“To be purple means to be gifted, hopeful, and sacrificed”—motto of the Violet organization
While the world is distracted by the Covid-19 crisis, scant attention has been paid to events in Syria. The US-led coalition is maintaining a savage multispectrum war on the country, but few are aware of the suffering of the Syrian people as the media have barely reported on the starvation, economic catastrophe, scorched-earth policy, and war crimes directly committed by the US-led coalition and indirectly via their client terrorist groups. All of these are components of the US-led spoiler policy designed to economically reduce Syria to a failed state, a sinister objective they were unable to achieve militarily.
The White Helmets’ Fall from Grace
For seven years of the hybrid war waged against Syria by the US-led coalition, the White Helmets were the flagship manufacturers of much of the propaganda aimed at maintaining the criminalization of the Syrian state, its army, and its allies. Their multimillion-dollar PR image has recently taken a battering, however. From their involvement in the Douma chemical weapon hoax to accusations of their murdering civilians and planting corpses for use as “props” in images used to justify US-led coalition bombings of Syria, the White Helmet organization has been discredited on several occasions and is no longer a pristine brand.
Even prior to the exposure of their collaboration with the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), itself recently exposed as a corrupt and compromised organization, the White Helmets were reported to have participated in various terrorist war crimes including the execution of prisoners of war and civilians. A study carried out by Maxim Grigoriev of the Foundation for the Study of Democracy raised the issue of organ and human trafficking and child abuse by this same group. Grigoriev’s seminal investigation is supported by testimonies I have also collated over my years of reporting on this terrorist-affiliated group.
A discussion I had with a senior UN official two years ago confirmed that many in the UN are aware of these crimes but know that they will never be investigated because the White Helmets are too “politicized”—meaning that the countries funding them will never openly admit that their intelligence asset in Syria was responsible for atrocities committed against the very civilians they claim to defend.
However, the Dutch government did withdraw funding in September 2018 following an investigation that concluded that there was a high risk of funds that were destined for the so-called humanitarian organization would end up in the hands of the various armed groups occupying and controlling the territory where White Helmets exclusively work.
Following the suspicious death of James Le Mesurier, the British military-intelligence founder of the White Helmets, in Istanbul in November 2019, investigations revealed his involvement in fraud and embezzlement of funds destined for the White Helmets. As a consequence, the German government demanded the repayment of 50,000 euros in March 2020 in connection with these financial irregularities. Western media are naturally trying to downplay the seriousness of these findings. A separate in-depth investigation into Le Mesurier’s business activities and covert role in Syria was carried out by the Working Group on Syria, Media and Propaganda and can be read here.
The controversy surrounding the White Helmets and their own members’ carelessness in posting images of themselves carrying weapons and fraternizing with terrorist groups, including Al Qaeda, has damaged their reputation in the public consensus. Yet, the media is still protecting this group as are the primary governments that fund them, the UK being the foremost defender of the construct. As a result, it seems increasingly likely that the White Helmets are going to be quietly shelved at some point in the hope that their crimes will be forgotten amid the Covid-19 chaos that has now swept across the world.
The White Helmets’ Replacement
While not a recent start-up, a group that goes by the name of the Violet Organisation has recently been gaining greater prominence in mainstream media reports covering the Syrian conflict. The Guardian, Middle East Eye, Al Jazeera, Al Araby, TRT World, and others have been increasingly referring to the Violet organization when upholding their long-standing anti–Syrian state narratives. It is worth underscoring that all the media mentioned have a transparent bias toward the “moderate” extremist cause and against the Syrian government and army.
In these more recent reports, the White Helmets are now regularly sidelined as “ambulance staff,” whereas, prior to their apparent fall from grace, mainstream media did not hesitate to heavily promote the group. Instead, the “hope still exists” strapline has now been firmly pinned to the Violet organization in Syria. Who are this group, and where did they come from?
In this, Part 1 of a series for Unlimited Hangout, I will provide information on the origins and sponsorship of the Violet Syria group. I will demonstrate that this group is yet another so-called grassroots outfit operating exclusively in terrorist-governed areas of Syria that is, once again, backed and promoted by the same governments and agencies that have been waging the multispectrum war against Syria and its allies for the last ten years.
Who Are the Violets?
The organization was allegedly founded in Idlib city in 2011 as a “humanitarian” volunteer group distributing food and aid. The group is now registered in Turkey, which may offer the first clue as to its affiliations in the Syrian conflict. A look at its partners and sponsors further increases the suspicion that the group may be following in the footsteps of the White Helmet construct as an instrument of US-allied imperialism.
According to the Violet organization’s website, the group’s aim is to rebuild parts of northern Syria by renovating, decorating, and refreshing parks, schools, and public spaces in Idlib city, which is controlled by Al Qaeda, or Hayat Tahrir Al Sham (HTS) as the organization has been rebranded. This project has been dubbed “Idlib’s Spring,” a throwback to the so-called Arab Spring that was largely orchestrated by US intelligence and that also launched the coalition’s destabilization campaign in Syria. Like the White Helmets that preceded them, the Violets are an organization operating exclusively in terrorist-held areas of Syria while claiming to be “a team of benevolent individuals motivated by love and faith to provide aid to the oppressed and the needy around the world.”
The Violet organization website demonstrates a strong connection to the refugee camps established in northwest Syria and also to the Covid-19 pandemic, which has been exploited to further promote this group’s centers as advancing the health and education of children in the region. Images of children wearing face masks are being exploited by the Violets on social media to raise money for the group.
The Violets boasted an impressive budget of $30 million in 2015–16, a massive sum considering that they allegedly began as a humble start-up consisting of only a few volunteers, which is a storyline similar to that used by the White Helmets. During this period, the Violets claim to have “reached out” to 2.7 million people, another interesting claim when one considers that the entire population of Idlib at this time was scarcely that large and that the Violets have, at maximum, 2,000 volunteers, according to their own website.
A 2011 UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs estimate placed the entire population of Idlib at 1,501,000, though this number may have increased with the influx of armed-group members and their families transferred there after the Syrian Army’s liberation of territory elsewhere in Syria.
Violet Management Team
The current CEO of the Violets, appointed in May 2020, is Hisham Dirani. Dirani is based in Gaziantep. Dirani’s previous experience was as the founder of an organization called Binaa Development, which focused on economic development and “implementing sustainable programs” inside Syria. Binaa had close ties with the UK government’s Department for International Development (DFID), the UN Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) and the extremist-linked Assistance Coordination Unit (ACU). Binaa was also supported by Qatar’s Red Crescent, which was accused of funneling money to the armed groups in 2012 and was subsequently banned from Syria by the Syrian government. Oddly, only the 2015 financial accounts for Binaa are available on their website, as all links to later accounts are not working.
The director of the Violet “intervention” team is Mamoun Kharbout, who previously worked with the Syrian Arab Red Crescent (SARC) in 2012, based in Idlib city. It is interesting that the connection has been made to SARC, perhaps representing an attempt to provide greater credibility for the Violets in order to distance themselves from the leadership of the White Helmets with their bias toward heavily armed groups. SARC was recognized by the International Red Cross Committee in Geneva (ICRC) in 1946. It has a headquarters in Damascus and fourteen branches in the fourteen governorates of Syria with seventy-five sub-branches.
It must also be noted that I have been told by Syrian civilians that members of SARC who are still operating in terrorist-held areas are not averse to working with armed groups and are not always sympathetic toward Syrian government–loyalist civilian populations that live under extremist occupation. While this is anecdotal, it is nevertheless worth mentioning in this context. There are also reports of SARC offices being seized by armed groups in northern Syria, which would suggest a mafia-style dynamic between the militias and any organizations working under their jurisdiction—the organizations may be coerced or incentivized into cooperating with these armed groups.
Another member of the Violet leadership is Fouad Sayed Issa, who is on the organization’s board. According to some reports, Issa was the original on-the-ground operative for the Violets in Idlib city. The organization originally consisted of sixteen-year-old Issa, his father, and three of his friends. Issa now claims that the organization has two thousand members across Syria, with an estimated one thousand based in northwest Syria.
Issa has been quoted by Syrian “opposition” media outlets, such as Enab Baladi, as describing the difficulties in ensuring that Violet members adhere to “humanitarian principles, values, neutrality and impartiality towards the beneficiaries.”
According to Issa, the problem lies with social media, just as it often did for the White Helmets:
“The problem lies outside working hours, primarily through social media sites, where volunteers express their ideas, religious or political affiliations, or personal thoughts. Here comes the organization’s mission to control nonalignment and abuse of others by its employees, especially as the matter harms the organization itself, and this is not easy.”(My emphasis)
Independent media outlet, Clarity of Signal, has provided what is perhaps the most comprehensive cache of White Helmet social media images and publications that expose individual members as armed-group members or sympathizers.
Given past precedent and Issa’s statement, it can be concluded that the Violets’ members work alongside sectarian extremist groups that may include Al Qaeda. A member of the White Helmet organization in Daraa, southern Syria, told me that, if the leader of a White Helmet group is part of Al Nusra Front (Al Qaeda), the whole group will be Al Qaeda. These so-called humanitarian organizations are, by design, sectarian in nature. Neither group appears to include members of religious minorities in Syria, they comprise exclusively Muslim Brotherhood and fundamentalist Sunni Muslim factions. Issa is surprisingly honest, perhaps because he is speaking to a sympathetic media outlet, but he gives a valuable insight into the nature of the Violet organization, as it mirrors that of the White Helmets, which was also described as inherently sectarian by their British intelligence cofounder James Le Mesurier.
One thing the Violets clearly have in common with the White Helmets is a penchant for slick professional publicity campaigns, as demonstrated by the content of their YouTube channel. I will go into greater depth regarding the significance of the photo below later in this article, but it demonstrates that the White Helmets and Violets collaborate closely in areas where Al Qaeda is in charge.
Who Backs the Violets?
The Violets are not shrinking when it comes to their partners. Their array of prominent governmental, UN agencies, and aligned organizations is striking because of the similarity to sponsors of the White Helmets. Despite working in a country that has been savagely impacted by US-led coalition economic sanctions, including those tied to the recently imposed Caesar Law sanctions, the Violets raise donations through the Bank of America, which apparently puts no restrictions on the financing of an organization working in Al Qaeda–held areas. Total “public” donations have amounted to almost $1 million so far this year.
A letter sent to the former US Secretary of State, John Kerry, in 2016, by the Washington-based Charity and Security Network, gives an indication of why the Violets, the White Helmets, the Asfari Foundation, and other US-led coalition aligned organizations might have been exempted from the sanctions:
“Finding a solution to this problem should be a priority for the Departments of Treasury and State. It is necessary to support US foreign policy goals. Many nonprofits carry out work funded by USAID, the State Department and the UN Treasury should support the governmental objectives of these agencies by fostering an environment in which the NPOs are able to access financial services and continue their operations.” (My emphasis)
In other words, those organizations that support US-allied foreign policy goals must be shielded from the economic pressures being brought to bear on the people of the targeted nation that they claim to be “saving” in order to serve the interests of US neocolonialism.
Along with the partners that are prominently displayed on the Violet website, additional sponsors are listed on the bottom of the website’s “Join Us” section. I have taken screenshots of these important backers in case they are removed at some point in the future. They include the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development, the UK’s DFID, and the Asfari Foundation. Significantly, all three are also heavily invested in the White Helmet organization since its establishment in 2013. The White Helmets, notably, were also founded in Gaziantep, Turkey, and Jordan.
The Most Influential Violet Sponsors and Partners: What Does It Mean for Syria?
One of the Violet group’s sponsors missing from their website is Kuwaiti billionaire Sheikh Abdullah Alnouri and his Charity Society, which signed two strategic-partnership agreements in 2019 alongside the Islamic Development Bank and SPARK to “improve access for Syrian refugees to higher education and economic empowerment” in Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, Turkey, and Iraq.
Al Nouri has simultaneously been funding the Violets in Syria. Kuwait has been an ally of the US-led coalition in the war against the Syrian state and has actively supported terrorist groups committing atrocities against the Syrian people. Although Kuwait has, more recently, tried to normalize relations with Syria, the threat of Caesar Law sanctions being levied against them seems to have impeded the advancement of this strategy.
The connection between the SPARK-led education strategy and the Syrian refugees being contained within areas controlled by Al Qaeda (and affiliated groups) will be explored in greater detail in Part 2 of this series.
The remaining sponsors of the Violets are a similar cluster of state-affiliated agencies and governments to those that have funded the White Helmets—all have a clear interest in the removal of the current Syrian government and its president, Bashar Al Assad.
British Government
The British government, via the DFID, is once again involved in the funding of what is effectively another shadow-state construct, operating only in terrorist-controlled territory and incubated in Turkey. That Idlib is controlled by Al Qaeda while the British government is funding another organization working under the direction of a terrorist group seems to be of no concern:
“Most of Idlib is currently under the control of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), an alliance of fighting groups that includes factions formerly aligned with al-Qaeda, that is considered a terrorist organization by the British government.”
Middle East Eye
Asfari Foundation
The Asfari Foundation was set up by the UK-based Syrian oil magnate, Ayman Asfari. Asfari is group chief executive of Petrofac Limited. He is a controversial figure even in Europe, having been previously investigated by the Serious Fraud Office in the UK after allegations of bribery and corruption in the gas and oil industry. Since 2009, Asfari has donated almost £700,000 to the UK Conservative Party, which has been in power since the regime change efforts against Syria began in earnest. He is a member of the Leaders Group, an “elite circle of donors” who are regularly invited to lunch with Tory influencers in return for paying £50,000 per year.
Asfari sits on the advisory boards of Chatham House and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, intelligence-linked think tanks and government-policy influencers in the UK and US, respectively.
Asfari has been instrumental in the creation and financing of many organizations within the billionaire-complex of NGOs that has infiltrated Syria since 2011 alongside the extremist groups. Many of the suspect NGOs within this network have been heavily relied on by Western mainstream media and UN agencies in their effort to blacken the reputation of those fighting terrorism on Syrian soil. Most important, Asfari was behind the establishment of the Syria Campaign, which is, effectively, the White Helmets’ PR agency and a powerful military-intervention lobby targeting Syria.
Save the Children
Save the Children (SC) appears to be one of the Violets’ major partners, appearing often in their Twitter feed. Save the Children is a group hardly immune to controversy. In 2014, they awarded war criminal and “infanticide endorser” Tony Blair, their Global Legacy Award at a gala charity at the Plaza hotel in New York. In 2015, following considerable public and internal condemnation, SC-UK had to apologize for their error of judgement, which damaged the organization’s reputation globally.
In addition, SC workers have been implicated in the exploitation of refugee children, including committing or abetting acts of sexual violence, in Liberia, Guinea, and Sierra Leone by UN Peacekeepers and more than forty UN-linked and independent “aid” agencies, in 2001. Save the Children and the UNHCR “investigated themselves” for this abuse of power by their own employees and, thus, the investigation into these egregious incidents cannot be classed as independent.
Furthermore, the husband of murdered British Member of Parliament (MP), Jo Cox, was accused of “inappropriate behavior” while working for the Save the Children charity in 2015. The Charity Commission found “serious weaknesses” in the charity’s workplace culture following an investigation into its handling of allegations of misconduct and harassment of staff between 2012 and 2015. The chief executive, Justin Forsyth, faced three complaints from female staff of misconduct, and Brendan Cox was accused of sexually assaulting a woman.
Brendan Cox resigned from two of the charities he had established in the memory of his wife, More in Common and the Jo Cox Foundation, after the sexual assault charges failed to disappear. Originally, the complaint was filed as assault and battery, but further legal action against Cox was eventually dropped. The connections between the Jo Cox Foundation, the White Helmets, and British regime-change operations in Syria were investigated by author and Unlimited Hangout founder, Whitney Webb, in a three-part series, which is available here, here, and here.
In addition to a series of past scandals, SC’s policy regarding intercountry adoption of displaced children endorses the questionable strategy that states “where other family-based options are not possible, intercountry adoption has allowed for abandoned, orphaned or children with disabilities to be raised within a loving family from another country.” SC states that “commercial or criminal gain, fraud, child trafficking and deception of birth parents” must not play any part in the adoption process. This policy and its potential subversion by NGOs such as SC and Violet will be analyzed in greater depth in Parts 2 and 3 of this series.
Against Child Trafficking (ACT) is an NGO established in 2008 by Roelie Post, an EU Commission official who exposed the sale of tens of thousands of children from Romania during the 1990s. In 2001, the Romanian government shut down these “intercountry adoption” operations, but the powerful lobby supporting the practice “applied maximum pressure on the Romanian government, the European Commission as well as Roelie Post herself.” Post’s book, The Untold Story of the Romanian Orphans is a must read for comprehending the powerful elite class that protects intercountry adoption agencies while neglecting the rights of the child. ACT is very clear regarding how intercountry adoptions are often a cover for something more sinister:
“Since 2008, ACT (Against Child Trafficking) provides the evidence that intercountry adoption is a legalized form of child trafficking. ACT is critical of the Hague Adoption Convention as it results in a legalized market in children (see Perverse Effects of the Hague Convention).”
Questions must be raised as to who monitors the SC abuse-preventative policies in Idlib when child internment centers or refugee camps are policed by organizations accused of child trafficking and suspected of child abuse (White Helmets) and organizations (the Violets) working with the White Helmets and Al Qaeda–linked armed groups.
In addition, because of SC’s record of mingling with the likes of Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s girlfriend and procurer of underage girls for rich and famous child abusers, the potential for the exploitation of SC’s position within the communities of the displaced and vulnerable worldwide will also be further investigated in Part 3 of this series.
International Rescue Committee
The International Rescue Committee (IRC) is another organization funding the Violets that is mired in controversy. The IRC board comprises some of the world’s most notorious war hawks, including Madeleine Albright, Condoleeza Rice, Colin Powell, and Henry Kissinger, who are responsible for the mass murder of children globally. The “charity” is managed by former UK Labour foreign secretary David Miliband, who joined the organization in 2013 after quitting UK politics.
UK government funding to the IRC was reportedly “frozen” in 2018 after an official investigation concluded that the IRC had “hushed up 37 allegations of fraud, sex abuse, and bribery.” Just as the SC investigated itself over child-abuse accusations, the IRC investigated the allegations against itself. The “wrongdoing” had first been identified by DFID in 2016, a year when DFID had given £92 million to the IRC—64 percent of all UK-based donations made to the group that year. In 2015, DFID funneled £76 million to the IRC.
DFID and the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office are still displayed on the IRC’s funders’ page on their website. In March 2020, the IRC published a job vacancy for a “Senior Advisor, Strategic Partnerships – DFID,” with a salary of £50,000 per year. The ad claims that the “DFID is a long-standing and strategic partner for the IRC. The Senior Advisor will lead, guide and coordinate IRC’s funding focused engagement with DFID.”
The IRC was also involved in the 2001 West African “sex for food scandal” alongside Save the Children, MSF, and the Norwegian Refugee Council (Violet sponsors in bold).
I will go into greater depth regarding the IRC’s potential links to human trafficking and connections to Big Pharma in Part 2 of this series. Whitney Webb has recently exposed the IRC’s role in coordinating ID2020’s pilot scheme for refugee newborns in Myanmar. Miliband’s close links with Bill and Hillary Clinton, George Soros, and John McCain will also be explored in upcoming installments of this series.
In addition, the IRC is also involved in the digitalization of child education in refugee camps and centers. In 2017, the MacArthur Foundation gave Sesame Workshop and the IRC $100 million to “educate young children from displaced Syrian families and help them deal with toxic stress.” Alison Hawver McDowell, a leading researcher into the Fourth Industrial Revolution, has described the Sesame Workshop project thus:
“Sesame Workshop’s program with Syrian refugees is an example of how foundations are paving the way for education to be reinvented as an exercise in data-driven, behavior modification. Over the course of this five-year project, traumatized families will be used to refine scaleable online education and behavioral treatment models that generate data and profit for private interests. These efforts will be subsidized by foundations and made possible with assistance from complicit non-profit actors. The products developed from the digital labor of these children will be deployed not only in future “humanitarian” efforts, but also among the growing ranks of children living in poverty in the United States and other countries. The $100 million was not a charitable award; it was a business investment.”
Qatar Red Crescent
As mentioned earlier, Qatar’s Red Crescent was reportedly banned from Syria by the Syrian government. In 2012, they were found to have been involved in cash-for-arms exchanges with extremist militias. Qatar has been responsible for the financing of many terrorist groups inside Syria, including Al Qaeda. Qatar has also trained and financed the White Helmets, and they have even commissioned fraudulent investigations into alleged Syrian government crimes, including the discredited Caesar report that is the basis for the criminal and savage sanctions that are now being used to further collectively punish Syrian civilians.
Remaining Sponsors and Their Connections to US/UK Intelligence Agencies and the Billionaire “Regime Change” Complex
Above, I have zeroed in on some of the Violet sponsors and will be covering them in greater detail in subsequent installments of this series for Unlimited Hangout. A quick glance at the remaining sponsors further reveals the Violets’ ties to a network of organizations connected to the “regime change” billionaire complex and powerful UN agencies as well as intelligence agencies and governmental offices of countries that are hostile toward the Syrian government.
Shelter Box (SB): An emergency disaster relief NGO providing emergency shelter for displaced people and refugees. SB is directly linked to Oxfam (another organization where Jo and Brendan Cox both worked) whose workers were caught raping girls as young as twelve years old in refugee camps in Haiti in 2011. SB partners include eBay and Airbnb.
Vision Hope (VH): A German based NGO that “builds sustainable communities in war-torn regions.” VH coordinates with donors and organizations, including the World Food Program (WFP), the World Health Organization, UNICEF, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, EuropeAid, the European Union, and Germany’s Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development.
World Vision (WV): A “child protection,” child education, economic development, and disaster relief NGO that claims to focus on ending child poverty. Partners include the Global Fund, WFP, UNICEF, End Violence Against Children, UNHCR, Child Health.
WV is one of the strongest promoters of the Covid-19 narrative in northern Syria in relation to the role of the Violets. In one article, WV stated:
“We continue to do everything we can to support the most vulnerable, and we urge world leaders to prioritize the protection of children from the aftershocks of this pandemic, giving them the chance to reach their potential.”(My emphasis)
CARE: “CARE works around the globe to save lives, defeat poverty and achieve social justice,” according to their website. CARE is partnered with USAID (a CIA outreach agent), UKAID, World Bank, WFP, and UNICEF among others.
OCHA: The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs directly funds the Violets.
The crossover between the coalition-funded White Helmets and the Violets is demonstrated further by the Violets’ collaboration with this now-infamous Al Qaeda auxiliary within the Molham-Team Volunteering project, which also appears to incorporate a number of other US/UK-linked NGOs.
Among the Violets’ backers there is a noticeable focus on the “welfare and education of children” in areas governed by the extremist proxies of the same governments that are financing the Violets and the White Helmets. There is also the history of refugee abuse surrounding some of the more influential donor organizations to consider, an issue of great significance, which will be further explored in subsequent parts of this series.
I have briefly mentioned the controversy surrounding intercountry adoptions or “legalized child trafficking” according to ACT. In June 2020, an open letter, written and signed by David Miliband (IRC), Dr Jihad Qaddour of Syrian Relief and Development connected to the White Helmets and Violet Organisation through the Molhamteam campaigns, Dr Zaher Sahloul of the Al Qaeda “MASH” unit, Syrian American Medical Society (SAMS) also apparently partnering the Violets (see above Tweet), and the Norwegian Refugee Council Secretary General, Jan Egeland, was addressed to the UN. The letter was an appeal for open borders, which could be perceived as facilitating intercountry adoptions and ultimately facilitating illegal trafficking as well.
“Open borders” is a policy endorsed by Doctors Without Borders (MSF) founder Bernard Kouchner, who has a documented role in the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) cross-border organ and human trafficking in Pristina, Kosovo, after the NATO intervention in former Yugoslavia, though he has long denied it. Whitney Webb and I have covered this sinister period in Kosovo’s history and the involvement of White Helmet cofounder James Le Mesurier in an article that can be found here.
In Parts 2 and 3 of this series, I will question why David Miliband’s and Jan Egeland’s names (alongside other UN-linked notables) were found written on the walls of Al Qaeda–controlled buildings in Idlib, not far from the headquarters of Abu Mohammed Al Jolani, the brutal leader of Al Qaeda. Egeland is also the UN Syria adviser, as well as the Secretary General of the Norwegian Refugee Council, which is funding the Violets.
Additionally, Egeland is a Norwegian diplomat and former politician with a career path that includes Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and the International Crisis Group (ICG) —all organizations considered to have a revolving–door relationship with Western intelligence agencies and that have supported and enabled US-allied military adventurism globally.
Egeland supports the extension of two Turkey-Syria border crossings for the delivery of “aid” to Idlib and has condemned the Chinese and Russian vetoes of these proposals. US ambassador to the UN, Kelly Craft, visited the Bab Al Hawa crossing on the Syrian border with Turkey in March 2020. Bab Al Hawa is known locally to be an Al Qaeda trading hub where incoming international “aid” is merchanted by the terrorist organization to provide revenue for the group and its armed militia affiliates. Craft and her entourage met with a delegation of White Helmets in an area that would have been strictly under the supervision of Al Qaeda, but this was left unmentioned in Western media reports.
During her visit, Craft pledged a further $108 million in “aid” to the alleged Al Qaeda haven and described the terrorist-managed crossing stations at Bab Al Hawa and Bab Al Salam as “vital humanitarian cross-border lifelines into Syria.” For Syrians living under Al Qaeda occupation, the “lifeline” serves only the US client terrorist groups, not the civilians living in the areas they control. It is inconceivable that the delegation’s members would not notice the militia controlling the checkpoints. Egeland’s Norwegian Refugee Council is one of a handful of international “NGOs” with a presence in Damascus. The question must be raised, why does Egeland not refer to the potential for “aid” being hijacked by the armed groups?
Egeland also took part in the “World Is Watching” save-Idlib video with a focus on one million children. Other participants in the video were Oxfam, UNICEF, Save the Children, World Vision, CARE, Mercy Corps, and David Miliband—all sponsors of the Violet organization.
Cofounder of Mercy Corps, Ellsworth Culver, was “credibly” accused by his daughter of serial sexual abuse over a period of four years. Mercy Corps have aligned with the Violets and White Helmets and the majority of their backers in lobbying to thwart the full and final liberation of Syria from terrorist occupation.
Violet Connections to White Helmets and Al Qaeda–Linked Armed Groups in Syria.
The collaboration between the sectarian extremist-linked White Helmets and the Violet organization is evident from images and information published on the groups’ respective social media accounts and websites. The tweet above, from Fares Shehabi, head of the Aleppo Chamber of Commerce, refers to the exodus of extremist armed gangs from eastern Ghouta after liberation in the first quarter of 2018. Al Qaeda, the Violets, and the White Helmets welcomed the expelled mercenaries and their families to Idlib.
The similarity in PR campaigns between the Violet and White Helmet groups is striking. There is a concerted cross-marketing campaign on Twitter in particular, as shown by the above Tweet. The exploitation of children to elicit sympathy and to raise money is a marketing strategy employed by both groups. Indeed, the White Helmets were made famous in part thanks to the flurry of images of their members carrying “rescued” children to camera, and the Violets have essentially copied this tactic.
The Idlib Spring campaign (painting Idlib purple), in partnership with the White Helmets via the Molhamteam, raised $370,000 in donations in 2019.
The “Peoples Glory” campaign was another collaboration between the White Helmets and the Violets that was launched just as Maarat Al Numan was liberated from terrorist occupation by the Syrian Arab Army in 2019. The campaign focused on monitoring the groups of displaced people from the city during the battles for the area.
For both organizations, children figure prominently in their narratives and offer a powerful pretext for their existence as organizations within the Al Qaeda–controlled regions of a country under attack by powerful, mostly Western, interests. These so-called humanitarian organizations have long been tasked with producing the essential “evidence” needed to prosecute the Syrian state in the court of global public opinion so as to manufacture consent abroad for an ongoing hybrid war against the Syrian people.
White Helmets and Violets Poster Campaign Promoting the Douma “Chemical Attack” Narrative, April 2018
I will now come back to the image, shown earlier in the article, depicting the Violets and the White Helmets jointly displaying posters protesting the alleged Syrian government/military “chemical weapon” attack in Douma, eastern Damascus in April 2018. The first point to make is that these images were uploaded to the Violet gallery page on the April 9, 2018, less than forty-eight hours after images from the claimed chemical attack had been produced by the White Helmets and the Jaish Al Islam militia in Douma. Those scenes can be seen reproduced on these posters in Idlib.
Syrian conflict researcher and author Philip Watson reviewed the images on the posters. He concluded that the images may have been doctored and that additional bodies are included in the poster. An extra dead baby was added to the poster—one assumes for maximum effect in appealing to a Western audience. The addition/changes that Watson pointed out are shown in the collage below. The link to the original video showing the Douma “victims” and these observations is available here.
Watson, other researchers, journalists, and even BBC producer Riam Dalati maintain that the Douma “victim” bodies were arranged for a macabre photo opportunity that led to the unlawful aggression against Syria by the US/UK interventionist military cartel. Dalati concluded that the “hospital scenes were staged” and it has been concluded that this would have been done primarily by the White Helmets—a claim that was later corroborated by analysis and evidence given by experts connected to the OPCW investigation and investigated by the Working Group on Syria, Propaganda and Media in their report “How the OPCW’s Investigation of Douma Was Nobbled.” Perhaps the most comprehensive investigation into the staging of “victim” scenes was carried out by researcher Stephen McIntyre, which can be read here.
Coming back to the poster, Watson told me that, although scenes of victims at Douma were obviously manipulated, the Violets and White Helmets adding another child to the poster canvas could just be an attempt to amplify the impact on their intended audiences.
I appreciate Watson’s caution, but I would add that, in the midst of a conflict where resources would normally be limited, a banner of this type should reliably contain an undoctored, hurriedly photographed image due to the chaos that would follow such an “attack.” This banner was produced less than forty-eight hours after the event, and the body of a baby was added to provoke maximum outrage, demonstrating a cynicism not aligned with any normal “humanitarian” response. The manipulation and exploitation of murdered children should never be normalized.
The White Helmets and the Violets have effectively used the images of dead children to persuade a Western public that a chemical attack took place, an attack that has now been exposed as an elaborate hoax. Yet, not one of the “child rights” defenders financing both organizations have an issue with the possibility of the White Helmets being an accessory to infanticide and the Violets amplifying White Helmet crimes against children in an aggressive advertising campaign for a US-led criminal military intervention that would further endanger children.
Conclusions: Who Can Guarantee the Safety of Syrian Refugee Children?
The Violet organization sits at the bottom of a long chain of high-profile NGOs. As shown in this article, many of the NGOs and UN agencies that are heavily involved in children’s rights, development, and education also have a disturbing history of abusing the very children whose lives are put into their care. The Violets work with the White Helmets and extremist groups that run mafia-style operations to raise revenue for their operations. Historically, the organ trade— sometimes called the Red Market—and human trafficking are among the most horrifyingly lucrative ventures in conflict situations. Twenty-one million human beings worldwide are victims of human trafficking according to various reports. Illegal organ trade generates up to $1.7 billion in revenue worldwide.
All of these NGOs are backed and supported by a powerful complex of billionaires and other key players in the global oligarchy networks. It is this complex that benefits from the amplification of their mission statements by aligned media outlets and influential policy makers. Investigations into accusations of misconduct are seemingly examined in house, which has the potential to underplay, and even cover up, the scale of the problem.
For example, Peter Dalglish, a high-profile “humanitarian” who held multiple UN posts was recently sentenced to nine years in jail in Nepal after having been charged with pedophilia and the sexual assault of young boys in his care. In 2002, Dalglish had worked in Nepal as chief technical adviser under the UN Child Labor Program. He was also a recipient of the Order of Canada and founder of the “Street Kids International” NGO, which merged with Save the Children in 2015 to provide “support” for child victims of conflict and for street children. Is Dalglish representative of the philanthropy-capitalist networks running the child protection industry, or is he an isolated case?
During an interview in 2019, the head of forensics in Damascus, Dr. Zaher Hajjo, told me that he believed Idlib city and border areas with Turkey to be an organ and human trafficking nexus for the armed groups and their auxiliaries, including the White Helmets and the Violets. Liberation of these areas would likely expose the heinous trade in human beings and human organs by these Western-supported groups, according to Hajjo, who worked in Idlib as a forensic scientist until the city was seized by Al Qaeda in 2015.
In subsequent articles in this series, I will further expose organizations that work in the same areas of Syria as the White Helmets and Violets and their connections to global child trafficking. I will analyze the risks of the education programs being introduced in child-internment centers managed by the Violets and their associates. I will also look at how Covid-19 combined with conflict and neocolonialist destabilization strategies has influenced the governance of refugee centers and increased the risk of exploitation of their inhabitants.
The question we must ask ourselves is do we wholeheartedly trust these organizations to genuinely care for the rights of children? Is there the slightest doubt in our minds that their intentions may not be as benevolent as their PR agencies would have us believe? Vulnerable children the world over, who risk being trafficked and exploited, deserve nothing less than gold-standard assurances that the organizations tasked with protecting them will not be involved in their abuse.
The future of these children depends on concerned members of the public pressuring our governments and associated agencies for transparency and accountability and to end the interventionist wars that drive displaced children into the hands of criminal and predatory trafficking cartels that often disguise themselves as child advocates. These crimes should be prevented, not “investigated” years after the damage has been done by the very organizations that committed them in the first place.
