Een paar dagen geleden plaatste ik een bericht over het offensief tegen het door ISIS bezette West-Mosul en het totaal ontbreken van beeldmateriaal en vooral het totale gebrek aan aandacht voor de meer dan 600.000 mensen die opgesloten zijn in dat deel van Mosul*.

Gisteren ontving ik een bericht van ANTIMEDIA, met dezelfde strekking. Met een paar grote uitzonderingen: zo spreekt de schrijver, Shahtahmasebi, die Oost-Aleppo vergelijkt met West-Mosul, over de systematische verschrikkingen, die de bevolking daar onderging door toedoen van het Syrische leger en de Russen…. Voor deze bewering is echter geen greintje bewijs, alles is van horen zeggen en toch berichtte de westerse media of ze deze zaken uit eigen ooggetuigen verslag hadden verkregen……

Voorts citeerde men o.a. SOHR (Syrian Observatory for Human Rights), een organisatie in Engeland bemenst en geleid door één persoon, een gewezen Syrische crimineel. De verslagen bleken telkens weer op leugens te berusten, maar dat was geen reden voor o.a. de BBC en de NOS de berichten van SOHR niet uit te zenden……….

Ook wordt er door Shahtahmasebi gesteld dat de verdedigers van Oost-Aleppo, de burgers niet gebruikten als menselijk schild. Dat is ronduit gelul van een dronken aardbei, dat deden de ‘gematigde rebellen’ (lees: psychopathische moordenaars en verkrachters) nu juist wel!! Sterker nog de door het Syrische leger en Russen meermaals ingestelde corridors, waardoor de burgers van Oost-Aleppo konden vluchten, werden door deze ‘gematigde rebellen’ keer op keer onder vuur genomen. Ook werden burgers die probeerden te vluchten zonder pardon standrechtelijk geëxecuteerd, inclusief mee vluchtende familieleden (waar de leeftijd van de vluchtenden er niet toe deed…….)……

Eén ding is zeker: waar steden in Irak in het recente verleden werden ontzet ‘door het Iraakse leger’ (o.l.v. de VS), vonden gruwelijke oorlogsmisdaden plaats door deze coalitie, zoals in het geval van Fallujah en een eerdere strijd om Mosul in 2014….. Daarover gesproken: men stelde dat na de bevrijding van Oost-Aleppo de mensenrechten op grote schaal werden geschonden door het Syrische leger, iets waar (alweer) geen bewijs voor werd geleverd, echter bij de ontzetting van Fallujah en andere steden, door ‘de Iraakse coalitie’ (in feite ‘de VS coalitie..’), werden er veel gruwelijkheden begaan op de bevolking die e.e.a. had overleefd……..

Mensen lees zelf het volgende artikel, het geeft zeker een ziek beeld van de strijd die de burgers in West-Mosul moeten ondergaan……..

650,000
Civilians Trapped in US-Backed Siege of Mosul and Nobody Is Talking
About It

February
21, 2017 at 9:45 am

Written
by Darius
Shahtahmasebi

(ANTIMEDIA) Iraqi
forces, backed by American airpower, are set to launch a long-awaited
offensive to retake West Mosul. There are reportedly 3,000
ISIS fighters left defending their last major stronghold in Iraq, and
an estimated 650,000 civilians are trapped in the western-held area
of the city. The U.N. has warned that these civilians are at “extreme
risk,” with food, fuel, water, and electricity supplies extremely
scarce. Mosul, the third largest city in Iraq, has been under
siege by U.S.-backed forces in a months-long offensive to retake the
city from ISIS.

Given
a captured ISIS fighter admitted that
he raped over 200 women in Iraq, it makes sense to want to liberate a
city of civilians currently held hostage by the terror group.
However, the forces the Americans are backing to retake the Iraqi
city are reportedly no better. There have been numerous accounts
of documented
revenge acts committed
by the Shia-led militias against the local Sunni population.

Despite
this, the mainstream media presents the siege Mosul as a
legitimate military operation without question, especially when
compared to the media’s coverage of the battle for Aleppo in late
2016. As noted by
Patrick Cockburn in the Independent:

“But
look at how differently the international media is treating a similar
situation in Mosul, 300 miles east of Aleppo, where one million
people and an estimated 5,000 Isis fighters are being encircled by
the Iraqi army fighting alongside Kurdish Peshmerga and Shia and
Sunni paramilitaries and with massive support from a US-led air
campaign. In the case of Mosul, unlike Aleppo, the defenders are to
blame for endangering civilians by using them as human shields and
preventing them leaving. In East Aleppo, fortunately, there are no
human shields – though the UN says that half the civilian
population wants to depart – but simply innocent victims of Russian
savagery.”

Cockburn notes that the
media completely hyped up Russia’s destruction of Aleppo yet stayed
almost silent on the Iraqi city of Ramadi, which was “80
per cent destroyed by US-led air strikes in 2015.”

Still,
even these much-needed criticisms published in the mainstream media
do not counteract the corporate media’s almost wholehearted support
for American military might in the Middle East and its complete
distaste for Russia. Mainstream outlets hammered home the narrative
that Russia was pounding at least 250,000 civilians trapped in
Eastern Aleppo at the end of 2016. However, the media failed to
mention three crucial facts regarding this assessment: 1) The
majority of Aleppo’s population lived in government-controlled
areas of Aleppo,
which were subject to regular
shelling by rebel groups;
2) The rebel groups that held Eastern Aleppo were all
affiliated with al-Qaeda and shared ISIS’ core belief system;
and 3) The New
York Times admitted the
figure of 250,000 civilians was a fabrication, as “some
groups say the population of eastern Aleppo is much lower, in the
tens of thousands.”

Following
the Aleppo offensive, the Syrian peace deal brokered without the
assistance of the United States has been said to hold “more than
previous ones,” according to
the U.N. envoy to Syria, Staffan de Mistura.

“And
in my modest opinion, has – if we all look at it carefully and
support it – more chances to actually succeed than others,” de
Mistura also said.

No
one doubts that Russia and Syria are responsible for some of the
most egregious
violations of humanitarian law and crimes
against humanity.
But the media’s presentation of these two battles can hardly be
called ‘balanced.’

ISIS
only exists in Iraq in
the first place because when the U.S. invaded in 2003, one of the
first things the top U.S. civilian administrator in Iraq, Paul
Bremer, chose to do was fire
an estimated 350,000
to 400,000 soldiers simply
because they were part of Saddam Hussein’s Baathist party. These
soldiers went from being classified as secularist to fighting
alongside fanatical and radical ISIS members, including
holding high-ranking positions within ISIS’ ranks.

Not
only that, but when ISIS was taking over Mosul in 2014, the U.S.
air force was nowhere to be seen,
even as they captured massive amounts of American military equipment
and brandished it on social media. ISIS’ rise to power was
facilitated by the Obama administration, as leaked
audio of
former Secretary of State John Kerry addressing Syrian opposition
members revealed:

“And
we know that this was growing, we were watching, we saw that DAESH
[ISIS] was growing in strength, and we thought Assad was threatened.
(We) thought, however…We could probably manage that Assad might
then negotiate, but instead of negotiating he got Putin to support
him.”

In
short, U.S. policies put ISIS in Iraq to begin with. Then, when it
suited their warped foreign policy, they decided not to target ISIS
so its momentum could grow throughout the region. Even recently, as
ISIS fought
to retake Deir
ez-Zor in Syria, putting another 250,000 Syrian civilians at risk,
the American military and mainstream media stayed mostly silent. This
was an area in which the U.S. military did strike
in 2016, only to target
Syrian military forces embroiled
in a battle with ISIS.

As
Iraq is set to retake Mosul from ISIS with American assistance, it is
not clear whether the Iraqi people will receive the much-needed
break that they deserve.

Thankfully,
Iraq’s prime minister, Haidar al-Abadi, asked the
Iraqi armed forces to respect human rights during the battle and to
take care of those displaced by the fighting. It is unlikely such a
request would have any effect on rogue militias given that in the
past, the Shia-led militias have been barred
from entering certain cities due to the havoc they are known to
unleash.

Fortunately
for the Iraqi forces, they are fighting alongside the U.S. military,
so their crimes are likely to be swept under the rug by the
mainstream media (for
now, anyway).

==========

* Zie: ‘Mosul, tweede dag van offensief tegen door ISIS bezet West-Mosul: wie geeft de meer dan 600.000 inwoners een stem??‘ 

 Zie ook: 

‘BBC World Service met geschiedvervalsing over strijd in Iraaks Fallujah‘ (en zie de links in dat bericht)

‘Mosul, het verschil in berichtgeving vergeleken met de bevrijding van Oost-Aleppo………..‘

Voor  meer berichten n.a.v. het bovenstaande, klik op één van de labels, die u onder dit bericht terug kan vinden, dit geldt niet voor het label ‘Deir ez-Zor’.