How Russia Played the Left on Syria

An expert for the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) is tasked to investigate what appears to be a chemical weapons attack on civilians in the town of Douma, Syria in April of 2018, seven years into a bloody civil war. The stakes are high—the US, UK, and France have accused the Syrian regime of perpetrating the attack and retaliated in the form of missile strikes on Syrian military targets. These Western powers are eager for a post hoc justification for the strikes. Much depends on the OPCW's report into the incident. The expert, Dr. Brendan Whelan, reports to his superiors that there's no evidence to support that a chemical weapons attack took place—by implication, the incident was probably staged by Syrian rebels as a pretext for Western military strikes on the Syrian regime. However, Whelan finds that the OPCW's final report is doctored to omit his conclusions and instead implicates the Syrian regime in a chemical weapons attack. It appears that a cover-up has taken place at the OPCW, under pressure from the United States and other Western powers.

If you've read the reporting of journalist Aaron Maté, this is the version of the story you'll be familiar with. If it sounds incredible, that's because it is. In reality, an internal OPCW document unearthed by the open-source investigative website Bellingcat reveals that Dr. Whelan is a disgruntled former employee of the OPCW whose conclusions were omitted from the final report in favor of a more thorough investigation that was carried out after Whelan left the organization. That is to say, the report wasn't "doctored"—Dr. Whelan simply wasn't with the OPCW anymore and the report didn't rely on his conclusions.

The final report concluded that a chemical attack did take place in Douma, and was likely perpetrated by the Syrian regime, which was already well-known to use chemical weapons on its own people.

But Aaron Maté, and many on the contemporary left, are undeterred. Maté's website, The Grayzone, features an unending series of articles about the OPCW "cover-up." He has even testified to the United Nations about the story at the invitation of Syria's ally, Russia. Maté and his supporters—like snide, allegedly left-wing personality Jimmy Dore—are absolutely savage to anyone who questions his narrative, from Bellingcat to the Director General of the OPCW to Cenk Uyger and Ana Kasparian of The Young Turks (TYT). It has become the latest issue on which the schismatic left turns its fire on each other.

"[Maté] isn't 'paid by the Russians'—he works for them pro bono."

Uyger and Kasparian recently ran a segment on the left-leaning TYT YouTube channel in which they suggest Aaron Maté is enabling the war crimes of the Syrian regime and its ally, Russia. Uyger stated that Maté is "paid by the Russians," and Kasparian remarked that he "seem[s] to be working for" Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad and Russia's Vladimir Putin. Maté took umbrage at this on Twitter, calling it "insane and libelous" (presumably because he isn't "paid by the Russians"—he works for them pro bono.) The feud has since escalated, with Jimmy Dore accusing Uyger and Kasparian of being paid mouthpieces for U.S. imperialism, and Kasparian accusing Dore of sexual harassment.

It's a mess, and predictably, the left is tearing itself apart on this issue. But Maté is right when he says it isn't mere leftist media "drama"—there's a real story at the heart of this spat. It's a story about Maté and Dore—and Russia—pushing a narrative that obfuscates Syrian war crimes and undermines the credibility of the UN's chemical weapons watchdog. It's a story about how the left's zealous opposition to U.S. imperialism causes them to see dictators like Assad and Putin as "lesser evils"—when, in fact, it was Russia and Syria who blocked the OPCW's access to the site of the chemical attack in Douma and very likely tampered with evidence at the scene before Dr. Whelan and his team arrived.

I don't think Aaron Maté is paid by the Russians. I think he really believes the version of the story that he has reported. But I do believe he's unwittingly covering up the murder of Syrian men, women, and children by Bashar al-Assad's regime, and de-legitimizing the only institution that is able to hold Assad accountable for his crimes—the OPCW. Perhaps the gravity of this charge weighs on Maté's conscience, and this is what motivates his denial and explains his single-minded focus on the OPCW story even now, more than two years later.

This should be a cautionary tale to the left. It's a good thing to be wary of American imperialism and to question US motives, especially after the "weapons of mass destruction" pretense for the invasion of Iraq in 2003. But this isn't 2003 anymore, and not everything is a pretense for war. Sometimes things simply are as they overwhelmingly appear to be, and military action is justified, in the opinion of The Standard. The left should be more clear-eyed about geopolitics and resist viewing every international event through the warped lens of ideology, lest they, like Maté, end up making common cause with the most unsavory actors in the world.