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| Al-Nusra Leader Al-Jolani. |
Reputed Turkish newspaper Daily
Sabah reported [1] on Thursday that the Turkish police had identified the
cause of death of the founder of the White Helmets, James Le Mesurier, as
ruptured aorta in the chest, and not the fractured skull as previously described
by the police in its preliminary report.
Le Mesurier was found dead on November 11 in suspicious
circumstances after falling off a two-story apartment building in downtown
Istanbul. He was alleged to have committed suicide by jumping of the second
floor of the building, though the latest findings cast aspersions over the
suicide theory, as the circumstances of the inexplicable death indicate likely
homicide.
Despite his “humanitarian credentials,” the founder of the
White Helmets, James Le Mesurier, was a shady character, alleged to be a covert
British MI6 operative by Russia’s foreign ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova
days before his death.
Before taking up the task of training Syrian volunteers for
search and rescue operations in 2013, Le Mesurier was a British army veteran
and a private security contractor from 2008 to 2012 working
for Good Harbor [2], run by Richard Clarke, the former Bush administration
counter-terrorism czar.
Much like Erik Prince of the Blackwater fame, Le Mesurier’s
work included training several thousand mercenaries for the United Arab
Emirates (UAE) oil and gas field protection force, and designing security
infrastructure for the police state of Abu Dhabi – a job description that
helped him recruit Syrian volunteers from refugee camps in Turkey willing to do
dirty “humanitarian work” in enclaves carved out by militant factions in Syria’s
war zones.
In this line of work, one is likely to make powerful
enemies, including intelligence agencies and militant groups. He could have
been killed by anyone of them. In particular, the White Helmets operate in
al-Nusra Front’s territory in Syria’s northwestern Idlib province and are known
to take orders from the terrorist outfit.
The assassination of James Le Mesurier should be viewed in
the backdrop of the killing of the Islamic State’s chief Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi
on October 27 in a US special-ops raid. It’s important to note in the news
coverage of the killing of al-Baghdadi that although the mainstream media had
been trumpeting for the last several years that the Islamic State’s fugitive
leader had been hiding somewhere on the Iraq-Syria border in the east, he was
found hiding in the northwestern Idlib governorate, under the control of
Turkey’s militant proxies and al-Nusra Front, and was killed while trying to
flee to Turkey in Barisha village five kilometers from the border.
The reason why the mainstream media scrupulously avoided
mentioning Idlib as al-Baghdadi’s most likely hideout in Syria was to cover up
the collusion between the militant proxies of Turkey and the jihadists of
al-Nusra Front and the Islamic State. Unsurprisingly, the White Helmets area of
operations is also Idlib governorate in Syria where they are permitted to
conduct purported “search and rescue operations” and “humanitarian work” under
the tutelage of al-Nusra Front.
In fact, the corporate media takes the issue of Islamic
jihadists “commingling” with Turkey-backed “moderate rebels” in Idlib so
seriously – which could give the Syrian government the pretext to mount an
offensive in northwest Syria – that the New York Times cooked up an exclusive
report [3] a couple of days after the special-ops night raid, on October
30, that the Islamic State paid money to al-Nusra Front for hosting al-Baghdadi
in Idlib.
The morning after the special-ops night raid, the Syrian
Observatory for Human Rights reported
[4] on October 27 that a squadron of eight helicopters accompanied by warplanes
belonging to the international coalition had attacked positions of Hurras
al-Din, an al-Qaeda-affiliated group, in Idlib province where the Islamic State
chief was believed to be hiding.
Despite detailing the operational minutiae of the special-ops
raid, the mainstream news coverage of the raid deliberately elided over the
crucial piece of information that the compound in Barisha village five
kilometers from Turkish border where al-Baghdadi was killed belonged to Hurras
al-Din, an elusive terrorist outfit which has previously been targeted several
times in the US airstrikes.
Although Hurras al-Din is generally assumed to be an
al-Qaeda affiliate, it is in fact the regrouping of the Islamic State jihadists
under a different name in northwestern Idlib governorate after the latter
terrorist organization was routed from Mosul and Anbar in Iraq and Raqqa and
Deir al-Zor in Syria and was hard pressed by the US-led coalition’s airstrikes
in eastern Syria.
It’s worth noting that although the Idlib governorate in
Syria’s northwest has firmly been under the control of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham
(HTS) led by al-Nusra Front since 2015, its territory was equally divided
between Turkey-backed rebels and al-Nusra Front.
In a brazen offensive in January, however, al-Nusra Front’s
jihadists completely routed Turkey-backed militants, even though the latter
were supported by a professionally trained and highly organized military of a
NATO member, Turkey. And al-Nusra Front now reportedly controls more than 70%
territory in the Idlib governorate.
The reason why al-Nusra Front has been easily able to defeat
Turkey-backed militants appears to be that the ranks of al-Nusra Front have now
been swelled by highly motivated and battle-hardened jihadist deserters from
the Islamic State after the fall of the latter’s “caliphate” in Mosul in Iraq
and Raqqa in Syria.
In all likelihood, some of the Islamic State’s jihadists who
joined the battle in Idlib in January were part of the same contingent of
thousands of Islamic State militants that fled Raqqa in October 2017 under a deal
brokered [5] by the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF).
The merger of al-Nusra Front and Islamic State in Idlib
doesn’t come as a surprise, though, since the Islamic State and al-Nusra Front
used to be a single organization before a split occurred between the two
militant groups in April 2013 over a leadership dispute. In fact, al-Nusra
Front’s chief Abu Mohammad al-Jolani was reportedly appointed [6] the emir of
al-Nusra Front by Abu Bakr al Baghdadi, the deceased “caliph” of the Islamic
State, in January 2012.
Al-Jolani returned the favor by hosting the hunted leader of
the Islamic State for months, if not years, in a safe house in al-Nusra’s
territory in Idlib, before he was betrayed by an informant within the ranks of
the terrorist organization who leaked the information of the whereabouts of
al-Baghdadi to the American intelligence, leading to the killing of the Islamic
State chief in a special-ops raid on October 27.
Finally, regarding the death of the founder of the White
Helmets, James Le Mesurier, in downtown Istanbul, it’s worth pointing out that
Turkey has been hosting 3.6 million Syrian refugees and myriad factions of
Ankara-backed militant proxies.
It’s quite easy for the jihadists of al-Nusra Front and the
Islamic State to intermingle with Syrian refugees and militants in the Turkish
refugee camps, and no town or city in Turkey, including the capital Ankara and
the metropolis Istanbul where James Le Mesurier was murdered, is beyond the
reach of Turkish-backed militant factions and Syrian jihadists, particularly
the fearsome and well-connected al-Nusra Front that has patrons in the security
agencies of Turkey and the Gulf States.
Plausibly, one of the members of the White Helmets operating
in al-Nusra’s territory in Syria’s Idlib betrayed his patrons for the sake of
getting a reward, and conveyed crucial piece of information regarding the
whereabouts of al-Baghdadi to the founder of the White Helmets, Le Mesurier,
who then transmitted it to the British and American intelligence leading to the
October 27 special-ops raid killing al-Baghdadi.
In all likelihood, the assassination of the founder of the White
Helmets was Islamic jihadists’ revenge for betraying the slain chief of the
Islamic State. What lends credence to the theory is the fact that according to
local media reports, a turf war has begun in Idlib governorate after the
killing of al-Baghdadi in the October 27 special-ops raid and several militant
leaders of al-Nusra Front have been killed by jihadists affiliated with the
Islamic State.
Footnotes:
[1] Turkish officials reveal White Helmets founder Le
Mesurier's cause of death:
[2] The most dangerous job in the world: Syria's Elite
Rescue Force:
[3] ISIS Leader Paid Rival for Protection but Was Betrayed
by His Own:
[4] Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi killed in US
raid:
[5] Raqqa’s dirty secret: the deal that let Islamic State
jihadists escape Raqqa:
[6] Al-Jolani was appointed as the emir of al-Nusra Front by
al-Baghdadi:
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