Oh Syria the victory is coming

Salaam

Another update. This gets more and more murkier.


After a New massacre, Charges that ISIS is operating with Assad and the Russians

The slaughter in the Druze region of Syria cost hundred of lives last month. It happened after the Druze told the Russians they wouldn’t fight for Assad

On July 25 in the Syrian province of Sweida a massacre began in the early morning. Ten jihadists from the so-called Islamic State entered Sweida town. They wore the traditional baggy trousers and loose-fitting overgarments of Druze men, but beneath the clothes they had hidden explosive vests. Three detonated in the main vegetable market, then one of them accompanied the many injured to the hospital and set off his explosive charge there. The other six suicide bombers were overcome before they could detonate, according to senior officials in the Druze community.

At the same time, hundreds of ISIS fighters entered three nearby villages, moving house-by-house slitting throats and shooting to death men, women and children. Some reported that the killers left a witness from each family alive to tell their hideous story. In all, 273 Druze were killed and 220 injured, Druze officials told us.

They strongly suspect that the attack by ISIS was carried out in cooperation with the Russian-backed Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad, and this is corroborated to some extent by ISIS prisoners we have interviewed who are being held by U.S.-allied Kurdish forces here in northern Syria. The Druse politicians and officials came here to try to forge an alliance with like-minded Kurds for mutual self-protection, which is when they told us the details of the massacre.

News of the atrocity has been reported internationally, but the story behind it still is not well understood.

The Druze are one of the smaller minorities in Syria, perhaps three percent of the population. But their reputation as fighters in the wars of the Levant goes back centuries. Altogether, they number about a million adherents of a monotheistic, Abrahamic faith mingling elements of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, but also beliefs in reincarnation. Long persecuted for their beliefs, they keep their scriptures secret.

Their lands and their strongholds traditionally have been in the mountains of Syria and Lebanon, although some Druze are in Jordan and a large contingent are in Israel. Many live outside the region as well, and fit easily into the secular West. (Amal Clooney, for instance, is from an influential Druze family in Lebanon.) In Syria, the hills east and south of Damascus officially are known as Jabal al-Druze, the Druze mountain, and the communities that live there are very close-knit.

To this day, Druze fighters are well represented in the militaries of Lebanon and Israel, and until recently of Syria as well. But when the Syrian uprising of 2011 turned violent, Druze leaders decided to stay neutral in the conflict. They called those serving in the Syrian army to desert and return home. Druze officials we spoke to, who did not want to be quoted by name, claim to have their own militia of 53,000 – reservists, military deserters and young men whom they have trained – ready to defend their Syrian heartland.

As the ISIS massacres in the Sweida region began just after dawn, mysteriously, telephone land lines and electricity in the area had been cut off. But the news spread by cell phone, and well-armed Druze men came out in droves to defend their population. “The big battle started around noon and lasted until 8 p.m,” said one Druze official who joined the fight.

According to the Druze politicians we talked to, there were approximately 400 combatants from ISIS, or Daesh as they are called here, facing thousands of individually armed Druze who rose to fight — and who did not take prisoners.

“Currently 250 Daesh are dead,” one Druze official told us. “There are no injured [ISIS fighters]. We killed them all and more are killed every day in ongoing skirmishes in which the Daesh attackers continue to come from the desert to attack. Every day we discover the bodies of injured Daesh who died trying to withdraw. Due to the rugged terrain, Daesh could not retrieve them with their four-wheel-drives. We have no interest to bury them.”

Of 10 known ISIS captives taken during the fighting, three were hanged immediately. Another was captured and hanged during skirmishes earlier this week. The Druze officials said that the Syrian authorities are demanding any surviving ISIS captives be turned over to them, but the Druze are refusing to do so.

The horror of the Sweida massacre in an area most considered safe—and in these last moments when ISIS rule in Syria appears to be all but over—was magnified when the Druze learned that some of their women and children had been taken captive by ISIS cadres. “Most of the Daesh attackers were killed,” a Druze official told us. “The only escapees were those who were kidnapped in the first village: 29 women, teenagers and babies.”

“ISIS sent a video of one of their Druze captives, 35-year-old A Shalguinz, who delivered her baby in the desert.”

One 19-year-old student already has been beheaded by ISIS, which also quickly posted pictures of their Druze female captives and demanded that the Syrian regime stop attacking them and exchange ISIS prisoners held by the regime for these women and children.

In addition to the sensational pictures of the helpless women holding their hands above their heads in the desert, ISIS sent a video of one of their Druze captives, 35-year-old A Shalguinz, who delivered her baby in the desert.

“Daesh said they will make them sabaya [slaves] if the regime doesn't’ give 100 prisoners to them and the regime refused,” one of our interlocutors told us.

“Assad’s alleged complicity with ISIS is long, gruesome, and well documented.”

People in the Middle East constantly speculate about the machinations of their governments and political parties, and rumors are taken seriously since verifiable facts often are hard or impossible to come by. But the Assad regime and ISIS at this moment have a coincidence of interests that is hard to mistake.

Assad currently is readying his troops and Russian- and Iranian-backed allies to attack the jihadist militants in Idlib, and the Druze leaders we talked to feel that their people were directly punished for not agreeing to join the Syrians in that operation.

Replaying the events that occurred prior to the slaughter and kidnapping, one Druze leader points out that about a week before the massacre, “Three Russian military officers came to the region to meet the political representatives of our area. They were meeting to create the 5th army in the region, exclusively for that region, so that all the young Druze who fled the Syrian Army and the Druze reservists are invited back.”

If the Druze have anything like as many as the 53,000 combatants they claim, obviously they could be hugely valuable to the regime’s army. But that was not going to happen.

“We don’t attack outside of our area. We only defend ourselves if necessary,” said the same official. “They came and said, ‘We’ll make the 5th battalion to protect the area. They can join the combat against al Nusra [al Qaeda linked jihadists] in Idlib,” he explained. “But the local representative answered them clearly, that they cannot join any Syrian Army to combat outside the mountain of the Druze, only defensive not offensive actions.”

Assad’s alleged complicity with ISIS is long, gruesome, and well documented. Recently he has had a policy of allowing armed militants to escape from cities in busses, ostensibly to reduce the risk of civilian casualties.

““It is known that Daesh militants in the suburbs of Damascus have been displaced to the east of Sweida in green buses by an agreement with the government: 1,400 Daesh were moved this way to the area east of Sweida and near the Tanf base of the Americans,” one of our Druze sources told us.

The U.S. garrison at al-Tanf sits on the strategic Baghdad-Damascus highway, located in Syria on the Iraqi border and within miles of the Jordanian border. This outpost has served as a launching point since 2016 for counter-ISIS operations including training for Syrian opposition factions fighting ISIS, al-Nusra and other jihadists.

“Adding to that, 1,000 combatants of Daesh came in a discreet way from the Yarmouk area [a Palestinian refugee camp in Damascus] to join the local Daesh, estimated at 2,000 to 3,000 combatants," said one of the Druze officials who talked to us. "We know this by internal sources of the Syrian army. There are still some Druze of the army who leak this information to us.” In these transfers, ISIS fighters "have the right to take their individual Kalashnikov and three magazines. According to the government all of them came armed this way as the Syrian government gave them this safe passage to move to our area.”

“The regime was a spectator to the massacre.”
— Syrian Druze official

“On the 24th of July most of the official checkpoints of the Syrian army around Sweida were withdrawn—all around the villages where the massacres occurred,” this Druze official told us. “They hit at 7 a.m., but at night something else was happening. Where the villages are—facing the Daesh area—the Syrian army withdrew the local weapons from the local protection militias. No one knew why. They also withdrew their checkpoint in the area and cut the electricity and local phone service. The regime was a spectator to the massacre.”

“We think there is complicity between Daesh and the regime,” another of the Druze leaders said. “It’s so obvious to us. The regime refused to send ambulances to assist the population. They cut the electricity as well and the local telephone service to make it difficult to communicate. They couldn’t cut the mobiles.”

One of the 10 captured ISIS attackers admits on an interrogation video shared by the Druze leaders that in the village massacres a man from the Syrian government guided them from house to house, knocking on the doors and calling the inhabitants by name so they would unwittingly open their doors to the ISIS attackers.

This is not the first time we have heard of such cynical and deadly complicity between the Assad regime and the ISIS terrorists it supposedly is fighting. We have interviewed, now, 91 men and women who defected from ISIS or were taken prisoner by the forces fighting it. They have told us that ISIS sold grain and oil to the Syrian government while in return they were supplied with electricity, and that the Syrians even sent in experts to help repair the oil facility in Deir ez Zour, a major city in southeast Syria, under ISIS protection. Early in the the revolution, Bashar al-Assad released al Qaeda operatives and other jihadists from his prison to make the case that he was fighting terrorists, not rebellious people hoping for democracy. One of those jihadists he released, known as Alabssi, was one of the ISIS leaders in the battle in Sweida.

In neighboring Iraq, ISIS has been declared militarily defeated since November 2017. President Donald Trump, in his state of the union speech in January this year, said, “I’m proud to report that the coalition to defeat ISIS has liberated very close to 100 percent of the territory just recently held by these killers in Iraq and in Syria.” But on the ground, U.S.-led coalition forces say that in the area patrolled by Americans and their close allies, around 1,000 ISIS militants are still at large. And an estimated 9,000 ISIS militants are still roaming free in Syria and Iraq. And in both places heinous attacks continue to occur.

Where did the fighters come from who carried out the massacre in Sweida? Ten ISIS fighters were captured and hundreds killed. According to our sources 83 ID cards were recovered. Most were Chechens, Palestinians from the Syrian camps, and some Saudis. There was a Moroccan and a Turkman among them, a Russian and a Libyan, as well as some Iraqis. Supposedly the brother of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of ISIS, commanded the assault.

The Chechens who were slain were all wearing suicide vests—as usual, our source said. Those who attacked in the center of Sweida wore suicide vests, but so did the snipers using powerful rifles to shoot from distant rooftops. “That’s where most our casualties came from,” said one of the Druze officials. “It seems ISIS is alive and well despite international reports that they are defeated, or nearly defeated.”

One of the officials will only speak to us anonymously out of concern the attack can be repeated. “If they kidnap one, they will kidnap more,” he worries. Some 114 villages and small towns are around Sweida with half a million Druze living there.

The leaders of Druze mountain tell us that they are now also appealing to the international community to be protected by an international force, as the Kurdish area is protected by the Americans, and to assist them to bring back the kidnapped women to their families.

“To safeguard our community and to protect the diversity in the future of Syria, we need to create a crescent against aggressors,” said one of the politicians. Running from north to south, including parts of Iraq, it would protect the Kurds, the Yazidis, Christians, and Druze. “The minorities are looking to the Coalition as the only credible force in the area,” he said, adding, “The crescent strategically speaking would also cut the Iranians from access to the regime.”

The world must decide whether or not to respond, but the record thus far does not hold out much hope.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/how-assad-isis-and-the-russians-cooperated-to-carry-out-a-massacre

Salaam

Another update, situation in Idlib province is deteriorating.

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Another update, on the fate of the refugees.

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The Syrian Observer

There are increasing reports of Syrian refugees being forcibly returned to Syria, despite the dangers that await them writes The Syrian Observer

Recently, there has been talk of the possibility of returning Syrian refugees from some neighboring countries, particularly Lebanon, and to a certain extent Jordan and Turkey, irregardless of whether they voluntarily consent to return.

Last month, Lebanon witnessed a number of worrisome developments regarding the presence of Syrian refugees. Prominent politicians have increased calls for refugees to return to Syria and have made unfounded accusations about an international plot to settle them in Lebanon. At the Friends of Syria Conference in Brussels in April, Lebanon made significant commitments on the rights of refugees, including providing residency status, education and legal protection and pledged to refrain from forcing refugees to return to places where they could be at risk. These pledges could have a real and positive effect on the lives of Syrians in Lebanon - if implemented. But since then, things have taken a turn for the worse.

Sadly, no sooner had Lebanon renewed its commitment to not forcibly return refugees, politicians demanded that Syrians in Lebanon return to their country of origin. The Foreign Minister in the caretaker government, Gebran Bassil, recently gave the UNHCR two weeks to develop a strategy for the repatriation of refugees, claiming that the organization was trying to delay their return to Syria. He then froze residency permits for UNHCR staff in Lebanon - without the support of the government - accusing them of obstructing the return of Syrian refugees by "spreading fear.”

In Jordan, incidents of forcible expulsion of Syrian refugees are frequently repeated with authorities citing suspicion of links to "terrorist groups".

In its latest report, issued earlier this month entitled, "I Do Not Know Why They Brought Us Back” Human Rights Watch (HRW) documented the systematic return of Syrian refugees under the supervision of the Jordanian authorities.

According to the report, the Jordanian authorities have recently forcibly deported about 400 Syrian refugees in a single month, while about 300 registered refugees returned to Syria voluntarily during that period.

HRW interviewed 13 Syrians who had been deported by Jordanian authorities and concluded that the Jordanian authorities had provided only scant information about the reason for their deportation and they had received no real opportunity to appeal or seek legal advice.

The group noted that mass expulsions had increased in mid-2016 and again at the beginning of 2017, following two terrorist attacks in the country, although there was no evidence that any of the deportees were involved.

While the situation in Turkey is still less acute for Syrians, when compared with both Lebanon and Jordan, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan reassured his supporters that the Syrians would not remain in Turkey forever, suggesting that his "open door" policy, which was activated in the early years of the conflict, had lost its validity.

A poll conducted by the Center for American Progress of Political Research showed that 78% of Turks believed their country was spending too much money on refugee care.

Human Rights Watch said authorities in Istanbul and nine provinces on or near the Syrian border had stopped registering new asylum seekers and warned of illegal deportations, forcible return to Syria and the denial of health care and education.

Meanwhile, inside Syria itself, Syrian officials are showing a false interest in the return of the Syrian refugees to the country. The government recently called for the return of refugees and passed legislation in preparation for reconstruction. The government is trying to create the idea that security has returned to Syria, despite the obvious signs that it has not. The government has two goals in mind when creating this illusion. The first is to give the image of a compassionate government that cares about its citizens, and the second is to minimize international attention to what is happening in Syria. If the number of Syrian refugees around the world is reducing, it is hoped that people will assume that the situation in Syria is improving.

Russia is now playing the biggest role in the arranging of forced returns. In mid-July, Russia announced that it had established the Centre for the Reception, Allocation and Accommodation of Refugees, which will monitor and facilitate returns, in cooperation with the Syrian government. However, Syria has not achieved the most basic standards of safety and security necessary for the return of refugees. Areas of the country are still seeing armed conflict, and there are growing fears that the government will invade Idleb. Even in areas that are largely peaceful, the threats to returning refugees still loom.

Nevertheless, the actions of the Syrian regime do not match its words. The Head of the Air Force Intelligence Jamil Hassan said that more than three million Syrians are wanted and their judicial cases were ready. He added that having such a huge number of people wanted by the government will cause major difficulty in the achieving of the plan.

According to the Syrian Reporter Website, Hassan described dealing with those who return to be like dealing with sheep. The corrupted ‘sheep’ will be filtered out and the good ones will be used, and those who are wanted will be charged with terrorism. He added: “After eight years, Syria will not accept the presence of cancerous cells and they will be removed completely,” citing a series of earlier speeches by Bashar al-Assad.

He added that more than 150,000 security files of wealthy people and Syrian businessmen who “aided the terrorists” have been complied. They will be dealt with through harassment and pressure, pending the full withdrawal of their funds, which will be used to “rebuild what they destroyed”. They will remain under house arrest by the security forces to speed up payment.

Article 33 of the International Refugee Convention of 1951 states that “No Contracting State shall expel or return a refugee in any manner whatsoever to the frontiers of territories where his life or freedom would be threatened on account of his race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion.”

It is impossible to be reassured by a regime that has killed two million of its people, deported 10 million and destroyed homes, schools, hospitals and places of worship. No self-respecting government can be involved in a scheme to return Syrian refugees without their consent, until threats to their safety, security and dignity have been extinguished.

http://syrianobserver.com/EN/Features/34636/Syrian_Refugees_Cannot_Be_Forcibly_Returned

Salaam

Another update

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Another update

How the Graffiti Boys ignited the Syrian Revolution

“Ashaab yureed isqat annidham.” This phrase is ringing in the ears of tyrants and despots around the Arab world and means quite simply that the people want to bring down the regime. It is the enduring chant of the Arab Spring, so it’s hardly surprising that these are probably the first words children learn in their cradles as they are rocked to sleep to the beat of this rousing street anthem.

When a group of 11-year-old Syrian boys made their way home from school one day and started larking around, as boys of that age do, it was almost inevitable that among the graffiti they scratched on a partially-collapsed wall would be these iconic words. By revolutionary standards it was an unremarkable act, hardly worthy of mention because the same graffiti can be found on walls in most Arab countries. However, just as hard-up Tunisian fruit seller Mohammed Bouazizi is credited with igniting the Arab Spring with his self-immolation, this long forgotten, single act of childish vandalism lit the touch paper of the Syrian Revolution.

It was a seminal moment in time that the Arab world’s Leftists would rather you forget; in their frenzied bid to rewrite the history of the Arab Spring they want you to believe that crazed Islamists are hijacking the peoples’ revolution. The Left in Syria, you see, isn’t as cuddly as the splintered socialist groups in Britain. These are hard-line fundamentalist, religion-hating secularists who have no room, not even a square inch, for religion in their world; not for themselves and not for anyone else.

While the people in Tunisia and Egypt fought for freedom from tyranny they also wanted the freedom to re-engage with their faith. Hence, to the shock and horror of the Arab Left, the people voted for trusted groups like the Muslim Brotherhood. It was something that the Left had never considered; they dismissed the Muslim vote as a figment of the imagination; never once did they ever imagine that Muslim groups would form political parties or even want to engage in democracy. And in Libya, although some of the more fundamentalist Islamic groups failed to secure the popular vote other Islamic flavoured parties were swept in to power.

So Syria, you see, is probably the Arab Left’s last chance at having a revolution free from religion. This is most likely the reason for their opposition to the revolution from the very outset because they knew for sure that it would carry a strong religious flavour. Well, sorry to disappoint them. I crossed the length and breadth of Syria shortly before the revolution and saw most communities, Christian and Muslim alike, holding tight to their faith. Whatever shape their revolution will take, the future will be dominated by believers.

But let me return to the 18 boys at the beginning of this story because it is vitally important that we all remember exactly how the revolution in Syria began. It did not begin with CIA interference, nor an influx of foreign fighters, Al-Qaida, rebranded weapons from the West, NATO or a global call across the Muslim world for jihad.This was a reluctant revolution, a revolution forced on the people by the acts of an evil, malevolent regime.

In fact, though, while the 18 boys may have loaded the revolutionary gun way back in February 2011, the trigger was pulled by a man called Atif Najeeb, a cousin of Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad. Within two hours of the schoolboy prank, Atif instigated raids on every single one of the boys’ homes: armed police, the military and the ubiquitous security officials stormed every home at precisely the same time, demanding that the children be handed over. Amid the drama there was hand-wringing, cries from mothers, pleas from fathers to take the place of their sons and general confusion and chaos.

Distraught as news swept Dar’a, in the south-west of Syria less than six miles from the Jordanian border, the parents and their relatives gathered outside his office, but Atif Najeeb along with Faisal Kalthoum the governor of Dar’a, refused to meet any one of them.

For four days the families waited but not a single scrap of news came out about the fate of their sons. Eventually, a delegation made up of family members, local imams, the local headteacher and other dignitaries assembled and once again demanded to see Najeeb or the governor. After three hours they were herded into a room to meet the governor who remained seated while deliberately keeping the delegation on their feet. Culturally, this is a huge insult in the Arab world. At this point no one had even an inkling of what the boys had done to deserve their fate. The parents’ pleas to have their children returned were ignored and the governor advised them to forget about them.

He allegedly said: “My advice to you is that you forget you ever had these children. Go back home and sleep with your wives and bring other children into the world and if you can not do that, then bring your wives to us and we will do the job for you.”

By this time families in towns and villages across the region were shocked and outraged by what had happened and began to demonstrate and rally to show their support for the boys, their families and the town of Dar’a. They included local people from Dayr Al-Zawr, Idlib and Homs. While some did suggest that it was time for a revolution, the families kept to only two demands: the return of their children and the sacking of the governor for his crude and inflammatory remarks.

As the pressure mounted on Kalthoum, a helicopter full of military thugs was flown in to Dar’a to quell the unrest and during clashes with local citizens several people from Dar’a were killed. They went to their graves not knowing what the children had done to incur the wrath of the governor.

Eighteen days later, when it was clear that the parents and families would not be appeased until their children were returned, the boys were released. Their condition was pitiful and shocking; all were traumatised beyond recognition. All had had their fingernails torn off. One had lost an eye while several had fractured skulls and all had at least one broken limb. Today, those boys still bear the whip marks and scars on their bodies which bear testimony to the brutal nature of their detention and torture. Several of them still have nightmares recalling the screeches and screams of their fellow inmates.

Far from calming the situation, the physical evidence that the boys had been tortured enraged the people of Dar’a who made their own two demands: the dismissal of the governor and justice delivered to those who had done such wicked things to the boys including Atif Najeeb and his torture squad.

The relatively low level demands carried on for the next six months and those making them resisted calls for a full-blown revolution and offers of outside intervention; there were many in the Arab world who wanted to take up arms in support of their brothers and sisters in Dar’a and the dozens of Syrian cities and towns now in full revolutionary mode. Moreover, while insisting that their reasonable demands be met, some of the families pleaded for calm and even argued that Assad could not possibly have known or allowed this atrocity to happen. Surely, a London-graduated doctor and Ophthalmologist could not have consented to this barbarism, they argued.

By August the death toll across Syria had reached 1,000 and then the foreign fighters arrived, not to help the people of Dar’a but to destroy their spirit and morale. The fighters were mercenaries from numerous neighbouring and distant countries including former Soviet satellite states who, in the pay of the Assad regime, embarked on a killing and raping spree.

The plan was to subdue the spreading uprising and instill fear in the lives of the Syrian people, those who dared protest and those who were considering joining the growing crowds on the streets. Instead, the gates of Hell were opened and talks of compromise and low level demands gave way to screams of “Ashaab yureed isqat annidham”.

As news of the atrocities in Dar’a and other Syrian cities reached Damascus some senior officers in the military could no longer stomach what was being done in their name. They defected from the regime and formed what is now known as the Free Syrian Army. It’s not an army of outsiders; it was founded by Syrian officers and grew in popularity and prominence with the media because of its name.

Speculation is rife about the emergence of Al-Qaida, foreign jihadists, support from Arab countries, subversive tactics by Arab countries, infiltration by the CIA and Mossad, just about everyone, in fact, bar the Free Wales Army. Some of the speculation is true, some is not, but don’t allow anyone to rewrite the history of the start of the Syrian Revolution.

One day peace will come to Syria and when it does the Graffiti Boys should be remembered and their names should go up on another wall in Dar’a – a wall where their names can be carved with pride.

Some of them may not survive the war but some will finally enjoy the taste of freedom. Today I salute them and remember each one by name and urge you to remember them too, so that when Syria’s history is written in full they will not be forgotten: 1) Muawiya Faisal Sayasneh 2) Yusuf Adnan Sweidan 3) Samer Ali Sayasneh 4) Ahmed Jihad Abazeid 5) Isa Hasan Abulqayyas 6) Ala Mansour Irsheidat Abazeid 7) Mustafa Anwar Abazeid 8) Nidhal Anwar Abazeid 9) Akram Anwar Abazeid 10) Nayef Muwaffaq Abazeid 11) Basheer Farooq Abazeid 12) Ahmed Thani Irshiedat Abazeid 13) Ahmed Shukri Al-Akram 14) Abdulrahman Nayef Al-Reshedat 15) Mohammed Ayman Munwer Al-Karrad 16) Ahmed Nayef Al-Resheidat Abazeid 17) Nabeel Imad Al-Resheidat Abazeid 18) Mohammed Ameen Yasin Al-Resheidat Abazeid.

https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20140125-how-the-graffiti-boys-ignited-the-syrian-revolution/

Salaam

Another update

Russia launches a diplomatic offensive on rebuilding Syria

Putin wants to convince European nations to normalise relations with Assad

As the Syrian civil war tips irreversibly in favour of President Bashar al-Assad’s Russia and Iran-backed regime, the western and regional powers that have intervened in the conflict over the past seven years continue to underestimate its lethal ability to contribute to the new world disorder.

From US president Barack Obama’s decision not to carry out his threat to punish the Assads for attacking civilians with nerve gas, to the ragged columns of Syrian refugees trudging towards Europe in 2015 and 2016, the war has helped feed corrosive forces of nativist populism and isolationism in the west.

Russia and Iran are the beneficiaries in Syria — at least for now. When President Assad’s forces came close to collapse in 2012, Iran’s Revolutionary Guards and its Shia paramilitary allies kept them alive; and Russia’s air force salvaged the regime from September 2015. Their campaign is now reaching its end.

The terror of Isis is also near its conclusion. The jihadi group was defeated in Syria mainly by Kurdish fighters with US air support and, in neighbouring Iraq, in large part by Iran-backed Shia militia in alignment with the US. But America and its western allies — always hesitant to intervene in Syria while they egged on a rebellion they were reluctant to equip for victory — now want out. In the past week the US and the UK have said they are curtailing their commitments. France is switching to supplying humanitarian aid ferried into Syria by Russia.

The trend seems to be towards a “normalisation” of relations with the Assad regime. Turkey, whose opposition to the Assads was once so virulent that it allowed its territory to become a pipeline for jihadis, now operates as the third leg of a new tripod of power in Syria, with Iran and Russia.

Moscow, the senior partner in this new balance of regional power, has launched a diplomatic offensive based on two fragile premises: a new Assad-led climate of stability to permit the return of almost 6m refugees from outside Syria, which should in turn unlock an EU-led financing of Syrian reconstruction.

Russian president Vladimir Putin pushed this thesis at his recent meeting with Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, whose coalition government was rocked by her migrant policy and who is anxious to see the repatriation of Syrian refugees in Germany. The Kremlin wants to create a new diplomatic vehicle for Syria, grouped around Russia and Turkey, Germany and France. How real is this?

First, it is unwise to assume the Assad regime will be an anchor of stability. It has waged total war against its own, majority Sunni, population that has cost half a million lives and uprooted half the population. The regime’s policies manufacture extremists, which it then often manipulates — whether by funnelling jihadis into Iraq after the US invasion of 2003, or releasing from jail hundreds of jihadist cadres early on in this rebellion in the cynical calculation they would hijack its leadership from mainstream rebels.

As for Syria’s alliance with Iran, which the west fondly hopes Russia will unpick, that goes back four decades. Hizbollah, the Lebanese Shia paramilitary group, which serves as Tehran’s spearhead in the Levant, was born in 1982 in the Iranian embassy in Damascus.

But second, and crucially for those hoping Syrian refugees will start heading home, Mr Assad does not seem to be on board with his allies. He seems anxious to prevent the revival of the Sunni-dominated demography that nearly toppled his minority regime.

Earlier this summer, for example, 3,000 Syrians were due to be repatriated from Lebanon, struggling under the burden of more than 1m refugees — more than one-quarter of the population. The Syrian authorities, however, accepted only 400 people, of which a mere 200 eventually returned. The rest refused to break up their families after the regime weeded out fighting-age men and boys.

Russia’s claims that it can facilitate repatriation have to be measured against this reality — as does its foreign minister Sergei Lavrov’s complaint in Beirut this week that “fabricated” reasons prevent Syrians returning, and obstruct the reconstruction Moscow wants the EU and US to pay for.

A third, and worrying, consideration is that Assad forces, with Russia’s air force, are poised to launch a military offensive to capture the last opposition redoubt of Idlib in north-west Syria. There are tens of thousands of jihadis in Idlib — dominated by an al Qaeda-linked faction— and it is bursting with refugees from vanquished rebel areas, about half of the roughly 3m population. Both groups could flee to the border with Turkey, which already hosts 3.5m Syrian refugees — a new security and refugee challenge that would collide with Turkey’s present currency crisis and its stand-off with the US.

Current US and EU policy sometimes seems based on the hope Syria (and Syrians) will go away. It will not — and it is not clear that they can.

https://www.ft.com/content/e89d42f0-a539-11e8-8ecf-a7ae1beff35b

Salaam

Another update

Syrian militant leader slams Turkey and defends evacuations in new video

Abu Mohammed al-Jolani said that the former al-Qaeda affiliate Hayat Tahrir al-Sham had become the 'greatest defender of Sunnis' in Syria

The leader of the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) militant group has described it as the only legitimate defender of Sunni Muslims in Syria, and said Turkey was not a reliable ally against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's government.

In a video posted on Facebook, Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, leader of the group formerly known as the Al-Nusra Front, said that both HTS's enemies and allies recognised that the group had "now become the greatest defender of Sunnis in Syria".

He warned that the ceasefires agreed between rebel groups and pro-government forces in the south of country would not be repeated in the north, and urged rebel forces to shun negotiations with Assad.

Most previously rebel-held areas of Syria, including the major cities of Homs and Aleppo, have returned to government hands in recent years. Idlib, which is largely controlled by HTS and its allies, is the last remaining rebel stronghold in the country.

"The weapons of the revolution and jihad... are a red line on which concessions are unacceptable, and they will never be put on the negotiations table," said Jolani.

“We urge our people in Aleppo to remain steadfast. The mujahideen will not fail you."

He added that the rebels should not expect Turkish observation posts to protect them against Assad's government. Under an agreement inked in Kazakhstan, Iran, Russia and Turkey have established observation posts across Syria to monitor "de-escalation zones" nominally designed to prevent hostilities.

He warned that the Turkish posts were "something we cannot rely on because the political positions may change at any moment".

Jolani also defended the decision to allow the evacuation of the Shia-majority villages of Foua and Kafraya, claiming it had removed the danger of "sectarian militias" and denied Iran an excuse to attack.

The two villages, located in the Idlib governorate, had been besieged by rebel forces since 2015, and has been a major point of contention between the rebels and the government.

The evacuation saw 7,000 people leave the two villages in return for hundreds of prisoners being released from Assad's prisons.

Idlib infighting

Idlib has seen massive unrest in recent years due to rebel infighting, the capture of much of the province by Turkish-backed forces, and the looming threat of an assault by Assad and his allies to retake the province.

According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, since April, 270 people - including 55 civilians - have been killed in attacks from all sides in Idlib, and adjacent parts of Hama and Aleppo provinces.

While much of the violence has been attributed to HTS and the Turkish-backed National Front for Liberation, others have blamed sleeper cells belonging to the Islamic State (IS) group.

The Observatory said that the province had been witnessing "mass assassinations" and that since Monday alone at least 13 rebel fighters had been killed.

Although IS and Al-Nusra Front both originated as part of the al-Qaeda-linked Islamic State in Iraq, the two became enemies after the former declared a caliphate in 2014. Al-Nusra Front rebranded as Jabhat Fateh al-Sham in July 2016, officially severing ties with al-Qaeda. In January 2017 they merged with other rebel groups to form HTS.

On Wednesday, US President Donald Trump's national security adviser warned Assad against the use of chemical weapons in any future assault on Idlib.

"We now see plans for the Syrian regime to resume offensive military activities in Idlib province," John Bolton told a press conference during a visit to Jerusalem.

"We are obviously concerned about the possibility that Assad may use chemical weapons again," he said.

He added that the US would respond "very strongly" to any chemical attack.

The US, France and Britain launched joint missile strikes on Syrian in April targets in response to an alleged chemical weapons attack in eastern Ghouta that killed scores of people.

Since 2011, following the brutal repression of anti-Assad protests, Syria's civil war has killed more than 400,000 people and displaced millions.

https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/syria-hayat-tahrir-sham-leader-slams-turkey-and-defends-evacuations-new-video-91127761

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Another update

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The Arabs never stopped killing each other since Muhammad's time. The actual crusade or jihad was in Israel to liberate the oppressed Palestine.

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How Assads regime deals with his opponents.

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Blurb

On May 10, 2017, the Museum hosted a screening of "Syria's Disappeared: The Case Against Assad," a documentary of personal testimonies of survivors of torture and families of the dead and missing. The film embodies the goals of the Museum's Ferencz International Justice Initiative: Elevating the voices of victims, empowering them to seek justice, helping create the necessary political will, and connecting victims with decision-makers who can make a difference. Following the film, panelists discussed their experiences being held in the detention centers, and the criminal investigation and case being built against President Assad for alleged mass atrocities. The program was moderated by Yahoo News chief investigative correspondent, Michael Isikoff.