the document advised.

In late December 2011 an opposition Syrian National Council was announced with a plan to “liberate the country.” Its representatives met Hillary Clinton. There now seems to be a US-endorsed Syrian Higher Revolutionary Council.

There are all-too-clear parallels with the Eisenhower-Macmillan plan to fund a Free Syria Committee with the “arming of political factions with paramilitary or other actionist capabilities” within Syria.

The CIA and MI6 planned to foment internal uprisings and replace the Ba’ath Communist-leaning government with a Western-friendly one.

Expecting this to be met by public hostility the plan anticipated that their agents would “Probably need to rely first on repressive measures and arbitrary exercise of power.”

The document was signed off in both London and Washington. Macmillan wrote in his diary of “a most formidable report” which was “withheld even from British chiefs of staff.”

Washington and Whitehall had become concerned at Syria’s increasingly pro-Soviet, rather than pro-Western, sympathies and they disliked the pan-Arab Ba’ath and Communist Party alliance, which was also widely supported by the Syrian army.

These political concerns were augmented by Syria’s control of a main pipeline from Iraq’s western oilfields in those pre-Saddam Hussein days.

Briefly put, in 1957 Syria allied itself with Moscow by signing an agreement on military and economic aid. The previous year it had recognised the People’s Republic of China.

The Soviet Union, as Russia has done now, warned the West against intervening in Syria.

Syria remains unchanged as a country valuing its sovereignty and the historical loyalties remain.

In 1957 this independent-mindedness caused senior State Department official Loy Henderson to say that “the present regime in Syria had to go.”

Ultimately the plan was not put into action since, British mandate or not, neighbouring countries refused to be part of it.

In a tone similar to that of 1957, Britain’s Foreign Secretary William Hague has said President Assad “will feel emboldened” by Russia’s and China’s voting against the US and Britain-drafted resolution at the UN.

Clinton has called for “friends of a democratic Syria” to unite and rally against the Assad government.

“We need to work together to send them a clear message – you cannot hold back the future at the point of a gun,” she said.

The Russia-China veto at the UN has been condemned by the US varyingly as “disgusting,” “shameful,” “deplorable” and “a travesty.” Jaw-dropping and embarrassing double standards.

Perhaps the bottom line is that in 1957 Iraq’s oil, to which Syria held an important key, was at the top of the Western agenda. Today it is Iran’s – and, as Canadian academic Michel Chossudovsky notes so succinctly, “The road to Tehran is through Damascus.”