“There can be no doubt about it, the ISIS of just two years ago was the most powerful, well-led, generously-armed and resource-efficient paramilitary force in modern history, having carved out for itself an empire between two sovereign states and devastating their armies in the process. However, this is no longer so. The days of the Islamic State-Daesh consuming Syria like a cancer are over,” rightly wrote Andrew Illingworth in the Almasdar News.
Daesh's days as an army in Syria are really, and finally, over.
Russia and its allies - Iran nd Hizbollah - have expelled ISIS from its last urban stronghold in Syria. Now the Syrian coalition will turn its attention to the numerous hotspots around the country where al Qaida-linked groups have dug in waiting for the Syrian Army to make its final push.
Russia and its allies - Iran nd Hizbollah - have expelled ISIS from its last urban stronghold in Syria. Now the Syrian coalition will turn its attention to the numerous hotspots around the country where al Qaida-linked groups have dug in waiting for the Syrian Army to make its final push.
On Monday, Lebanese media reported that the Syrian Arab Army (SAA), joined by combat troops from the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and Hezbollah, recaptured the city of Abu Kamal in Deir Ezzor province. The city was the last bastion for the terrorist group, ISIS, which, at one time, controlled a vast swathe of land stretching from northern Iraq to central Syria. Now the group has been chased from its last urban hideaway and scattered across the arid wastelands like a nomadic tribe wandering the dessert. Abu Kamal was ISIS’s “last stand”, the final chance to fend off the advancing loyalist forces and reverse the course of the war. But the three-pronged attack proved to be too much for the demoralized jihadists who fled the city northward or surrendered to Syrian troops on the perimeter. Thus, ISIS no longer occupies any of the major towns or cities that once comprised the emerging Wahhabi proto-state. The group has been soundly defeated, its leadership is in tatters and the star-crossed Caliphate has met its end.
What happens next in Syria is of critical importance. Although large parts of the country remain under the control of al-Qaida-linked groups and the other Sunni militias, Vladimir Putin believes the combat part of the war is nearing its end and wants to begin preparations for a political settlement. This view is shared by the entire Putin administration including Deputy Defense Minister Valery Gerasimov. On Monday, Gerasimov said: “The active phase of the military operation in Syria is nearly over. Thanks to our joint efforts, terrorists are being wiped out in the Al-Bukamal area in eastern Syria and along the Syrian-Iraqi border. It will only be a matter of time before the other militant groups are completely eradicated which will allow us to move on to a post-conflict settlement.”
It’s worth noting, that the western media has entirely ignored the defeat of ISIS at Abu Kamal mainly because it was the Russian-led coalition that delivered the final blow. In the current climate in the US, any facts that fail to support the anti-Russia hysteria that has swept the country, are scrubbed from publication. So while the headlines at the New York Times should have read: “Russia Crushes ISIS in Syria”, they instead focused on the trivial details of the latest sex scandal.
“I have conveyed to Mr. Putin and to the Russian people, our gratitude for their efforts to save our country. In the name of the Syrian people, I greet you and thank you all, every Russian officer, fighter and pilot that took part in this war.”
Putin thinks the defeat of ISIS at Abu Kamal creates an opportunity for the warring parties to hash out their differences and reach an agreement that will put an end to the fighting. There’s no doubt that Assad will be asked to make concessions he wouldn’t otherwise make to satisfy the objectives of his Russian allies. But Putin does not want Syria to become his Vietnam, he has no intention of using the Russian airforce to recapture every square inch of sovereign Syrian territory. As he’s said from the very beginning, his plans involve the annihilation of the terrorist forces operating in the country; nothing more and nothing less. This is why the outcome at Abu Kamal is so important in shaping the agenda. ISIS has been vanquished and the enclaves where the other insurgent groups are currently located, will be part of a wide-ranging mop-up operation that will end the terrorist threat in Syria for good. Security will eventually be reestablished and the government will move on to the arduous task of rebuilding its decimated cities and infrastructure. But first a settlement must be reached.
Later in the week, Putin met with leaders from Iran and Turkey. The geopolitical interests of all the parties are vastly different but not necessarily irreconcilable. Turkey, for example, might agree to withdraw its troops from Northern Syria if they are given assurances by Putin that the Kurds will not be allowed to set up an independent state on Turkey’s southern border. The Kurds might also be willing to settle for something less than “full statehood” if they are allowed sufficient autonomy to operate as a culturally independent entity.
The main problem remains the United States and its Israeli-Saudi allies who still want to topple Assad, partition the country, and transform Syria into another US garrison state at the heart of the world’s largest energy reserves. The defeat of ISIS has not changed Washington’s strategic ambitions or its determination to occupy Syria even after the hostilities have ended.
The United Nations never approved US intervention in Syria, but that’s probably a moot point given Washington’s abysmal record of shrugging off international law. From the look of things, the US is planning to stay in Syria for a long time, and that’s going to dampen the prospects for peace. Check this out from NPR: “A rising number of Syrians who fled are returning to their homes, with more than 600,000 going back in the first seven months of this year, according to the International Organization for Migration.
The U.N. migration agency says that number is comparable to the number of returns spanning the entire year in 2016.
The Syrian government has been stressing that people are coming home, NPR’s Ruth Sherlock reports, and state media have been posting photos and accounts of such returns…
Most of those going home – 84 percent — were displaced within Syria. “The next highest number of people … returned from Turkey, followed by Lebanon, Jordan and Iraq,” the IOM adds.” (U.N.: More Than 600,000 Syrians Have Returned Home In 2017″, NPR)
The fact that Syrian refugees are returning home in droves further underscores the positive impact Russia’s intervention has had on restoring security across the country.
The Russian president and his generals have prevented another country in the Middle East from being senselessly ravaged and plunged into fratricidal warfare.
But while Putin has achieved much of what he set out to do when he launched his campaign in September 2015, US proxies in the mostly-Kurdish SDF have seized nearly all the territory east of the Euphrates creating the de facto partition that Putin hoped to avoid. How can this situation be resolved without a clash between Washington and Moscow?
It can’t be. There can be no political settlement unless the US relinquishes control over Syrian territory and abandons its misguided project to redraw the map of the Middle East. But is that really going to happen?
It all depends on Donald Trump. If Trump really wants to end the conflict, then the Saudis and Israelis will probably comply. But if Trump is convinced that Syria is merely a skirmish in a much broader war with Iran, then he might opt to double-down by establishing bases east of the Euphrates while escalating tensions in other parts of the region.
Is this what the recent flare-up in Saudi Arabia was all about?
Did the Crown Prince collude with Trump’s people in detaining Saad Hariri?
Is the administration trying to throw more gas on the ME fire hoping to shift the attention to Tehran?
Certainly.
Trump has never tried to conceal his hatred for Iran, but how far is he willing to take it?
Is he willing to take the United States and the world to war?
Here’s a clip from an article by Josh Rogin at the Washington Post which helps to illustrate how members of the mainstream media (and their think tank colleagues?) are using events in Syria to make their case against Iran. He says: “…the Assad regime and Iran are preparing for the next phase of the long-running war, in which they will attempt to conquer the rest of the country. Whether Iran succeeds depends largely on whether the United States acknowledges and then counters that strategy. Tehran is pouring thousands of fighters into newly acquired territories and building military bases. Although U.S.-supported forces hold territories east of the Euphrates River in Syria’s southeast, as well as along the borders of Israel and Jordan in the southwest, Iran has stated its intention to help Bashar al-Assad retake all of Syria….” (“The U.S. must prepare for Iran’s next move in Syria”, Washington Post)
Does Trump or anyone believe this nonsense?
Iran has not “conquered Syria”. Iran (like Hizbollah and Russia) was invited to help support the sovereign government in its fight against jihadist outsiders who destroyed the country and killed tens of thousands of its people. Rogin’s analysis is completely divorced from reality.
Rogin’s analysis reads like a science fiction novel. He wants the United States to engage in clearly illegal acts of piracy to prevent a sovereign government from assisting a neighbor in its fight against foreign terrorists. He also wants Trump to block critical land-routes that connect Beirut, Damascus, Baghdad and Tehran, effectively imposing a military cordon around the country. Rogin thinks the US has the right to arbitrarily decide these matters without United Nations approval, as it has done previously.
With Vladimir Putin on the other side, this is lunacy.
With Vladimir Putin on the other side, this is lunacy.
And yet, this is the neocon rationale for expanding the war beyond Syria’s borders. More than anything, the neocons, Saudi Arabia and Israel want to drag the United States into a war with Iran. That is their Number 1 priority.
Who says Iran, today, says Russia.
Does Donald Trump want to be the “exalted” leader who plunges the country into another bloody world war or does he want to implement the non-interventionist policies he supported during his campaign and seem to have forgotten?
Let's hope he loves American children as much as Putin loves Russians and we love ours.
As to the question of Syria's capability of resistance to the United States & Israel on the long run, the answer is yes. And yes.
When th civil war sponsored by Barack Obama began in Syria five years ago, I remember that it took the Syrian army more than four years to retake a lost post.
That was long ago, he said.
In those days, the army had not learned to fight in a guerrilla war. The army were trained to retake Golan and defend Damascus. But they have learned now.
Indeed they have.
Outside Syria, only a few remember the day when the Americans bombed the Syrian soldiers close to that airbase and killed more than 60 of them, allowing Isis to cut it off from the rest of the city.
The Syrians have never believed the American claim that they made a “mistake”. It was only the Russians who told the US air force they were bombing Syrian forces.
The Brits already seem to have got the message. They slyly withdrew their military trainers – the men intended to prepare David Cameron’s mythical “70,000 rebels” who were supposedly going to overthrow the Assad government.
Even the UN’s report that the regime killed more than 80 civilians in a gas attack this summer got little play from the European politicians who used to play up war crimes in Syria and supported Donald Trump’s pointless Cruise missile attack on a Syrian airbase.
And what of Israel?
Here is a nation which truly counted on the end of Assad, going so far as to bomb his forces and those of his Hizbollah and Iranian allies while giving medical help to Islamist fighters from Syria in Israeli cities. No wonder Benjamin Netanyahu was so “agitated” and “emotional” – Russian descriptions – when he met Vladimir Putin in Sochi. Iran was Russia’s “strategic ally” in the region, Putin said. Israel was an “important partner” of Russia. Which was not quite the same – and not what Netanyahu wanted to hear.
The repeated victories of the Syrians mean that the Syrian army is among the most “battle-hardened” in the region, its soldiers used to fighting for their lives and now trained in coordinating troops and intelligence from a single command headquarters. This alliance now has political cover from two permanent UN Security Council members, Russia and China.
So what will Israel do? Netanyahu has been so obsessed with Iran’s nuclear programme that he clearly never imagined – in company with Obama, Hillary Clinton, Trump, Cameron, May, Hollande and other members of the political elites in the West – that Assad might win, and that a more powerful Iraqi army might also emerge from the rubble of Mosul.
Netanyahu still supports the Kurds, but neither Syria nor Turkey nor Iran nor Iraq have any interest in supporting Kurdish national aspirations – despite the military use by America of Kurdish militiamen in the so-called Syrian Democratic Forces (it being largely Kurdish rather than “Syrian”, not “democratic” at all and scarcely a “force” without US air power).
So while we’re waiting for Donald Trump to start World War Three with either Kim Jong-un or Vladimir Putin, if not with both, the military map of the Middle East has substantially, bloodily changed. It will be years before Syria, as well as the Gaza Strip, Iraq and Yemen are rebuilt. However, the Israelis, so used to calling on Washington for help, may have to go back to Putin again to clear up the mess they’re in.
Those in the Israeli political right who claimed that Assad was a greater danger than Isis may have to think again – not least because Assad may be the man they’ll have to talk to if they want to keep their northern border safe.
Alepo era um pouco uma São Paulo da Síria no plano econômico, e uma cidade liberal, onde os cristaos viviam como nas cidades ocidentais. Isto antes de virar campo de batalha do Daesh contra o país. Tropas russas e sírias combateram os extemistas e recuperaram controle da cidade que ficara sitiada durante três anos. Agora é reconstruir, inclusive as tantas igrejas que foram sistematicamente destruídas.
PALESTINA
Hasbara exposed
Newly released footage shows Israeli police attacking MK Ayman Odeh during a violent home demolition raid in Umm Al-Hiran on 18 January, as reported by +972 Magazine.
At the time, Israeli authorities claimed that the deceased, Yacoub Abu Al-Qiyan, was shot while carrying out a “terrorist attack” on the Israeli forces conducting the demolition raid. Subsequent video evidence revealed that Al-Qiyan had been shot before he lost control of his vehicle.
The new video, shot by an Al Jazeera cameraman, shows Israeli riot police blocking Odeh’s path, before shoving the parliamentarian and spraying him in the face with pepper spray.
“Moments later,” describes +972 Magazine, “after Odeh appears to fall to the ground in pain, officers throw stun grenades toward him and others. Police later shot Odeh in the head and back with sponge-tipped bullets, although that part of the incident was not caught on camera.”
At the time, police claimed Odeh had been struck by protesters’ stones, “only to change their story in the hours and days that followed”.
Responding to the footage, Odeh said: “The police and government’s lies and incitement continue to be exposed. Everything we claimed from the get go has turned out to be true.”
He added that the “only justice” it is possible to offer the Al-Qiyan family “is to uncover the truth, to recognise the village of Umm Al-Hiran, and to allow its residents to remain on their land.”
Israeli authorities plan to demolish the entirety of Umm Al-Hiran in order to construct a new Jewish ilegal colony in its place, Hiran.
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