{"id":76422,"date":"2016-02-17T17:12:56","date_gmt":"2016-02-17T17:12:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/2016\/02\/17\/daesh-devait-prendre-damas-en-octobre-2015\/"},"modified":"2016-02-17T17:12:56","modified_gmt":"2016-02-17T17:12:56","slug":"daesh-devait-prendre-damas-en-octobre-2015","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/2016\/02\/17\/daesh-devait-prendre-damas-en-octobre-2015\/","title":{"rendered":"Daesh<\/em> devait prendre Damas en octobre 2015…"},"content":{"rendered":"

Daesh<\/em> devait prendre Damas en octobre 2015…<\/h2>\n<\/p>\n

Dans un texte du 16 f\u00e9vrier<\/a> sur le site Russia Insider<\/em>, le commentateur et chroniqueur Alexander Mercouris, r\u00e9put\u00e9 s\u00e9rieux et couvrant largement les politiques anglo-saxonnes vis-\u00e0-vis de la Russie, s’int\u00e9resse \u00e0 un article de la version imprim\u00e9e de l’Evening Standard<\/em> de Londres, une tribune de l’ambassadeur russe \u00e0 Londres, Alexander Yakovenko. Mercouris, s’arr\u00eatant \u00e0 un passage du texte de l’ambassadeur, s’interroge sur le fait de savoir comment une telle affirmation aussi extraordinaire, que celle-ci, ait put passer inaper\u00e7ue ; mais quoi, \u00e9crit Mercouris, le fait est que Yakovenko nous dit bien : « L’\u00e9t\u00e9 dernier, nos \u00ab\u00a0partenaires occidentaux\u00a0\u00bb nous dirent qu’ils pr\u00e9voyaient que Damas tomberait aux mains de Daesh en octobre <\/strong><\/em>[2015]<\/strong>. Nous ne savons pas ce qu’ils<\/em> [nos \u00ab\u00a0partenaires\u00a0\u00bb] pr\u00e9voyaient de faire d’autre. Sans doute auraient-ils fini par peindre tous ces extr\u00e9mistes \u00ab\u00a0en chevaliers blancs\u00a0\u00bb et les auraient-ils accept\u00e9s comme un grand État sunnite englobant la Syrie et l’Irak..<\/em>. »<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

L’extrait concern\u00e9, dans un contexte plus large, de l’article de l’Evening Standard <\/em>(du 15 f\u00e9vrier<\/a>) dit ceci : « …To have an idea of the sheer challenge facing the international community, one has to look back at how the Syrian situation has evolved over the past four years. We witnessed the process of radicalisation on the opposition side. Many Syrian groups became involved with foreign terrorist organisations which were well supplied and financed by various regional players, who in turn projected their domestic political agendas onto the Syrian battleground<\/em>.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

» It came to the point when the Americans gave up on finding people they could trust among the rebel groups fighting the Syrian government. We were told by our British colleagues a few months ago that the situation in Syria was a complete mess. The situation was further complicated by the emergence of IS, an explosive mix of religious fanatics and the rump of the Iraqi Ba’athist regime, including Saddam Hussein’s officer corps<\/em>.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

» In the meantime the US assembled its anti-IS coalition of about 70 members, which delivered ineffective airstrikes at IS targets for more than a year before Russia had to intervene at the request of the Syrian government with its air force. Last summer we were told by our Western partners that in October Damascus would fall to IS. What they were planning to do next we don’t know. Probably, they would have ended up painting the extremists white and accepting them as a Sunni state straddling Iraq and Syria<\/strong><\/em>.<\/strong> »<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

La pr\u00e9sentation de Yakovenko s’ins\u00e8re, comme on le comprend \u00e9videmment, dans un plaidoyer justifiant fortement l’intervention russe en Syrie. Elle tend \u00e9videmment \u00e0 placer la d\u00e9cision de cette intervention dans la logique, notamment, de cette affirmation : ce serait principalement pour \u00e9viter la prise de Damas par Daesh<\/em> et la conqu\u00eate totale de la Syrie, non comme une possibilit\u00e9 mais quasiment comme une certitude si personne n’intervenait, que la Russie serait, elle, intervenue.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

A cette \u00e9poque, \u00e0 l’\u00e9t\u00e9 2015, la situation en Syrie \u00e9tait tr\u00e8s critique pour le r\u00e9gime Assad. Daesh<\/em> venait de prendre Palmyre, notamment pour redessiner les traces des origines de la civilisation, l’arm\u00e9e syrienne venait de subir des d\u00e9faites s\u00e9v\u00e8res et se repliaient sur le p\u00e9rim\u00e8tre de la r\u00e9gion autour de Damas. D’autre part, les USA discutaient avec leurs divers \u00ab\u00a0alli\u00e9s\u00a0\u00bb de rencontre et de fortune de l’installation d’une \u00ab\u00a0no-fly zone<\/em>\u00a0\u00bb en Syrie, adoss\u00e9e \u00e0 la Turquie, ce qui constituait le r\u00eave ouvertement proclam\u00e9 du Turc Erdogan lui permettant une annexion de facto<\/em> de cette zone ; mais aussi cela qui aurait permis, selon l’interpr\u00e9tation de Mercouris, de mener une campagne de bombardement contre Assad sous pr\u00e9texte d'\u00a0\u00bbintervention humanitaire\u00a0\u00bb, ouvrant effectivement la voie de Damas \u00e0 Daesh<\/em>.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Apr\u00e8s avoir rappel\u00e9 toutes ces circonstances, Mercouris r\u00e9sume effectivement son hypoth\u00e8se selon l’id\u00e9e que « [c]e que Yakovenko nous dit en r\u00e9alit\u00e9 est que les USA planifiaient \u00e0 l’\u00e9t\u00e9 2015 une campagne de bombardement<\/em> [sous le couvert de l’installation d’une \u00ab\u00a0no-fly-zone<\/em>\u00ab\u00a0] pour aider au renversement du gouvernement syrien en sachant que cela<\/em> [aiderait] \u00e0 la conqu\u00eate de Damas par Daesh et \u00e0 la victoire des islamistes en octobre<\/em>… » Puis il discute de la validit\u00e9 de l’affirmation de Yakovenko selon divers points de vue.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

• Yakovenko pouvait-il \u00eatre au courant d’une information de cette importance par rapport \u00e0 sa position dans la hi\u00e9rarchie du pouvoir russe ? La r\u00e9ponse de Mercouris est positive, sans h\u00e9sitation, vu le rang du diplomate et le poste qu’il occupait. (« Though London is no longer the most important diplomatic posting for a Russian ambassador in Western Europe, it remains an important posting, and any official appointed to be Russia’s ambassador to Britain is by definition a senior official whom Moscow will ensure is kept well-informed<\/em>. ») Pour notre part, nous observerions que le canal que repr\u00e9sente Yakovenko et l’article qu’il \u00e9crit est typique d’une m\u00e9thode assez employ\u00e9e par les Russes pour diffuser publiquement mais discr\u00e8tement une information tr\u00e8s importante, d’autant plus que ce m\u00eame Yakovenko pr\u00e9sente l’information qui met Mercouris en \u00e9moi d’une fa\u00e7on si naturelle, comme s’il s’agissait d’un \u00e9change d’informations courant, où la partie US (nous mettrions les Britanniques et le reste du bloc-BAO \u00e0 part) se contenterait d’afficher son impuissance en m\u00eame temps qu’elle donnerait une information qui pourrait paraître comme un encouragement donn\u00e9 aux Russes d’intervenir. Nous pourrions aller jusqu’\u00e0 penser que les Russes voulaient, avec cette intervention de Yakovenko, faire savoir publiquement ce qu’ils savaient sans pour autant provoquer un effet de communication important…<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

• Mercouris remarque que personne n’a r\u00e9agi, certainement pas du c\u00f4t\u00e9 officiel, du c\u00f4t\u00e9 des gouvernements britannique et US, dans les journaux porte-drapeaux anglo-saxons du Syst\u00e8me, etc. Il suppose qu’il s’agit de \u00ab\u00a0la politique du silence\u00a0\u00bb comme nous la rencontrons souvent, ce qui est effectivement une possibilit\u00e9\/une probabilit\u00e9. (« It is not difficult to see why the British and US governments might think that in light of the incendiary nature of what Yakovenko is saying denying it would simply give his comments more publicity if they denied them and that the better approach is silence<\/em>. ») Encore faut-il voir de quelle duplicit\u00e9 ce \u00ab\u00a0silence\u00a0\u00bb est la marque : est-ce la marque d’une confusion devant cette r\u00e9v\u00e9lation qui mettrait en cause leur machiav\u00e9lisme nihiliste (laisser faire Daesh<\/em> en l’aidant indirectement mais puissamment), ou devant cette r\u00e9v\u00e9lation qui mettrait en \u00e9vidence leur impuissance de nihiliste (observer les intentions et les capacit\u00e9s de Daesh<\/em> qu’ils ont tant contribu\u00e9 \u00e0 \u00e9clore et \u00e0 faire venir \u00e0 maturit\u00e9 sans pouvoir rien faire contre cela) ?<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/p>\n

• Enfin, le plus important dans les supputations de Mercouris est de comprendre pourquoi les Anglo-Saxons auraient pu donner une telle information aux Russes, au risque de provoquer ce qui est arriv\u00e9, savoir leur intervention. L’explication que donne Mercouris est \u00e0 moiti\u00e9 convaincante : il avance l’hypoth\u00e8se que les USA, et leurs amis britanniques notamment, ont agi de cette fa\u00e7on pour effrayer les Russes devant la perspective de la prise du pouvoir par Daesh<\/em> et les forcer \u00e0 eux-m\u00eames forcer Assad \u00e0 quitter le pouvoir, comme les Anglo-US et le bloc-BAO (et Daesh<\/em> d’ailleurs, et le diable et son train) le veulent depuis si longtemps : « No-one in the early summer thought there was any likelihood the Russians would intervene militarily in Syria. The US probably thought it was not risking anything by telling Moscow its military plans and what their likely consequences would be. Probably what the US expected was that the threat of a bombing campaign leading to the seizure of Damascus by the Islamic State would terrify Moscow and persuade the Russians to force Assad to stand down, which has been the US objective all along<\/em>… »<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

C’est l\u00e0 le passage le plus int\u00e9ressant dans l’hypoth\u00e8se, ou l’interpr\u00e9tation de Mercouris de la r\u00e9v\u00e9lation de Yakovenko. Pour nous, et puisqu’il est \u00e9vident qu’il y a eu une communication du c\u00f4t\u00e9 anglo-saxon, et l’on dira plut\u00f4t du c\u00f4t\u00e9 US tout simplement, vers la Russie, il nous paraît extr\u00eamement probable que cette communication ne repr\u00e9sentait en rien une politique int\u00e9gr\u00e9e et contr\u00f4l\u00e9e de Washington, – cette chose, \u00ab\u00a0une politique int\u00e9gr\u00e9e et contr\u00f4l\u00e9e\u00a0\u00bb n’existant d’ailleurs pas \u00e0 Washington, – mais bien une action d’une fraction du pouvoir US ; et nous pensons aussit\u00f4t aux militaires<\/strong>, qui sont bien entendu les premiers inform\u00e9s d’une telle prospective puisqu’ils en sont eux-m\u00eames, au sein du pouvoir US, la source et l’outil…<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\n

Nous pensons aux militaires, bien entendu parce qu’on connaît suffisamment la situation \u00e0 cet \u00e9gard \u00e0 Washington, notamment entre le Pentagone (les militaires) et la Maison-Blanche, – telle que nous l’avons rappel\u00e9e r\u00e9cemment<\/a> en en pr\u00e9sentant une synth\u00e8se g\u00e9n\u00e9rale. Il y a eu assez de bruits, d’interventions et d’indications ces derniers temps sur la position de groupes importants parmi eux qui s’opposent \u00e0 la politique-Syst\u00e8me de d\u00e9structuration et de regime change<\/em>, alors que nous vivons au milieu d’affirmations circonstanci\u00e9es selon lesquelles des informations ont \u00e9t\u00e9 pass\u00e9es par ces militaires (le g\u00e9n\u00e9ral Dempsey notamment, selon Seymour Hersh) vers les Russes. Il serait tout \u00e0 fait logique sinon imp\u00e9ratif, dans ce climat et dans cette occurrence, que ces m\u00eames militaires aient inform\u00e9 les Russes d’une telle possibilit\u00e9<\/strong> (Daesh<\/em> pouvant prendre Damas, avec l’aide plus ou moins affich\u00e9e de Washington au niveau du pouvoir civil, c’est-\u00e0-dire par exemple de la factions R2P du pouvoir civil qui se trouve \u00e0 la Maison-Blanche \u00ab\u00a0autour\u00a0\u00bb du pr\u00e9sident Obama) ; il serait \u00e9galement tout \u00e0 fait logique que ces m\u00eames militaires US aient \u00e9ventuellement fortement encourag\u00e9 les Russes \u00e0 agir eux-m\u00eames pour contrer ces plans…<\/strong> Peut-\u00eatre cette hypoth\u00e8se \u00e9clairerait-elle d’une lumi\u00e8re nouvelle certains comportements (du c\u00f4t\u00e9 des militaires US) sur le terrain en Moyen-Orient, \u00e0 propos de l’intervention russe plut\u00f4t que \u00ab\u00a0face \u00e0\u00a0\u00bb elle.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

L’on observera effectivement et comme nous faisions l’hypoth\u00e8se plus haut que, dans ce cas, il serait tout \u00e0 fait logique que les Russes fassent savoir \u00e0 Washington, \u00e9ventuellement au pouvoir civil type-Maison-Blanche\/R2P, avec la discr\u00e9tion d’une pr\u00e9cision plac\u00e9e presque innocemment au milieu d’un texte d’argumentaire courant, qu’ils ont effectivement des canaux d’information washingtoniens concernant des cas d’une telle importance. Nous pensons que l’interpr\u00e9tation de Mercouris (de la pr\u00e9cision donn\u00e9e par Yakovenko, moins du comportement US) peut \u00eatre envisag\u00e9e d’une fa\u00e7on tr\u00e8s acceptable de ce point de vue qui mettrait en avant les militaires US. Elle correspond parfaitement au d\u00e9sordre extraordinaire qui r\u00e8gne<\/strong> dans les directions diverses, \u00e0 Washington comme d’ailleurs dans le reste du bloc-BAO. (A cette lumi\u00e8re, on comprend \u00e9galement d’autant mieux qu’Erdogan, qui a du mal \u00e0 contenir son temp\u00e9rament explosif, ait commis cette effarante sottise d’abattre le Su-24 russe le 24 novembre, pat simple esprit de d\u00e9pit et, par exemple, avec cette sorte de calcul absurde qui peut naître du d\u00e9pit de croire qu’il provoquerait ainsi un embrasement g\u00e9n\u00e9ral impliquant directement l’OTAN contre la Russie.)<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Nous reproduisons ci-dessous l’essentiel du texte du 16 f\u00e9vrier<\/a> de Mercouris. Nous avons raccourci le titre initial (« Russian Diplomat Drops a Bombshell: US Expected ISIS to Seize Damascus by Octobe<\/em>r ») pour des raisons techniques.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

dedefensa.org<\/em><\/h4>\n<\/p>\n

_________________________<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Russian Diplomat Drops a Bombshell<\/h2>\n<\/p>\n

Alexander Yakovenko, Russia’s ambassador to Britain, dropped something of a bombshell on Monday, though one that has gone completely unnoticed. In a piece in the print edition of the London Evening Standard defending Russian policy in Syria he made the following extraordinary disclosure:<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\u00ab\u00a0Last summer we were told by our Western partners that in October Damascus would fall to IS (ie. the Islamic State – AM). What they were planning to do next we don’t know. Probably, they would have ended up painting the extremists white and accepting them as a Sunni state straddling Iraq and Syria\u00a0\u00bb.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

The summer – when these conversations between the Western powers and the Russians allegedly took place – was the time when the US was in discussions with Turkey and Jordan about setting up a no-fly zone and safe havens in Syria. I discussed in this article how \u00ab\u00a0no-fly zone\u00a0\u00bb is today simply a euphemism for a US bombing campaign<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

What Yakovenko is therefore in effect saying is that the US was planning in the summer to start a bombing campaign to overthrow the government of Syria in the knowledge that this would result by October in the victory of the Islamic State and its capture of Damascus. Russia Insider<\/em> has previously explained that it was to stop the US proclaiming a no-fly zone<\/a> – i.e. commencing a bombing campaign aimed at overthrowing the Syrian government – that Russia intervened in Syria. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n

The fact Yakovenko says the US told the Russians this would result in the Islamic State capturing Damascus by October explains why the Russians felt they had to act as they did.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Is Yakovenko however telling the truth?<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

The first thing to say is that the British and US governments have not denied what he is saying. That however is not conclusive. It is not difficult to see why the British and US governments might think that in light of the incendiary nature of what Yakovenko is saying denying it would simply give his comments more publicity if they denied them and that the better approach is silence. If so, then the fact Yakovenko’s comments have been almost entirely ignored shows this approach has worked.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Is Yakovenko however senior enough to know the details of the discussions that took place in the summer between the Russians and the Western powers as he says? The answer to that question is almost certainly yes. Though London is no longer the most important diplomatic posting for a Russian ambassador in Western Europe, it remains an important posting, and any official appointed to be Russia’s ambassador to Britain is by definition a senior official whom Moscow will ensure is kept well-informed. If there were discussions of the sort Yakovenko says, he would almost certainly have been fully briefed about them.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

What Yakovenko says is also consistent with things we know. In the summer – having just captured Palmyra — the Islamic State was on a roll, making it not implausible that it might reach Damascus by the autumn. The Syrian army in the meantime had suffered a succession of heavy defeats, and had been forced to withdraw from Idlib province. In light of all this, in the context of a US bombing campaign, it is not implausible the US was telling the Russians in the summer that the Islamic State would seize Damascus by October. As for the US’s discussions about setting up a no-fly zone and safe havens, there was nothing secret about those, and they were openly acknowledged.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Why however would the US tell the Russians that they expected the Islamic State to seize Damascus by October? That is not a difficult question to answer.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

No-one in the early summer thought there was any likelihood the Russians would intervene militarily in Syria. The US probably thought it was not risking anything by telling Moscow its military plans and what their likely consequences would be. Probably what the US expected was that the threat of a bombing campaign leading to the seizure of Damascus by the Islamic State would terrify Moscow and persuade the Russians to force Assad to stand down, which has been the US objective all along. In that case the US seriously underestimated the Russians’ resolve and their willingness to act to prevent what the US was threatening from coming to pass.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Overall Yakovenko’s disclosure makes sense, and is therefore probably true. What it shows is how reckless the US’s Syrian policy had become. At the very time the US was pretending to fight the Islamic State it was in fact preparing steps that it knew would facilitate its victory. Even if this was intended as a diplomatic play it was an extraordinary thing to do…<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Alexander Mercouris <\/h4><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Daesh devait prendre Damas en octobre 2015… Dans un texte du 16 f\u00e9vrier sur le site Russia Insider, le commentateur et chroniqueur Alexander Mercouris, r\u00e9put\u00e9 s\u00e9rieux et couvrant largement les politiques anglo-saxonnes vis-\u00e0-vis de la Russie, s’int\u00e9resse \u00e0 un article de la version imprim\u00e9e de l’Evening Standard de Londres, une tribune de l’ambassadeur russe \u00e0… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"neve_meta_sidebar":"","neve_meta_container":"","neve_meta_enable_content_width":"","neve_meta_content_width":0,"neve_meta_title_alignment":"","neve_meta_author_avatar":"","neve_post_elements_order":"","neve_meta_disable_header":"","neve_meta_disable_footer":"","neve_meta_disable_title":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[4940,12572,12206,11165,17349,17348,3538,12406,2730,3333,2671,17350],"class_list":["post-76422","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ouverture-libre","tag-ambassadeur","tag-daesh","tag-damas","tag-dempsey","tag-evening","tag-mercouri","tag-militaires","tag-r2p","tag-russie","tag-standard","tag-us","tag-yakovenko"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76422","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=76422"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76422\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=76422"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=76422"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=76422"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}