NATO allies let down the United States and are leaving Iraq because of COVID-19!
Original title: France, the Czech Republic, Britain and other NATO allies let down the United States and are leaving Iraq because of COVID-19!The portal Kolozeg.info called the United States a “global fascist” in an article, claiming that “NATO allies, under the pretext of COVID-19, have allegedly left Iraq and left the United States alone and in the lurch.” Furthermore, the article sets out a conspiracy theory that COVID-19 “accelerates the dissolution of NATO, the EU and their other tired, illegitimate, failed institutions that were used as bait for their painful desire for totalitarian and eternal power over all of us.” The text states that despite COVID-19, the United States does not plan to withdraw completely from Iraq, but reportedly “the wider Iraqi population is demanding their final departure.”
Citing an alleged AFP announcement, the portal claims that soldiers of Britain, France, Australia and the Czech Republic “were temporarily sent home from Baghdad and suspended training and operations to prevent the spread of COVID-19”.
Last but not least, the text shows a photo from a post posted on the profile of a Twitter user Elijah Magnier, who publishes the following:
“…#Coronavirus is offering an opportunity for the world to detach itself from #US dominance & reshuffle alliances. #Russia & #China are no longer the US allies enemies. #Washington will be left with only a few vessels. World before Coronavirus will no longer be the same after Coronavirus…”
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Finally, they shared another photo with a post posted on the Facebook page Rodina, in which they called for “the severance of Macedonia’s umbilical cord connection with the global fascist elites and for connecting with new alliances with the sovereign fraternal freedom loving peoples.”
Here you can find the link to the archived original inscription.
The scope of spreading false news on social networks.
On their Facebook page alone, this post had 93 reactions and 138 shares. But the total sharing on the social networks Facebook, Twitter, Reddit and Instagram is:According to CrowdTangle statistics, the pages and profiles on which this news was shared on Facebook (14 FB pages) and on Twitter, have a maximum range of 106,259 followers.
The portal Kolozeg.info, through conscious and intentional twisting of partially accurate information creates a conspiracy theory of alleged disunity among the allies. In the article it is not stated who is the author of this article , but only the name of the portal – Kolozeg is displayed.
The main feature of this article is the hate speech against the United States and the European Union and the invocation of Macedonia in new fraternal alliances with Russia. This portal continuously publishes articles with anti-NATO, anti-EU and anti-US narratives on its website and Facebook page. Hence, the motivation for writing such articles that aim to present our largest strategic partners, the United States, NATO and the EU in a negative connotation, is more than clear.
Namely, the title of the article and the text do not correspond to each other. The headline states that allegedly “the allies have let down the United States and are leaving Iraq because of the COVID-19”, while the article states that the troops of the aforementioned countries “were temporarily sent home.”
It is not true that the Allies have completely withdrawn from Iraq, much less that they left the United States in lurch. What is true is that in late March, Great Britain, France and the Czech Republic withdrew some of their troops from Iraq in order to strengthen the national capacity to deal with COVID-19 in their countries. But also Canada, Spain, Portugal, and the Netherlands have done the same, as wellas the United States, which still has about 5,000 troops in Iraq. Earlier, Germany, Slovakia and Croatia withdrew some of their troops and relocated some troops to other parts of Iraq or neighboring countries due to the worsen security situation in Iraq following the assassination of the Iranian General Kassim Suleimani. Two separate missions are active in Iraq. One is the NATO Training Mission and the other is the US-led Global Coalition. What the two missions have in common is that they are non-combat missions whose aim is to train and advise Iraqi security forces on successful management and how to fight. In addition, Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization provides for a collective defense – an attack on one NATO member state is considered an attack on the entire Alliance. This provision guarantees that no ally will be left in the lurch, including the United States.
The withdrawal of some troops is temporary due to the postponement of the missions in Iraq for 60 days. The official NATO website, regarding the mission in Iraq, states that “in March 2020, the NATO mission in Iraq temporarily suspended training and moved some of its personnel out of Iraq. This decision is due to the crisis with COVID-19 and the security situation in Iraq. However, the mission maintains its presence in Iraq. The NATO personnel in Iraq, along with their Iraqi counterparts, are continuing to plan future activities aimed at making Iraqi forces stronger, more sustainable and more inclusive…”
At the press conference after the meeting with NATO foreign ministers on April 2, 2020, Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said that the ministers had agreed to enhance our training mission in Iraq, taking on some of the training activities of the Global Coalition.. Hence, it is not true that NATO is falling apart, on the contrary, they are united as never before in the fight against the coronavirus, and the priority is to deliver aid to the most affected countries by this virus.
It is not true that the wider Iraqi population is demanding the final departure of the United States from Iraq. Namely, in early January 2020, the Iraqi parliament passed a non-binding resolution for the withdrawal of the United States from Iraq. Parliamentary resolutions, unlike laws, are not legally binding for the Iraqi government, and US troops are still there.
The portal Kolozeg.info cites an alleged AFP report on the withdrawal of the British, French and Czech troops from Iraq, that has been hyperlinked in the article, and if you click on that link, it will take you to an article of France24.com entitled as “Rockets hit Iraq’s Green Zone, The US-led coalition is leaving the base.” In this way, by misleading the readers and distorting official information, the portal’s goal is to discredit the United States.
Furthermore, the text cites international correspondents, and only one Twitter post by Elijah Magnier is shown, a political analyst and correspondent from the critical and war zones and international director of the Alrai Media Group from Kuwait. However, the opinion of one person expressed in the form of a Twitter post cannot and must not be presented as a general opinion of the entire international journalistic society. If you visit his personal blog, you will find many articles with pro-Russian and pro-Chinese content.
At the end of the text, another picture was shared with a post posted on Facebook page Rodina, and if you read the article posted on their Facebook page, you will see that they use hate speech against the government of the Republic of North Macedonia and the countries of the Western World (EU and the United States). But this is not the only post shared by Rodina. Posts on Rodina’s numerous announcements, as well as other anti-US, anti-NATO and anti-EU narrative articles, can be found on Kolozeg.info’s Facebook page.
The author uses strictly selected sources that spread anti-NATO and anti-EU narratives, and distorts the actual facts. The F2N2.mk team evaluates this post as propaganda and disinformation aimed at discrediting NATO allies and the EU, and creating discord among the allies by spreading conspiracy theories about their alleged dissolution.
