Originally appeared at TASS; Translated by J.Hawk exclusively for SouthFront
TASS Interview with the Director of the New Challenges and Threats Department of the Russian Foreign Ministry I.I. Rogachev, February 19, 2019:
Q: How would you comment on the situation around the placement in Western countries of “white helmets” evacuated from Syria in July 2018? According to media reports, some of them settled in Western countries such as UK and Canada, others remain in Jordan. What is the story behind it?
the Director of the New Challenges and Threats Department of the Russian Foreign Ministry I.I. Rogachev
A: I’d like to remind that when Syrian forces with Russian air support cleared the south-western de-escalation zone of terrorists, including the Golan heights sector, our Western partners decided in July 2018 to evacuate the pseudo-humanitarian White Helmet activists from Syria. They were allocated Jordanian refugee camps for Syrians as a temporary measure, until the Western countries which vouched for them, including UK, Germany, Canada, Netherlands, France, and others, placed them on their own territory.
I’d like to also emphasize that unfortunately this dubious operation took place with the participation of a respected international organization, namely UNHCR, which did the actual White Helmet evacuation from Syria to Jordan. And as the Russian MFA noted at the time, any UNHCR support for the provocative operations of the “white helmets” is at best a major mistake and at worst political involvement and denial of humanitarian principles of neutrality, independence, humaneness, and impartiality. Apparently Western diplomats forced not only UNHCR but also Jordanian authorities to believe that white helmets would not stay long in Jordan. But they are there to this day.
The evacuation itself says a lot. First, it shows who really makes the decisions concerning white helmets, including both the absolutely crucial ones, such as the one to cease operations and resettle all over the world, and all the other ones as well.
Secondly, everything went perfectly smoothly right up to the last moment, namely evacuation from Jordan, which also speaks to the complete control over the organization, presence of order and discipline within its ranks, allowing it to operate stealthily and in an organized manner.
What’s interesting from my point of view is that White Helmets are not treated like other Syrian refugees, but are under a certain privileged regime. That’s how one deals with valued collaborators in a dangerous situation, people who rendered a certain sensitive favor, did their job, and now they have to be bailed out. Does it not remind one of how the US evacuated collaborating Vietnamese, Afghan interpreters, and other similar groups who, due to their collaboration with the US, did not win respect of their compatriots, to put it mildly?
Q: But something went wrong with White Helmets.
A: The initially promised 3-4 weeks to resettle White Helmets in the West proved unrealistic, in part due to their obvious criminal activities of the pseudo-humanitarians.
Russia said many times that White Helmets are provocateurs, facilitators of the most dangerous of terrorist movements, opponents of the counter-terror operations by the Syrian government supported by the Russian government. They were the producers and source of a range of cynical fakes in order to disinform the international audience, prevent Syria stabilization, and also block key humanitarian goals including the voluntary return of Syrian refugees.
It’s evident that their checkered past caused many of them to remain in Jordan without clear future prospects. The official and benign reason for their presence in Jordan is the fact that since early 2019, there were 8 children born to their families, which means it’s undesirable to move them. But we all know that’s not the real reason.
Q: So you want to say that Western sponsors of White Helmets realized they are a threat even to them?
A: No matter how hard the sponsors of this special project try to show the true nature of White Helmets, the truth about their crimes is breaking through, including thanks to independent journalists and activists. For example, the report by Maksim Grigoryev, the director of the Foundation for Studying Problems of Democracy, presented at an event opposing the White Helmets in New York on December 20, 2018, organized by Russia’s UN mission jointly with the Syrian one.
Westerners simply fear for the safety of own citizens and can’t guarantee the White Helmets they take in have no more contact with terrorists and are not terrorists themselves.
We’re talking, at a minimum, about those who facilitated terrorist activities and, at the maximum, about active members of terror organizations. Thus fear is justified. It would seem that Western partners do not wish to invite such potential threats into their countries and are trying to hand over this hot potato to one another. I won’t be surprised that in the end pseudo-humanitarians who participated in terrorist activities won’t enter any Western country but will be sent to some third country.
Q: On the bases of the White Helmets example, can we speak of presence of double standards in foreign policy?
A: Yes, that’s exactly it. What is more, one cannot claim that leading Western powers now place fighting terrorism above their own opportunistic political interests, which means international counter-terrorism cooperation is rife with selective approaches where terrorists are divided into “bad ones” and “not so bad ones”. States are forced to accept the concept of “countering violent extremism” with its dangerous elements, creating conditions to change “inconvenient” governments.
The main consideration of the Western sponsors is presenting those who perform their assigned tasks in the best possible light, creating an image of “peace emissaries”, in order to continue destabilizing the political environment under that cover.
For our part, we are determined to continue actively advancing and defending Russian foreign policy goal of ensuring that White Helmets-perpetrated crimes in Syria and attempts to deceive the international community, including through staged actions in order to place the blame for using chemical weapons to Syrian forces and any other terrorist activities, will be thoroughly investigated and turned over to law enforcement.
