James
Le Mesurier, a British ex-mercenary, founded the White Helmets in
2013. The group has been lauded for its “humanitarian” efforts in
Syria, but they have actually functioned more as a logistics and
propaganda arm of Syria’s al-Qaeda branch, complete with training
from Le Mesurier.
By
Whitney Webb
Part
2 - James Le Mesurier: from mercenary to “humanitarian”
Though
mainstream narratives have suggested that the White Helmets were
trained by the Red Cross, the White Helmets were actually founded in
March 2013 by Le Mesurier. He, like many officers in the British
military, attended the Royal Military Academy, where he graduated at
the top of his class, receiving the Queen’s Medal.
He
later served in the British Army and operated in a variety of
theaters. Most notably, Le Mesurier served as intelligence
coordinator for Pristina City in Kosovo soon after the NATO
intervention that led to NATO being accused of war crimes for its
targeting of thousands of civilians and media.
By
2000, Le Mesurier left the army and went to work for the United
Nations as he had “realized humanitarian aid was more effective”
than an army in theaters of war during his time with the British
military. He, again, served in a variety of locations, focusing on
“delivering stabilization activities through security sector and
democratization programs.” According to Le Mesurier, “stabilization
activities” refers to the “framework for engagement in ‘fragile’
states” or, in other words, destabilized nations.
Prior
to his founding of the White Helmets, Le Mesurier served as Vice
President for Special Projects at the Olive Group, a private
mercenary organization that has since merged with Blackwater-Academi
into what is now known as Constellis Holdings. Then, in 2008, Le
Mesurier left the Olive Group after he was appointed to the position
of Principal at Good Harbor Consulting, chaired by Richard A. Clarke
– a veteran of the U.S. national security establishment and the
counter-terrorism “czar” under the Bush and Clinton
administrations.
After
joining Good Harbor, Le Mesurier became based in Abu Dhabi, where he
specialized in risk management, emergency planning, and critical
infrastructure protection. He trained a UAE gas field protection
force and “ensured the safety” of the 2010 Gulf Cup in Yemen, a
regional soccer tournament. But following this work, Le Mesurier
claims to have become dissatisfied, wanting to have a more direct
impact on the communities he worked in.
He
told Men’s Journal in 2014 that it was the idea of using his
military training to benefit civilians that truly enthused him: “the
idea of being a civilian carrying a weapon and guiding a convoy in a
conflict zone — that leaves me cold.”
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