Radio 4 Programme Next Week Asks If the Syrian White Helmets Were Really Heroes

Here’s another programme on the radio asking a very interesting question. Radio 4’s Mayday programme next Friday, 26th March 2021, examines whether the White Helmets, the paramilitary force co-founded by James Le Mesurier in Syria, were the heroes they were made out to be. The blurb for the programme in the Radio Times runs

Omnibus edition of the BBC Sounds podcast released last year. It tells the story of the White Helmets Syrian civil defence force co-founder James Le Mesurier. When Le Mesurier fell to his death in Turkey in November 2019, he left behind a tangle of truths and lies. The documentary investigates claims that, far from being heroes, the White Helmets are part of a very elaborate hoax. Le Mesurier-his detractors say-was a British secret agent pulling the strings, so when his body was found there were a lot of questions to answer. Presented by Chloe Hadjimatheou.

I’ve come across a number of pieces from left-wing websites and news media suggesting that the White Helmets really weren’t the heroic figures they were presented as in the western media, fighting to defend people of all religions against government tyranny or sectarian paramilitaries in the Syrian civil war. These sites suggested that reports of some of the atrocities the Syrian government was supposed to have carried out on its own people were false. They had been deliberately staged to provoke western intervention and the government’s regime change. The American Neocons once again want the current dictator gone, because he’s an Alawi. This is a Shi’a sect somewhat similar to the Druze. They’re very unorthodox by the standards of Sunni Islam, but the regime is allied to that other Shi’a country, Iran. I think it might also be allied to Russia as well. In any case, it’s been on the list of countries whose governments the Neocons want overthrown since the 1990s. And I think oil also looms very large in this, as its connected to another oil pipeline running from Europe to the Middle East.

The programme’s on at 9.00 pm, if you want to listen to it.

Tags: Alawis, Atrocities, BBC Sounds, Chloe Hadjimatheou, Druze, Intelligence Agencies, James Le Mesurier, Mayday, Neocons, Oil Industry, Oil Pipeline, Paramilitaries, Radio 4, Shi'a, White Helments