Ryot | 19 Sept 2015
The United States bills itself as a peacemaker, but a newly released WikiLeaks document could point to the country having played a significant role in the heightening of tensions between the regime of President Bashar al-Assad and Syrian rebels in the Middle Eastern nation, Al Bawaba English reports.
The alleged document is a telegram sent from Damascus by US Ambassador William Roebuck in 2006. It detailed specific plans for destabilizing Syria five years before the bloody conflict even began.
Despite the cable having been classified as “secret,” the US hasn’t been shy making known how much it disapproves of Assad. Since 1979, Syria has been listed as a “state sponsor of terrorism.” But a painstaking analysis of the document reveals there may be some truth to the conspiracy theories linking the American government to the creation of the Islamic State group.
The report broke down “possible actions” the US could have taken in Syria, including encouraging “rumors and signals of external plotting,” using the media to cause “Bashar personal angst and may lead him to act irrationally” and “highlighting failures of reform.” The strategies all seem to have in common a disregard for the Syrian people and their quality of life.
One proposed action in particular should raise a few eyebrows: “play on Sunni fears of Iranian influence.” If the US proceeded with this plan, it could have played a role in the rise of ISIS.
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange in his new book, “The WikiLeaks Files,” delves into the US empire and its involvement in Syria. He suggests America intended to overthrow the Syrian government long before the civil uprising began in 2011, according to RT News.
“That plan was to use a number of different factors to create paranoia within the Syrian government; to push it to overreact, to make it fear there’s a coup,” he told RT.
The most serious part of the strategy, Assange noted, was the US plan to “foster tensions between Shiites and Sunnis. In particular, to take rumors that are known to be false … or exaggerations and promote them — that Iran is trying to convert poor Sunnis, and to work with Saudi and Egypt to foster that perception in order to make it harder for Iran to have influence, and also harder for the government to have influence in the population.”
Currently, Assange is cooped up in the Ecuadorian embassy, where he’s been granted asylum, in London. If he steps onto British soil, he will undoubtedly be arrested by the round-the-clock police force barricading the premises. He is wanted in the UK, US and Sweden.
