SATISH SHARMA - not just Rotigraphy.: If reports of the killing of Mohammad Jolani are true, it is all but certain his real legacy will be whitewashed by Western media.

If reports of the killing of Mohammad Jolani are true, it is all but certain his real legacy will be whitewashed by Western media. Already, the founder of the local Al Qaeda affiliate founder that ravaged Syria, slaughtering religious minorities and establishing ISIS-style zones of control in coalition with no shortage of help from the CIA-backed "Free Syrian Army," is being referred to simply as an "opposition leader" heading an anodyne-sounding faction known as HTS. The whitewash is partly the outcome of a PR campaign initiated about four years ago by Washington and Brussels to rebrand Jolani as a reliable asset who would destabilize the Syrian government without attacking the West or Israel. The operation was run through a network of think tanks like the EU-funded International Crisis Group and media cutouts like the US government-sponsored PBS, as well as the NYT, who sent staff into Idlib to report on the progress Jolani was making, and trumpet the local popularity he supposedly enjoyed. But as the neocon State Department diplomat James Jeffrey made clear, Washington was helping to manage Jolani's success from behind the curtain. According to Jeffrey, the US government “opened indirect channels to them [Jabhat al-Nusra] as soon as we could, and kept Secretary [Mike] Pompeo advised of it and what we were learning.” Those channels “were through people in the media, people in the NGO world who did have direct contacts with them [Syrian al-Qaeda], and these people would share their views with us; they would ask us if we had messages." thegrayzone.com/2021/06/09/was