US seeks to juggle several interests in Syria: Activist

Press TV has conducted an interview with Mimi al-Laham, a Syrian activist and political commentator, about the US Special Operations Forces helping Turkish troops to allegedly fight Daesh terrorists in Syria.

Here is a rough transcription of the interview:

Press TV: US involvement seems to only further complicate things on the ground as we have the FSA which is both US and Turkey backed, you have the Kurds which are US-backed and targeted by Turkey, you have the Kurds and the FSA which do not get along with one another, can you help us understand this seemingly complicated scenario?

Laham: Yes, I think the Americans are trying to juggle several different interests at the same time. They have to contend with Turkey and the Syrian rebels and at the same time they have their agenda of creating a Zionist Kurdish state and I say Zionist Kurdish state because the state that they have envisaged is going to be a pro-Israeli vassal state that is one of the projects of the 1982 Israeli Oded Yinon Plan.

So they have to juggle their NATO ally - Turkey - which is of course opposed to this as well as the Syrian rebels which are naturally opposed to having a piece of their country divided and at the same time support the Kurds and it is not working out for them obviously. They have completely lost support in most parts of Syria. The only support now that they could muster are from some Kurdish elements and a lot of the Kurds that are actually fighting alongside them are not necessarily Syrian Kurds. They can be Turkish and Iraqi Peshmerga. So really they have no support inside Syria which is demonstrated by this video.

The other thing that is demonstrated by the video is that all along the US has been backing people that may not be what the Americans would call something they have interest in. In fact a lot of these groups have been fighting alongside al-Qaeda and the rhetoric displayed in this video sort of goes alongside with that fact.

Press TV: The most important objective of the so-called US-led coalition was supposedly to go after terrorism, what happened? It seems like we have all these twisted objectives where Daesh seems to be dropping down a few lines on that list of priorities. What happened to first eradicating terrorism and then dealing with these political objectives that the US or Turkey may have?

Laham: Absolutely, the fact is confusing because the Americans are speaking with forked tongues and basically we must ignore everything that they are saying because they have been the number one sponsors of terrorism and I am speaking about of course the US administration.

Since the 80s, they created al-Qaeda, they brought al-Qaeda to Iraq, they of course brought al-Qaeda and ISIS to Syria and are now openly backing it, so the way to understand the situation is in fact to read the documents that are coming out of their think tanks and all along the project has always been for a new Middle East which involves carving up the countries under sectarian lines and instilling sectarian hatred in the Middle East.

That has always been the stated project of the US State Department and if we look at things in that perspective, supporting one side and the other side and having them fight each other that is perfectly reasonable under the US objective.

Press TV: And then Ankara says its objective is to go after Daesh terrorists and Kurdish militants but then when Daesh was right there in Kobani at a rocks throw from the Turkish border, they watched them massacre citizens in Kobani without even raising an eyebrow but the second that there are Kurds in Jarabulus all of a sudden Turkey makes this incursion into Syria, your thoughts on that.  

Laham: Well I think that the Turkish interests in this scenario is of course to attack the Kurds and prevent any creation of a Kurdish state and not so much to attack ISIS. That is just an excuse. In fact attacking ISIS is an excuse for the Americans as well whose main objective is to create a Kurdish state.

So ISIS is really just a pawn, it is not really the main objective here which is the Kurdish state.

Press TV: A lot of people say for Ankara there are two objectives that come before going after Daesh. One is to overthrow Damascus, the Syrian government, and the other is to go after Kurds and they both are priorities for Ankara that come before going after terrorists.

Laham: I do not think Ankara has any objective to go after terrorists at all. I think that the only objectives that they have is the first two that you stated, preventing a Kurdish state which is not necessarily a bad thing and actually it is a good thing but also to overthrow the Syrian government and unfortunately those two things at the same time is almost impossible for that to happen. If you destabilize Syria, Syria might get divided by the United States.

So Turkey has since the beginning of the war been in fact working against its own interests by supporting terrorists in Syria in order to destabilize it. So I would say that the Turkish objective to fight terrorism is just a cover really for the first two objectives and violating Syrian sovereignty in that way and creating a buffer zone to allow the rebels to take the area.

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