That’s right; the brave, elite soldiers doing what they apparently do best – dressing up as Arabs and waging war in the Middle East.
Some people may be surprised by that statement; others won’t. But there is a very dubious history of the SAS/Special Forces involvement in that part of the world; a few examples of which will be highlighted in this post.
At present, this strategy is, at least on the surface of it, aimed at finally fighting the ‘Islamic State’ in Syria.
According to an August 2nd Sunday Express newspaper report (and other sources); “SAS dress as ISIS fighters in undercover war on jihadis”. It continues, “More than 120 members belonging to the elite regiment are currently in the war-torn country” covertly “dressed in black and flying ISIS flags,” engaged in what’s being called Operation Shader.
It may well be that, as suggested, the Special Forces are there to take out ISIS/ISIL fighters and positions.
But as is already quite clear, this new, joint British-American-Turkish push to get into Syria and ‘combat ISIS fighters’ may simply be a cover story for a larger objective: which is to finish off what’s left of the Syrian government and Syrian Army. Because if destroying ISIS/ISIL was the objective, it would make no sense to also be flat-out refusing to cooperate with the Syrian government.
These British ‘elite troops’ dressing up as ISIS fighters and waving around the black flag would almost be amusing, were it not for the fact that they are illegal invaders in a sovereign nation. In an ideal world, of course I would be all for British soldiers taking on the ISIS/ISIL fighters. However, there is a very dubious history when it comes to the SAS and Special Forces and their role as terrorists, false-flag specialists and agent-provocateurs is nothing new. They were there at the very beginning of the Syrian crisis and may actually have been among the people who triggered the ‘Civil War’ in the first place.
Remember the mysterious – and to this day unidentified – ‘Death Squads’ from 2011? Indeed, one of the key causes that made the unrest in Syria rapidly escalate into a Civil War were these mysterious ‘Death Squads’ that were reported to be terrorising Syrian towns and families and acting with impunity.
Remember, this was happening very, very early in the conflict in 2011 and *before* the country fully erupted into war. Even anti-government activists in Syria were saying there was a serious problem involving this ‘Third Element’, citing that “shadowy death squads are operating in Syria’s flash-point city of Homs, from which foreign reporters are officially banned. In the past two days, more people have been killed in these mysterious circumstances than by the state security forces firing in the streets. Yet little is known about who is behind such killings, which appear to target government supporters and opponents.”
At around the same time, the Syrian joirnalist Nizar Nayouf separately corroborated what journalist Thierry Meyssan had been telling RT and others, reporting to James Corbett on The Corbett Report that hundreds of troops were moving from near the Jordanian border; “they are not Jordanian, not Arab but foreign,” he had said.
According to reporting from three years ago, in June 2012 SAS Special Operations Forces as well as agents of the UK’s MI6 were already operating in Syria (along with American and other covert specialists). And, how interesting, there just happened to also be all these reports of non-Syrians going around killing people and making sure the ‘crisis’ truly did erupt into a full ‘Civil War’.
How can we be sure SAS and elite ‘Special Forces’ were involved in the early stages of the War in Syria? Because they had been doing the same thing in Libya in 2011.
The Guardian was reporting on both SAS Special Forces and French intelligence agents being on the ground in Libya, coordinating with the Al-Qaeda rebels. This was in fact happening from the very beginning of the conflict. All of our governments’ assurances that there would be no ‘ground troops’ was in fact a nonsense: there were foreign forces on the ground all along.
An article published in The Telegraph outright contradicted our governments’ claims that (1) they were not trying to kill Gaddafi and (2) that this had been a purely Libyan rebellion with no foreign ‘boots on the ground’. The article clearly revealed that;
- ‘Defence sources have confirmed that the SAS has been in Libya for several weeks, and played a key role in coordinating the fall of Tripoli.’
- ‘SAS soldiers, who have been dressed in Arab civilian clothing and carrying the same weapons as the rebels, have been ordered to switch their focus to the search for Gaddafi’.
And then again, in The Daily Mirror (20th March 2011); ‘Hundreds of British SAS soldiers have been operating with rebel groups inside Libya for three weeks’.
Note that this was in March 2011, before any UN Resolution on Libya and long before any British or NATO-aligned personnel should’ve been involved at all. Again, this time from The Daily Mail: ‘The bombing of the country came as it was revealed that hundreds of British Special-Forces troops have been deployed deep inside Libya targeting Colonel Gaddafi’s forces – and more are on standby.’
While David Cameron, William Hague and the British government was continually repeating that UK ground troops would not be involved, there were already an estimated 350 already mounting covert operations – with ‘more on standby’. Note that, as The Daily Mail specified, this was all happening *before the NATO campaign had even begun* and in all likelihood before even the UN had been convened to discuss the crisis. The SAS was therefore in Libya with no mandate, no legal basis for their presence, and engaged in aiding warfare against government and police personnel.
This was an international crime on every level; and again, even though it probably doesn’t need to be said, let’s be absolutely clear that neither Gaddafi nor the Libyan government had committed any crime against British interests or indeed against *any* foreign or Western citizen or institution.
Yet, as The Daily Mail confirmed, elite troops and MI6 spies were being sent to invade Libya (and ‘invade’ is the word); ‘MI6 operatives backed by the SAS are to land in the east around the key rebel stronghold of Benghazi ‘within days’,’ the newspaper reported. ‘In addition, 600 soldiers of the Black Watch are on 24-hour standby…’
There is every reason to believe that these ‘Special Forces’ may have been the ones coordinating the Libyan ‘rebels’ from day one and that they may in fact have been instrumental in STARTING the unrest in Libya in the first place. What if they were complicit in the earliest murders of Libyan police and security personnel in February 2011 – incidents that Libyan officials at the time had insisted were started by “foreign agents”? Again, the SAS troops were disguised “in Arab civilian clothing and carrying the same weapons as the rebels” according to The Telegraph.
There was even a claim by an Israeli intelligence outfit that ‘Special Forces’ had been responsible for the capture of Gaddafi in Sirte and had handed him over to the Misrata terrorists for execution.
Again, there’s nothing new in this; British soldiers have been caught ‘disguised as Arabs’ and carrying out terrorist attacks even before Libya. There were famously (and embarrassingly) some of them caught in the act during the Iraq War – remember?
As reported by The Insider, and various others, at the time; ‘British soldiers have been caught posing as Arabs and shooting Iraqis in the occupied city of Basra in southern Iraq. A group of them was caught yesterday by Iraqi police. They were driving an Iraqi car, wearing Arab clothing, and carrying weapons and explosives. The Iraqi police were patrolling the area looking for suspected “terrorists” or “insurgents”, and they noticed that the men were acting suspiciously. Suddenly, without warning, the suspicious men started shooting at people, but the new Iraqi security forces managed to capture some of them before they could escape. Obviously, if these men had not been caught, the mass media would now be reporting the incident as just another attempt by evil “terrorists” to create civil war in Iraq.’
Imagine the dismay of the Iraqi police to find that British soldiers (two of them pictured above) were carrying out terrorist attacks and pretending to be locals.
Yep, that’s the SAS for you.
So, no, I’m not all that surprised to now hear that they’re in Syria, ‘dressed as ISIS’ and waving about the black flags; because whenever we hear the term ‘Special Forces’, it is fair to assume something pretty unsavory is going on.
The claim will continue to be that they’re doing this in order to infiltrate and attack ISIS/ISIL fighters and positions. But if I was a soldier in the Syrian Army, I might be worrying about attacks from suspiciously light-skinned and British-sounding ‘ISIS fighters’ any time now…
Incredible article, really well written and very informative. The tactics currently employed by the SAS goes back many years – the term ‘pseudo-gangs’ was coined by British counter-insurgency specialist Kitson in the fifties (and outlined in his counter-insurgency book) during the Mau-Mau uprising where British troops would dress up as Mau-Maus and carry out atrocities against the civilian population which were subsequently blamed on the Mau-Maus.
Likewise, there is ample of evidence of the pseudo-gang concept operating in Northern Island in the 70s with the SAS passing themselves off as IRA units and again carrying out assassinations and terror. These strategies were developed further during the Operation Gladio NATO actions of the late sixties up to the early eighties and while the focus has always been on NATO and the CIA, the British state and military intelligence structures were deeply involved in creating the strategy of tension concepts.
Synthetic terrorism is sadly as British as HP Sauce and Baked Beans.
‘As British as HP Sauce and Baked Beans’ – it appears so, Paul Harvey. Thanks for commenting. I was aware of the same tactics being applied in Northern Ireland and I’m familiar with Operation Gladio, though I didn’t know about the Mau-Maus. That’s some more history I’ll have to read up on – thanks for the pointer.
It just makes me sick though, being a UK citizen and wanting to have some level of pride in the state; but you can’t when you realise the kind of things being done. Libya is a particularly horrendous example, when you consider what that country is like now compared to what it was like a few years ago.
Reblogged this on Floating-voter.
Not surprised.