The US and allies are concerned about the rescue of members of the so-called White Helmets after the increasing territories in the southwest and other regions liberated by the Syrian Government.
The fate of close to 1,000 White Helmets members and their families has come under discussion by several countries including the US, Canada, UK and France, as stated by CNN according to a diplomatic source and two administration officials.
The White Helmets, who also name themselves the Syrian Civil Defense (SCD) will be resettled in other countries: some CNN sources claim those would be the UK and Canada, while others claim some will be hosted by Germany.
President Donald Trump allegedly discussed the possibility of a need to rescue the group’s members at the NATO summit on July 11th, according to a CNN source. The US and the UK conversed on several occasions about the issue and Western delegations have convinced the US to assist in lobbying Israel and Jordan in providing escape routes for the volunteers.
Russia has dubbed the White Helmets a terrorist organization, the same has been done by the Syrian Government, so it is unlikely that Russia would partake in any “rescue actions” even if they were to be asked for assistance by the US-led bloc.
The White Helmets is an organization that operates in parts of militant-controlled Syria and Turkey, they were formed in 2014. They have received funding from countries such as the UK, Japan, Canada, Netherlands among others. One of their biggest funders is the US.
The MSM and the US-led bloc describe the White Helments as an impartial humanitarian NGO that focuses on urban search and rescue. Syria and its allies as well as non-mainstream media and analysts point out the organization’s links to terrorist groups and describe it as a propaganda arm used against the Damascus government.
Furthermore, the White Helments are quite controversial, even according to info admitted by the MSM. In June 2017 a member of the White Helmets was indefinitely suspended after it was found out that he assisted armed militants in the burial of corpses of pro-government soldiers as reported by News Week. There was a petition against their 2017 Nobel Peace Prize nomination, as well as change.org petition which calls for the Right Livelihood Foundation to retract their award to the White Helmets. Roger Waters, former Pink Floyd frontman, during his concert on April 13th called them a “fake organization” that provides propaganda for “jihadists and terrorists.” He claimed that listening to “propaganda of the White Helmets and others we would be encouraged to encourage our governments to go and start dropping bombs on people in Syria,” in a video posted on YouTube by a group called Hands off Syria.
