Did US kidapping al-Libi help al Qaeda in Libya?

President Barack Obama was able to garner some good press through his twin anti-terrorism raids in North Africa on 5 October. At a time of growing domestic political crisis he was able to flex his C-n-C muscles and look like he was doing some good elsewhere.

But was he? Only one of these raids was successful. In Somalia, they failed to get their man and it just doesn't look good to say that Seal Team 6 had to beat a hasty retreat. While we know who they didn't kill in Somalia, we have heard very little about who they did kill and these operations usually have that dark underside.

In Libya, however, they got their man, Abu Anas al-Libi, and they have branded it a success. But is it, when viewed in terms of the overall fight against al-Qaeda? Consider these factors:

The real battle with al-Qaeda is one for the hearts and minds of young Arabs. As long as they are seen as some kind of heroes, they can always recruit faster that the US can special rendition. On the other hand, if they see a better way to struggle against their enemies and for a better life, they with chose that.

The raid was carried out on Libyan soil without the consent of the Libyan government. That makes it completely illegal by both international and Libyan law and a kidnapping. This is to be up held as an example of the "rule of law" to the world?

This flagrant violation of Libyan sovereignty only serves to weaken an already weak Libyan government when a strong Libyan government can be the only thing that can stop the proliferation of al Qaeda in Libya.

It will win sympathy from many young Arabs for al-Qaeda precisely because it was an illegal act by the imperialist superpower and a violation of the sovereignty of an Arab state.

Libyan Youth Movement ran this Op/Ed that alerted me to these aspects of the question:

Op/Ed: The Kidnapping of Abu Anas al-Libi:
The Risk of Libyanizing al-Qaeda
October 9, 2013
By Ezieddin Elmahjub

As a Muslim, I condemn al-Qaeda. I feel that they hijacked my religion and started to cherry pick texts from Islamic scriptures to justify the killing of innocent lives. Al-Qaeda thugs were not successful in anything but in making Muslims look bad in the eyes of millions of fellow humans who do not have adequate background about Islam as a religion of peace, tolerance, respect and mutual existing.

Again, as a Muslim, I recognise the right of every human being to live in peace and prosperity. Attacks on innocent Westerners are a reflection of ill and hostile mentalities and cannot be accepted or justified by any means. Western nations have the right to defend the rights its citizens to live in peace without fear, but have no rights to use terror and disrespect of the sovereignty of other nation to do so.

The recent American operation in Tripoli that led to the kidnapping of Abu Anas al-Libi is an example of unintelligent American response to al-Qaeda threats. It is true that the recent Hollywood-style operation of kidnapping Abu Anas will secure to the U.S authorities short term benefits such as intelligence from Abu Anas and the joy of victory and demonstration of American might but, in the long run, this operation will lead to more al-Qaeda activities in Libya and therefore, to the likelihood of more threats to the Libyan and American interests. Currently, Libya is instable nation and its official authorities are weak. The recent American operation is going to make the situation even worse.

I’m not saying that the U.S should not respond to al-Qaeda threats. I’m simply saying that there are better ways to respond to those threats. Libyans are most likely to perceive Abu Anas’ kidnapping operation as an insult to their land and honour. Many of the Libyan youth will sympathise with Abu Anas’s family and blame the Libyan and U.S Governments for his kidnapping in this way. This, in turn, may lead to increasing the likelihood of providing al-Qaeda with a supporting environment to operate and carry on its activities in Libya. Some innocent Libyan soldier, police man or government employee will bear the brunt of the recent U.S operation. Practically, al-Qaeda only has access to innocent lives in Libya to exact revenge.

The U.S Administration must seek alternative approaches to respond to threats posed by al-Qaeda in Libya. As a start, the Administration may find it useful to negotiate an agreement with the Libyan authorities by which the Americans offer training, technical assistance and intelligence support. The Libyans, in turn, can offer legitimate and full cooperation with the American authorities. It is better to have the Libyan authorities deal with Libyans who embrace al-Qaeda’s ideology, rather than kidnapping them and creating heroes out of them. This approach is better for the two nations. It secures information for the Americans and supports the position of the Libyan Government to secure sovereignty over the Libyan soil.

However, if the Americans wish to act unilaterally, they will risk undermining the fragile powers of the new Libyan state. This may lead to more chaos, and we all know that al-Qaeda will grow by leaps and bounds if Libya turned into a failed state. At that point, the Americans might find themselves in a position where individual operation will never protect their interests and the interests of their allies.

You may contact Ezieddin via email at: Ez_m_elmahjub@yahoo.com.au

*This article solely represents the views of its author and does not necessarily reflect the Libyan Youth Movement.

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Why the return of chemical weapons is a big deal

One day people will rue the day that poison gas was re-introduced into class warfare and the antiwar movement sat on its hands.

Poison gas is the perfect ultimate weapon for the bourgeois to use against the proletariat. That is why Assad is using it now.

When he took back Qusayr from the revolution, he started to move Shia and Alawite families into the formerly Sunni town in an attempt to secure it through ethnic cleansing. Problem was, since he had taken Qusayr with conventional bombardment, there wasn't a lot left standing to move them into. By using a poison gas that disperses within hours, he solves that problem.

Poison gas is the perfect weapon for the bourgeois to use against the 99% because it doesn't destroy their precious property, only human lives. And there is the sheer terror of an odorless gas that comes in the night and kills the children first. It is the very best weapon for putting down rebellions. With conventional bombardment the Syrian landlords have to destroy their buildings to kill the people. Even where the 1% has nukes, they can hardly threaten to nuke a restive neighbourhood, and biologicals are very tricky. How can you be sure they won't migrant to the local Beverly Hills?

Chemical weapons don't have these problems. Given modern weather forecasting abilities, poison gas can be accurately applied to selective neighborhoods, killing all people and animals but leaving most property unharmed. That alone assures it of a big role in imperialism's battle to remain on top as the struggle between rich and poor intensifies in this century.

Worldwide revulsion at the horrors caused by the use of poison gas on the battlefields of what they called "the Great War," before we knew enough to number them, forced an international ban on chemical weapons. As the great powers moved on to even more grotesque weapons, their role as the "poor man's nukes" help keep the ban in place. That ban has held for almost a hundred years with only one important violation until recently.

From Wikipedia, we see that poison gas proved to be a particularly ineffective weapon in the war between imperialist powers but that right after the war it started to be used for colonial and mass suppression before mass opposition force the ban that is now being violated:

By the end of the war, chemical weapons had lost much of their effectiveness against well trained and equipped troops. At that time, chemical weapon agents were used in one quarter of artillery shells fired but caused only 3% of casualties.^[43]

Nevertheless, in the following years, chemical weapons were used in several, mainly colonial, wars where one side had an advantage in equipment over the other. The British used adamsite against Russian revolutionary troops in 1919 and allegedly used mustard gas against Iraqi insurgents in the 1920s; Bolshevik troops used poison gas to suppress the Tambov Rebellion in 1920, Spain used chemical weapons in Morocco against Rif tribesmen throughout the 1920s^[44] and Italy used mustard gas in Libya in 1930 and again during its invasion of Ethiopia in 1936.^[45]

You will note while it was no longer used in inter-imperialist rivalries, chemical weapons found ready application as a weapon of mass rebellion suppression up until the Geneva Protocols were adopted, and even after. Saddam Hussein’s murder of 5,000 Kurds with poison gas was also a use of this type. The Wikipedia entry goes on to say that mass opposition to the use of chemical weapons led to the ban:

Public opinion had by then turned against the use of such weapons which led to the Geneva Protocol, an updated and extensive prohibition of poison weapons. The Protocol bans the use (but not the stockpiling) of lethal gas and bacteriological weapons, which was signed by most First World War combatants in 1925. 

The Geneva Protocol protections that public pressure won are really quite limited. Ratifying countries were free to stockpile chemical weapons and free to use them if they were used against them. It was violated in its first decade by Italy in Abyssinia and Japan against China. As noted in the Wikipedia entry on the Geneva Protocol, it has a number of important loopholes:

Eric Croddy, assessing the Protocol in 2005, took the view that the historic record showed it had been largely ineffectual. Specifically it did not prohibit:[6]

• use against not-ratifying parties
• retalliation using such weapons, so effectively making it a no-first-use agreement
• use within a state’s own borders in a civil conflict
• research and development of such weapons, or stockpiling them

Note especially number 3 in the bullet point list. The Geneva Protocol was never designed to make what Bashar al-Assad is doing with chemical weapons in Syria illegal! It was never meant to disallow the use of poison gas by the bourgeois in putting down a revolution in its own country!

As the worldwide crisis of imperialism limps forward and the struggle for survival, which becomes a struggle between the 99% and the 1%, intensifies, I'm afraid that we will see the kind of brutal and vicious defense of the realm that we are seeing in Syria, repeated in places all over the globe. And just as in Syria, the utility of something like sarin for ethnic cleansing or mass suppression is something a morbid system like ours will find very useful in spite of the taboo.

While the Western powers may complain loudly about Assad's use of poisons, they have done nothing to deter him or anyone else. Instead, because he has promised to give up the chemical weapons he denied having, he is welcomed into a new partnership by US Secretary of State John Kerry and the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons is given the Noble Peace Prize for a year that has seen more chemical deaths than the last twenty years combined. Meanwhile, we have new reports of hundreds of tons of chemical & biological agents being transferred from Syria to Iran through an air-bridge, which, if true, means the whole CW disarmament agreement is a joke.

I suspect that many in that top 1% are secretly happy to see Assad re-introduce chemical weapons into the arena of class warfare. And in a certain perverse way, he was the perfect man for the job, the way Nixon was the perfect US president to approach China. Assad has just enough support on the Left, and so much confusion has been sown around the Syria conflict, that those that might be expected to have a problem with the return of poison gas to class relations and rally the public to defend the hard won ban are missing-in-action.

So let it here be noted that in the year 2013, poison gas was use by a government to suppress a revolutionary people for the first time in a quarter century. I fear it will be less than a quarter century before the next use and that it might become quite common as the struggle for the planet intensifies

So I will not be silent about the use of poison gas in Syria and I will not excuse it and I think in the future the failure of the Left, the anti-war movement and the peace and justice movement to vigorously oppose this first new use will be like a badge of shame for this period.

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The Courage of Ghouta in a Craven World

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“The biggest disaster is the hunger. People in Ghouta have nothing to eat, they are dying of hunger. There are injured people without help. You come from a big country with power – tell me is this right?”
                      -- chemical massacre survivor asks UK reporter

3 kids welcome the UN inspectors. Signs say:
"East Ghouta is a land of martyrdom and bravery"

The bombardment of the rebellious communities of East and West Ghouta continues today just it did for months before the sarin gas attack of 21 August brought these neighbourhoods to the attention of the world. Now, in return for a promise to give up his chemical weapons, Assad is being welcomed in from the cold. Meanwhile, he has tightened his siege of those communities to the point were he has cut off all food and medical supplies, electricity and telephone, and a craven world looks the other way as he is being allowed to starve to death the children who survived his poison gas attack.

While Assad and his supporters continue to advance ludicrous theories about how he didn't do the chemical attack, his "regular" missiles keep slamming into the resistive community with ultimate effects not that different from sarin. Six weeks after banned chemical weapons were used to slaughter over a thousand people in Ghouta, Assad has been allowed to continue the slaughter by conventional means unabated, while the UN and the world "community" hide behind the protocol of "International Law." This video is from Saturday:

Assad Rockets Wound 6 Members of Same Family in Mleiha, East Ghouta | 5 Oct 2013

6 members of the same family were wounded after shelling by rocket launchers of regime forces in the Mleha suburb of Damascus; the footage shows the arrival of the wounded in a field hospital.

Writing for the Washington Post from Beirut, 20 Sept 2013, Loveday Morris and Taylor Luck introduced the situation this way:

A month after rockets carrying chemical payloads rained down on the suburbs of Damascus, doctors say hundreds are still suffering the ill effects of sarin poisoning. But the horror of the gas attack is being overtaken by continuing shelling and airstrikes, as well as by malnutrition and disease.

Missile bombardment of the residential neighborhoods in Medmah | 20 Sept 2013

"Locals say they have become accustomed to army shelling whenever they congregate, a practice they say is done on purpose in order to target the largest number of civilians."

Through Skype interviews with doctors and activists, the Washington Post reporters paint a vivid picture of the dire conditions in these Damascus suburbs where starvation is becoming an increasing problem. They are now also forced to contend with outbreaks of brucellosis, scarlet fever, hepatitis and other diseases being breed by the conditions:

But scores of survivors suffering from side effects continue to require medical attention for persistent symptoms that include respiratory problems, nausea, weakness and blurred vision, the doctors say. Meanwhile, they say, explosive shells continue to fall, leaving little way of evacuating the wounded and only limited medical equipment to treat them.

An estimated 300 survivors of the chemical attack are contending with side effects in the Eastern Ghouta towns of Ein Tarma and Zamalka, doctors said. An additional 150 are suffering from the effects in Moadamiya, a town to the west of Damascus that was also targeted Aug. 21, doctors said, and oxygen supplies there are low.

But even before last month’s attack, the worst chemical strike in decades, rebel-held areas of the Damascus suburbs had long been a target of government assaults. And now, the side effects from sarin are just one among a sea of concerns.

"This siege is what we call a slow death," said an activist who gave his name as Anas al-Dimashqi. For about 10 months, he said, government ­forces have maintained what amounts to a blockade by erecting checkpoints that prohibit food and supplies from entering the area.

Wall Street Journal reporter Sam Dagher was able to visit Moadhamiya recently. David Greene interviewed him on NPR. He talked about this siege:

DAGHER: The government has tanks, has armored vehicles, has army units there basically besieging the section of the town which is controlled by rebels. And...

GREENE: That they're trapping people in this rebel-controlled area.

DAGHER: Precisely. They've set up earth berms. They've stacked up empty barrels and broken kitchen appliances in order to separate that section of the town that's controlled by the rebels. And there are snipers on rooftops. So it's a real war zone there and the people who are trapped - and these include rebel fighters and civilians - they're not allowed to leave.

Nobody is allowed to go in. They are subjected almost on a daily basis with artillery shelling, rockets that are being fired from nearby mountaintops, sometimes aerial bombardment. And sometimes you get clashes between the forces that are on the government side of the town and the rebels.

He also talked about the people's attempts to break the blockade and the Assad regime's countermeasures:

GREENE: Are people getting food and supplies from the outside at all?

DAGHER: Well, up to about two months ago, those who sympathized with the plight of the people who are trapped in Moadhamiya would drive past the town and toss grocery bags out of their car windows in their direction. And often people would come out and take the bag, but it would be at great risk because snipers might shoot them. The government realized what was going on so it completely shut down that section of the highway.

and he spoke of attempts by the UN to get food in:

the United Nations and the Syrian Red Crescent here which works with the United Nations have made repeated urgent appeals for access to this particular town. I spoke to an official with the Syrian Arab Red Crescent and he said that he has made seven attempts since the start of this year to deliver much needed food trucks to Moadhamiya.

And he's been turned away every time by the military checkpoints at the entrance.

The Guardian called the people "in effect, prisoners," saying "They are under siege, cut off from all outside help, gradually being starved and with no means of escape." It's report described a scene at one checkpoint:

On one recent occasion the NDF commander at the last checkpoint, who was refusing to let food into Moadamiyeh, told a SARC driver: “Unload your supplies here. Then call your friends and let them come and fetch it.” When the driver said people were afraid to come out in case they were killed, the checkpoint commander said: “Yes, if I recognise someone I don’t like, I might kill them.”

Children staving to death in Medmah | 25 Sept 2013

This policy of starving people into submission that have defied the regime's bombs and poison gas for so many months now is a deliberate one that is being allowed by the world. It certainly isn't being protested by Code Pink or anyone else on the Left. Dagher reported:

The people who are with the regime whom I actually interviewed when I was there, confirmed that these people were starving, and they said these people deserved it and they should starve until they surrender.

Apparently it is both US and UN policy also that Assad should be allowed to bomb and starve them until they surrender, he just shouldn't be allowed to use poison gas to secure their surrender.

The siege of Ghouta started months before the August chemical weapons attack. The Independent interviewed a family in Lebanon that escaped from Ghouta after the chemical attack. They described the horror their lives had become:

Kindeh, Tasnim’s uncle, began the awful tale: “We all lived in Ghouta until less than a month ago. I was working on a construction site in Damascus, passing through the government checkpoints every day. When I didn’t give the guard money for Malboro cigarettes he hit me with his gun.”

“No bread or flour or rice was allowed to enter Ghouta for three months. Only women were allowed into Damascus to buy any food at all, but when I brought bread the guard threw it on the ground, stamped on it and told me ‘now you can take it’. If I complained he would beat me too,” continued Rawda.

“The guards started using bags of bread instead of sandbags around their checkpoint, just to humiliate us. They said that one bag of bread cost one bullet. So we were afraid like this for three months before the massacre. We lived by picking whatever fruit or vegetables we could find in Ghouta.”

“It had become normal for planes to throw bombs and fire on our homes. Even in Ramadan bombs were falling every two or three hours. My husband died but I cannot even say to the officials that he was killed by a bomb or I could be hit or put in prison, so I told them it was a car accident."

The chemical attack first announced itself because the bombs sounded different:

“That night there were planes dropping bombs as usual. At 1am we heard bombs but the sound was strange."

That different sound was also noticed by another worker

who was on duty at the hospital that night, said he heard an unusual-sounding rocket shortly before 2 a.m. It seemed to land without the blast of mortar or tank shells.

The refugees now in Lebanon were able to survive because they knew what to do:

My brother was a first aider, he and his son were helping in Zamalka neighbourhood where many people died. They knew it was chemical weapons, so they took some clothes, poured coca cola on them and put charcoal between the layers. The Free Syrian Army had given us instructions on what to do if there was a chemical attack.

After the UN inspector came and went, things got even worst and the family left. The reporter writes:

“How many people do you think died?” [Rawa] asks me. I shake my head as she says: “I can tell you it is many more than you and the world know. The international inspectors were allowed free entry to some areas and they were able to do a good investigation. In other neighbourhoods the regime prevented the inspection, they didn’t really know everything that happened. When they left it was worse. The Syrian regime threw more bombs and fires than ever before, it was terrible, worse than a horror movie. One week later we left and escaped to Lebanon”.

She collapses into tears as she trails off, “My two older sons are still there.”

Who can doubt that they stayed to carry on the fight? Because that is the main thing about Ghouta. It has a spirit that won't be broken. Months of bombardment and siege didn't break it. That's why Assad became so desperate that he turned to his stockpile of banned chemical weapons, and they didn't break Ghouta either. And now that he has returned to the use of conventional bombs and intensified the use of them, with the world's blessing, and is denying them any food at all, he is finding that he still can't break them!

From Reuters on Friday we get this description of Ghouta after the chemical attack:

Already it is hard to tell exactly where the chemical rockets fell in the rebel-held Ghouta, a mix of suburban sprawl and farmland, because damage from conventional bombardment has reduced the area to a grey monochrome of rubble and wreckage.

Street after street is littered with smashed concrete and bent metal. One building, destroyed before the chemical attack, is sliced in half from top to bottom. On one floor, a kitchen can be seen complete with cabinets and washing machine. On another, the headboard of a double bed and a bedroom commode.

At the site where residents say a sarin-loaded rocket fell, only mounds of rubble stand amid scorched earth, remnants of houses and patches of garden ringed by narrow streets that were so packed with bodies on the night of the attack that they said it was impossible not to step or drive over the dead.

After the sarin gas attack, Assad and his supporters even had the audacity to claim that the rebels had carried out the attack and that Ghouta had long ago been taken back from the rebels and was in the hands the regime at the time of the attack! This is what RT claimed on the very day of the chemical attack:

Finally, the region reported to be the site of the poison gas attack by Assad forces, Eastern Ghouta, was re-secured from the Al-Qaeda-affiliated Jabhat al-Nusra jihadist terrorists, by Government troops in May as part of a major series of rollback victories against the insurgent forces and is not currently a scene of any major resistance to Assad forces.

It is just such false reports of imaginary Assad victories that his much heralded "military gains" are made of. Clearly his claim to have conquered Ghouta in May was premature, but having already made such a claim, we can see where the desperation to make it real could have lead to the use of chemical weapons.

Al-Qaeda-affiliated Jabhat al-Nusra jihadist terrorists killed by Government Forces in Ghouta

Reuters also gives us this portrait of the life of sixteen-year-old Mohammad al Zeibaa. who lost his entire family in the sarin gas attack:

Like most people in Ghouta, Mohammad vows to remain steadfast until Assad's overthrow - a still distant goal after military gains by the president's forces.

He has become an integral part of a community struggling to administer itself despite clashes with government forces and a 13-month government siege that leaves everyone hungry and is starting to starve the youngest and most vulnerable.

Every day, Mohammad shows up to work at the field hospital near his home. Thin and child-like for his age, he is too small to bear arms but he resembles the men with his stoic appearance, broken occasionally by a quick smile.

Like everyone else he eats many meals without bread, a staple now in short supply, and finishes perishable food quickly because it cannot be refrigerated. The rebel area has been off the electricity grid for a year.

At night he spends his time in the dim half light of rechargeable torches and the droning of electricity generators, along with their noxious fumes. To get around, Mohammad uses a bicycle due to fuel shortages and lack of public transport.

At home his landline telephone stopped working long ago and he has no use for a cell phone because it is hard to get a signal. If he needs to communicate, he uses a walkie-talkie to contact a dispatcher and ask him to relay messages.

Most of the rebel fighters are further west, on the front line near the Damascus ring-road which separates the rebellious eastern suburbs from the center of the capital.

But during a short drive through the area, rebels could be seen two or three to a motor bike, their guns slung over their shoulders. Others walk around, congregating around rebel checkpoints. Almost every family has a gun, sometimes laid openly on a table or hanging by the door.

Such is life in the rebel territory linked to central Damascus only via two government checkpoints. There, soldiers confiscate food, baby milk and medicine and at times refuse entry even to people who have queued for hours.

Residents, especially the men, cannot leave their district and venture into government controlled Damascus without risking indefinite detention when they try to pass the checkpoint.

For food they rely on locally raised poultry and meat, as well as olives, citrus, eggplant and green peppers. But in May, government bombardment set ablaze this year's wheat crop.

The handful of doctors complain that dysentery and a lack of antibiotics endanger lives. They say the siege is starting to cause malnutrition among pregnant mothers and children, and that some babies have already died of starvation.

Classroom in besieged East Ghouta. They try to provide for the kids | 28 Sept 2013

The Reuters article continues, describing how they try to organize life the liberated areas:

The one thing that East Ghouta has in abundance is men willing to fight.

But supported by financing from underground charities and fund-raising by families abroad, it has also set up a network of pro-rebel organizations tackling the community's medical needs, communications, humanitarian relief, education and sanitation, and ensuring something that approximates to the rule of law.

With most schools either bombed out or unsafe, residents have organized "revolutionary education" centers for small children.

Teenagers, however, go to work.

The most popular choice for boys and girls as young as 14 is medical work, where volunteers are needed and parents feel their children are as safe as they can be in a war zone.

Teenage nursing assistants receive on-the-job training in field hospitals and quickly find themselves dispensing medicine and helping to treat battlefield casualties.

Because Bashar al-Assad has allowed a few obsolete and empty chemical weapons shells to be destroyed, US Secretary of State John Kerry may be willing to sing his praises, but in Ghouta they don't see that anything has been done to stop Assad from killing, so they are preparing for another chemical attack:

Syria has recently agreed to a plan by Russia and the United States that calls for the country to surrender its chemical weapons, but the doctors and activists said residents wait in fear of another attack.

In Eastern Ghouta, the doctors said they were trying to stock 14 emergency chemical-weapons treatment centers so that residents can be prepared if the horror of Aug. 21 is repeated.

“We do not trust this regime,” Dimashqi said.

Will these girls in Zamalka be murdered yet?

The people of Ghouta show us what the "Death of Fear" is all about. They show the type of courage the world badly needs to move forward. They have been bombed. They have been gases. They have been starved. They have suffered all this and more while a mean and cowardly world excuses their tormentor. And still they will not surrender! Still Ghouta remains the land of the free and the home of the brave, a title which the United States has forfeited.

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Võ Nguyên Giáp on learning war from the people

Võ Nguyên Giáp, who died yesterday at the age of 102, had no formal military training yet he led the armed struggle for Vietnamese independence for more than 30 years, and is widely considered one of the greatest generals of all time.

Much of that greatness can be traced to his ability to learn from the people. In the following passage from Fighting under Siege, Giới Publishers, Hanoi, 2004, pp 106-110, General Giap recounts some of the earliest days of this struggle, in the winter of 1946-47, and how he was able to learn lessons from a company he thought had been destroyed; lessons that would powerful shape the war going forward:

After the fourth military conference, I planned to visit Tuyên Quảng and Chiêm Hóa before the arrival of the dry season But during the conference, Nguyên Khang, secretary of Zone 12, made reference to our fighting in occupied zones in the southern part of Bắc Ninh. I was concerned about this, so I decided to visit Zone 12 first.

War zone 12 was then composed of Lang Son, Bắc Giang, Bắc Ninh, Hải Ninh, Hòn Gai, Quảng Yên (including Dong Trieu and Chí Linh) provinces.

General Giáp on the way to Military Zone 12

It was my first return to this midland region since my move to Việt Bắc. I noticed a strange phenomenon: an independent company of the main provincial force of Bắc Ninh had always remained in the enemy-occupied region.

This unit was originally a 100-strong company of the self-guards of Ngoc Thuy (Gia Lam) many of whom were workers at the Gia Lam Railway Factory who had sworn to fight to the death after the night of December 19 [1946, start of Battle of Hanoi - clay] . The province provided the unit with one additional platoon of self-guards from Bắc Ninh town and about 100 guerrillas chosen from various communes. The company was organized into five platoons, including one section of Christian self-guards from Al Mo village and one section of women called Section Trưng Trắc.

The company coordinated its operations with a main force battalion from the Bắc Bắc regiment. When the enemy launched large-scale offensives, the battalion commander ordered the unit to withdraw. The communications person who brought the order to the company was wounded which cut off the company's links with the battalion. The company was besieged on all sides and the regiment thought it had been annihilated. Some time later, the regiment learned that the company was still fighting, ordered it to withdraw. But the whole unit, from officers to ordinary soldiers, asked to continue fighting. They convinced their superior officers that it was impossible for the French to annihilate them. The militia and the people living in surrounding districts to the south of Bắc Ninh unanimously asked the provincial authorities to let the company remain in the enemy-controlled territory, promising to take care of the men.

The company was able to survive because it was firmly supported by the people. Our fighters relied on fighting villages. They concentrated then dispersed into platoons or sections in order to fight the enemy. The French knew that parts of our forces remained. They frantically searched for them, trying by all means to extricate them or to drive them out of the region. However, they could not. Through the determination of this company, the guerilla movement was not only maintained but expanded. French soldiers travelling in small numbers were annihilated. The French administration in many communes was afraid of the Việt Minh. Many wicked elements were killed. Quite a few people involved in the French administration became two-faced, working for the enemy but actually obeying the directions and control of the Việt Minh. Thanks to this single company, the province's main force could easily enter and leave the occupied zone to organize ambushes and surprise attacks far behind the enemy's rear.

Even before the August 1945 general insurrection, Bắc Ninh had organized fighting villages. The Japanese and the security guards had found it very difficult to intrude into these villages. After 19 December 1946, resistance villages developed widely. Faking the lead were Dinh Bang, Tu He, and Lang Giang villages. Each village had a battle area filled with tunnels, trenches, fortifications, mines, pikes, and booby traps. Militiamen and self-guards strictly controlled the coming and going of all strangers. Although these were isolated battlefields, our forces were often caught in the middle of big sweeps but by relying on the tunnels and trenches even with scarce arms and ammunitions, they could hinder the advance of the enemy. The resistant village in Ái Quốc commune and Cam village, located next to the dike of the Dương river caused great losses to the enemy, obliging them to give up lens sweep operation mid-way through. Dinh Bang village north of Bắc Ninh did not let the enemy go beyond its bamboo hedge a single time in six months.

I discussed the development of more independent volunteer companies, describing the experiences of the independent company of Bắc Ninh in the areas newly occupied by the enemy. I also described the multiplication of the resistance villages with the mat Committee and Command.

6

Fighting in south Bắc Ninh was like opening the page of a new book. During the anti-Japanese struggle in Cao-Bắc-Lang, I realized that the platoon was the right size for armed agitation work and that only a company could have sufficient strength to survive and to carry out efficient military activity in an enemy-controlled area. Our fourth military conference decided to allow forces of company size to remain to the enemy's rear. This decision proved correct. To widely develop guerilla warfare, the role played by an independent company was indispensable. On the way back, I wondered what size a main-force unit should be be most effective should the French attack Việt Bắc.

We intended to organize two main-force divisions The zones eagerly chose their best battalions and their best weapons and exposed them to the High Command. But the war broke out and expanded very quickly. Contingents had to be sent to the South and regiments were busy with their own war zones and battlefields. The conditions were not right to concentrate our strategic reserve forces order to repel the enemy's large-scale offensives.

In mid-August, the Government approved a decree organizing an independent division under the High Command. Hoang Van Thai, chief of the general staff, was expected to become division commander, with preparations made by the High Command.

While thinking about the animated atmosphere surrounding the setting up of the division, the image of the volunteer company living behind enemy lines in southern Bắc Ninh became clearer and clearer. I was on horseback, climbing a slope through a narrow pass that marked the boundary between the mid-lands and Việt Bắc. At the top of the pass, clumps of bamboo shone brilliant green in the yellow autumnal sun. Gusts of wind brought the cold from Thai Nguyên. I felt comfortable and completely at ease. Still on horseback an idea flashed across my mind like a bolt of lightning, clarifying my thoughts.

At that moment, I realized that to ensure the steady progress of the resistance war, we could not yet concentrate our troops into divisions and prepare for large-scale battles. On the contrary, we must undergo a long-term process of training our troops from bottom to top. Past events appeared in my mind one by one: the breaking up of the Hue' battlefield, the failed regiment-scale attack on Ha Dong town, the company of volunteers in Bắc Ninh's enemy's rear, and so on. All this proved that what we needed to do now was to disperse part of our forces into companies operating guerilla warfare deep in the enemy rear. Our main forces must be trained to fight at the battalion level before undergoing training for larger-scale battles.

From Thai Nguyên town, I decided to go on to Cho Chu where Uncle Ho was living, but his residence had been removed to Diem Mac.

After dinner, sitting by the fire in a house on stilts, I reported to him on the fourth military conference and my visit to Zone 12: '"The enemy is preparing for a large-scale offensive to wipe out our main force and achieve an early end to the war. Our troops with their present level of equipment and skills are not capable of fighting in big concentrations. I propose to Uncle Ho and the Standing Central Committee that we delay for some time the organization of division-sized units. We stand for resistance by all the people in all respects, but guerilla warfare to the enemy's rear is not yet strong. I feel it is necessary to dispatch part of our main forces to localities to the enemy's rear, to disperse them into companies to develop guerilla warfare. Our main force at the central and zonal levels should be limited to battalions; a battalion is not too small. The French consider a battalion "a small fighting contingent". Battles of battalion scale are appropriate for mobile guerilla warfare tactics. I propose a concrete formula: "Independent companies, concentrated battalions". Under the guiding principle put forth by Uncle Ho, the militia should constitute a source for replenishing our main force. When the local resistance movement is strong, our main force will operate elsewhere. The stronger the local force, the more effectively it will replenish the main force. In two or three years, guerilla warfare must develop all over the country. In that end, to win victory, we must certainly have a very strong main force."

Uncle Ho listened attentively, then he said, "The dispersion of part of the main force to develop guerilla warfare is very necessary. We shall not only send companies to the enemy's rear, but also to these regions where the hostilities will expand to in the future. The formula of "Independent companies, concentrated battalions" is appropriate for the current situation. The number of companies to be sent to the localities will be decided by the Standing Central Committee. Once a unanimous decision has been reached, it must be implemented at once."

The family of the host offered us a basket of cassava and some molasses.

Uncle Ho was smoking and meditative when he continued, "The enemy has sent in a large reinforcement, the war will expand and become more atrocious, our people will suffer a lot... For the autumn aid winter season this year, have the preparations been completed?"

I reported that instructions hid been sent to every locality, to which the scorched earth policy would be applied, food and other materials hidden, houses and gardens emptied, and key communication lines destroyed when the enemy arrived. In the country there were now over one million militiamen and guerrillas. 'he army had been strengthened and replenished throughout the summer and were ready to fight.

Obama's Real Syria Policy: Endless War

In every war the combatants on both sides claim to have justice on their side. One may be right but they can't both be right. Most often both sides are wrong and neither has justice on its side. Yet it can't be said that there are no just wars. For example, colonized nations have a right to fight for their independence if it is not granted peacefully. The American Revolutionaries fought a just war against the British Empire, even though they carried the injustice of slavery within their bowels. For the British it was an unjust war of imperial conquest, as was the American war in Vietnam.

The US Civil War was also a just war in so far as it was a war to end slavery. Those on the side that ended slavery were fighting a just war. Those that fought for the "freedom and independence" to preserve and extend slavery did not have justice on their side. Still, we can recognize the courage and integrity of the Confederate soldier who gave his all for his cause, even while recognizing that his cause was one of the worst ever to take up arms in defence of.

The people of the United States paid a very high blood price in settling the question of slavery through civil war, and it was paid primarily by the ordinary people on both sides of the conflict, but because the slave holders wouldn't give up the tyranny of slavery without a fight, it was not only a just war but a necessary one as well. More than 600,000 Americans died in our civil war.

At the time, people and countries around the world were called upon to take a position on our civil war and to support one side or the other, much as is the case with Syria today. Many supported the Union and the fight against slavery. Some did so because of long-held principles even though they may have benefited from slavery. Others saw the long-term benefits of a slave-free economy. Some threw their weight behind the Confederacy because they profited from the cheap cotton and tobacco the slaves made possible, and they wanted slavery to thrive.

While both sides wanted badly for their side to win, so much so that many were willing to give their lives for that victory, both sides were united in their desire to see the bloody business resolved as quickly as possible with no more loss of life than necessary to resolve the dispute.

There was, however, a third type of player in the US civil war that wanted neither a quick victory for the Union nor the Confederacy, but wanted to see the civil war extended so that the overall strength of the United States could be depleted regardless to the loss of life and unnecessary human suffering that would entail.

I find this third stance, one that seeks not to end the war either through victory or negotiations, but instead seeks to cynically extend the war with an aim of profiting from the misery of both parties to the conflict while a rival or surrogate is weakened or destroyed, to be the most despicable stance one can take towards any war. To not believe in either side, or any side, but instead to work to extend the misery and carnage of the war with an eye towards weakening another nation is quite possibly the most depraved, most inhumane policy to take in any war and that is precisely the policy the United States has taken, under the leadership of Barack Obama, towards the Civil War in Syria, a war into its third year with more that 115,000 dead, 2 million refugees, and many millions more homeless.

While it has been generally accepted Left doctrine that US policy towards Syria was one of regime change, I have long dissented from that view, and argued that Barrack Obama favoured the survival of the Assad regime; all the more so, if it could be in a weaken state. I said that his calls for Assad to step down and his fledged "support" for the opposition was his way of playing "good cop" to Putin's "bad cop." Their cooperation on Syria may be more public now, but it is not new.

There are those in the antiwar movement who think they forced Obama to call off air strikes on Syria that he really wanted to do. They should now consider why Obama put the kibosh on the French air strikes. Did the anti-war movement force that too? Or is it just another indication that he really didn't want to see Assad hurt and the anti-war movement was just doing what its been doing for two years on Syria, giving Left cover for the real imperialist policy towards the Syrian conflict.

That policy has been to use the people's uprising in Syria to win a better negotiated settlement from the Assad Regime, but also to make sure the regime is victorious in the end. Assad's promise to give up chemical weapons is a case in point, and long a goal of Israel. As I point out in Barack Obama's Courtship with Bashar al-Assad, Obama opened those negotiations even before he became president and his chief negotiator, John Kerry was still meeting with Assad and trying to workout the terms of the deal even after the Arab Spring protests came to Syria.

US policy has always been to extend this conflict, and use the people's struggle to weaken the regime and force it to agree to terms without ever allowing it to be changed. Early on, Obama sent the CIA into Turkey to throttle the flow of weapons to the opposition, and make sure they never got enough weapons to win, or weapons that could neutralize Assad's "Death from Above" air campaign. Since Obama wants the world to think he is really opposed to Assad, the non-interventionist Left did him a favour by charging him with "funnelling" weapons to the rebels when he never supplied them a single bullet.

The longer the Syrian Revolution persists, the clearer it becomes exactly what Obama's real Syria policy is, but few declarations of it have been as clear and straight forward as the one expressed by a CIA official in describing their Syria mission in the Washington Post, Wednesday:

The CIA’s mission, officials said, has been defined by the White House’s desire to seek a political settlement, a scenario that relies on an eventual stalemate among the warring factions rather than a clear victor. As a result, officials said, limits on the agency’s authorities enable it to provide enough support to help ensure that politically moderate, U.S.-supported militias don’t lose but not enough for them to win.

One gets the feeling this policy is being so bluntly stated and blamed on Obama because even the CIA finds it sleazy.

When I put forward this thesis at the Daily Kos almost a year ago, I was banned from the site for spouting "conspiracy theories." Now we have this frank admission, from the agent's mouth, of the depraved reality of the policy of the United States towards the civil war in Syria. It is a policy that has sought to extend a conflict that has already gone on for almost 3 years and has cost 115,000 Syrian lives, not so that those seeking to overthrow the dictatorship and establish a democracy may eventually win, even if at a high cost, but so they can eventually lose. The problem for Assad, Putin and Obama is that the Syrian people just won't give up. See tomorrow's post on Ghouta as an excellent example.

This also implies a policy of "pulling the rug" out from under and other dirty tricks on the side we claim to support, and indeed, we have seen the terrible effects of this policy on the battlefield. As for example, in Aleppo were time and again the opposition has been on the verge of routing Assad's forces when suddenly their ammunition supply line dries up and they are forced to retreat. And so, the back and forth in Aleppo continues into another year, as one of the oldest inhabited cities in the world gets smashed into rubble, with the US making sure the rebels get just enough to hang on in Aleppo but not enough to end the fighting. For that matter, the same could be said about Homs, Idlib and Damascus as cities older than the Bible are sacrificed to a strategy designed to weaken Syria no matter who comes out on top.

This is the real US policy of endless war, and with it, endless bloodshed, in Syria and this is not a policy that the US anti-war movement has opposed.

END THE ASSAD REGIME - VICTORY TO THE SYRIAN PEOPLE

See these posts for more on Obama's Syria policy:
The Courtship Continues: Obama stopped French strike on Assad
The Courtship Continues: Obama's New Gift to Assad
How Obama Helped Assad Kill with Poison Gas in Syria
Win-Win for Assad as Obama Response to CW Mass Murder Put on Hold
Obama Denied Gas Masks to Assad's Victims
Obama's Dilemma and Assad's Opportunity
Barack Obama's Courtship of Bashar al-Assad
Obama Denied Gas Masks to Assad's Victims
Barack Obama's Courtship of Bashar al-Assad Exposed!
Obama "green lights" Assad's slaughter in Syria
Assad's Redline and Obama's Greenlight!
Chemical weapons use in Syria, Has Obama's red-line has been crossed?
AP weighs in on Obama's Green Light for Assad's slaughter in Syria
Syria: Obama's moves Assad's "red line" back as SOHR reports 42,000 dead!
SecState John Kerry and his "dear friend" Bashar al-Assad
How Obama's 'No MANPADS for you' policy in Syria is backfiring
More thoughts on Obama's 'No MANPADS for you!' policy
Obama: Did the CIA betray Assad's opposition in Syria?

I'm still trying to get my head around the fact that #Assad's chemical attack on #Ghouta saved him rather than spelt his end.... What?

— Abdul (@al_7aleem) September 28, 2013

Click here for a list of my other blogs on Syria