“Is the UN Funding Terrorism?” The Truth About Zaatari Refugee Camp

700,000 Syrians reside at Zaatari refugee camp within the borders of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. These are Syrians who have fled their homes in the continuing civil war. Since 2011, fighters backed by the United States, France, Britain, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Jordan have been battling the Syrian government.

Many of the insurgent forces that seek the overthrow of the Syrian government are not Syrian. Many are Jordanians. Others are Turkish, Qatari, Pakistani, or Libyan. Fighters from as far away as Malaysia have been arrested by Syrian officials.

According to the US military’s report, there are over 2,000 factions among the Syrian “opposition.” They include the Islamic State of Iraq and Levant (ISIL), the Al-Nusra Front, as well as groups referring to themselves as “Al-Qaeda in Syria.”

The Model Refugee Camp

Zaatari refugee camp has been propped up as the model project of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency.

In the lobby of the United Nations Secretariat Building, the Jordanian UN mission sponsored a photo exhibition depicting life in the camp. Associate Professor of Photography Nina Berman of Columbia University described how, with funding from the United Nations, she had taken photographs documenting Zaatari life. The photographs have been blown up to large sizes and now decorate the walls surrounding the camp. According to Berman, Zaatari provides much better services than many other refugee camps.

Ursula Lindsey, a blogger who visited the camp, said it is commonly called “The Hilton” because it is so much better than other camps.

The United Nations Relief and Works Agency is currently asking for more money, saying that it doesn’t have enough resources for its many refugee camps in Iraq, Jordan, and Turkey. The UNRWA continues to appeal for more funds to address the refugee crisis. Diplomats from around the world are bemoaning the “underfunding of the UN system” in speeches and appeals for funds. The US-aligned gulf states continue to donate billions of dollars for refugee relief and hold fundraisers for Syrian refugees. Much of the money ends up going to Zaatari.

What is being ignored is something that has been only subtly mentioned in all of the publicity surrounding Zaatari refugee camp. Zaatari isn’t just a camp for displaced Syrians. Zaatari is a base — for recruitment by the armed terrorists who are currently destabilizing Syria.

The Free Syrian Army (FSA) is not a group of choir boys. In 2014 a number of FSA factions joined with ISIL. Free Syrian Army leaders openly admit that the group trains alongside Al-Nusra Front and other Al-Qaeda-linked extremist groups. Videos of the atrocities of FSA fighters fill the internet. The Free Syrian Army engages in beheadings, torture, and in some instances cannibalism.

In his article on Zaatari Refugee Camp, David Remnick of the New Yorker interviewed many anti-government insurgents at Zaatari. One of them, Nabegh Srour, was reported to have said he hoped Israel would invade Syria, saying, “Our enemy is Bashar, not Israel.”

According to Ursula Lindsey, many of the inhabitants of Zaatari Refugee camp were actually “escorted to the border by the Free Syrian Army.” The Free Syrian Army in coordination with the Jordanian military has set up an intake process at the border. The Jordanian military meets the Syrians who have been “escorted by the Free Syrian Army” at the border, and places them at a screening center, eventually transporting them to Zaatari camp.

The record of the FSA forces the question: Are these Syrians being “escorted to the border” by the Free Syrian Army of their own free will?

Lindsey’s writings on the camp document how the camp is completely controlled by anti-Syrian activists. She writes, “I was not able to understand how the presence of FSA in the camp was tolerated.” She also described how refugees who have served the Syrian Armed Forces are segregated from the larger population of the camp, in order to keep them away from Free Syrian Army members.

A Captive Audience

Lindsey also writes that refugees are not allowed to leave the camp, unless they go through a bureaucratic process. However, a number of refugees – specifically, those who have been recruited to join the Free Syrian Army — are no longer held captive in the camp.

The camp has another problem called “early marriage.” Girls between the age of 14 and 16 are finding their way out of Zaatari by getting married. Jordanian and other men from throughout the region are marrying young Syrian refugees, securing them a way out of the camp.

Remnick’s article also describes how fundraising for the Free Syrian Army goes on in the camp, with products being sold to raise money for the insurgents. His article quotes people who describe the FSA as heavily involved with organized crime and human trafficking.

Reports make no real effort to conceal it. Zaatari refugee camp is controlled by forces sympathetic to the Free Syrian Army, a group of armed terrorists who seek to overthrow the Syrian Arab Republic.

700,000 Syrians are trapped in a camp controlled by these forces. The billions of dollars provided for “refugee relief” are by proxy subsidizing the anti-government forces in Syria, and prolonging a war that has already killed over 200,000 and displaced nearly 3 million.

The Syrian government appears to be very aware of the role played by the refugee camps. They are making a point of providing services within Syria to those who have been displaced by the fighting, in order to prevent people from leaving the country and slipping into UN-funded camps surrounded with barbed wire, where FSA sympathizers appear to be in control.

Caleb Maupin is a political analyst and activist based in New York. He studied political science at Baldwin-Wallace College and was inspired and involved in the Occupy Wall Street movement, especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.
First appeared:http://journal-neo.org/2015/03/07/is-the-un-funding-terrorism-the-truth-about-zaatari-refugee-camp/

How the Jordanian revenge beheading only unites ISIS with Al Qaeda and al-Nusra for the West's proxy war on Syria and MidEast

http://carnegie-mec.org/2015/02/04/wider-implications-for-jordan-s-revenge-against-islamic-state/i15c?mkt_tok=3RkMMJWWfF9wsRomrfCcI63Em2iQPJWpsrB0B%2FDC18kX3RUtJL%2Bbfkz6htBZF5s8TM3DUVtFXqBR9kEAS7M%3D

Neither of the jihadists executed by Jordan are connected with ISIS in its current incarnation, but with al Qaeda. For example, one of them is Ziad Karbuli, an Iraqi national linked with the late al Qaeda in Iraq leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and who had been detained in Jordan on death row since 2006. Through their execution, therefore, Jordan has inadvertently strengthened the link between ISIS and al Qaeda.

This is significant because the two groups have been engaged in a battle over resources and legitimacy since the start of the Syrian conflict. ISIS has been trying to present itself as the "true" al Qaeda, causing the latter to increase its military activities worldwide as well as within Syria to affirm its influence. Despite initial condemnation of the brutality of ISIS, al Qaeda's Syrian offshoot Jabhat al-Nusra has recently begun engaging in similar activities itself, such as beheadings and other forms of public violence.

One reason behind this is that al-Nusra has felt upstaged by the Islamic State and has escalated its violent acts in order to assert its presence in the face of its rival. But another reason is that the actions of the international coalition set up to fight ISIS have pushed the two groups together.

The coalition airstrikes in Syria have targeted both ISIS and Jabhat al-Nusra, thereby presenting the groups with a common enemy. The Syrian regime's attacks on ISIS following the organization's advance in Iraq in June 2014 also shifted the position of ISIS away from the regime, aligning the organization with Jabhat al-Nusra, which still regards fighting the Assad regime as its primary objective. In the Qalamoun area bordering Syria and Lebanon, ISIS and Jabhat al-Nusra have begun cooperating against the Syrian regime and Hezbollah.

The coalition's mediocre support for the moderate Syrian opposition in southern areas of Syria not only contributed to the Free Syrian Army's vulnerability to attack by al-Nusra brigades but also pushed some members of the two entities to maintain a working relationship based on material necessity and backed by sharing the mutual goal of fighting the Assad regime.

Today, several towns along Syria's south-western border witness al-Nusra presence. In the north, a number of towns have shifted their alliance from al-Nusra to ISIS due to a number of reasons, from fear to coercion to seeking material gains.

Now that ISIS and al-Nusra have been pushed towards one another even more as a result of the Jordanian executions, a similar shift of allegiance is likely in southern Syrian towns as well. If that were to happen, Jordan, which has borders with southern Syria, would find itself with ISIS on its doorstep overnight.

This bears bad news for the coalition. The south is where the Free Syrian Army retains more control than anywhere else in Syria, and where the coalition is planning on empowering the moderate opposition through training and weapons provision. Being confronted with ISIS in the area derails this plan.

The presence of ISIS in the south would also push Jordan to escalate the level of its engagement in the Syrian conflict. It will be forced to change from a supporter of its patrons, the United States and Saudi Arabia, in their fights against ISIS and into a participant in frontline warfare with the organization. This will in turn trigger further entrenchment by not just those two countries but also other members of the coalition in the war as they scramble to aid their Jordanian ally in its fight against ISIS.

Such a development would heighten the reactive nature of the coalition's strategy towards ISIS.

Syrian National Coalition (SNC) receives $6 million from the United States and criticized as it will end up in the hands of ISIS

Source: http://english.al-akhbar.com/content/syrian-national-coalition-receives-6-million-us-financial-aid

Key Points:

The opposition Syrian National Coalition (SNC) said on Thursday it had received $6 million from the United States in the first direct US financial support for the rebel body.

Ahmed Tohme, the chief of the SNC’s self-proclaimed interim government, said the money would be divided into two parts, with $4.4 million devoted to reconstruction and the purchase of heavy equipment include generators, water pumps and tankers.

The remaining $1.6 million will be used to strengthen local governance in rebel-controlled areas and for emergency aid response, including food baskets and assistance to bakeries.

The SNC’s political wing said it has signed deals with the US Agency for International Development (USAID) on the dispersal of the funds.

Moderate rebel groups with ties to the Coalition have lost ground in recent months to both the Syrian army and jihadist groups like the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and al-Qaeda's al-Nusra Front.

The training program is a part of the US’ plan to field local forces in Syria. The Pentagon has estimated that it can train more than 5,000 recruits in the first year and that up to 15,000 will be needed to retake areas of eastern Syria controlled by ISIS.

The US decision to train and equip rebel groups in Syria was criticized by several of its officials who warned of dire consequences.

Former US Congressman Ron Paul denounced in an interview with Russia Today the plans, noting that these Western-backed forces have been helpful to ISIS, which since August has captured swathes of lands in Iraq and Syria.

“The Free Syrian Army (FSA) turned over the weapons, that we (the US) sent them, to ISIS,” Paul said. “It is pretty well recorded that for $50,000 the FSA turned over one of the two American journalists to ISIS.”‬‪

In September, a report by the London-based small-arms research organization Conflict Armament Research revealed that ISIS jihadists in Syria as well appear to be using US military-issued arms and weapons supplied to rebels by Saudi Arabia.

The report said the jihadists disposed of "significant quantities" of US-made small arms including M-16 assault rifles and included photos showing the markings "Property of US Govt."

It also found that anti-tank rockets used by ISIS in Syria were "identical to M79 rockets transferred by Saudi Arabia to forces operating under the Free Syrian Army umbrella in 2013."