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Lebanon-based al-Mayadeen reports tonight, December 8, 2024 that Russia, Iran, Turkey call for immediate end to hostilities in Syria.
My cynical interpretation of this - beyond pathetic - “call” is the following:
Turkey knew and did/does all it can - again - to destroy Syria. Russia and Iran were surprised or act surprised; they can do nothing given their own malaise. Or their “intelligence” services failed miserably?
Their common statement is devoid of constructive steps in this uniquely urgent situation. It does not even mention the Syrian government or its President. They “call for” terrorists who are approaching the outskirts of Damascus and have declared long ago that they want to get rid of the Baathist party, al-Assad etc. and create an Islamist state to “end hostilities”!
They endorse, for all practical purposes, that Bashar al-Assad falls or he and his family are killed à la Saddam Hussein and Muammar Gaddafi.
In this statement, they endorse that terrorists, supported over time by the CIA, NATO US, NATO Turkey and Israel, take over Syria - no matter the price to be paid by the innocent Syrian people.
They do not call upon the UN and its Security Council, do not mention regional organisations, do not address what they themselves could do - they only appeal to terrorists to behave nicely…
OK, I call them terrorists - not moderate rebels, opposition forces, rebel groups, participants in a civil war, or whatever you’ll see in the Western press. HTS - see later - that now sweeps down toward Damascus is considered a terrorist group even by the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, European Union and some other countries.
But that may, of course, soon change.
Eastern Aleppo © Jan Oberg 2016
The US and Europe now finally get the regime change they started in Darra in 2011 and continued at the Marrakesh Meeting of what was euphemistically called “The Friends of Syria” with some 100 countries. There in Marrakesh, they decided to depose President al-Assad and replace him with a new National Council à la Libya consisting of 300 unknown and un-elected people.
That was December 12, 2012 - 4 years on the day before Aleppo was liberated from their terrorist friends, then called al-Nushra, assisted by their ‘humanitarian’ PR helpers, The White Helmets - and btw also some Uyghurs who were being educated in Aleppo, presumably to go back to ‘liberate’ China’s Xinjiang Province with the help of the US…
What happens in Syria is not predominantly - if at all - a civil war; it never was.
It was - and still is - an international regime change attempt that ended with the liberation of Eastern Aleppo from 4,5 years of al-Nushra occupation. It happened on December 12, 2016. I was there, and I documented it in photo documentaries and numerous articles you can find on The Transnational and its archive sites.
Liberated after 4,5 years of al-Nusra occupation. Aleppo, December 12, 2016 © Jan Oberg
It should not surprise you that none of the dozens of Western media I offered my writings to - based on being present where there were extremely few foreigners - wanted to publish any of them.
You, dear reader, had to be lied to: the Western-orchestrated and financed, full-scale support for terrorists did not happen; it never happened. It was a ‘civil war’ with 'mostly ‘moderate’ rebels that the West could support. The US/West fully supports terrorism when it suits the West’s purposes. And toppling al-Assad was such a purpose. But with the fall of Aleppo in December, they gave up, and Syria disappeared from the media front pages.
In certain ways, it is as nasty and unethical as the support of Israel’s genocide on Palestinians.
It is this al-Nusra - now Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) - that is conquering Syria these very hours, and they will, according to most reports, take control of Syria’s capital, Damascus, within a few hours. They have the full support of the West. You have not heard any Western leader lament or condemn the supporting countries or HTS itself.
They are all fine with backing terrorism, even though they normally pretend they are fighting terrorism.
To understand a little bit better what HTS is, see here. You’ll read that HTS can be seen as "a new stage in the life of the blessed revolution", Abu Jaber urged all factions of the Syrian opposition to unite under its Islamic leadership and wage a "popular Jihad" to achieve the objectives of the Syrian revolution, which he characterised as the ouster of the Ba'athist regime and Hezbollah militants from Syrian territories, and the formation of an Islamic government.
HTS’ leader, Abu Mohammad al-Julani, indeed a multi-faceted personality “ had served as the emir of the now-defunct al-Nusra Front, the former Syrian branch of Al-Qaeda. The US State Department listed Al-Julani as a "Specially Designated Global Terrorist" in May 2013, and four years later announced a $10 million reward for information leading to his capture…”
At this moment, CNN, for instance, treats Mr al-Julani as a statesman and asks him only nice questions. Judge for yourself here.
If you wonder about the role of the CIA, read Wikipedia about the CIA’s Operation Timber Sycamore—another of charming President Obama’s nasty tricks (together with the regime change in Kiev three years later) in cooperation with David You-Know-Who-Petraeus.
Tonight al-Mayadeen - in Lebanon - can also tell you that “'Target is Damascus,' Erdogan hopes 'smooth march' on Syria's capital.” I tend to assume that Mr Erdogan also hopes for a smooth killing of Bashar al-Assad, his family and people around him, members of parliament and others who had normal working relations and even positive views of the president.
I met a few such people.
Take a moment to browse my photo documentation mentioned above. You’ll also see that I happened to meet some of the victims - not of “dictator al-Assad’s regime” but of the invading and occupying terrorists’ activities. Actually, the most systematic destruction and heartbreaking human consequences I have ever experienced, and I have visited and worked in a few war zones.
Simply, NATO member Turkey’s role in mass-producing terrorists for Syria and stealing everything it could out of Aleppo and its industrial zone (the 2nd largest in the Middle East with 40 000 workers that no leftwingers or labour unions in Europe bothers the slightest about) from 2011-2016 are well-known facts - and why not try to repeat them now the chance looks much better?
If there is some truth in all the above - and I write in the belief there is - now only God can save the innocent Syrian civilians from slow extermination - not a deliberate genocide but with similar effects over time as in Gaza.
Please be aware of the country’s tremendous diversity in terms of ethnicity and religion; perhaps because of this diversity and marked elements of secularism, religion-based fundamentalism has not taken root in Syria.
Refugee girl in Jibrin, Aleppo, December 2016. Liberated. © Jan Oberg
No group of terrorists can accommodate that diversity and create stability, not to speak about peace. The Syrian people, including, for instance, the secular and the 10% Christians, will face unspeakable horrors caused by these Western-, CIA- (and others) and Israel-supported terrorist groups who will fight each other till the last Syrian for power over all of Syria.
In summary, you may now add yet another nail in the West’s coffin: Yugoslavia’s dissolution, The Global War On Terror (GWOT) that has failed and also supports terrorists), Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, NATO’s expansion and the resulting destruction of Ukraine, Nord Stream’s destruction and USrael’s live-streamed Gaza Genocide: Syria’s complete destruction on the road to becoming an Islamist/Jihadist fundamentalist state.
Hoping I shall be proven wrong sooner rather than later, this victorious Islamic fundamentalism in Syria is unleashed by a very unusual, informal and tacit coalition of Russia, the US, EU, Turkey, Israel, Iran and others.
One day you support genocide on Palestinians. The next day, you support the terrorist occupation of Syria, a country with thousands of years of culture, the end of the old Silk Roads. What moral catastrophe next?
Tonight, I think of the very decent and cultured people I met in Syria in 2016 and wonder just how much darker our dark times are going to be.
Jan Oberg is the co-founder and director of TFF-The Transnational. The views expressed here are the writer’s own.
Cover Photograph: Extremists take over Bashar al-Assad’s palace, loot and destroy.
