The authorities of the city of Damascus have been forced to cut water supplies in the city for a few days, after militants polluted the water with diesel.
Photo: FAN
Water supplies, coming into the city of Damascus, have been turned off by the city’s authorities for a few days, after militants polluted the water with diesel, the Reuters news agency reported on Friday. Currently, the city uses its water reserves.
The al-Fija spring, which is used to supply Damascus with water, is located is in the militant-held Wadi Barada valley, to the northwest of the city, in a mountainous area near the Lebanese border.
According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, while the government controls the most part of the surrounding territory, on Friday, the air power carried out several aerial attacks and the Syrian Army shelled the militant-held area. As a military news outlet of the Hezbollah, an ally of the Syrian government, reported, militants, stationed in the Wadi Barada valley, had refused to leave the area, and, as a result, the Syrian Armed Forces launched an offensive against them on Friday’s morning.
OK, we need to add another thing on to-learn list of syrian army: take and secure crucial strategic infrastructure.
Well, this is one time where I really wish I had the time to volunteer at SouthFront. SF is reporting a legitimate piece on something newsworthy, but much of it is taken from the original Reuters piece. The Reuters piece was, unfortunately, a carefully-worded piece of English-language propaganda designed to set the narrative for the many outlets that would use it as a basis for their reporting. I’m not suggesting SF did anything wrong, but a non-native English speaker or someone who didn’t know that they were using language manipulation at Reuters would be unaware of the intent and effect. Reuters left out much through omission, and minimize the grave nature of this act in their editing. If you Google this or do a search on Twitter for “damascus water”, you’ll see that most news outlets repeated the Reuters wording in their reports.
A few examples of pro-head-chopper Reuters’ subtle language manipulation:
It was not pollution When you intentionally dump a toxic substance directly into drinking water so people who drink it get sick or die, you are poisoning the water supply, not polluting it. There is no ambiguity about where the al Fija mountain spring water is headed – it has been the major drinking water source for Damascus for the last three thousand years. Pollution is used (in American English) to describe a much broader set of harmful acts, but those acts are usually not committed with the sole intent to poison people. This act by the head-choppers (al Nusra I believe at Wadi Barada) had – as it’s ONLY intent – poisoning Damascus residents. Using the word ‘contaminate’ is marginally more accurate than ‘polluting’, but again that word speaks nothing to the motives of the head-choppers. Poisoning was their intent. The fact that the Damascus Water Authority detected it quickly and kept it out of the Damascus distribution system does not make it any less poisonous – it would have sickened people that drank it.
It was a petroleum-smelling product. That’s all the water authority knows. The head-choppers said nothing. It could have been diesel fuel or gasoline or some kind of industrial solvent or maybe even insecticide. Nobody knows for certain, and Reuters knows that. Diesel fuel ‘pollution’ just sounds less harmful than ‘unknown poisonous petroleum product’.
It was an overt act of terrorism Reuters loves to fling that word around at anything they see the Syrians, Russians, Iranians or Hezbollah do, yet they curiously avoid using it even once here. It defies logic that this act fits the exact definition of terrorism, yet Reuters lulls the audience into thinking of it like an industrial accident. Oops! Just a little pollution.
It was a war crime committed by Western/GCC/Israeli-backed rebels. This needs no explanation. Reuters would have described it as such if the Syrian Army poisoned a rebel city’s water supplies. Why is it just ‘pollution’ here?
It was intentionally done by al Nusra Reuters at least suggests ‘militants’ are directly responsible, but fail to do the very basic journalistic legwork of identifying the perpetrators. Someone on Reddit suggested the rebranded al Nusra held that Wadi (river valley) the last few years. I don’t know for sure, but I’m not a ‘news service’ like Reuters. Why do they obscure the specific identity of the rebel group when they have a good idea who did it?
Al Nusra previously threatened to poison the same water source. They had cut the water supply lines to Damascus several times in the last few years. Seems like a pertinent background ‘fact’ that would help explain the current situation. Reuters omits this like the current act of terror was just some random thing they thought up on Friday because they were being attacked by Syrian forces.
Syrian Observatory for Human Rights is not an independent, nor a very credible source. Reuters has many contacts on either side of the war. Why do they prominently name this one-man shop without qualifying it as a ‘pro-rebel, western-funded NGO’? I see Reuters took the time to explain that Hezbollah was a Syrian government ally (which damn near everyone knows), yet repeatedly cites SOHR without the least bit of qualification as if it’s a neutral, credible source.
Reuters is more clever than most, but this is a case study in information warfare, manipulative use of language and controlling the narrative. If they can introduce neutral or deceptive wording early enough in negative news about their rebel head-choppers, they know it will automatically be repeated thousands of times by others, further pinning the narrative they are trying to promote. Anyone remotely familiar with U.S. military psychological operations should recognize this tactic at once as Grey PsyOps – they teach it as part of the U.S. military PSYOPS doctrine. I’m not suggesting the U.S. military’s 4th PSYOPS Group or 8th MISB is running Reuters – the U.S. military is prohibited from running psyops on U.S. citizens (for what that’s worth). It’s just obvious ‘Someone’ is practicing their craft at Reuters.
Any ‘news’ that emanates from Reuters should be considered carefully. One needs to assume some of it is factual, but then determine what Reuters is trying to make you think by the way they word their articles and present facts. Eventually, it just jumps out at you when you see it.
Good comment on the “manipulative use of language” by Reuters . They are owned by the Rothchild’s so they may have taught PSYOPS to the US military.
Thank you for routing out the manipulation. You should copy your comment and post it at the reuters site, as well as any site that carries the manipulated version.
Good work.
Al Nusra is now openly admitting that they poisoned the Damascus water supply because the Syrian Army is trying to take back Wadi Barada from them. Just like in Aleppo, the Syrian government is offering them safe passage to Idlib if they put down their arms. The Nusra head-choppers in Wadi Barada refused the deal and are under the insane impression that they can somehow stand their ground and hold the Wadi.
And since poisoning the water supply to 5 million Damascus-area civilians didn’t work like they hoped, western-backed al Nusra has now placed charges in and is threatening to blow the main water tunnels to Damascus. They made a video of this latest threat from inside the tunnels and posted it online. @maytham956 links to it, but the head-choppers are speaking in Arabic.
If they do blow the tunnels, I expect Reuters to choke out something like “Regime mercilessly cuts water to its own citizens again claiming damaged tunnels – blames rebels”
These militants couldn’t get much worse as humans – they are criminals. This is warfare against the civil population and infrastructure. Poisoning wells is archaic tactic of warfare, the original intent being to completely disrupt localized civilian life and make an area uninhabitable. Nothing but vengeful, self serving mercenaries.
The bigger picture is that Wadi Barada is a small village near Madaya. Reports say that the Syrian army has intensified its attacks on rebel held Madaya since the fall of East Aleppo. In this context one report speaks of barrel bombs on Wadi Barada. Maybe somebody is taking revenge. But it could even be that some tank lorry with fuel was bombed in the area.
BS… the terrorists spiked the water supply in retaliation for the army moving against them.
Don’t make excuses for goat-fucker murderers.
Kill every last one of the bearded goat-fuckers…
This is why I oppose allowing these dogs to leave one area for another. They will not stop attacking Syrian civilians, until they are ALL DEAD…and they all NEED to be dead before Syria can have peace.
Does this really translate into the US government/CIA did it.