Thread by @EHSANI22

3-Recall how after 09/11, democracy promotion became an instrument for combatting terrorism. G.W Bush : "It is the policy of the US to seek & support growth of democratic movements & institutions in every nation & culture, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world"

4-State Dept under Condozeezza Rice embarked on Democracy Promotion initiative that kept asking for more congressional funding of activists throughout the region. Even allies like #Egypt were included. Anti-Govt Activists in both #Egypt & #Syria were funded by the State Dept

5-Mubarak became aware of such activities w start of the uprising. He was livid when he found out of the US funding & called the Obama WH to furiously complain. The new Admin was largely unaware of the 5-6 year old State Dept initiative & funding (story from a private source)

6-In #Syria , Wikileaks provides detailed account of how State Dept initiative worked through American Embassy in Damascus. The Wikileaks book lists a cable from detailing how Razan Zeitouneh (known activist later kidnapped by Ghouta Armed Groups) was working w @USEmbassySyria

7-The State Dept's Democracy Promotion funding of Syrian activists included training on the use of social media & the financing of the purchase of Satellite phones. Again, this was budgeted for by the large State Dept program from as early as 2004-2005

8-As soon as the events of Tunisia/Egypt reached #Syria , activists were ready. "The Syrian Revolution" Facebook page & other social media platforms were quickly setup. Add @AlJazeera to the mix and voila - The Spontaneous Arab Spring was now in full swing in Syria

9-As activists hoped/expected & got ready for the Arab Spring to reach Syria, so did Islamists sharing the Moslem Brotherhood ideology. They also hoped/expected and were ready. The two independent groupings shared the same goal - Seeing the Regime Toppled & Gone

10-Activists who never carried arms had their contacts & were trained to work w Western Media. The latter saw Syrian uprising through the lens of these activists who seemed young, westernized, eloquent and have a noble cause - Transition Syria away from dictatorship to democracy

11-For Syrian uprising to follow the Tunisian/Egyptian model, it had to stay peaceful. Activists like Razan Zeitouneh & many others coming out in city squares were. The Western Media & Think Tank experts covered this group framing the uprising exclusively as good versus evil

12-Again, in order to maintain this good versus evil narrative, taking up arms against the state was either willingly or unwillingly ignored. When it was mentioned, the Opp initially blamed the killing of Syrian soldiers on the State itself which was supposedly killing defectors

13-Never mind that @joshua_landis reported, barely weeks after events of Daraa, , how relatives of his extended family were shot & killed in coastal area. Such reports were largely ignored & when they were reported by the Western press, they were viewed as "isolated incidents"

14-While historians & researchers will have the last word on how peaceful the protests were and when it turned into an armed insurgency, I believe that the incident of Jisr-al-Shugour in June 2011 was the most identifiable evidence supporting the early signs of an armed uprising

15-I have told in previous tweets how the US knew through Eavesdropping on communication devices that it was the Opp and citizens who killed the soldiers rather than the story that the Opp promoted at the time that these were defecting soldiers killed by their own superiors

16-Barely 4 weeks later: “One of many grim videos to emerge from Syrian city of Hama purported to show the body of protester Ibrahim Kashoush after his throat had been cut by the security forces" wrote the Guardian on July 5, 2011, Original song & then gruesome video went viral

17-Every Western media outlet reported the story as "fact". Not one doubted the tale told by the Opp. The state was so upset by the song that it ordered its intel to find the man and have his throat cut out. What is there not to believe? This was a clear war between Good and Evil

18-The "Yalla Erhal Ya Bashar" song and the brutal death of its singer became synonyms with evil. It wasn't till Dec 2016 (over 5y later) that a real reporter @James__Harkin decided to look into the story. It was all one big lie. Singer was still alive gq-magazine.co.uk/article/syria-…

19-How much coverage did @James__Harkin 's story receive by rest of the media? To put mildly, not much. Did it cast any doubt on credibility of the Opp? Hardly. Should the media have doubted the other stories told to them? What for? Evil was Evil & they were on the "right side"

20-Through my personal involvement in Syrian crisis, I had met an amazing Opp activist who was from Daraa and was present during early days. We remained close & in contact till he was captured by #ISIS . Many of us who knew him now believe that he was killed. What about Daraa?

21-The Daraa activist (won't mention his name out of respect) confirmed to me (and others) that the tale of the children whose nails were supposedly pulled out is not fully truthful. Yes, they were arrested and later released but no nails were pulled. Is this important? Yes & No

22-As many of us expected, any student of Syria's modern history ought to have known that Assad was extremely unlikely to follow on the footsteps of Ben Ali or Mubarak by handing the keys and leaving. He was expected to fight all the way till the end & use whatever it takes

23-Where the Media saw Good fighting Evil and never wanted to present the two sides of the conflict & then let their readers decide (isn't this what journalism was supposed to look like?), reporters turned themselves into advocates from day one and never looked back.

24-Where Assad & the state saw the fingerprints of Islamists and Moslem Brotherhood activists spread throughout the uprising, the media was so married to its morally comfortable good versus evil narrative that it refuses to report or investigate what seemed obvious to rest of us

25- Media/Think Tanks & others had a handy way to deal with those who questioned the accepted narrative - Brand those voices as "Assadists". This single word was the quick defense mechanism that was used to silence & squash those who asked questions. This continues till today