Tunisian authorities detained dozens of former government officials from the Muslim Brotherhood organization in the country for charges related to terrorism and facilitating the recruiting and transporting of hundreds of Tunisian and other nationals to join terrorist groups to Syria to fight the Syrian people and in other countries.
Thousands of Tunisians and thousands of others through Tunisia were sent to Syria and elsewhere where the USA targeted to spread ‘freedom’ and ‘democracy’, by the Ennahda Movement, the Muslim Brotherhood branch in Tunisia, with the help of the other Muslim Brotherhood regimes in the countries that the NATO-sponsored Arab Spring managed to plant in place of the secular governments it toppled.
The following report by the Syrian TV news reporter in Tunisia Nasreen Swaid details:
Tunisia continues to follow the path of holding the Muslim Brotherhood accountable for several crimes, some of which are related to the issue of sending young people to terrorist hotbeds around the world; in this context, the Tunisian judiciary issued a prison warrant against the Brotherhood’s shadow man in the Ministry of Interior, Fathi Al-Baldi, who is considered one of the most dangerous members of the Ennahda Movement’s special apparatus.
Yahya Mohammed, Tunisian political activist: The Muslim Brotherhood are involved directly and indirectly in a relationship with the ‘Transfer’ and a relationship with terrorism in Tunisia. As we know, Fathi Al-Baldi was an advisor during the period of the former Minister of Interior, and he was obviously involved in sending young people to Syria.
Therefore, we consider that his arrest today did not come out of nowhere. His arrest was based on the fact that he was primarily linked to terrorism, and linked to the case of young people being sent to hotbeds of tension.
The judiciary charged Fathi al-Baldi and former Minister of Justice Nour al-Din al-Behairi with charges, the most prominent of which were joining a terrorist organization and facilitating operations of a terrorist nature, as these cases relate to the file of transferring terrorists to Syria.
The extensive investigations included security officials, former ministers, businessmen, and politicians close to the Brotherhood’s Ennahda movement, and the list of defendants included more than a hundred people who were involved in sending young people to fight within terrorist groups in Syria.
Anas Al-Shabi, academic and specialist in terrorist groups: The crimes they committed are crimes, to put it mildly, that turn gray hair. Therefore, in the Fat’hi Al-Baldi case, Fat’hi Al-Baldi is only the hand that carries out the execution, but the main thing is those who took the decision: Ali Al-Arayedh, Rashid Al-Ghannouchi… This is the leadership that was supposed to be held accountable for this..
An internal cleansing of the administration that Tunisia is conducting to get rid of the Brotherhood members involved in terrorism and ‘transfer’, and to solve files that have been stuck on the shelves of the courts for a full decade, with the hope of holding accountable all those who committed crimes against the Tunisian state.
Granting Tunisian nationality to foreign terrorists is the most dangerous file that proves the involvement of the Ennahda movement in terrorism, a file that may reveal more dangerous and sensitive facts at the level of national security.
Nisreen Sweid, Syrian TV – Tunisia.
End of the transcript.
A German study in December 2017 found that the number of Tunisians who joined ISIS in Syria reached 12,800 terrorists including 66 women and not including the terrorists who joined the other CIA-sponsored terrorist organizations like Al Qaeda, FSA, and their affiliated groups.
The Syrian Army and its allied forces managed to eliminate thousands of those terrorists, not less than 5 thousand, 1320 others were missing at the time of the above-mentioned German study, in addition to the hundreds of Tunisian terrorists arrested by the Syrian security and handed back to the Tunisian authorities. Tunisian records say 800 Tunisian terrorists returned to their country, some might have returned on their own.
To force-spread the excess of ‘democracy’ and ‘freedoms’ the United States and its Western cronies and Gulfies stooges enjoy, the CIA along with ‘intelligence’ agencies from most countries of the world founded, funded, trained, and armed dozens of terrorist groups and used the members of those group it managed to radicalize to enforce those exports.
Disappointedly, some of Syria’s presumed allies, or at least friendly countries, also joined the plot and dumped their unwanted terrorists into Syria, or turned a blind eye to the transfer of those terrorists to Syria crossing several borders. For instance, in February 2014, a statistic revealed that tens of thousands of terrorists arrived in Syria from 87 countries, most of whom through NATO member state Turkey. Topping the list were Chechnya: 14,000 terrorists, Saudi Arabia: 12,000 terrorists, Lebanon: 9,000 terrorists, Libya (under NATO occupation post-Gaddafi): 4,400 terrorists, Iraq: 11,000 terrorists, and hundreds from Western Europe, even from Palestine which managed to send 5,000 of its radicalized members to liberate Al Quds (Jerusalem) by destroying the Palestinian refugee camps in Syria!
Hopefully, the world, after the exposing and defeat of Western Zionism and Nazism in Gaza and Ukraine, and the self-inflicted bankruptcy of the Western countries can heal from the manufacturing of terrorist groups by the Western countries, the countries which used to lecture the world about democracy and freedoms and proven they lack the basics of those for their people.
The investigations carried out by the Tunisian authorities with the terrorist Muslim Brotherhood officials is one small step in the path to exposing the criminals behind the real global terrorism, many similar steps are still needed around the world and citizens of the West, in particular, have the main duty in this regard.
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Throughout August and September, anti-government protests have rocked Syrian cities. While the crowds are typically small, numbering only a few hundred, they show little sign of abating. Demonstrators are motivated by increasingly unlivable economic conditions spurred by crippling U.S.-led international sanctions against Damascus. These have produced hyperinflation, mass food insecurity, and many daily hardships for the population. They also prevent vital humanitarian aid from entering the country.
The media has given the unrest blanket coverage. No reference to Washington’s central role in imposing the misery under which average Syrians suffer today, let alone that several key figures in the protests are former opposition fighters who laid down their arms under a government-approved reconciliation deal in 2018, can be found in the reporting.
By contrast, mainstream news outlets appear positively exuberant at the prospect of a new Syrian ‘revolution’ erupting, and many comparisons have been drawn to the protests in March 2011 that turned into an all-out war by the year’s end. In the process, the long-standing, indomitably established narrative that those demonstrations were initially peaceful and only turned violent after many months in response to brutal repression by authorities has been endlessly reiterated.
This is despite the reality of what happened during that fateful time being spelled out in the Syrian government’s own internal documents. Namely, records of the Central Crisis Management Cell, created in March 2011 by Damascus to manage responses to the rioting that began a few weeks earlier.
While mainstream outlets have previously reported on this trove, dubbing them “The Assad Files,” they have universally misrepresented, distorted or simply falsified the contents to wrongfully convict Syrian officials of horrific crimes. In some instances, quite literally. The documents show that Assad and his ministers struggled valiantly to prevent the upheaval from escalating into violence on either side, protect demonstrators, and keep the situation under control.
Meanwhile, sinister, unseen forces systematically murdered security service officials, pro-government figures, and protesters to foment catastrophe in a manner similar to many CIA regime change operations old and new. This shocking story has never before been told. Now, with dark insurrectionary clouds again pullulating over Damascus, it must be.
THIS OPPOSITION IS ARMED’
Over the first months of 2011, the Arab Spring spread revolutionary fervor rapidly throughout North Africa and West Asia. Mass protests dislodged long-reigning dictators Ben Ali in Tunisia and Hosni Mubarak in Egypt. Libya was plunged into civil war, and even the hyper-repressive Gulf monarchies appeared threatened. There was one exception, however.
For the most part, the streets of Syria remained stubbornly calm.
This was despite relentless calls for upheaval by local opposition elements. Repeated demands for a “day of rage” against the government of Bashar al-Assad were widely publicized in the Western media but locally unheeded. As “Al Jazeera” explained in February of that year, Syrians had no appetite for regime change. For one, the country’s ethnically and religiously diverse population cherished their state’s secularism and feared unrest would create potentially violent tensions between them all.
Inconveniently, too, Assad was extremely popular, particularly with younger Syrians. He was widely perceived as a reformer who encouraged and protected diversity and inclusion and oversaw a system that, while far from perfect, delivered extremely high standards of education, healthcare, and much else. Unlike many other leaders in the region, his refusal to accommodate Israel was also greatly respected.
Peace in Damascus finally shattered in mid-March when massive demonstrations broke out in several major cities following weeks of sporadic, small-scale bursts of public disobedience across the country. Reports of thousands arrested and an uncertain number of protesters killed spread widely. This was the spark that ignited the West’s proxy war in Syria. Ominously, mere days earlier, a truck carrying vast quantities of grenades and guns was intercepted at Syria’s border with Iraq.
Anti-government protesters flash victory signs in the southern city of Daraa, Syria, March 23, 2011. Hussein Malla | AP
Pater Frans was a Jesuit priest from the Netherlands who, in 1980, established a community center and farm near Homs where he preached harmony between faiths and cared for people with disabilities. When the crisis erupted, he began publishing regular observations of events that were deeply critical of both the government and the opposition.
Along the way, Frans repeatedly noted that “from the start,” he witnessed armed demonstrators fire on police. “Very often,” he once recorded, “the violence of the security forces has been a reaction to the brutal violence of the armed rebels.” In September 2011, he wrote:
From the start there has been the problem of the armed groups, which are also part of the opposition…The opposition of the street is much stronger than any other opposition. And this opposition is armed and frequently employs brutality and violence, only in order then to blame the government.”
It is unknown whether such problematic insights motivated Frans’ murder by armed militants in April 2014, not long after he refused an offer of UN evacuation.
‘NO DROP OF BLOOD’
If peaceful protesters were killed in the initial stages of the failed “revolution,” the question of who was responsible remains unanswered. The Central Crisis Management Cell records indicate that in the days leading up to the mid-March protests, government officials issued explicit instructions to security forces that citizens “should not be provoked”:
In order to avoid the consequences of continued incitement…and foil the attempts of inciters to exploit any pretext, civil police and security agents are requested not to provoke citizens.”
Similarly, on April 18, the Cell ordered the military to only “counter with weapons those who carry weapons against the state, while ensuring that civilians are not harmed.” Four days later, though, “at least” 72 protesters were allegedly shot dead by authorities in Daraa and Douma, the highest reported daily death toll since the demonstrations began. Condemnation from rights groups and Western leaders was fiery.
Three months later, a number of Syrian Arab Army officers defected and formed the Free Syrian Army. Claiming to have become disaffected, they threw their weight behind the opposition due to the April 18 slaughter and alleged the shooting was expressly ordered by their superiors, which they refused to fulfill. However, if orders to execute protesters were given, they evidently weren’t approved by Assad or his ministers.
Contemporary Cell records show that the highest echelons of the Syrian government were extremely unhappy about the killings in Daraa and Douma, with one official cautioning this “difficult day” had “created a new situation…pushing us into circumstances we are better off without.” They went on to lament, “If the directives previously issued had been adhered to, we would have prevented bloodshed, and matters would not have come to this culmination.”
An obvious suspicion is that the use of lethal force was directed by Army commanders planning to defect who wanted to concoct a valiant pretext while creating significant problems for the government. This interpretation is amply reinforced by the defectors who claimed that soldiers who refused the order to kill civilians were themselves executed.
An FSA fighter holds a bullet riddled poster of President Assad in Aleppo, Syria, March 30, 2013. Sebastiano Tomada | SIPA
That narrative was eagerly seized upon by Western media, rights groups, and the Syrian opposition as proof of Assad’s maniacal bloodlust. Yet, even the pro-opposition Syrian Observatory of Human Rights has dismissed it as entirely false “propaganda” intended to create divisions within government forces and encourage further defections. More sinisterly, it also provided a convenient explanation for why Syrian security operatives were dying in large numbers after the “peaceful” protests began.
From late March onwards, targeted killings of security operatives and soldiers by unknown assailants became routine before the military was formally deployed in Syria. By early May, the Cell requested daily updates on casualties among “our own forces.” Publicly, though, the government initially remained silent on the slaughter. The Cell records suggest officials were afraid of showing weakness, inflaming tensions, and encouraging further violence.
It was not until June, with the slaughter of at least 120 security forces by armed militants who’d taken over the town of Jisr al-Shughour, that Damascus – and the Western media – acknowledged the killing spree. Cell records show that by this time, government supporters were being abducted, tortured, and murdered by opposition actors. This led to the formal deployment of the military to handle the crisis, which subsequently became even more deadly. Despite the carnage, the Cell’s instructions remained unambiguous.
“Ensure that no drop of blood is shed when confronting and dispersing peaceful demonstrations,” an August memo states. The following month, an order to “prohibit harming any detainee” was issued. “If there is evidence” that any security official “fell short in carrying out any mission,” the Cell dictated, “any officer, head of branch or field commander” implicated would have to explain themselves to the government “to hold them accountable.”
‘TOPPLING DOWN THE REGIME’
Some of the most compelling passages in the Cell documents refer to unidentified snipers lurking on rooftops and buildings adjacent to protests from the upheaval’s beginning, firing on crowds below. One memo records that in late April 2011, a sniper near an Aleppo mosque “shot demonstrators, killing one and injuring 43,” and “the situation of some injured is still delicate.”
As such, “focusing on arresting inciters, especially those shooting at demonstrators,” was considered a core priority for the Assad government for much of that year. Around this time, the Cell also hit upon the idea of capturing “a sniper, inciter or infiltrator” and presenting them publicly in a “convincing” manner. One official suggested that “surrounding and catching a sniper alive or injured and exposing him in the media is not impossible” and would “restore public trust in security agencies and the police.”
But this never came to pass. Damascus also neglected to publicly present a bombshell document circulated among “the so-called Syrian opposition in Lebanon” that its intelligence services intercepted in May 2011. The remarkable file, reproduced in full in the Cell records, lays bare the opposition’s insurrectionary plans, providing a clear blueprint for precisely what had happened since March, and what was to come.
A Syrian anti-government fighter aims a sniper rifle inside a classroom at a school in Homs, Syria, Feb. 22, 2012. Photo | AP
The opposition proposed convening mass demonstrations so that security forces “will lose control of all regions,” be “taken unaware,” and become “exhausted and distracted.” This, along with “honest officers and soldiers” joining “the ranks of the revolution,” would make “toppling down the regime” all the more straightforward, particularly as any crackdown on these protests would encourage a Western “military strike,” ala Libya. They foresaw mainstream news outlets playing a significant role in making this happen:
Everyone should be confident that with the continuation of demonstrations today, media channels will have no choice but to cover the events…Al Jazeera will be late due to considerations of mutual interests. But we have Al Arabiya and Western media channels who will come forward, and we will all see the change of tone in covering the events and demonstrations will be aired on all channels and they will have wide coverage.”
The document is the most palpable evidence to date that the entire Syrian “revolution” unfolded according to a pre-prepared, well-honed script. Whether this was drawn up in direct collusion with Western powers remains to be proven. Still, the presence of snipers picking off protesters is a strong indication among many that this was the case.
Unidentified snipers are a frequent fixture of U.S.-orchestrated ‘color revolutions’ and CIA coups, such as the attempted overthrow of Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez in 2002 and the 2014 Ukrainian ‘revolution.’ In both cases, the shooting of unarmed protesters by snipers was pivotal in unseating the targeted government. In Kiev, demonstrations that began months earlier started running out of steam when 70 protesters were abruptly slain by sniper fire.
This turned the entire crowd violent while triggering an avalanche of international condemnation, which made President Viktor Yanukovych’s downfall a fait accompli. In the years since, three Georgian mercenaries have claimed they were expressly ordered by nationalist opposition actors and a U.S. military veteran embedded with them to carry out a massacre “to sow some chaos.” Officially, the crime remains unsolved today.
‘BURN ENORMOUS SUMS’
The Central Crisis Management Cell documents would have forever remained a Syrian government secret were it not for the enterprising work of the Commission for International Justice and Accountability (CIJA). This shadowy organization was founded in May 2011 by Western military and intelligence veterans to prosecute Syrian officials for war crimes. Its first act was to train Syrian investigators “in basic international criminal and humanitarian law” in service of a “domestic justice process in a future transitional Syria.”
For years, CIJA enjoyed glowing profiles in major news outlets and connected journalists and rights groups with material that formed the basis of several hard-hitting investigations exposing purported Syrian government atrocities. At no point was any concern raised about the Commission’s collaboration with dangerous armed groups to smuggle sensitive documentation out of abandoned government buildings in opposition-occupied areas of the country.
CIJA chief Bill Wiley claimed in 2014 that his organization worked with every Syrian opposition group “up to but excluding Jabhat al-Nusra and Islamic State.” However, an investigation by “The Grayzone” indicates that the Commission’s staff in Syria were frequently in extremely close quarters with both groups and, in fact, paid them handsomely for their assistance in securing documentation. This included material seized in the city of Raqqa after its January 2014 capture by ISIS, when the terrorist group was massacring Alawites and Christians.
“We burn enormous sums of money moving this stuff,” Wiley told The “New Yorker” in 2016. Accordingly, CIJA received tens of millions of dollars for these efforts from a number of Western governments, including states at the forefront of the Syrian proxy war.
The Commission’s work produced no prosecutions for many years. This changed in late 2019 when Anwar Raslan and Eyad al-Gharib, two former Damacus’ General Intelligence Directorate members, were indicted in Germany for crimes against humanity.
The opposition proposed convening mass demonstrations so that security forces “will lose control of all regions,” be “taken unaware,” and become “exhausted and distracted.” This, along with “honest officers and soldiers” joining “the ranks of the revolution,” would make “toppling down the regime” all the more straightforward, particularly as any crackdown on these protests would encourage a Western “military strike,” ala Libya. They foresaw mainstream news outlets playing a significant role in making this happen:
Everyone should be confident that with the continuation of demonstrations today, media channels will have no choice but to cover the events…Al Jazeera will be late due to considerations of mutual interests. But we have Al Arabiya and Western media channels who will come forward, and we will all see the change of tone in covering the events and demonstrations will be aired on all channels and they will have wide coverage.”
The document is the most palpable evidence to date that the entire Syrian “revolution” unfolded according to a pre-prepared, well-honed script. Whether this was drawn up in direct collusion with Western powers remains to be proven. Still, the presence of snipers picking off protesters is a strong indication among many that this was the case.
Unidentified snipers are a frequent fixture of U.S.-orchestrated ‘color revolutions’ and CIA coups, such as the attempted overthrow of Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez in 2002 and the 2014 Ukrainian ‘revolution.’ In both cases, the shooting of unarmed protesters by snipers was pivotal in unseating the targeted government. In Kiev, demonstrations that began months earlier started running out of steam when 70 protesters were abruptly slain by sniper fire.
This turned the entire crowd violent while triggering an avalanche of international condemnation, which made President Viktor Yanukovych’s downfall a fait accompli. In the years since, three Georgian mercenaries have claimed they were expressly ordered by nationalist opposition actors and a U.S. military veteran embedded with them to carry out a massacre “to sow some chaos.” Officially, the crime remains unsolved today.
‘BURN ENORMOUS SUMS’
The Central Crisis Management Cell documents would have forever remained a Syrian government secret were it not for the enterprising work of the Commission for International Justice and Accountability (CIJA). This shadowy organization was founded in May 2011 by Western military and intelligence veterans to prosecute Syrian officials for war crimes. Its first act was to train Syrian investigators “in basic international criminal and humanitarian law” in service of a “domestic justice process in a future transitional Syria.”
For years, CIJA enjoyed glowing profiles in major news outlets and connected journalists and rights groups with material that formed the basis of several hard-hitting investigations exposing purported Syrian government atrocities. At no point was any concern raised about the Commission’s collaboration with dangerous armed groups to smuggle sensitive documentation out of abandoned government buildings in opposition-occupied areas of the country.
CIJA chief Bill Wiley claimed in 2014 that his organization worked with every Syrian opposition group “up to but excluding Jabhat al-Nusra and Islamic State.” However, an investigation by “The Grayzone” indicates that the Commission’s staff in Syria were frequently in extremely close quarters with both groups and, in fact, paid them handsomely for their assistance in securing documentation. This included material seized in the city of Raqqa after its January 2014 capture by ISIS, when the terrorist group was massacring Alawites and Christians.
“We burn enormous sums of money moving this stuff,” Wiley told The “New Yorker” in 2016. Accordingly, CIJA received tens of millions of dollars for these efforts from a number of Western governments, including states at the forefront of the Syrian proxy war.
The Commission’s work produced no prosecutions for many years. This changed in late 2019 when Anwar Raslan and Eyad al-Gharib, two former Damacus’ General Intelligence Directorate members, were indicted in Germany for crimes against humanity.
Anwar Raslan, center, stands in the courtroom at the Higher Regional Court in Koblenz, Germany, Jan. 13, 2022. Thomas Frey | AP
Raslan headed the Directorate’s domestic security unit, while al-Gharib was one of his departmental lackeys. The pair defected in December 2012, with Raslan and his family fleeing to Jordan, where he would play “an active and visible role in the Syrian opposition.” He was part of the opposition delegation to the Geneva II conference on Syria in January 2014. In July of that year, he was granted asylum in Germany.
Following his escape, Raslan told numerous tales of abuse and atrocities perpetrated by his unit and the Syrian government during his 20 years of state service. He claimed his defection was spurred after learning of an apparent opposition attack in Damascus that he was investigating was, in fact, staged by security forces. Significant doubts about his accounts and whether his defection was principled or just cynical opportunism have been raised.
In a bitter irony, Raslan’s loudmouth tendencies were his undoing. His assorted claims provided grounds for his arrest by German authorities and were used against him in his prosecution, which heavily relied on documents seized by CIJA, including the Cell records. An expert statement submitted to the court by Commission operative Ewan Brown, a British Army veteran, falsely frames these as indicative that Assad’s government sanctioned and encouraged brutality and repression against peaceful protesters.
Al-Gharib was found guilty of aiding and abetting crimes against humanity and received four-and-a-half years in prison in February 2021. A year later, Raslan was given life imprisonment for crimes including mass torture, rape, and murder. The pair were convicted not for personally perpetrating these horrors but for serving in the General Intelligence Directorate when they were allegedly committed. Details of these purported crimes were, in some cases, provided to the court by highly unreliable witnesses.
The conclusion that Al-Gharib and Raslan were prosecuted because they were within easy reach, and CIJA and its Western backers needed something to show for all their efforts, is ineluctable. The Commission had good reason to be nervous about failing to fulfill its founding objective. In March 2020, the European Anti-Fraud Office (OLAF) formally accused the organization of “submission of false documents, irregular invoicing, and profiteering” in connection with an EU “Rule of Law” project it ran in Syria.
CIJA’s crusade to punish Syrian officials could only succeed in the event of regime change. Its launch in May 2011 shows that foreign actors were laying the foundations for that eventuality from the earliest days of the ‘peaceful revolution.’ The recent protests may indicate that Western powers haven’t given up on the objective yet.
Foreign intelligence agencies, including Israeli and US intel and their regional partners, have been instrumental in fueling recent anti-government protests in Suwayda, just as they did in 2011.
On 17 August, anti-government protests erupted in Suwayda, a province in southern Syria with a Druze-majority population. These demonstrations were triggered by the Syrian government’s decision to lift fuel subsidies, which came amidst a severe economic crisis exacerbated by US economic sanctions.
Hundreds of Syrians burnt tires, blocked roads, and chanted anti-government slogans in Al-Karama Square in Suwayda’s city center.
Protesters shouted, “Long live Syria and down with [Syrian President] Bashar al Assad,” which, according to Reuters, echoed “chants from 2011 pro-democracy protests that were violently crushed by security forces and sparked a long-running conflict.”
References to the protests in 2011, and the bloody 12-year war that followed are important, but not for the reasons Reuters suggests.
Suwayda then and now
Contrary to the mainstream view, the anti-government demonstrations in 2011 were not popular, peaceful protests demanding democracy. As detailed elsewhere, the protests were sparked by US and allied intelligence agencies seeking regime change in Damascus. The CIA and Saudi intelligence flooded Syria with Al-Qaeda militants from Iraq and Lebanon who infiltrated protests to attack Syrian police, soldiers, and security officials.
According to an informed source speaking with The Cradle, the protests are driven primarily by groups enjoying support from US and Israeli intelligence, namely the Men of Dignity and the Brigade Party.
According to the source, “everyone is aware of the role they played and continue to play” in Suwayda.
The Men of Dignity, or Rijaal al-Karama, group was formed by an obscure Druze religious figure, Wahid Balous, shortly after the US-led covert war on Syria began in 2011.
“Balous was an unknown cleric before the [war],” one of his associates toldThe New Arab in 2015. Three years earlier, “His name began to emerge with the rise of armed groups affiliated to sheikhs who said they were neither in the opposition nor the pro-government camp.”
Al-Jazeera also reported in 2015 that “Syria’s Druze are not fully supportive of Balous,” including some who “questioned his political agenda.”
“He openly declared himself opposed to Israel, but his close relations with Israeli Druze, who are linked to Israeli intelligence and the military establishment, raised fears that he might have been manipulated,” said one activist from Suwayda, quoted by the Qatari outlet.
The informed source speaking with The Cradle also highlights the role of Israeli intelligence in establishing the Men of Dignity with the help of Israeli Druze figures.
“The Men of Dignity are influenced and mobilized by the Mossad, and there is a role for Sheikh Mowafaq Tarif, the head of the spiritual council for Syria’s Druze,” the source states.
Israeli involvement in Druze affairs
While the Druze community in Suwayda and in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights are traditionally strong supporters of the Syrian government, some Druze elements in Israel are Zionists and support the Jewish state.
Sheikh Mowafaq Tarif has publicly expressed his strong support for Zionism and the Israeli state, while prominent Druze politician Ayoob Kara is a member of the Likud Party, founded by former Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin.
Given this context, it’s not surprising that Israel has been involved in efforts to sow chaos and promote separatism among the Druze in Syria, as outlined in Oded Yinon’s 1982 plan of breaking up Baathist Syria into ethnic mini-states, including a Druze state, as a primary Zionist objective.
As part of the establishment of the Men of Dignity in 2012, Balous established a militia allegedly devoted to protecting the Druze community during the ongoing war between the government and foreign-backed Salafist armed groups, including the so-called Free Syrian Army (FSA) and Al-Qaeda-affiliated Nusra Front.
According to sources from Suwayda speaking with Al-Jazeera, Balous commanded between 500 and 1,000 fighters.
This can be compared with the strength of the pro-government Druze militias active in Syria at the time.
Al-Jazeera notes that roughly 8,000 Druze fighters were then affiliated with the National Defense Forces (NDF), the Popular Committees, Dara al-Watan (Shield of the Homeland), and the armed wing of Syrian Social Nationalist Party (SSNP).
According to the informed source speaking with The Cradle, Balous’ militia obtained their weapons from Israel via the Nusra Front – since rebranded as Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS).
In 2014, opposition activists close to the FSA acknowledged the Israeli air force bombed Syrian army positions in Quneitra near the Golan Heights in support of Nusra.
Between 2015 and 2017, reports from the Wall Street Journal and UN peacekeeping troops patrolling the Golan Heights border fence revealed that Israel was supporting Nusra and allied FSA factions in southern Syria. Israel provided funds to pay salaries and buy weapons for armed groups while bringing Nusra fighters across the Golan border fence for treatment in Israeli hospitals.
Anger at Israeli support for Nusra caused Druze residents in the town of Majdal al-Shams, located on the Israeli side of the Golan border fence, to attack Israeli ambulances carrying Nusra fighters.
Israeli support for Nusra was further documented by the Druze activist Sidqi al-Maqt, who also hailed from Majd al-Shams. Maqt had been imprisoned for 27 years by Israel for resisting its occupation of the Golan Heights.
After his release in 2012, Maqt documented contacts between the Israeli army and Nusra in posts on social media. As a result, he was arrested again in 2015 and spent another five years in an occupation prison.
Collaboration and conscription
In June 2015, Balous and his militia were criticized for undermining the Syrian army and collaborating with the Nusra Front. At the time, Syria’s Druze community was facing its worst threat from the Israeli-backed Nusra Front and allied FSA since the start of the war.
Al-Jazeerareported that “Some criticized [Balous’] attacks on government checkpoints, and according to sources in Sweida, many questioned the absence of his militia when armed opposition groups launched a large-scale attack on the Thaaleh airbase in Sweida.”
Balous’ collaboration with the so-called rebels of Nusra and the FSA was evidenced further by a report from the Lebanese Daily Star. The Lebanese paper reported that “FSA spokesman, Yassin al-Hariri, pledged that if Thaaleh airport is seized by the rebels, it will be turned over to Balous’ Dignity Sheikhs group.”
The Nusra and FSA attack came at a sensitive time, as Nusra had massacred 20 Druze civilians in Idlib governorate in northern Syria the day before. In the months prior to the massacre, Nusra fighters had destroyed historic Druze graves and shrines in Idlib and forced hundreds of Druze to covert to Sunni Islam.
The massacre came as the western and Persian Gulf media launched a propaganda campaign to rebrand Nusra and describe it as a moderate group deserving western military support, despite its ties to Al-Qaeda.
Prominent Lebanese Druze politician Walid Jumblatt played his part. Following the massacre, he refused to condemn Nusra as a terrorist group, instead claiming, “The terrorist regime of Bashar obliged the Syrians to join Nusra.”
While Balous and the Men of Dignity refused to join the effort to protect Suwayda, Druze fighters in the NDF, Dara al-Watan, and SSNP helped the Syrian army recapture the Thaaleh airbase.
At the same time, large numbers of Druze youth were joining the Syrian army following a plea from Druze religious leader Hikmat al-Hijri.
Balous took a different stance. In a speech circulated online, he called on Druze youth to refuse conscription into the army, even though President Assad had made commitments that Druze recruits would remain in Suwayda to protect their own communities.
While seeking to undermine the military defense of Suwayda, Balous’ Men of Dignity organized anti-government protests that included the slogan, “The people want the downfall of the governor [of Suwayda],” Atef al-Nadaf.
Syria expert Aymenn al-Tamimi notes that in response, pro-government elements accused Balous and his followers of “orchestrating the demonstrations as part of a prior agreed plan to destroy the regime in Suwayda through collusion with foreign intelligence and Jabhat al-Nusra.”
In September 2015, Balous was assassinated in a bomb attack along with 25 others, including several Men of Dignity leaders in the Zhahr al-Jabal region.
Although it is not known who killed Balous, it is widely suspected the head of Military Intelligence in Suwayda, Colonel Wafiq Nasser, ordered the bombing. Balous had called for the “citizen’s arrest” of Colonel Nasser three months prior.
Rallying behind the flag
The informed source speaking with The Cradle also pointed to the role of Hezb al-Liwa, or the Brigade Party, in the protests that erupted in Suwayda recently. The group was founded in July 2021 and led by journalist Malik Abu Khair.
In an interview with Al-Monitor, Abu Khair said the party receives no foreign funding and that its political vision called for resolving the Syrian crisis in accordance with the US-backed UN Resolution 2254, which calls for a new constitution, elections, and the removal of President Assad from power.
However, according to the informed source, Abu Khair resides in France, and the party is funded by Qatar, France, and Britain:
“Those who called for protests in the squares were the Brigade Party and the Men of Dignity. They are the ones who raise the Druze flags and demand the implementation of UN Resolution 2254, and they offer dollars to those who join the Syrian Brigade Party or work with them.”
A militia affiliated with the Brigade Party, the Counter Terrorism Force (CTF), was also established in Suwayda in 2021.
Nowras Aziz, an independent journalist from Suwayda residing in France, toldAl-Monitor that the CTF militia “was formed of members with criminal records, militia fighters and former security contractors with the military, as well as members of gangs that carry out kidnappings and demand ransom. Those are known locally and deeply hated.”
The Kurdish and Jordanian roles
The Brigade Party and affiliated CTF have received support from the US military and allied Kurdish forces operating out of the Al-Tanf base on the Syria-Jordan-Iraq border.
Journalist Nowras Aziz added that Brigade Party leader Abu Khair “had contacted the [US-led international] coalition forces at Al-Tanf base in the second half of 2020,” explaining his plan to take full control over the eastern villages of Suwayda province and remove “any presence of the Syrian regime or Iran in that area.”
Sources in Suwayda speaking to pro-opposition Syria TVconfirmed the Brigade Party and CTF received funding, arms, and training from the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) and the US military. This included help in establishing bases under SDF supervision in the eastern countryside of Suwayda.
The sources added that the CTF militia received six months of training from US forces stationed at the Al-Tanf base, under the pretext of combating Iranian militias and drug trafficking.
Because the US base at Al-Tanf is located on the Jordanian border – in close proximity to Suwayda – this suggests the US is using Jordan as a staging ground to support Druze separatism in Syria. The US military has already established 16 military bases in the Hashemite Kingdom, and there is talk about establishing a NATO office in the country.
It is widely acknowledged that the US, Israel, and Saudi Arabia used Jordan as a staging ground to support the FSA and Nusra during the war to topple the Syrian government starting in 2011.
Additional evidence for a US and Israeli-backed separatist project in Suwayda emerged in July, roughly one month before the recent protests erupted. As Syria TVreported in July 2023:
The “Syrian Brigade Party announced the establishment of service institutions alternative to those affiliated with the Syrian regime, indicating its desire to establish an independent self-administration for the Druze community, similar to the special regions of northeastern Syria, which are predominantly Kurdish.”
Syria TV further noted that the Brigade Party’s separatist project is “met with widespread opposition” in Suwayda, including from political and civic organizations, most of the local armed factions, and prominent religious leaders.
This suggests the current protests organized by the Men of Dignity and Brigade Party are supported only by a minority of Druze in Suwayda.
However, as in 2011, the western media has focused its attention on the few hundred protesters waving colorful flags and chanting slogans against President Assad to suggest the majority of Syrian Druze back regime change.
In light of the recent protests, the source speaking to The Cradle observes that:
“What caught my attention is an important detail: the raising of the Druze flag. During the protests since 2011, the Druze flag has not been raised at all. This flag-raising indicates preliminary steps that may lead to a separatist movement similar to that undertaken by the Kurds.”
Syrian Druze religious leader Sheikh Yusef Jarbou made a reference to the prominence of the Druze flag in the protests during a meeting with Suwayda notables on 30 August, one week after the protests began.
Sheikh Jarbou rejected calls by some of the protestors for separatism and the overthrow of the Syrian government, while stating that the flag of the Syrian state is the flag that he represents, and that siding with Damascus is the “strategic and national choice.”
Additionally, not all protesters in Suwayda are seeking regime change, as media reports typically imply.
Prominent Syria expert Joshua Landis of the University of Oklahoma explained that “most of the protesters are calling for more government activity in the economic life of the country, rather than a collapse of the government.”
“They want more electricity, they want subsidies, they want better schooling, they want the currency to be stabilized. They are desperate. They want higher salaries,” Landis said.
Crushing Syria through sanctions
It remains to be seen whether US and Israeli efforts to turn the Druze community against the Syrian state will succeed.
As journalist Aaron Mate observed, US planners are waging an economic war against average Syrians, hoping a collapse in living standards will turn them against the government.
Andrew Tabler, a former senior US official for Syria policy, boasted in 2021 that US sanctions have caused Syria’s currency to collapse, leading to “corresponding cuts in regime subsidies that have exacerbated fuel and food shortages for everyday Syrians.”
The threat of economic collapse comes as pro-Israeli voices are calling for the establishment of a “Free Druze Province” in Suwayda, bound by the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights to the west, the Al-Tanf base to the east, and US and Israel-allied Jordan to the south.
Damascus-based journalist Vanessa Beeley warns that the stage is now set for a possible US-Israel military intervention.
She reports that according to Syrian security sources, the US is gathering mercenaries at Al-Tanf in preparation to seize Suwayda and the border crossings with Jordan.
If such an intervention takes place, Israel will be one step closer to achieving the goal of dividing Syria into weak, ethnic mini-states, as articulated by Oden Yinon some four decades ago.
The views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of The Cradle.
Amidst the influx of thousands of US troops into West Asia, Syria is once again at the heart of a multifaceted battle for control, which will likely be played out on its troubled, contentious border with Iraq.
In a significant development last month, US military convoys rolled into Iraq via the Arar crossing with Saudi Arabia. This visible display of foreign force movements saw a portion of the convoy making its way to the Ain al-Assad base in western Iraq, while the rest headed toward the US occupation base of Al-Tanf in Syria.
In July, the US Department of Defense unveiled its plan to deploy approximately 2,500 soldiers from the 10th Mountain Division, stationed at the Fort Drum military base. Their mission: Operation Inherent Resolve (OIR), the codename for the US-led military campaign against ISIS in Syria and Iraq.
Given the fact that US troops were assumed to be gone from Iraq since last year, pro-US media and political commentators went into overdrive trying to convince a cynical Iraqi public that these new troop movements suggest a healthy development in Washington’s policies toward Baghdad. But will it work?
Syria’s strategic significance
Today, the focal point of the Russian-American-Iranian power struggle in West Asia is in Syria. This strategically located country serves as a pivotal Meditteranean gateway for Russia’s military presence, and is the Arab cornerstone for the Axis of Resistance which extends from Iran to Lebanon and Palestine.
Geopolitically, Syria’s significance derives from its vital location at the crossroads of three continents, and shares borders with five countries: Turkiye (822 km), Iraq (605 km), Jordan (375 km), Lebanon (370 km), and Palestine (76 km). Moreover, Syria’s coastal stretch along the Mediterranean Sea, spanning 192 km, holds tremendous strategic sway in the realm of global security, politics, and economics.
For these multifaceted reasons, Washington has stayed fully engaged on the Syrian file as an important arena from which to curtail Russian and Iranian influence throughout the region. As such, regime change scenarios have played an outsized role in US policy in West Asia.
In 2011, spurred on by the euphoria and optimism of the so-called Arab Spring, anti-government protests erupted in Syria and were very quickly infiltrated by western weapons and agendas.
A plethora of armed factions emerged during this turbulent period, each backed by different foreign states and interests, including the Free Syrian Army, Al-Nusra Front, ISIS, the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), and various other armed extremist groups.
By 2012, it became clear that chief among the countries involved in supporting terrorist militias in Syria were the US, Turkiye, Qatar, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Israel. In a direct display of support, Washington threw its weight behind the Kurdish-led SDF, offering training and weaponry to help ethnic Kurds carve out an autonomous zone in eastern Syria, emptied of much of its Arab population.
These machinations were not lost on Russia and Iran, who entered the fray upon the request of the Syrian government, and rallied support from the likes of Lebanese Hezbollah and Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Units (PMU).
For much of this conflict, western powers turned a blind eye to the burgeoning activities of terrorists along the Syrian-Iraqi border – and by 2014, ISIS managed to seize control of Mosul and three Iraqi provinces.
The Iraqi-Syrian border, stretching over 605 km, fell under ISIS’s dominion as it severed supply lines to Iraqi factions fighting in Syria. This strategy aimed to force Iran to withdraw its support of Syrian President Assad.
But in an unexpected countermove, mostly Iran-backed Iraqi forces launched campaigns to reclaim territory from ISIS’s grasp. After an arduous 1,200 days of battles, they emerged victorious, wresting control of the Iraqi borders from the grip of the self-proclaimed caliphate.
Disputes on the border
On the Syrian side of the border, the Syrian Arab Army (SAA), aided by Russia and other allies, successfully reclaimed a vast swathe of territory from armed opposition militias, leaving only pockets of militias in eastern Syria, notably in the city of Idlib, where Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (formerly Al-Nusra Front) dominates.
Of particular concern to the US has been the prominent presence of the Iran-supported PMU along Syria’s borders with Iraq. In order to control that border, the US-led international coalition – occasionally joined by Israeli forces – has launched countless targeted operations against the PMU along the Iraqi border. Washington argues that it does so in “self-defense,” to prevent attacks against US forces stationed at bases like Syria’s al-Tanf and Iraq’s Ain al-Assad.
It is a position unsupported by international law: US forces illegally occupying a sovereign state cannot claim self-defense.
Nevertheless, these dynamics have compelled the US to prioritize the Iraqi border within its broader Syria strategy. As strategic expert Hazem al-Sharaa tells The Cradle:
“These borders are not only part of the Syrian war game but have become part of the Ukrainian war and Washington’s conflict with both Moscow and Tehran.”
Today, control of the al-Qaim (Iraq’s side) border crossing are held firmly by the PMU. When the US feels a need to undermine that control, it makes claims of PMU attacks against US bases and troops, in order to launch a lethal US retaliation at PMU positions.
In the broader picture, Russia – as a steadfast ally and strategic partner to Damascus – also plays a role in tightening the grip around the illegal US occupation of Syria, with Russian forces now reaching a point of contact with the US-backed SDF.
A proxy theater for Russia and the US
This has “raised the American side’s fears of a decline in its influence in Syria,” says Ali al-Shammari, a researcher at Al-Rafidain Center for Strategic Studies. “Washington lost on the Ukraine front, and does not want another loss on the Syrian front,” he tells The Cradle.
For Vladimir Vasiliev, a senior researcher at the Institute for the United States and Canada of the Russian Academy of Sciences, a US loss in Ukraine may ratchet up confrontation in Syria quickly: Washington “is attacking Russia with Ukrainian hands. The failure of this attack will prompt America to resort to a backup plan in Syria.”
On 23 July, 2023, a potentially dangerous episode unfolded as a Russian Air Force fighter jet narrowly avoided a collision with a drone from the US-led coalition. These past months have seen subtle yet palpable tensions grow between US and Russian forces in Syria.
Syrian intelligence sources tell The Cradle that US forces in Syria have increased from 500 to 1,500 soldiers, all of whom have entered the country via the Al-Waleed border crossing from Iraq. Meanwhile, a high-ranking officer within the Iraqi border guards reveals that there are “indications of an upcoming military operation by the US army on the Syrian side of the border with Iraq.”
A senior security source in the Iraqi Counter-Terrorism Service (CTS), on the other hand, reports to The Cradle that “the Americans whom we meet at the Joint Operations Command weekly, and who inform us of all their movements and air strikes inside Iraqi territory against ISIS, did not inform us of any military operation inside Iraqi territory.”
Stakes and alliances
Suspicions over US military ploys grew further on 7 August, when Iraqi Defense Minister Thabet al-Abbasi paid a secret visit to Washington, accompanied by prominent army commanders and the head of the CTS.
Although the details of the visit remain undisclosed, private sources tell The Cradle that Iraqi officials were presented with a new deployment strategy for US forces in eastern Syria. Implementation of this strategy is expected upon the conclusion of US reinforcement efforts.
The sources add that the Americans emphasized the necessity of neutralizing Iraqi Shia armed factions and preventing their involvement in potential clashes between US forces and the SAA along the Iraqi border. As Ghazi Faisal, director of the Iraqi Center for Strategic Studies, tells The Cradle, US interest in Syria appears not to have diminished a whit:
“Washington’s plan in Syria has three axes: forcing Moscow to bring in more forces to Syria to relieve pressure on Ukraine, blocking the Iranian presence in Syria, and cutting off Iran’s supply of advanced missiles to Hezbollah in Lebanon.”
Qamishli, a city situated in northeastern Syria approximately 680 km from Damascus, emerges as a potential epicenter for the brewing confrontation between US and Russian interests, due to the coexisting spheres of influence between US forces and the SDF on one hand, and on the other, the Russian military position at a local airport.
In this intricate mix, several military factions aligned with both Tehran and Damascus also stake a claim on these areas. Kirill Semenov, an expert from the Russian Council for International Affairs, notes that “In the event of any provocation from any party, all possibilities will be available.
“The views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of The Cradle.
“No external factor enables a government or an army to stabilize, unless this government and this army enjoy a popular support that safeguard them.”
Egypt’s former Assistant Foreign Minister Hussein Al-Haridi in a recent interview
The pre-planned war in Syria has spanned twelve years and is still ongoing. It is well known that this warfare is not limited to battlegrounds but rather takes various economic, social, and political forms, in a bid to deplete President Bashar Al-Assad’s government. Surprisingly, all of these endeavors, however, were futile.
The Gloomy Tunnel
The arrest of two men in Daraa in March 2011 and the eventual outbreak of sporadic demonstrations in several regions, formed the full-fledged launch of a bloody scenario or even a global war that later appeared that it has been previously plotted. That was at a time when the entire region was experiencing “revolutions” dubbed as the “Arab Spring.”
It has been clear that all intents and schemes including the normalization of ties with the Zionist enemy- through subduing all resistance movements- as well as compensating for the defeat in Iraq, pass through Syria.
Soon after, Western powers, led by the United States, joined Arab countries in raising slogans such as “the freedom of the Syrian people” and “human rights in Syria.” Such moves were aimed at overthrowing the Syrian government’s legitimacy, neglecting thousands of Syrians who protested in support of President Al Assad.
In June 2012, world powers assembled in Geneva to declare “the necessity of a political transition.”
This declaration was only a pretext for escalating the demonstrations into a major military clash, resulting in the formation of organizations such as the “Free Syrian Army” (FSA) and the ” Jaysh al-Islam” (Army of Islam). These organizations comprised Syrians as well as a significant number of mercenaries from other Arab and Western countries, all with diverse backgrounds and agendas, who flocked to attack Damascus.
Since then, Syria has entered a dark tunnel: the country’s unity and sovereignty have been shattered, with almost all areas divided into pro and anti-regime factions. The emergence of Takfiri factions such as “Jabhat Al-Nusra” and “Ahrar Al-Sham” on the battlefield heightened the tensions.
Then in January 2014, the ISIL terrorist group took control of Raqqa and set out to govern vast areas of Syria and Iraq. Backed by regional and Western governments, these organizations have committed the most heinous terrorist acts against the Syrian people, as well as looting riches and systematically destroying the country’s infrastructure.
In addition to the military conflict, fierce media campaigns have intensified, relying on false flag chemical attacks in a bid to defame the Syrian government while disregarding the crimes committed by so-called “opposition factions.”
Syria Battles Bravely
Amid this reality, the Syrian state and its army stood firmly to protect the governing system and fortify Damascus, which had become a target for terrorists. The fall of the capital would have dealt President Assad a tremendous blow.
In September 2014, the US directly engaged in the struggle, organizing a coalition and assisting Kurdish factions under the pretext of eradicating “ISIL” in northern Syria. Later in 2015, and under the request of the Syrian government, Russia joined the war in a bid to aid Damascus in counter-terror operations.
This was a crucial turning point in the warfare, along with Iran’s and Hezbollah’s key roles in the battlefield and victories in more than one strategic battle, such as the clashes of Qusayr and Aleppo.
This video diplays scene of the couter-terror operations in Syria.
Such turning point reflected on Damascus’ recontrol of swathes of the Syrian territory, as well as keeping the threat of terror away from the capital and Aleppo. This was in addition to preventing Turkey, which aided the armed groups, from reaching its aim of dominating that region and eventually beating “ISIL” in the Syrian Badiya battles.
At the time when the military developments were unfolding in Syria, there was a political course emerging. Hence, when Russia, Iran, and the Syrian Army imposed a new status quo in the battlefield, the “Astana Talks” was established. The peace process came after the West and the UN yielded no substantive progress in the negotiations between the government and the so-called opposition, which remained split and withdrew the battlefield in favor of terrorist organizations.
Wary of Kurdish presence in Syria’s north, Turkey joined, afterwards, the Astana Talks as a guarantor state. This political process, which culminated in several rounds, concluded in a settlement, primarily brokered by the Russians and Turks in September 2018. The settlement involved Idlib and the northwest, which has been under terrorist control, resulting in a halt to fighting on those fronts.
Syria’s Outlook in 2020
On the eve of 2020, the Syrian state maintained control, as it had not done for the past nine years, except in the north, where the conflict created a kind of status quo represented by the limited presence of the US forces through several military bases. Undoubtedly, those bases were later utilized as a springboard for stealing oil and wheat. Also, there was a limited Turkish presence in the area under the pretext of countering the so-called Kurdish expansion.
On the other hand, the Israeli enemy found no means to voice concern over the failure of its allies and the victory of its foes. Thereupon, it occasionally breaches Syria’s airspace and launches strikes.
Despite this scenario in the country’s north, almost 12 years of war did not affect Syria’s Arabian identity, as the idea of its federalization had been buried.
This war has resulted in creating a powerful “Axis of Resistance” that extends from Iran through Iraq to Syria, then to Lebanon and Palestine. Consequently, Washington unleashed an economic warfare through the “Caesar” sanctions, depleting the Syrians who stood by their government.
Illustrative photo displaying flags of movements within the Axis of Resistance.
In mid-2020, the Coronavirus pandemic spread all over the world, resulting in a stalemate in the Syria negotiations. Yet, the sanctions remained the most prominent feature in Syrians’ diaries.
Then in 2022, when the pandemic subsided, the war between Russia and the West in Ukraine commenced, casting a shadow across the entire world. The impasse was broken here by multiple communications reaching the gates of the presidential palace in Damascus, indicating what may be dubbed the “great turning point.” So, what happened, and what were the causes and effects?
“No external factor enables a government or an army to stabilize, unless this government and this army enjoy a popular support that safeguard them.”
Egypt’s former Assistant Foreign Minister Hussein Al-Haridi in a recent interview
The pre-planned war in Syria has spanned twelve years and is still ongoing. It is well known that this warfare is not limited to battlegrounds but rather takes various economic, social, and political forms, in a bid to deplete President Bashar Al-Assad’s government. Surprisingly, all of these endeavors, however, were futile.
The Gloomy Tunnel
The arrest of two men in Daraa in March 2011 and the eventual outbreak of sporadic demonstrations in several regions, formed the full-fledged launch of a bloody scenario or even a global war that later appeared that it has been previously plotted. That was at a time when the entire region was experiencing “revolutions” dubbed as the “Arab Spring.”
It has been clear that all intents and schemes including the normalization of ties with the Zionist enemy- through subduing all resistance movements- as well as compensating for the defeat in Iraq, pass through Syria.
Soon after, Western powers, led by the United States, joined Arab countries in raising slogans such as “the freedom of the Syrian people” and “human rights in Syria.” Such moves were aimed at overthrowing the Syrian government’s legitimacy, neglecting thousands of Syrians who protested in support of President Al Assad.
In June 2012, world powers assembled in Geneva to declare “the necessity of a political transition.”
This declaration was only a pretext for escalating the demonstrations into a major military clash, resulting in the formation of organizations such as the “Free Syrian Army” (FSA) and the ” Jaysh al-Islam” (Army of Islam). These organizations comprised Syrians as well as a significant number of mercenaries from other Arab and Western countries, all with diverse backgrounds and agendas, who flocked to attack Damascus.
Since then, Syria has entered a dark tunnel: the country’s unity and sovereignty have been shattered, with almost all areas divided into pro and anti-regime factions. The emergence of Takfiri factions such as “Jabhat Al-Nusra” and “Ahrar Al-Sham” on the battlefield heightened the tensions.
Then in January 2014, the ISIL terrorist group took control of Raqqa and set out to govern vast areas of Syria and Iraq. Backed by regional and Western governments, these organizations have committed the most heinous terrorist acts against the Syrian people, as well as looting riches and systematically destroying the country’s infrastructure.
In addition to the military conflict, fierce media campaigns have intensified, relying on false flag chemical attacks in a bid to defame the Syrian government while disregarding the crimes committed by so-called “opposition factions.”
Syria Battles Bravely
Amid this reality, the Syrian state and its army stood firmly to protect the governing system and fortify Damascus, which had become a target for terrorists. The fall of the capital would have dealt President Assad a tremendous blow.
In September 2014, the US directly engaged in the struggle, organizing a coalition and assisting Kurdish factions under the pretext of eradicating “ISIL” in northern Syria. Later in 2015, and under the request of the Syrian government, Russia joined the war in a bid to aid Damascus in counter-terror operations.
This was a crucial turning point in the warfare, along with Iran’s and Hezbollah’s key roles in the battlefield and victories in more than one strategic battle, such as the clashes of Qusayr and Aleppo.
This video diplays scene of the couter-terror operations in Syria.
Such turning point reflected on Damascus’ recontrol of swathes of the Syrian territory, as well as keeping the threat of terror away from the capital and Aleppo. This was in addition to preventing Turkey, which aided the armed groups, from reaching its aim of dominating that region and eventually beating “ISIL” in the Syrian Badiya battles.
At the time when the military developments were unfolding in Syria, there was a political course emerging. Hence, when Russia, Iran, and the Syrian Army imposed a new status quo in the battlefield, the “Astana Talks” was established. The peace process came after the West and the UN yielded no substantive progress in the negotiations between the government and the so-called opposition, which remained split and withdrew the battlefield in favor of terrorist organizations.
Wary of Kurdish presence in Syria’s north, Turkey joined, afterwards, the Astana Talks as a guarantor state. This political process, which culminated in several rounds, concluded in a settlement, primarily brokered by the Russians and Turks in September 2018. The settlement involved Idlib and the northwest, which has been under terrorist control, resulting in a halt to fighting on those fronts.
Syria’s Outlook in 2020
On the eve of 2020, the Syrian state maintained control, as it had not done for the past nine years, except in the north, where the conflict created a kind of status quo represented by the limited presence of the US forces through several military bases. Undoubtedly, those bases were later utilized as a springboard for stealing oil and wheat. Also, there was a limited Turkish presence in the area under the pretext of countering the so-called Kurdish expansion.
On the other hand, the Israeli enemy found no means to voice concern over the failure of its allies and the victory of its foes. Thereupon, it occasionally breaches Syria’s airspace and launches strikes.
Despite this scenario in the country’s north, almost 12 years of war did not affect Syria’s Arabian identity, as the idea of its federalization had been buried.
This war has resulted in creating a powerful “Axis of Resistance” that extends from Iran through Iraq to Syria, then to Lebanon and Palestine. Consequently, Washington unleashed an economic warfare through the “Caesar” sanctions, depleting the Syrians who stood by their government.
In mid-2020, the Coronavirus pandemic spread all over the world, resulting in a stalemate in the Syria negotiations. Yet, the sanctions remained the most prominent feature in Syrians’ diaries.
Then in 2022, when the pandemic subsided, the war between Russia and the West in Ukraine commenced, casting a shadow across the entire world. The impasse was broken here by multiple communications reaching the gates of the presidential palace in Damascus, indicating what may be dubbed the “great turning point.” So, what happened, and what were the causes and effects?
The US plan involves providing ISIS and other extremist groups with armored vehicles as well as the planned ‘kidnapping’ of Russian and Iranian military personnel
The Director of the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR), Sergey Naryshkin, has warned that the US occupation army is concocting a plan to sow chaos in quake-struck Syria by training and arming members of ISIS and other extremist groups.
“[The US army plans] to form several groups of radicals with a total number of about 300 people. After special training, they will be involved in attacks on military facilities in Syria and Iran,” Naryshkin said in an SVR statement released on 20 March.
“Their patrons intend to use some of the terrorists in the capital region, including for the kidnapping of Russian and Iranian servicemen,” he added.
Washington is allegedly giving “a special role in the effort” to the so-called Free Syrian Army (FSA) – a coalition of Kurdish and Arab rebel fighters that was formed in 2011 by Syrian army defectors and which operates in Syria’s central and northeast regions.
“The Americans and their British allies use them to work with clandestine formations of [ISIS] that are still lingering in the country’s remote regions,” the statement says.
Washington’s efforts to sow chaos in the country come at a time when the Arab world has moved hastily to rebuild ties with Syria, recognizing the failure of the US-sponsored war.
According to the Kremlin, ISIS fighters are tasked with fomenting chaos in Suwayda, Deraa, Homs, Raqqa, and Deir Ezzor governorates. These activities are coordinated from the Al-Tanf military base of the US occupation in Homs.
On top of this, the US army is reportedly getting ready to deliver “several dozen pickup trucks with large-caliber machine guns, as well as the Igla short-range man-portable air defense system, TOW, and NLAW missile defense systems” to the extremist groups.
“Representatives of the US Armed Forces Central Command, along with members from intelligence services, are involved in the planning of major operations against government forces and state structures in Syria,” the SVR reported.
The SVR revelations come just days after US Central Command (CENTCOM) chief, General Michael Kurilla, bemoaned that the Russian air force has increased the frequency of “unprofessional” and “unsafe” flyovers of US occupation bases in Syria.
Despite US claims that it is committed to the defeat of ISIS, earlier this month Al-Monitor noted: “Nearly four years after the [ISIS] defeat on the battlefield, some 10,000 suspected fighters from the group remain in makeshift prisons under [US-proxy militia] control, with not even a hint of international political will to establish war crimes tribunals on the horizon.”
Following last year’s deadly prison riot in Ghweran prison in US-controlled Hasakah, reports said the US army used the chaos to quietly transfer hundreds of ISIS members to Deir Ezzor – including a significant number of high-ranking leaders – in a bid to “revive” the extremist group in Syria’s oil-rich regions.
This took place just a few months before two US Army CH-47 Chinook helicopters were spotted airlifting ISIS fighters in Iraq’s northern province of Kirkuk after clashes with the Iraqi army.
In the early years of the Syrian war, Washington welcomed the growth of ISIS in Iraq and Syria. An August 2012 Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) report made clear that Salafists, the Muslim Brotherhood, and Al-Qaeda were the driving forces of the US and Gulf-backed insurgency against Damascus and that the US and its regional allies supported the establishment of a “Salafist principality” in eastern Syria.
For 18 months after the declaration of the so-called Caliphate, US planners took no action against ISIS, allowing the group to threaten Baghdad and Damascus.
More recently, the US army has been accused of training militants affiliated with ISIS and Al-Qaeda at Al-Tanf base to fight in Ukraine and to carry out attacks inside the territory of former Soviet states.
ISIS ranks in Afghanistan were bolstered last year by US-trained spies and elite military personnel who were abandoned following Washington’s chaotic withdrawal from the country last year, according to former Afghan officials that spoke with western media outlets.
Tunisian President Kais Saied said on 10 March that he is seeking a reappointment of ambassadors between his country and Syria, representing the growing Arab consensus to reintegrate the Syrian government into the regional fold.
“A decision must be taken on this issue,” Saied was quoted to have told Tunisia’s Foreign Minister Nabil Ammar during a meeting.
“Nothing can justify the absence of a Tunisian ambassador in Damascus and an ambassador from Syria in Tunis … The question of the regime in Syria concerns only the Syrian people, and we deal with the Syrian state,” the president added.
On 9 February, following the devastating earthquake that struck Turkiye and Syria, Saeid disclosed that the two countries were set to restore diplomatic relations, which Tunisia severed in 2012 as a result of what western and Gulf media claimed was the government’s ‘brutal crackdown on protests.’
Since 2021, Saied expressed an openness to upgrading his country’s diplomatic relations with the Syrian government.
This represents the growing embrace that Syria has witnessed from several Arab countries since the devastating quake struck the country on 6 February.
Countries such as Saudi Arabia, a principal instigator of the Syrian war, expressed the need to end the international and regional isolation of Syria – isolation which Washington continues to encourage despite its impediment of humanitarian aid to the disaster-stricken nation.
In 2017, Tunis reinstituted a limited diplomatic mission in Syria in order to track over 3,000 Tunisian militants fighting with the opposition.
The presence of foreign militants in Syria has been recorded as early as 2011, despite claims to the contrary by the opposition, which maintains until this day that there was no armed, anti-government activity in the country until 2012. This is despite the fact that armed men were filmed crossing the border into Syria from Iraq in 2011 by Al-Jazeera journalist Ali Hashem, whose video was suppressed by the Qatari-funded media outlet.
Militants from Tunisia, in particular, were present in Syria as early as 2011.
In 2014, writer and analyst on West Asian geopolitics, Sharmine Narwani, wrote – citing a Tunisian television report – that “a Tunisian jihadist who goes by the name of Abu Qusay, told Tunisian television that his ‘task’ in Syria [in 2011] was to destroy and desecrate mosques with Sunni names,” as well as to write “pro-government and blasphemous slogans on mosque walls” in order to incite sectarian tension and instigate defections from the Syrian army.
“It was a ‘tactic,’ he [said], to get the soldiers to ‘come on our side’ so that the army can become weak,” Narwani cited the Tunisian militant as saying. Actions such as this, as well as foreign funding, resulted in the Syrian military defections that triggered the rise of the Free Syrian Army (FSA) in 2011.
The Tunisian television report has since been removed from YouTube.
The supreme commander of the US Army and allied forces, including the Biden’s oil thieves, Al Qaeda Levant, and its ISIS offshoot terrorists sneaked into Syria to boost the morale of his soldiers after the US-led NATO’s miserable failure in Ukraine.
US Army General Mark Milley, the top commanding of Al Qaeda Levant and ISIS and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the USA sneaked into Syria without obtaining a visa from a Syrian embassy and without asking permission from the Syrian authorities, however, we think that he did inform the Russian army of his illegal visit, similar to how his boss Biden asked permission from Russia to visit his proxy puppet in Kiev last month.
When asked by Pentagon propagandists accompanying him on his illegal trip into Syria whether the risk of sacrificing 900 of the US troops who are illegally deployed for almost 8 years in Syria is worth the war criminal said ‘the answer is yes.’
US Army General Mark Milley chief of US joint staff and supreme commander of ISIS in Syria
The British regime’s propaganda news outlet Reuters quoted the US general commanding ISIS telling his travel mates that he believes the task assigned to the 900 soldiers in Syria is worth risking their lives.
The task of those 900 troops was laid out by the former US commander in chief Donald Trump to “steal the Syrian oil because he likes oil” and Milley added that the task includes protecting their allies in Syria, those would be the thousands of Al Qaeda, ISIS, and Kurdish SDF separatist terrorists.
In addition to stealing Syrian oil and protecting the terrorists of Al Qaeda, ISIS, and the Kurdish separatists, the task of the US troops in Syria is also to steal the food of the Syrian children in order to exert pressure on the Syrian state to force it into providing consensus that would serve the crime families of the Bidens, Clintons, Trumps, Obamas, and their puppeteers.
On its behalf, the Syrian ministry of foreign affairs condemned the illegal visit of the US officer, a spokesperson in the ministry said in a statement:
“Syria condemns the illegal visit of the US Chief of Staff to an illegal military base in northeastern Syria,” adding that “Damascus affirms that the illegal visit of the US Chief of Staff is a flagrant violation of its sovereignty, territorial integrity, and unity.”
The Syrian ministry of foreign affairs source added: “Syria calls on Washington to stop its systematic and continuous violations of international law and to stop its support for separatist armed militias.”
Defying the attempts by the USA and its proxies to prevent it from combating terrorism in the country, the Syrian ministry of foreign affairs spokesperson concluded in their statement:
“Damascus confirms that the American practices will not deviate it from its approach to combating terrorism and preserving its sovereignty, security, and stability.”
An undeclared task assigned to the US troops illegally deployed in Syria is to act as cannon fodders for Israel, whenever Israel bombs Syria, the Syrian Resistance responds by bombing the US troops in Syria.
US troops in Syria illegally occupy bases in the Syrian Al Tanf region at the joint Syrian – Iraqi – Jordanian borders, also in Hasakah and Deir Ezzor provinces where they ‘coincidentally’ are based at Syria’s main oil and gas fields.
From their base in Al Tanf, the US Army troops train and command a group of ISIS (ISIL – Daesh) remnants which recently had a marketing rebranding changing its name from ‘Maghawir Thawra‘ (revolution commandos) to Syrian Free Army. These ‘commandos’ are responsible for numerous terrorist attacks in the southern Syrian provinces of Daraa, Sweida, and Quneitra, and in the central Syrian open desert. The bases in the northern part oversee the ISIS breeding farm in Al Hol and the smuggling of stolen Syrian oil to Iraq.
Syria News is a collaborative effort by two authors only, we end up most of the months paying from our pockets to maintain the site’s presence online, if you like our work and want us to remain online you can help by chipping in a couple of Euros/ Dollars or any other currency so we can meet our site’s costs.You can also donate with Cryptocurrencies through our donate page. Thank you in advance.
Biden forces illegally deployed and operating in Syria to help ISIS and other terrorist groups continue their task of stealing the Syrian oil and depriving the Syrian people of their own fuel despite the devastating earthquake that struck the country earlier this month.
Locals in the countryside of Al Yarubiya in northeastern Syria spotted a new convoy of tankers loaded with stolen Syrian oil and protected by the US Army heading toward Iraq through the illegal Mahmoudiya border crossing.
The locals said they counted 34 tankers in the convoy which was also guarded by vehicles of the US-sponsored Kurdish SDF separatist terrorists coming from the oil wells of the Syrian Hasakah province in northeastern Syria.
Under the guise of combating ISIS (ISIL – Daesh), the terrorist organization that was founded by the former US junta of Obama / and Zionist Biden, the US Army led a coalition of similar evil forces comprising several NATO armies, a host of black op units from the most retard political regimes in the world, the Saudis and Qataris, along with officers from the Israeli IDF and Mossad terrorist organizations, Jordanian and Turkish ‘intelligence’ units, and some local units of the defunct FSA, the umbrella created to spring-up Al Qaeda Levant.
Instead of combating ISIS, the terrorist organization was founded under the US army’s watchful eyes, grew in numbers and weapons, and moved in its brand new machine guns-mounted Toyota pickups across the open deserts between Iraq and Syria which are under US control, those were former US Secretary of State John Kerry’s own words.
The US Army and its coalition buddies were also busy with other tasks, they created the Kurdish SDF separatist terrorists and branched out Al Qaeda Levant into dozens of smaller competing terrorist groups to further the goal of destroying Syria, the last secular country in the region while the US Army does what it only knows what to do: steal oil.
Former US Commander in Chief laid out the only task of the US troops in Syria: ‘to keep the oil,’ he said and added: ‘I like oil.’
Meanwhile, the Syrian people continue suffering from severe shortages in food and fuel to heat their homes, cook their meals, fill their cars and public transportation, deliver humanitarian aid to the destroyed areas, and run their factories in order to survive.
Syria News is a collaborative effort by two authors only, we end up most of the months paying from our pockets to maintain the site’s presence online, if you like our work and want us to remain online you can help by chipping in a couple of Euros/ Dollars or any other currency so we can meet our site’s costs.You can also donate with Cryptocurrencies through our donate page. Thank you in advance.
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Alexandr Svaranc In today’s geopolitical dynamics, Russia and Turkey maintain a relevant regional presence in strategically important regions of the Near and Middle East, where the interests of the two powers can combine and diverge. However, the ruling elites have a high sense of maintaining a balance of power, respecting national interests, avoiding the prospect of radicalization of conflict situations and seeking decoupling to strengthen regional peace and mutually beneficial cooperation.
It should be recognized that the administrations of Presidents Vladimir Putin and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan have so far succeeded in finding relatively acceptable solutions to crisis situations through constructive dialogue, guiding the diplomacy of the two countries towards finding joint solutions on the same issue of Syria, overcoming the burden of historical stereotypes and building a new example of a worthy partnership.
In this context, Russia and Turkey have established a number of effective negotiating platforms (in particular the Astana, Sochi and Geneva summits in multilateral and bilateral formats). Russia understands the concerns of Turkish partners on key issues of Turkey’s national security (including ethnic separatism, external threats to territorial integrity and international terrorism). Russia, given its economic, resource, technological, intellectual and military-industrial strength, does not set out to suppress its important geographical neighbor. On the contrary, Moscow is developing a high level of strategic partnership in all the aforementioned areas, making a significant contribution to stabilizing Turkey’s financial and economic situation and strengthening its defense potential, and expects to expand trade with the ambitious goal of reaching USD 100 billion.
The stability and progress of each country depends not least on border security and the normalization of relations with its immediate neighbors. The political course of Turkey’s ruling Justice Party, led by its charismatic leader Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, proclaimed the “Zero Problems with the Neighbors” strategy in the early 2000s. For the Republic of Turkey, which will celebrate its 100th anniversary in 2023, the tradition of a post-imperial state remains high, where the complex history of the collapse of the Ottoman Empire following World War I was partly transformed into a painful relationship with many of its neighbors, who regained or lost their independence on the wreckage of the collapsed state.
Of course, the declaration of the said strategy without taking into account current realities cannot simultaneously succeed on all directions of Turkey’s borders and requires time and painstaking diplomatic work on bilateral and multilateral levels. At the same time, Turkey has had a number of positive achievements in shaping better relations with Russia, Georgia, Bulgaria and African countries. There is every reason to believe that Ankara is also interested in restoring full-fledged friendly relations with such a key country in the Arab East as Syria.
The peculiarities of the US regional policy in the Middle East have led to widespread destabilization in a number of Arab countries, to the negative phenomenon of the growth of radical Islamic movements with their institutionalization as Al Qaeda and ISIS (both terrorist groups banned in Russia), which eventually led to the chaos in a large part of the Levant. Accordingly, the destabilization of the political situation in the same Syria has provoked ethnic and religious strife, triggered a wave-like flow of a large army of refugees mainly to neighboring Turkey, and caused a significant social and economic crisis which took a heavy toll on the Turkish economy.
For Turkey, the politicization of the Kurdish issue within and near its national borders is an objective concern, forcing the authorities to pursue a tough course to prevent another territorial redistribution and, as a consequence, new social cataclysms in the Near and Middle East. Both Turkey and its reliable partners have to contend with these challenges.
The Russian peacekeeping operation in Syria since fall 2015 has set a new precedent for eliminating the US foreign monopoly in this region. With the arrival of the Russian Air Force, conditions have developed on Syrian territory for more effective interaction with key states in the Near and Middle East (in particular Turkey and Iran) to curb the threat of international terrorism emanating from ISIS (terrorist group banned in Russia) and to find political ways to resolve the accumulated differences in the Syrian-Turkish agenda, combining them with effective peacekeeping operations.
Turkey, which has problems with Kurdish separatism, is very sensitive to attempts to activate the Kurdish militant movement in Syria. This is why, after the Syrian Kurds declared political autonomy in 2014, Ankara recognized the Syrian Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD) as a terrorist organization and ally of the PKK, which is banned in Turkey, and the fighting wing of the PYD, the People’s Protection Units (YPG), as a military opponent. Partly due to the Russian presence in Syria, a number of Turkey’s limited military operations in the north have become a reality in order to avoid the creation of quasi Kurdish independent territorial entities capable of intensifying terrorist and separatist threats to Ankara. In particular:
– Operation Euphrates Shield in 2016-2017 (as a result, the cities of Jarablus and al-Bab were subjected to military mop-ups, 2,000 square kilometers of Syrian territory came under Turkish control with the formation of a security buffer zone there);
– Operation Olive Branch in 2018 to prevent the Kurdish-populated cantons of Jazira, Kobani and Afrin from uniting and the Kurds from reaching the Mediterranean Sea (Afrin ended up under full control of Turkish forces);
– Operation Peace Spring in October 2019, with Turkish military and pro-Turkish Free Syrian Army (FSA) units advancing deep into northern Syria, taking control of new population centers – Ras al-Ain and Tel Abyad, cutting the strategic M-4 highway. Thanks to effective negotiations between the Russian and Turkish leaders in Sochi on October 22, 2019, new zones of influence in north-eastern Syria were secured, with the status quo maintained in Turkish-occupied areas and the withdrawal of all Kurdish groups from the entire border with Turkey 30km inland, as well as the establishment of Russian-Turkish patrols in the area.
It should be noted that from operation to operation, Turkey has built up its military forces from special forces units to the use of armored vehicles, artillery and air force with a combination of infantry from the same FSA units, gaining new experience in combat operations in this theater.
In November 2022, with air strikes against Kurdish military bases (in Kobani, Aleppo, Raqqa, al-Hasakah), Turkey announced a new “Operation Claw-Sword” in northern Syria. The formal occasion was the terrorist act of November 13, 2022 in Istanbul’s Istiklal Square, which the Turkish intelligence services recognized to be organized by Kurdish insurgents (in particular the PKK and a Kurdish fighter executor from Syria). Ankara aims to implement a declared plan to establish a 30-kilometer security zone along the entire border with Syria.
Erdoğan has announced his intention to conduct a ground operation involving regular army forces alongside the air operation. He also criticized Russia to a certain extent. Turkey’s leader believes that Moscow has not fully met its obligations under the 2019 Sochi agreements to withdraw Kurds from the 30-kilometer zone. However, the creation of the same “Idlib Security Zone” with Russian participation was, infamously, prevented by the fact that the US refused to withdraw its forces from the zone with the support of local Kurdish forces.
Russia and Turkey have gone a long way towards an effective partnership in the Syrian crisis. Of course, every time Moscow and Ankara make progress in finding new solutions to stabilize the situation in northern Syria, the US, aware of the loss of its own hegemony in the region, finds another form of torpedoing the Russian-Turkish agreements. Accordingly, the Russian-Turkish effective partnership is perceived in Washington as a kind of attack on America’s monopoly and a breakdown of NATO unity, plagued by equally obvious internal contradictions.
Meanwhile, Russia-Turkey relations are progressing with strong results to show for it. Thus, according to Mehmet Samsar, Turkish Ambassador to Russia, the trade turnover between Russia and Turkey by the end of 2022 could be close to USD 50 billion, an increase of USD 15 billion over 2021. The scope of this partnership is expanding: from a gas pipeline to a nuclear power plant, from military and technical cooperation to joint actions for regional peace, from a grain deal to a gas hub. Turkey remains one of the few NATO countries that has not supported total sanctions against Russia in the context of the special military operation in Ukraine, pursues a traditionally pragmatic policy and maintains its role as a reliable partner and effective mediator in relations with its northern neighbor.
The author believes that, in the new year too, the Russian-Turkish situational alliance that has developed in recent years will maintain its momentum of growth, trust and optimization of new opportunities. The coming year 2023 will prove to be a time of intense and important political, economic, military and cultural events in the lives of the two countries. In particular, the next presidential election in Turkey, the launch of ambitious new economic projects (the gas hub, the unblocking of important regional communications, the prospect of a second nuclear power plant near Sinop on the Turkish Black Sea Coast), the establishment of stability in the safe corridor on the Turkish-Syrian border, the approach of peace in the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, etc. All this points to a broader agenda of Russia-Turkey relations, where the parties can complement each other and interact effectively.
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The resumption of ties between Hamas and Syria is a symbolic victory for the resistance, as relations were strained for years following the start of the war
GAZA CITY, THE GAZA STRIP, PALESTINE – 2018/12/16: A masked Palestinian seen holding a flag during the rally.
Palestinians take part in a rally marking the 31st anniversary of Hamas’ founding, in Gaza City. (Photo by Mahmoud Issa/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)
On 20 October, the US denounced and warned against the current reconciliation process between Syria and Palestinian resistance movement Hamas, stating that the group’s communication with Damascus will reinforce its “isolation” and undermine the interests of Palestinians.
“The Assad regime’s outreach to this terrorist organization only reinforces for us its isolation,” State Department spokesman, Ned Price, told media.
“It harms the interests of the Palestinian people and it undercuts global efforts to counterterrorism in the region and beyond,” he said, adding that Washington will “continue rejecting any support to rehabilitate the Assad regime, particularly from designated terrorist organizations like Hamas.”
Relations between Damascus and the Palestinian resistance group took a sour turn in 2012, a year after the start of the US-backed war in Syria, when Hamas publicly denounced the Syrian government and announced its solidarity with the opposition that had by that time already become aligned with extremist elements.
In 2013, Hamas operatives fought alongside the Free Syrian Army (FSA) factions and Jabhat al-Nusra against Hezbollah and the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) during the battle of al-Qusayr, in western Syria near the Lebanese border.
The ties between Hamas and the axis of resistance were strained for years after the group’s involvement in the Syrian war. Regardless of this, Hezbollah never condemned Hamas for what was seen by many as a huge betrayal, and in 2013 held meetings with the group’s representatives in a bid to ease tensions.
In recent years, Hamas made a number of attempts to resume ties with the Syrian government, despite the non-compliance of Damascus. On 25 July, however, Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah revealed to Al-Mayadeen his personal interest in bringing the two together.
Relations between Hezbollah and Hamas had already thawed at this point, especially in light of the high-level coordination which took place between the two groups during the 2021 Sayf al-Quds battle fought between the Palestinian resistance factions and Israel.
In June of this year, a Hamas delegation reportedly visited Syria and met with officials in a bid to rebuild their relationship.
On 15 September, Hamas disclosed in a press statement that it has officially resumed its relations with Syria after ten years of tension. A month later, President Bashar al-Assad received a Hamas delegation and held a “warm” meeting in Damascus.
“The meeting with Assad is a glorious day, and from now on, we will resume our presence in Damascus to work alongside the Syrian people to regain the country’s stability,” the group’s deputy leader, Khalil al-Hayya said at the time, denouncing all aggression and threats against the country’s territorial integrity.
The reconciliation between Hamas and Syria signifies the return of Damascus into the regional fold, and is expected to be met with further criticism and rejection by Washington and its allies, particularly Israel.
The only tragedy about the death at 96 years of age of Youssef al-Qaradawi, the spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, the world’s deadliest terrorist grouping, is that the Muslim Brotherhood did not die along with him.
The only tragedy about the death at 96 years of age of Youssef al-Qaradawi, the spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, the world’s deadliest terrorist grouping, is that the Muslim Brotherhood did not die along with him.
Qaradawi was the Egyptian born spiritual head of the Muslim Brotherhood murder gang. Typical of the beliefs Qaradawi espoused was that Hitler went too easy on the Jews, that the world’s 100 million Shia, along with all apostates from Sunni Islam, must be exterminated and that his Islamic Caliphate should rule over us all. He lived in Qatar and, when not spewing out misogynistic, Shiaphobic, anti Semitic bile from that excuse for a country on al Jazeera’s top rating TV show. this hateful, Hitler loving demagogue issued fatwas to the Muslim Brotherhood faithful to slaughter Syria’s minorites and “apostates”.
The Muslim Brotherhood, its strong links with Western intelligence forces and dubious Trotsykist groups notwithstanding, is the Arab world’s original, most subversive, and most dangerous terrorist organization. It strongly believes in imposing the Caliphate and, as their countless atrocities in Egypt and Syria show, murdering or subjugating all who resist them. There will be no peace in the Arab or Western worlds until the Muslim Brotherhood is crushed in its Egyptian and Syrian spawning grounds and in those areas of the Western world NATO has allowed it colonize. Syria’s former ruler, the late Hafez el Assad, accurately described these NATO aligned devils in this video.
Following their failed 1982 coup, most Syrian Muslim Brotherhood terrorists fled into safe haven bolt holes from where they built a network of dedicated and highly professional cadres to spew their toxins. Though the Muslim Brotherhood Support Network in the West deserves a lot more scrutiny to determine why supposed left wing groups support these sectarian cut throats, they are, from my experience at least, protected by MI5 and allied intelligence agencies.
Take the case of Omar Gabbar, who shared a platform with prominent child sex jihad proponent Muhammed al-Arefe. Not only did Gabbar’s Hand in Hand for Syria front group secure one of the world’s top child sex jihadist recruiters in their first month of operation “from a Leicester kitchen table” but their original posters were designed by Turkish-based hacks of the terrorist Free Syrian Army, whose flag is emblazoned on the logo of Hand in Hand for Syria. Gabbar should, together with the legal hounds and British armed response units he set on me, consider that decent people, who are not members of the Muslim Brotherhood or any of its satellites, have got very lengthy prison tariffs for much less. Though al-Arefe is now barred from Britain, Omar Gabbar remains there and, like many others, who brought al-Arefe to Britain, is allowed work, as a hospital consultant in his case, where he has access to the young and impressionable children al-Arefe expects to do sex jihad.
The Muslim Brotherhood are allowed leverage the professional status of operatives like Gabbar not only to bring sex jihadist recruiting sergeants like Al Arefe to England to help the Canadian secret service ferry child brides like Shamima Begum to their Syrian caliphate but to collect tens of millions of dollars for the Caliphate under false pretenses thanks, in large part to the control MI5 have over the Charity Commission which can be seen, inter alia, by the example of Samara’s Appeal, a dodgy Anglican cult charity focused on Syria, which is exempted from having to list its trustees.
Gabbar is not the Muslim Brotherhood’s only well placed British asset. Dr Rola Hallam is the daughter of Mousa al Kurdi, one of the head honchos in the supposedly moderate wing of Syria’s Murder Inc; she can drive through ISIS checkpoints at will, as this website based on BBC Panorama’s farcical puff piece plainly illustrates.. Though Hand in Hand for Syria’s collusion with ISIS, as evidenced by their ability to sail through ISIS checkpoints and to work in ISIS strongholds, is a further indication that the moderate and less moderate wings of Syria’s Murder Inc are in bed together and that the British and Irish authorities should consider rounding up the flotsam working with them, that will not happen because Qaradawi’s Muslim Brotherhood are so well engrained at the heart of British and Irish political life.
At the center of the effort to hijack Ireland’s traditional tolerance stand the extremists of the Clonskeagh Mosque aka The Islamic Cultural Centre of Ireland, which Wikileaks’ leaked U.S. cable and all informed writers say, have embedded ties to the most extreme elements of the Muslim Brotherhood murder gang. The mosque or “cultural center”, which gets massive subsidies from the opaque Dubai-based Al Maktoum foundation and sources linked to other totalitarian Gulf states, regularly hosts such “scholars” as Saudi cleric Salman al Awda, who calls for the total extermination of all Americans, and Egyptian demagogue Wagdy Ghoneim, whose views likewise make him an international pariah in places where the writ of the Muslim Brotherhood does not run as deeply as it does in Ireland.
The “cultural center’s” head religious figure is Hussein Halawa, an Egyptian blow-in, who has lived in Ireland for decades but who cannot speak either English or Irish. Halawa reported directly to Yusuf al-Qaradawi through The European Council for Fatwa and Research (ECFR) which al Qaradawi controlled. Although the arch-bigot Qaradawi was eventually banned from Ireland, Halawa not only remains at large but his children, who were arrested on Muslim Brotherhood related terror charges in Egypt, became a cause célèbre amongst Ireland’s media and large sections of Ireland’s political class, despite Halawa being a leading supporter of Qaradawi and his cut throats. If Halawa was just an otherwise parasitical, functionally illiterate Egyptian blow-in and if female Irish “reverts” were not ending up in accident and emergency wards after “honor beatings”, some of this idiot’s utterances might be tolerable but the fact that his children felt compelled to rush to aid Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood as they persecuted Copts and lynched Shias should be definite warning flags even if an alarmingly large number of Irish politicians and other useful idiots opportunistically support him.
In an earlier piece on MI5 subversion in Iran, I cited the great Gamal Nasser mocking the Muslim Brotherhood over their attempts to destroy secular Egypt. Qaradawi and the Muslim Brotherhood could claim to have got the last laugh both in Egypt and Syria, thanks both to their outright terrorism and the massive support they have received from the intelligence agencies of the United States, Canada, Britain, Israel, Ireland and a host of other countries with no more regard to the harm they do than have any other comparable bunch of sociopaths. Although Syria’s current President has repeatedly warned the West against the spill over effects of Muslim Brotherhood terrorism, Western leaders do not care because it is not how they are hard wired.
As long as the Biden, Obama, Clinton, Cheney, Blair and Bush families, together with their minions, can benefit from promoting the Zelenskys and Qaradawis of this world, innocents will continue to die in Armenia, Syria, Yemen, Russia or anywhere else, Western Europe included, they choose to make a wasteland. So, to conclude, grieve not for Qaradawi but only that the Muslim Brotherhood and all its obnoxious tentacles have survived him.
The Syrian regime-change war and Lebanon’s economic collapse happened under Saad Hariri’s watch, but the Future Movement leader is seldom mentioned for the pivotal role he played in Lebanon’s unravelling
In 2005, US neoconservatives centered around then-Vice President Dick Cheney’s office began collaborating with Saudi Prince Bandar bin Sultan, defected former Syrian Vice President Abd Al-Halim Khaddam, and the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood to topple the Syrian government.
Washington did so as part of an effort to topple the governments of seven countries in five years, including Libya and Iran, using the so-called ‘War on Terror’ as a pretext.
However another crucial, though overlooked collaborator in the regime change effort was pro-Saudi Lebanese politician Saad Hariri. And his actions would soon see massive repercussions unfold in his own country.
The dynastic Hariris
In 2005, Saad’s father, former Lebanese prime minister Rafiq Hariri, was assassinated in a massive car bombing, which a highly-politicized UN-backed court pinned on two individuals affiliated with Lebanese resistance group Hezbollah. In the wake of Rafiq’s death, Saad came to head not only the Saudi-supported Future Movement – Lebanon’s leading Sunni political party – but also the multi-billion-dollar Hariri business conglomerate established by his father in Saudi Arabia.
Initially, the US, French, and Israeli governments quickly blamed Syria for Rafiq’s killing. Presumably, Saad was motivated to participate in the US-led regime change effort in Syria as a result.
But business interests also played a role as Saad wished to gain control over Syria’s telecommunication sector. This is something his father had previously tried, but failed to accomplish.
As French journalist Georges Malbrunot details in his book The Road to Damascus, Syria first launched its mobile phone industry in the early 2000’s, and Lebanon’s prime minister at the time, Rafiq Al-Hariri, wanted to invest in one of the two Syrian companies that had just been created for this purpose.
But Rami Makhlouf, cousin of Syria’s President Bashar Al-Assad and the dominant investor in the sector, blocked Rafiq’s efforts. Malbrunot notes further that according to a lawyer close to the Syrian government, “there was an immediate veto from the intelligence services against Hariri.”
While the Baath Party may have considered the telecommunications sector to be of strategic importance – and therefore not open to outsiders – Assad would have also been concerned about Hariri’s direct role in bribing top Syrian officials, including then-Vice President Abdul Halim Khaddam, prior to his defection, among a broad slate of other grievances.
In the wake of Rafiq’s assassination, Saad was quick to pick up his father’s baton. At the time the Christian Science Monitor reported that:
“[Saad Hariri] may be a newcomer to Lebanese politics, but Hariri is no neophyte. He ran his father’s massive construction company, Saudi Oger, for over a decade and has extensive financial interests in telecommunications in the Middle East. He is ranked at 548 in Forbes Magazine’s annual list of billionaires with an estimated fortune of $1.2 billion. His father was ranked 108th with $4.3 billion. Hariri has adopted his father’s globe-trotting existence, holding talks with Jacques Chirac, the French president and a close family friend, Vice President Dick Cheney, and Middle East leaders.”
Saad’s support of Salafi-jihadists
In addition to running his deceased father’s business conglomerate, Saad was active in protecting Al-Qaeda affiliated militant groups in Lebanon. Journalist Seymour Hersh notes that according to a 2005 International Crisis Group (ICG) report, Hariri had helped release four Salafist militants from prison who had previously trained in Al-Qaeda camps in Afghanistan and were arrested in Lebanon while trying to establish an Islamic state in the north of the country.
Hariri also used his influence in parliament to obtain amnesty for another 29 Salafist militants, including seven suspected of bombing foreign embassies in Beirut a year prior. Hersh notes that according to a senior official in the Lebanese government, “We have a liberal attitude that allows Al-Qaeda types to have a presence here.”
In the wake of the radical Fatah Al-Islam’s 2007 battle with the Lebanese army, which destroyed the Nahr Al-Bared Palestinian refugee camp, Charles Harb of the American University of Beirut (AUB) observed that Saad was giving “political cover” to “radical Sunni movements” that could be directed and employed against the Resistance Axis of Iran, Syria, and Hezbollah.
Harb also noted the involvement of Saudi intelligence in cultivating these groups. He explained that “Several reports have highlighted efforts by Saudi officials to strengthen Sunni groups, including radical ones, to face the Shia renaissance across the region. But building up radical Sunni groups to face the Shia challenge can easily backfire.”
Start of the ‘Syrian Revolution’
In early 2011, US planners exploited dissatisfaction among certain segments of Syrian society – not only pro-western liberals but also the country’s Salafi community – to spark initial ‘Arab Spring’ type protests in the country.
Saad Hariri’s interest in gaining control of the Syrian telecommunication network via any successful regime-change operation was hinted at during the first protest in Daraa, a predominantly Sunni governorate, on 18 March, 2011.
As Syrian sociologist Muhammad Jamal Barout revealed, protestors in Daraa chanted against Rami Makhlouf and demanded that his businesses be expelled from the province (recall that Makhlouf held the dominant position in Syria’s telecommunications sector).
Salafist militants, including from Al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI), quickly began attacking Syrian security forces under the cover of the early protests. US planners facilitated these attacks (with the help of Prince Bandar), in the hope of unleashing a sectarian civil war on the country comparable to that which had destroyed Iraq starting in 2003.
The Future Movement and Salafi terror
Prominent opposition and human rights activist Haitham Manna provided evidence that elements close to Saad Al-Hariri were among those funneling weapons to the Salafist militants in Syria, including in Daraa, in part to secure financial interests.
According to Muhammad Jamal Barout, Manna’ publicly disclosed in an interview on Al-Jazeera on 31 March, 2011, that “he had received offers to arm movements from Raqqa to Daraa three times by parties he did not identify in the interview.”
Barout additionally writes that, according to Manna, there were secret communications between some Syrian businessmen abroad who found themselves bent on revenge against the Assad government because their interests had been harmed by the network of the pro-government businessman Makhlouf.
Furthermore, these groups were willing to fund and arm opposition movements throughout the country. Barout notes that these businessmen apparently had relations with professional networks capable of delivering weapons to any location in Syria and that some members of the Future Movement in Lebanon were among those arranging these weapons shipments.
One name pops up more than others: Okab Sakr, the MP from Hariri’s Future movement made infamous in phone conversations leaked to Lebanese media outlet Al Akhbar, in which he directly discusses large weapons transfers to Syrian militants.
Writes The Guardian of Hariri’s close confidant: “Every time Okab is in town the weapons start to move across the border,” said a rebel colonel from the Jebel al-Zawiya region, who calls himself Abu Wael.
Sakr eventually fled the country to avoid repercussions for his illicit activities, and admitted to his role in arming the Syrian conflict, which dragged Lebanon into the messy and dangerous fray.
Within no time, Fatah Al-Islam and other militants previously under the protection of Hariri and Saudi intelligence in Lebanon were soon identified on the battlefield in Syria. Dr. Haytham Mouzahem, director of the Beirut Center for Middle East Studies explained that, “When the uprising in Syria began in 2011, many of the remaining Fatah al-Islam members crossed the border and joined groups in the Free Syrian Army [FSA].”
This provided one indication among many that the FSA – as it was known then – was not secular, democratic, or comprised primarily of army defectors, as is often claimed, but rather consisted primarily of Salafist militants, including many affiliated with Al-Qaeda.
The role of Al-Qaeda militants from Lebanon came further into focus in the summer of 2011, when Der Spiegel reported that a prominent Salafist cleric in Tripoli was sending fighters into Syria as early as summer 2011 because, in his view, “Assad is an infidel” and “There is a holy war in Syria and the young men there are conducting jihad. For blood, for honor, for freedom, for dignity.”
According to one of the fighters interviewed by the German magazine, around 60 percent of the Lebanese fighters crossing the border from Tripoli to Homs had previously fought in Iraq.
Syrian fallout: Refugees flood into Lebanon
As the months and years passed, more and more jihadists flooded into Syria. As they did, and as fighting with the Syrian army and its allies intensified and became more brutal and sectarian, more and more Syrian civilians flooded into Lebanon to flee the conflict back home.
With the onset of war in Syria in 2011 and subsequent US sanctions, the Syrian economy began to massively contract, which in turn caused the closely connected Lebanese economy to gradually slow as well.
Given that Lebanon is a small country facing its own disastrous economic crisis, it has been unable to provide decent living conditions for even its own 5.5 million residents, let alone for the 1.7 million Syrian refugees present in the country.
Because US planners, along with their many regional collaborators including Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Lebanon and others, launched a dirty war on Syria in 2011 causing millions of Syrians to flee their homes and seek refuge in bordering states, it is the US and its close allies that bear most of the responsibility for the current refugee crisis Lebanon now faces.
Accommodating such a large number of refugees would always be difficult, but this became near impossible after the October 2019 Lebanese banking crisis, which in turn caused what the World Bank described as a “brutal” economic contraction of a magnitude “usually associated with conflicts or wars.” Even relatively prosperous and middle-class Lebanese were plunged into poverty, losing most of their life savings, as the Lebanese lira quickly plunged.
A Hariri legacy: Lebanon’s economic collapse
The origins of the crisis can be traced to the creation of a banking infrastructure based on efforts to maintain a currency peg between the Lebanese lira and US dollar.
This system was established by Lebanese central banker Riad Salameh in the 1990’s in the wake of the Lebanese civil war, presumably to restore economic stability needed after the wild currency swings seen throughout the conflict.
Then-prime minister Rafiq Hariri had appointed Salameh – his personal money manager at US brokerage firm Merrill Lynch – as governor of Lebanon’s Central Bank.
To maintain the peg, Salameh effectively established a Ponzi scheme that enriched wealthy Lebanese as well as the bankers themselves. As the New York Timesexplained:
“Lebanon’s Central Bank promised that 1,507 Lebanese lira would be worth exactly $1 and that Lebanese banks would always exchange one for the other. That policy brought stability, but it also required Lebanon’s banks to hold a large store of U.S. dollars . . . so the banks could make good on the promise to exchange 1,507 lira for $1 at any point. Lebanese firms also needed dollars to pay for imported goods, a large part of the economy in a country that produces little of what it consumes. . . . To keep dollars flowing in, the head of Lebanon’s Central Bank developed a plan: Banks would offer very generous terms — including an annual interest of 15 percent or even 20 percent — to anybody who would deposit dollars. But the only way for banks to make good on these terms was by repaying the initial depositors with money from new depositors. Of course, there is a name for this practice: a Ponzi scheme.”
The receipt of such high interest rates on deposits allowed wealthy Lebanese both at home and abroad to slowly loot the country. Commercial bankers benefitted as well, by receiving a handsome spread on the interest rate paid by the central bank and forwarded to depositors. The Hariri family benefited directly from the system, both as owners of huge US dollar deposits as well as owners of their own commercial bank, Bankmed.
Riad Salameh personally benefitted from the system as well, setting up a brokerage firm with his brother, Forry Associates, that took some $330 million in fees for brokering the sale of government bonds between 2002 and 2015, $200 million of which were allegedly transferred to Salemeh’s personal accounts with various Lebanese banks, including with Hariri’s Bankmed. These transfers led to the ongoing investigation of Salemeh by European officials on charges of money laundering and embezzlement.
As the protracted Syrian war – aided by Hariri and his allies -across Lebanon’s only viable land border tore into Lebanon’s fragile economy, and the flow of new US dollars entering the Lebanese banking system also began to slow, Salameh’s Ponzi scheme became unsustainable, and finally began to collapse in October 2019.
Lebanese banks began to restrict US dollar withdrawals for small depositors to minor amounts, while secretly allowing wealthy and connected clients to pull out huge sums for transfer abroad. Soon, small depositors, who had themselves deposited dollars, were restricted to withdrawing an unreasonable equivalent in Lebanese liras instead.
The value of the lira quickly dropped by some 90 percent, wiping out the life savings of many and causing mass poverty as prices of everything, including essential goods, skyrocketed. According to banker and political commentator, Ehsani, the total losses for depositors amount to roughly $111 billion.
According to Syria’s President Assad, some $40 billion of those frozen deposits may be of Syrian origin, with huge negative ramifications for the country’s finances and reconstruction efforts.
The October 2019 economic collapse was accompanied by wide-spread protests expressing anger against Lebanon’s broader political class, pressuring Saad Hariri to step down as prime minister.
Despite the key role played by the Hariri-Salameh political clique in establishing, benefitting from, and finally collapsing the Lebanese banking system, and subsequently the entire economy, both Hariri and Salameh continue to enjoy diplomatic and political support from their backers in Washington.
In February 2020, amidst criticism of Salameh’s role in precipitating the crisis, US ambassador to Lebanon Dorothy Shea suggested to Lebanese TV it was “a mistake to scapegoat any one person or institution for Lebanon’s economic collapse” and that Salameh, still “enjoys great confidence in the international financial community.”
The reason for this was provided, at least in part, in April 2019 when Lebanese newspaper Al-Akhbar published minutes of a meeting between the US Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Terrorism Financing and Financial Crimes, Marshall Billingsley, and the (former) Lebanese Economy Minister, Mansour Bteish. The minutes cite a US official saying:
“We need a governor of the Banque du Liban [central bank] and a deputy governor who we can trust, and who is sensitive and with whom confidential information about terrorist financing and money laundering can be exchanged. The situation today is that we trust Governor Riad Salameh and (former) Deputy Governor Muhammad Baasiri.”
As US planners have not been fighting terrorism, but rather funding and arming al-Qaeda affiliated groups to use as proxies in their war against Syria between 2011 and 2017, this suggests Salameh continues to enjoy US protection to avoid details of terrorist financing, in particular Saad Hariri’s role in arming terrorist groups in Syria on behalf of US planners, from coming to light.
It is difficult to imagine that Lebanon can emerge from its current crisis, or deal with corruption and poor governance plaguing the country, while US influence over Lebanese affairs remains dominant and oppressive US sanctions against Syria remain in place.
The views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of The Cradle.
A decade after the unanimous decision by the leadership of Palestinian resistance movement Hamas to leave its base in Syria, a restoration of ties with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad now inches closer to reality.
According to a report by Reuters, Hamas is expected to resume ties with Damascus soon, setting aside the long breakup with Syria.
In the period between 18–19 June, a delegation from Hamas reportedly visited Syria and met with officials, in a bid to rebuild their relationship.
Back in 2011, the Arab world was facing unprecedented turmoil that shocked its foundation and dethroned many of its rulers, leaving no Arab state safe from political upheaval.
At the start of the war on Syria, Hamas leaders Ismail Haniyeh and Khaled Meshaal were forced to end the presence of Hamas in Syria in order to preserve its neutrality, in the face of growing popular support for the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and Syria.
“What pained Abu Walid [Khaled Meshaal] most when leaving Syria were the warm relations with President Al-Assad and the favor Hamas found with the president, which it will never forget,” Hamas leader Moussa Abu Marzouk wrote.
However, it was not long before activists in Hamas were mourned as “martyrs” on social media, fighting against the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) in Idlib.
In December 2012, Hamas field commander Mohammed Ahmed Kenita was killed fighting the SAA.
According to a report by Palestine Now, Kenita arrived from Gaza four months prior and contributed in the graduation of three military combat courses for rebels from the Free Syrian Army (FSA).
But, despite the ever growing sectarian and political differences between the two, Hamas found no other choice but to approach Syria in light of plans by former president Donald Trump to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and the signing of the so-called Abraham Accords.
After Syria resumed ties with the UAE and Bahrain, the two states which harshly criticized Syria in the early days of the war, Hamas found the appropriate time to re-establish contact with Syria.
“Haniyeh and I talked about various issues in the region, including Syria, and that the relationship between Hamas and Syria must be re-established. There is a positive atmosphere, even if that takes time. I think that Hamas is moving towards resetting its relationship with Damascus,” said Secretary General of Hezbollah, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, in an interview in late 2021.
On 21 June, Ismail Haniyeh landed in Beirut to meet Lebanese officials and take part in the 31st Islamic National conference.
Haniyeh is also expected to meet with the leader of Islamic Jihad Ziad al-Nakhalah and with Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah.
In another blow to the sinister plots of the Turkish madman Erdogan, the US-led coalition to support ISIS in Syria and Iraq snatches a top ISIS commander who went astray, apparently, in an area under the Turkish illegal occupation in northern Syria.
In the early hours of dawn, today, the US-led coalition to support ISIS (ISIL) in Syria and Iraq carried out an airdrop operation in the outskirts of the Syrian city of Jarabulus currently under the occupation of the Turkish army and its slew of anti-Islamic Al Qaeda and Al Qaeda-affiliated terrorist groups, the coalition claims they captured a top ISIS commander.
Simultaneously, the Syrian Arab Army units protecting the city of Saraqib in the southeastern countryside of Idlib repelled a large attack by terrorists of the Turkey-sponsored Al Qaeda Levant (aka Nusra Front, HTS, FSA, Moderate Rebels…), the attack was successfully repelled.
The following report by the Lebanese news channel Al Mayadeen covers both of the above news:
The US-led international coalition announced in a statement that its forces had arrested at dawn today a senior leader of ISIS during an operation in Syria, the statement indicated that the detainee is classified as one of the top commanders of the organization in Syria, and he is an expert in making bombs.
According to the statement, the coalition forces will continue to hunt down ISIS remnants wherever they are, to ensure their permanent defeat.
American helicopters had carried out an airdrop operation in the Jarabulus area, north of Aleppo, which is under the control of Turkish-backed militants, the airdrop took place between the villages of Al-Hamir and Ghandour, amid violent clashes.
In parallel, the Syrian army repelled an attack launched by armed groups on the Idlib countryside. According to Sputnik agency, the reconnaissance units of the Syrian army monitored armed groups that tried to advance toward military sites along the line of contact in the vicinity of the city of Saraqib, after which violent clashes erupted in which the Syrian army used artillery and missiles to stop the militants’ attack.
End of the transcript.
Aside from the obvious lies repeatedly spewed that the USA combats terrorism when in reality, its main goal was to achieve its goals through ‘creative chaos’ by sponsoring ‘moderate rebels’ and supplying them with ‘non-lethal weapons’ to effect regime change in Syria, as per official US statements, and as per the very admissions of current and former US officials, these highly choreographed and publicized operations to take out an ISIS commander here or there by US regimes are always carried out when a PR stunt is needed to be used on the domestic level in the USA itself and also to deliver messages to its regional allies that its army is still relevant in military terms, not only to steal oil and wheat from the poor people.
However, the main question we’ve asked before and continue to ask: how come the first and second ISIS leaders felt safe in areas under the control of the Turkish army, for the first, and inside Turkey itself for the second, and now this commander who the US also says it captured in areas under the control of fighters loyal to Erdogan?
Worth noting that Turkey is the second most important member of NATO after the USA, the same ‘defensive’ alliance that mastered distributing roles in games that cost the lives of millions of people, devastated millions of others, uprooted, displaced, maimed, raped, tortured, and many ended up being used as spare parts and sex-slaves around the world.
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السؤال الأهم هو: لماذا تتخذ القيادات الكردية هذه المواقف المتناقضة؟ ولماذا لا تستخلص الدروس من كل أخطائها؟
بعد التهديدات التركية بالتوغل في الأراضي السورية شرق الفرات وغربه، بذريعة طرد مسلحي وحدات حماية الشعب الكردية من الشريط الحدودي مع تركيا، عاد الحديث من جديد عن حوارات كردية مع دمشق بهدف التصدي للجيش التركي في هجومه المحتمل.
قرار وحدات حماية الشعب الكردية لا يتخذ في القامشلي بل في جبال قنديل.
ومع أن المعلومات ما زالت ضئيلة لجهة نتائج هذه الحوارات، إلا أن الجميع يعرف أن قرار هذه الوحدات لا يتخذ في القامشلي، بل في جبال قنديل، حيث قيادات حزب العمال الكردستاني التركي، الذي بات يسيطر على الحركة الكردية السورية بعد إقصائه الأحزاب والمنظمات والمجموعات الكردية الوطنية وغير الوطنية، بما فيها تلك الموالية لمسعود البرزاني؛ حليف الرئيس التركي رجب طيب إردوغان.
ومع المعلومات التي تتحدّث عن تأجيل العمل العسكري التركي بعد زيارة وزير الخارجية الروسي سيرغي لافروف لأنقرة واعتراضه عليها، تراجعت في الوقت نفسه حدة التصريحات الكردية التي كانت تتحدّث عن ضرورة العمل العسكري المشترك مع الجيش السوري، وهو ما يعكس تناقضات القيادات الكردية بشقّيها: السوري أولاً، والتركي ثانياً. والشق الثاني هو الأهم بغياب إرادة الطرف الأول في اتخاذ القرارات التي تخدم الشارع الكردي السوري أولاً، والدولة السورية تالياً بتوجهاتها الجديدة إلى الحل الشامل لما يسمى القضية الكردية، فقيادات قنديل التي غادرتها بسبب القصف التركي المتوالي ترى في مسلحي وحدات حماية الشعب الكردية، وأغلبيتهم الساحقة من السوريين، ورقة مهمة تساوم بها كل الأطراف الإقليمية والدولية بعد انتكاسات الحزب المسلحة في تركيا.
وقد نجح الجيش وقوات الأمن التركيان المدعومان بآلاف المليشيات الكردية الموالية لها في إنزال ضربات مؤثرة في مسلحي حزب العمال الكردستاني، بعد أن استخدم الجيش طائراته المسيرة بكثرة، في جنوب شرقي البلاد وشمالي العراق، وعلى طول الحدود التركية مع العراق وإيران وسوريا.
قيادات قنديل وبغياب زعيمها عبد الله أوجلان المسجون منذ شباط/فبراير عام 1999، يبدو أنها قد نسيت أو تناست أن من اختطف أوجلان من العاصمة الكينية نيروبي وسلّمه إلى تركيا، هو الاستخبارات الأميركية بالتنسيق مع الموساد الإسرائيلي.
كما أنها نسيت أو تناست كيف ارتعشت خوفاً، عندما قال الرئيس الأميركي السابق دونالد ترامب في 29آذار/مارس من عام 2018″إن القوات الأميركية ستغادر سوريا قريباً جداً، وتترك الأطراف الأخرى تهتم بالأمر”، وقصد بذلك الحرب على داعش ثمّ التهديدات التركية باجتياح المنطقة. وهي نسيت كذلك أو تناست أن ترامب هو الذي أشعل الضوء الأخضر للرئيس إردوغان، الذي أمر الجيش التركي بالتوغّل، شرق الفرات، في التاسع من تشرين الأول/أكتوبر عام 2019، (وهو نفس اليوم الذي غادر فيه أوجلان سوريا قبل 19 عاماً بعد أن بقي فيها 15 عاماً)، لتسيطر على الشريط الحدودي، بين تل أبيض ورأس العين (نحو 100 كلم) وتطرد المسلحين الكرد من المنطقة.
ونسيت كذلك أو تناست أن الجيش التركي كاد يسيطر على الشريط الحدودي السوري مع تركيا سيطرة كاملة، شرق الفرات، لولا تدخّل موسكو وإرسال القوات الروسية إلى المنطقة، وتسيير دوريات مشتركة مع الجيش التركي في المنطقة.
وهي أيضاً نسيت أو تناست أنها السبب في اجتياح الجيش التركي في كانون الثاني/يناير عام 2018 منطقة عفرين والسيطرة عليها تماماً، بعد أن رفضت التنسيق والعمل المشترك مع الجيش السوري لمنع الجيش التركي من القيام بمثل هذا الاجتياح.
ولم تستخلص كذلك الدروس اللازمة من حواراتها مع الرئيس إردوغان بهدف حل المشكلة الكردية في تركيا وسوريا معاً، إذ أخفقت كل هذه الحوارات، ليس في حل المشكلة الكردية وحسب، بل في تخلية سبيل زعيم الحزب، عبد الله أوجلان، وهو في سجن انفرادي في جزيرة إيمرالي القريبة من إسطنبول.
ولم يكتف إردوغان بذلك، بل أمر بوضع الزعيمين المشتركين لحزب الشعوب الديمقراطي (الجناح السياسي لحزب العمال الكردستاني) صلاح الدين دميرطاش، وفيكان يوكساكداغ، وعدد آخر من قيادات الحزب، ورؤساء البلديات والآلاف من أنصار وأتباع وكوادر الحزب في السجون على الرغم من سيطرة هذا الحزب على الشارع الكردي.
وتبيّن استطلاعات الرأي أنه قد يحصل على 12٪ من مجموع أصوات الناخبين في تركيا، وعددهم نحو 60 مليوناً.
وعودة إلى مواقف قيادات قنديل، يبدو أيضاً أنها قد نسيت أو تناست كيف نسّقت مع أنقرة للعمل المشترك، ما بين عامي 2013 و2015، حيث زار زعيم حزب الاتحاد الديمقراطي الكردستاني السوري صالح مسلم تركيا مرات عدة، والتقى القيادات التركية التي طلبت إليه التمرّد على دمشق، فرفض ليكون ذلك الموقف الإيجابي الوحيد له ولرفاقه، ولكن بعد أن جاءت القوات الأميركية إلى شرق الفرات لتساعدهم في حربهم على داعش، وهو ما استغلته القيادات المذكورة لتدخله في حساباتها الخاصة، التي اعتقدت أنها ستساعدها في إقامة كيان كردي مستقل شرق الفرات.
وأياً كانت التسمية خصوصاً بعدما سارع عدد من العواصم الغربية ولا سيما باريس، وبرلين، ولندن، بل وحتى “تل أبيب” لدعمها وفق حساباتها الخاصة، ومنها تشجيع قيادات “قسد” الكردية على تكريد المنطقة، وتطهيرها عرقياً بسكوت وتواطؤ من القيادات العربية في “قسد”. ومن دون أن تستذكر القيادات المذكورة مواقف واشنطن والعواصم الغربية، التي اعترضت على استفتاء مسعود البرزاني على استقلال كردستان العراقي في أيلول/سبتمبر عام 2017، وهو ما اعترض عليه إردوغان “الحليف الإستراتيجي للبرزاني”.
ويبقى السؤال الأهم وربما الوحيد: لماذا اتخذت وتتخذ القيادات الكردية كل هذه المواقف المتناقضة؟ ولماذا لا تستخلص الدروس اللازمة من كل أخطائها، ومن تاريخ الحركة الكردية في تركيا وسوريا والعراق بل ومن إيران كذلك؟
يتذكر الجميع كيف كان الكرد وما زالوا ورقة تلوّح بها الأطراف الخارجية في تآمرها على دول المنطقة التي دعمت كرد الدول الأخرى، فيما حاربت كردها داخل حدودها. كما استعدى الكرد بعضهم بعضاً في هذه الدول الأربع، ودخلوا في صراعات مسلحة ودموية فيما بينهم، تارة من أجل المصالح والسلطة، وتارة أخرى خدمةً لأطراف خارجية، كما هي الحال في تحالف مسعود البرزاني مع أنقرة، تارة ضد الراحل جلال الطالباني، وتارة أخرى ضد حزب العمال الكردستاني التركي وزعيمه عبد الله أوجلان. ومن دون أن يخطر في بال البرزاني وأمثاله، أن العواصم الإقليمية والغربية لم تفكر، ولن تفكر في حقوق الكرد، بل استخدمتهم وتستخدمهم وستستخدمهم إلى الأبد لتحقيق أهدافها الخبيثة، التي تستهدف دول المنطقة وشعوبها برمتها، وفي مقدمهم الكرد، ومعهم العرب، والفرس، والأتراك، وغيرهم.
وهذا ما تحقّق للعواصم الغربية والإقليمية بفضل الدور الذي أداه ويؤديه الكرد في العراق، والآن في سوريا التي لولا تآمر القيادات الكردية (الماركسية سابقاً) في شرقها مع المحتل الأميركي والأوروبي، لما وصلت الأمور إلى ما وصلت إليه في المنطقة وسوريا خصوصاً، ولولاها لما تذرعت تركيا بهم لتتوغل في الشمال السوري وتسيطر على 9٪ من مجمل الأرض السورية.
كذلك فإن الواقع المفروض شرق الفرات بدعم أميركي، هو مبرّر كافٍ لأنقرة لتبقى في المناطق التي تسيطر عليها قواتها بالتنسيق والتعاون مع عشرات الآلاف من مسلحي ما يسمّى “الجيش الوطني” المعارض و”النصرة” وحليفاتها الإرهابية.
وتتحدث المعلومات هنا باستمرار عن حسابات تركية للاستفادة منهم حين اللزوم ضد الكرد، سواء في داخل تركيا أو في الشّمال السوري، وقد يكون ذلك ما قصده ترامب عندما قال في آذار/مارس عام 2018 “سنغادر سوريا ونترك الأطراف الأخرى تهتم بالأمر فيما بينها”. وفي اتصاله الهاتفي بإردوغان في 24 من كانون الأول/ديسمبر عام 2018 قال: “لقد أنهينا مهمتنا وسوف ننسحب من هناك وسوريا كلها لك”!
ويبقى الرهان في جميع الحالات على التطورات المحتملة ليس في سوريا فقط وتوتّراتها مع تركيا، بل على الخريطة السياسية التي يراهن البعض عليها كنتيجة لزيارة الرئيس بايدن للسعودية في 15 من الشهر المقبل، ولقائه زعماء الخليج، ومصر، والأردن، والعراق، وهو ما سينعكس مباشرة على مجمل معطيات المنطقة، وأهمها: الملف النووي الإيراني، والوضع في سوريا وانعكاسات ذلك على كل الحسابات بصورة مباشرة أو غير مباشرة. فعسى ألا يكون الكرد مادتها الحارقة، التي ستحرقهم، وتحرق كل الذين عاشوا ويعيشون معهم منذ مئات السنين بكل أيامهم الحلوة والمرة. وعسى أن يستخلص حكام دول المنطقة بدورهم، وخصوصاً في سوريا والعراق وإيران الدروس الكافية من كل ما عاشته، وتعيشه دولهم والمنطقة عموماً، ويسدوا الطريق على الأعداء الذين يعرفهم الجميع، وخصوصاً الكرد ومنذ أكثر من مئة سنة على الأقل!
إن الآراء المذكورة في هذه المقالة لا تعبّر بالضرورة عن رأي الميادين وإنما تعبّر عن رأي صاحبها حصراً
Steven Sahiounie Hundreds of Syrians took to the streets in the city of Afrin on June 3 to protest against routine blackouts and a sharp hike in the prices of electricity provided by Turkey. The electricity is available a mere 10 hours per day, while the summer temperatures are 30 degrees Celsius (86 Fahrenheit) in recent days.
Afrin, in the Aleppo province, has been under Turkish military occupation since 2018, after President Trump gave Turkish President Erdogan the green light to invade Syria.
The protesters stormed the main building of the local electricity company, “Turkish-Syrian Energy” or STE Enerji company, and set it on fire before Turkish-backed mercenaries opened fire on them. The protesters also set fire to Afrin’s local council building.
The areas occupied by the Turkish military also have Syrian mercenaries in the employ of the Turkish government. The mercenaries are from the now defunct ‘Free Syrian Army’ which was organized by President Obama and supported by US Senator John McCain. The mercenaries follow a political ideology called Radical Islam, which is the same ideology as Al Qaeda, ISIS, and the Muslim Brotherhood. Erdogan and his ruling party, AKP, are followers of the Muslim Brotherhood.
Local reports say at least one protester was killed and two others were injured. As the protests grew in size, demonstrators were seen chanting “Turks go out of Syria” and “Syria is free.”
Similar protests were reported in the cities of Jindires, Suran Marea, and Al-Bab, also in the Aleppo governorate. In Marea, protesters set the local headquarters of the Turkish-backed Local Council on fire.
Shortly after these protests swept through Aleppo, Turkish forces shelled a high voltage power line that supplies power to Tal Tamr and other villages in the countryside of Hasakah governorate, leaving the area in a black-out.
Afrin was occupied by Turkey and its mercenaries during the military offensive against the Kurdish fighters in 2018, causing the displacement of hundreds of thousands of people. Since the invasion, the residents have suffered through violations of human rights, lack of basic services, and constant insecurity.
Similar protests were reported in other Syrian cities under Turkish occupation such as Azaz on Friday. Discontent has been brewing against the Turkish occupation, as mercenaries allied with Turkish forces have been accused of embezzling millions in humanitarian aid and of using the global fuel and wheat crisis to hike the price of daily necessities.
Turkey proposed attack
The demonstrations come as Erdogan has renewed his threats to carry out a fresh military offensive against Kurdish fighters in Syria. Recently he announced that his troops will proceed with the planned military invasion of Syria, starting with the cities of Tal Rifaat and Manbij.
The operation will resume efforts to establish a 30-kilometer long ‘safe zone’ along Turkey’s southern borders to curb threats from the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) and the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG), which is the backbone of the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) which Ankara labels as terrorist organizations.
Turkey says US-backed SDF forces pose a threat to its borders, and in response, Turkish troops have occupied large swathes of northern Syria.
In northeastern Syria, US and Russian forces mobilized intending to stop Turkey from carrying out a new attack against SDF. While US forces moved on the ground, Russian warplanes scrambled in the air.
Fighters of the Syrian opposition factions loyal to Turkey
Residents of Manbij, in the eastern countryside of Aleppo, have documented the outcome of the attacks, warning that the Turkish operation will lead to the displacement of the indigenous population and the city’s religious, sectarian, and ethnic components.
Turkey informed the United States it is committed to taking necessary measures against “terrorist organizations” threatening its national security, and that it will not tolerate the escalation of attacks against Turkish territory from the areas controlled by the US-backed SDF in northern Syria.
Ankara reports that the risk of terrorist attacks from SDF-run areas in Syria against Turkey has increased recently, and emphasized that the PKK-affiliated terrorist organizations are an existential threat not only to Syria’s territorial integrity but also to Turkey’s national security.
Ankara considers the SDF, and its military backbone, the YPG, a terrorist organization and an extension of the PKK, which is classified as a terrorist organization by Turkey and the US, and the EU.
The US position
US Ambassador to the United Nations, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, visited the border between Turkey and Syria to assess a long-running UN operation delivering humanitarian aid into northwest Syria, near Hatay, Turkey on June 2, 2022.
UN trucks delivering food and aid into Syria from Turkey were observed and reported by Serena Shim, an American journalist. She saw they contained armed terrorists and weapons being delivered into northern Syria. Not long after her reporting, she was mysteriously killed in a car accident, after a cement truck hit her small car in Turkey. The accident and the driver were never investigated, even though he fled the scene.
In 2017 President Trump shut down the CIA operations which funded, trained, and supported Radical Islamic terrorists in Turkey to fight in Syria for regime change.
Turkey informed the United States it is committed to taking necessary measures against “terrorist organizations” threatening its national security, and that it will not tolerate the escalation of attacks against Turkish territory from the areas controlled by the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in northern Syria.
The US occupies areas in Syria, and the US military was tasked by Trump with stealing the oil produced in the largest oil field in Syria and allowing the US-backed SDF to sell the oil to fund their operation.
The Russian position
The Russian military was invited into Syria by the government in 2015. Russia has fought against ISIS, Al Qaeda, and all affiliated terrorist groups which follow Radical Islam. The Muslim Brotherhood is outlawed in Russia, Syria, Egypt, and the UAE. US Senator Ted Cruz has tried to pass legislation in the US Congress to designate the Muslim Brotherhood in the US as a terrorist group but came up against heavy opposition from both Democrats and Republicans who are influenced by the group.
Recently, the Russian army reinforced its ground and air forces at the airport of Qamishli, in Hasakah province.
The Turkish military and Radical Islamic mercenaries
Turkey concluded two separate deals with both the United States and Russia during its Operation Peace Spring, which it launched in northern Syria on October 9, 2019.
According to the agreements, Russia and the US pledged to withdraw YPG units to a depth of 30 km to the south of the Turkish border, but Ankara says they did not fulfill their promises.
Washington says that Turkey did not abide by the understanding signed between them. Russia had a signed agreement with Turkey to secure the M4 highway from Latakia to Aleppo, by removing all Al Qaeda groups from Idlib. However, Turkey has protected and reinforced the terrorist groups in Idlib, which is the last terrorist-occupied area in Syria. Turkey established a network of military outposts which protect the Al Qaeda affiliated groups who occupy Idlib. The highway remains closed to trucks and passengers for fear of attack.
SDF, YPG, PKK
During the chaos of the US-NATO attack on Syria, which began in 2011, some Kurds in Syria formed military units and got the backing of the US government, while advancing a separatist agenda in the region. The SDF and YPG were partners with the US troops who invaded Syria to fight ISIS. This US support of a terrorist group that has killed 40,000 people in Turkey over decades has driven a very big wedge between Ankara and Washington, DC.
Turkey’s proposed safe zone
Under Erdogan’s plan, he will rid the north of Syria of the terrorist group who plans to establish their own ‘homeland’ there, and he will convert the area into a safe zone to settle Syrian refugees now living in Turkey. The Turkish people have decided the refugees must go home, and they blame all their economic woes on the Syrian refugees.
Pro-Turkey revolutionary
Zahran Alloush had been the leader of a Radical Islamic terrorist group, Islamic Army, backed by Saudi Arabia in East Ghouta, the suburbs of Damascus, along with his brother, Mohamed Alloush, who now lives in Turkey and owns a chain of restaurants there.
In 2016 he was an official with the Syrian National Coalition, which the US government recognizes as the only legitimate representative of the Syrian people. His position was the chief negotiator representing the US position in the Geneva talks to find a political solution to the Syrian conflict. In 2017 he was chosen as the speaker of the delegation for the revolutionary movements at the Astana peace process talks for peace in Syria.
After he resigned, he was accused of stealing $ 47 million, which he embezzled from funds supplied to the terrorists in Syria to fight the US-sponsored regime change.
Recently, he bought a company in Turkey that mines chrome, Al Ghuraba, (The Strangers).
NATO proxies of the US-sponsored Kurdish SDF separatist terrorists and the Turkey-sponsored Al Qaeda and its affiliated terrorist groups exchanged mortar shelling in the northern countryside of Aleppo, the fratricide is ongoing since yesterday evening and until the time of this report.
The artillery and mortar shelling caused material damage in the targeted villages without losses in lives, none reported by the belligerent parties, which could be to keep the morale of their personnel.
Propaganda outlets of the Kurdish SDF separatist terrorists claimed that the villages of Samouqa and Umm Al Qura in the Al Shahba area in the northern Aleppo countryside were shelled with artillery by the Turkey-sponsored terrorists, 12 projectiles struck the villages today, Thursday 12 May.
One of the Kurdish propaganda outlets provided a video report of what it said is a heavy shelling shortly after midnight by the Turkish army and its so-called ‘National Army’ proxy in the eastern countryside of Ain Eissa city in the northern Raqqa countryside.
The Kurdish SDF terrorists on their part shelled villages under the control of the Turkish-sponsored Al Qaeda and its affiliated groups, the shelling targeted the village of Masha’ala in the northern countryside of Afrin, northwest of Aleppo,
Locals in the northern Syrian city of Jarabulus reported the artillery shelling by the Kurdish SDF terrorists against the city led to the injuries of two children, with no elaboration on the status of the two victims.
These clashes between NATO’s different proxy terrorist groups have been ongoing ever since NATO’s incursion in northern Syria first by the terrorist groups of the FSA followed by the Nusra Front (Al Qaeda Levant aka Nusra Front aka HTS) which ISIS took over from and then directly by NATO’s largest and second-largest armies, the US, and the Turkish, with their sponsored proxies.
The clashes between the foreign occupying forces in northern and northeastern Syria have resulted in much material damage, thousands of people killed, maimed, tens of thousands uprooted and displaced, and millions oppressed until this very day. NATO is working on its plan to Israelize the areas it currently occupies in Syria, mainly the areas where Syria’s main oil fields and the country’s food basket, by uprooting the local Syrians and replacing them with terrorists and their families sponsored by, and loyal to NATO.
A top commander of the Al Qaeda FSA in the Daraa countryside, the former terrorist commander refused to join the reconciliation and refused to join his colleagues in Idlib.
Local sources from the town of Eastern Mleiha in the Daraa countryside said that Ismael Shokri Al Daraan was shot dead after attending a football (soccer) match in the town earlier today, he died instantly at the spot.
Despite cleaning most of the province of Daraa with its surrounding countryside, some terrorist commanders remain in the province causing insecurity and provoking panic among the civilians in a mostly tribal area, such terrorists as this Al Daraan are a constant source of fear and security breaches including assassinations, blowing up vehicles, looting properties, and smuggling drugs.
The local sources added that nobody claimed responsibility for Al Daraan’s elimination, the Syrian security would prefer to arrest him and extract useful information that would lead to dismantling a number of terrorist groups in the southern region of Syria, his death does not serve the overall security, however, nobody will feel sad for him.
Forces of the US army loyal to Joe Biden and of the British army working as mercenaries for the regime of Elizabeth the Second are illegally deployed in the Al Tanf area in the depth of the Syrian southeastern desert at the border’s conjunction with Iraq and Jordan, these forces have established a no-fly zone around their base in which terrorist groups gather, and train under the supervision of these foreign forces, then carry out their terrorist attacks against the people of the southern region, Al Daraan, his terrorist group, and a host of other terrorist groups with an ISIS-affiliated group relied heavily on supplies and protection from these two NATO forces operating against international law thousands of miles far from their home countries.
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UPROOTED PALESTINIANS: SALAM ALQUDS ALAYKUM 