Lebanese Hostages in Syria and Western Media Propaganda

The release of the Lebanese pilgrims who were kidnapped in Syria more than a year and a half ago was not big enough news for Western media, or even for Arab oil and gas media. The story is embarrassing for those in Western media who have been promoting and romanticizing the armed groups of the Syrian “revolution.” Worse, the captors were in fact very moderate and “secular” (any Islamist group in Syria that is not tied directly to al-Qaeda earns the moniker of “secular” by Western governments and media).

Lebanese pilgrims on their way from visiting Shia religious sites in Iraq were kidnapped because they were Shia. Liwa Asifat Ash-Shamal (the Northern Storm Brigade), a group affiliated with the Free Syrian Army, stopped the bus carrying the pilgrims traveling with their wives and children. The women and children were released, but only after the captors proudly identified themselves as members of the Free Syrian Army.

As is always the case with the Free Syrian Army, the command later denied what other members and commanders have said regarding the claim of responsibility. And like all typical cases of sectarian kidnapping by the Free Syrian Army and its other “moderate” and “secular” affiliates, the Free Syrian Army (and Qatari and Saudi propaganda outlets) claimed at first that the pilgrims were Hezbollah fighters. But that lie did not stand for long: The footage of the hostages made it clear that those were not fighters. In fact, the pilgrims were mostly part of the Amal Movement, and the pilgrimage was run by a religious travel agency run by the Amal movement in south Beirut. As in all cases relating to Syria, Western media initially repeated the lie of the Free Syrian Army and of the Asifat Ash-Shamal gang without bothering to inquire about the case or to do any independent reporting.

Western media have become so propagandistic about the Syrian “revolution” that correspondents (operating from Beirut and relying almost always on staff composed of March 14 Lebanese) don’t refrain from engaging in fundraising for the armed groups. Loveday Morris of The Washington Post wrote a tear-jerking article about the financial needs of not the “moderate” and “secular” groups who exist only in the imagination of Western governments but of what she termed “the moderate Islamist” armed groups. There are now distinctions being made between the jihadi Bin Ladenites and the moderate and reasonable jihadi Bin Ladenites: There is al-Qaeda and al-Qaeda-light. The groups that receive lavish funding from Qatar and Saudi Arabia are said to be deprived of cash.

The pilgrims spoke of the horror of their experience, but that was not something that Western media wanted to bother with. They were made to watch summary executions, including one execution of somebody whose only crime was being Christian. One of the hostages (al-Jazeera has been calling them muhtajazin, or “those under arrest”) spoke about the blatant sectarian bigotry of the captors, but his comrades (and others) later presumably pressed him to refrain from talking about the sectarian dimension. They spoke about cash payments being made to the captors by the representative of Saad Hariri and Saudi intelligence, Lebanese MP, Okab Sakr.

No matter how many sectarian crimes and war crimes are committed by Syrian armed groups, Western media will insist that they are revolutionary (and since when have Western media become keen on revolutions and revolutionaries?). For a year and a half, the families of the hostages lived in total oblivion according to Western media. The mawkishly sentimental stories about Syria can’t extend to the victims of the heroes of the Western colonial agenda in the Middle East. There were no interviews in Western media with the families of the hostages. What is even more bizarre, is that Western media have even internalized the sectarian outlook of Syrian militant groups, according to which all Shia and Alawis are shabiha who deserve death, or at least some captivity and torture.

There will come a time when the real story of the Syrian conflict is written. The story will bear no resemblance whatsoever to the prevailing narrative in Western media about the glorious “Syrian revolution” led by “secular” and “moderate” forces. But it will be a long time when a corrective story is published, and when that time comes, it will be too late, far too late.