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Syria is the mother of all mysteries. Even the Romans couldn’t figure out all the intrigues, plots, factions, coups and assassinations that were common there. Nor could they understand or deal with its hotbed of religions and weird sects.
Two thousand years later, not much has changed. This week, irregular forces of a former al-Qaida outfit named Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) appeared out of the countryside and seized Syria’s second most important city, Aleppo. Syria’s dormant 14-year-old civil war suddenly went critical. A few days later, the newly re-emergent Tahrir stormed the important Syrian city of Hama. In both cases, Syrian government forces of the ruling al-Assad family simply and inexplicably melted away after fighting the jihadists for 14 years.
I have a personal interest in this fight. In 2017, my Eric S. Margolis Foundation to protect animals joined the Four Paws group out of Vienna to mount the daring rescue of an entire zoo in Aleppo. The wretched animals there, bears, huge tigers, lions, dogs, and chimps had been trapped in the city’s private zoo by years of war. While they starved, the war between various jihadist factions and government troops raged as Aleppo, once Syria’s second city, was relentlessly reduced to rubble.
I also went to Hama while trying to visit the magnificent Crusader castle Krak des Chevaliers. There, the troops of President Hafez al-Assad (father of the current ruler Bashar,) were slugging it out with jihadists. Tens of thousands died in the fighting. Much of Hama was also reduced to ruins.
A sizeable portion of Syria’s 23 million people are Alawites, a mysterious breakaway Muslim sect from the Shias that many majority Sunni Muslims call heretics. Turkey’s minority Alevi Muslims are often confused with the Alawis, whom they brand as heretics. Poor Alawis flocked to the army where they eventually seized power, led by iron-fisted General Hafez al-Assad. Lebanon’s Druze, a mysterious mountain sect, are sometimes close to the Alawites. Maronite Christians also are highly influential, so too Druze and Armenians. Lebanon’s civil war, which I covered, ran from 1975 to 1990 until the Syrian Army ended the bloody conflict.
As a veteran war correspondent, it seems to me that at least many foreign powers are now backing HTS. The US and Israel have been trying to overthrow the Assad regimes since 2011. Israel wanted to cement its hold on the strategic Golan Heights that it captured from Syria. The US, which now occupies the oil producing NE third of Syria, has at least 9,000 troops there and, with Israel, helps the jihadists while publicly denouncing them.
Turkey, whose leader hates Assad, is also highly active in Syria and is most likely providing logistic support to HTS and other jihadist groups while also battling leftist Kurdish groups. Add Russian air units near Latakia, occasional help from Hezbollah groups and minor operations from small Iranian forces. In short, the evolving war in Syria looks increasingly like the awful, madhouse Thirty Year’s War in the 1600’s.
Interestingly, Israel’s far right coalition leaders keep referring to their ambition to ‘remake the face of the Mideast.’ This obviously refers to genocide in Gaza, the open-air prison camp for Palestinians driven in 1948 from their homes in what is today Galilee. But Israel’s expansionist hard right also has its gaze fixed on Lebanon around the Litani River, the region’s last remaining free water source. It has also long coveted southern Syria, including Damascus, and overthrowing President Bashar al-Assad, a staunch supporter of the Palestinians. Remember, also, that large parts of Iraq are now occupied by US ground forces and air bases. So, a ‘new face’ of the Levant may be indeed emerging out of its current chaos.
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All0w me to explain what is happening in Syria
First thing you got to realize is that this Syrian “war” is a contrived event whose purpose is to distract from the catastrophic mass murder the fake Jews are perpetrating in Gaza
And that Assad of Syria is a double agent working for the Israelis just like the Hezbollah elite and the Mullahs of Iran
The Israelis like it just the way it is because they know that in any democratic Arab country the people would always for against any pro Israeli candidate.
Therefore it is best to rule the ME thr0ugh controlled opposition.
If Assad or the Mullahs or the Hezbollah elite were the real honest to goodness mortal enemies of the squatter colony the Israeli controlled West would have gave them the Saddam and Gadhafi treatment.
But they never do
In fact all of these regimes/gangs allow the Israelis to kill their people with impunity
With never any blood for blood
Why?
Because the people Israel kills are threats to the traitorous regimes and therefore threats to Israel
The above explains what has happened in the past and can be used to predict future events in the ME
White racism is concentrating its efforts against Syria, paving the way for the invasion of Iran. The curious thing is that while white racial hatred has always acted together, its victims have not. But with the genocide of children by the Israelis, the other victims are finally uniting around Syria.
Because they know that this will be the fate of their own children if they do not stop it now.
Thus, the union of white racial hatred must face the resistance of nations with true respect for human rights.
It’s eerily like Russia in 1917.
Central authority has collapsed and NO ONE knows who’s in power.
Bolsheviks seized the moment, and the side that seizes the moment will have the power in Syria… but for how long? Too many forces weighing in on Syria, domestic and foreign.
Syria may just break apart.
Assad was asleep at the wheel, rather like King Priam of Troy. The Turk-Zion-backed Jihadis were pouring in from all over, and he didn’t see it coming.
Such ineptness cannot rule a country as complex as Syria.
This is Q-Anon on meth.
A “union of white racial hatred” doesn’t exist, except in your mind. You obviously have missed the anti-White propaganda that is established and omnipresent since 1945.
If so, please explain this, or refute it.
https://www.oig.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/assets/PDFs/The%20Removal%20of%20a%20Canadian%20Citizen%20to%20Syria%20%28Redacted%29.pdf
Are jews white?
You rarely engage with other commenters, even those who reply to yours.
So will you now deal with this substantively, in a further reply to #6?
The person you responded to is a total moron and usually makes little to no sense whatsoever. Every post contains either “Evil Whites” “White Racism” “White Genocide of Indigenous Peoples” etc. This idiot’s gibberish isn’t worthy of a reply.
Oh stop. Assad is gone.
I agree. It’s quite possible that the obsessives worrying themselves and us about a few supply ships the Russian dock in Tartus for refuelling have just pawned themselves. Just running a quick namecheck on all the Syrian militias indicates overthrowing Assad wasn’t worth the trouble the power vacuum will cause.
Definitely Syria played a role in Desert Storm in the 1990s and one might add they did t get in the way of the deposition of Saddam. The Arabs have got their own labyrinthine politics without being agents of Israel though. Saddam himself gleefully attacked Iran with US and Jewish backing even though the Israelis were bombing his nuclear weapons factory. Backstabbing and so on. Working for Israel as double agents? Small minded and parochial more accurately.
My argument always goes back to
No blood for blood
The Israelis slaughter Arabs of Syria, Lebanon and Iran and bomb their cities
And never any blood for blood
The fact is the squatters can not tolerate dead Israelis, everybody knows this
Therefore the key to destroying the squatter colony is to kill lots of Israelis
The Palestinians know this hence the Gaza slaver revolt of 10-7
The elite of the Arab world are in bed with the Israelis and are vile traitors to their people and especially the Palestinians.
Assad served his purpose
Now he will be replaced by another Israeli owned shill
I can’t understand why Americans have so much faith in unelected potentates like Assad, the Mullahs and the Hezbollah elite (who are promoted as evil boogeymen by the Jewish Press)
You are playing right into the fake Jews hands
The only real deal is the Palestinian resistance.
The most surprising thing, of course, was that Erdogan finally threw his mask in the trash; after that, the surprising recruitment of thousands of mercenaries from the West, which must have emptied the prisons of the West and friendly countries, because they can print the money, but gathering such a number of hired assassins in such a short amount of time in a few days is admirable.
Thank you, Eric, for helping the zoo animals in Syria.
oh that’s easy to explain, that’s back when we were still outsourcing our torture, cheney determined it was more efficient to in-house our torture program, (saves money on the air travel). that was when assad was described as a “modern leader” and “westward looking”. after that he became a villain, for conducting the torture sessions, that we requested of him.
Nonsense
Show us some evidence of your claim that Assad was ever considered anything but an enemy of Israel.
Assad was always in bed with the Israelis/US and this incident proves it
It also proves that Assad is a vile torturer
But, you’re welcome to follow him straight down into Hell
Jews do not consider themselves white and certainly don’t support white interests. In a sense it does not matter what Jews look like but what they think. Even if all Jews were black they would not think of themselves as black but only as Jews.
Spot on.