Claims that armed extremists are fighting in Syria are backed by some foreign journalists working on the ground. Independent journalist Thierry Meyssan tells RT how efforts by some forces to turn the conflict into a full-scale civil war are failing.
“It began with some armed groups entering the country, making troubles, trying to create Islamic emirates on the border with Jordan. These people recruit others to form bigger fighting groups and now they are entering in co-ordination with political opposition. And you know, in this country, there is a long history of opposition between the Baas Party and the Muslim Brotherhood. So, now there is an alliance between the Muslim Brothers and these armed groups coming from abroad,” he explained. “These groups can go everywhere, because now they have some support inside the population.”The question is why are these groups typically able to find this support? Is it because people are now ready to use any means to reverse the government, or are the reasons more ideological in nature?Thierry Meyssan points out that the reason the Muslim Brotherhood wants to topple the Assad regime is not because they want democracy – that is according to their own words – but because President Bashar Assad is Alawi.“It could be the beginning of religious war inside the country,” he told RT.On the other hand, the journalist does not believe that isolated conflicts in Syria, like the one in Homs, will spread into a full-scale civil war.“External pressure against Syria will [go on], and all these people entering [the country] will continue [to do so], but I have no reasons now to think that this will extend to all the country,” he said.NATO, however, is trying to act in exactly the same manner in its approach to Syria as it did with Libya, Meyssan continued.“They do exactly the same to create a file on the United Nations – first, with the Geneva council of human rights, and after – in the Secondly Council. They try to manipulate the Arab League exactly in the same way,” he explained. “In the Libyan case they organized a big story in front of the Geneva Council for Human Rights – they said 5,000 people were killed by the security forces. Of course, it’s absolutely wrong. A lot of people were killed, but very few by the security forces. Most of them were killed by these armed groups they [had] put inside the country.“The same armed groups are used [by NATO] in [Syria],” Meyssan added.“In Libya, the support on the streets was only in Cyrenaica, because there was an old contention between Cyrenaica and Tripolitana – this country was created artificially very late. So, you don’t have such thing in Syria,” he went on to explain. “In Syria, the only way to divide the people is to use the confessional war. They are trying to do this now.”At the same time, the journalist insists that all the attempts by outside forces to destabilize the country by means of military are not working.“We see a lot of people killed, but this is not a civil war they tried to organize. If they want to enter with foreign troops inside, like they did in Libya, or using the proxy from the Gulf council, they will have a very big problem because this country is ready for battle,” he said. “Syria is able to resist the pressure for a very long time.“People who try to destabilize Assad will have a stronger Assad after that,” Thierry Meyssan concluded.