Syria

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Re: Syria

Post by blindpig » Wed Dec 11, 2024 11:23 pm

Syria after the collapse. What next?
December 11, 20:13

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The Orderly and Rapid Fall of the Assad Regime: Why and What Comes Next

Rapid military developments in Syria, without resistance from the Syrian army, led to the fall of President Bashar al-Assad and his unopposed departure from Damascus. This transition was the result of high-level negotiations between key players, including Turkey, Russia and Iran. However, the surprises in the Middle East are far from over; they are only just beginning with this transition of power and the attempt to create a new state with very different standards.

One of the key reasons for the rapid fall of the Assad regime was the strategy employed by the advancing forces in the towns and villages they captured, especially in the countryside of Idlib, Aleppo and its surroundings (apart from isolated extremist actions), but also in Hama, Homs, Damascus and southern Syria.

The attackers deliberately distanced themselves from the brutal tactics that had united the world against the forces fighting the Syrian army since 2011.
This shift in approach allowed the regime to collapse like a snowball rolling down a mountain, with minimal resistance as one city after another surrendered. The orderly surrender occurred without significant bloodshed after protracted negotiations led by the main mediators: Turkey, Iran, and Russia.

Russia and Iran lost a staunch ally and a strong base in the Middle East, leaving Turkey as the dominant power. Istanbul provided military support to the advancing forces, coordinated their operations, and carefully directed their actions through a joint operations room. Under Turkish leadership, these forces achieved all of their objectives in areas previously controlled by the Syrian army. However, they did not extend their success to areas controlled by U.S.-backed Kurdish forces in the northeast, where power extended to Deir ez-Zor and Raqqa.

Syria remains deeply divided, with the northeast under Kurdish control, Israel expanding its occupation of new Syrian territory in the south, and no unified factions that could form a cohesive ruling authority. Instead, Prime Minister Mohammed Ghazi al-Jallali has been appointed to lead an interim administration running the country. What events have brought Syria to this point, and what does the future hold?

As head of the interim administration, Prime Minister al-Jallali will likely be responsible for the day-to-day functions of the state while preparing it for a longer-term transition. This includes maintaining basic governance, preventing a complete collapse of institutions, and overseeing negotiations to achieve a more permanent political settlement. Al-Jallali will have to navigate deep divisions as he works with opposition groups, external actors, and the remnants of the Assad-era bureaucracy. His ability to manage these relationships will determine whether Syria can move toward stability. His appointment signals to the international community that Syria is attempting to rebuild itself within a framework that combines continuity and change. However, it also raises questions about whether genuine reform is possible with a figure associated with the previous regime. Al-Jallali’s leadership during the transition will set the tone for Syria’s transition. Whether he can maintain stability and steer the country toward a new political structure will depend on his ability to build consensus among internal and external actors.
His tenure will likely determine whether Syria moves toward unity or remains divided and uncertain.

Many factions in Syria have united under the leadership of the Repel Aggression Coalition, forming a single alliance that includes groups such as Jaysh al-Izza, Jaysh al-Ahrar, Faylaq al-Sham, Al-Quwat al-Mushtaraka, Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham, Harakat Nour al-Din al-Zinki, the Sultan Murad Brigade, Ansar al-Tawhid, Suqour al-Sham, Ahrar al-Sham, the Sulayman Shah Brigade, the Al-Hamza Division, and the Turkistan Islamic Party Brigades. Among them, Ahrar al-Sham and Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham stand out as the largest and most influential.

A call has been announced for a “National Transitional Council” (NTC) to unite all elements of the revolution. This comes after Abu Muhammad al-Julani said that existing institutions would remain under the current prime minister in order to maintain stability following the unexpectedly rapid collapse of the Syrian government’s control over major cities.

However, the path forward remains uncertain. It is not yet clear how the state will be governed in the coming weeks or who will lead the effort to draft a new constitution and prepare for parliamentary elections. The main challenge will be creating a coherent governance structure and reconciling the diverse and often conflicting ideologies of the combined factions.

As these factions, with their different backgrounds and agendas, try to forge a unified vision for Syria’s future, questions remain about who will wield ultimate authority and how they will navigate the complexities of building a functioning state.
The success of this fragile alliance will likely determine whether Syria can move toward stability or remain divided and uncertain.

The creation of the National Transitional Council highlights the enormous challenges of uniting disparate factions into a coherent governing structure. While the Repel Aggression coalition suggests a temporary convergence of interests, the long-term sustainability of such an alliance remains questionable.

Factions within the NTC span a wide range of ideologies. Groups such as Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) and Ansar al-Tawhid advocate sharia-based governance of Syria. Their extremist vision risks alienating moderate factions and potential international supporters. Large groups such as HTS and Ahrar al-Sham may claim disproportionate influence, risking the marginalization of smaller factions and internal disunity. At the same time, Ahrar al-Sham and Faylaq al-Sham combine Islamic principles with nationalist aspirations, seeking a pluralistic model of governance that includes diverse Syrian groups.

On the other hand, factions such as the Sultan Murad Brigade and the Turkistan Islamic Party Brigades include foreign fighters and minorities, and they pursue unique goals, complicating the prospect of national unity. Smaller factions often support democratic or technocratic governance, which can conflict with the dominant Islamist forces in the coalition. These differences highlight the difficulty of creating a common vision of governance and policy.

Israel has formally abandoned the 1974 disengagement agreement with Syria, declaring its intention to renegotiate the dynamics on the border. In a bold move, Israel captured Mount Hermon and several villages in Quneitra, declaring Syria an open battlefield and signaling its intention to advance further into Syrian territory with blatant disregard for international norms. The Israeli Air Force conducted a sustained campaign, systematically attacking and destroying more than 100 strategic targets, including Syrian air defense systems, ammunition depots in Damascus, and key installations at several airports across the country, further weakening Syria’s already depleted defenses.

On the other hand, Russian forces, deployed on the Syrian-Israeli border primarily for stabilization following the Syrian civil war, acted as a buffer between Israeli and Syrian forces, preventing escalation. They were stationed primarily in the Quneitra and Golan Heights areas and served as intermediaries, restraining both sides from aggressive actions that could lead to a wider conflict. However, their presence was also a symbol of Russia’s influence in the region and its role as a security guarantor for the Assad regime.

Recent events have forced Moscow to abandon these positions due to the security risks to its soldiers, creating a vacuum that has allowed Israel to expand its operations and consolidate its control in southern Syria.
No international power has stepped up to defend Syrian sovereignty or oppose Israel’s annexation of additional Syrian territory. For Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the occupation of parts of Syria represents a major achievement in Israel’s strategic ambitions. Not only does the move strengthen his political position at home, it also reinforces Israel’s territorial and military dominance at a key moment in the evolution of the Middle East’s geopolitical situation.

Moscow, which has provided refuge to Bashar al-Assad and his family, has announced that it remains in touch with all parties involved in Syria, maintaining a pragmatic approach toward the new authorities. However, uncertainty hangs over Russia’s strategic presence in the region. The possible loss of the Khmeimim and Tartus military bases would be a significant loss, as these facilities provide the only access to the warm waters of the Mediterranean, a critical geopolitical asset for projecting influence in the region.

Since the outbreak of the Syrian civil war in 2012, Turkey under Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has taken a firm stance against President Bashar al-Assad. Erdogan has repeatedly stated that his goal is to visit Damascus and pray at the Umayyad Mosque. Today, with the fall of Assad, this goal seems achievable, cementing Turkey’s status as the “godfather” of the new Syrian leadership.

Turkey has long-term goals in Syria: securing its borders, countering Kurdish autonomy, and strengthening its influence in northern Syria. To this end, Ankara has used military action, economic integration, and support for opposition groups and jihadists. However, achieving these goals depends on Turkey’s ability to balance domestic political objectives, regional rivalries, and international interests.

Turkey has established zones of influence in regions such as Afrin, Jarablus, and al-Bab, where it exerts significant administrative, economic, and military influence. Turkish currency and goods dominate local markets, and the establishment of schools and cultural institutions has helped spread the Turkish language and culture.

These actions also help Turkey address its domestic challenges. It hosts more than 3.5 million Syrian refugees, and anti-refugee sentiment has become a significant political issue. By creating “safe zones” in northern Syria, Ankara aims to repatriate significant numbers of refugees, reducing domestic tensions and demonstrating its role as a stabilizing force in the region. However, such ambitions have drawn opposition from Russia and Iran, especially in light of Turkey’s resettlement of opposition-supporting Syrians in areas cleared of Kurdish forces. This process of demographic engineering is aimed at weakening Kurdish influence and strengthening Turkey’s position.

Turkey’s military campaigns and support for offensive forces are also aimed at undermining U.S.-backed Kurdish militias in northeastern Syria. Although the United States relies on Kurdish militias such as the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) to fight ISIS, Ankara views the alliance as a threat to its security. Turkey’s operations demonstrate to Washington that it will not tolerate a prolonged Kurdish presence on its borders, even if it means disrupting American plans to stabilize the region.

Despite the fall of the Assad regime, the fighting in Syria is far from over. Fighting continues in northeastern Aleppo between Turkish-backed forces and U.S.-backed Kurdish militias. Turkey views these Kurdish forces not as Syrian militias but as affiliates of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which is designated a terrorist organization in Turkey and internationally. Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan recently underscored this position, saying that these forces are “foreign fighters who have gathered in Syria and they must all be eliminated.” The Kurdish forces remain determined to defend their autonomy and continue to receive U.S. support, creating a protracted conflict that limits Ankara’s ability to achieve its goals.

The United States, however, takes a different stance. While Washington also considers Ahmed al-Shaar (Abu Muhammad al-Julani), the leader of the task force, a terrorist, it continues to support Kurdish groups, including militias linked to the PKK, which it also officially recognizes as terrorist organizations. Yet these same Kurdish forces play a key role in protecting the American presence in Syria. U.S. forces also provide them with air cover and prevent attacks on them, creating a paradoxical dynamic. The U.S. will only recognize new leaders in Syria if there is a smooth transition.

In recent days, Kurdish forces have advanced and taken control of Deir ez-Zor and Raqqa, adding these territories to the already-held regions of Hasakah and Qamishli, which are critical to Syria’s economy and resources. The new Syrian leadership is unlikely to accept this development, as it exacerbates tensions in the northeastern region, which contains the country’s grain basket as well as oil and gas resources. This Kurdish control presents an ongoing dilemma and raises the question of federalization, especially given the different identities of the Kurds, Alawites, and Druze in Syria.
However, Turkey’s staunch opposition to Kurdish autonomy will make the creation of a Kurdish state similar to Iraqi Kurdistan much more difficult. Ankara is unlikely to tolerate even the hint of a Kurdish enclave in northeastern Syria, ensuring that the issue remains a contentious and unresolved point in the country’s fragmented landscape.

There is no doubt that Syria’s exit from the Islamic Republic of Iran’s sphere of influence represents a major change for Tehran. Since the war began in 2011, Iran has invested tens of billions of dollars in support of President Bashar al-Assad, especially under years of harsh Western sanctions against Syria. These financial and military commitments have come at a high cost: Iran has lost thousands of officers and fighters in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and its allies, including Hezbollah, over the years of war. These losses began with the rise of ISIS in Syria and continued even after its defeat.

Iran has also built up vast weapons depots across Syria, which remain prime targets for Israeli airstrikes even after the fall of the Assad regime. Iran has also committed to sending one or two tankers of oil every month to meet Syria’s energy needs, demonstrating its strong support during the conflict. However,

former President Bashar al-Assad consistently refused to allow Hezbollah to engage in military action against Israel from Syria or to launch missiles at Israeli targets. The stance was a calculated move aimed at distancing Syria from the current conflict with Israel, signaling that Syria is not an active participant in the feud and attempting to remain neutral amid escalating regional tensions.

The most serious loss for Iran is the loss of Hezbollah’s main weapons supply route, a critical supply line for the Lebanese resistance in its fight against Israel. This severed corridor, the cornerstone of Iranian military support for Hezbollah, threatens to have serious strategic consequences if not repaired. It will likely force Iranian leaders to rethink their broader strategies and adjust their policies in the Middle East, especially given the growing pressure on Iran’s regional influence.

In Lebanon, Hezbollah has also suffered significant losses, although it remains far from defeated. Despite the intensity of Israeli strikes, the group has managed to maintain its core operational strength, including thousands of infantry and elite special forces units, which remain largely unscathed. However, the deterioration of the logistical supply chain and the changing regional landscape will require a measured and strategic response from Tehran. These growing challenges underscore the need for Iran to rethink its regional priorities and adapt to a rapidly changing geopolitical environment.
The Fall of Syria: A New Middle East

Israel’s recent advance into Quneitra, aimed at creating a buffer zone to secure the occupied Golan Heights and capturing additional Syrian territory, sends a clear message: there will be no return of occupied Syrian territory. Moreover, Israel’s willingness to withdraw from Lebanon has likely diminished, and its interpretation of ceasefire agreements is becoming increasingly flexible. This is especially true if the Lebanese resistance movement finds itself under siege and its financial and military resources are severely compromised for an extended period.

Syria’s collapse has profound implications for the region – implications that have yet to be fully revealed. It marks the beginning of a new Middle East, but not the one envisioned by former US National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, who coined the term during the 2006 Lebanon War. Nor does it fit the vision of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who sought to destroy Hezbollah and expand his influence into Syria and Iraq in order to redraw the regional map. Instead, we see an undescribed Middle East whose contours and dynamics remain unpredictable. Lebanon, for its part, lost an important round against Israel, but not the war. The future remains uncertain, and the region faces questions about who will rule Syria and how its fall will change the region, especially in terms of its impact on Lebanon.

The region is at a critical juncture, with its trajectory determined by the shifting interplay of forces, alliances, and resistance. The fall of Syria is likely to reverberate far beyond its borders, setting the tone for a Middle East whose final shape is still unclear.

(c) Elijah J. Magnier

https://ejmagnier.com/2024/12/08/the-or ... omes-next/ - original in English

https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/9546093.html

Syria. The last 75 years
December 11, 18:03

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In Syria over the past 75 years, not counting external wars:

1949 – three military coups, the supreme power changes as many as three times in one year

1951 – military coup

1954 – general rebellion and coup

1961 – military coup

1962 – as many as two military coups in one year

1963 – military coup, the Baath Party comes to power (one of the leaders is Assad Sr.)

1966 – military coup, where Assad Sr. is one of the main participants

1968-69 – riots in the main cities of the country, suppressed by the army

1970 – military coup, Assad Sr. comes to power

1976-82 – civil war between the Assad government and the Islamists. Mass killings in Aleppo. The city of Hama, mentioned more than once in December 2024, was completely destroyed during the fighting in 1982...

1984 - President Assad's younger brother unsuccessfully tries to overthrow his brother and seize power.

Since 1985, 20 years of relative stability begin under the harsh dictatorship of the Assad clan

2000 - Assad Sr. dies, power passes to his son

2005 - Vice President Khaddam, a close associate of his late father, unsuccessfully attempts to overthrow Assad Jr.

Since 2011 - as we all know, an ongoing war.

So 2024 and even 2025 will not be the last years of the eternal Syrian turmoil...

P.S. And what beauty was happening there throughout the 19th century!.. Emperor Nicholas I first thought about introducing Russian troops into Syria in 1840, when the "Egyptians" and "Turks" were once again fighting for Damascus and Aleppo during the civil strife within the Ottoman Empire.

Russian military intelligence began systematic work on the lands of modern Syria while Pushkin was still alive...

For five years, from 1834 to 1839, Russian officers worked continuously in Palestine and Syria. The first to survey the region for the possibility of military operations was Colonel of the General Staff Alexander Duhamel, who was listed as consul in Egypt. Then Lieutenant Colonel Pyotr Lvov worked in Syria. This native of the Tver province, a veteran of wars with the Turks and Polish rebels, compiled the first military map and topographic description of Syria in the style: "... here a road cut into the rock winds, and Beilan in a military sense would deserve special note."

Beilan is now the Turkish Belan in Hatay, where there are still more Arabs than Turks, and the line of the Syrian-Turkish border was recognized by Damascus only in 2011 and almost immediately "unrecognized" after Erdogan supported the internal Syrian rebellion.

But let's go back to the 19th century.

Emperor Nicholas I personally familiarized himself with the map of Syria and other documents of Lieutenant Colonel Lvov, leaving his own notes on them. As a result of this acquaintance, the lieutenant colonel became a colonel and received a lifelong pension of 2,000 rubles per year.

Following Pyotr Lvov in Syria and Palestine in 1838-39, Captain of the Life Guards Pavlovsky Regiment Joseph Dainese, assistant to the quartermaster general of the Active Army, worked. This Italian, who transferred to Russian service, compiled a "military survey map" and a detailed "Memoire sur la Syrie en 1838" (written in French, "Report on Syria in 1838").

Based on the results of the activities of Duhamel, Lvov and Dainese in St. Petersburg, the Department of the General Staff of the Ministry of War in 1840 compiled the following summary: "The conquest of Syria, given the disposition of the inhabitants to the advancing army, becomes possible along the path of action from Anatolia during one 7- or 8-month campaign, but given the hostility of the steppe and mountain tribes, offensive actions, even from Anatolia, will be extremely difficult, will require a strong army and can be successful only with the slowest course of the war, special caution and inevitable sacrifices."

https://t.me/alter_vij/3365 - zinc

PS. Find Bashar al-Assad in the picture, who has recently become a Muscovite. Perhaps he will vote for Sobyanin in the elections.

https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/9545750.html

Google Translator

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‘Israeli’ Tanks Reach Damascus Countryside Amid Terrorist Takeover of Syria
December 11, 2024

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Israeli occupation armored forces take position outside the occupied village of Majdal Shams near the buffer zone that separates the occupied Golan Heights from the rest of Syria, December 9, 2024. Photo: AFP.

“Israel” has continued to expand its occupation in Syria without facing any resistance. Israeli tanks are now reportedly around 20 kilometers from the capital, Damascus, while the Zionist entity is simultaneously waging a massive bombing campaign across the country.

Israeli tanks reached the city of Qatana in the southern Damascus countryside, about 20 km away from the Syrian capital, on Tuesday, December 10.

The Israeli occupation took over the entirety of the Golan, including the Syrian side of Mount Hermon. It led a further eastward advance, taking over the UN-monitored buffer zone in the same area. The prime minister of the occupation entity, Benjamin Netanyahu, declared earlier that the Golan “will be Israeli for eternity.”

Israeli forces are also occupying several towns and villages, including Aarna, Baqa’sm, al-Reemeh, Hinah, Qal’a, Jandal, al-Husseiniyah, Jita, and al-Khashab in the southern Damascus countryside.

Meanwhile, the Zionist entity carried out destructive airstrikes on Tuesday night, hitting Syrian army facilities in Aleppo, Damascus, and the western port city of Latakia.

“The Israeli Navy carried out a large-scale operation last night to destroy the Syrian army fleet, where several ships belonging to the Syrian naval fleet were destroyed, which were carrying dozens of naval missiles, in the area of ​​the Bayda port and the Latakia port,” Israeli Army Radio reported on December 10.

The city of Salamiyah, in the eastern countryside of Hama, also came under Israeli strikes of Tuesday.

Warplanes also targeted the Shayrat airbase in the Homs countryside as well as military installations in the northern region of the Raqqa governorate.

Israeli media outlets claim that the Israeli Air Force draws closer to destroying the entirety of the Syrian Air Force.

Some 300 Israeli airstrikes have targeted Syria since the overthrow of the government of former President Bashar al-Assad on Sunday, December 8, by Turkish and US-backed terrorist groups.

Meanwhile, violence and instability prevails across the country.

According to reports on December 10, Syrian chemist Dr Hamdi Ismail was found killed in his home.

Several executions of Syrian army soldiers have been reported since the Assad government fell.

The terrorist organization Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) that led the assault on Syrian territory since late November has not said a word about the Israeli occupation of southern Syria and the relentless attacks across the country.

HTS, formerly known as al-Qaeda’s branch in Syria, the al-Nusra Front, has been implicated in numerous atrocities, including kidnapping, public executions, indiscriminate attacks on civilian areas, and other war crimes over the years. HTS is recognized as a terrorist organization by the United Nations and is banned in several countries.

On December 9, the terrorist organization appointed Mohammad al-Bashir as the prime minister of the “interim government” of Syria.

Al-Bashir was the “prime minister” of the HTS-led “Salvation Government,” which was formed in 2017 and ruled Syria’s northern province of Idlib, where HTS was based and operated for years, before toppling the Syrian government last Sunday.

https://orinocotribune.com/israeli-tank ... -of-syria/

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War Propaganda and the Fall of Syria
Margaret Kimberley, BAR Executive Editor and Senior Columnist 11 Dec 2024

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2018 meme debunking accusations of chemical weapons use by Syria. Image: @angelojohngage

A succession of U.S. presidents have been committed to regime change in Syria. That long-held goal has been achieved in part through a sustained campaign of war propaganda.

“AQ [Al Qaeda] is on our side in Syria.”
Senior Policy Adviser Jake Sullivan's 2012 email to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton


The rapid fall of the Syrian Arab Republic government was both a shock and a catastrophe for that region and for the world. It was incomprehensible that the state which withstood a sustained attack since 2011 from the United States, Israel, Turkey and other NATO members, and gulf monarch states such as Saudi Arabia, would collapse so swiftly. The defeat was political, not military. There was surprisingly little actual fighting on the battlefield.

Russia, Syria’s most powerful ally, is engaged in Ukraine, while Turkey, Syria’s nemesis, played a two-sided game of working with its NATO allies while claiming to be negotiating in good faith with Russia. Surely more details are still to come, but treachery and a U.S. commitment to pursuing hegemony won the day and the Axis of Resistance now represented only by Iran, has been dealt a huge blow. The project for a Greater Israel is a reality and the Israeli Defense Forces have destroyed Syria’s air force and navy as Syrian Arab Army soldiers have fled rather than risk capture by the jihadists who have now overrun that country.

Syria was the victim of a U.S. regime change plot that began in 2011 and it was carried out by successive administrations with the help of collusion with the media. The U.S. had buy-in for whatever acts it wanted to carry out against Syria because of a sustained war propaganda effort. That effort continued until the last moment before the government fell.

After the Barack Obama administration succeeded in destroying the state of Libya and killing its president with the help of jihadist proxies, it turned its attention to Syria in an attempt to replicate that plot. The corporate media assisted with a drumbeat of condemnation against Syrian president Bashar al-Assad. The country, with a long history of supporting dictators and tyrants, declared that Assad was a murderer, a dictator, and a butcher. Their propaganda output included newly created terms such as “barrel bombs” and a new epithet against anyone who spoke against their regime change project, who were labeled as “Assadists.”

Every tool of war propaganda was put to use, including claims that Assad was using chemical weapons against his people. In a futile effort to end such charges, in 2013, the Russian government assisted the Syrians in destroying their chemical weapons stockpiles , but to no avail. The charges continued without any evidence. Syria was even accused of using chemical weapons on the very day that United Nations inspectors arrived in 2013.

The chemical weapons charge was used over and over again and each time the version of events strained credulity. In 2018 the U.S., France, and the U.K. declared they would take military action against Syria if there were any chemical weapons attacks. Like clockwork, on April 7 of that year, 40 civilians were killed in the city of Douma and it was reported that the Syrian government had dropped chemical weapons on the building where the killings took place. But one inspector from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) cast doubt on that version of events. A leaked document stated, “…there is a higher probability that both cylinders were manually placed at both locations rather than being delivered by aircraft.” The whistleblower disappeared from corporate media accounts, while the likelier explanation that civilians were kidnapped and killed by U.S. proxies, was sent down the memory hole.
Consider the odd timeline of events that year. On March 4, a former Russian double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter were poisoned by a chemical agent in Britain. The British government blames Russia, which has no reason to harm a former spy they swapped eight years prior. Saudi Arabia’s de facto ruler, crown prince Mohammed bin Salman, arrived in London for an official visit on March 7. On March 12, French president Emmanuel Macron stated that France would attack Syria if any chemical weapons are used there. The next day the Russian military claims to have evidence that a chemical attack will be carried out against Syrian civilians as a pretext for war. On March 16 France warned French journalists to leave Syria. Mohammed bin Salman traveled to Washington on March 19. On April 8 the prince known as MBS went to Paris for yet another official visit. On that day Saudi funded jihadist groups and the White Helmets, who were created by a British intelligence officer, reported that a chemical weapons attack occurred in the city of Douma. On April 14, the United States, France and Britain joined in a missile strike against Syria.

Just as they had done since 2011, the U.S. media played an important part in supporting U.S. foreign policy as the final blows were being planned. CNN disingenuously reported, “How Syria’s rebel leader went from radical jihadist to a blazer-wearing ‘revolutionary.’ “ Abu Mohammed al-Jolani is no longer called a “radical jihadist” leader of Hayat Tahrir Al Sham (HTS) because CNN and the rest of western media orchestrated the transformation. They didn’t interview al-Jolani in years past, but he and his handlers have now been coached in how the game is played. “I believe that everyone in life goes through phases and experiences…As you grow, you learn, and you continue to learn until the very last day of your life.” It is easy to grow and learn with the help of media image makers. CNN was not alone in offering a helping hand while behaving as an innocent bystander. The British Broadcasting Corporation was also part of the charade with what was essentially the same headline used by CNN. “From Syrian jihadist leader to rebel politician: How Abu Mohammed al-Jolani reinvented himself.” Reinvention is easy when corporate media offer a helping hand.

Al-Jolani was once wanted by the U.S. In 2017, the State Department announced a reward of up to $10 million for his capture. “We remain committed to bringing leading AQS figures in HTS to justice.” That announcement from the first Donald Trump administration was also phony. Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and her successor John Kerry knew quite well that their proxies were members of ISIS and Al Qaeda offshoots.

The use of jihadists as proxies has a long and ignoble history. In 1993, the British newspaper The Independent interviewed Osama bin Laden, hailing him as an “Anti-Soviet warrior” who used his armies for peaceful purposes. The man who less than ten years later would mastermind the attacks of September 11, 2001, and become a hated villain, had, in fact, been a western ally fighting the Soviet Union in Afghanistan beginning in the days of the Jimmy Carter administration.

After many fits and starts, the coup de grace has been delivered. The Syrian people who either lived through war or who were forced to become refugees around the world are now ruled by numerous groups of warring jihadists. The U.S. has won a decisive victory and Israel immediately enlarged its occupation of Syria.

Before the details of this change of events are known, it is important to point out what is already known. The west and their agents in the Western Asia region have schemed to take over Syria for many years, and they utilized war propaganda as one of their weapons. They will continue to do so as they work to consolidate their malicious but successful handiwork.

https://blackagendareport.com/war-propa ... fall-syria
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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blindpig
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Re: Syria

Post by blindpig » Fri Dec 13, 2024 12:43 pm

(I've been posting a lot of contradictory material on this topic the last few days, well, contradictions abound. They are generated by where the speaker stands, Doctorow reporting the semi-official line from Moscow, Helmer the mid-level Moscow insider view, Beeley on the ground in Syria and Pepe from I dunno where. It all has validity, the proportions of which will come out in the sauce. And there's an awful lot of CYA going on...)

Over 350 airstrikes destroy '80 percent' of Syria's military assets: Tel Aviv

Israel is obliterating all of Syria's military infrastructure and weapons following the toppling of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad by extremist militants

News Desk

DEC 10, 2024

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(Photo credit: Omar Haj Kadour/AFP/Getty Images)

The Israeli Air Force has taken advantage of the fall of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad's government and the collapse of his army to carry out 350 airstrikes in the past 48 hours in Syria, Israeli military spokesman Avichay Adraee said on social media site X on 10 December.

The intense strikes have left “nothing of the Syrian army’s assets,” regional security sources and officers within the now-fallen Syrian army told Reuters.

Sources speaking with the agency described Tuesday morning’s airstrikes as the “heaviest yet, hitting military installations and airbases across Syria, destroying dozens of helicopters and jets, as well as Republican Guard assets in and around Damascus.”
Other reports in Israeli media suggested the strikes had destroyed some 80 percent of Syria's military assets.


Israeli targets in Syria also include missile depots, manufacturing facilities, drones, tanks, radars, navy vessels, and more, the army said.

AFP correspondents reported on Tuesday that Israeli strikes in Damascus’s Barzeh area completely destroyed a defense ministry research center.

Israeli military sources said that the Navy carried out a wave of bombings on Monday to destroy the Syrian naval fleet stationed at Minet al-Beida Bay and Latakia Port on the Syrian coast.

Assad’s government was toppled on Saturday when extremist militants from Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) entered the capital without resistance.


Israel has also taken advantage of the chaos to occupy additional territory in the Syrian Golan Heights, including in the buffer zone previously separating the Syrian army from Israeli occupation forces.

Amid the bombing, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared, “The Golan Heights will forever be an inseparable part of the state of Israel.”

https://thecradle.co/articles/over-350- ... s-tel-aviv

Deadly clashes renew between Turkish, US proxy militias outside Aleppo

The SDF says Turkish-backed extremists are 'threatening' makeshift prison camps in US-occupied Syria that hold tens of thousands of ISIS members and their families

News Desk

DEC 12, 2024

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(Photo credit: Anadolu Agency)

Clashes restarted in the countryside of Aleppo on 12 December between Turkish-sponsored extremists who successfully staged a coup in Syria earlier this week and Kurdish fighters from the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF).

According to local reports, the fighting broke out in the vicinity of Tishreen Dam on the Euphrates River when militants from the Syrian National Army (SNA) attacked SDF positions.


The clashes started less than a day after Washington said it successfully brokered a deal between the SNA and the SDF to “de-escalate” days of battles in and around the city of Manbij that have killed dozens of civilians.

“We have reached an agreement to cease fire in Manbij with American mediation to preserve the security and safety of civilians, with the exit of our fighters from the city,” SDF Commander-in-Chief Mazloum Abdi announced on Wednesday.

“Our commitment to our partnership with the Syrian Kurds, especially the Syrian Democratic Forces, is deep and resolute, and that commitment exists because we are in a partnership with them to fight ISIS,” US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said on Thursday, hours before the SNA–SDF clashes restarted.

An ally of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), the SNA is a Turkish proxy comprised of former fighters from armed groups that sought to topple the Syrian government since 2011. Fighters from the Free Syrian Army (FSA), Al-Qaeda, and ISIS all joined the SNA, which Ankara used for years as a tool to prevent the Kurdish-led SDF from establishing a contiguous Kurdish autonomous zone from Afrin in Syria’s northwest to Hasakah in Syria’s northeast.

Tishreen Dam, the second largest power station in Syria, has been under the control of the US-backed Kurds since December 2015, when they captured it from ISIS. The dam serves as a central supply line between Aleppo and Raqqa.

As the violence continues in the Aleppo countryside, the SDF is also feeling the pressure of the new status quo in Raqqa and Hasakah in Syria's north and east, as hundreds took to the streets to demand an end to SDF rule.


According to local reports, at least two were killed and nine injured by SDF security forces who opened fire on the protesters. In Hasakah, local reports said SDF troops also used live ammunition to disperse protesters, calling for the end of their rule.

In neighboring Deir Ezzor, local Arab tribes accused the SDF on Wednesday of “heavy-handed actions” to suppress protests, which reportedly resulted in civilian deaths.

During an interview with CNN on Wednesday, the SDF chief said that the deteriorating situation across Kurdish-controlled Syria “threatens” dozens of makeshift prison camps that hold thousands of ISIS members and their families.

“With the increasing threats that faced the city of Manbij, we relocated ISIS detainees from the prisons there to other, more secure detention facilities,” Abdi said.

“As Turkiye-backed factions advanced toward the city center, cells launched attacks on detention centers holding both civilians and terrorists. Currently, detention centers in both Raqqa and Hasakah are facing similar threats, necessitating enhanced cooperation and additional security measures to protect these sites.”

Hebrew media reported on Thursday that the SDF has been pleading for Israeli assistance “in light of the seizure of territories from them by Islamist militias backed by Turkiye.”

In mid-July, authorities from the SDF-controlled Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES) issued a general amnesty that secured the release of over 1,500 Syrian ISIS fighters convicted of terrorism-related offenses, provided they “did not participate directly in combat” against the SDF.

The SDF was formed in 2015 with US assistance in a race to occupy Syria's energy-rich regions after Iran, Hezbollah, and Russia helped the Syrian army defeat ISIS. The Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG) make up the backbone of the SDF.

In 2022, US military officials described the SDF-run prison camps in northeast Syria as an ISIS “army in waiting” and its “next generation.”

https://thecradle.co/articles/deadly-cl ... ide-aleppo

'You have nothing to say?': HTS tightlipped on Israeli airstrikes, occupation of Syria

Hundreds of Israeli airstrikes have wiped out the majority of Syria’s military capabilities in the last few days

News Desk

DEC 12, 2024

Image
(Photo credit: AFP via Getty Images)

Obeida Arnaout, a spokesman for the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) extremist group that just took over Syria after a joint assault with Turkish-backed fighters, refused to address Israel’s airstrikes across the country in an interview aired by British news outlet Channel 4 on 11 December.

During the interview, Arnaout avoided answering the question twice.


When asked about his reaction to the over 300 Israeli airstrikes on Syria since 8 December, Arnaout said: “Our priority is to restore security and services, to revive civilian life and institutions, and care for newly liberated cities. There are many urgent parts of day-to-day life to restore, bakeries, electricity, water, communications, so our priority is to provide those services to the people.”

“I understand it's not your priority, but are you honestly telling me that you have nothing to say about Israel striking 300 sites in this country?” Channel 4’s interviewer asked a second time, to which Arnaout responded: “Have no doubt, we want everyone to respect the sovereignty of the new Syria. This point is very important to us.”

The Israeli attacks, which exceed 350 since the fall of Damascus, have wiped out most of Syria’s military capabilities. The Israeli army also significantly expanded its illegal occupation in the country.

More Israeli strikes targeted Syrian military infrastructure in the Damascus outskirts on 12 December.

There has been documented evidence over the years regarding Syria’s extremist opposition cooperating with Israel, particularly during 2014 battles in Quneitra, when fighters from the Nusra Front – the Al-Qaeda group that became HTS – were receiving air cover from Israeli jets and being treated in Israeli hospitals in the occupied Golan Heights.

Political Syrian opposition organizations have also enjoyed ties with Tel Aviv.

Fahd al-Masri, a former Free Syrian Army (FSA) spokesman and member of the Belgium-based National Salvation Front in Syria, told Israeli news outlet i24 after president Bashar al-Assad's government was ousted on Sunday: “Without the blows you inflicted on Hezbollah and Iran, we could not free Syria,” Masri said. “Thank you, Israel. This is an Israeli victory, our brothers and neighbors.”

HTS leader Abu Mohammad al-Julani, who has recently started going by his real name Ahmad al-Sharaa, told a reporter this week that his message to foreign countries is that Syria is tired from war and not looking to enter another one, adding that the main “fear” was of Hezbollah and “Iranian militias.”


Arnaout, who refused to answer Channel 4’s questions on Israeli airstrikes, gave an interview on 7 December with the Center for Peace Communications – a New York-based “non-profit” organization that is funded by pro-Israel lobbies and promotes “reconciliation” in the region.


Answering a question about whether the HTS-led assault against Aleppo resembled the Hamas operation on 7 October, the HTS spokesman said his organization did not attack anyone – adding that former government troops who surrendered or did not fire were spared.

He also said any isolated incidents would be closely monitored and “dealt with swiftly.”

Several videos of militants executing unarmed soldiers – including wounded ones in hospital – have emerged since Arnaout’s interview with Center for Peace Communications.

Scores of former ISIS fighters and commanders are incorporated into Turkiye's proxy in Syria, the Syrian National Army (SNA) – which was part of the assault with HTS that led to the fall of Damascus and the collapse of the Syrian government.

https://thecradle.co/articles/you-have- ... n-of-syria

US proxies in Syria 'plea' with Israel for help after HTS-led extremists attack ISIS prisons

Israel is debating whether or not to respond to Kurdish requests for aid, facing the ‘dilemma’ of a backlash from Ankara

News Desk

DEC 12, 2024

Image
(Photo credit: AFP)

Kurdish militants in northern Syria have been reaching out to Israel for “assistance” after their villages were stormed by extremist groups who were involved in the assault that resulted in the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s government, according to a 12 December report by Hebrew newspaper Israel Hayom.

“Senior Kurdish militia figures are turning to Israel for urgent help, in light of the seizure of territories from them by Islamist militias backed by Turkiye,” the report said.

The daily added that the Israeli security establishment is deliberating on whether or not it should respond to these Kurdish requests for aid, highlighting there has been ongoing communication between Tel Aviv and the Kurds, which has increased since Assad’s government fell on 8 December.

Yet Israel faces a “dilemma,” given the potential backlash from Turkiye. The main Kurdish group operating in Syria is the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), which helps the US oversee its occupation of the country.

It is predominantly made up of forces from the Peoples Protection Unit (YPG) – the Syrian branch of Ankara’s longtime rival, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).

The report mentioned that Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar has been engaged in diplomatic efforts on behalf of Kurdish militants and the Druze in Syria, and has raised the matter with his European counterparts and with US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken.

“You control the skies; you did not hesitate to take the great mountain (Syrian Mount Hermon). Everyone is afraid of you, including Abu Mohammad al-Julani (the leader of the group that has assumed control in Syria). Turkiye is against you and we are for you. You must help us, for your own interest," A. Avak, an SDF commander, is cited as telling Israel Hayom.

Avak expressed that western and Israeli help is greatly needed, and that Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) and other groups involved in the recent assault against the former Syrian government may one day “turn against” Israel. So far, HTS has not taken a firm position on Israel’s massive assault against Syria that began after Assad’s fall and wiped out the majority of Syrian military capabilities.

According to Tel Aviv, 80 percent of Syria’s capabilities have been destroyed.

The Israel Hayom article came one day after the eastern city of Deir Ezzor fell to HTS-led groups after battles with the SDF. Turkish-backed Syrian National Army (SNA) forces, who have been responsible for atrocities against Kurds in Syria, have also gained significant ground in the country after the collapse of the government.

The report also coincided with a significant ISIS resurgence in Syria. Dozens of former Syrian military soldiers were executed by ISIS in the Al-Sukhna desert region this week.

Mazloum Abdi, head of the SDF – which has fought the infamous extremist group with US-backing over the course of the Syrian war – announced on Thursday that it has halted anti-ISIS operations due to attacks targeting its forces, adding that ISIS “is now stronger in the Syrian desert.” Abdi told CNN a day earlier that the SDF has begun relocating ISIS prisoners because the prisons they are held in have been threatened and attacked by HTS-led factions and other Turkish-backed groups.

The SDF accidentally shot down a US MQ-9 Reaper drone on Monday after mistaking it for a Turkish UAV.

Thousands of ISIS members have been imprisoned in SDF-run jails since the fall of the northern city of Raqqa in 2017. These include 2,000 foreigners whose home countries have refused to repatriate them.

Many ISIS fighters have escaped over the years. The SDF, earlier this year, issued a general amnesty for over 1,500 ISIS militants.

The US proxy has also been accused of releasing ISIS fighters from jail.

https://thecradle.co/articles/us-proxie ... is-prisons

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Syria’s Post-Mortem
Posted by Internationalist 360° on December 10, 2024
Pepe Escobar

Image

The NATO-Israeli cabal cheering on Damascus’s fall will get more than they bargained for. Power struggles and infighting among extremist militias and civil society, each backed by different regional and foreign actors who want a piece of the pie.

Terror, occupation, and Palestine

The late Hezbollah secretary-general Hassan Nasrallah was adamant when he insisted on the deeper meaning of losing Syria: “Palestine would be lost.” More than ever, it’s up to a Global Resistance not to allow it.

The short headline defining the abrupt, swift end of Syria as we knew it would be: Eretz Israel meets new-Ottomanism. The subtitle? A win-win for the west, and a lethal blow against the Axis of Resistance.

But to quote still pervasive American pop culture, perhaps the owls are not what they seem.

Let’s start with former Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s surrender. Qatari diplomats, off the record, maintain that Assad tried to negotiate a transfer of power with the armed opposition that had launched a major military offensive in the days prior, starting with Aleppo, then swiftly headed southward toward Hama, Homs, aiming for Damascus. That’s what was discussed in detail between Russia, Iran, and Turkiye behind closed doors in Doha this past weekend, during the last sigh of the moribund “Astana process” to demilitarize Syria

The transfer of power negotiation failed. Hence, Assad was offered asylum by Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow. That explains why both Iran and Russia instantly changed the terminology while still in Doha, and began to refer to the “legitimate opposition” in a bid to distinguish non-militant reformists from the armed extremists cutting a swathe across the state.

The head-chopper leader of the new Caliphate of al-Sham takes the Ummayyad mosque in Damascus by storm.

Any resemblance with Al-Baghdadi solemnly preaching at the mosque after the ISIS capture of Mosul is of course mere coincidence. pic.twitter.com/nifXPB6Tpx

— Pepe Escobar (@RealPepeEscobar) December 8, 2024


Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov – his body language telling everything about his anger – literally said, “Assad must negotiate with the legitimate opposition, which is on the UN list.”

Very important: Lavrov did not mean Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), the Salafi-jihadi, or Rent-a-Jihadi mob financed by the Turkish National Intelligence Organization (MIT) with weapons funded by Qatar, and fully supported by NATO and Tel Aviv.

What happened after the funeral in Doha was quite murky, suggesting a western intel remote-controlled coup, developing as fast as lightning, complete with reports of domestic betrayals.

The original Astana idea was to keep Damascus safe and to have Ankara manage HTS. Yet Assad had already committed a serious strategic blunder, believing in lofty promises by NATO messaged through his newfound Arab leader friends in the UAE and Saudi Arabia.

MASSIVE air traffic between Iran, Russia and the Russian air base in Hmeimim.

All that with total Turkish consent.

Historically, this is a first.

Call it the the last sigh of the – dead – Astana process.

— Pepe Escobar (@RealPepeEscobar) December 8, 2024


To his own astonishment, according to Syrian and regional officials, Assad finally realized how fragile his own position was, having turned down military assistance from his stalwart regional allies, Iran and Hezbollah, believing that his new Arab allies might keep him safe.

The Syrian Arab Army (SAA) was in shambles after 13 years of war and ruthless US sanctions. Logistics were prey to deplorable corruption. The rot was systemic. But importantly, while many were prepared to fight the foreign-backed terror groups once again, insiders say Assad never fully deployed his army to counterattack the onslaught.

Tehran and Moscow tried everything – up to the last minute. In fact, Assad was already in deep trouble since his visit to Moscow on 29 November that reaped no tangible results. The Damascus establishment thus regarded Russia’s insistence that Assad must abandon his previous red lines on negotiating a political settlement as a de facto signal pointing to the end.

Turkiye: ‘we have nothing to do with it’

Apart from doing nothing to prevent the increasing atrophy and collapse of the SAA, Assad did nothing to rein in Israel, which has been bombing Syria non-stop for years.

Until the very last moment, Tehran was willing to help: two brigades were ready to get into Syria, but it would take at least two weeks to deploy them.

The Fars News Agency explained the mechanism in detail – from the Syrian leadership’s inexorable lack of motivation to fight the terror brigades to Assad ignoring serious warnings from Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei since June, all the way to two months ago, with other Iranian officials warning that HTS and its foreign backers were preparing a blitzkrieg. According to the Iranians:

“After Aleppo fell, it became clear that Assad had no real intentions of staying in power, so we started to engage in diplomatic talks with the opposition, and arranged the safe exit of our troops from Syria. If the SAA does not fight, neither will we risk our soldiers’ lives. Russia and the UAE had managed to convince him to step down, so there was nothing we could do.”

There’s no Russian confirmation that they convinced Assad to step down: one just needs to interpret that failed meeting in Moscow on 29 November. Yet, significantly, there is confirmation, before that, about Turkiye knowing everything about the HTS offensive as far back as six months ago.

Ankara’s version is predictably murky: HTS told them about it, and asked them not to intervene. Additionally, the Turkish Foreign Ministry spun that President-Caliph Recep Tayyip Erdogan tried to warn Assad (no word from Damascus on that). Ankara, on the record, via Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan, firmly denies orchestrating or approving the Rent-a-Jihadi offensive. They may regret this yet, with everyone from Washington to Tel Aviv jumping in to take credit for the fall of Damascus.

Only the NATO propaganda machine believes this version – as HTS has been for years completely supported not only by Turkiye, but also, covertly, by Israel, which was outed for paying salaries to the extremists during the Syrian war, and famously helped rehabilitate Al-Qaeda fighters injured in battle.

All that leads to the predominant scenario of a carefully calculated CIA/MI6/Mossad controlled demolition, complete with a non-stop weaponizing flow, Ukrainian training of takfiris on the use of FPV kamikaze drones, and Samsonites full of cash bribing high-ranking Syrian officials.

New Great Game reloaded

The Syrian collapse may be a classic case of “extending Russia” – and also Iran, when it comes to the all-crucial land bridge that connects it with its allies in the Mediterranean (the Lebanese and Palestinian resistance movements). Not to mention sending a message to China, which, for all its lofty “community of a shared future” rhetoric, had done absolutely nothing to help in the reconstruction of Syria.

China has – finally – spoken.

Calls for a “political solution” in Syria.

Not good enough.

Please try again.

— Pepe Escobar (@RealPepeEscobar) December 9, 2024


On the geo-energy level, now there are no more obstacles to the resolution of an epic Pipelineistan saga – and one of the key reasons for the war on Syria, as I analyzed it nine years ago: building the Qatar–Turkiye gas pipeline through Syrian territory to provide Europe with an alternative to Russian gas. Assad had rejected that project, after which Doha helped fund the Syrian war to depose him.

There’s no evidence that key Persian Gulf states such as Saudi Arabia and UAE will gleefully accept Qatar’s geoeconomic stardom if the pipeline is built. For starters, it needs to run through Saudi territory, and Riyadh may no longer be open to that.

This burning question connects to a pile-up of other questions, including, with the Syrian gateway all but gone: how will Hezbollah receive weapons supplies in the future, and how will the Arab world react to Turkiye trying to go full Neo-Ottoman?

Then there’s the thorny case of BRICS partner-state Turkiye directly clashing with top BRICS members Russia, China, and Iran. Ankara’s new turn may even end up causing it to be rejected by BRICS, and not granted a favorable trade status by China.

While a case can certainly be made that losing Syria may be devastating for Russia and the Global Majority, hold those horses – for now. In the event of losing the port of Tartous that the USSR-Russia has run since 1971, alongside the Hmeimim air base – and thus being ousted from the Eastern Mediterranean – Moscow would have replacing options, with different degrees of feasibility.

We have Algeria (a BRICS partner), Egypt (a BRICS member), and Libya. Even the Persian Gulf: that, incidentally, could become part of the Russia–Iran comprehensive strategic partnership, to be officially signed on 25 January in Moscow by Putin and his Iranian counterpart President Masoud Pezeshkian.

It’s extremely naïve to assume that Moscow was caught by surprise by the staging of an alleged Kursk 2.0. As if all Russian intel assets – bases, satellites, ground intel – would not have scrutinized a bunch of Salafi-Jihadis for months assembling an army of tens of thousands in Greater Idlib, complete with a tank division.

So it’s quite plausible that what’s being played is classic Russia, combined with Persian guile. It didn’t take long for Tehran and Moscow to do the math on what they would lose – especially in terms of human resources – by falling into the trap of supporting an already enfeebled Assad in yet another bloody, protracted ground war. Still, Tehran offered military support, and Moscow, air support, and negotiations scenarios till the very end.

Now, the whole Syrian tragedy – including a possible Caliphate of all-Sham led by reformed, minority-hugging jihadist Abu Mohammad al-Julani – falls into the full managing responsibility of the NATO/Tel Aviv/Ankara combo.

They are simply not prepared to navigate the ultra-complex tribal, clannish, embedded in corruption Syrian matrix – not to mention the magma of 37 terror outfits only kept together, so far, by the tiny glue of ousting Assad. This volcano will certainly explode in their collective faces, potentially in the form of horrendous internal battles that may last at least a few years.

Syria’s northeast and east are already, instantly, mired in total anarchy, with a multitude of local tribes bent on keeping their mafioso schemes at all costs, refusing to be controlled by a US–Kurd Rojava composite that is largely communist and secular. Some of these tribes are already getting cozy with the Turk-supported Salafi-jihadis. Other Arab tribes had this year joined forces with Damascus against both the extremists and Kurdish secessionists.

Western Syria may also be anarchy territory, as in Idlib: bloody rivalry between terror and bandit networks, between clans, tribes, ethnic groups, and religious groups regimented by Assad, the panorama even more complex than in Libya under former President Muammar al-Gaddafi.

As for the Head-Choppers’ supply lines, they will inevitably be stretched – and then it will be easy to cut them off, not only by Iran, for instance, but also by the NATO wing via Turkiye/Israel when they turn against the Caliphate, as they invariably may if the latter’s abuses become too media-apparent.
No one is able to foresee what will happen to the carcass of Assad-dynasty Syria. Millions of refugees may return, especially from Turkiye, which Washington has for years tried to prevent to protect its “Kurdification” project in the north – but at the same time, millions will flee, terrified by the prospect of a new Caliphate and a renewed civil war.

Is there a possible ray of light amongst such gloom? The leader of the transition government will be Mohammad al-Bashir, who was, until recently, the prime minister of the so-called Syrian Salvation Government (SSG) in HTS-ruled Idlib. An electrical engineer by training, Bashir added a further degree to his education in 2021: Sharia and law.

Losing Syria should not mean losing Palestine

The Global Majority may be mourning what, on the surface, looks like a nearly lethal blow against the Axis of Resistance. Yet there’s no way Russia, Iran, Iraq – and even thunderously silent China – will let a NATO-Israel-Turkiye-backed Salafi-jihadi proxy army prevail. Unlike the collective west, they are smarter, tougher, infinitely more patient, and consider the contours of the Big Picture ahead. It’s too early; sooner or later they will start rollin’ to prevent western-backed jihadism from spilling into Beijing, Tehran, and Moscow.

Russian foreign intel agency Sluzhba Vneshney Razvedki (SVR) now has to be monitoring 24/7 what will be the next destination of the large cross-Heartland Salafi-jihadi brigade in Syria, overwhelmingly Uzbeks, Uighurs, Tajiks, and a sprinkle of Chechens. There’s no question they will be used to “extend” (US Think Tankland terminology) not only Central Asia but the Russian Federation.

Meanwhile, Israel will be overstretched in the Golan. The Americans will temporarily feel safe and secure around the oil fields from which they will keep stealing Syrian oil. These are two ideal latitudes for the start of what would be the first concerted BRICS retaliation against those who are unleashing the First BRICS War.

Then there’s the ultimate tragedy: Palestine. A massive plot twist took place right inside the venerable Umayyad mosque in Damascus. The NATO-Israeli-Turk Head-Chopping Army is now promising the Palestinians they are coming to liberate Gaza and Jerusalem.

Yet until this past Sunday, it was all “We love Israel.” The MC of this PR op – designed to fool the Muslim world and the Global Majority – is none other than the Caliph of al-Sham himself, Julani.

As it stands, the new regime in Damascus will be, for all practical purposes, backed by those who support and engineer Eretz Israel and the genocide of Palestine. It’s already out in the open, coming from Israeli cabinet officials themselves: Tel Aviv ideally would love to expel the population of Gaza and the West Bank to Syria, though Jordan is their preferred destination.

This is the battle to focus on from now on.

The late Hezbollah secretary-general Hassan Nasrallah was adamant when he insisted on the deeper meaning of losing Syria: “Palestine would be lost.” More than ever, it’s up to a Global Resistance not to allow it.

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2024/12/ ... st-mortem/

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Syria podcast - leaving Syria and the terrorist coup on behalf of Israel, Turkey, Qatar and NATO member states
Mike Robinson of UK Column speaks to Vanessa Beeley

vanessa beeley
Dec 13, 2024
Mike and I sat down to talk about my recent departure from Syria for the second in a series of podcasts on Syria. You can follow UK Column News and insights here. They are providing an invaluable news and analysis service in this age of misinformation.

This is the first podcast during the first days of the terrorist advances in Syria, starting with Aleppo.

https://beeley.substack.com/p/syria-pod ... 0to%20paid

The situation in Syria is deteriorating on an hourly basis, mass executions, ethnic cleansing of Shia and Alawite Muslim communities - Christmas is cancelled in Damascus with festivities forbidden and even family gatherings muted and surveilled.

More to follow

****

Please do consider subscribing. Thank you to all those who do and who have enabled me to keep working despite the tragedy unfolding in Syria.. xx

Vanessa Beeley is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

https://beeley.substack.com/p/syria-pod ... dium=email

******

The Syrian Revolution Was a Lie
Posted by Internationalist 360° on December 11, 2024



“I was born and baptized in Syria. As a Christian and a journalist I have more interest than most in seeing Syria respect freedom of religion and freedom of the press. Syria is secular. And those who celebrate it being turned into an Islamic Caliphate run by Al Qaeda, Israel and NATO are delusional or Zionists and imperialists.”

– Richard Medhurst




British-Syrian journalist Richard Medhurst reports on the end of the Syrian Arab Republic as Al Qaeda takes over Damascus and helps Israel and NATO consolidate their stranglehold over Syria.

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2024/12/ ... was-a-lie/
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: Syria

Post by blindpig » Sat Dec 14, 2024 12:27 pm

The fall of Syria

The collapse of the government of Bashar al-Assad is a grave setback for anti-imperialist forces from which we must learn.
Proletarian writers

Thursday 12 December 2024

Image
While Israel and Turkey had clear and deep involvement in the operation that broke the back of a Syrian regime that proved to have been slowly rotting from within, the ultimate architects of the siege, terrorise, divide and occupy strategy were the US imperialists, enthusiastically assisted by their British counterparts for nearly 14 years of dirty warfare.

The resignation of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad and the handing over of Damascus to US-backed terror gangs is a victory for US imperialism. The Anglo-American imperialists have long sought to subjugate all of Syria and now they think they have the opportunity to do so.

There are those who call themselves ‘socialists’ who are celebrating the fall of the Syrian government and the end of the Syrian Arab Republic, but as soon as it was declared that President Assad had gone into exile, US and Israeli warplanes started bombing runs all over the country and the Israeli regime began to annex more Syrian territory.

The US-led war on Syria began in 2011 in the period referred to as the ‘Arab Spring’, during which mass street protests broke out in Tunisia and then Egypt and in both countries longstanding leaders aligned with the USA were forced out. The USA and its imperialist allies responded quickly to the situation and began to actively manipulate and even create protests in other countries, including in Syria and Libya.

Their aim was to rapidly escalate any peaceful protests that did occur into violent confrontations spiralling into civil war that could then be used to justify ‘humanitarian’ intervention by the imperialist camp. This is what was done in Libya and which had such horrific effects on the Libyan people, with the nation now divided in two and with open slave markets operating in Tripoli.

In Syria at this time, the USA unleashed a giant cover action campaign that was codenamed ‘Operation Timber Sycamore’. This consisted of a huge programme of arming gangs of extremely reactionary fundamentalists, who at various times went under the names of al-Qaeda, Isis, the Syrian National Army, Jabat Al Nusra and now Hayt-Tahrir Al Sham. This multitude of names disguises that they are (at root) the same group, which has been working with the USA in many countries since at least the time of the Afghan war in the 1980s.

Their way of war is always the same, and it involves the mass killing of civilians and countless other war crimes that the US pretends to oppose. Along with this campaign of mass terror came the economic sanctions, which in many ways were even more devastating than the actions of the terror gangs.

A brutal and strangulating siege
Since 2011, Syria has suffered under brutal and strangulating imperialist sanctions that have severely prohibited its ability to fulfil even the most basic functions such as feeding its population. Even after intervention by the Russians and Iranians in support of the Damascus government, over one third of the country remained controlled by the al-Qaeda-type groups and by Kurdish forces (also aligned with the USA) in parts of the north and north-east. Meanwhile, US military directly occupied the country’s major oil and wheat producing areas.

The aim of all this was to create a state of siege in the country, and the aim of any siege is to break the will of the opponent to resist by making life in the besieged land as unbearable as possible. This is what was being done to Syria from 2011 onwards, and it was done in order to bring down the government led by Bashar al-Assad and replace it with one that is totally subservient to US diktat.

What happened over the course of last week was that the years of siege warfare appear to have finally paid off and a significant number of commanders in the Syrian army simply refused to fight the latest incursion of US and Turkish-backed HTS-led forces.

The cumulative effect of the siege warfare seems to have finally broken the will to fight of many in the Syrian army, and President Assad himself left the country as part of a deal with the US-backed forces. Now Syria is a country without a functioning state, with no army to defend it, and no allies. It is being bombed continuously by Israeli and US warplanes, the imperialists clearly being determined to make sure that not a shred of Syria’s defensive capabilities remain. Territory is being seized by Israel in the south and there is a high likelihood of a direct Turkish invasion in the north.

Thirteen years of war, hundreds of thousands dead and millions turned into refugees. This is the legacy of the imperialists’ dirty war on Syria, and now they have won their grim victory it is likely that only chaos and more destruction awaits the Syrian people.

The enemy within
The question must be asked: why did so many on the British left support this imperialist war? Why did left-social-democratic and Trotskyists such as Owen Jones, Paul Mason, Aaron Bastani, Zarah Sultana and so many other ‘leftist’ luminaries support the destruction of this anti-zionist country?

The answer lies in the fact that all of these ‘leftists’ are rabid supporters of US imperialism. Whether the war is on Russia or on Syria, Britain’s fake left will line up either to support it directly or to indirectly justify it by hiding behind dumb phrases like “Assad is a dictator”. These traitors to the working class will move on and forget this war as the news media turns away and Syria is torn to pieces by the rabid dogs of imperialism.

The lesson for true socialists is that when this war was first being pushed by David Cameron back in 2011 a much more serious antiwar campaign should have been waged. Instead the pro-imperialist left agreed with much of the propaganda being pushed by the imperialists and ended up doing little or nothing to mount any real opposition to the 13-year-long siege on and destruction of a nation that was an important part of the anti-imperialist resistance axis.

This is yet another shameful episode of collaboration by the British ‘left’ with our class enemies. Until we purge our movement of the influence of this bribed and treacherous fifth column, we will come not a single step closer to our own liberation.

https://thecommunists.org/2024/12/12/ne ... treachery/

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The Day the Media Decided Militant Jihadism Is OK
December 12, 2024

Jonathan Cook on the sudden capacity of the Western press — in the case of Syria — to distinguish between jihadists and Islamic nationalists.

Image
Hamas graffiti in the Occupied West Bank city of Nablus in 2006. (Michael loadenthal, Flickr, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

By Jonathan Cook
Jonathan-Cook.net

Here is a very strange thing. For years, Western media outlets and politicians have been recklessly indifferent to the fact that Hamas is not a jihadist movement, like al-Qaeda or Islamic State, but a specifically *Palestinian* national resistance movement — if one underpinned by an Islamist ideology that distinguishes it from secular Palestinian national movements like Fatah.

Shortly after Hamas’ attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stood alongside U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken and claimed unchallenged: “Hamas is ISIS [Islamic State]… and Hamas should be treated exactly the way ISIS was treated.“

But Hamas, unlike al-Qaeda and Islamic State, is not seeking to recreate a caliphate embracing all Muslims wherever they live, indifferent to national borders. It wants to create a Palestinian state in Palestine. Israel is determined to stop any Palestinian state emerging, even it means committing genocide.

Hamas does not demand strict adherence to religious law, and it does not prioritise Islam over Palestinian national identity.

It is not, as Israel and its apologists in the West try to persuade us, part of some Islamic crusade, waging a global war against the values of a supposed Judeo-Christian “civilisation.”

Hamas does not oppress Christians (a Christian community existed quite peacefully in Gaza until Israel started bombing their churches), or force women to wear the veil.

The U.K.’s designation of Hamas as a terrorist organisation in both its military and political-welfare wings has been justified in large part on this misrepresentation of Hamas’ ideological character.

I raise this matter not to praise Hamas (see the legal disclaimer below) but to highlight the current, outrageous hypocrisy of the entire Western media corps.

We now have an al-Qaeda offshoot in Syria, rebranded as HTS (Hayat Tahrir al-Sham). And Western journalists, led as ever by the BBC, are falling over themselves to explain how the group has transformed itself overnight from head-chopping jihadism into a moderate, “diversity-friendly” Syrian national resistance movement.

The media is suddenly deeply concerned to clarify the difference between militant jihadism and Islamic national resistance, and insist that the latter is respectable.

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Fighters of Tahrir al-Sham in the Syrian village of Mushairfa, northeast of Hama, during the northeastern Hama offensive in October 2017. (Qasioun News Agency, CC BY 3.0, Wikimedia Commons)

That, of course, is being presented as the rationale for the British and U.S. governments to quickly end the designation of HTS as a terrorist organisation, even as the same governments keep Hamas in its entirety proscribed. It is the reason given for embracing this al-Qaeda retread as a good Syrian nationalist movement, and one supposedly keen to unify the country.

The point is: the Western media is quite capable of understanding the difference between jihadists and Islamic nationalists when they want to. But they only want to when the British and U.S. national security states tell them to.

That is the behaviour of what we are told is a “free press”.

LEGAL DISCLAIMER: The above observations are made for purely analytical purposes and are not intended in any way to “encourage support” for Hamas, which would be in violation of Section 12 of the U.K.’s Terrorism Act. Hamas is designated a terrorist organisation by the U.K. government.

After all, who are we to question the government’s wisdom in using counter-terror legislation to jail journalists for up to 14 years for pointing out the inconsistent application of its policies?

Who are we to question the right of the British police to raid the homes of independent journalists, investigate and arrest them, as has happened to Richard Medhurst and Asa Winstanley, for allegedly not sticking closely enough to the U.K. government’s position on Hamas?

Who are we to question why the British media, upholders of a glorious tradition of press freedom, are not reporting on the arrest and investigation of independent journalists by police for supposedly violating Section 12 in relation to Hamas when the police appear utterly unwilling to enforce Section 12 in relation to HTS?

None of the foregoing should be seen in any way to suggest that Britain is not fully democratic, or that it is exhibiting any signs of becoming a police state.

https://consortiumnews.com/2024/12/12/t ... ism-is-ok/

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Syrian minorities flee to Lebanon in fear of extremists

The groups who launched an assault on Syria and took over the country are responsible for committing many atrocities against minorities over the years

News Desk

DEC 13, 2024

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(Photo credit: X)

Tens of thousands of Syrians from various minority groups have fled their villages and made their way to the Lebanese border in fear of the extremist groups who just took over Syria days ago after the lightning offensive that led to the fall of president Bashar al-Assad’s government.

Around 90,000 Syrian citizens have entered Lebanon since the collapse of the Assad government, according to a report released by Lebanese newspaper Al-Akhbar on 13 December – which cites security sources in Lebanon.

The official number who entered Lebanon from Syria since Assad’s government fell on Sunday does not exceed 7,000, excluding the thousands of displaced people who entered via illegal crossings – bringing the number closer to 90,000.

“The majority of them are from minorities who were residing in areas controlled by the regime, such as the vicinity of the Sayyida Zaynab shrine and the countryside of Homs and Hama, all the way to the Lebanese border, and they decided to leave. Some of them spoke of being subjected to threats, while others denied this, but they have great concerns,” the security sources said.

A small number of Syrians have resided in Beirut, while others have entered Lebanon’s eastern Bekaa region. Many are also reported to still be stranded along the border.

The eastern Lebanese city of Hermel has seen Syrians take refuge from the Qusayr, Matarba, and Rablah areas in Syria, as well as Nubl and Zahraa – two Shia towns in the Aleppo countryside that were besieged by Al-Qaeda’s Nusra Front, now known as Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), the extremist forces which led the incursion on Syria and entered Damascus on 8 December.

Some of the displaced Syrians have reported being attacked or asked to leave by the extremist militant groups.

Since the fall of Damascus, HTS has publicly vowed that minority groups and all religious sanctities would be protected by the new government appointed by the former Al-Qaeda branch. While no mass slaughter of minorities has taken place, as seen in previous years of the Syrian war, many are skeptical and fearful.

The Nusra Front was responsible for many atrocities against Christians, Alawites, Shias, and Druze – which included suicide bombings, executions, kidnappings, indiscriminate shelling, and other war crimes.

The Turkish proxy – the Syrian National Army (SNA) force – that also joined HTS in its assault against Syria that began on 27 November has incorporated scores of ISIS fighters and commanders into its ranks over the years.

https://thecradle.co/articles/syrian-mi ... extremists

Israeli tanks push deeper into south Syria as Tel Aviv hails 'historical moment'

Israel has taken advantage of the fall of president Bashar al-Assad's government to occupy Syrian land and destroy its military infrastructure

News Desk

DEC 13, 2024

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(Photo credit: Jalaa Marey/AFP)

Israeli tanks penetrated deep into the Quneitra countryside overnight and entered the town of Khan Arnabeh, one of the largest towns in the governorate, local sources reported to Al Mayadeen on 13 December.

The sources added that the Israeli tanks entered an abandoned former military base in Khan Arnabeh, before withdrawing again.

Israeli forces also issued warnings to the residents of villages in the western countryside of Daraa to stay in their homes, Al Mayadeen's correspondent Reda al-Basha stated.

Israel has been occupying additional land in southern Syria and the Golan Heights since Assad was deposed on Sunday by extremist militants from Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS).

The group, led by former Islamic State (ISI) commander Abu Mohammad al-Jolani, who has recently started going by his real name Ahmad al-Sharaa, received strong foreign backing from the US, Turkiye, and Israel in its lighting campaign to capture Syria's major cities, including Damascus.

Last night's incursion came as Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz ordered the military to “prepare to remain” throughout the winter in the UN-patrolled buffer zone in the Golan Heights.

“Due to the situation in Syria, it is of critical security importance to maintain our presence at the summit of Mount Hermon, and everything must be done to ensure the (army's) readiness on-site to enable the fighters to stay there despite the challenging weather conditions,” Katz's spokesman said in a statement Friday.

Katz called the return of the peaks of Mount Hermon in Syria to Israeli control “a moving historical moment.”

“Netanyahu and I visited the Golan Heights and saw the peaks of Mount Hermon in Syria, which returned to our control after 51 years,” he added.

Katz made his comments as footage emerged of Israeli Jewish settlers performing Talmudic rituals in areas under Israeli army control inside Syria. The Israeli settler movement is asking that the army “conquer and destroy” as much territory in Syria and Lebanon as possible to pave the way for Jewish settlement.


Israel also carried out air raids in the early hours of the morning on the capital, Damascus.

The Al Mayadeen correspondent said that the Israeli raids “targeted Mount Qasioun in the Syrian capital, Damascus, where the former regime's Republican Guard sites are located.”

The bombings come as part of Israel's effort to systematically destroy all Syrian military weapons and infrastructure.

On 10 December, the Israeli air force took advantage of the collapse of the Syrian army to carry out over 350 airstrikes in 48 hours in Syria.

The intense strikes have left “nothing of the Syrian army's assets,” regional security sources and officers within the now-fallen Syrian army told Reuters.

Israeli targets in Syria included military bases, warplanes, missile depots, manufacturing facilities, drones, tanks, radars, navy vessels, and more, the army said.

https://thecradle.co/articles/israeli-t ... cal-moment

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What’s Really Behind Israel’s “Shock & Awe” Campaign In Syria?

Andrew Korybko
Dec 13, 2024

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A confluence of interests explains its actions, but these same actions also have some unintended consequences.

Israel carried out one of the largest attack operations in its history after launching nearly 500 strikes in post-Assad Syria, which has just been taken over by a group of “rebels” led by the terrorist-designated and Turkish-backed Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), formerly known as Al Qaeda in Syria. The goal is to create a “sterile defense zone”, to which end the IDF broached the Golan Heights buffer zone and advanced along the Syrian-Lebanese border, ending up just kilometers away from Damascus.

The operation is ongoing and it’s possible that Israel will push further, whether deeper into Syria and/or perhaps flanking Lebanon to reinvade Hezbollah from behind the defense lines that it built. It also can’t be ruled out that Israel will expand its annexed portion of the Golan Heights to include Syria’s portion and even areas beyond. Complementarily, Israel could arm nearby Druze to carve out a client state in southern Syria, even if such never declares independence. All of this advances the “Greater Israel” plan.

Russian Permanent Representative to the UN Vasily Nebenzia condemned “the continuing aggression of Israel against Syria”, though the argument can be made that Israel’s “demilitarization” of post-Assad Syria prevents strategic Soviet- and Russian-era weaponry from being sent to Turkiye and onward to Ukraine. The “rebels” and terrorists can’t operate them without extensive training anyway so they might have passed them along to their Western patrons as payment for their support if they weren’t destroyed.

Their loss of this equipment, and the possibility that former members of the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) who were trained to operate such could be allowed to join the new armed forces as part of the ongoing “nation-rebuilding” efforts, interestingly creates a military-technical opportunity for Russia. TASS reported on what Ibragim Ibragimov, a researcher at the Russian Academy of Sciences’ Institute of World Economy and International Relations, told Vedomosti earlier this week.

In his view, “I don’t exclude that a new format of military-technical cooperation will appear soon and that Russian military instructors will play a role in establishing a new Syrian army.” It might be this possible opportunity that accounts for publicly financed Russian media’s restrained response to the Syrian regime change that was analyzed here. The explanation is that Russia might want to replace these wares, which the new ruling arrangement needs, so it’s mutually beneficial to remain cordial for now.

Therefore, it could turn out that Israel’s “demilitarization” of post-Assad Syria inadvertently serves to perpetuate Russia’s military presence, though other unrelated developments could still occur to ensure its phased but dignified withdrawal like some observers expect might be inevitable. It’s also interesting to wonder why Israel waited until now to destroy all of Syria’s strategic weaponry and didn’t do so earlier. The answer appears to be that Israel didn’t feel as threatened by Assad as it does by HTS.

Despite the official decades-long state of war between their countries, Assad was considered more predictable, and later after Russia’s intervention, more manageable. After all, it was only on one exceptional occasion in early 2018 that the SAA shot down an Israeli jet, on every other occasion Israel’s strikes against the IRGC and Hezbollah there went unpunished. This is due to Assad being more rational than HTS extremists in that he wasn’t willing to risk Syria’s destruction just for Iran and Hezbollah’s sake.

His successors are ideological driven and embrace a twisted “martyrdom” concept, however, so it couldn’t confidently be ruled out that they wouldn’t one day try to learn how to operate the strategic Soviet- and Russian-era weaponry that they inherited to launch a devastating attack against Israel. Whatever replacement equipment the new ruling arrangement might receive, whether from Russia or whoever else, will presumably have to first be preapproved by Israel for this reason or it’ll be destroyed.

In the same vein, it can therefore also be concluded that the US didn’t consider it a threat to its interests for the Taliban to seize approximately $24 billion worth of American equipment during its reconquest of Afghanistan or they’d have destroyed it all beforehand. One reason for that could be that they thought that the Taliban might be emboldened to expand into Central Asia. In any case, the contrast between Israel’s reaction to HTS’ conquest of Syria and the US’ reaction to the Taliban’s of Afghanistan is damning.

Putting all the preceding observations together, Israel’s “shock and awe” campaign in Syria is driven by: 1) a much greater threat perception of HTS than of Assad; 2) the desire to advance military-strategic goals in Lebanon and Syria; and 3) possible territorial revisionism per the “Greater Israel” plan. The unintended consequences are that: 1) Biden’s Afghan fiasco looks even worse than before; 2) Syrian heavy equipment won’t make it to Ukraine; and 3) Russia might retain its military presence in Syria.

https://korybko.substack.com/p/whats-re ... aels-shock

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Inside Israel’s Brazen Syria Land Grab: A Decades-Old Plan Comes to Life
Posted by Internationalist 360° on December 13, 2024
Robert Inlakesh

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Within hours of former Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s deposition, the Israeli military launched an unprecedented offensive that seized more land in the Golan Heights. Israel now openly seeks to implement a buffer zone plan that will seize more of Syria’s territory, a plot that has been over a decade in the making.

In February 2013, it was reported that the Israeli government had been presented with a “buffer zone” proposal that would extend as far as 10 miles into Syrian territory. This would, of course, mean violating the 1974 disengagement agreement with Syria, which saw Israel withdraw from a series of areas in the Golan Heights.

Later on that same year, the U.S., along with its allies Israel and Jordan, sought to establish two separate buffer zone areas inside southern Syria. The first was set to extend from the West of Qatana and areas in the Damascus countryside down to the Jordan border, working to clear any Syrian presence from the Golan Heights. The second buffer zone was set to extend from Dara’a to Jabal Druze along the northern Jordanian border. This plan was to be enforced through the deployment of 20,000 American soldiers who would be stationed in Jordan.

This buffer zone model inside Syria was to be modeled on the “Good Fence” strategy implemented over two decades in southern Lebanon. Although Israel would eventually have its own forces stationed there, it would heavily rely on local militia forces to operate such a system. While this was labeled a “buffer zone” strategy, in reality, it amounted to a military occupation of Lebanese territory using right-wing Maronite Christian militias to do all the heavy lifting through the self-described “South Lebanon Army” (SLA).

In 1967, Israel illegally occupied the Golan Heights from Syria, which would end up triggering on-and-off violence between the two sides, as Israeli forces would routinely send settlers and military vehicles deeper into Syrian lands, attempting to expand their territorial control. Former Israeli Defence Minister Moshe Dayan even admitted that “Israel could be blamed for over 80 percent of the incidents which enflamed tensions around the demilitarized zones between Israel and Syria ahead of the 1967 War.”

During the 1973 “October War” that was launched by Syria and Egypt in a bid to recapture their own occupied territories from Israel, when the tide began turning militarily after Washington began aiding its allies in Tel Aviv, Israeli forces pushed even further into Syrian lands. The situation even triggered Iraqi President Saddam Hussein to send his army to reinforce Damascus as the situation grew dire for former Syrian President Hafez al-Assad.

Israel later annexed the Golan Heights, which was rejected by the international community, who deemed it illegal through the passing of United Nations Security Council resolution 497. Despite this condemnation, Tel Aviv was never punished for violating the binding resolution.

“There is absolutely no basis under international law to preventively or preemptively disarm a country you don’t like.”

UN experts said on Wednesday that Israel’s recent strikes on Syria violate international law. pic.twitter.com/HzBrxn6r27

— Middle East Eye (@MiddleEastEye) December 12, 2024


The war in Syria that began in 2011 then presented the Israelis with a new opportunity to claim territory that would solidify their control over the resource-rich Golan Heights. In 2013, while planning to secure a new buffer zone in southern Syria, Israel began providing support to at least a dozen opposition groups that were fighting against the Syrian Arab Army (SAA).

This support came in the form of propping up its own proxy group called “Forsan al-Julan” while providing light weapons, medical aid and financial support to a range of other armed militia that included the al-Nusra Front.

In recent years, the Israelis have been working on opening contacts with groups belonging to the Druze minority religious sect in southern Syria, even sending proposals to Moscow to create a Syrian Druze state bordering Israel. The Druze-led Syrian Liwa Party would then emerge from the area of Suwayda in 2020, swiftly opening a line of contact with the U.S., seeking to separate southern Syria from the rest of the country.

Israeli tanks continue to advance further into Syrian territory, meeting no resistance from the newly installed government in Damascus. That government has yet to offer any opposition to Israel’s invasion or its hundreds of airstrikes carried out across Syrian territory. It appears that Israel’s long-sought-after goal of expanding its occupation into Syria has, for now, succeeded.

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2024/12/ ... s-to-life/

"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: Syria

Post by blindpig » Sun Dec 15, 2024 1:24 pm

On Syria's oil wealth
December 14, 19:27

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Syrian "black gold"

Before the war, Syria was an insignificant oil exporter – production was only 0.5% of the world total. This gave the budget 25-30% of income. And it was not a very rich country.

However, before the war, it covered all its consumption and exported "black gold". The production record was about 600 thousand barrels per day, but the figure has been steadily falling over the years. In 2010 – 383 thousand.

Many associate support for the protests in 2011 with a severe drought and problems in the economy. However, even without the drought and then the war, sooner or later, without investment in production, the budget would have lost significant export income.

Today, oil exports are out of the question – if you add up all the oil produced, including in the Kurdish territories, you get a maximum of about 116 thousand barrels per day.

In the current deplorable situation - with a destroyed industry, the "old" Syria of Assad consumes about 140 thousand barrels per day. Oil consumption in the pre-war and calm 2010 was about 290 thousand per day (a drop of more than two times).

Of these current 140 thousand consumed, about 60 thousand (over 40%) were imported by Iran by sea on credit, 16 thousand were produced by the Assad government (11.4% - a pittance!). Another 20 thousand were given to him by the Kurds under the agreement - from sources I read that the volume was 30% of what was produced in the Kurdish territories. But no one in Damascus could check the volumes. Or did not really want to ... You understand - in these matters people have many temptations.

The rest of the deficit of 44 thousand (approximately 30%) the government sought on the black market ... from the same Kurds. And here there were even more temptations to buy at one price and sell at another.

The government needed money for oil supplies from Iran and the Kurds. Given the temptations of the clans, for the population all this resulted in a constant depreciation of the national currency against the dollar, to hyperinflation. This is in addition to the unofficial levies on businesses and the population by the 4th Division and the like. And other problems in the economy.

But let's get back to the Kurds. There was a figure that production on their territory was 100 thousand. The fields themselves had previously been barbarically exploited by ISIS* and many wells were essentially finished. But 100 thousand is the most optimistic figure. In 2020, the Minister of Oil and Mineral Resources of Syria described the situation as follows:

“Oil production in Syria reached 89 thousand barrels per day. Of these, about 80 thousand were stolen. That is, almost all the oil produced in the east of the country is stolen.”

And it is stolen by the Americans, sold through their company Delta Crescent under black schemes to the same Turkey and Iraqi Kurdistan.

One of the beneficiaries of Delta Crescent is an ardent Russophobe and extremist - Republican Lindsey Graham.

He recently threatened sanctions against Turkey ( https://ria.ru/20241209/sanktsii-1988161656.html) - what a coincidence - if pro-Turkish groups attack Kurdish territories. The senator's hat flares so brightly (like a gas torch) when he worries about the Kurds.

Now there is an attempt to agree between the Kurds and the new Syrian authorities - how the oil will be divided. This issue knocked out the previous government.

Meetings are underway between the Turks and the Americans. ( https://t.me/bayraktar1070/3163 ) For the United States, in addition to business, oil is a lever of pressure on HTS* and the new Syria. They will try to hold on to or bargain something from the Turks.

But in all cases, the oil produced inside Syria will not be enough under the current status quo. There are no reserves - and soon there will be problems with fuel. Because Iran has stopped supplying its 60 thousand barrels per day.

They will have to import. Most likely, the new authorities will turn to Qatar for help.
Perhaps, for now they will supply it free of charge - the treasury of the new Syria is empty and there is nothing to pay with. Exports have also collapsed during the years of sanctions, like everything else.

So the mythical wealth of Syria in the form of oil is a fairy tale. Yes, this income is a profitable business for clans. But this is more a story about the redistribution by shadow players from the States, Damascus, Iraq, Turkey, "Syrian Kurdistan", etc.

Syria does not yet have any export potential in terms of oil. I read that Western companies will come and invest - but so far it is a theory. As well as statements about the Qatar pipeline. But oil will be needed now.

S. Shilov

* - terrorist organization

https://t.me/bayraktar1070/3168 - zinc

https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/9551542.html

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Syrian Color Revolution 2.0: Tentative Perspectives
by Gordonhahn
December 12, 2024

Syria like Ukraine and because of Ukraine has become the victim of aggressive geopolitics being waged against each other by the West and the East. Syria like Ukraine has now experienced more than one color revolution, but in the case of Damascus both were violent, while in Ukraine only the latter, the February 2014 Maidan revolt, was violent but on a far smaller scale thereof. The November attack on Aleppo, Syria’s second city, and Idlib region carried out by a Syrian opposition alliance of jihadists, most notably al-Nusrah successor Hayyit Tahrir as-Sham (HTS), other jihadi groups, Islamists such as Muslim Brotherhood, and the supposedly pro-democratic Syrian Free Army mushroomed rapidly into the unexpected fall of the Bashir Assad regime. The operation appears to have been designed by Washington in part in order to force Russia to divert resources from Ukraine to bolster the Assad regime or risk the fall of the Assad regime and loss of Russia’s two military (one naval) bases in Syria. For now the attempt at the former has succeeded but that against the latter remains an open question.

The U.S. has openly welcomed the revolutionary seizure of power, without explaining why the new regime should be expected to be any more humane than the Assad regime. Violent revolutions rarely end well. Given the predominant position within the alliance of jihadi, formerly jihadi, and Islamist groups, one would expect more caution. This is the tipoff that there was a U.S. role in this revolt as was the case back in 2011-2012. We see this in the following White House comment:

“This is a day for Syrians, about Syrians. It’s not about the United States or anyone else. It’s about the people of Syria who now have a chance to build a new country, free of the oppression and corruption of the Assad family and decades of misrule. We owe them support as they do so, and we are prepared to provide it. But the future of Syria, like the fall of Assad today, will be written by Syrians for Syrians.

Now, as the President stated, the fall of this regime is also a fundamental act of justice. It’s a moment of justice for the victims of this regime and a moment of historic opportunity for the long-suffering people of Syria, and also, of course, a moment of risk and uncertainty, as he discussed”(www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/press- ... -in-syria/).

Note that the statement all but takes credit for the overthrow and supports the ‘new regime’. The Biden administration could not disclose its role, since supporting a U.S.-designated terrorist or terrorist group is illegal. The surrealism of the statement is compounded by the fact that there is as yet no regime or order in Syria to speak of, with different regions of Syria under the control of different members of the revolutionary united front. Indeed, the country seems poised to fall into multiple internecine wars. In such violent revolutionary situations, the radicals are best-positioned to win out. But U.S. democracy-promotion is a ‘science’ in which only the destructive process is well worked out. Consolidation of such a revolution by pro-republican forces remains a goal for which there is neither strategy nor tactics. Under the present lame duck, revenge-thirst Biden administration, there is little to no thought being given to the long-term consequences of policy. Only the short-term ‘gains’ of trumping Trump and complicating Putin’s life seem important.

The West’s (including NATO Turkey’s) goal for its new Syria project at a minimum is an asymmetrical, parallel escalation against Moscow on the order of the Kursk incursion but deployed internationally in order to force the Russians to divert some of its focus and resources from Ukraine or suffer a small strategic defeat. Indeed, Ukrainian forces are said to be fighting on the rebels’ side and providing drone warfare assistance (www.nytimes.com/2024/12/03/world/middle ... ussia.html). This small strategic defeat – still limited by the fact that Russia as of now still holds onto its naval and air bases in Syria – is the price Washington has exacted from Moscow for its imminent victory in Ukraine.

At a maximum, it was hoped that the renewed conflict would evolve into a ‘color revolution’ costing Moscow not just war resources but also a ‘strategic defeat’ smaller than that which the West hoped to inflict on Moscow in Ukraine and thereby confirm the ‘right’ to eternal NATO expansion. Thus, the CIA and Pentagon reportedly armed 21 out of 28 anti-government Syrian and foreign militias refashioned by Turkish training into a mercenary “national army,” according to the Turkish think tank SETA. Many of these groups took part in this week’s assault on Aleppo (https://t.co/aw6ueXG7hG). Regardless of whether the minimum or maximum program is achieved, Washington hopes to exact a high cost for Moscow and thus increase Putin’s unwillingness to make compromises with Trump, as the president-elect pursues an end to the NATO-Russia Ukrainian War.

The military invasion’s main curator is NATO member Turkey, the president of which, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has dreams of a Greater Turkey and becoming the region’s superpower, while solving his Kurdish problem, centered in Iraq but bolstering the opposition in Syria. By invading Syria with proxy and Turkish forces, Erdogan was pursuing his own ‘small imperial’ goals, while serving both NATO’s fight in Ukraine against Russia and Washington’s support of Israel against the Palestinians, Hezbollah, and Iran. Turkey clearly played the lead role by organizing, training, and equipping the HTS-led revolutionary forces, likely with financing from Washington and Brussels. Thus, NATO is endorsing Turkish imperial or at least revanchist military action, even as it goes to war against Russia for what it regards as imperialist aggression in Ukraine.

Ankara’s goals were in fact likely manifold: to secure Turkey proper’s security by placing one of the building blocks in Syria for what is hoped might become a Greater Turkey, to weaken competitor Iran, and to position Ankara in future perhaps to confront an increasingly ambitious Israel as the leader of the Sunni world and, with Iran weakened, of the Muslim world. These goals are to be served by the operation, at a minimum, diverting Iran and Hezbollah from their fight with Israel in order to defend their Syrian ally—Assad’s Alawite regime – or, at a maximum, to deprive them of said ally. The U.S. likely informed Israel of the plan, and this may explain Netanyahu’s sudden acceptance of a ceasefire in southern Lebanon, despite failing to achieve a single of its goals there or in Gaza.

In response to the Turkish/NATO-backed jihadist/SFA offensive into Aleppo, both Iraq and Iran reinforced Syrian forces with thousands of troops and militia fighters after jihadi-led, Western-backed counteroffensive took Aleppo in late November, but the jihadi-led coalition’s rapid advance led to calling off the assistance. Thus, Damascus fell and so too the Assad regime. This violent ‘color revolution – completion of the initial American effort at the same beginning in 2011 — has been condemned by almost all the region’s leaders and the Arab League in support of Assad. We now are faced with the specter of Turkey, Turkish-backed entities, Kurds, Israel, the various revolutionary factions, remnants of the Assad regime’s army, and perhaps others fighting in Syria. The unprecedented rhetorical support by Iran and Arab and Sunni states for Syria, many of which backed anti-Assad rebels back in 2012 and later, is a result of the U.S.’s failed Mideast policies, in particular Washington’s support for Israel’s brutal war in Gaza.

The specter of a breakdown of the revolutionary coalition, civil war, and chaos hangs over Syria. In such situations – as the French, Russian, Chinese, and other revolutions demonstrate – the extremists, in this case the HTS, most often have the edge, given their zealotry, ruthlessness, and willingness to deploy violence to achieve their aims. The blowback potential is high here, with U.S. and its allies vulnerable. Israel now is under threat of having a full-fledged jihadi state, backed by NATO outlier, Turkey, on its northeast border. NATO’s Turkey is also at risk of similar blowback over time and more immediately continued instability next door and on its border. In addition, a threat comes from the opportunities the Syrian chaos affords the Kurds, who already have used it to seize Deir ez-Zur in eastern Syria on the Iraqi border. America’s European allies now await more than a million refugees, fleeing from the jihadi revolutionaries. In terms of other regional players, not just Iran but predominantly Shiite Iraq may have problems with an emerging Sunni-dominated Syria next door.

For the U.S. itself, the risk of blowback appears to be limited for the most part to politics, unless the 1,000 troops illegally located there are drawn in, forcing incoming President Donald Trump to go against his inclination to avoid wars. The world is bound to see the enormous cynicism of American republican messianism, which condemns authoritarian governments but supports extremist oppositions in Syria, Ukraine (2014), and elsewhere. HTS amir Muhammad al-Jolani (Golani, Jawlani), was once a U.S. wanted terrorist with a $10 million bounty on his head. Perhaps, some in Washington decided to use the same money to buy him off for this special operation, for Jolani is now being afforded CNN television interviews, where he portrays himself as a tolerant moderate, pursuing institution-building rather than the global caliphate (https://x.com/wikileaks/status/1865668192636657752; https://x.com/craigmurrayorg/status/186 ... 3DfCRCwexQ; and https://x.com/maxblumenthal/status/1865 ... 3DfCRCwexQ). Time will tell. But recall how Russia’s intervention in Syria to support the Assad regime and regional stability was billed by the West as Putin sowing chaos by flooding Europe with refugees. Now when AQ- and ISIS-affiliated jihadists seize the country with support from Washington and Brussels and carry out a bloodbath and spark an even greater refugee crisis what will this be called? Among the Rest, such Western cynicism will only cement its support for Russia and China. More importantly, depending on resources and foci, a HTS regime could begin to target U.S. interests in another AQ-tied case of blowback for Americans.

Begun in part due to the overlap with the Ukrainian, the demise of Assad likely will create a new black hole in perhaps the world’s most explosive region. Unintended consequences of the overthrow of the Assad regime include: a strict Islamist regime in all or a rump of Syria, the partitioning of Syria, or a series of wars between factions that draws in neighboring and perhaps other states, and the partitioning of the Syrian state. The Syrian civil war is almost certain to continue in a new, more vigorous guise. Internecine warfare is already being regenerated between Kurds, on ther one hand, and the Turlkish-backed Syrian National Army in the northeast, between remants of the former regime and all those who overthrew it, including the jihadists such as HTS, between jihadists and the Free Syrain Army, and between other groups, including foreign forces such as the Israelis, Turks, Iranians, Iraqis, and soon perhaps others.

In terms of a partition, Israel has already seized the Golan Heights, and its troops have moved to within 20 miles of Damascus while decimating former Syria’s military infrastructure and weapons stores. Turkey and its proxies hold much of northern Syria and has increasingly less latent imperial dreams rooted in Ottoman nostalgia. Turkish TV has discussed a future map of Turkey’s expansion in 2025, which includes parts of Armenia, Georgia, Greece, Bulgaria, Cyprus, and the northern parts of Iraq and Syria(https://x.com/sprinterfamily/status/186 ... 3DfCRCwexQ).

Ultimately, the Syrian black hole if it is not likely to, certainly has the potential to spinoff new wars involving Western allies, such as Israel and NATO’s Turkey, and foes, such as Iran, and fence-sitters, such as Iraq, which draw in the Ukrainian war’s participants and others once again. Despite the consolidating factor that is the recent Israeli military aggression, the tectonics of conflict between NATO Turkey and Russo-Sino-allied Iran could lead to a strategic earthquake. Should NATO Turkey and Russian-allied Iran somehow overcome their differences in the face of an Israeli advance on Damascus, the specter of a major regional war between Israel and the Muslims would hang over the Middle East–another bad outcome for another poor revolution. In this event, Western powers, on the one hand, and Russia and perhaps even China, could be drawn into the Middle East vortex.

On the other hand, a war between NATO Turkey and U.S.-backed Israel would be a peculiar and ironic twist of a higher order on the curious case during the Syria color revolution 1.0. Nearly a decade back when Pentagon-backed forces clashed with CIA-backed forces as the Islamic State rose in the desert sands of western Iraq and eastern Syria–two states touched by the hand of America’s curious mix of republican messianism and military adventurism. Suffice it to conclude by noting that Syria color revolution1.0 led directly to the rise of ISIS. Syrian color revolution bodes no better.

https://gordonhahn.com/2024/12/12/syria ... spectives/

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Pieces Begin Slowly Falling into Place in 'New Syria'

Simplicius
Dec 13, 2024

The world waits with bated breath for the Syrian situation’s resolution, how precisely the ‘opposition’ forces plan to balance the medley of foreign powers and interests in creating some semblance of a unified nation. Most likely, this will not work at all, although they are giving a good early college try.

In the last big report I had talked about the vying powers, how Israel and Turkey are now bound to eschatologically come to a loggerheads over Palestine and the Levant. Erdogan hinted as much in a new speech, wherein he suddenly lamented all the territories Turkey had lost in the early 20th century: (video at link.)

He gives the whole game away, implanting the memories in the minds of his followers, reminding them that Syria ‘should’ truly belong to Turkey. This is the slow, gradual preparation for the things to come, of which I’ve spoken. In fact, some may recall even last year I had written that Turkey’s destiny—like that of all bygone empires—lies in pursuing irredentist reunification.

Recall that in some ways Turkey has a point—though we may dislike Erdogan, it cannot be argued that Turkey wasn’t butchered up by European powers with the Sykes Picot ordeal.

But now two strongly opposing narratives are forming. On one hand, many statements and videos testify to the HTS-controlled Syria becoming a kind of proxy of Israel, while a deluge of new evidence shows Turkey slowly fortifying its position as future hegemon of the region.

First, from Turkish TV: (Video at link.)

Don’t make it so obvious!

Next, as soon as Damascus fell, the director of the MIT—Turkey’s CIA equivalent—Ibrahim Kalin was spotted visiting Jolani, touring Damascus, as well as paying homage to the ancient Umayyad mosque.

Several videos showed Jolani acting as personal chauffeur to Kalin, driving him around Damascus with an armed escort. Photo of Jolani behind the wheel:

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Video with Kalin seen in the passenger seat as onlookers are shocked Jolani is chauffeuring him: (Video at link.)

Think about that: Jolani as personal driver to the head of Turkey’s top intelligence agency—that’s not to mention that Kalin was senior personal advisor to Erdogan and is member of his AK Party.

So, Erdogan’s personal henchman is already shadowing Jolani, whispering in his ear—what can that mean? And what does that say about rumors that HTS had long ago cut ties with Turkey, with the same going for SNA/FSA/TFSA?

That’s not to mention even more videos appearing of ‘rebels’ declaring that they’re coming for Israel next: (Video at link.)

But at the other end of the equation, Israel has invaded Quneitra, securing what they claim is a buffer zone: (Video at link.)

The presence of Israeli Merkava Mark 4 tanks in the city of Umm Batna in the rural area of ​​Quneitra in southern

Look how awkward the MSM presstitute looks as she’s forced to report an obvious illegal invasion by Israel, one she’s obliged to couch in ‘neutral language’ by her producers: (Video at link.)

You know, this kind of language:

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Israeli tanks were reportedly seen a mere 15km from Damascus borders, with other sources claiming 40km—no one seems to know precisely where they are, which I suppose Israel has done on purpose:

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Some of southern Daraa was reportedly captured as well:

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Israeli forces have captured al-Khalidiyah, Rwihinah and the heights of Mughr al-Meer, Daraa direction, south Syria.

Earlier today, Israeli troops entered the former Syrian Arab Army base at Tall ash-Sham but withdrew a couple of hours later.

276 sqkm of Syria is under Israel's control (excluding the Golan).


Now, there are all kinds of stories and videos claiming Netanyahu is courting the region’s Druze tribes—here pictured suddenly sucking up to Sheikh Mowafaq Tarif, the spiritual leader of the Druze in Israel:

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Several other videos depicted Druze members calling on Israel to annex their region in order to ‘protect them’ from HTS. If true, this would be an obvious ploy for Israel to annex most of Quneitra but the problem is many of these videos have been debunked.

From one of the videos:

ISRAEL TO TAKE MORE: The Druze leader of al-Suwayda in southwestern Syria also issued a resolution on behalf of his village! “We will not agree to live under the rule of the rebels, who are identical to ISIS, we want to live under Israeli rule and become part of Israel.”

The one ‘Druze leader’ of al-Suwayda turned out to be an Israeli Druze, living in Israel; and the Druze tribal council of Hader reportedly issued a refutation—so it’s difficult to know for certain which way things are going at the moment.

However, Israeli settlers were already reported to be setting up an illegal new mission in the area, according to this video:

Printing and studying the Sefer HaTanya in the new Chabad house in the village of Hader in the liberated Hashan area (Syria). This is our entire country! Conquer and settle!! (Video at link.)

It’s hard to say if the above is some kind of religious PR stunt or taunt, or a serious confirmation that Israeli settlers are already putting down ancestral roots on newly annexed Syrian territory.

(Paywall with free option.)

https://simplicius76.substack.com/p/pie ... lling-into

These people insane with religion should be put down like the mad dogs they are.

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Anyone Expected Anything Else?

Hello! US MSM are generally war criminals--I am talking about their editorial boards staffed with sociopaths and whores, both literally and figuratively speaking. In other words--those are not normal humans.

These statements by the Salvation Government and the HTS leader, Abu Mohammad al-Julani, were met with enthusiasm by prominent experts of Islamic radicalism and fundamentalism. They praised al-Julani’s professionalism, transparency, and moderate views, and the fact that he distanced himself from his jihadist roots.Western media picked up this narrative and, in an attempt to whitewash the rebel leader, CNN released an exclusive interview with him. In this interview, al-Julani repeated the above-mentioned statements made by the Syrian Salvation Government and noted that the ambitions of HTS and its allies are confined to Syria, which should reassure potential adversaries and key regional players. The goals of HTS, he claimed, were to overthrow Bashar Assad and then to start “building Syria” – and the rebels had already achieved the first goal. However, as often happens, the statements issued by the rebels were far from the truth. HTS terrorists and allied opposition groups have already released dozens of videos demonstrating executions of members of Arab-Kurdish forces, Syrian soldiers (even those who surrendered voluntarily), Alawites, and Shiites. In several video clips, militants are seen slitting the throats of their captives..

It is not "as often happens"--it happens always. There is not an atrocity or war crime which US MSM wouldn't support. So, this flows naturally from the nature of the journalism schools in the West where they produce primarily brainwashed illiterate activists who have neither morals nor integrity. Doctor Goebbels would have been proud. Now, information now emerges that actually Tiger Brigade and its commander Suheil are intact, how and why--we have to wait and see, but many transport planes fly to Khmeimim as we speak. So, we will have to be patient.

Posted by smoothiex12 at 12:17 PM 63 Comments

http://smoothiex12.blogspot.com/2024/12 ... -else.html

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Vanessa Beeley Interview – The US/Israeli-Backed Regime Change In Syria & Its Zionist Beneficiary
The Last American Vagabond

vanessa beeley
Dec 14, 2024
Joining me today is independent investigative journalist, Vanessa Beeley, here to follow up on our recent interview regarding Syria and the western-backed regime change that took place. We discuss the potential hypothetical deals that could have been made prior to the shift in power, as well as the possibility that there was a resignation speech that was withheld.

We also discuss the reality of the group the US and Israeli government’s are supporting in Syria, and how they are not just a recognized terrorist organization, but have been armed, funded and supported by these governments for decades — long before the new HTS moniker. We also discuss the dark future for the Syrian people, and the early but very clear signs that Israel has begun its annexation of Syria while already turning toward Iran.

(Video at link.)

https://beeley.substack.com/p/vanessa-b ... dium=email

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Abu Mohammad al-Julani: Putting lipstick on a pig

Julani's rise from Al-Qaeda affiliate to a western-recognized ‘moderate’ leader exemplifies how geopolitics trumps ideology. For years, the west has pretended to fight terrorism while leveraging Julani and his vast Al-Qaeda and ISIS-linked terror network to destabilize Syria.


A Cradle Correspondent

DEC 13, 2024

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Photo Credit: The Cradle

Just in time for the Al-Qaeda offshoot Hayat Tahrir al-Sham’s (HTS) lightning conquest of Syria, a western PR campaign was launched to rebrand the terror group’s leader, Abu Mohammad al-Julani.

The BBC assured their readers that Julani, now commonly referred to as Ahmed al-Sharaa – which is his real name – had “reinvented himself,” while the Telegraph insisted that the former deputy to ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi is now “diversity friendly.”

On 6 December, just days before entering the capital Damascus, Julani sat down with CNN journalist Jomana Karadsheh for an exclusive interview to explain his past.

“Julani says he has gone through episodes of transformation through the years,” CNN wrote, after he assured Karadsheh “no one has the right to eliminate” Syria’s Alawites, Christians, and Druze.

But why was Julani so eager to convince the American public that he had no plans to exterminate Syria’s religious minorities? This question looms larger when recalling the massacre of 190 Alawites in Latakia on 4 August 2013, and the taking of hundreds more as captives.

Back then, militants from HTS (then the Nusra Front), ISIS, and the Free Syrian Army (FSA) attacked 10 villages, slaughtering civilians in ways documented by Human Rights Watch: gunshot wounds, stabbings, decapitations, and charred remains. “Some corpses were found in a state of complete charring, and others had their feet tied,” the report stated.

Another useful US asset

Fast forward to recent years, and Julani’s “transformation” seems less about repentance and more about utility. Despite HTS remaining on the US terror list – and an American bounty of $10 million reserved for Julani himself – former US special envoy to Syria, James Jeffrey, described the group as a strategic “asset” for US operations in Syria.

Under the guise of countering extremism, Washington pursued a dual strategy: enforcing crushing economic sanctions on Syria – of the sort that killed 500,000 Iraqi children in the 1990s – while ensuring its wheat-abundant and oil-rich regions remain under US control.

Ambassador Jeffrey admitted to PBS in March 2021 that Julani’s HTS was the “least bad option of the various options on Idlib, and Idlib is one of the most important places in Syria, which is one of the most important places right now in the Middle East.”

But how did Julani ascend to power in Idlib, which US official Brett McGurk described as “the largest Al-Qaeda safe haven since 9/11,” while failing to mention the critical US role in bringing it about? His Nusra Front spearheaded the 2015 conquest under the banner of Jaish al-Fatah (the Army of Conquest), a coalition that combined Nusra suicide bombers with Free Syrian Army (FSA) fighters equipped with CIA-supplied TOW missiles. Foreign Policy hailed the campaign’s swift progress, crediting this synergy of jihadists and western arms.

Years later, US official Brett McGurk would label Idlib “the largest Al-Qaeda safe haven since 9/11.” Yet, the crucial role of US weapons and strategic aid in this outcome went unmentioned.

Assistance from Tel Aviv and Brussels too

This assistance extended beyond arms: the Financial Times (FT) reported that in response, EU foreign ministers “lifted an oil embargo against Syria to allow rebels to sell crude to fund their operation.”

While the FSA claimed control of the oil fields, activists openly acknowledged that the Nusra Front was the true beneficiary, trucking barrels to Turkiye for refining or export to Europe. The arrangement netted Nusra millions before ISIS seized the fields a year later.

Academic and Syria expert Joshua Landis noted the importance of controlling the oil fields, explaining that “Whoever gets their hands on the oil, water, and agriculture holds Sunni Syria by the throat” and that “the logical conclusion from this craziness is that Europe will be funding Al-Qaeda.”

Behind the scenes, western and regional powers facilitated Julani’s ascent. Israeli airstrikes supported Nusra during clashes with Syrian forces, while outgoing Israeli Army Chief Gadi Eisenkot admitted to supplying “light weapons” to rebel groups – essentially acknowledging what the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) had been reporting for years to “discredit the rebels as stooges of the Zionists.”

Previous reports in the Wall Street Journal showed that Israel had for years provided humanitarian and medical aid to “rebels” in southern Syria, including by bringing Nusra fighters across the border into Israel for treatment.

In an interview with The American Conservative in border village Beit Jinn, militants revealed that Israel had been paying salaries – to the tune of $200,000 per month – for the entire year before HTS troops were expelled from the area by the SAA and fled to Idlib.

Meanwhile, the US oversaw a “cataract of weaponry” to Syria’s opposition, as described by the New York Times. Though publicly earmarked for the FSA, these arms frequently ended up in Nusra’s hands.

Julani’s meteoric rise began years earlier, seeded by his ties to Al-Qaeda in Iraq and its Jordanian leader, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. The latter, whose activities conveniently justified the US invasion of Iraq, operated with tacit US acknowledgment.

Julani followed a similar trajectory, emerging as a key player in the Nusra Front, which conducted bombings in Damascus and other cities in 2011 and 2012, with attacks initially misattributed to the Syrian government.

A salafist principality

Why did the EU choose to “fund Al-Qaeda” by dropping oil sanctions? Why did the US provide a “cataract of weaponry” to Nusra?

An August 2012 Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) report revealed that the US and its regional allies supported the establishment of a “Salafist principality” in eastern Syria and western Iraq as part of the effort to depose president Bashar al-Assad and divide the country.

The DIA report said a radical religious mini-state exactly of the sort later established by ISIS as its “caliphate” was the US goal, even while admitting that the so-called Syrian revolution seeking to topple Assad’s government was being driven by “Salafists, the Muslim Brotherhood, and al-Qaeda.”

The seeds of the Salafist principality were planted when late ISIS leader Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi dispatched Julani to Syria in August 2011 – at that time, Baghdadi’s group was known as the Islamic State of Iraq (ISI).

Prominent Lebanese journalist Radwan Mortada, who was embedded with Al-Qaeda fighters from Lebanon in Syria, met Julani in the central Syrian city of Homs at this time. Mortada informs The Cradle that Julani was being hosted by the Farouq Brigades, an FSA faction based in the city.

Contrary to media reports, Farouq commanders insisted the group was not comprised of defectors from the Syrian army. Instead, they said Farouq was a sectarian Salafist group that included fighters who had fought for Zarqawi’s Al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) after the 2003 US invasion.

A few months later, Julani and his fighters secretly entered the war against the Syrian government by carrying out multiple terror attacks. In Damascus on 23 December 2011, Julani sent suicide bombers to target the General Security Directorate in Damascus, killing 44, including civilians and security personnel.

Two weeks later, on 6 January 2012, Julani sent another suicide bomber to detonate explosives near a bus in the Midan district of Damascus, killing some 26 people.

The establishment of the “Support Front for the People of the Levant,” or the Nusra Front, was revealed after a videotape was provided to journalist Mortada showing Julani and other masked men announcing the group’s existence and claiming responsibility for the attacks, which opposition activists had blamed on the Syrian government itself.

The great prison release

Julani’s rise, however, was facilitated years earlier. In what has been dubbed the “Great Prison Release of 2009,” the US military freed 5,700 high-security detainees from Bucca Prison in Iraq. Among these was Julani, alongside future ISIS leaders like Baghdadi. Craig Whiteside of the US Naval War College described Camp Bucca as “America’s Jihadi University,” emphasizing the role of these releases in revitalizing the Islamic State of Iraq – which had been nearly defeated by Sunni tribal uprisings.

“The United States is often unjustly blamed for many things that are wrong in this world, but the revitalization of ISIL [ISIS] and its incubation in our own Camp Bucca is something that Americans truly own,” Whiteside wrote.

“The Iraqi government has many enemies, and the United States helped put many of them out on the street in 2009. Why?” Whiteside wondered, not realizing they would be sent to Syria as part of the US’s covert war to topple Bashar al-Assad.

More alarming today is the prospect of HTS releasing thousands of ISIS fighters from US–Kurdish prisons in Syria's north to expand their ranks. It wouldn't be the first time. This past July, American-backed Kurds released around 1,500 ISIS prisoners from detention camps, which the US military describes as an ISIS “army in waiting.”

The question of who Abu Mohammad al-Julani is – his motivations, ideologies, and transformations – is ultimately less important than what he represents. Over the past two decades, one fact remains consistent: Julani is a tool of US and Israeli strategy.

From his early days in Iraq to his rise as the leader of the Nusra Front and later HTS, Julani has played a pivotal role in advancing the geopolitical interests of his benefactors. Whether branded a terrorist or a “blazer-wearing” moderate, his actions have consistently served as a means to destabilize Syria and the wider West Asian region.

Julani’s “reinvention” is no more than a veneer designed to mask the enduring reality of his role: a strategic asset in a game where ideology is secondary to power.

https://thecradle.co/articles/abu-moham ... k-on-a-pig

These guys who have been leading the various jihadi groups can be understood as condottieri, men of some organizational ability and some reputation who can raise fighters and be their paymaster conduit from the Western and Gulf moneybags. Ideology is secondary and a tool for them, whatever their personal opinions.
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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blindpig
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Re: Syria

Post by blindpig » Mon Dec 16, 2024 12:26 pm

Syria. 12/15/2024
December 15, 22:28

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Syria. 12/15/2024

1. Negotiations with HTS regarding our bases are ongoing. The parties are currently exchanging proposals and discussing possible parameters. There are already certain points of contact on a number of parameters. But there are a couple of problematic issues.

2. There are currently no decisions on the complete withdrawal of bases in Latakia and Khmeimim. For now. If we fail to reach an agreement with HTS regarding the bases, we will have to organize the process of withdrawing troops and equipment in full. This is also not a quick process. But I would like to believe that the bases will be preserved. This is easier than negotiating alternatives in other countries.

3. From the remaining strongholds in Syria that were not specified in the agreement on bases in Latakia, our troops are being pulled back in the direction of Tartus or Khmeimim. So far, without any significant incidents.

4. The surplus equipment that is generated in Latakia will be removed, and the group, even in the case of an agreement with HTS on bases, will be reduced due to the absence of previous tasks for it, which required an expanded military presence in different areas of Syria.

5. The Russian embassy in Damascus also remains for now and will probably remain. The security of the external perimeter is currently provided by HTS militants, driving away militants from groups that are not part of HTS (a carbon copy of the situation in Kabul), including with a fatal outcome for some of them.

6. In addition to Assad, a number of high-ranking officials of the previous army and government of Syria are now in Russia in de facto political exile. In the foreseeable future, they are unlikely to be able to return to their homeland and they have currently dropped out of current Syrian politics.

7. The remnants of the Syrian army that went to Iraq are unlikely to be able to represent a combat-ready force now. Perhaps the Iranians will take them under their wing and create formations from Syrians under the wing of their numerous proxy structures. Although the question of the combat capability of the Syrian formations remains in question. But this is already the Iranians' concern.

8. In Syria itself, especially outside the major cities, killings of people associated with the previous government and army, as well as robberies and looting, continue. HTS militants are trying to create the appearance of legality, but outside several major cities, power essentially belongs to various armed gangs that are taking advantage of the vacuum of power and security. HTS, even if it wanted to, would not be able to stop all this in a short time.

9. Israel continues to consolidate its position in the occupied Syrian territories and demonstrates a desire not only to hold and populate the Golan Heights captured earlier, but also to extend the occupation to new territories. Even HTS was forced to publicly declare that it is against the Israeli occupation and that Israel must stop striking Syria. However, HTS is unlikely to be able to do anything to Israel now.

10. The key question of Syria's future is whether HTS and Turkey will limit themselves to painting Syria green along the Euphrates (including the upcoming capture of Tabqa and Raqqa) or whether there will be an invasion of the mainland Rojava. The US and Turkey are currently negotiating this issue. Everyone understands that without Rojava's oil, the economic situation for "green" Syria will be as unacceptable as it is for the Assad government. Erdogan obviously wants to finally resolve the Kurdish issue while there is still an opportunity. The US, of course, does not want to give up the Kurdish card, which they use to cover up the theft of Syrian oil and maintain their military presence in Syria.

https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/9553973.html

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(Old but relevant...)

Al-Assad’s Strategy to Avoid Becoming a Puppet of Russia and Iran
by Abdullah Al-Ghadhawi
March 11, 2021

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Al-Assad’s Strategy to Avoid Becoming a Puppet of Russia and Iran|20210310-TA-Assad-Long-Game-Strength-Weak|20210310-TA-Assad-Long-Game-Chart|20210310-TA-Assad-Long-Game-Map-Battlespacex|20210310-TA-Assad-Long-Game-Strength-Weak-1|20210310-TA-Assad-Long-Game-Military-Compare|20210310-TA-Assad-Long-Game-Map-Battlespacex-1
Recent moves by Bashar al-Assad in the security sphere show the embattled Syrian president still has cards to play to preserve his power, despite having sacrificed much influence to Iran and Russia to secure his regime’s survival in the civil war.
Despite everything being said about the Syrian president’s weakness and inability to manage the country alone, he is still holding on to power despite the encroachment of his Russian and Iranian allies and, as his late father did, exploiting the regime’s secret weapon: the security services and their sectarian structure. This has proven to be the key to preserving the core of the regime and ensuring al-Assad’s survival.

Security Service Personnel Changes

In July 2019, al-Assad made changes in the upper echelons of his security forces that led many observers to ask whether he was losing control of his regime to his Russian and Iranian benefactors. The changes were considered significant because the affected branches were responsible for active military and intelligence operations, which both Russia and Iran are deeply involved in. Yet these changes showed how al-Assad could move his loyalists around, with Russian and Iranian approval, to strengthen his grip on the most essential elements of his regime. Unchecked Iranian and Russian influence in Syria leave al-Assad vulnerable to the will and decisions of his foreign allies. By replacing the highest echelons of security, he cements his own trusted inner circle.

Maj. Gen. Ali Mamlouk, an ethnic Circassian Sunni, became Deputy Head for Security Affairs, and Kifah Melhem, an Alawite, was appointed head of the Military Intelligence Division — the most important security position in Syria. Historically, the military intelligence apparatus has been led by Alawite officers because it is the largest and most powerful institution in Syria, supervising all sectors of the army and enjoying broad powers. The leadership of the historically powerful Air Force Intelligence was given to Maj. Gen. Ghassan Ismail, an Alawite from Tartus — the same city as Melhem — highlighting the need for the two complementary bodies to be governed by al-Assad loyalists. Hussam Luqa, a Sunni from the Aleppo countryside, was named head of State Security. Brig. Gen. Suhail al-Hassan, commander of the elite 25th Special Mission Forces Division (previously known as the “Tiger Forces”) and perhaps the most notorious of Russia’s friends in high-ranking military posts, was sidelined from decision-making circles.

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Then earlier this year, al-Assad appointed Talal Makhlouf and Aamer Al Hamawi, both from the Alawite sect, to the positions of Special Military Office and Private Office, respectively. Separately, the posts are not largely significant in the Syrian security landscape, but together with the other four intelligence agencies they constitute a bulwark keeping al-Assad in power. The Political Security Directorate leadership was given to another Sunni figure, Nasser al-Ali (appointing Sunni figures to head Political Security and State Security is customary, dating back to Hafez al-Assad — another indication of how Bashar al-Assad is closely following the strategy his father used).

Observers and analysts spoke of Iranian and Russian influence in these security changes — analysis based on changes that took place in 2019. At the end of 2020, al-Assad began to make quiet and pivotal changes in the security services and postponed others. Al-Ali was dismissed, and the terms of Melhem, Ismail, and Luqa were extended for a period of one year.


Syrian and regional observers who saw a Russian and Iranian power play on al-Assad in July 2019 underestimated the degree to which it was actually working to the Syrian president’s advantage. The July 2019 changes at the top of the security services actually reflected al-Assad’s strategy following the end of active military operations: Reward the officers who pledged loyalty to his regime and who protected him against the popular uprising.

Al-Assad Preserves Control

2021 has thus far shown how al-Assad is implementing his strategy to remain in power, preserve his control over his regime, and reduce the ability of Russia and/or Iran to execute a coup against him. He has made quiet changes in the highest levels of his military and intelligence services without the media hype that took place with the July 2019 changes. A defected security figure who preferred not to be named suggested that al-Assad has shifted toward implementing new changes to security services that are beyond Russian and Iranian influence, specifically Military Intelligence, Air Force Intelligence, and some sectors of the army. The changes suggest al-Assad is playing the long game to ensure he remains in power and that he has a clear road map to deal with the security services as well as military positions to strengthen his loyalists.

Generally, it is unusual for the Syrian regime to announce security changes in the intelligence services unless the security services circles direct the leaks. This time, however, there has been no widespread leak regarding the changes, although the security services were anticipating a cleansing campaign at the beginning of 2021.

Military Intelligence Appointments

The next series of changes seem to be aimed at Military Intelligence, since it is the only body authorized to deal with Iranian-mobilized militias. Al-Assad likely does not want any military figure to remain for a long time in this leadership position to prevent him from establishing special relations with the Iranians that could make him more loyal to Tehran than to the regime. Moreover, at the end of 2018, al-Assad consolidated all the militias that were fighting on the ground under Military Intelligence and distanced the Air Force Intelligence Service from these militias. These moves made Military Intelligence the most powerful among all the regime’s security services.

Melhem, the head of the Military Intelligence Division, had his term extended for a year only, which means that he is slated to leave his position in 2022. The same applies to Ismail, the director of Air Force Intelligence. In addition, al-Ali, director of Political Intelligence, was dismissed, and Maj. Gen. Hussam Iskandar remained Director of State Security, which is responsible for local reconciliations and southern Syria.

Among these changes, which will soon be completed, is the appointment of Maj. Gen. Malik Habib to head the Badia branch of Military Intelligence, where he previously served as a brigadier general. This reflects the Syrian regime’s interest in reversing Islamic State gains in the Badiya region, where the gas fields could be within the organization’s reach. Deir ez-Zor is a strategic area where ISIS continues to have a presence.

Another reason for the focus is for the Assad regime to demonstrate that Syria is able to fight ISIS, too. The highest military rank for the Badia branch used to be at the level of brigadier general, but al-Assad has raised the rank to a major general. This could be a way for al-Assad to signal that his regime has a common goal with the new administration of U.S. President Joe Biden after the Pentagon announced in February that U.S. forces in Syria are focused on fighting ISIS, not on protecting oil fields.


Presidential Palace Appointments

The other personnel change in the regime security structure is the replacement of the director of the Military Office in the Presidential Palace, Maj. Gen. Wajih Al-Abdullah, with fellow Alawite and close al-Assad associate Maj. Gen. Talal Makhlouf. This position is considered one of the most sensitive positions and has a role in military decisions. Makhlouf, former commander of the Republican Guard, is maternally related to al-Assad and is close to him and his brother, military commander Maher al-Assad.

In the Private Office in the Presidential Palace, Amer al-Hamawi replaced fellow Sunni Muhammad Deeb Daaboul, who reportedly was removed from decision making for health reasons. With these changes, al-Assad maintained the same sectarian structure set down by his father, replacing Alawites with new Alawites and Sunnis with new Sunnis.

Significance of the Changes

The above changes explain the mentality of the Syrian regime and its plan for the branches of these security organizations in the rest of the region. The main security bureaus — Military Intelligence, Air Force Intelligence, State Security, and Political Security — and the highest-ranking officers in the Presidential Palace, especially the Private Office, form the solid foundation of the Assad regime. Long-running, coup-proofing logic has been applied to filling these positions, with the ironclad custom being that Military Intelligence and Air Force Intelligence are led by Alawites, since the Military Intelligence bureau fully supervises the army, thus allowing the regime to protect itself militarily.

Hafez al-Assad focused on Military Intelligence and Air Force Intelligence and did not pay as much attention to the State Security and Political Security branches. He made it customary to put these branches under the leadership of Sunnis because these branches are less powerful and because the Political Security Directorate is affiliated with the Ministry of Interior; Bashar al-Assad has followed this custom.

In contrast, some members of the regime who preferred not to be named attributed the upcoming security changes to al-Assad’s desire to get rid of all the officers involved in corruption and bribery to improve the country’s internal security conditions and send a message to the Syrian public and regime elements that he can limit the security services’ power. Though corruption in Syria is rampant on all levels, al-Assad differentiates between different types. Widespread domestic corruption is the least of al-Assad’s worries, and he has no desire to try to combat it. However, corruption in the security apparatuses and intelligence bureaus leaves al-Assad vulnerable to further Iranian and Russian infiltration through bribing officers and high-ranking personnel.

Curbing Russian Influence

Since the Russian military intervention in Syria began in September 2015, Russia has moved to restructure the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) so that it can reliably fight in major battles alongside Russian advisers. Russia also began to rearrange the structure of the SAA, adding divisions like the 5th Corps, which is now regarded to be directly under the authority of Russia. Russia also has had a strong role in the appointment of senior SAA leaders.

The appointment of Brig. Gen. Assef al-Dikr to lead Branch 293, the unit responsible for all promotions and matters related to the officer corps in the SAA, is a prominent example of Russia intervening in personnel decisions in the senior echelons of the SAA. However, al-Dikr, who studied in Russia for five years and is fluent in Russian, was quickly marginalized due to conflicts within the army and al-Assad’s desire to get rid of Russian oversight. If Russia’s goal was to weaken Assad, it made a mistake by focusing on the SAA and not paying attention to the security services and the military officers posted in the Presidential Palace.

Al-Assad has consistently tried to keep the security services away from the influence of the Russians and Iranians due to the essential role these services play in preserving the regime’s power. Russia no longer has sweeping influence over these sectors, especially since the Military Intelligence Division, which is now under al-Assad’s full control, oversees the military establishment. There is no public mention of any Russian influence within the intelligence establishment, especially in the regime’s four core security bureaus.

Al-Assad has recently limited Russian influence in military appointments in an attempt to minimize Russian leverage. For example, Maj. Gen. Zaid Saleh, head of the security committee in Idlib and one of the senior SAA officers close to the Russians, was dismissed on Jan. 5 this year. And in February, al-Assad appointed Alawite Gen. Haitham Barakat to be the chief of staff to Sunni Maj. Gen. Nizar Ahmed al-Khader, a Russian choice for commander of the 17th Division who had only been appointed in December 2020. This bold move is a direct challenge to Russia that gives al-Assad direct oversight over the 17th Division’s performance.


Even Brig. Gen. Suhail al-Hassan, leader of the “Tiger Forces” – which are supervised and advised by Russia – no longer has an important role in the SAA. This is due to the decline of major military operations and other SAA officers’ resentment of his influence, which the regime has exploited to weaken al-Hassan. The example of al-Hassan is important because it demonstrates how al-Assad can undermine Russian attempts to use the SAA to weaken his personal control over his regime.

Taking On Iran

Al-Assad has also worked to reduce the influence of Iran, especially as related to the Iranian use of militias to create parallel security structures that are not beholden to his regime. As a first step, al-Assad designated Military Intelligence as the branch that deals with the Iranian-backed militias, Lebanese Hezbollah, and the so-called “auxiliary forces,” previously known as the Shabiha, which are forces under Iranian supervision. This step is meant to organize the forces fighting on the ground through the Military Intelligence branch and reduce Iran’s control.

In September 2020, al-Assad moved to expel Arab fighters from the National Defense Forces, a group of Iran-controlled militias formed in 2013 that include fighters from Egypt, Tunisia, and other Arab countries. Perhaps seeing them as a threat with more loyalty to Iran than Syria, al-Assad ordered the Arab fighters to withdraw from battlefronts so they can be sent back home.

Interestingly, Maj. Gen. Bassam Merhej al-Hassan, the former commander of the National Defense Forces and a close associate of al-Assad who oversaw important portfolios such as chemical weapons in Syria, was removed from the SAA. Even though al-Assad chose al-Hassan to supervise the National Defense Forces and monitor Iran’s conduct in Syria, al-Assad considered him to be too close to Iran. Over the past year, Iranian officials have visited Syria more than ever because none of the Syrian personnel under Iranian sway remain in positions of influence.

Al-Hassan’s removal is further indication of the regime’s efforts to block Iran’s channels of influence in Syria and force all communication to go through the Military Intelligence division. At the same time, the regime is moving to dismantle all Syrian militias with some independence from the SAA by merging them with the 5th Corps, sending them to Libya, or assigning them to fight ISIS alongside the Iranian militia brigades in eastern Syria.

Although Assad’s dependency on Russia and Iran over the years has grown, the Syrian leader has been able to avoid becoming a puppet of Moscow and Tehran. The Syrian president has, in great part, accomplished this through an adroit strategy of limiting Russian and Iranian influence over his security forces by giving his intelligence services oversight over the military. By appointing a mix of loyal Alawite and (to a lesser extent) Sunni officers and commanders in critical positions, the Assad clan, over the decades, has been able to render its regime coup-proof. Therefore, it is important to keep an eye on these numerous security agencies as the regime struggles to deal with an economic meltdown.

https://newlinesinstitute.org/state-res ... -and-iran/

So then, it appears that Assad shit in his own Easter basket.

******

‘Israel’s’ Support for Syrian Opposition Exposed
Posted by Internationalist 360° on December 15, 2024
Kit Klarenberg

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While never acknowledged in the mainstream, the Zionist entity’s sinister alliance with extremist opposition groups arrayed against Damascus has long laid in plain sight.

In the wake of ultra-extremist militants of Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham seizing Damascus, Zionist entity premier Benjamin Netanyahu gave a smug address from the Golan Heights, Syrian territory illegally occupied ever since 1967. Along the way, he took personal credit for the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s government and the Syrian Arab Army’s defeat, while pledging that the ground on which he stood would be part of “Israel “for eternity”. Ever since, Israeli occupation forces have pushed ever deeper into Golan, unimpeded and unopposed.

Tel Aviv’s criminal seizure of yet further territory from its neighbors was an absolutely inevitable upshot of Syria’s collapse. However, some Western journalists and politicians have expressed dismay – in many cases, the same figures were cheering al-Assad’s fall just 24 hours prior. Consternation has also widely abounded over the foreign-dominated and controlled opposition groups that overran Damascus, effusively praising the Zionist entity’s assistance in their offensive against the SAA.

Speaking to Israeli TV on December 2, one rebel fighter thanked Tel Aviv for striking Hezbollah and other Resistance groups, stating the opposition was “very satisfied” with the support. They added, “We love Israel and we were never its enemies…[Tel Aviv] isn’t hostile to those who are not hostile toward it. We don’t hate you, we love you very much.”

‘Striking deeper’

While never acknowledged in the mainstream, the Zionist entity’s sinister alliance with extremist opposition groups arrayed against Damascus has long laid in plain sight. A September 2018 investigation by the US empire house journal Foreign Policy spelled out in detail “Israel’s secret program to back Syrian rebels.” It documented how, since 2013, Tel Aviv “armed and funded at least 12 rebel groups” in the country. The ostensible purpose was to “prevent Iran-backed fighters and militants of the Islamic State from taking up positions near the Israeli border.”

The entity’s “military transfers” to anti-Assad opposition groups were vast. They “included assault rifles, machine guns, mortar launchers, and transport vehicles.” The material was funneled via the illegally occupied Golan Heights. “Israel” even “provided salaries to rebel fighters… and supplied additional money the groups used to buy arms on the Syrian black market.” Initially, arms transferred were “mostly US-manufactured,” but these were later “switched” to “non-American weapons…apparently to conceal the source of the assistance.”

Every step of the way, “Israel’s” backing of the Syrian opposition ratcheted. Foreign Policy attributes this ever-aggressive stance to Tel Aviv’s failed “appeals” to the US and Russia “to secure a deal that would ensure that Iranian-backed militias would be kept away from southern Syria.” This prompted the entity to “[begin] striking deeper inside Syrian territory, targeting not just individual weapons shipments from Iran to Hezbollah but also Iranian bases across the country.”

In providing this largesse, Tel Aviv “relied on relationships it developed with individual commanders” of extremist militias, sending “assistance directly to them.” Representatives of these factions “would communicate with Israeli officials by phone and occasionally meet them face to face” in the Golan Heights. “When commanders switched groups and locations, Israeli assistance followed them” – and the entity’s chosen proxies frequently served as distributors of Zionist-supplied weaponry “to other groups,” giving them “outsized influence” in the dirty war.

Foreign Policy records, “As a result of Israel’s humanitarian and military assistance, many residents of southern Syria came to perceive it as an ally.” An anonymous opposition fighter told the outlet, “Israel is the only one with interests in the region and a little bit of humanity and [provides] assistance to civilians.” However, “As troops loyal to Assad, aided by Russian and Iranian forces, reasserted control over more and more areas of Syria,” Tel Aviv cut a secret deal with Moscow, to the opposition’s detriment.

Under its auspices, SAA forces returned to “areas adjacent to the Golan Heights” while Russia promised “to keep Iran-backed militias 80 kilometers” from the area “and not to start hindering Israeli strikes on Iranian targets across Syria.” Despite this, Tel Aviv didn’t desert its murderous surrogates. As government forces closed in, “rebels reached out to their Israeli contacts and asked for asylum.” They and “their immediate family members” were duly permitted to flee to “Israel”, Jordan, and Turkey, with Tel Aviv’s assistance and protection.

With eerie foresight, Foreign Policy concluded that “Israel’s” policy of backing the rebels would contribute to significant and enduring unresolved security problems not only in Damascus but throughout West Asia more widely:

“[This] raises questions about the balance of power in Syria as the civil war there finally winds down. With the Iranian forces that helped Assad defeat the rebels showing no inclination to withdraw from Syria, the potential for the country to become a flash point between Israel and Iran looms large. Without deft diplomacy, confrontations in Syria, protests in Gaza, and tensions over the Iran nuclear deal could plunge the Middle East into chaos.”

‘Military capabilities’

Foreign Policy was at pains to portray “Israel’s” assistance to the Syrian opposition as being predominantly informed by a desire to crush ISIS. For example, the outlet claimed Tel Aviv “provided fire support to rebel factions” fighting an Islamic State affiliate near the Yarmouk River. This purportedly extended to drone strikes targeting ISIS commanders “and precision-missile strikes against the group’s personnel, fortifications, and vehicles during battles with the rebels.” Meanwhile, the Zionist entity “did not extend similar fire support for rebel assaults on regime forces.”

Yet, such an exculpatory narrative is at glaring odds with multiple public admissions by Israeli officials. For example, in April 2017, former entity Security Minister Moshe Ya’alon revealed that “recently”, ISIS had “apologized” after “[opening] fire” on Tel Aviv’s forces in the Golan Heights. This contrition was expressed by the terror group despite the IOF responding to this broadside by bombarding Islamic State fighters with airstrikes and tank fire, killing four of them.

One might reasonably ponder why, despite these casualties, ISIS felt the need to say sorry. An obvious explanation is the hyper-militant faction did not wish to offend Tel Aviv, lest the entity’s long-running operation to provide medical assistance to insurgents wounded in the Syrian dirty war in field hospitals dotted across Golan be terminated. From 2012 onward, UN peacekeeping forces consistently testified to witnessing injured Al Qaeda, al-Nusra, and ISIS fighters being treated by Israeli military doctors across the region.

Along the way, documentary filmmakers even captured video evidence of this practice. Once tended to, these belligerents were sent straight back into battle by their Zionist protectors to fight Hezbollah and the Syrian Arab Army. These astonishing scenes went largely unremarked upon in the Western media although in May 2016, ex-Mossad chief Efraim Halevy proudly boasted that Tel Aviv was committed to a strategy of “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” in its crusade to neutralize Assad:

“It’s always useful to deal with your enemies in a humane way. When you have people who are wounded, considerations of whether to take them in are not simply whether it’s politically useful…I didn’t say there was no tactical [consideration]. I don’t think there’s going to be blowback…Al Qaeda to the best of my recollection hasn’t specifically targeted Israel…As Hezbollah fighters are concerned, we have a different account.”

Fast forward to today, and ever since al-Assad’s fall, “Israel” has relentlessly blitzed SAA sites in Syria. Entity officials boast the “historic” campaign has “destroyed most of the former [Assad] regime’s strategic military capabilities,” decimating up to 80% of the fallen government’s “strategic weapons stockpiles.” Markedly, there has been no attempt whatsoever by HTS to deter or respond to this bombardment, despite Damascus now being completely defenseless against future incursions from its adversaries. Group spokespeople have moreover actively refused to denounce the attacks.

Nonetheless, longtime Syrian “revolution” activists have expressed shock at “Israel’s” onslaught against the “newly liberated” country and further illegal “annexation” of its territory, demanding Tel Aviv cease its inexorable assaults forthwith. One wonders whether such public reactions are truly borne of ignorance and naivety about “Israel’s” rapacious expansionism. The reality may be that the opposition knew all along precisely what would be unleashed following al-Assad’s ouster and still welcome it. After all, they were coordinating directly with the Zionist entity at every step of their struggle.



https://libya360.wordpress.com/2024/12/ ... n-exposed/

******

Israel will 'hold, settle' Syrian Golan Heights following new conquests: Netanyahu

Since the fall of Bashar al-Assad's government, Israel has occupied additional Syrian territory in a push to create a 'Greater Israel'

News Desk

DEC 15, 2024

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(Photo credit: Kobi Gideon/GPO/File)

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office announced on 15 December that his government unanimously approved a plan to encourage demographic growth in the occupied Syrian Golan Heights and Katzrin settlements.

"Strengthening the Golan is strengthening the State of Israel, and it is especially important at this time. We will continue to hold onto it, make it flourish, and settle it," Netanyahu stated.

The government has set aside over 40 million NIS to implement the plan.

The Israeli army occupied the Syrian Golan Heights during the 1967 Six-Day War. Israel refused to withdraw its forces or return the territory despite the inadmissibility of conquering land during the war under international law and amid demands by the UN Security Council Resolution 242.

The Israeli army has occupied additional Syrian territory since extremist militants from Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), led by former Al-Qaeda leader Abu Mohammad al-Julani (now Ahmad al-Sharaa), captured Damascus last week and toppled the government of Bashar al-Assad.

Al Mayadeen's correspondent reported that Israeli forces are now 15 kilometers away from the Beirut-Damascus international road after expanding their occupation of the Quneitra countryside, seizing a new village.

Israeli army officers have held meetings with local leaders of the seven Syrian villages near the Golan Heights that Israeli forces occupied last week, Yedioth Ahronoth reported on 15 December.

"The officers met openly with village elders in their homes to reassure them that no harm would come to residents and that their daily lives would continue undisturbed," the Israeli paper wrote.

Capt. Omer, a company commander from the 7th Armored Brigade, met with local leaders in the village of Umm Batnah, located 12km deep into Syrian territory,

"I asked the village elder to collect weapons from residents after they had taken rifles from abandoned Syrian military outposts," the commander said.

The army claims it will only remain in the area until the territory can be handed over to an "established and defined state entity" to prevent "terrorist groups" from seizing control, in reference to Julani's HTS, formerly known as the Nusra Front.

Israel previously supported Julani's Nusra Front, the Al-Qaeda affiliate in Syria, with weapons, salaries, medical care, and air support from its warplanes during the group's previous war against the Syrian government from 2012 to 2018.

Despite supporting Julani in the past, Israel is now using his group's presence as a pretext to occupy additional Syrian land and bomb Syria's military infrastructure.

Israel's Jewish settler movement, which enjoys wide support from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his ministers, views southern Syria, including Damascus, as part of "Greater Israel."

Haaretz writes that Netanyahu wants to establish a "legacy as the leader who expanded Israel's borders after 50 years of retreat."

"There is enthusiastic support on the right for the idea that the appropriate punishment for Israel's enemies is a loss of territory. Netanyahu has a key partner in Donald Trump," the paper added.

According to Suzanne Maloney, vice president of the Brookings Institution and director of its foreign policy program, "The new administration will surely take a permissive approach to Israeli territorial ambitions."

"Netanyahu wants to be remembered as the one who created Greater Israel, not just as a political schemer accused of corruption who abandoned 100 hostages in Gaza. That's why he'll try to cement Israeli control in northern Gaza. That's why he won't rush to withdraw from the newly occupied territory in the Golan. Under certain circumstances, he might even expand it," Haaretz concluded.

https://thecradle.co/articles/israel-wi ... -netanyahu

'Syria will not engage in conflict with Israel': De-facto ruler makes first comments on Israeli attacks


The former ISIS and Al-Qaeda commander said the Turkish and US-backed coup in Syria was 'a victory over the dangerous Iranian political project' in West Asia

News Desk

DEC 14, 2024

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(Photo Credit: Balkis Press/Abaca via Reuters)

Syria's de-facto new ruler and Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) leader Ahmed al-Sharaa on 14 December addressed for the first time Israel's numerous violations of Syrian territory and sovereignty.

"We are not about to engage in a conflict with Israel," Sharaa – who recently shed his nom de guerre Abu Mohammad al-Julani – said in an interview on Syrian TV, pointing to “Syria's weakened state.”

The former deputy commander of ISIS and co-founder of Al-Qaeda in Syria added that Israel's “arguments” for attacking the country “no longer exist.” “Hezbollah and Iran are no more,” he said.


Nevertheless, Sharaa failed to address Israel's occupation of large swathes of Syrian land in the southwest of the country, which officials in Tel Aviv claim will last “through the winter.”

Sharaa went on to claim that HTS and its allies “have no hostilities with Iranian society.” Nevertheless, he called the US and Turkish-backed coup in Syria “a victory over the dangerous Iranian political project in the region.”

He also said his forces “could have struck Russian bases in Syria” but decided to "give the Russians a chance to reconsider their relationship with the Syrian people."

Reports in Russian media reported this week said officials in Moscow believe they reached “an informal understanding” with the Al-Qaeda offshoot to maintain its two military bases in the country – a naval base in Tartous and the Hmeimim Air Base near the port city of Latakia.

On Saturday, Reuters cited Syrian officials as saying the Kremlin is “reducing” its military presence on the front lines in northern Syria and from positions in the Alawite Mountains but keeping its two bases.


Elsewhere in his televised interview, Sharaa revealed he is in contact with western embassies and is "holding discussions with Britain to restore its representation in Damascus."

"We have systematic plans to address the systematic destruction practiced by the regime," Sharaa said, adding that his “experience” ruling Idlib governorate with Turkish support "will advance in the rest of the country's governorates."

On Saturday, US State Secretary Antony Blinken said the White House is in direct contact with HTS and Sharaa, who still has a $10 million bounty on his head by the US government.

“Yes, we have been in contact with HTS and with other parties,” Blinken said during a news conference in Aqaba, Jordan. "Our message to the Syrian people is this: We want them to succeed, and we’re prepared to help them do so,” Blinken added.

https://thecradle.co/articles/syria-wil ... li-attacks

US reassures Kurdish proxies: 'No existential threat' from Turkish-backed extremists

The Turkish foreign minister stated that it is his country's goal to 'eliminate' the US-backed Kurdish militia in northeast Syria

News Desk

DEC 14, 2024

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(Photo credit: Rudaw)

The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), which occupy north east Syria with US backing, received “assurances from the Americans that its areas will not witness attacks threatening its existence,” Al-Akhbar reported on 14 December, citing sources speaking with the paper.

"What worries the Kurds most is not knowing the direction of the administration of President Donald Trump, who is known for his good relations with Turkiye and its president," sources speaking with Al-Akhbar added.

On 13 December, Turkiye's foreign minister stated that his country's goal was to eliminate the Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG), the force that comprises the backbone of the SDF.

Just hours after a meeting with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan said in a live broadcast on NTV that "the elimination of YPG is [Turkey's] strategic goal."

The SDF has been battling the Turkish-backed Syrian National Army (SNA) in recent days around the cities of Manbij, Ayn al-Arab, and Tabqa in the eastern countryside of Aleppo and Raqqa.

However, the SDF and SNA announced yesterday that a four-day truce would begin between the two parties, to allow for political and diplomatic solutions and the exchange of prisoners.

Al-Akhbar reports that the SNA made the announcement, which confirmed in a statement that "an agreement had been reached to cease fire in Manbij and its countryside for four days" in "an attempt to implement humanitarian and security understandings, including the withdrawal of SDF cells and their families from the area."

Al-Akhbar added that despite the ceasefire, skirmishes took place around the Tishrin Dam in the Sarrin area in the northeastern countryside of Aleppo in a Turkish attempt to show that the agreement only concerns the Manbij area and that Ankara will continue its attacks until it takes complete control of the border strip with Syria.

At the same time, the Kurdish-dominated SDF is now seeking to reach a deal with Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), Syria's new de facto ruling faction, to allow it to continue to govern the areas under its control, Al-Akhbar said in a separate report Saturday.

The Lebanese newspaper reported that the SDF, which controls most of northeast Syria and some neighborhoods in Aleppo, will work with HTS to "manage the administrative, economic and military file," noting that "for this reason, the new Syrian flag was raised as a sign of goodwill" by the SDF.

Two weeks ago, HTS, the former Al-Qaeda offshoot, launched a lightning military campaign from its stronghold in Idlib Governorate. The group quickly took control of Syria's major cities, starting with Aleppo and ending with the capital, Damascus.

The SDF and HTS, previously known as the Nusra Front) have had tense relations and fought one another during the war in Syria that began in 2011.

"Kurds have had a bad experience with HTS folks from the Jabhat al-Nusra days," Mohammed Salih, Non-Resident Senior Fellow in the Foreign Policy Research Institute and an expert on Kurdish and regional affairs, told The New Arab.

https://thecradle.co/articles/us-reassu ... extremists

More relevant, what does 'friend Erdogan' say? And more importantly, what will 'friend Erdogan' do?
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: Syria

Post by blindpig » Tue Dec 17, 2024 12:13 pm

Israel’s calculus in Syria: Exploit anarchy for strategic dominance

In its unobstructed territorial grab and destruction of Syria's military infrastructure, Tel Aviv hopes to either expand its borders into a newly partitioned Syria, or to use its gains as negotiating chips in a grand bargain for regional primacy.


Khalil Nasrallah

DEC 16, 2024

Image
Photo Credit: The Cradle

Thirteen years ago, Syria’s public squares ignited in flames of unrest. But after over a decade of withstanding a foreign-backed war aimed at overthrowing Syrian president Bashar al-Assad's government, which was thwarted by the interventions of Iran, Russia, Hezbollah, and myriad other Syrian and non-Syrian forces, his government collapsed in a matter of just 11 days.

Assad fled in secrecy, leaving behind a crumbling Syrian Arab Republic and informing almost no one of his plans to abandon the sinking ship.

Former Al-Qaeda affiliate Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), in alliance with other opposition militant factions, swiftly seized control of the country. The head of the UN-designated terrorist organization, Abu Mohammad al-Julani, also known as Ahmad al-Sharaa, declared himself an unelected president, forming a “salvation government” to guide the country through a transitional phase. Standing beside and behind him is Turkiye, which is determined to exert a strategic and pervasive influence over the direction of the new Syria.

Amid this monumental reshaping of West Asia’s political map, Israel seized the opportunity to act. Through the Biblically-named ‘Operation Bashan Arrow,’ the occupation state launched a strategic campaign against the remnants of the Syrian military, which had all but abandoned its positions. Nonstop airstrikes targeting Syria's critical infrastructure marked the start of deeper Israeli involvement in the Syrian arena.

Israel’s military intervention was the culmination of years of preparation. In 2018, Israel had attempted to create a buffer zone in southern Syria, only to be thwarted by Syrian and allied forces who reclaimed the disengagement zone and the surrounding western mountains separating the border with neighboring Lebanon.

But with the Syrian state now in shambles, Tel Aviv saw a rare and irreplaceable opportunity to go for the jugular. Years of anticipation and strategic planning materialized in a swift campaign aimed at neutralizing perceived threats and securing long-term advantages.

The ‘Battle between wars’

The collapse of Syria into chaos after 2011, marked by the arrival of foreign jihadists and the proliferation of armed extremist factions, provided Israel with the conditions to secure its strategic interests quietly.

The first notable Israeli strike on Syrian territory occurred in Jamraya in early 2013. This marked the beginning of what Israel referred to as the “battle between wars,” a calculated effort to achieve multiple long-term goals.

One of Tel Aviv’s central priorities during this campaign was to prevent the transfer of advanced weapons from Iran via Syria to Hezbollah in Lebanon, as they could tip the balance of power in the region.

Another critical goal was to obstruct Iran and its allied resistance forces from establishing permanent bases and logistics hubs within Syria, which Israel viewed as direct threats to its security.

A further objective involved weakening Syria’s military infrastructure to prevent it from rebuilding its strategic capabilities, reemerging as a regional power, and establishing a buffer zone adjacent to the Israeli-occupied Syrian Golan Heights.

Dismantling Syria strike by strike

Although Israel’s broader ambitions were not realized, its tactical gains during the intervening years were significant. Frequent airstrikes degraded the capabilities of resistance forces, and Israel leveraged Syria’s internal challenges – its economic collapse, societal disarray, and the Syrian military’s overstretched resources – to establish its dominance. These operations set the stage for the larger-scale assault that followed Assad’s fall.

The collapse of the Syrian government marked the beginning of Israel’s most expansive military campaign in the region. Under the banner of ‘Bashan Arrow,’ Israel launched an unrelenting series of attacks against the Syrian state and its defenses.

Over 500 airstrikes targeted critical infrastructure, including military bases, radar systems, air force installations, intelligence headquarters, and scientific research facilities. Even the capital, Damascus, was not spared.

The aerial bombardments were accompanied by a ground incursion focused on border areas near Lebanon. Israeli forces advanced into the southwestern countryside of Damascus, targeting the strategic peaks of Mount Hermon.

Last week, those heights were declared “recaptured” by Israel’s Defense Minister Israel Katz, 51 years after Tel Aviv's initial loss, in an operation that dismantled years of fortifications built by the Syrian military and its allies in the Axis of Resistance.

US support and near-regional silence

Israel’s actions were met with muted responses on the global stage. Arab states issued routine condemnations that carried little weight, raising suspicions of tacit approval or alignment with Israel’s normalization agenda – even if that was not their intent.

In a statement, the Arab League conveyed “its full condemnation of Israel, the occupying power, for its illegal attempts to exploit Syria’s internal developments, whether through seizing additional lands in the Golan Heights or declaring the 1974 Disengagement Agreement void.”

Saudi Arabia slammed Israel’s actions in the Golan Heights, warning that they would “ruin Syria’s chances of restoring security,” while the UAE “strongly” condemned the expanding occupation and reaffirmed its “commitment to the unity, sovereignty, and territorial integrity of the Syrian state.”

Western responses were similarly restrained, with European states offering cautious disapproval. In contrast, the US provided unequivocal support. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan framed Israel’s actions as a legitimate exercise of its right to self-defense.

This endorsement coincided with a visit to Israel by General Michael Kurilla, the head of US Central Command, signifying the operational coordination between Washington and Tel Aviv. US forces also carried out over 70 airstrikes in Syria during this period, ostensibly targeting ISIS but likely focused on degrading Syria's military capabilities.

Israel’s strategic goals in Syria

Several strategic objectives drove Israel’s campaign in Syria – all aimed at securing its dominance and neutralizing potential threats. One of its primary goals was the elimination of any remaining Syrian military forces and critical installations capable of challenging the occupation state. Another focus was on preventing Hezbollah from acquiring advanced weapons via Syrian territory.

Such arms transfers were viewed as a significant threat to Israel’s security calculus. Israel also sought to dismantle the presence of Iranian advisors and resistance factions, which had used Syria as a logistical and operational hub.

Securing territories in southern Syria was equally vital, as Israel aims to establish buffer zones that would protect its northern borders and safeguard strategic sites like Mount Hermon. Beyond immediate military concerns, Tel Aviv views the newly occupied territories as potential leverage in future negotiations.

By maintaining control over these areas, Israel hopes to enforce favorable terms in any future peace talks and secure international recognition of its sovereignty over the Golan Heights. At the same time, Israel seeks to mitigate threats from extremist opposition factions in Syria, some of which openly espouse jihadist ideologies hostile to Israel.

While these efforts have yielded significant short-term gains, Israel’s long-term security remains uncertain. The new Syrian leadership under the HTS-appointed interim government is ideologically – at least, on paper – opposed to Israel and closely aligned with Turkiye.

Turkish leaders, emboldened by Assad’s fall, have asserted their influence in the region, signaling a potential strategic rivalry with Israel.

Regional repercussions

Israel’s actions in Syria have had far-reaching implications for West Asia. Neighboring Arab states, particularly Jordan and Egypt, find themselves in increasingly precarious positions. The rise of extremist Islamist movements aligned with Ankara, coupled with Israel’s expanding influence, has left these normalizer nations grappling with security concerns and diminished regional clout.

At the same time, Israel’s moves have deepened divisions within the Arab world. Normalization efforts with Israel by certain Arab states have further fractured alliances, leaving the region disunited in its response to the Syrian crisis.

In the end, the greatest casualties of this geopolitical reshuffling are the Arab peoples themselves – left weakened, fragmented, and increasingly sidelined in a rapidly changing regional order.

https://thecradle.co/articles/israels-c ... -dominance

'Syria will not engage in conflict with Israel': De-facto ruler makes first comments on Israeli attacks

The former ISIS and Al-Qaeda commander said the Turkish and US-backed coup in Syria was 'a victory over the dangerous Iranian political project' in West Asia

News Desk

DEC 14, 2024

Image
(Photo Credit: Balkis Press/Abaca via Reuters)

Syria's de-facto new ruler and Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) leader Ahmed al-Sharaa on 14 December addressed for the first time Israel's numerous violations of Syrian territory and sovereignty.

"We are not about to engage in a conflict with Israel," Sharaa – who recently shed his nom de guerre Abu Mohammad al-Julani – said in an interview on Syrian TV, pointing to “Syria's weakened state.”

The former deputy commander of ISIS and co-founder of Al-Qaeda in Syria added that Israel's “arguments” for attacking the country “no longer exist.” “Hezbollah and Iran are no more,” he said.


Syria's de facto leader Ahmad al-Sharaa in remarks to Syria TV: "Israel's excuses have run out, and they have crossed the lines of engagement. We are not seeking to enter any conflict in view of Syria's weakened state and are addressing the international community." pic.twitter.com/SHkMvjLzsT

— Quds News Network (@QudsNen) December 14, 2024
Nevertheless, Sharaa failed to address Israel's occupation of large swathes of Syrian land in the southwest of the country, which officials in Tel Aviv claim will last “through the winter.”

Sharaa went on to claim that HTS and its allies “have no hostilities with Iranian society.” Nevertheless, he called the US and Turkish-backed coup in Syria “a victory over the dangerous Iranian political project in the region.”

He also said his forces “could have struck Russian bases in Syria” but decided to "give the Russians a chance to reconsider their relationship with the Syrian people."

Reports in Russian media reported this week said officials in Moscow believe they reached “an informal understanding” with the Al-Qaeda offshoot to maintain its two military bases in the country – a naval base in Tartous and the Hmeimim Air Base near the port city of Latakia.

On Saturday, Reuters cited Syrian officials as saying the Kremlin is “reducing” its military presence on the front lines in northern Syria and from positions in the Alawite Mountains but keeping its two bases.

Russia is reducing its military presence in Syria, redirecting forces and equipment elsewhere. However, key bases in #Khmeimim and #Tartus remain crucial for operations in the #Mediterranean, with negotiations ongoing with Syria's new leadership. #Russia #Syria #Military pic.twitter.com/Nz3RqjOiT5

— Ivan Kircanski (@KircanskiIvan) December 13, 2024


Elsewhere in his televised interview, Sharaa revealed he is in contact with western embassies and is "holding discussions with Britain to restore its representation in Damascus."

"We have systematic plans to address the systematic destruction practiced by the regime," Sharaa said, adding that his “experience” ruling Idlib governorate with Turkish support "will advance in the rest of the country's governorates."

On Saturday, US State Secretary Antony Blinken said the White House is in direct contact with HTS and Sharaa, who still has a $10 million bounty on his head by the US government.

“Yes, we have been in contact with HTS and with other parties,” Blinken said during a news conference in Aqaba, Jordan. "Our message to the Syrian people is this: We want them to succeed, and we’re prepared to help them do so,” Blinken added.

https://thecradle.co/articles/syria-wil ... li-attacks

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From Cassad's Telegram account:

Colonelcassad
Syria. 12/15/2024

1. Negotiations with HTS regarding our bases are ongoing. The parties are currently exchanging proposals and discussing possible parameters. There are already certain points of contact on a number of parameters. But there are a couple of problematic issues.

2. There are currently no decisions on the complete withdrawal of the bases in Latakia and Khmeimim. For now. If we cannot reach an agreement with HTS on the bases, we will have to organize the process of withdrawing troops and equipment in full. This is also not a quick process. But I would like to believe that the bases will be preserved. This is easier than negotiating alternatives in other countries.

3. From the remaining strongholds in Syria, which were not spelled out in the agreement on the bases in Latakia, our troops are being pulled back in the direction of Tartus or Khmeimim. So far, without significant incidents.

4. The surplus equipment that will accumulate in Latakia will be removed, and the group, even in the case of an agreement with HTS on bases, will be reduced due to the absence of previous tasks for it, which required an expanded military presence in different areas of Syria.

5. The Russian embassy in Damascus also remains for now and will probably remain. The security of the external perimeter is currently provided by HTS militants, driving away militants from groups that are not part of HTS (a carbon copy of the situation in Kabul), including with a fatal outcome for some of them.

6. In addition to Assad, a number of high-ranking officials of the previous army and government of Syria are now in Russia in de facto political exile. In the foreseeable future, they are unlikely to be able to return to their homeland and they have currently dropped out of current Syrian politics.

7. The remnants of the Syrian army that went to Iraq are unlikely to be able to represent a combat-ready force now. Perhaps the Iranians will take them under their wing and create formations from Syrians under the wing of their numerous proxy structures. Although the question of the combat capability of the Syrian formations remains in question. But this is already the Iranians' concern.

8. In Syria itself, especially outside the major cities, killings of people associated with the previous government and army, as well as robberies and looting, continue. HTS militants are trying to create the appearance of legality, but outside several major cities, power essentially belongs to various armed gangs that are taking advantage of the vacuum of power and security. HTS, even if it wanted to, would not be able to stop all this in a short time.

9. Israel continues to consolidate its position in the occupied Syrian territories and demonstrates a desire not only to hold and populate the Golan Heights captured earlier, but also to extend the occupation to new territories. Even HTS was forced to publicly declare that it is against the Israeli occupation and that Israel must stop striking Syria. However, HTS is unlikely to be able to do anything to Israel now.

10. The key question of Syria's future is whether HTS and Turkey will limit themselves to painting Syria green along the Euphrates (including the upcoming capture of Tabqa and Raqqa) or whether there will be an invasion of the mainland Rojava. The US and Turkey are currently negotiating this issue. Everyone understands that without Rojava's oil, the economic situation for "green" Syria will be as unacceptable as it is for the Assad government. Erdogan obviously wants to finally resolve the Kurdish issue while there is still an opportunity. The US, of course, does not want to give up the Kurdish card, which they use to cover up the theft of Syrian oil and maintain their military presence in Syria.

https://t.me/s/boris_rozhin

Google Translator

(Don't know that the US 'needs' that Syrian oil, other than supplying their Kurds the main purpose was denying Syria that oil. In order to mollify 'Friend Erdogan' I suspect those Kurds will be hung out to dry once again. Some people never learn.)

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Assad on the reasons for the collapse of the Syrian Arab Republic
December 16, 21:02

Image

Bashar al-Assad spoke about what happened in Syria.

With the intensification of terrorism in Syria and the arrival of terrorists in the capital Damascus on the evening of Saturday, December 7, 2024, questions began to arise about the fate and whereabouts of the president amid a stream of confusion and stories that were far from the truth. They represented support for the process of establishing international terrorism disguised as the Syrian liberation revolution.

At a critical historical moment in the life of a nation, when the truth must take place, it is necessary to clarify some things through a brief statement. The circumstances and the subsequent complete cessation of communication for security reasons did not allow this to be done, and the brief provisions of the statement will not replace a detailed narration of everything that happened later, when such an opportunity arises.

First of all, contrary to what was rumored, I did not leave the country as planned or leave during the final hours of the fighting, but remained in Damascus, fulfilling my duties, until the early morning of Sunday, December 8, 2024. With the expansion of terrorism inside Damascus, I moved to Latakia to monitor the fighting from there. Upon arrival at the Khmeimim base in the morning, it became clear that the [government] forces had withdrawn from all battle lines and the last army positions had fallen, while the field situation in the area was deteriorating and the attack on the Russian military base itself by drones was intensifying. Due to the impossibility of leaving the base in any direction, Moscow asked the base leadership to consider the issue of an immediate evacuation to Russia on the evening of Sunday, December 8, the day after the fall of Damascus, the fall of the last military positions and the subsequent paralysis of the remaining state institutions.

During these events, neither I nor any other person or party raised the issue of asylum or resignation, and the only option considered was to continue the struggle in defense against a terrorist attack.

In this context, I emphasize that the one who, from the first day of the war, refused to exchange the salvation of his country for his own salvation or to bargain with his people with various offers and temptations; the one who was with the officers and soldiers of his army on the front lines, tens of meters from the terrorists in the hottest and most dangerous flashpoints of the conflict; the one who did not leave during the most difficult years of the war and remained with his family and people to confront terrorism under bombardment and in the face of the danger posed by the terrorists who stormed the capital more than once during the 14 years of war; the one who did not abandon the non-Syrian resistance in Palestine and Lebanon and did not betray the allies who stood with it - cannot be the same person who abandons his people to whom he belongs or betrays them and his army.

I have never been a person who seeks office, but I considered myself the owner of a national project, supported by a people who believed in it. I carried confidence in the will of this people and its ability to preserve its state and defend its institutions and choice until the last moment. With the fall of the state into the hands of terrorism and the loss of the ability to provide anything, the office becomes empty and meaningless, and there is no point in remaining responsible in it. This in no way means renouncing the true national belonging to Syria and its people - a fixed belonging that neither situation nor circumstances change; a belonging filled with the hope that Syria will return free and independent.


(c) Bashar al-Assad

P.S. Meanwhile, Kadyrov today called for the exclusion of HTS militants from the list of terrorist organizations. The trade for bases in Syria is in full swing.

https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/9555913.html

Google Translator

A picture worth a thousand words...

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Rick Sterling: Eye-Witness Syria: The Last 12 Days | Evacuating My Christian Family from Al Qaeda Controlled Syria – Kim Iversen Interviews Kevork Almassian
December 15, 2024 natyliesb
By Rick Sterling, LA Progressive, 12/10/24

My friend lives in Damascus. I will call him Qusay to protect his identity. Qusay was born and grew up in Aleppo and still has family there. He is a high-level translator and university professor. From his family, he learned what unfolded in Aleppo following the invasion beginning November 27. He personally witnessed events in Damascus, where he still is. The following is what Qusay told me about events in Syria over the past 12 days.

Overthrow of Aleppo
The march and overthrow of Aleppo was done by Syrian and many foreign fighters supplied and backed by Turkish intelligence and military. Syrian military communications were jammed using electronic warfare. The invaders used drones for surveilling and attacking Syrian forces. The jihadists were trained in the use of drones by NATO-funded Ukrainians. Turkey and other NATO forces supplied the drones and all sorts of other advanced weaponry. They had tanks in addition to machinegun-mounted trucks and other vehicles.

The jihadists were carefully prepared by Turkish and US forces. They sent individuals to talk with influential people in the Aleppo community, promising payments of hundreds of dollars and other rewards in exchange for complicity or no opposition. Doctors, engineers, and public officials were contacted personally. It is highly likely that military officials were also contacted. When the invasion supported by the Turkish military happened starting November 27, the Syrian defense of Aleppo collapsed.

Qusay thinks the Syrian army was exhausted from 13 years of war plus constant attacks from Israeli jets they have been helpless to stop. They, like all Syrian society, have been impoverished by intense sanctions from the West coupled with the theft of essential national resources. The primary wheat-growing and oil and gas-producing regions have been occupied by US forces and their Kurdish proxies since 2016. As a result, most Syrians only have electricity a few hours per day and have trouble putting food on the table. Before the “dirty war” began in 2011, Syria was self-sufficient in food and energy. Syria had no national debt and Syrians enjoyed free health care and education.

The invaders in Aleppo tried to assuage the public that they are not like the “rebels” of old who persecuted and killed Christians and Alawi and enforced sharia law. In Aleppo, they provided free bread for families and quickly set up electronic communications hubs so that everyone might have internet and also so they could broadcast their messages.

Collapse in Damascus
While the northern invading army went on to central Syria, a different attacking group worked from the south. First, they attacked and took over Deraa on the Jordan border, then Suweida. Then they advanced to Damascus. It seems there were agreements in advance because there was little military defense of the capital of Syria. President Assad relinquished power and departed for Moscow.

On Day One (Sunday) after the collapse of Bashar’s government, looting and chaos erupted immediately. People were terrified and afraid to go out of their homes. Government buildings were looted and ransacked. Universities were broken into and computers and lab equipment stolen. The Central Bank of Syria and other institutions were vandalized.

Many people have replaced the flag of Syria with the “revolution” flag out of fear. (The “revolution” flag is in fact, the French colonial flag).

Now, on Day Two, the situation is better. There is more security. Many stores are still closed, but they are opening one by one. The former PM and cabinet have urged people to go back to work.

The titular head of the new government is Abu Mohammed al Jolani. He has publicly stated women are free to wear what they want, and there will be no retaliation or revenge attacks. The Syrian Prime Minister has been replaced with Mohamad al Bashir. The Jolani government seems to be in control throughout most of the country, including Latakia.

A huge concern now is the ongoing Israeli attacks and bombings. Israel has destroyed nearly all military buildings in Damascus area while Israeli drones are constantly overhead. Queneitra in the far south has been occupied by the Zionist army. Netanyahu and Biden have both taken “credit” for the long dirty war in Syria.

Qusay says, “Suddenly everything is lost…Syrians are used to relying on the army to defend our country. But there is no more defense. Israel is taking overy Syrian land. Turkey is taking over another part of Syria. ….. We don’t know where Syria is going.”

Some Syrians think they will have a better life. Others believe this is an illusion and there are dark days ahead. Last weekend, Qusay’s family had their bags packed and were ready to leave. But there is no place to go. Both Jordan and Lebanon have closed their borders.

(More...)

https://natyliesbaldwin.com/2024/12/ric ... t-12-days/

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As Syria Enters the Abyss, a New Geopolitical Map Unfolds
Posted by Internationalist 360° on December 16, 2024
Alastair Crooke

Image

Syria has entered the abyss – the demons of al-Qa’eda, ISIS, and the most intransigent elements of the Muslim Brotherhood are circling the skies. There is chaos, looting, fear, and a terrible passion for revenge scalds the blood. Street executions are rife.

Maybe Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham (HTS) and its leader, Al-Joulani, (following Turkish instruction), thought to control things. But HTS is an umbrella label like Al-Qa’eda, ISIS and An-Nusra, and its factions have already descended into factional fighting. The Syrian ‘state’ dissolved in the middle of the night; the police and army went home, leaving weapons depots open for the Shebab to loot. The prison doors were flung (or prised) open. Some, no doubt, were political prisoners; but many were not. Some of the most vicious inmates now roam the streets.

The Israelis – within days – totally eviscerated the defence infrastructure of the state in more than 450 air strikes: missile air defences, Syrian air force helicopters and aircraft, the navy and the armouries – all destroyed in the “largest air operation in Israel’s history”.

Syria no longer exists as a geo-political entity. In the east, Kurdish forces (with U.S. military support) are seizing the oil and agricultural resources of the former state. Erdogan’s forces and proxies are engaged in an attempt to crush the Kurdish enclave completely (although the U.S. has now mediated a ceasefire of sorts). And in the south-west, Israeli tanks have seized the Golan and land beyond to within 20 kms of Damascus. In 2015 the Economist magazine wrote: “Black gold under the Golan: Geologists in Israel think they have found oil – in very tricky territory”. Israeli and American oilmen believe they have discovered a bonanza in this most inconvenient of sites.

And a big impediment – Syria – to the West’s energy ambitions has just dissipated.

The strategic political balancer to Israel that was Syria since 1948, has vanished. And the earlier ‘easing of tensions’ between the Sunni sphere and Iran has been disrupted by the rude intervention of ISIS rebrands and by Ottoman revanchism working with Israel, via American (and British) intermediaries. The Turks have never really reconciled themselves to the 1923 Treaty that concluded World War I, by which they ceded what is now northern Syria to the new state of Syria.

Within days, Syria has been dismembered, partitioned and balkanised. So why do Israel and Türkiye still bomb? The bombing started the moment Bashar Al-Assad departed – because Türkiye and Israel worry that today’s conquerors may prove ephemeral, and may soon themselves be displaced. You don’t need to own a thing in order to control it. As powerful states in the region, Israel and Turkey will wish to exercise control not just over resources, but over the vital regional crossroads and passageway that was Syria.

Inevitably however, ‘Greater Israel’ is likely, at some point, to butt heads with Erdogan’s Ottomanesque revanchism. Equally the Saudi-Egyptian-UAE front will not welcome the resurgence of either ISIS re-brands, nor the Turkish-inspired and Ottomanised Muslim Brotherhood. The latter poses an immediate threat to Jordan, now bordering the new revolutionary entity.

Such concerns may push these Gulf States closer to Iran. Qatar, as purveyor of arms and funding to the HTS cartel, may again be ostracised by other Gulf leaders.

The new geo-political map poses many direct questions about Iran, Russia, China and the BRICS. Russia has played a complex hand in the Middle East – on the one hand, prosecuting an escalating defensive war versus NATO powers and managing key energy interests; while, at the same time, trying to moderate Resistance operations toward Israel in order to keep relations with the U.S. from deteriorating utterly. Moscow hopes – without great conviction – that a dialogue with the incoming U.S. President might emerge, at some point in the future.

Moscow likely will draw the conclusion that ceasefire ‘deals’ such as the Astana Agreement on jihadist containment within the boundaries of the Idlib autonomous zone in Syria are not worth the paper on which they were written. Türkiye – an Astana guarantor – stabbed Moscow in the back. Likely, it will make the Russian leadership more hard-nosed over Ukraine, and of any western talk of ceasefires.

Iran’s Supreme Leader spoke on 11 December: “There should be no doubt that what happened in Syria was plotted in the command rooms of the United States and Israel. We have evidence for this. One of the neighbouring countries of Syria also played a role, but the primary planners are the U.S. and the Zionist regime”. In this context, Ayatollah Khamenei quashed speculations about any weakening of the will to resist.

Türkiye’s proxy victory in Syria nonetheless may prove Pyrrhic. Erdogan’s Foreign Minister, Hakan Fidan, lied to Russia, the Gulf States and Iran about the nature of what was being cooked-up in Syria. But the mess now is Erdogan’s. Those that he doubled-crossed will at some point extract pay-back.

Iran seemingly, will revert to its earlier stance of gathering together the disparate threads of regional resistance to fight the Al-Qa’eda reincarnation. It will not turn its back on China, nor the BRICS project. Iraq – recalling the ISIS atrocities of its civil war – will join with Iran, as will Yemen. Iran will be aware that the remaining nodes of the former Syrian Army might well, at some point, enter into the fight against the HTS cartel. Maher Al-Assad took his entire armoured division with him into exile in Iraq on the night of Bashar Al-Assad’s departure.

China will not be pleased at events in Syria. The Uyghurs played a prominent part in the Syria uprising (there were an estimated 30,000 Uyghurs in Idlib, under training by Türkiye (which sees Uyghurs as the original component of the Turkic nation). China too, will likely see the overthrow of Syria as underlining putative western threats to their own energy security lines that run through Iran, Saudi Arabia and Iraq.

Finally, western interests have been fighting over Middle Eastern resources for centuries – and ultimately that is what lies behind the war today.

Is he, or isn’t he, pro-war, people ask about Trump, since he has already signalled that energy dominance will be a key strategy for his Administration.

Well, western countries are deep in debt; their fiscal room for manoeuvre is shrinking fast, and bond-holders are beginning to mutiny. There is a race to find a new collateral for fiat currencies. It used to be gold; since the 1970s it was oil, but the petrodollar has faltered. The Anglo-Americans would love to have Iran’s oil again – as they did until the 1970s – to collateralise and build a new money system tied to the real value inherent in commodities.

But Trump says he wants to ‘end wars’ and not start them. Does the re-drawing of the geo-political map make some global entente between east and west more, or less, likely?

For all the talk of possible Trump ‘deals’ with Iran and Russia, it is likely too early to say whether they will – or can – materialise.

Seemingly, Trump has to secure the domestic ‘deal’ first, before he will know whether he has the scope for foreign policy deals.

It seems that the Ruling Structures (notably the ‘Never-Trump’ element in the Senate) will allow Trump considerable latitude on key nominations for domestic Departments and Agencies that manage U.S. political and economic affairs (which is Trump’s key concern) – and will also permit a certain discretion on, shall we say, the ‘warfare’ Departments that targeted Trump over the last years, such as the FBI and the Department of Justice.

The putative ‘deal’ seems to be that his nominations will still need to undergo Senate confirmation and must broadly be ‘on-side’ with Inter-Agency foreign policy (notably on Israel).

The Inter-Agency grandees, however, reportedly insist on their veto over nominations affecting the deepest structures of foreign policy. And therein lies the crux of matters.

Israelis generally are celebrating their ‘victories’. Will this euphoria weigh with U.S. business élites? Hizbullah is contained, Syria is demilitarised, and Iran is not on Israel’s border. The threat to Israel today is of a qualitatively lower order. Is this, in itself, sufficient to allow tensions to ease, or to see some wider understandings to emerge? Much will hang on Netanyahu’s own political circumstances. Should the PM emerge from his criminal Court process relatively unscathed, would he need to take the big ‘bet’ of military action against Iran, with the geo-political map so suddenly transformed?

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2024/12/ ... p-unfolds/

Why an experienced diplomat like Crooke would take a huckster like Trump at his word is beyond me. Trump is the PT Barnum of our time, on steriods.
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: Syria

Post by blindpig » Wed Dec 18, 2024 12:12 pm

Turkiye masses troops on Syria border, invasion 'imminent': Report

US officials warn that a 'cross border operation is imminent' as Turkiye amasses its troops on its southern border

News Desk

DEC 17, 2024

Image
(Photo credit: Aris Messinis, AFP)

The Turkish-backed Syrian National Army (SNA) announced the start of an operation against the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in the northern Syrian town of Kobani (Ayn al-Arab) on 17 December.

The announcement came in the midst of a build-up of Turkish troops on the Syrian border in preparation for a possible invasion alongside its proxies in the SNA.

Al Mayadeen's correspondent stated that “Turkiye wants a security belt 30 kilometers wide on the border with Syria,” stressing that it “is close to achieving its goal.”

The Turkish military has built a concrete barrier between Kobani and the Turkiye border, while Turkish warplanes can be seen flying above the city.

The US media has reported that Turkiye is building up its forces along the border in preparation for a possible invasion.

The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported that according to one US official, “A Turkish cross-border operation could be imminent.”

The WSJ adds that SNA fighters and Turkish uniformed commandos and artillery in large numbers are now concentrated near Kobani, a Kurdish-majority city in Syria on the northern border with Turkiye.

Turkiye began building up its forces near the border two weeks ago as militants from Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), a UN-designated terror group, toppled the government of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad and occupied the capital, Damascus.

Kurdish forces under the People's Protection Units (YPG) began taking control of Kurdish-majority areas in Syria in 2012, with the outbreak of war in 2011.

Turkiye has sought to prevent Kurds from forming contiguous regions in areas of Syria on its southern border, stretching from Afrin in the northwest to Kobani in the north center and to Hasaka in the northeast.

Turkiye first supported ISIS and then sent its own forces to invade northern Syria multiple times to prevent such a Kurdish region from being established.

The US military partnered with the YPG to create the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in 2015. The US and SDF occupied land outside of traditional Kurdish control, including Sunni Arab areas containing Syria's oil fields and wheat-producing regions.

The US has been trying to keep Syria partitioned, under sanctions, and unable to rebuild since the war ended in 2019.

Kurdish official Ilham Ahmed urged President-elect Donald Trump to prevent a new Turkish invasion.

Turkiye's goal is to “establish de facto control over [Kurdish] land before [Donald Trump] take[s] office, forcing [the US] to engage with them as rulers of [Kurdish] territory,” Ahmed wrote to Trump in a letter viewed by the WSJ. “If Turkey proceeds with its invasion, the consequences will be catastrophic.”

A spokesman for Turkiye's embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to the WSJ's requests for comment.

https://thecradle.co/articles/turkiye-m ... ent-report

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Germany Rejects Possible Turkish Offensive Against Syrian Kurds

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Turkish army military on the Syrian border near Ain al-Arab/Kobani, Dec. 17. 2024. X/ @EastWestGroup


December 17, 2024 Hour: 9:52 am

The Syrian Kurds’ civilian administration warned that Türkiye is preparing to attack them again.

On Tuesday, German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock urged Türkiye to refrain from launching a large-scale incursion into the Kurdish autonomous region in Syria.

“Kobani is a symbol of the courageous fight of Kurdish men and women against the Islamic State,” Baerbock stated on social media, referring to the Kurdish city that Türkiye is reportedly preparing to attack. Kobani was the site of a fierce battle against the jihadist group in 2014.

“What people need least after 14 years of war is more bloodshed. Türkiye also has a responsibility to preserve Syria’s territorial integrity and the hope for peace,” emphasized the minister, as Syria’s new interim government works to stabilize the country following the sudden collapse of Bashar al-Assad’s regime.

Last week, the German Foreign Ministry had already indirectly urged Türkiye and Israel to avoid interfering in Syria’s transition process, amid airstrikes carried out by both countries under the pretext of defending their own security.

Breaking News: Turkish occupation drones have targeted civilian positions, mosques, and schools in areas controlled by the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) west of Tal Abyad city, north of Raqqa. The SDF, which has fought tirelessly against ISIS and imprisoned 50,000 Islamist… pic.twitter.com/hcAnbweGFF

— Amjad Taha أمجد طه (@amjadt25) December 17, 2024


On Tuesday, The Wall Street Journal cited senior U.S. officials who said that Turkish forces, including militia fighters, Turkish-uniformed commandos, and a significant amount of artillery, are being concentrated near Kobani.

The civilian administration of the Syrian Kurds, who established a semi-autonomous region in northeastern Syria during the civil war, has warned that Türkiye may be preparing to attack them again, after having already invaded and occupied several parts of their territory.

The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), the militias of the Kurdish autonomous region, are allied with the United States in the fight against remnants of ISIS in Syria.

Last week, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken traveled to Türkiye to seek assurances that Ankara would scale back operations against Kurdish fighters. However, U.S.-brokered ceasefire talks between the Syrian Kurds and Türkiye-backed rebels in Kobani failed on Monday without reaching an agreement.

Türkiye argues that both the party governing the Kurdish autonomous region in Syria and the militias in that region are linked to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). Ankara considers them terrorists who cannot be part of the transition process following the regime’s collapse.

https://www.telesurenglish.net/germany- ... ian-kurds/

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Evaluating Bashar al-Assad’s Human Rights Record in Syria
Posted by Internationalist 360° on December 16, 2024
Justin Podur and Joe Emersberger

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Can resisting the genocidal US Empire be a stain on your human rights record?

By a slave owner’s reading of history, Abraham Lincoln butchered 260,000 to 400,000 of his “own people” in the South to keep the Confederate States from seceding from the USA. [1] Lincoln was actually a perpetrator of genocide against the indigenous peoples of North America like the all the US presidents who established the USA. He also wanted to expel the Black population to Haiti after the Civil War. But taken in isolation, his military victory over the Confederate States – even if you know that the plight of slaves was not actually Lincoln’s priority – cannot be used by any reasonable person to depict him as a monster. There is no “freedom” to establish a giant confederation of slave owners that anyone should respect. Waging a civil war to prevent it was fully justified. That does not mean that Lincoln’s side never acted immorally in the way it fought the war. But an honest assessment of Lincoln’s human rights record must take into account that he was on the right side of the US Civil War.

Waging war to defend against the world’s greatest evil is justified

President Bashar al-Assad of Syria also fought, but in his case ultimately lost, a civil war that he was fully justified in waging. Since 2011 until his ouster weeks ago, Assad fought to prevent his country from being conquered and partitioned by the greatest evil in the world today: the US Empire. Assad fought armed rebels backed by the US and its top clients in the region: Turkey, Israel and Saudi Arabia. The case for depicting Assad as a monster is based on the premise that Assad had no right to defend his country against the US and its allies. Sometimes Assad’s detractors denied the significance of the US role in the war. Always absurd, their denial became downright farcical once the US occupied part of Syria in 2014.

With the help of Russia and other allies (Iran and Hezbollah), Assad was able to achieve a stalemate in the war for years. But it was a stalemate that allowed the US and its proxies to occupy resource-rich areas of the country. The US occupation magnified the impact of sanctions that Washington used to ruthlessly bleed Syria economically. Neither Assad nor his foreign allies were willing to take the enormous risks required to kick the US out of Syria, or to stop Israel’s constant bombing of Syria. The economic bleeding eventually paid off dramatically for the US-backed rebels. Assad was overthrown mere days after rebels launched an offensive to break the 2020 stalemate that had been negotiated by Russia and Iran with Turkey.

The civil war to oust Assad was a US project executed for the benefit of Israel. The genocidal Zionst state has already bombed hundreds of sites in Syria to destroy any military capacity for the new government. At the same time Israel has done this, Syria’s new government has clearly signalled its submissiveness towards Israel, but expressed hatred for Israeli enemies: Iran and Hezbollah. Israel is occupying Syrian villages, issuing deportation orders to Syrian citizens, and bringing in Jewish settlers. Israel now has better military options for attacking Lebanon and for cutting off armed support to Hezbollah. So those hailing Assad’s ouster on “human rights” grounds must ignore that his ouster has provided the Israelis state with greater power and impunity to crush the human rights of Syrians, Palestinians and Lebanese.

When we declare the US Empire to be the world’s greatest evil, our case is overwhelming. Before October 7, 2023 one could point to countless military coups the US has sponsored in the Americas; its slaughter of millions in Indochina during the 1960s and 70s; the millions of deaths it caused in Iraq since 1990; economic policies that consigned hundreds of millions to misery and premature death; its sponsorship of Israeli atrocities for several decades. The case was already irrefutable, but today it is even more stunningly so.

The US government has sponsored a Holocaust in Gaza since October 7, 2023. Its horrors have been live-streamed around the world so continuously that even outfits with proven track record of subservience to the US have been forced into damage control. In November, the ICC issued arrest warrants for Netanyahu and his former defense minister Yoav Gallant. Days ago, Amnesty International belatedly concluded that Israel is guilty of genocide in Gaza. But both the ICC and Amnesty international, still insisted on parroting the genocidal Israeli (and US) take on the Palestinian armed resistance of October 7. [2]

Imperialists have always posed as a “human rights” crusaders

The character assassination of targeted leaders for their “human rights” records was conceived by Western imperialists, avant la lettre, in the 19th century to justify the destruction of states and the colonization of the post-destruction territories. When the Scramble for Africa was happening at full speed in 1884, the Times of London carried campaigns about every single individual African leader and how they each “must go”: Tippu Tip of Eastern Congo had to go, Msiri of Katanga had to go, Cetshwayo of the Zulus had to go, Mwanga of Buganda, Kabarega of Bunyoro, Arap Samoei, Bai Bureh, Yaa Asentewaa, Abd el Kader of Algeria had to go, Sadok Bey of Tunis had to go, Sultan Ahmadou, Samori Toure, King Benanzin – had to go, of course Queen Ranavalona had to go, she was a Mad Queen, Mkwawa of the Hehe, Samuel Maherero, Hendrik Witbooi – had to go, Queen Liliuokalani of Hawaii had to go. This is not an exhaustive list. Every single one of these leaders had the equivalent of their human rights record pilloried in the Western press, notably the Times. The Belgians claimed that they colonized Congo to protect the Congolese from slavery. Then they killed 10 million of them over about 20 years, chopping off their hands for trophy photographs if they didn’t collect rubber fast enough.

The imperialist game of targeted leaders that “must go” is older than the specific doctrine of human rights and democracy. But that doctrine also was conceived and built as an engine of imperialism. When Africa was decolonizing itself in the 1960s, Africans looked naturally to the communist countries as models. Economic equality and economic development – tangibles like caloric intake, health and education, and infrastructure – these were the kinds of things that were rapidly improving in postcolonial communist nations. In the kind of neocolonial relationships that the US was trying to impose on the newly decolonized countries – in which the West would continue to control investment, finance, intellectual property, and elite education – Third World nations tilting to the West would not be getting economic equality or development. They would instead be getting unequal exchange and impoverishment while enriching the West.

What the West could offer, especially to communist, nationalist, or developmentalist states that were trying to protect themselves from Western economic penetration, was “human rights and democracy”, a methodology for measuring “authoritarianism” and even a framework for overthrowing these developmentalist regimes – the “color revolution”. Another benefit of campaigning for human rights and democracy is that the open (to foreign penetration) multiparty electoral political and media systems that the US promotes render developmentalist states unprotected from US campaigns against them. US agents can freely use local media (and now social media) to generate political influence inside almost any country in the world. Any state that constrains US media, tech, or political agents like NED, IRI, and NDI gets labelled as authoritarian.

This is all outlined in, among other works, Nicholas Guilhot’s The Democracy Makers, Jessica Whyte’s The Morals of the Market, and James Peck’s Ideal Illusions. Our own book, Extraordinary Threat, shows the working of this (so far failed) methodology on Venezuela and previous books by one of us, Haiti’s New Dictatorship, and America’s Wars on Democracy in Rwanda and the DR Congo shows the working of this (successful) methodology to Haiti, Rwanda, and the DR Congo. Yugoslavia is another well-documented case.

Closer to Syria, in the Arab world, the “human rights and democracy” campaign was run to overthrow Saddam Hussein in Iraq and Muammar Gaddafi in Libya, leaving generational destruction in their wake and countries that show no sign of regaining the sovereignty or developmental level they had under leaders they were told “must go’. As already noted, Bashar al-Assad in Syria was targeted with incredible ferocity and held out for a long time, but ultimately left in 2024. Syria’s development prospects had already been destroyed by Israeli bombing, US sanctions, and US and Turkish occupation and outright asset stripping before the overthrow.

How bad was Assad’s human rights record?

But what if we put all these important considerations aside? Put aside Assad’s right to defend his government from being overthrown by the US Empire. Put aside western imperialism’s long track record of lying about enemies and pretending to be human rights crusaders as they murder and plunder. Let’s simply try to assess how bad Assad’s government was.

He first took office in 2000. There are two questions:

How badly did he violate human rights between 2000-2011, before the civil war began?
How badly did he violate human rights in the way he fought the civil war from 2011-2024?
“How badly” can only be answered comparatively.

So, we review what is known about Assad’s human rights and democracy record, compared to two states: Saudi Arabia and the USA. These two comparators have prisons, the death penalty, and torture. They commit genocide (the US all over the world and notably Gaza right now, Saudi Arabia in Yemen from 2014 on), but face no threat, nor even any rhetoric, of being overthrown by anyone.

The main index of human rights violations / authoritarianism / tyranny would be numbers killed and imprisoned. The main index of dictatorship / democracy is elections.

How does Syria under Bashar al-Assad, from 2000-2011 compare?

Prisons.

Consider the prison population data shown below which is taken from the Institute for Crime & Justice Policy Research (ICPR), a research outfit funded in part by the UK government.

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During the 2000s both the USA and Saudi Arabia had vastly larger prison populations than Syria. Adjusted for population, Syria’s imprisoned about half as many people as Saudi Arabia, and only one tenth as many as the USA.

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Group therapy in San Quentin prison, 2012

Elections.

Saudi Arabia doesn’t even bother holding sham elections at the national level.

In the USA, the Republican and Democratic parties can be considered two factions of the same party that serves US elites, not the general public. Some have branded them the Uniparty. There are certainly significant differences between Democrat and Republican voters. African Americans are far more likely to vote Democrat than Republican for example (80 percent voted for Harris in 2024, and 90 percent for Biden in 2020). Majorities of Democrat voters and independents said last year that the US should stop arming Israel. Democrat voters ( as well as independents) are twice as likely as Republican voters to say that the US should stop weapons sales to Israel. However, we know for certain neither party would ever cut off weapons sales to Israel simply because most voters want that. In fact, the Democratic party’s willingness to defy their voting base (and disregard trying to appeal to independents) by arming Israel probably cost them the presidential election in November. But what does “losing” really mean when Uniparty always wins?

Alternatives to the Uniparty are very effectively marginalized: everything from the winner-take-all allocation of electoral votes, to the lawsuits to deny alternative ballot access, to the exorbitant cost of media access, to the dependence on private donors all work to ensure that the Uniparty consistently gets over 96 percent of the vote.

In fact, as shown below, the Uniparty in the USA, has sometimes been more dominant in elections than Assad had been in Syria.

ELECTION RESULTS

Saudi Arabia – no national level elections

USA percentage of vote won by the Uniparty [3]

2000…96.3%

2004…99.0%

2008…98.6%

SYRIA percentage of vote won by Assad [4]

2000…97.0%

2007…97.0%

2014…88.7%

2021…95.1%


Services. A broader view of human rights in Syria before the civil war would look at access to basic services like health care and food. One way to capture that is through child mortality data. As of 2011, UNICEF’s data for 2009 (the most recent available at the time) showed Syria had a very low child mortality rate compared to many nearby countries. It was significantly lower than Saudi Arabia’s and Jordan’s in 2009 according to UNICEF’s 2011 data.

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But UNICEF often revises its data retroactively. As with other UN agencies, these revisions often look like they have been driven by pressure from powerful western donors. UNICEF revised by 2009 so that as of 2024 it is claiming that Saudi Arabia’s child mortality rate was actually much better than Syria’s in 2009. Regardless, in neither data set does Syria stand out as a country with a poor child mortality rate compared to its neighbors, many of them dictatorships that were not hit with US-orchestrated destabilization campaigns.

We can’t really use human rights data from 2011-2024 to compare Syria to the USA and Saudi Arabia since neither of those two countries were fighting a civil war. But we do have a long-running war in the neighbourhood that we can use for comparison. Let’s compare Assad’s conduct of the Syria war to the way Israel (with the unconditional and essential backing of the US) has waged war since October of 2023.

Comparing Syria’s civil war to the Holocaust in Gaza

Deaths.

According to the New York Times, fourteen years of civil war in Syria caused as many as 620,000 deaths in a country whose population in 2011 was 22 million. These deaths were inflicted by both the Syrian government and the armed opposition. The NYT cited various counts of war-related deaths, not cluster sampling methods that have been used to estimate the death rates before and after a war. Cluster sampling captures deaths from the war that might not otherwise be reported as war-related: the deaths caused by damaged health and sanitation systems for example. In Iraq, cluster sampling methods produced vastly higher estimates of the death toll from the US invasion of Iraq in 2003 (and the subsequent occupation) than did direct counts produced by sources such as Iraq Body Count.

So to compare the NYT’s count for Syria civil war we will use similar direct counts available from Gaza’s health ministry. In Gaza, with a population of only 2.2 million people before the Israeli rampage since October 7, there were 43,000 deaths tallied by Gaza’s health ministry in 13 months – Ralph Nader and others have argued this is a drastic underestimate. Unlike the NYT’s figure for Syria where the government and rebels share responsibility for the deaths, all of the victims of the war on Gaza were killed by Israel.

So the share of Gaza’s population killed by Israel in only 13 months is 1.95 percent. In 14 years of civil war in Syria, all sides together killed 2.8 percent of the population (about 0.2 percent per year on average). According to the lowest estimates of Israeli killing (which could be off by a factor of 5) Israel is therefore killing Gaza’s population at a rate about nine times faster than all actors in the war in Syria killed Syrians.

The Syria numbers used in the comparison above include deaths on all sides, combatants as well as civilians. The anti-Assad Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, seems to claim that Assad is responsible for 219,223 civilian deaths by March of 2024. [5] Given that the death toll in Gaza has overwhelmingly been of Palestinian civilians, a better comparison with the Gaza health ministry data would be the number of civilians Assad has been accused of killing since 2011. In that comparison Israel has been killing Gaza’s population at a rate about 16 times faster than Assad did to Syrians. [6]

Displacement. By 2014, three years of Syria’s Civil War had displaced 9.5 million people, 43% of the pre-war population of 22 million. By 2024, 14 million were displaced, 63.6% of the population. The responsibility for displacement is shared by both sides of the war. In Gaza, 90 percent of the population had been displaced after a year of war, entirely by Israel.

Hospital Destruction. In 2021, nine years into Syria’s civil war Aljazeera reported that “in northwest Syria, [not all of Syria] for example, the UN has said that 50 percent of health facilities are no longer functioning.” In Gaza, after only a year of war, less than half of its hospitals were functional, and those that were “only partly so” according to Doctors with Borders.

In conclusion:

Syria under Assad incarcerated a fraction of the numbers the US incarcerates.
Its record on women’s rights is a century ahead of Saudi Arabia’s.
Its conduct during the 2011-2024 civil war destroyed a fraction of the buildings and infrastructure Israel destroyed in Gaza and Lebanon.
Assad’s government did not target children and medical facilities with anything like the intensity Israel did, nor did it impose starvation and siege conditions.
There were disputes about the fairness of Syria’s elections, but unlike Saudi Arabia, it held some. If Republicans and Democrats are counted together, as they should be, the duopoly achieves vote tallies that would make any authoritarian or dictator blush.
The 2011 protests in Syria were suppressed with violence, as were protests in Saudi Arabia. When Palestinians in Gaza protested against Israel in 2018, Israeli snipers killed hundreds of them and injured thousands. American police also kill protesters. Several of the leaders of the Ferguson and George Floyd uprisings in the US were killed by police after the fact. And of course US police kill around 1000 Americans a year, every year.
According to any measure of human rights or democracy, the ousted Syrian regime had more legitimacy than the completely secure genocidal governments of the US, Israel, and Saudi Arabia. Trotskyists believe in permanent revolution and anarchists believe that all tyrannies must fall. For Westerners who belong to those political tendencies, it is necessary to prioritize. On the basis of human rights and democracy, among these four governments (US, Saudi Arabia, Israel, and Syria), overthrowing Syria ought to have been the fourth priority.

So why was there such an intense campaign to overthrow Syria?

Syria was overthrown because the US is devoted to neutralizing and destroying independent countries; it was prioritized by the US and Israel for overthrow because Arab states are prioritized for destruction. We’ve written about this in the past and will write more. For our purposes here, we will conclude by talking about the role the Western campaign to overthrow Syria played in Western politics.

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2011 was the year of the Arab Spring: grassroots movements arose in Tunisia, Egypt, Bahrain, Libya, Syria – but not in Saudi Arabia, UAE, or Qatar. The demands of protesters varied from economic and developmentalist demands to demands for multiparty elections. In Egypt and Bahrain the spring was crushed. In Tunisia the president left the country and reforms did follow. With Libya and Syria, the US got involved quickly (some have argued that they sprung the spring in the first place) and turned springs into civil wars. Libya was an immediate success for the US, the government overthrown, Gaddafi publicly murdered. But Syria turned into a 13-year war.

As the Syria war went on, campaigners for the overthrow of Syria targeted the Palestine solidarity movement in the West for destruction. Sectarianism played a role. But their main rhetorical tool was “human rights and democracy.”

That movement was always fighting an extremely uphill battle. All mainstream Western political parties and mainstream media outlets are pro-Israel and racist against Palestinians. Even in this weak movement, 2011 was not a particularly strong year. The year before, Israel had murdered activists trying to get into Gaza by sea in the Freedom Flotilla, waylaying the boats and sending the message that the siege would never be broken nonviolently. Antiwar mobilizations during Israel’s Gaza wars (2006, 2008/9), as well as attempts to get into Gaza, were ongoing. Campus movements were updating the models of struggle developed for solidarity with anti-apartheid activists in the 1980s. Social media was becoming important – for better and worse.

Those of us who knew about US-backed regime change operations and opposed agitation in the West for the overthrow of other countries, found ourselves to be a minority in the Palestine movement. For the most part, we were simply shouted down by the “human rights and democracy” wielding regime changers. We tried both holding debates and holding our tongues but the split left the antiwar coalition degraded even relative to its weak pre-2011 state.

When Israel and the West opted for genocide in Gaza after October 2023, many of the same people on both sides of the decade-old split found themselves mobilizing to try to stop the genocide alongside younger activists unfamiliar with the old debate. The focus on the genocide led us to naively believe that the fracture over Syria had been transcended. It hadn’t. Once again, “human rights and democracy” is being wielded not against the genociders, but against the now-ousted Syrian government. Even now, with Assad gone, regime changers are primarily focused on blaming the current chaos on Assad.

Antiwar, Palestine solidarity efforts have not thus far been a powerful force in the West. We will never influence events if we can be divided at will by regime changers wielding the fraudulent weapon of human rights.

NOTES

[1] Britannica gives a low value for the death toll in the South of 260,000 (and 620,000 combined for North and South) but notes that other researchers have estimated a combined North-South death toll of 752,000 to 851,000.

[2] Amnesty said in its report that “On 7 October 2023 Hamas and other armed groups indiscriminately fired rockets into southern Israel and carried out deliberate mass killings and hostage-taking there, killing 1,200 people, including over 800 civilians, and abducted 223 civilians and captured 27 soldiers”. This is false. Palestinians overran at least eight military bases on that day according to a UN report. The Electronic Intifada showed that Israeli forces likely killed hundreds of its own people in its response to the raids, in fact, likely killing many in an effort to prevent more hostages from being taken.

And the ICC issued an arrest warrant for Hamas leader Ibrahim Al-Masri at the same time it issued warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant. The resistance to Israel’s genocide was considered as bad as genocide itself. And the ICC neglected to issue warrants for Israel’s full partners in genocide, several western governments, most especially its benefactors in Washington.

[3] US presidential elections results downloaded from the Federal Election Commission website

[4] Syria’s presidential election results taken from Straightstimes (2000 and 2021), from Washington Post (2007), and Gulf News (2014)

[5] A March 2024 SOHR article listed 164,223 civilian deaths overwhelmingly caused by Assad or his allies. The article later added “These statistics, documented by the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, do not include the following:

Over 55,000 civilians who were killed under torture in the detention centers and prisons of Bashar al-Assad’s regime…”

[6] Assuming the Gaza Health ministry numbers for 13 months are 70% civilian deaths then 1.33% of the population had been killed. According to SOHR, over a 13 year period the civilians Assad killed equaled 1% of the pre-war population of 22 million (an average of 0.077 percent of the population per year). If Nader is correct, Israel is killing Palestinians at a rate more like 80x the rate that the Syrian government’s enemies claim Assad killed Syrians.

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2024/12/ ... -in-syria/

*****

Leaving Syria under control of terrorist groups
Crispin Flintoff speaks to Vanessa Beeley

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vanessa beeley
Dec 17, 2024

Russian troops convoy leaving Damascus.

My recent conversation with The Crispin Flintoff Show:



****

Please do consider subscribing to my Substack. Thank you to everyone for your support xx

https://beeley.substack.com/p/leaving-s ... dium=email

******

Removal of surplus
December 17, 23:32

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Satellite photos of Khmeimim and Tartus. Airplanes and ships are loaded with equipment withdrawn from bases deep in Syria, which has now become redundant in light of the changed realities in Syria.

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The bases themselves are not currently being taken anywhere. Trading on them is still ongoing.

https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/9558128.html

Google Translator
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: Syria

Post by blindpig » Thu Dec 19, 2024 12:13 pm

Looking into the abyss: A journey through Damascus after Assad’s fall

With Assad’s government toppled, Syria teeters between fragile hopes for peace and the looming threat and chaos of militant rule. The Cradle’s correspondent crosses an open border into a city alive with jubilation but, in many areas, still plagued by war, fear, and an uncertain future.


A Cradle Correspondent

DEC 18, 2024

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Photo Credit: The Cradle
“The border is open. You can go to Syria!”

This is what my taxi driver friend Ali texted me.

“Do you need a visa? Are there checkpoints?” I asked.

“There is nothing, just go!” came his quick reply.

It felt surreal. Was this really the best time to go to Syria?

Just three days earlier, Bashar al-Assad’s government had fallen to militants from Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), led by the notorious former Al-Qaeda leader Abu Mohammad al-Julani. At the same time, Israel was carrying out the largest bombing campaign in its history – over 350 massive strikes to dismantle Syria’s military infrastructure entirely.

Despite fears of what might lie ahead, I found myself in Ali’s car early the next morning, heading from Beirut to the Syrian border. After clearing Lebanese control, I switched taxis – my new driver, Omar, greeted me with a smile.

“The terrorist is gone,” Omar said with satisfaction, referring to Assad as I loaded my bag into the car.

Omar, a graying man in his late forties with a short beard, shared his story as we drove. In 2013, he was detained while attending a protest in Damascus’s Midan district. A substantial bribe secured his release after a year in prison.

He had not only participated in demonstrations but also worked with the Local Coordination Committees (LCC) and helped form a local armed group that later joined the Free Syrian Army (FSA).

No passport control

Another passenger in the car, Abd al-Qader, beamed with excitement as we drove through the no man’s land between the two borders.

Abd al-Qader was returning to Syria after 13 years. He says he fled to Lebanon after the start of the war in 2011, afraid he would be detained by Syrian intelligence – the notorious and feared ‘Mukhabarat’ – for supporting the opposition.

The CIA and allied intelligence agencies had sparked the protests in Syria in March of 2011 while also flooding the country with Al-Qaeda militants from Iraq and Lebanon to attack Syrian police and security forces, blaming the deaths on Assad.

As we drove across the border, the old building where the Syrian authorities would stamp your passport was burned, empty, and had been looted. “Now you don’t have to pay bribes to cross the border,” Abd al-Qader said.

Now, the border was totally open; there was no passport check, just a few teenagers in mismatched civilian and military clothes who waved us through, AK-47s slung casually over their shoulders.

As we kept driving down the winding highway to Damascus, a camouflage truck with several masked men standing in the bed with mounted machine guns drove up and parked on the side of the road.

Omar said they were “revolutionaries” and that we had nothing to worry about. “They speak directly on the phone to Joe Biden, don’t worry,” he joked. “You can take selfies with them in Damascus!”

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The old building where the Syrian authorities stamped passports visibly vandalized and burned.

Israeli bombing and Julani’s arrival

As we entered the outskirts of the capital, the air was filled with a terrible smell. I soon saw smoke billowing from buildings on the right side of the road.

We were passing Al-Mezzeh military airport, which Israel had struck a few days ago as part of a massive bombing campaign it launched almost as soon as Julani entered Damascus.

Israel said it had dropped some 450 bombs on Syria’s military infrastructure, weapons depots, naval port, and missile defense systems over the past few days.

It reminded me of Beirut, where I had spent the past two months. I witnessed first-hand how Israel’s mass bombing campaign of Lebanon had turned large sections of the southern suburbs of the capital into an apocalyptic wasteland.

I noticed that same acrid scent I had smelled in Beirut, which made me wonder what kind of radiation and chemicals from the Israeli bombs will continue to poison future generations of Lebanese and Syrians, reminiscent of Iraq, where generations still suffer from the intoxicating aftermath of US bombings.

Yet Omar shrugged off the destruction. He said Syria would now have good relations with every neighboring country, including Israel, and that Syria no longer needed an army.

Over the next two nights in a row, I was awoken by the loud boom of Israel’s bombing of military sites on Mount Qasioun, which overlooks Damascus from the north. In addition to the bombing campaign, Israel immediately occupied additional Syrian land in the Golan Heights after Julani took control of the country.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is now bragging that he is the first leader in decades to expand Israel’s territory, while religious Jews in Israel are demanding to establish settlements and make large swathes of Syria, including Damascus, part of ‘Greater Israel.’

Torture, prisons, and ghosts of the war

Driving into Damascus, we passed the Palestine Branch of Syrian Security on the left side of the highway. Omar said that is where he was held. The Palestine Branch had five stories and had been burned by the HTS militants. He said there were prisons in the underground floors of the building where people were tortured.

As we exited the highway and entered the city, we saw another intelligence building with high, imposing walls. “Many detainees were held there,” Omar said.

The specter of Syria’s prisons still looms over its people. While western media sensationalized prisons like Sednaya with tales of bone-crushing machines, the truth of brutal detentions is undeniable. Sharif, a Kurdish man I later met, told me about his brother, Qassem, a bus driver accused of transporting militants. Detained in 2014, Qassem was tortured to death within five months. Sharif asked bitterly:

“Why torture someone like that? If he did something wrong, put him in prison, sure. But to torture and kill him? He is a human being. God created him. Why do that? Many people in Syria have stories like my brother's. Of people taken without questions or answers.”

Anti-Alawite reprisals

As we continued the drive into Damascus, we passed the government passport office. The building was charred from being torched, and smoke was still rising from it. Around twenty or thirty people were gathered around, watching as a crane lifted a burnt-out car out of the way.

We then passed Abbasiyyeen Square, a famous roundabout in the city with a fountain and grassy area in its center. A modest crowd was in the square, including some women and children, giving the impression life was continuing as normal.

Some people were holding the country’s old colonial flag embraced by the Syrian opposition in 2011, now the flag of post-Assad Syria. A few HTS men wearing green camouflage tactical clothing and assault rifles stood watch. Rumors swirled about a general being publicly executed there—but they were false.

While Damascus and other cities remain largely peaceful, videos have appeared on social media allegedly showing former government officials and Alawites being beaten, paraded through the streets, or lynched by mobs or armed militants. Reports are also spreading about Syrian soldiers disappearing in Latakia after surrendering to HTS militants.

The Caesar Sanctions

Before going to my hotel, Omar took me to his favorite shawarma place and treated me to a big plate that included French fries.

As I was just about finished, a small boy approached us selling roses. We were sitting at a table on the sidewalk. He asked if he could take the last French fries from my plate.

I told him. “Of course, you can eat them.” But instead, he said, “They are for my mother.” He wrapped them up in a napkin and walked away.

I was shocked that he or his mother, or both, would be so poor that he would bother to save a handful of French fries. But in fact, it should not be a shock; Syria is a very poor country. It has been under a punishing US blockade, imposed through what is known as the Caesar Sanctions, for years.

US officials have openly stated they wished to use the sanctions to crush Syria’s economy while also occupying Syria’s oil fields and major wheat-producing regions to starve the country further.

These officials know that similar US sanctions killed some 500,000 children in Iraq over the course of a decade in the 1990s without hurting Saddam Hussein himself. But they imposed the sanctions on Syria anyway, to punish Syria’s civilians until they oust Assad from power.

The members of the Syrian “opposition” living in Washington, DC, who advocated for imposing the sanctions, know this too.

They know the elites of a sanctioned country still have all the luxuries they need and that such measures only hurt regular people and make them go hungry. Many people in Damascus have been discussing details that have been discovered this week about Assad’s luxurious life, including his classic car collection.

The fact that many Syrians are happy that the old government is gone is perhaps one sign that the murderous US sanctions were, in the end, successful.

“We just want to eat and live in peace,” one man in Damascus told me when I asked what he thought about Assad’s ouster.

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Syrians in Damascus queuing for bread – an aftermath of the Caesar Sanctions imposed on the country.

Sunnis take power

Some of the Syrians who are happy about the change are religious Sunnis, who have now taken power in Damascus, the capital of the old Umayyad Empire.

The first night in Damascus, I went to the Umayyad Mosque. Formerly a church and still home to the alleged head of John the Baptist (or Prophet Yahya in Islamic tradition), the mosque is considered the fourth most important in Sunni Islam.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, head of the Islamist AKP party, famously vowed back in 2014 that he would pray in the Umayyad Mosque. Prior to the fall of the Assad government, Erdogan also hinted at his role in helping HTS take Damascus. US President-elect Donald Trump also hinted at this, stating that Turkiye had orchestrated the “unfriendly takeover” of Syria with little bloodshed.

Armed militants from HTS, many with their faces fully masked, were present at the mosque. Some lounged inside on the carpet, and others took pictures at the entrance with a few late-night visitors.

I felt nervous around the masked militants, not knowing how they would react to a foreigner, so I left after a few minutes. As I turned the corner to exit the mosque, three more armed HTS men with AK-47s walked in my direction.

These men were not masked, and I could see they had Asian features. They were Uyghur from the Turkistan Islamic Party (TIP), which had helped Julani and HTS conquer Idlib in 2015. The Uyghur fighters took over the homes of Christians they expelled after the invasion, and now were walking the streets of Damascus.

In the morning, I went back to the Umayyad Mosque for the first Friday prayers since the change of government. Despite the rumors circulating online, Erdogan was not there.

However, there was a huge crowd, the mosque was totally full, and the outside courtyard was packed as well.

Drones were overhead filming the crowd, and as they flew close, people would break out in chants of “Allahu Akbar” or “The people want the execution of Bashar.” The crowd was mixed, with women, children, men, and adolescents.

There were some armed HTS men providing security in what was a festive atmosphere. I spoke to one young woman who said she was happy because it was the first time in 50 years that a mass gathering filling the entire courtyard was allowed.

She said with a smile that Julani had been there the day before and wondered if he was inside the mosque now.

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Syrian civilians and militants celebrating in the Umayyad Mosque's courtyard in Damascus.

The Christians are scared

At the same time, angst grips Syria’s Christians. It is no secret that Christians were murdered and ethnically cleansed by Al-Qaeda groups – including Julani’s Nusra Front – in Iraq and Syria over the past two decades.

In 2013, Nusa militants invaded Maaloula, an ancient Christian town an hour's drive north of Damascus. They destroyed and looted churches and kidnapped nuns from the town whose residents are among the last to speak Aramaic, the language of Jesus.

Some of the most historic Christian towns in the world, in Iraq’s Ninevah plains, were ethnically cleansed by ISIS in collaboration with Masoud Barzani’s Kurdish Peshmerga forces the same year following the terror group’s capture of Mosul.

Just yesterday, news emerged that an elderly Christian couple was murdered in Wadi al-Nasara, the “Valley of the Christians,” near the Syrian city of Homs.

Initial reports said the couple was murdered as part of a burglary, a possible result of Julani’s emptying of Syria’s prisons, both the political prisoners and the criminals, as his men took over the country.

However, later reports said one of them had been beheaded, a common Al-Qaeda tactic, suggesting other motives of the killers.

Speaking to The Cradle, one member of the local Christian congregation in Damascus says:

“If the Christian community in Syria survives, it will be because of a decision of Uncle Sam. We know it is Washington who controls what is happening in Syria. We know it is Washington and Tel Aviv that give orders to Julani. Will President Trump ensure the safety and future of Christians in Syria? We don’t know. We can only pray.”

This is the question on everyone’s mind now. Perhaps the future of Syria is bright, as many Iraqis thought after the US army invaded Iraq and deposed Saddam. Or maybe it is the beginning of another nightmare, as Iraqis tragically learned over the next fifteen years.

https://thecradle.co/articles/looking-i ... ssads-fall

Syria's de facto ruler says foreign extremists 'deserve Syrian citizenship'

Abu Mohammad al-Julani, a UN-designated terrorist, held a press conference in Damascus to speak with western media about the future of Syria

News Desk

DEC 17, 2024

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(Photo credit: CNN)

Abu Mohammad al-Julani, who now goes by his real name Ahmad al-Sharaa, the head of Hayat Tahir al-Sham (HTS) and Syria's new de facto ruler, has stated that foreign fighters who helped his organization topple the Syrian government may be allowed to receive Syrian citizenship.

Julani, the former Al-Qaeda commander and UN-designated terrorist, was asked during a press briefing in Damascus on 17 December about the status of foreign fighters who took part in the so-called Syrian revolution and who have now been present in Syria for many years,

Julani stated that foreign fighters who entered Syria for HTS to fight against the Syrian government were “part of the movement that led to the downfall of Assad and should be celebrated.”

As part of the US-backed covert war on the Syrian government, Islamic State of Iraq (later ISIS) leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi dispatched Julani and a group of extremist fighters from Iraq to Syria in August 2011 to establish the Nusra Front, the official Al-Qaeda branch in Syria.

Julani's organization carried out suicide bombing attacks in Damascus in December 2011 and January 2012 before announcing the existence of the group.

Thousands of Salafist religious extremists from dozens of countries, including Britain, Belgium, France, China, Chechnya, Tunisia, Afghanistan, and Saudi Arabia came to fight with Julani against Syria.

Julani later broke from Baghdadi, after he declared a merger between Nusra and the Islamic State of Iraq, and announced the establishment of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS).

Nusra and ISIS began competing for the new foreign fighters who continued to flood into Syria from Turkiye.

The Nusra Front imposed fundamentalist Islamic rule on large areas of Syria under its control and committed numerous sectarian massacres, including the killing of 190 Alawites in villages in Latakia in August 2013.

“Christians to Beirut, Alawites to the grave” became a common slogan among fighters from Nusra and other armed factions fighting in Damascus.

Nusra later changed names several times and is now known as HTS.

Julani stated that the fighters in HTS have been in Syria for many years, and it should not be beyond the realm of possibility that they could be integrated into Syrian society because they believe in the same ideology and values as the Syrians.

He claimed that the number of foreign fighters in Syria has been exaggerated because no one has a clear record of how many there are.

After the Nusra Front captured Idlib Governorate in 2015, Julani's foreign fighters occupied the homes of the Christians and other minorities who the group expelled.

During Tuesday's press conference, Julani also stated that Syria would no longer be used as a base to attack Israel or any other nation.

Regarding a new constitution for Syria, Julani stated it will reflect the values, culture, and beliefs of the Syrian people. It will not be a constitution that is alien to the Syrian people, he added.

Syria's minority Christians, Alawites, and Druze fear that Julani will impose a fundamentalist Islamic government on Syria that restricts their rights similar to that imposed by Nusra in areas of Syria in the past.

https://thecradle.co/articles/syrias-de ... itizenship

Turkiye provides 'air support' to extremists violating ceasefire in north Syria: SDF

The US-backed militia says it downed an advanced Turkish drone and has warned that Ankara is massing its troops near the Syrian border in preparation for a 'possible invasion'

News Desk

DEC 18, 2024

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(Photo Credit: Anadolu Agency)

The Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) announced on 18 December that the Turkish-backed Syrian National Army (SNA) has continued to launch attacks on the city of Kobane and the strategic Tishreen Dam in northern Syria with air support from Ankara.

“Despite ongoing de-escalation efforts by the United States of America, the Turkish occupation and its mercenaries continued their attacks on numerous areas in the vicinity of Kobani, the Tishreen Dam, and Ain Issa yesterday and today,” the SDF said in a statement.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) confirmed that the SNA once more violated a US-mediated ceasefire agreement by launching a “surprise attack on [SDF positions] around the Tishreen Dam and Qaraqozak Bridge in eastern Aleppo countryside.”

“According to reliable SOHR sources, the attack was accompanied by intense aerial and ground bombardment in attempts to take control of Qaraqozak Bridge and Tishreen Dam, where a Turkish Bayraktar TB2 drone was shot down, and a Turkish radar vehicle was destroyed in the area by SDF,” the UK-based monitor reported on Wednesday.


The SNA is a Turkish proxy militia comprised of former fighters from the Free Syrian Army (FSA), Al-Qaeda, and ISIS. Ankara has used the SNA for years as a tool to prevent the US-backed SDF from establishing a contiguous Kurdish autonomous zone from Afrin in Syria’s northwest to Hasakah in the northeast.

“That ceasefire has been holding. It had expired; it has been extended into the end of this week,” US State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said on Tuesday about the previous ceasefire violations by the SNA.

Miller added that Washington's concerns are “broader than just Kobani. The concern we have is to any increase in fighting in northern Syria at this point.”

His remarks came after SDF commander Mazloum Abdi proposed a “demilitarized zone” in the Kurdish-majority city of Kobani “with the redeployment of security troops with US supervision and presence.”


The SNA mobilized against SDF-controlled areas east of Aleppo just days after helping former Al-Qaeda offshoot Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) topple the Syrian government.

As the SNA launched attacks on the SDF from the west, in Syria's northern borders, Ankara has been amassing troops in preparation for a possible invasion. The Turkish military has also built a concrete barrier between Kobani and Turkiye, while Turkish warplanes are often seen flying above the city.

“Without a doubt, the Turkish occupation persists, and its latest plan is to attack the city of Kobani. The ultimate goal is to occupy all of Syrian territory and annex it to Turkey. To this end, the Turkish state is mobilizing a large number of troops and mercenaries along the border, equipping them with heavy weaponry,” the general command of the SDF said on Tuesday.

“Paradoxically, the Turkish state seems to be avenging ISIS by attacking the very areas where it was defeated. Kobani, the city where ISIS suffered its first major setback, symbolizes the Kurdish people’s struggle for freedom and the defense of the entire region,” the statement adds.

The SDF controls dozens of makeshift prison camps holding tens of thousands of ISIS fighters and their families in US-occupied northeast Syria. Kurdish authorities have warned that the offensive by Turkish-backed militants and attacks by resurging ISIS cells are a “threat” to the security of these prisons.

In mid-July, authorities from the SDF-controlled Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES) issued a general amnesty that secured the release of over 1,500 Syrian ISIS fighters convicted of terrorism-related offenses, provided they “did not participate directly in combat” against the SDF.

The SDF was formed in 2015 with US assistance in a race to occupy Syria's energy-rich regions after Iran, Hezbollah, and Russia helped the Syrian army defeat ISIS. The SDF has close ties with the Kurdistan Worker's Party (PKK), which is designated as a terrorist organization by Turkiye, the US, and the EU.

https://thecradle.co/articles/turkiye-p ... -syria-sdf

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Privatizing Syria: US Plans to Sell Off a Nation’s Wealth After Assad
Posted by Internationalist 360° on December 18, 2024
Kit Klarenberg

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In the immediate wake of the Syrian government’s abrupt collapse, much remains uncertain about the country’s future – including whether it can survive as a unitary state or will splinter into smaller states as did Yugoslavia in the early 1990s, a move that ultimately led to a bloody NATO intervention. Moreover, who or what may take power in Damascus remains an open question. For the time being at least, members of ultra-extremist Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) appear highly likely to take key positions in whatever administrative structure sprouts from Bashar Assad’s ouster after a decade-and-a-half of grinding Western-sponsored regime change efforts.

As Reuters reported on December 12, HTS is already “stamping its authority on Syria’s state with the same lightning speed that it seized the country, deploying police, installing an interim government and meeting foreign envoys.” Meanwhile, its bureaucrats – “who until last week were running an Islamist administration in a remote corner of Syria’s northwest” – have moved en masse “into government headquarters in Damascus.” Mohammed Bashir, head of HTS’ “regional government” in extremist-occupied Idlib, has been appointed the country’s “caretaker prime minister.”

However, despite the chaos and precariousness of post-Assad Syria, one thing seems assured – the country will be broken open to Western economic exploitation, at long last.

Multiple reports show that HTS has informed local and international business leaders that when in office, it will “adopt a free-market model and integrate the country into the global economy, in a major shift from decades of corrupt state control.”

As Alexander McKay of the Marx Engels Lenin Institute tells MintPress News, state-controlled parts of Syria’s economy may have been under Assad, but corrupt it wasn’t. He believes a striking feature of the ongoing attacks on Syrian infrastructure from forces within and without the country is that economic and industrial sites are a recurrent target. Moreover, the would-be HTS-dominated government has done nothing to counter these broadsides when “securing key economic assets will be vital to societal reconstruction, and therefore a matter of priority”:

We can see clearly what kind of country these ‘moderate rebels’ plan to build. Forces like HTS are allied with U.S. imperialism, and their economic approach will reflect this. Prior to the proxy war, the government pursued an economic approach that mixed public ownership and market elements. State intervention enabled a degree of political independence [that] other nations in the region lack. Assad’s administration understood without an industrial base, being sovereign is impossible. The new ‘free market’ approach will see all of that utterly decimated.”

‘Reconstruction Project’

Syria’s economic independence and strength under Assad’s rule and the benefits reaped by average citizens, as a result, were never acknowledged in the mainstream before or during the decade-long proxy war. Yet, countless reports from major international institutions underline this reality – which has now been brutally vanquished, never to return. For example, an April 2015 World Health Organization document noted how Damascus “had one of the best-developed healthcare systems in the Arab world.”

Per a 2018 U.N. investigation, “universal, free healthcare” was extended to all Syrian citizens, who “enjoyed some of the highest levels of care in the region.” Education was likewise free, and before the conflict, “an estimated 97% of primary school-aged Syrian children were attending class, and Syria’s literacy rates were thought to be at over 90% for both men and women [emphasis added].” By 2016, millions were out of school.

A U.N. Human Rights Council report two years later noted pre-war Syria “was the only country in the Middle East region to be self-sufficient in food production,” its “thriving agricultural sector” contributing “about 21%” to GDP 2006 – 2011. Civilians’ daily caloric intake “was on par with many Western countries,” with prices kept affordable via state subsidy. Meanwhile, the country’s economy was “one of the best performing in the region, with a growth rate averaging 4.6%” annually.

At the time that report was written, Damascus had been reduced to heavy reliance on imports by Western sanctions in many sectors and, even then, was barely able to buy or sell much in the way of anything, as the measures amounted to an effective embargo. Simultaneously, the U.S. military occupation of a resource-rich third of Syria cut off the government’s access to its own oil reserves and wheat. The situation would only worsen with the Caesar Syria Civilian Protection Act’s passing in June 2020.

Under its auspices, a vast volume of goods and services in every conceivable field were and today remain banned from being sold to or traded with any Syrian citizen or entity. The legislation’s terms explicitly state preventing attempts to rebuild Syria was its chief objective. One passage openly outlines “a strategy to deter foreign persons from entering into contracts related to reconstruction.”

Immediately after coming into effect, the Syrian pound’s value collapsed further, sending living costs skyrocketing. In a blink, almost the entire country’s population was left barely able to afford even the bare essentials. Even mainstream sources typically approving of belligerence towards Damascus cautioned of an inevitably impending humanitarian crisis. However, Washington was neither concerned nor deterred by such warnings. James Jeffrey, State Department chief of Syria policy, actively cheered these developments.

Simultaneously, as Jeffrey subsequently admitted to PBS, the U.S. was engaged in frequent, secret communication with HTS and actively assisting the group – albeit “indirectly” due to the faction’s designation as a terrorist entity by the State Department. This followed direct approaches to Washington by its leaders, including Abu Mohammed Jolani, former leader of Al Qaeda affiliate al-Nusra. “We want to be your friend. We’re not terrorists. We’re just fighting Assad,” HTS reportedly said.

Given this contact, it may be no coincidence that in July 2022, Jolani issued a series of communications about HTS’ plans for future Syria, containing multiple passages in which finance and industry loomed large. Directly foreshadowing the group’s recent pledge to “adopt a free-market model,” the extremist mass murderer discussed his desire to “open up local markets to the global economy.” Many passages read as if they were authored by representatives of the International Monetary Fund.

Coincidentally, Syria, since 1984, has refused IMF loans, a key tool by which the U.S. Empire maintains the global capitalist system and dominates the Global South, ensuring ‘poor’ countries remain under its heel. The World Trade Organization, of which Damascus isn’t a member either, plays a similar role. Accession to both would go some way to cementing the “free-market model” advocated by HTS. After over a decade of deliberate, systematic economic ruin, geopolitical risk analyst Firas Modad tells MintPress News:

They have no choice. They need Turkish and Qatari backing, so [they] will need to liberalize. They have no capital whatsoever. The country is in ruins and they desperately need investment. Plus, they hope liberalizing may attract some Saudi, Emirati or Egyptian interest. It’s impossible for Syria to rebuild using its own resources. The civil war might resume. They are acting out of necessity.”

‘Shock Therapy’

In Syria’s protracted political and economic dismantling, there are eerie echoes of the U.S. Empire’s destruction of Yugoslavia throughout the 1990s. During that decade, the multiethnic socialist federation’s breakup produced bitter wars of independence in Bosnia, Croatia and Slovenia – encouraged, financed, armed, and prolonged every step by Western powers. Belgrade’s perceived centrality to these brutal conflicts and purported complicity in and sponsorship of horrendous war crimes led the U.N. Security Council to impose sanctions against what remained of the country in May 1992.

The measures were the harshest ever levied in U.N. history. At one point, producing inflation of 5.578 quintillion percent, drug abuse, alcoholism, preventable deaths and suicides skyrocketed, while shortages of goods – including water – were perpetual. Yugoslavia’s once thriving independent industry was crippled, its ability to manufacture even everyday medicines virtually non-existent. By February 1993, the CIA assessed that the average citizen had “become accustomed to periodical shortages, long lines in stores, cold homes in the winter and restrictions on electricity.”

Surveying the wreckage years later, Foreign Affairs noted that sanctions against Yugoslavia demonstrated how “in a matter of months or years whole economies can be devastated,” and such measures can serve as uniquely lethal “weapons of mass destruction” against civilian populations of target countries. Yet, despite such desolation and misery, throughout this period, Belgrade remained resistant to privatization and foreign ownership of its industry or to the pillaging of its vast resources. The overwhelming majority of Yugoslavia’s economy was state- or worker-owned.

Yugoslavia was not a member of the IMF, World Bank, or WTO, which went some way to insulate the country from economic predation. In 1998, though, authorities began waging a heavy-handed counterinsurgency against the Kosovo Liberation Army, a CIA and MI6-funded and armed al-Qaeda-linked extremist militia. This provided the U.S. Empire with a pretext to, at last, finish the job of neutralizing what remained of the country’s socialist system. As a Clinton administration official later admitted:

It was Yugoslavia’s resistance to the broader trends of political and economic reform [in Eastern Europe] – not the plight of Kosovar Albanians – that best explains NATO’s war.”

From March – June 1999, the military alliance bombed Yugoslavia for 78 straight days. Yet, Belgrade’s army was barely in the firing line at any stage. In all, officially, just 14 Yugoslav tanks were destroyed by NATO, but 372 separate industrial facilities got smashed to smithereens, leaving hundreds of thousands jobless. Markedly, the alliance took guidance from U.S. corporations on which sites to target, and not a single foreign- or privately-owned factory was hit.

NATO’s bombing laid the foundations for Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevic’s removal via a C.I.A.- and National Endowment for Democracy-sponsored color revolution in October of the following year. In his place, a doggedly pro-Western government advised by a collective of U.S.-sponsored economists took power. Their explicit mission was to “make an economic environment favorable for private and other investments” in Belgrade. Ravaging “shock therapy” measures were deployed the moment they assumed office, to the further detriment of an already immiserated and impoverished population.

In the decades since successive Western-backed governments across the former Yugoslavia have enforced an endless array of neoliberal “reforms” to ensure an “investor-friendly” environment locally for wealthy Western oligarchs and corporations. In lockstep, low wages and a lack of employment opportunities stubbornly endure or worsen while living costs rise, producing mass depopulation, among other destructive effects. All along, U.S. officials intimately implicated in the country’s breakup have brazenly sought to enrich themselves from the privatization of former state industries.

‘Internal Repression’

Does such a fate await Damascus? For Pawel Wargan, founder of the Green New Deal for Europe, the answer is a resounding “yes.” He believes the country’s story is familiar “to those who study the mechanisms of imperialist expansion.” Once its defenses are fully neutralized, he foresees the country’s industries being “bought-up at bargain sale prices as part of market ‘reforms,’ which transfer yet another chunk of humanity’s wealth to Western corporations”:

We’ve witnessed the well-rehearsed choreography of imperialist regime change: a ‘tyrant’ is overthrown; backers of national sovereignty are systematically and viciously repressed; with tremendous, but hidden, violence, the country’s assets are chopped and diced and sold to the lowest bidder; labor protections are discarded; human lives are cut short. The most predatory forms of capitalism take root in every crevice and pore that emerges in the collapse of the state. This is the agenda of structural adjustment policies enforced by the World Bank and IMF.”

Alexander McKay echoes Wargan’s analysis. Now “free,” Syria will be forcedly made “dependent upon imports from the West” evermore. This not only fattens the Empire’s bottom line but “also severely restricts the freedom of any Syrian government to act with any degree of independence.” He notes similar efforts have been undertaken throughout the post-1989 era of U.S. unipolarity. It was well underway in Russia during the 1990s “until the slow turn around in policy started in the early 2000s under Putin”:

The aim is to reduce Syria to the same status as Lebanon, with an economy controlled by imperial forces, an army used primarily for internal repression, and an economy no longer able to produce anything but merely serve as a market for commodities produced elsewhere, and site of resource extraction. The U.S. and its allies do not want independent development of any nation’s economy. We must hope the Syrian people can resist this latest act of neo-colonialism.”

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2024/12/ ... ter-assad/

Compatible Left Joins Imperialism in Celebrating Defeat of Syria
Posted by Internationalist 360° on December 18, 2024
Stansfield Smith

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Islamists take over Syria as Western media launders the barbaric reputation of HTS.

It may be no surprise that the “mainstream” corporate news media have turned into advertising agencies for US government policy. But it still surprises that what the CIA called a compatible left – those on the left it deemed compatible with maintaining imperialist rule – celebrates another US successful “regime change,” this time, Syria.

Portside ran an article, Liberation in Syria Is a Victory Worth Embracing, which criticized “some self-styled Western ‘anti-imperialists’” for their lack of enthusiasm for the “victory.” While it does note Israel bombed Syria 220 times up to mid-November this past year, one finds no mention of the long US blockade imposed on Syrians.

Counterpunch has been a compatible left website outspoken in its hostility towards those exposing US coup operations in Syria, calling them “campists” and “tankies.”

On December 10, Counterpunch (CP) highlighted Understanding the Rebellion in Syria which made the outlandish claim “Some on the Left have claimed without foundation that their rebellion was orchestrated by the U.S. and Israel…. Neither the U.S. nor Israel had a hand in these events. In fact, the opposite is the case.” It writes off as “campists” and “tankies” those of us who recognize the obvious, “that this military offensive is led by ‘Al-Qaeda and other terrorists’ and that it is a western-imperialist plot against the Syrian regime intended to weaken the so-called “Axis of Resistance” led by Iran and Hezbollah.…the campists claim that the fall of Assad weakens it and therefore undermines the struggle for the liberation of Palestine.”

December 11, Counterpunch turned to self-described Zionist academic Stephen Zunes for an “exclusive interview” presenting him as a “foreign policy expert” for the left. Zunes, back in 2011, praised the US-NATO destruction of Qaddafi’s Libya in Truthout.

CP has long supported the fake “Syrian revolution.” They refuse to publish anti-imperialist writers such as Ben Norton, who reported, “A bombshell declassified 2012 memo from the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) reveals that, from the start, ‘The Salafist, the Muslim Brotherhood, and AQI are the major forces driving the insurgency in Syria’. AQI is a reference to Al-Qaeda in Iraq, which later evolved into ISIS.” Even the New York Times disclosed seven years ago that the CIA already spent more than $1 billion to overthrow Assad, “one of the costliest covert action programs in the history of the C.I.A.”

Why do these “left” websites like Counterpunch cover up major CIA regime change operations?

Truthout on December 11 it ran its own pro-US regime change article, As Assad Regime Falls, Syrians Celebrate — and Brace for an Uncertain Future. It repeats the same apologetics for US imperial rule: “Contrary to common misconceptions, the U.S. and Israel did not aspire to remove Assad after 2013.”

John Feffer of the Institute for Policy Studies published a more sensible article, but one that still covered up the US economic blockade’s destruction of Syria as well as its long regime change operation. Feffer also repeats the US line that the Syrian government used chemical weapons attacks, even though Seymour Hersch and The Grayzone showed the US concocted this story.

None of the compatible left websites mentioned the words of Biden and Netanyahu, who with legitimate reason took credit for the fall of Assad. Netanyahu recognized the Assad government as “a central link in Iran’s axis of evil.” The Axis of Resistance to the Israeli-US anti-Palestinian genocidal bloc includes Hamas, Iran, Hezbollah, Assad’s Syria, and Yemen. The Israeli butcher proudly acknowledged the overthrow “is a direct result of the blows we have inflicted on Iran and Hezbollah, the main supporters of the Assad regime.” Biden likewise: “Neither Russia nor Iran nor Hezbollah could defend this abhorrent regime in Syria. This is a direct result of the blows that Ukraine and Israel have delivered upon their own self-defense with unflagging support of the United States.” Indeed, Israel inflicted heavy damage on Hezbollah in Lebanon, and Russia remains tied up combating the US-instigated war in Ukraine.

Some of the compatible left – LA Progressive and Common Dreams, both orbiting the Democratic Party – ran honest articles on the US role. On December 11-12, Common Dreams posted The West Celebrates Assad’s Fall, But What Comes Next May Be Even Worse, and Jeffrey Sachs’ excellent How the US and Israel Destroyed Syria and Called it Peace.

The first noted the so-called “liberation” was “cheered by U.S. President Joe Biden and other major Western leaders, like French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz..” It asks the obvious question, “why is the West cheering for al Qaeda and its allies?” Indeed, and why are these compatible lefts following suit?

It continues:

“Since the fall of Assad, Israel has already carried out hundreds of airstrikes across Syria, targeting airports, naval bases, and military infrastructure. And the U.S. Central Command announced that it has struck more than 75 targets, including ISIS leaders, operatives, and camps….

The Obama administration provided support to the anti-Assad forces, primarily to the Free Syrian Army forces and its affiliates, but the CIA began to support other groups as early as 2013 even though they had jihadi orientations. CIA’s covert operation against the Syrian regime, known as Timber Sycamore, was a joint effort with Saudi Arabia that had long ties with radical Islamist groups….

Syria was under imperialist attack for the past 13 years. The U.S. (along with Turkey) backed and funded mercenaries and terrorist forces against Assad’s regime, imposed economic isolation of the country through sanctions, and denied plans that would have contributed to reconstruction even though aid was desperately needed for civilians.”


Jeffrey Sacks (also here and here) pointed out that US destruction of Syria was planned since 1996. General Wesley Clark revealed in an interview clip, probably seen by leftists of all stripes, that back in 2001, after Afghanistan, the US intended to wage war and overthrow seven more states in the Middle East: Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Iran. The one now not destroyed is Iran.

The Long US War against Syria

Relying on deadly sanctions, an invisible form of carpet bombing, the US starved the Syrian people and hollowed out the Syrian economy until it collapsed.

Before 2011, Syria, just like Qaddafi’s Libya, was a thriving nation, self-sufficient in energy and food, with free health care, free education and no national debt. Then the US and its NATO and Gulf allies orchestrated a dirty war, funding and arming sectarian terrorists to fragment Syria. These groups were deceitfully presented by many on the compatible left as part of a liberation movement.

Even David Sorenson at the US Air War College recognized, “By 2015, aid to anti-Assad forces became the most expensive US covert action program in history, topping 1 billion USD.” Since 2014, US and Turkish military and proxy forces have occupied about one-third of Syria and appropriate all its oil, gas, and wheat harvest.

Alena Douhan, UN rapporteur on the effect of the US economic blockade against Syria, reported, “The imposed sanctions have shattered the State’s capability to respond to the needs of the population, particularly the most vulnerable, and 90% of the people now live below the poverty line.” They have “limited access to food, water, electricity, shelter, cooking and heating fuel, transportation and healthcare.” The World Food Program states almost 13 million Syrians, half the population, lack sufficient food.

How many died from these measures we do not know, but the similar draconian US blockade on Venezuela killed 40,000 in a year and a half.

Douhan continues, “With more than half of the vital infrastructure either completely destroyed or severely damaged, the imposition of unilateral sanctions on key economic sectors, including oil, gas, electricity, trade, construction and engineering have quashed national income, and undermine efforts towards economic recovery and reconstruction.”

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ISIS fighter beheading boy, 16, in Syria (photo credit: ARAB MEDIA)ISIS (HTS) behead a Syrian boy. Now the compatible left praise them as heroes.

We should wonder who Counterpunch is serving when it publishes, “Neither the U.S. nor Israel had a hand in these events.”

The “campists” or “tankies” Counterpunch refers to run the gamut from Scott Ritter, Ron Paul, Vijay Prashad, Ben Norton, Glenn Greenwald, Colonel Macgregor, Aaron Mate, JD Vance to Sara Flounders. They share opposition to the endless neocon wars advocated by Obama, Hillary, Biden and Cheney. We find, once again, sectors of the compatible left functioning as a conveyor belt for US regime change propaganda broadcast into the progressive and anti-war movement, telling us to celebrate another successful US imperial operation.

Meanwhile, the struggle of the Middle East to free itself from US-Israeli domination has suffered a major defeat, on top of that inflicted on Hezbollah and Gaza. The Palestinians’ situation has worsened, Iran is next on the US hit list, and Venezuela, Cuba, and Nicaragua are not far behind. Our active solidarity is needed

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https://libya360.wordpress.com/2024/12/ ... -of-syria/
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Re: Syria

Post by blindpig » Fri Dec 20, 2024 12:24 pm

The Armed Syrian Kurds Will Be Destroyed If The US Doesn’t Step In To Save Them

Andrew Korybko
Dec 19, 2024

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It remains to be seen whether America will once again come to their rescue or finally abandon them.

The Wall Street Journal cited unnamed senior US officials to report earlier this week that Turkiye is preparing for another conventional military intervention in Syria against the armed Kurds there. This was followed by the State Department revealing that the ceasefire between Turkiye and the US-backed but Kurdish-led “Syrian Democratic Forces” (SDF) had been extended till the end of the week. For background, the US has bases in SDF-held northeastern Syria, which is agriculturally and energy-rich.

On that same day, the SDF’s Kurdish leader Mazloum Abdi proposed a US-supervised demilitarized zone (DMZ) in Ayn al-Arab/Kobani, which coincided with the terrorist-designated Hayat Tahrir al-Sham’s (HTS) military chief proclaiming that they reject federalism and won’t grant such to the Kurds. The first statement is meant to have the US once again save the Syrian Kurds’ autonomous project while the second clearly signals that it won’t be tolerated in the so-called “New Syria”.

HTS’ Turkish patron considers the armed Syrian Kurds to be terrorists and the US’ backing of them is most responsible for troubled Turkish-US ties over the past decade. HTS’ rejection of federalism coupled with credible reports about a Turkish military buildup along the Syrian border suggest that those two are preparing to destroy the SDF. The US can therefore either finally let this happen or risk a brinksmanship crisis with Turkiye out of desperation to stop it.

Regarding the first scenario, the whole point in backing the armed Syrian Kurds was to deprive the Assad Government of the resources required to rebuild the country while also slyly cultivating a security threat for keeping Turkiye’s multipolar foreign policy in check, both on a specious anti-ISIS pretext. The former imperative is now irrelevant while the latter remains pertinent, but the political and military costs that clinging to this policy could entail might be considered unacceptable for policymakers, especially Trump.

Sparking a serious intra-NATO crisis over Turkish-designated terrorists just a month before Biden leaves office and while Ukraine is on the backfoot would be disadvantageous for the US. The outgoing administration might thus decide to abandon their armed Syrian Kurdish allies entirely or signal that this is the beginning of the end for them but drawing out the process till after Trump enters office. This could take the form of agreeing to supervise the proposed DMZ while the Kurds disarm and demobilize.

Elite members of the SDF could also be allowed safe exit from Syria, whether to the neighboring Kurdish Regional Government in Iraq or possibly even to the US or some European countries on the basis that they fear retaliation once the Turkish-backed HTS establishes its writ over the region under their control. This sequence of events would be the best for the US’ overall interests, both strategic and reputational, though it remains to be seen whether policymakers agree.

As for the second scenario of risking a brinksmanship crisis with Turkiye out of desperation to stop the SDF’s impending destruction, the outgoing administration might not want its last weeks to be defined by a disastrous withdrawal from Syria that reminds everyone of their earlier one from Afghanistan. To that end, they might defiantly hold their ground by confronting Turkish troops at the expense of the US’ abovementioned strategic and reputational interests.

In that case, it would be Turkiye’s prerogative to escalate, not the US’. One course of action could be relying on HTS as their proxies to provoke the US into militarily retaliating against the same so-called “heroes” that America and its media have just cheered for “saving Syria”. That would creatively throw the US into a soft power dilemma that would discredit it no matter what response follows. All told, it would be best for the US to cut its losses in a “face-saving” way, but it doesn’t always behave rationally.

https://korybko.substack.com/p/the-arme ... -destroyed

Hanging the Kurds out to dry is an old US tradition. You'd think the Kurds would have heard about the old woman and the snake...

*******

US officials say 'massive ISIS jailbreak' possible if Turkish-backed offensive continues in north Syria

Extremist groups that seized power in Damascus with the backing of Ankara and Washington have been clashing with Kurdish militias who control dozens of prisons holding thousands of ISIS fighters

News Desk

DEC 19, 2024

Image
(Photo Credit: Fadel Senna/AFP via Getty Images)

US counterterrorism officials are warning that Turkiye's continued support for the Syrian National Army's (SNA) offensive against Washington's Kurdish proxies in northern Syria threatens to provoke a “massive jailbreak” of thousands of ISIS fighters.

“I usually hate this cliche, but this is the closest thing we have to a ticking time bomb,” an unnamed US official told Politico. “If [Turkiye] doesn’t get these attacks on the [Syrian Democratic Forces] halted, we could have a massive jailbreak on our hands.”

The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) have helped Washington retain control of Syria's oil and wheat-rich regions in the northeast since 2015 after wrestling control away from ISIS. The Kurdish militia also controls dozens of makeshift prison camps that hold tens of thousands of ISIS members and their families.

“This is essentially a terrorist army in detention,” Joseph Votel, a retired US general who led Central Command (CENTCOM) from 2016 to 2019, told the DC-based outlet. “I am very concerned,” he added.

The SNA – a Turkish proxy militia comprised of former fighters from the Free Syrian Army (FSA), Al-Qaeda, and ISIS – has been launching heavy attacks against SDF positions in northern Syria over the past two weeks following the collapse of the Syrian government.

Approximately 10,000 battle-hardened ISIS fighters are detained by the SDF in northeastern Syria, with around 5,000 being Syrians, 3,000 Iraqis, and about 2,000 hail from Europe, Central Asia, and North America. Additionally, there are about 56,000 displaced persons, including the family members of ISIS fighters, held in camps like Al-Hawl and Al-Roj.

“If we want to make sure that those camps are properly guarded, we, the United States, need to provide the Syrian Kurds with assurances that we will prevent Turkiye from attacking them,” US Senator Chris Van Hollen, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said in a recent interview. “When Turkiye supports the Syrian National Army’s attacks against the Kurds, the big winner is ISIS.”

In 2010, one year before the start of the US-backed war in Syria, the predecessor of ISIS – the Islamic State of Iraq – had been defeated. But US planners eventually released leaders of the group from Bucca Prison in Iraq, reviving the organization and allowing it to launch an insurgency against the neighboring government of Bashar al-Assad.

US support for ISIS continued as it captured large swathes of Syria and Iraq in 2014, including as the organization conquered the cities of Raqqa and Mosul. The US then used the threat of ISIS to justify returning US troops to Iraq with the permission of the Iraqi government.

Kurdish groups in the Iraqi Kurdistan Region (IKR) also served to help arm ISIS with US and Saudi-supplied weapons a decade ago.

In mid-July, authorities from the SDF-controlled Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES) issued a general amnesty that secured the release of over 1,500 Syrian ISIS fighters convicted of terrorism-related offenses, provided they “did not participate directly in combat” against the SDF.

https://thecradle.co/articles/us-offici ... orth-syria

Hundreds of Syrian troops return from Iraq as HTS extremists open 'reconciliation centres'

Baghdad says it received 'written assurances' about the safety of the repatriated military personnel by HTS-led authorities in Damascus

News Desk

DEC 19, 2024

Image
(Photo Credit: Antonio Pedro Santos/EPA)

The Iraqi government announced on 19 December that it safely repatriated 1,905 Syrian military officers and personnel who had sought refuge in the country earlier this month when Turkish-backed extremists led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) staged an armed coup in Damascus.

"Based on humanitarian considerations and after obtaining official approvals, our armed forces stationed at the Syrian crossing facilitated their entry," the Iraqi Joint Operations Command (JOC) said in a statement.


Baghdad says the handover process started on Wednesday in coordination with the de facto authorities in Syria and aligned with an “amnesty” issued by HTS for Syrians who served in the army or joined Iran-backed resistance factions.

Iraqi officials also called on HTS and its allies to “uphold human rights standards, safeguard the returned personnel, and protect their families.” Furthermore, the JOC said the weapons belonging to Syrian personnel remain in the Iraqi Ministry of Defense’s custody and will be returned to the new Syrian government “once it is established.”

The HTS amnesty comes hand-in-hand with a large number of "reconciliation centers" the former Al-Qaeda offshoot has opened in the country.

“After handing in all their documents, weapons, and equipment, they will receive three-month ID cards, which exempt them from legal prosecution,” Al-Araby Al-Jadeed reported on Thursday.

According to the Qatari-funded outlet, the HTS-led Military Operations Command initially established these centers in Aleppo. Subsequently, additional centers have been launched in Latakia, Tartous, Homs, Hama, Deir Ezzor, and Idlib governorates.

The overthrown government of Bashar al-Assad implemented similar measures with Russian support in regions it regained control of. However, the efforts were often short-lived due to recurrent targeted assassinations of government officials by local armed groups.

On 7 December, dozens of extremist armed groups led by HTS chief Ahmad al-Sharaa (formerly known as Mohammad al-Julani) stormed the Syrian capital and took control of the state, ending the long-term rule of Bashar al-Assad.

The US, along with its Gulf and European allies, have welcomed the rise of Sharaa, who is the co-founder of Al-Qaeda in Syria and former deputy commander to ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. Moreover, Washington this week confirmed the HTS leader and de-facto ruler of Syria still has a $10 million bounty on his head.

https://thecradle.co/articles/hundreds- ... on-centres

******

Syria After the Fall: Black Flags, Power Plays, & Lies Behind The Coup - Vanessa Beeley
Conversation with Moscow based journalist Fiorella Isabel

https://substack.com/app-link/post?publ ... now_button

vanessa beeley
Dec 19, 2024
As I slowly piece together all the pieces of the jigsaw, I think this is an important conversation where we discuss the on the ground insights that I gained during the ten days of confusion in Syria.

Fiorella once again sits down with independent journalist Vanessa Beeley who left Damascus where she resided for years, as Syria shockingly fell into the hands of Al Qaeda and HTS.

As the puppet masters in Israel and NATO make their appearances via bombs, take overs and good ol’ western “democracy,” the terrorist factions are forever changing the face of the secular country that withstood sanctions and vilification for nearly 14 years. Israel’s bombed Syria over 500 times, seized much of the territory in the Golan and has permanent plans to stay.

As expected many are fleeing but the main narrative is to blame Assad and Syrias, distracting from the very western culprits. Beeley touches on these topics and recounts those moments of demise, what we know now about how this happened, and who has been behind it all, including former allies. Tune in for an in-depth discussion on points few are talking about with someone who has been on the ground, through it all.

https://app.fastmail.com/mail/Inbox/T21 ... u=1e19408c

Syria under HTS rule and the EU hypocrisy condemns Syrians to persecution
My reports yesterday for UK Column News

https://substack.com/app-link/post?publ ... ch_now_gif

vanessa beeley
Dec 19, 2024
You can watch the full news program at the UK Column website .

For all those who are following the story - my dogs are finally safe and out of the house with friends in Syria and one has travelled today to Lebanon. Thank you to everyone for your incredibly kind messages and thoughts - it got me through some dark hours. Now, time to return to the field and to work.

https://beeley.substack.com/p/syria-und ... dium=email
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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blindpig
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Re: Syria

Post by blindpig » Sat Dec 21, 2024 12:21 pm

How to Understand the Change of Government in Syria: The Fifty-First Newsletter (2024)

The fall of Damascus and rise of HTS signal a dangerous shift in Syria, deepening regional instability, and isolation for Palestine. From Israel to Africa’s Sahel region, what comes next?

19 December 2024

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Houmam al-Sayed (Syria), Namle, 2012.

Dear friends,

Greetings from the desk of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research.

One of the most stunning events of the past few months has been the fall of Damascus. This fall had initially been expected over a decade ago, when rebel armies funded by Qatar, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and the United States crowded around the edges of Syria and threatened then President Bashar al-Assad’s government. These armies, backed by rich and powerful countries, were comprised of a range of actors, including:

swaths of people who were angered by the economic distress caused by the opening up of the economy and the subsequent devastation of small manufacturing businesses, which were suffering in the face of the emerging might of Turkish manufacturing;

the peasantry in the north, frustrated by the government’s lack of a proper response to the long drought that forced them into the northern cities of Aleppo and Idlib;

sectors of the secular petty bourgeoisie discontent with the failure of the Damascus Spring of 2000–01, which had initially promised political reforms stemming from the muntadayāt (forum discussions) held across the country;

a deeply aggrieved Syrian Muslim Brotherhood, formed out of the pious petty bourgeoisie, which had been crushed in 1982 and re-emerged after being inspired by the role the Brotherhood played in the 2010–11 protests in Tunisia and Egypt;

eager Islamist forces that had been trained by al-Qaeda in Iraq and wanted to fly the black flag of jihadism from the highest parapets in Damascus.

Despite the failure of these factions of the Syrian opposition in 2011, it was many of these same forces that succeeded in overthrowing Assad’s government on 7 December 2024.

Just over a decade ago, Assad’s government remained in power largely because of support from Iran and Russia, but also because of the involvement – to a lesser extent – of neighbouring Iraq and Hezbollah (Lebanon). Assad did not have the stomach for the contest. He became president in 2000 after the death of his father, Hafez al-Assad, who took office through a military coup in 1971. Bashar al-Assad had a privileged upbringing and studied to be an ophthalmologist in the United Kingdom. When the rebel armies neared Damascus in December of this year, Assad fled to Moscow with his family, claiming that he wanted to retire from politics and resume his career as an ophthalmologist. He did not make a statement to his people telling them to be brave or that his forces would fight another day. There were no comforting words. He left quietly in the same way he appeared, his country abandoned. A few days later, on Telegram, al-Assad released a text but was timid.

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Hakim al-Akel (Yemen), The Symbolic History of Arab Joy (Arabia Felix), 1994.

After being defeated by Syrian, Iranian, and Russian forces in 2014, the Syrian rebels regrouped in the city of Idlib, not far from Turkey’s border with Syria. That is where the main opposition force broke with al-Qaeda in 2016, took over the local councils, and shaped itself as the only leader of the anti-Assad campaign. This group, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (Organisation for the Liberation of the Levant, or HTS), is now in charge in Damascus.

Originating directly from al-Qaeda in Iraq, HTS has not been able to shed those roots and remains a deeply sectarian body with ambitions to eventually turn Syria into a caliphate. Since his time in Iraq and northern Syria, HTS leader Abu Mohammed al-Jolani developed a reputation of great brutality toward the large number of minority groups in Syria (specifically Alawites, Armenians, Kurds, Shi’ites), who he regarded as apostates. Al-Jolani is well-aware of his reputation, but he has remarkably altered the way he presents himself. He has shed the trappings of his al-Qaeda days; he trimmed his beard, dresses in a nondescript khaki uniform, and learned to talk to the media in measured tones. In an exclusive interview with CNN released just as his forces took Damascus, al-Jolani recalled past murderous acts committed in his name merely as youthful indiscretions. It was as if he had been trained by a public relations company. No longer the al-Qaeda madman, al-Jolani is now being presented as a Syrian democrat.

On 12 December, I spoke to two friends from minority communities in different parts of Syria. Both said that they fear for their lives. They understand that though there will be a period of jubilation and calm, they will eventually face severe attacks and have already begun hearing reports of small-scale attacks against Alawites and Shia families in their network. Another friend reminded me that there was calm in Iraq after the fall of Saddam Hussein’s government in 2003; several weeks later, the insurgency began. Could such an insurgency of former government forces take place in Syria after they have recomposed from their state’s hasty fall? It is impossible to know what the social fabric of the new Syria will be like given the character of the people who have taken power. This will be especially true if even a fraction of those seven million Syrians who were displaced during the war return home and seek revenge for what they will surely see as the mistreatment that forced them overseas. No war of this kind ends with peace. There are many scores yet to settle.

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Safwan Dahoul (Syria), Dream 92, 2014.

Without detracting attention from the Syrian people and their well-being, we must also understand what this change of government means for the region and the world. Let us take the implications sequentially, starting with Israel and ending with the Sahel region in Africa.

Israel. Taking advantage of the decade-long civil war in Syria, Israel has bombed Syrian military bases on a regular basis to degrade both the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) and its allies (notably, Iran and Hezbollah). Over the past year, during its escalation of the genocide against Palestinians, Israel has also increased its bombing of any military facility it believes is being used to resupply Iran and Hezbollah. Israel then invaded Lebanon to weaken Hezbollah, which it achieved by assassinating Hezbollah’s long-time leader, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, and by invading southern Lebanon, where Hezbollah was rooted. As if coordinated, Israel provided air support to HTS as it moved out of Idlib, bombing Syrian military facilities and army posts to demoralise the SAA. When HTS took Damascus, Israel strengthened its Division 210 in the Occupied Golan Heights (seized in 1973) and then invaded the United Nations buffer zone (set up in 1974). Israeli tanks proceeded outside the buffer zone and came very close to Damascus. HTS did not contest this occupation of Syria at any point.

Turkey. The Turkish government provided military and political support to the 2011 rebellion from its inception and hosted the exiled Syrian Muslim Brotherhood government in Istanbul. In 2020, when the SAA moved against the rebels in Idlib, Turkey invaded Syria to force an agreement that the city would not be harmed. Turkey also enabled the military training of most of the fighters who proceeded down highway M5 to Damascus and provided military equipment to the armies to battle the Kurds in the north and the SAA in the south. It was through Turkey that various Central Asian Islamists joined the HTS fight, including Uyghurs from China. When Turkey invaded Syria twice over the past decade, it held Syrian territory that it claimed was its historical land. This territory will not return to Syria under the HTS government.

Image
Fateh al-Moudarres (Syria), Child of Palestine, 1981.

Lebanon and Iraq. After the fall of Saddam Hussein’s government in 2003, Iran built a land bridge to supply its allies in both Lebanon (Hezbollah) and Syria. With the change of government in Syria, resupplying Hezbollah will become difficult. Both Lebanon and Iraq will now border a country ruled by a former al-Qaeda affiliate. While it is not immediately clear what this means for the region, it is likely that there will be an emboldened al-Qaeda presence that wants to undermine the role of the Shia in these countries.

Palestine. The implications for the genocide in Palestine and for the struggle for Palestinian liberation are extraordinary. Given Israel’s role in undermining Assad’s military on behalf of HTS, it is unlikely that al-Jolani will contest Israel’s occupation of Palestine or allow Iran to resupply Hezbollah or Hamas. Despite his name, which comes from the Golan, it is inconceivable that al-Jolani will fight to regain the Golan Heights for Syria. Israel’s ‘buffers’ in Lebanon and Syria add to the regional complacency with its actions achieved by events such as its peace treaties with Egypt (1979) and Jordan (1994). No neighbour of Israel will pose a threat to it at this time. The Palestinian struggle is already experiencing great isolation from these developments. Resistance will continue, but there will be no neighbour to provide access to the means for resistance.

The Sahel. Since the United States and Israel are basically one country when it comes to geopolitics, Israel’s victory is a victory for the United States. The change of government in Syria has not only weakened Iran in the short term but has also weakened Russia (a long-term strategic goal of the United States), which previously used Syrian airports to refuel its supply planes en route to various African countries. It is no longer possible for Russia to use these bases, and it remains unclear where Russian military aircraft will be able to refuel for journeys into the region, notably to countries in the Sahel. This will provide the United States with an opportunity to push the countries that border the Sahel, such as Nigeria and Benin, to launch operations against the governments of Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger. This will require a close watch.

Image
Djamila Bent Mohamed (Algeria), Palestine, 1974.

In July 1958, several poets organised a festival in Akka (occupied Palestine ’48). One of the participating poets, David Semah, wrote ‘Akhi Tawfiq’ (My Brother Tawfiq), dedicated to the Palestinian communist poet Tawfiq Zayyad who was in an Israeli prison at the time of the festival. Semah’s poem grounds us in the sensibility that is so sorely needed in our times:

If they sow skulls in its dirt
Our harvest will be hope and light.


Warmly,

Vijay

https://thetricontinental.org/newslette ... -in-syria/

******

Kurdish Self-Defense Forces in Syria Refuse to Disband

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Kurdish self-defense forces in Syria. X/ @ArturRehi

December 20, 2024 Hour: 10:23 am

‘Considering the behavior of the various parties toward us, it is impossible to dissolve our military forces,’ SDF spokesman said.
The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), under the Kurdish-led administration that governs northeastern Syria in practice, reject dissolving after the collapse of Bashar al-Assad’s administration, as demanded by Türkiye and the Islamist provisional government installed in Damascus.

From the city of Hasaka, SDF spokesperson Siamand Ali criticized the “stubbornness” of Turkish-backed factions in continuing the war and the provisional government’s lack of openness toward other components of the Syrian population. He also called for a total ceasefire across Syrian territory as a condition for participating in the new government.

No Dissolution of the SDF
“Under the current circumstances in Syria and considering the behavior of the various parties toward us, it is impossible to dissolve our military forces,” said Ali, who is also a spokesperson for the Kurdish People’s Defense Units (YPG), which Türkiye considers a terrorist organization.

He emphasized the need to maintain the autonomous administration in northeastern Syria and the forces protecting Kurdish areas, “without separatist intentions,” as a model for all of Syria. Due to the threat posed by Turkish-backed rebel forces in northern Syria, the SDF has evacuated all official headquarters, and its military presence in public spaces is nonexistent.

At the location where Ali gave an interview to the EFE news agency, there were no signs of military activity—only the banners of the armed group and photos of its fighters who died in battles against the Islamic State (ISIS) and Turkish-backed factions.

Ali noted that the SDF is not the only armed group retaining its weapons, pointing out that other armed factions remain active in Daraa and Sweida in southern Syria, as well as Turkish-backed factions in the north, which he described as “an obstacle to political transition because they take orders from abroad.”

The SDF was formed in 2015 by unifying self-defense forces from Kurdish, Syriac, and Arab communities in northern Syria to protect the region from ISIS attacks and establish security.

Thousands rallied in Qamishli, Syria, to support the US-backed, Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). The SDF has faced weeks of attacks by the Turkish-backed SNA as the Turkish military prepares for yet another incursion into Kurdish-held Syrian territory. pic.twitter.com/W83GEuRePF

— red. (@redstreamnet) December 20, 2024


Clashes with Turkish-Backed Forces
Despite the absence of military forces in public spaces, all main roads and streets in the cities are filled with checkpoints run by the Internal Security Forces, the Kurdish police, who are equipped only with light weapons.

Since early December, Turkish-backed factions grouped under the Syrian National Army (SNA) have launched continuous attacks on the SDF northeast of Aleppo, in the far western part of the Kurdish-controlled area. This has led the militias to take Manbij, a city located about 70 kilometers northeast of Aleppo.

Ali explained that SDF forces withdrew from the area as a gesture of goodwill to stop the fighting, but Turkish-backed factions continued hostilities near the Tishrin Dam and the strategic Qara Kozak Bridge, the only crossing between the two banks of the Euphrates River in this region.

He mentioned that the SDF entered negotiations with these forces, mediated by the U.S. and France, to stop the fighting. However, the Turkish government made “impossible demands,” including the dissolution of the SDF.

“Under the current circumstances in Syria and with Turkish air support for the factions fighting us, dissolving our forces would expose our people to genocide,” Ali stressed.

#Syria 🇸🇾: Syrian Democratic Forces (#SDF) released a new video from the vicinity of Tishrin Dam in #Aleppo.

Members of the group are armed with #USA-origin 🇺🇸 M4(A1) carbine with EOTech pattern optical sight and AKM assault rifles. pic.twitter.com/rTLy3EPfc5

— Joseph Graniczny (@GranicznyJoseph) December 20, 2024


Turkish Demands
Türkiye is also demanding the relocation of the tomb of Ottoman Sultan Suleiman Shah (1178–1236) in the town of Qara Kozak. His remains were transferred to Türkiye in 2015 due to fears that ISIS fighters in the area would destroy the tomb.

The SDF agreed to return the remains to northern Syria but rejected Türkiye’s demand to introduce its forces into Syrian territory to provide permanent protection for the tomb. “The Turkish state is attempting to use the return of the remains to establish a military base,” Ali said.

Regarding the political transition process led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) following the overthrow of President Bashar al-Assad, the Kurdish commander stated that there are no direct negotiations with this Islamist group, which he said “made a mistake by assuming power unilaterally.”

“There are no official contacts with the Damascus government so far; we only receive messages through intermediaries, and we respond positively to them,” he added.

The provisional government established by HTS has called for the dissolution of all armed groups in the country and the integration of their members into a unified national army.

https://www.telesurenglish.net/kurdish- ... o-disband/

******

Pentagon confirms 'around 2,000' US troops deployed in Syria

Washington quietly doubled the official number of troops present inside Syria at an unspecified point before the fall of Damascus

News Desk

DEC 20, 2024

Image
(Photo Credit: AFP)

Pentagon Press Secretary General Pat Ryder revealed on 19 December that the US has “around 2,000” troops deployed inside Syria, more than double the figure Washington has previously claimed to have inside the war-torn country.

“As you know, we have been briefing you regularly that there are approximately 900 US troops deployed to Syria. In light of the situation in Syria and the significant interests, we recently learned that those numbers were higher,” Ryder told reporters on Thursday, adding that he “learned today there are approximately 2,000 US troops in Syria.”

Ryder goes on to reveal that the unannounced increase started before the fall of the Syrian government – without specifying a time frame – and that the deployment includes temporary forces for “shifting mission requirements."

The US illegally deployed troops in Syria in November 2015 to allegedly “prevent the return of ISIS.” This came just two months after Russia accepted the request of Damascus to provide air support to the Syrian army, Iranian special forces, and Hezbollah in their fight against ISIS forces who threatened to overrun the Syrian capital.

In the chaos that ensued, Washington and allied Kurdish militias seized control of Syria's resource-rich northeast, where the US army remains to this day and regularly loots Syrian resources. Hundreds of US troops are also present in the massive Al-Tanf base near the tri-border area connecting Syria, Iraq, and Jordan.

“Whether Washington chooses to admit it or not, the US now has direct influence over the vast majority of Syria’s most productive oil fields,” Syria analyst Jennifer Cafarella of the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) wrote in 2017. She also explained that the territorial gains of the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) “are Syrian national treasures that, when added up, amount to brute geopolitical power for the US.”

In 2019, US President-elect Donald Trump detailed why Washington intends to uphold the occupation of northeast Syria, saying, “We want to bring our soldiers home. But we did leave soldiers because we’re keeping the oil .… I like oil. We’re keeping the oil.”

For the past several years, the US claimed to have only “900 troops” inside Syria. However, local sources and observers have said the actual number was likely closer to 2,000 troops, which are rotated in and out from US bases in Iraq.

Since the start of the US–Israeli genocide of Palestinians in Gaza, the Pentagon has repeatedly reinforced its bases in Syria to confront attacks by Iraqi resistance factions.

https://thecradle.co/articles/pentagon- ... d-in-syria

Ankara will have a hand in drafting Syria's new constitution: Erdogan

Turkiye has expanded its attacks against US-backed Kurds in Syria and has deployed its proxies against them

News Desk

DEC 20, 2024

Image
(Photo credit: AP/Francisco Seco)

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced on 20 December that Ankara has begun contacts with Syria's new leadership to discuss drafting a new constitution for the country, after the fall of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad’s government earlier this month.

“Our brothers and sisters in Syria will make their own decisions about their future,” the Turkish president said on Friday.

“We will try to help them with what the government structure should be and we will help the Syrian administration with how to transfer our experience there and how we can revive the state,” he added. “One of the most important steps in restoring the state is establishing a constitution, and in this regard, we have already begun communicating with representatives of the new Syrian administration.”

Erdogan confirmed that the head of Turkish intelligence is discussing the issue with authorities in Syria.

Turkish-backed extremist groups, including Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) and Ankara’s proxy, the Syrian National Army (SNA), stormed Damascus on 8 December after an 11-day shock offensive that resulted in the collapse of the Syrian army.

HTS has set up a transitional authority under the premiership of Mohammad Bashir.

Since the fall of Damascus, Ankara has expanded its aerial campaign on US-backed Kurds in Syria, providing air support to SNA factions – many of which include scores of ISIS elements – as they attack Kurdish militant positions north of the country.

The predominantly Kurdish city of Kobani in northern Syria, known in Arabic as Ain al-Arab, came under heavy fire from the Turkish army and SNA militants in the past two days.

A ceasefire between Ankara, Turkish-backed militants, and US-backed Kurds was brokered by Washington earlier this month and has been extended to the end of this week, according to a State Department announcement on Tuesday.

A Turkish Defense Ministry official said on 19 December, contradicting the State Department, that there is no talk of a ceasefire, according to Reuters. “As Turkey, it is out of the question for us to have talks with any terrorist organization. The [US] statement must be a slip of the tongue.”

Ankara has been targeting the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in Syria for years. The organization, a US proxy that helps Washington oversee its occupation in the country, is made up of forces linked to the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) – Turkiye’s sworn foe.

SNA factions announced an operation against the SDF in Kobani (Ain al-Arab) on 17 December. The announcement came in the midst of a build-up of Turkish troops on the Syrian border in preparation for a potential invasion.

The Turkish military has been illegally occupying Syria since 2016.

https://thecradle.co/articles/ankara-wi ... on-erdogan

Israeli tanks, bulldozers deepen occupation of southwest Syria

An FSA militant said that Israeli soldiers 'roam freely' in occupied Quneitra in southwest Syria

News Desk

DEC 20, 2024

Image
(Photo credit: Reuters)

Israeli raids, arrests, and searches are continuing in the Syrian southern Quneitra countryside and western Daraa, in an effort to bulldoze agricultural lands and create military roads that connect the villages of the northern Quneitra countryside to the slopes of Mount Hermon, local sources told Al Mayadeen on 20 December.

A source stated that Israeli forces entered the Al-Shahar Forest and the Jubata al-Khashab Nature Reserve in the northern Quneitra countryside, while pushing closer to the neighboring towns of Taranja and Ofania.

Roughly 30 Israeli soldiers, supported by bulldozers and armored vehicles, penetrated a military point west of the town of Al-Rafid in the southern Quneitra countryside. Using bulldozers, they removed trees and destroyed bunkers at a military checkpoint before withdrawing.

Israeli troops occupied large swathes of new territory in southwest Syria after the fall of Bashar al-Assad's government on 8 December. Militants from Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) entered the capital after facing minimal resistance from the Syrian Army.

Former Al-Qaeda leader Abu Mohammad al-Jolani, now known as Ahmed al-Sharaa, is the new de facto leader of the country.

A local source stated to Al Mayadeen that Israeli forces intend to bulldoze agricultural lands and nature reserves to establish military roads linking the villages of the northern Quneitra countryside to the terraces of Mount Hermon, north of Beit Jinn, in the far southwestern Damascus countryside.

The source reported dignitaries of the villages occupied by Israel in the Syrian Golan Heights in Quneitra Governorate published a statement demanding that the Israeli army withdraw behind the border lines established following the Yom Kippur War in 1973.

Israeli forces are also preventing villagers in southern Syria from accessing their fields, AP reported on Friday.

Abdel Raouf Issa, a resident of Maariyah, said the Israeli military “is demanding that we hand over all weapons to the occupation. We told them that we have no weapons at all.”

“They prevented us from farming. They prevented us from moving,” he said. “We call on the United Nations to remove the occupation as soon as possible.”

Israel has occupied roughly 500 square kilometers of Syrian territory, including the demilitarized buffer zone established in 1974 following the Yom Kippur War ceasefire. AP added that Israel is facing criticism for exploiting the “chaos in Syria in the wake of Assad’s ouster to make a land grab.”

Israel continues to expand its presence in Syria, The Wall Street Journal wrote on Friday.

“Israeli soldiers walk among us, tanks are stationed here, and reconnaissance units roam freely,” said a former Free Syrian Army (FSA) commander in Qarqas village, which overlooks the Quneitra region toward Damascus. “I see Israelis with my own eyes every day,” he added.

On Tuesday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that Israeli troops will occupy the recently seized territory in Syria for the foreseeable future.

Kheder Khaddour, a Syrian researcher at the Malcolm H. Kerr Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut, said Israel was anticipating Syria becoming divided and chaotic like Libya, which has been engulfed in chaos for years after Muammar Gaddafi was toppled in 2011 by UK and Qatari-backed Al-Qaeda militants and NATO airstrikes.

https://thecradle.co/articles/israeli-t ... west-syria

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Syria’s Fall and Anti-Imperialist Lessons

Posted by Internationalist 360° on December 19, 2024
Essam Elkorghli

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SyriaA defaced portrait of Bashar al-Assad on the outskirts of Damascus, Syria. [Photo: Aris Messinis/AFP/Getty Images]

Similar to a predator realizing it is losing a fight and is reaching its end, the U.S. is lashing out and attempting to deepen its claws into subjugated nations like Syria, which just experienced a coup. The fall of Syria was a serious strike against the Axis of Resistance, but all is not lost. There are lessons to take away from these events in the fight against imperialism.


The fast-paced unfolding of events that took place in Syria shook everyone, including the regime change and color revolution enthusiasts who hoped to destroy Syria only to deliver it on a golden plate to the Zionist entity to annex massive swaths of lands. The forceful overthrow of the government in Syria represents a colossal defeat to the Pan-Arabists in the region and those who center the Palestinian national liberation cause. This is not a rhetorical exaggeration; the demise of Syria will have direct consequences on the Axis of Resistance — given that the land bridge (Iran-Iraq-Syria-Lebanon) has been undermined — and the interconnected struggle against imperialist zionism. While the fog of the color revolution has not settled, there are plenty of lessons to learn from the destruction of Syria and how imperialism is still capable of launching deadly blows as we witness the demise of its hegemony.

Syria and the Imperialist Cordon Sanitaire

Any reader of non-mainstream media that is not kowtowing to imperialism and Zionism will know that anyone who questions the usual narratives about Syria will be framed as an Assad apologist. This framing dilutes any contestation of what western media and liberal mouthpieces have produced in terms of defamation and lies about Syria’s government as merely bloodthirsty, dictator-loving, and campist. These mouthpieces of liberal imperialism never look at how those critical of imperialism center the notion of contradiction in the materialist dialectic tradition, especially espoused in anti-western Marxism. Leftists and western Marxists alike, alongside the liberal imperialists, have been constantly referring to Syria as a dictatorship that needs a regime change. Meanwhile, those critical of imperialism understand the notion of contradiction that situates people into a system mired with imperfections. The Syrian government has historically oppressed, imprisoned, and prosecuted dissidents — both right and left-wing. Further, as a state, it promoted neoliberalism since Bashar Al-Assad took over in 2000. Denying these facts would be an injustice to the history and analysis of this conjuncture and would not provide sufficient grounding to understand how western imperialism aided in the mobilization of the many Syrians for a regime change since 2011. While most of the mainstream news and literature will focus on how much blood has been spilled by the war on Syria since 2011, pinning the blame solely on the government, the people who challenge such narrative have been constantly sidelined and the critical literature they produce is being equated as regime propagandists.

The work of Ali Kadri, particularly Imperialism with Reference to Syria and The Cordon Sanitaire: A Single Law Governing Development in East Asia and the Arab World, are arguably the best suited books to understand imperialism and how it operates globally with cases of Eastern Asia and Western Asia — the very places Mao had warned the Arabs about half a century ago when he orated :

“Imperialism is afraid of China and of the Arabs. Israel and Formosa [Taiwan] are bases of imperialism in Asia. You are the front gate of the great continent, and we are the rear. Their goal is the same. . . Asia is the biggest continent in the world, and the West wants to continue exploiting it. The West does not like us, and we must understand this fact. The Arab battle against the West is the battle against Israel. So boycott Europe and America, O’ Arabs!”.

Now, we are constantly hearing the Zionist entity as expanding and forming buffer zones to supplant any actors from launching attacks against the entity, a cordon sanitaire. Kadri situates this term within the imperialist system to understand imperialism and anti-imperialism, development and de-development of the regions. He essentially notes that imperialism implants allied regimes and transfers industrial technology to them so that they develop but within subservient status to the US-led imperialism while remaining as a military outpost that protects US hegemony:

“There is also a remarkable similarity between these regions [Eastern and Western Asia]. Rich countries in both regions are closely allied with US-led imperialism. In particular, the developed Asian countries serve as part of a Cordon Sanitaire hedging the advance of China … Accordingly, one may deduce that to develop as such or to grow wealthy and sustain a pro-imperialist working-class consciousness, a given country has to supplement US-led imperialist hegemony.”

Liberals will often bring the example of the economic development of the Zionist entity and the so-called ‘Asian tigers’ without a reference to US-led imperialism and how it enabled such economic transformation of those gates to Asia. In their advocacy for such developmental models, they forgo imperialism as a world system and how much geopolitical autonomy these countries have (i.e. just a fortnight ago, South Korea declared martial law, fearing parliamentary budget disputes and sending alarming message to the more than 28,000 American soldiers housed in that satellite state). These satellite regimes, whether in Western Asia or Eastern Asia, have a strategic role in defending US hegemony, and in return, the US protects the regimes sitting there from actual revolutionary change, like what we saw in Bahrain in 2011 and the Zionist entity when Iran retaliated against it in October and April of this year. The enabling of subservient development of those entities serves the interest of the US to create its own imperialist buffer zone.

Libya, Syria, Iraq, Lebanon and Iran have been countries that hampered the hegemony of this ever-expanding buffer zone by training, housing, funding and arming the Palestinian resistance, and for that reason, color revolutions have been instigated to allow for the Zionist entity to enjoy its expansionist project unabashedly with the help of the Zionist Arabs and the NATO proxies in the region.

In recent days, people have been resharing the video of the war hawk, retired U.S. general Wesley Clark , where he spoke about performing a regime change in seven countries, particularly the aforementioned ones to protect US strategic interests in the region. But it is not about just regime change. It is about dependent development and how to transform the economies of these countries into consumer hubs as opposed to sovereign production localities outside of the orbit of imperialism, so they purchase the excess productions of the imperialist core.

Clark, who was spearheading the bombing campaign against Yugoslavia, has infamously said “demolish, destroy, devastate, degrade, and ultimately eliminate the essential infrastructure of [Yugoslavia],” where it is clearly to demobilize the infrastructural development of the country to make it docile and economically subservient to the imperialist system — nothing about democracy and popular rule by the masses. While Iraq and Libya have been destroyed, de-developed and deindustrialized alongside the introduction of a market-oriented economy, Syria is awaiting the same fate as its ‘moderate rebels’ want to transform the economy into free-market .

Anti-imperialist Lessons Following a Devastating Defeat Worse than ’67

The loss of Syria is a grand defeat for the Axis because Lebanon’s land bridge has been cut off by these Zionist ‘moderate’ rebels who took power in Syria and vowed to stifle the presence of Shia in the country, namely Iran, Iraq and Lebanon — the very powers that are actually sacrificing their limbs and livelihood for Palestine’s liberation and the resistance in Gaza. The end of Syria is a loss for the Arabs that the region has not experienced anything like it since 1967 when the Zionist entity took over the Golan Heights and swiftly annexed the Sinai Peninsula. In my view, it is even worse because not only is Syria being destroyed here, but people are celebrating it as a revolution and liberation of Syria, and it is done by mostly indigenous hands as opposed to foreign entities inflicting this loss upon us, like what the region witnessed in 1967.

The demise of Syria is a major blow to those who know the weight of Syria in Arab history and civilization. It is a hub of knowledge production and ancient civilization, with rich cultural production and art history. Just like many of Iraq and Libya’s artifacts and heritage are being destroyed and/or sold to western museums to satiate the gaze of museum goers and milking profits from entrance fees and orientalized exhibitions, while we (the people of Libya and Iraq) are left with hollow libraries and museums, Syria will experience the same. There will be a loss of individual freedoms, forced assimilation to an Islamist status quo, discrimination based on sects, and silencing of ideologically anti-imperialist knowledge production. Surely, Syria’s education textbooks that have promoted progressive and peaceful coexistence between the various sects and ethnicities within the Syrian society will be undermined by the anti-Kurd, anti-Shia and anti-religious pluralism spearheaded by the ‘reformed’ jihadists running the country. These are not mere speculations but lessons learned from the destruction of Libya and how Islamist takeover has reduced the country to being run by reactionary and conservative forces that furtively seek to normalize relations with Zionism while the country continues to be under sanctions despite the overthrow of the Libyan government since 2011.

Since 2022, many have been cheering the dwindling US hegemony given the proliferating de-dollarization, the formation and consolidation of BRICS as an alternative, and the rise of China that presents an alternative development model outside of the imperialist orbit. But the imperialist enemy has been detecting its diminishing hegemony and hence, it has passed in its congress the so-called Global Fragility Act — an act that views the world as changing too fast and too far from the imperialist orbit, making it a fragile globe, and hence the need to promote stability. This act was passed in 2019 and is tied to a number of other acts that attempt to stifle the burgeoning popularity of China and Russia as strategic partners for sovereign development for much of the global south.

To claim that imperialism is in decay and incapable of inflicting damage on the Axis forces would only unjustly serve imperialist goals.


Imperialism as a system that has withered multiple crises is led by smart billionaires who bankroll numerous functionaries that enable the reproduction of the system and supplant anti-imperialism through various weapons — media propaganda, financial sanctions, and militarism. All three were employed in Syria, such that the mainstream media and the functionaries of imperialism performed the most bizarre mental gymnastics that involved celebrating jihadists rolling into Syria’s capital, overthrowing the government, and claiming liberation while almost half of the country getting annexed by the Zionist entity (and not forgetting that Turkey occupies part of Syria and the US has troops stationed in the country’s fertile lands and oil-abundant region). The inability to question Zionist expansion by the new rulers of Syria – who promised not to make Syria a launchpad for attacks against the Zionist entity – tells us how blinded by imperialist logic these decadent regime change enthusiasts are.

While surely the Axis of Resistance has received a major blow and needs to reorganize and restrategize vis-á-vis the proliferation of imperialism in Syria given the victory of the Zionist Islamists (they literally thanked the Zionist entity for supporting them in overthrowing the Syrian government), the compass remains Palestine.

The ongoing genocide in Gaza ought to be our compass and standing with — ideologically and materially — the anti-imperialist forces should be the prime focus. The enemy is no longer on the other side of the border; the enemy of Palestinian liberation is within us, and it starts with educating and mobilizing against the local functionaries of imperialism.

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2024/12/ ... t-lessons/
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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