This year's oscars have forged ahead and broken new ground in the fight against bigotry and intolerance. As is often the case, the movie industry is leading the way in acceptance and diversity, spearheading the fight for civil rights and mutual respect. It's to this end that the 89th academy awards are a historic victory for humanity - today we witness the first ever academy award presented to a terrorist organisation.
The so-called 'White Helmets' have been awarded the 'Best Short Documentary' award for their Netflix short. They're a group that has come together in Syria to help rebuild, ration supplies and rescue people from the hardships of war - their official name is the Syrian Civil Defence, and they're on a shoestring budget, funded only by personal donations and their drive to save their country.
Except exactly zero things in that previous run-on sentence are true.
The 'White Helmets' take their name from the distinctive safety helmets they wear, initially issued to them in Turkey where they formed. They, and several NGOs refer to themselves as the Syrian Civil Defence, which is curious because an internationally-recognised Syrian Civil defence already exists and has been officially registered with the UN since the 1950s. At first glance it may seem coincidental; they've selected a name for themselves that lends them credibility and they may not have known about the actual Civil Defence organisation... This choice of name, though, belies their true purpose. They've specifically selected the name of an existing, respected institution in an attempt to usurp their credibility - credibility they desperately need to be able to 'sell' themselves as a benevolent rebuild and rescue operation.
The entire point of the White Helmets is their image. For a group that claims to operate in an open warzone with little funding, their videos have suspiciously high production values and they have an extremely consistent internet presence. Or, it would be suspicious if they actually were operating in a warzone or had funding problems. Since their inception, the UK government has funded them to the tune of around $40 million USD, with the US, France and others also offering so-far undisclosed funds. In similar situations, the US typically eclipses the UK in terms of funding so it stands to reason that they're one of the best-funded groups involved in the Syrian war. It's also worth noting that while money is being poured into what is effectively a propaganda outfit, western financial sanctions have been placed on Syria imposing a state of near-famine and perpetual fuel deficiency. Further, the White Helmets' leadership is permanently stationed in Turkey, not Syria.
Foreign funding doesn't necessarily colour the organisation though, does it? It does indeed invite strong suspicion, especially given the immense volume of funding and the fact that the NATO countries providing it are explicitly involved with fomenting and escalating the war, supporting armed forces against the government and various overt and covert operations aimed at undermining it, but it doesn't specifically demonstrate any wrongdoing within the organisation proper. Unfortunately, or fortunately, depending on your perspective, the White Helmets operatives themselves have no problem with brazenly and publicly working with known jihadi groups such as the Al-Zinki Movement (AZM) and the overarching Al-Qaeda groups like the Al Nusra Front (ANF), who keep changing their name to avoid the known terrorism list - I believe their latest name is Anhrar Al-Sham.
The Al-Zinki movement is a particluarly nasty group. They've received widespread media attention for executing a 12 year old for 'using Allah's name in obscenity' (quite literally the equivalent of uttering 'jesus christ' when surprised or frustrated), and made public statements justifying the execution by claiming he was actually 16 (?!). They've executed men for 'wizardry', and have been discovered firing Chlorine-gas-loaded mortar rounds into population centres and blaming nearby Russian helicopters for the attack (the claim backfired when the helicopters were identified as unarmed medical flights).
BBC4, for some reason, has a certain fondness for them. Back in 2015 they ran a documentary where one of their reporters embedded with AZM, following them around to show 'what it's like on the front lines'. The video footage was nothing special, mostly just gunfire exchanges from within cover and background dialogue from a nearby AZM checkpoint, but it was quickly noticed that several fighters were wearing White Helmets gear - they were fighting on the frontlines, alongside a group best known for excuting children. The documentary was pulled from the BBC4 website, but the damage was done - and in an amusing turn of events, the next time the reporter was embedded with the AZM, they guided him into a live mortar-fire zone, presumeably to be killed.
This wasn't an isolated occurence though, it was just one of the more amusing ones - there is no end to the photo and video evidence of known White Helmets working with ANF and even ISIS, often appearing in execution videos or posing in photographs with dead soldiers and/or civilians. I'll include some examples below.
The group's actual rescue work is, in many cases, highly questionable too. Very few civilians in newly-liberated East-Aleppo had even heard of the group; others reported that they were a part of Al-Qaeda and did nothing for the civilians. This was echoed more strongly in Idlib, where many civilians reported that the White Helmets hoarded any aid (food, medicine, clothing etc.) and only bothered to rescue rebel fighters. Further, there have been several instances where they've been caught staging their rescue videos, and their promotional material seems to show them rescuing the same accident-prone children again, and again, and again, and again.
This is far longer than I meant for it to be, so I'll leave you with one final thought:
Khaled Khatib, the cinematographer meant to receive the award, had his US visa cancelled for being a potential threat to national security.
Post last edited by aldra at 2017-02-28T04:05:27.063723+00:00
