Brandon Turbeville
July 7, 2017
ICARDA (International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas) is one of 15 important international agricultural research centers. It is also the host of a seed bank which contains 150,000 samples in its temperature-controlled seed vaults.
Based in the Syrian town of Tal Hadya, the organization was focused not only on saving seeds and working with the Svalbard Seed Vault in the North Pole, but also focused on improving livelihood in dryer areas such as Syria’s east.
But ICARDA’s work was suddenly interrupted when the United States launched its proxy war against Syria. Tal Hadya was overtaken by western-backed terrorists, also known as Al-Nusra and Ahrar Al-Sham. As is the nature of western-backed terrorist groups, anything remotely resembling civilization and progress was banned, killed or destroyed.
Somehow, America’s deviance overlooked the ICARDA facility, and for awhile the organization was able to continue operations. Foreign employees were removed from the facility early on but some employees were unable to flee and instead preserved the facility, putting their lives at risk because at any moment, America’s freedom fighters might have decided to give them a heavy dose of democracy which usually takes the form of beheadings, rape and torture.
These employees that remained, were of course, Syrians. They negotiated their way to the facility so that they could continue to retrieve data and check operations. The herbarium, a collection of 16,000 pressed and dried, wild, cereal and legume specimens coming from the fertile crescent which traverses Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Turkey and Iran, was rescued, packed away and sent to a safer location at the center of Aleppo.
Eventually, however, even the native researchers were no longer able to continue their work. As Ali Shehadeh explains, “It started when they started stealing the cars from the centers, or even blocking the roads, capturing the cars, stealing the cars by force – it wasn’t a pleasant experience for a lot of us.”
Thankfully in 2012, ICARDA copied a large portion of the samples and sent them to Svalbard seed vault in Northern Norway. In 2015, ICARDA took the seeds from Svalbard to Lebanon and Morocco to initiate creation of collections in those countries. Terbol, located in the Bekaa Valley in Lebanon is the new home for ICARDA. Ironically, the project found its way to Syria originally due to the Lebanese civil war. Now it’s come full circle.
Thankfully, most of the seeds were copied and the project continues. But it seems the United States has added to its voluminous list of wars, a new war on seeds. At home, the U.S. does everything in its power to eradicate natural seeds in favor of genetically modified crops and across the world it pushes GM biotech harder than any heroin or crack dealer on the streets of Chicago.
In 2002, the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan destroyed the seed bank in Kabul. In 2003, the U.S. invasion of Iraq decimated that country’s seed bank. In addition, the U.S. forced Iraqis to accept the GM crops of multinational biotech firms. Now, in Syria, after drought and American sanctions had already thrown Syria into an agricultural crisis, the seed bank project has been run out of the country.
The United States is now proving that it is the greatest threat to world security. Not just because of its worldwide bombing campaigns, color revolutions and destabilizations, but because of its agricultural policies and its stealth elimination of independence both at the national and individual level.
Natural Blaze / report a typo / Image credit: ICARDA
ICARDA (International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas) is one of 15 important international agricultural research centers. It is also the host of a seed bank which contains 150,000 samples in its temperature-controlled seed vaults.
Based in the Syrian town of Tal Hadya, the organization was focused not only on saving seeds and working with the Svalbard Seed Vault in the North Pole, but also focused on improving livelihood in dryer areas such as Syria’s east.
But ICARDA’s work was suddenly interrupted when the United States launched its proxy war against Syria. Tal Hadya was overtaken by western-backed terrorists, also known as Al-Nusra and Ahrar Al-Sham. As is the nature of western-backed terrorist groups, anything remotely resembling civilization and progress was banned, killed or destroyed.
Somehow, America’s deviance overlooked the ICARDA facility, and for awhile the organization was able to continue operations. Foreign employees were removed from the facility early on but some employees were unable to flee and instead preserved the facility, putting their lives at risk because at any moment, America’s freedom fighters might have decided to give them a heavy dose of democracy which usually takes the form of beheadings, rape and torture.
These employees that remained, were of course, Syrians. They negotiated their way to the facility so that they could continue to retrieve data and check operations. The herbarium, a collection of 16,000 pressed and dried, wild, cereal and legume specimens coming from the fertile crescent which traverses Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Turkey and Iran, was rescued, packed away and sent to a safer location at the center of Aleppo.
Eventually, however, even the native researchers were no longer able to continue their work. As Ali Shehadeh explains, “It started when they started stealing the cars from the centers, or even blocking the roads, capturing the cars, stealing the cars by force – it wasn’t a pleasant experience for a lot of us.”
Thankfully in 2012, ICARDA copied a large portion of the samples and sent them to Svalbard seed vault in Northern Norway. In 2015, ICARDA took the seeds from Svalbard to Lebanon and Morocco to initiate creation of collections in those countries. Terbol, located in the Bekaa Valley in Lebanon is the new home for ICARDA. Ironically, the project found its way to Syria originally due to the Lebanese civil war. Now it’s come full circle.
Thankfully, most of the seeds were copied and the project continues. But it seems the United States has added to its voluminous list of wars, a new war on seeds. At home, the U.S. does everything in its power to eradicate natural seeds in favor of genetically modified crops and across the world it pushes GM biotech harder than any heroin or crack dealer on the streets of Chicago.
In 2002, the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan destroyed the seed bank in Kabul. In 2003, the U.S. invasion of Iraq decimated that country’s seed bank. In addition, the U.S. forced Iraqis to accept the GM crops of multinational biotech firms. Now, in Syria, after drought and American sanctions had already thrown Syria into an agricultural crisis, the seed bank project has been run out of the country.
The United States is now proving that it is the greatest threat to world security. Not just because of its worldwide bombing campaigns, color revolutions and destabilizations, but because of its agricultural policies and its stealth elimination of independence both at the national and individual level.
Natural Blaze / report a typo / Image credit: ICARDA
Brandon Turbeville – article archive here – is an author out of Florence, South Carolina. He is the author of six books, Codex Alimentarius — The End of Health Freedom, 7 Real Conspiracies,Five Sense Solutions and Dispatches From a Dissident, volume 1 and volume 2, The Road to Damascus: The Anglo-American Assault on Syria,and The Difference it Makes: 36 Reasons Why Hillary Clinton Should Never Be President. Turbeville has published over 1,000 articles dealing on a wide variety of subjects including health, economics, government corruption, and civil liberties. Brandon Turbeville’s podcast Truth on The Tracks can be found every Monday night 9 pm EST at UCYTV. He is available for radio and TV interviews. Please contact activistpost (at) gmail.com.
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