The 13-Year-Old War in Syria Holds a Warning For Ukraine
‘March Madness’ is such a NATO thing. The Western military alliance routinely kicks off conflicts in foreign countries during this particular month, most recently Serbia (1999), Iraq (2003), Libya (2011), and Syria (2011). In that last case, it took a few years for the US to actually invade, but the sanctions and the covert support of anti-government forces began right away.
Remember Bashar Assad, the Syrian president who simply ‘had to go’, according to everyone from then-UK Prime Minister David Cameron, and then-Secretary of State John Kerry, to then-Italian Foreign Minister Paolo Gentiloni Silveri. Whatever happened to Assad, anyway? Turns out that he’s still living a quiet life as president of Syria, and hardly ever finds his name being rolled around in the mouths of NATO’s regime change enthusiasts anymore.
Nearly a decade after mounting a propaganda campaign to support a US-led NATO invasion of the country, the State Department’s special envoy to the conflict, Ambassador James Jeffrey, confirmed in 2020 that the US was no longer seeking Assad’s ouster. Instead, he said, it wanted to see “a dramatic shift in behavior,” evoking Japan’s transformation in the wake of the US dropping a couple of bombs on it during World War II.
That’s quite the policy shift. But it can be explained in exactly the same way that a guy who lusts after a girl and gets shot down suddenly starts telling people that he was never really into her anyway. The attitude changed because Washington had no choice. It had tried just about everything, and failed.
Read more How NATO undid decades of post-colonial development in mere months
The anti-Syrian propaganda, now virtually non-existent, had for years been relentless. We were told that Assad had simply lost control of the country, and that the US and its allies couldn’t risk having ISIS terrorists running around as a threat and trying to establish a caliphate in Syria because Assad simply wasn’t able to stop them. And whenever he did try, he was conveniently accused of humanitarian offenses. So of course, here comes Uncle Sam to ‘help’ get rid of ISIS, and also Assad – totally without any humanitarian issues, because American bombs aren’t like that.
In the process, the CIA and Pentagon spent billions of dollars training and equipping ‘Syrian rebels’, many of whom bailed out to join other jihadist groups, including ISIS and Al-Qaeda, taking their shiny new weapons with them.
There’s a glaring parallel here with Ukraine, which risks following a similar trajectory with Western involvement and patronage. Even before the current conflict, the CIA-linked Freedom House and others had questioned the extent to which far-right extremists controlled the country. Major Western media outlets were publishing pieces referencing Ukraine’s neo-Nazi problem. So it looks like the same argument could someday be used on Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky – that he’s lost control of the country to extremists. And just like the West trained extremists in Syria under the guise of helping, they’ve done the exact same thing in Ukraine by training and equipping the Azov neo-Nazi fighters.
So what happened to those ‘Syrian rebels’, anyway? Since Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan didn’t want a festering jihadist nest right next door, and knowing exactly who those fighters were ever since a NATO base in Türkiye served as a staging ground for the mission to support them, he ultimately airlifted them en masse (an estimated 18,000 of them) to go fight – and die – in another war that NATO had also kicked off in Libya. So, problem solved. But the move raises a question for Ukraine’s future. What are all the Western-trained neo-Nazis going to do when the dust settles in Ukraine, if Russia doesn’t complete its stated mission of de-Nazification?
Former French intelligence chief Alain Juillet has noted that the terrorist troubles in Syria just happened to arise three weeks after Assad’s selection in 2011 of an Iranian-Iraqi pipeline through Syria, rather than a Saudi-Qatari pipeline. The competing pipeline plans would provide a way for either Iran or Qatar to ship natural gas to Europe from the Iranian-Qatari South Pars/North Dome gas field, thus eliminating the high cost of transporting the gas by tankers. So the impetus for intervention was likely economic, as is typically the case. There’s also little question that the West has always wanted to control Syria as a means of containing Iran.
Read more The US has sacrificed a common anti-terror principle to stick it to Putin
Not only did that plan backfire, but spectacularly so. By 2015, then-US President Barack Obama, who at one point weighed conducting airstrikes on the country, was asking Syrian allies Russia and Iran to work with the US to “resolve the conflict.” He stated that “we must recognize that there cannot be, after so much bloodshed, so much carnage, a return to the pre-war status quo.” The US had gone from guns ablaze regime-change mode, to asking ‘pretty please’ permission of Syrian allies Russia and Iran to help them do it.
Both Iran and Russia had entered the conflict militarily at the request of Assad’s government to help stabilize the country, with Moscow first entering the scene when fighting got too close for comfort to its warm water base for the Black Sea Fleet in Tartus. So basically, Russia was called in to help clean up the mess that the US and NATO had made of the country. And by December 2018, when I asked Russian President Vladimir Putin at his annual press conference whether then-US President Donald Trump was right about ISIS being defeated in Syria, he agreed.
So Trump yanked out the US special forces troops who had been deployed to the country, and declared that America would only keep hanging around where the oil was, in Syria’s eastern oil fields. “Our mission is the enduring defeat of ISIS,” the Pentagon chief said, attempting to reframe Trump’s crass admission. Yeah, right – because it’s not enough that ISIS isn’t really a problem anymore. Uncle Sam has to stick around to make sure that they never come back, ever again. Guess there’s no chance of just heading home and kicking back with a few beers and waiting to see if it’s actually going to be a problem in the future? Nope! Not when so much has been invested in establishing an in-country military footprint that just happens to be right on top of the biggest pile of Syria’s natural resources – the kind that have been the topic of CIA intelligence directorate reports since at least 1986. In December 2023, Syrian Oil Minister Firas Hassan Kaddour evoked the plan to “liberate” the oil fields from US occupation.
Peace in Syria was only possible because of Russia helping to eliminate the troublemakers. Has Zelensky considered what his own future might look like if Russia doesn’t actually succeed in doing the same in Ukraine – and that maybe Russia achieving its goals wouldn’t actually be the worst thing that could happen? The Ukrainian president is already being accused of “consolidating power,” by the State Department-backed media, and has canceled presidential elections. If he doesn’t get a handle on the hoodlums, like the ones in the Ternopol regional council busy giving out awards named after famous Ukrainian Nazis to other famous Ukrainian Nazis, then he’s ripe for the Assad treatment. And if he’s too harsh with them, then he risks being accused, like Assad, of undemocratic heavy-handedness. And at the very least, Ukraine ‘winning’ means that Zelensky is going to have to let his new friends hang out and take what they want for as long as they want to – as the Syria case proves. The West lost in Syria and still won’t go home. Imagine if it had actually been able to have free run of the place. Maybe there’s something worse than a Russian ‘win’ for Ukraine: Permanent occupiers who use friendship as a pretext to stick around and suck the country dry.
The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.
Ukraine Turned Into Afghan Drug Lords Paradise Under Western Watch
Over the past decades, Ukraine has played the role of a drug trafficking hub, with illicit substances flowing to and from many regions – including Afghanistan, where ISIS and the Taliban still heavily rely on the drug business as a source of income.
Under the West’s watch, Ukraine has morphed into a gangsters’ paradisewith all sorts of illicit drugs passing through its territory and the domestic production and consumption of synthetic narcotics booming.
Back in June 2002, the US Justice Department emphasized Ukraine’s growing importance as a transit point for heroin trafficking largely originating from Afghanistan which went through the Balkan and Northern routes. The US-backed 2014 coup in Ukraine exacerbated the problem and was followed by a spike in corruption, gang crime, and weapons smuggling. The role of Ukraine as a transit point for extremists and illicit drugs to Europe has also increased.
ISIS Hub and Afghan Drug Route
In July 2015, Italian MEP Matteo Salvini drew attention to ISIS* sympathizers fighting on the side of the Kiev regime in Donbass in an official letter to the EU leadership.
In 2019 and 2020, British, Polish and Ukrainian investigative journalists revealed that ISIS jihadists originating, in particular, from post-Soviet space used Ukraine as a transit point to and out of the Middle East in the course of the civil war in Syria which started in 2011. Having sustained defeat from the Russian Air Forces in Syria, ISIS started to use Ukraine as a safe haven.
Ukraine’s role as a hub for ISIS terrorists could be closely connected with drug trafficking. Establishing a foothold in Afghanistan in 2015, ISIS militants used the Afghan opiate trade as a source of income since at least 2014, according to the Russian Federal Service for Drug Control.
“The large-scale transit of Afghan heroin acts as a renewable financial base for the functioning of the Islamic State, which extracts fabulous profits by providing half of the total volume of heroin supplied to Europe through destabilized Iraq and some African countries,” the Russian agency stated on November 26, 2014.
“In 2015, the Afghan branch of ISIS officially declared its establishment,” Andrey Serenko, director of the Analytical Center of Afghanistan policy, told Sputnik. “[ISIS-Khorasan*] emerged from the ruins of some groups of dissatisfied Taliban** fighters whose leaders for some reason did not agree on interests with the Taliban leadership. From the first months of its existence, the Afghan branch of ISIS began to fight for jihad resources. The large Afghan ‘jihad industry’, then, and even now, relies heavily on the drug business. If in Syria and Iraq such sources of economic power of jihad were the illegal trade in petroleum products, then in Afghanistan it was drugs.”
“In [Afghanistan’s] provinces of Kunar and Nangarhar [infamous for heroin production – Sputnik], ISIS reached an agreement with the local tribes who joined ISIS and still sympathize with the terror group. Accordingly, in several counties, for example, Achin County, ISIS was able to seize control of laboratories producing heroin,” the expert continued.
US global policy think tank RAND pointed out in July 2017 that ISIS viewed conflict zones in Ukraine and Syria as an ample opportunity to connect to underground criminal networks to facilitate the drug trade. ISIS recruits traveled back and forth, relying on drug trafficking as a means of generating revenue.
“The drug business is not only about cargo, it is primarily about people, people who are imported, people who settle locally, people who settle somewhere. Because heroin itself does not travel by itself, someone transports it. That is, someone must control the routes,” explained Serenko, adding that Afghan jihadists have regarded Ukraine as a convenient transit corridor to Europe since at least 2010.
In 2021, the Russian Interior Ministry drew attention to the increasing use of Ukrainian ports for the transit of opiates from Afghanistan. The ministry’s head, Vladimir Kolokoltsev, underscored the influence of “the Afghan factor” on drug crime in the Eastern European state alongside the heightened risks of terrorist and extremist activity.
Market and Transit Point for Synthetic Drugs?
Speaking at a ministerial meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) in August 2022, Kolokoltsev again emphasized the growing flow of psychotropic substances from Afghanistan.
“Despite the declarative statements of the authorities, the flow of drugs from Afghanistan does not weaken. Moreover, the ‘range’ is expanding to include methamphetamine and marijuana,” the minister highlighted.
Ukraine has become a lucrative market for methamphetamine, a synthetic drug, which today is taking a leading position in the drug market not only in Afghanistan but in the entire world, according to Serenko. Citing Afghan experts specializing in drug trafficking issues, he noted that Ukrainians have become one of the main consumers of the psychotropic substance.
“[Afghan experts] believe that today, during the conflict, the Ukrainian army can use methamphetamine in order to maintain the combat readiness of its military personnel. [The drug ensures] the absence of fear, the removal of fatigue, the unique ability to not eat or drink for two or three days, not to be distracted by any inconvenience,” the expert said.
Serenko continued that Afghan experts consider Ukraine as an emerging transit point for this type of drug on its route to Europe, where the demand for Afghan-produced methamphetamine is rising.
“Therefore, these two directions, which today are identified on the basis of the supply of synthetic drugs from Afghanistan to Ukraine, and through Ukraine to the West and Arab countries, they are – according to the assessments of my Afghan friends, who are now experts in this area, and whose opinion I much trust – the main ones,” Serenko underscored.
Ukraine and West Turn Blind Eye to Drug Problem
It appears, however, that neither Western nor Ukrainian authorities are interested in addressing the problem which continues to worsen, according to Alexander Mikhailov, a retired Russian lieutenant general of drug police.
“Taking into account the present situation in Ukraine, there is no war on drugs there at all,” Mikhailov told Sputnik. “And by definition, it doesn’t work. Moreover, today it should be noted that a large number of those Ukrainian citizens who have concentrated in Europe were previously involved in drug trafficking. On the one hand, we are dealing with supplies, and in Europe we are dealing with sales, which are carried out by the same Ukrainians who were doing this before fleeing to Europe. This radically changes the situation.”
According to the retired lieutenant general, drugs are one of the elements of obtaining funds for the purchase of weapons, equipment, and the recruitment of mercenaries. He is not surprised by the Kiev regime’s lax attitude to the matter.
To add to the controversy, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy signed into law a bill legalizing “the medical use” of cannabis in mid-February. However, Mikhailov believes that the use of the substance could go far beyond medical needs. Even prior to the legalization, Ukraine’s cannabis market was extensive, with numerous marijuana plantations maintained across the country, according to the 2023 Global Organized Crime Index report. According to him, Ukraine continues to fall into the abyss of criminality.
“Look at Zelensky’s eyes and everything will become clear to you,” Mikhailov said. “It is impossible, on the one hand, to shut something down, and on the other hand, to show with all your appearance that drugs are not evil, but are a good tool for awakening thoughts in the head of the Ukrainian dictator.”
Is Ukraine Exporting ‘Drug War’ to Russia?
Since 2014, Russia has seen an increased influx of drug dealers of all sorts from Ukraine.
In 2016-2018, these criminal activities reached their peak. During this period, every second drug smuggler arrested by the Russian authorities and almost every clandestine drug laboratory liquidated in Russia involved Ukrainians. Most of these used forged Russian passports, as per retired Colonel of Justice Sergey Pelikh, former head of the 3rd Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs for the investigation of organized crime in the field of drug trafficking.
According to the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs, Ukrainian law enforcement agencies directly participated in the organization of covert drug labs on the territory of Russia and the recruitment of drug dealers that were tested on lie detectors before being sent on their “mission.”
“These individuals, who were [arrested in Russia and] interrogated including by me, said that before being sent to Russia they took a polygraph test in Kiev,” Pelikh told Sputnik, alleging that the recruits were tested by the Ukrainian Security Service (SBU).
Meanwhile, the domestic production of synthetic drugs in Ukraine skyrocketed by 2020. As per the UN Office on Drug and Crime (UNODC), the number of dismantled amphetamine laboratories in Ukraine leaped from 17 in 2019 to 79 in 2020 – the highest number of seized laboratories in the world at the time. The World Drug Report 2022 by the UNODC singled out Ukraine as both an independent producer of synthetic drugs and a routine transit hub for psychotropic substances.
Why Drug Mafia is Centered in Odessa
“Ukraine has been used as a hub for absolutely all drugs, because of its access to the [Black] sea through Turkiye, [the port city of Odessa] and beyond, as the Balkan route was very actively used,” Pelikh emphasized.
Ukrainian drug mafias had no scruples about instrumentalizing Russia’s Black Sea Grain corridor for smuggling illicit substances through Odessa, as Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh revealed in July 2023, citing intelligence sources familiar with the matter.
“The Odessa port is one of the hubs not only for industrial goods, agricultural or trans-shipment, but also, accordingly, it was a hub for the transportation and further distribution of any goods to anyone in any direction, which is, so to speak, the basis for the trans-shipment of drugs. The greater the volume of traffic, the easier it is for any drug to be smuggled, hidden and transported accordingly,” Pelikh said.
Russia is continuing to raise global awareness about Ukraine’s place in the international drug criminal network. Ukraine remains a crucial part of the Balkan route for the delivery of Afghan drugs to Europe, Minister of Internal Affairs Kolokoltsev likewise warned during a meeting with his Saudi counterpart in May 2023.
The Crocus City Hall terror attack carried out by the hands of terrorists affiliated with the Afghan branch of ISIS and reportedly sponsored by Ukrainian nationalists has once again turned the spotlight on Ukraine’s role as a terrorist safe haven and a hub for illicit drugs that inflict damage on both Europe and Russia.
* A terrorist group, also known as ISIS or ISIL, outlawed in Russia and many other countries.
**The Taliban is an organization under UN sanctions for terrorism
Doctors Alarmed at Mysterious Cancer Epidemic: “Something Diabolical Is Happening”
Some of the world’s top doctors are highlighting the ‘alarming’ trend of cancer cases spreading like wildfire among patients aged under 50. Details of the turbo cancer epidemic are still being suppressed by the mainstream […]
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NYC Schools Caught Teaching 4-Year-Olds That ‘Some Boys DON’T Have Penises’
New York schools are now teaching children as young as four that “some boys have a penis but not all boys do.” The New York Post reports that the transgender ideology is being promoted to children in […]
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5 Hidden Facts That Prove Baltimore Bridge Collapse Was an Inside Job
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Study Reveals a Link Between PFAS Exposure And Delayed Puberty in Girls
A recent University of Cincinnati (UC) study reveals a concerning link between exposure to per- and poly-fluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) and delayed puberty in girls.
PFAS are common environmental pollutants dubbed “forever chemicals.” These harmful chemicals are used to make different environmental and consumer products like firefighting foams and nonstick products. PFAS has long been a cause for concern due to its widespread presence in soil, water, food, and even human blood.
The study, published in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives, involves 823 girls aged six to eight years old, with 379 of them coming from the Greater Cincinnati area in Ohio and 444 from the San Francisco Bay area in California.
The study tracks the relationship between PFAS exposure, hormones and puberty onset, particularly the first signs of breast development and pubic hair. Researchers monitored pubertal development, including signs such as breast development and the emergence of pubic hair, while testing their blood for PFAS levels for several years.
Alarmingly, researcher Susan Pinney, from UC’s Department of Environmental and Public Health Sciences, found that 85 percent of girls had measurable levels of PFAS in their systems, while 99 percent had PFOA, a PFAS compound. This suggests that PFAS exposure contributes to decreased hormone levels, which results in delayed puberty onset. (Related: Forever chemicals: Study shows exposure to PFAS linked to post-diet weight gain.)
“The study found that in girls with PFAS exposure, puberty is delayed five or six months on average but there will be some girls where it’s delayed a lot more and others that it wasn’t delayed at all. We are especially concerned about the girls at the top end of the spectrum where it’s delayed more,” Pinney said.
Moreover, Pinney warned the public about the long-term implications associated with delayed puberty, including a heightened risk of breast cancer, renal disease and thyroid disease.
“Puberty is a window of susceptibility. Environmental exposures during puberty, not just to PFAS, but anything, have more of a potential for long-term health effects. What these have done is extend the window of susceptibility, and it makes them more vulnerable for a longer period of time,” she said.
Drinking water and most feminine hygiene products contain high levels of PFAS chemicals
Pinney warned that local factors contribute to PFAS exposure in Greater Cincinnati.
For instance, a DuPont plant near Parkersburg, West Virginia, has been releasing PFAS into the Ohio River, the primary source of drinking water in the area, for decades. These PFAS flow downstream to major water intakes on both sides of the river near eastern Hamilton County. Pinney also claims that a firefighter training area near those same water intakes also contributes to PFAS exposure, as they have found PFAS in firefighting foam.
Aside from PFAS in drinking water in the local area, non-toxic family products company Mamavation, in partnership with Environmental Health News, found in a separate investigation in 2022 that PFAS are also present in various tampon brands, including some labeled as organic. The report, released after testing 23 different tampon products in an Environmental Protection Agency-certified lab confirms the contamination of five popular tampon brands with detectable levels of fluorine, indicative of PFAS contamination.
The brands in question are Maxim Hygiene Organic Cotton Cardboard Applicator Tampons, OrganYc Complete Protection Tampons, Playtex SPORT Regular & Super Tampons, Tampax Cardboard Applicator Unscented Tampos and Up & Up Regular Tampons. They contained PFAS levels ranging from 19 to 28 parts per million.
Watch the following video about forever chemicals detected in water systems of nearly 2,800 U.S. cities.