Much though I want to view this as good news I keep finding myself steelmanning that it's actually bad news
* destabilising a region already in flames
* replacing a secular evil government by.. jihadists in a loose coalition. WCGW?
* Russia used port and airfields to maintain a presence in the Med and for nefarious purposes in Africa. What do they do now, to replace them because I doubt "nothing" is the answer.
* does Iran feel a need to do "stupid things" now to prop up regional Shia politics?
* could this be bad for Ukraine?
* how will Turkey negotiate with this facing the pkk and Kurdish nationalism?
Assad wasn’t really a stabilizing force holding back worse players, he was a desperate despot just barely holding on to power thanks to a proxy war. Now the rest of the parties have a real chance to establishing a governing coalition. Syria has always been relatively secular and the rhetoric coming from the rebel side is in marked contrast to the usual pattern in the region. The most extremist group involved HTS has been surpsingly moderate in its stewardship of the Idlib governate.
There are reasons to interpret this as very good news: Iran and Russia no longer have enough resources to project power. Even with a warm water port and strategic position in the Mediterranean at stake, they just can’t prop up the regime anymore. I can’t help but think that two fewer regional powers meddling in Syrian affairs is nothing but a stabilizing force.
Almost seven million Syrian refugees might have the chance to return home and rebuild now. That’s great news.
>It didn’t turn out well when we took him off the board.
No? The post-invasion process turned into a simmering insurgency followed by a loose civil war, but since then and so far, Iraq has stabilized into a more or less functional state in which investment is growing and living standards are again moving upwards. I don't see how the automatic response of "it didn't turn out well" applies. The shaky morality of a historical decision (invasion and toppling Saddam in this case) doesn't necessarily translate to a bad outcome in the long run.
Same could be argued about the last 100 years of the region. West doesn't give a shit about these countries as long as they keep selling oil (in dollars).
West propped and props up Islamism (and other tyrannies) to prevent nationalisations of oil resources. Seems to be mostly working as intended.
It's naive to think that peace and stability will suddenly prevail in Syria. The situation will likely follow the Libya model: total chaos, worse than when Gaddafi ruled. HTS are wolves in sheep's clothing, and they wear this disguise only to convince the world that there is no need to form another anti-terrorist coalition. They learned lessons from the collapse of ISIS. All the organizations that once had a common enemy in Assad will now seek to seize power and begin fighting one another.
It’s equally cynical to presume that it won’t. People can only tolerate so much violence and this civil war has been propped up by external powers for over a decade.
Regardless, HTS isn’t the group that captured the capital so I don’t know why everyone is so focused on them right now. They got the ball rolling with their November 27 offensive and captured Hama but they’re still restricted to the northern provinces.
While on the topic of ISIS, I don’t think it’s the rebels we should be worried about. ISIS would never have become what it was without the former Ba’athist officers from Saddam’s regime building out its command structure and military. It’s the disaffected Ba’athists from Assad’s regime that we should be worried about.
Any regime change that involves freeing many thousands of women and children from prisons notorious for torture and mass-executions seems like a decent one! The future is uncertain, but it's not like "everyone chills out and gets into their hobbies" was an option -- it's gotta be one of the most war-ravaged places to exist in human history.
Have you heard of a thing called, Islamic State? They had a thing for creative murder. Aside from the usual behadings, they came up with things like pushing homosexuals from buildings in the public and alike. They are also now free again.
How is this an answer to the op's statement?. Assad was a war criminal just like his father. Remember the Hama 1982. Son followed dad by killing thousands, torturing and displaced millions. West will support and try a rosy picture of so called secular totalitarians as long as it fits to their agenda.
What are you trying to state? There's a small number of citizen IS supporters and they're now free, along with all others who showed opposition to the regime. Ok. So what?
Please don't use a general understanding of the patterns in the region to extrapolate wild takes when you don't know the specifics of each country and their people. Syrians are not Afghans are not Libyans are not whatever, as much as the west would like to portray them.
Ah, so you claim they were a american controlled group?
While the US spend lots of effort on hunting them?
Keeping the flames high, to play firemen?
I don't think that there was a need of more flames, for that theory to be plausible. Occasionally some western weapons likely did found their ways towards IS as well, but they rather captured the bulk of it. Or do you have other sources?
Afghanistan is the obvious example, among many. Beyond that, American interventionism has fueled extremism in the region for decades. This is not a wild take, but one agreed upon by scholars.
I mean, they've literally gone to war against both ISIS and Al-Qaeda. You don't have to trust them exactly but it's not like there's no grounds to believe they're at least not going to be ISIS.
I'm not sure why you think that means they aren't terrorists. Al-qaeda and ISIS have also been at war for a decade. Does that make one of them any less terrible than they have always been?
It's not about trust. We have enormous amounts of evidence from all human rights organizations monitoring the situation. You may not understand this but the entire war was filmed. You can just go look up who they are, what they believe and what they have done to people. They advertised it themselves for the majority of their career.
I said no such thing. I also wouldn't dispute that the PKK are also "terrorists".
I still think it's pretty clear that there can be some hierarchy within that category. HTS and the Kurds are less evil than the Taliban, which is less evil than Al-Qaeda, which is less evil than ISIS.
Like you said, there is plenty of history to look at here. HTS has run Idlib for years and they have done nothing that compares to the likes of ISIS. Maybe that will change if they consolidate total power, but neither of us have any evidence to state definitively what will happen. There are plenty of reasons to be either pessimistic or optimistic.
> I still think it's pretty clear that there can be some hierarchy within that category. HTS and the Kurds are less evil than the Taliban, which is less evil than Al-Qaeda, which is less evil than ISIS.
This I can agree with for sure. There are lesser evils and a hierarchy. I think the hierarchy also depends on the situation on the ground for who it's tolerable to support at a specific time. If it would have taken HTS as much bloodshed to get to where they are today as it did Assad to originally regain control, then I think it would less favorable than what actually happened, for example.
"Soviet Union" means the Union of (16) Soviet Socialistic Republics. It's an abbreviation. The republics originally were parts of Russian Empire, so their status was raised, at least nominally (because revolutioners, including Lenin, condemned imperializm and conquesting other nations - something that was considered perfectly normal in the West at the time).
I mean, unlike another nation south of them, at least for now, they didn't destroy Christian churches (the opposite in fact, rebel-controled territory rebuilt Christian churches), and let Christian orphanage/school stand without expropriation under false pretense.
How it will develop has yet to be seen, but I'm hopeful.
> Homosexuality is not a capital offence in the Gaza Strip or elsewhere in Palestine.[54][55] The laws against homosexual behavior in Palestine[d] are a relic of the British and Ottoman rule in Palestine; they specify prison sentences of 10 to 14 years.[54][55] There is no evidence that these British colonial-era laws are actually enforced in Gaza.[54]
> Reports of extra-judicial killings of LGBT people in Palestine have circulated, without being confirmed. Sources such as the news agency Reuters, the news outlet The New Arab, and the NGO Human Rights Watch, characterise many of these reports as misinformation: the stories are exaggerated, oversimplified, or misattributions of events that occurred elsewhere.[56] Examples of this include:
> Two members of Palestinian nationalist militant groups were accused of espionage and killed by their comrades in situations that included rumours about homosexuality or bisexuality.[57][58]
> During the Israel–Hamas war, a video described as "Hamas executes people by throwing them off a roof of a building!" circulated on social media. Some derivatives of the meme claimed the men were executed for being gay.[56] The video, however, was from 2015 and not from Palestine.[56] A July 2015 report from Al Arabiya, included identical images and states that they were originally shared by the so-called Islamic State, and showed the execution of four gay men in Fallujah, Iraq.[56]
> In February 2016, the Al-Qassam Brigades (the militant wing of the Hamas movement) executed Mahmoud Ishtiwi, the commander of Al-Qassam's Zeitoun Battalion.[59] The alleged offences were described evasively, the stated reason was Arabic: تجاوزاته السلوكية والأخلاقية التي أقر بها, lit. 'for behavioral and moral violations, to which he confessed',[58] which some western news media interpreted as a euphemism for homosexual activity.[60][61] Local sources clarified that Shteiwi was convicted of spying for Israel.[62] The Qassam Brigades alleged that Ishtiwi had been executed by firing squad,[63][58] but people who saw his body before burial alleged that he might have died in custody and been shot after death.[64][58]
It is curious that you don't mention the fact that the Sha was in power due to an American/British coup that deposed a democratic government to protect oil interests.
Please don't use the word "liberal" to refer to something outside the US, because the concept of "liberal" only exist there.
This concept of neoMarxist sympathies of educated people(white collar workers) in urban areas and Ivy Leagues, that focus extremely on sex and wokeism, that concept only exist in the US.
In Europe "liberal" means he who follows economic liberalism, that is being part of the "right".
In Asia and Middle East is even weirder. Iran is probably the place of Earth that had more Empires in its History. Nationalism, ethnic identity and religion is way more important than anything else, specially on Sha's time. If you call communists people you are referring to Chinese land type of communism instead of industrial, very different from Europe or the US one.
I had a great time skiing on Iran back on the day.
Sednaya wasn’t a regular civilian prison. It was run by the military to house and torture political prisoners and anyone the government considered a “rebel.” Its notoriety long predates the civil war.
Just to be clear, you're talking about prisons like Sednaya, the infamous "Human Slaughterhouse?" The one where Assad imprisoned thousands of political opponents, journalists, military deserters, Muslim minorities and civilians, and then systematically tortured and executed those people?
I do remember the same shit promoted when Gaddafi was toppled.
And then Western mass media stopped showing news from "freed" Libya. Because, you know, public executions and human slave markets kinda not something, their population should know about, unless it's done by "bad guys".
>Any regime change that involves freeing many thousands of women and children from prisons notorious for torture and mass-executions seems like a decent one!
Overthrowing Gaddafi didn't make Libya a better place. Now it has open air slave markets, amongst other loveliness.
American education tends to concentrate on American history of slavery, so many American are ignorant about just how widespread slavery was/is in the Islamic world and how many Muslims until today consider it a regular institution explicitly endorsed by God.
I certainly wouldn't like to be a black manual worker in any Arab country. Even if you aren't a formally legally enslaved person, you will be treated as one.
Or any other place from Asia, ie nepalis or philippinos are treated absolutely horribly in many rich middle east places. That culture, barring exceptional ethical individuals, has nothing in common with modern western values.
The vast majority of Syrian refugees are going to try their best to stay in Europe because why would they want to leave to return to devastation and ruin (aside from forced deportation).
Plus a lot of people who tried to pass themselves off as Syrians aren't Syrians at all.
The asylum claim processing authorities were a bit overwhelmed, but soon learned to ask questions such as "can you tell me in which city you used to live, what was the name of the mayor, what was the closest mosque/church, your address, your school" etc. Few of the fake ones could answer such probing in a satisfying way.
Most Syrians I know have unbounded love for their country and their people. You'd be surprised by the number of people who are not motivated purely by financial gain.
Syria has (had) a secular government that allowed Sunnis, Alawites, Christians, Druze Muslims, twelvers, and Kurds to live there. The status quo for the region is theocratic iron fist of a particular Islamic denomination, with all others persecuted.
Not to mention, Assad is a Ba’athist (as was Sadam) which by definition is all about Arab unity.
Which Sunni warlord group should we hand the country to now? Do you think things will be better? Can you name a single Syrian political figure or interest group (don’t Google!) that you would propose lead the country? Be honest with yourself.
>Almost seven million Syrian refugees might have he chance to return home and rebuild now
It was under a repressive dictatorship with crumbling infrastructure. Sure, it can always be worse, but the people deserve and are capable of so much better.
Yes, I would argue the islamic state was indeed worse. And so far I see nothing preventing them or a similar force taking hold again. I mean turkey is the moderating factor here and turkey under Erdogan has gone the authorian islamic way since a while.
Well his son made hundreds of millions / billions from selling directly oil from ISIS held lands, since nobody else wanted to deal with them. His daughter personally built and supervised hospitals in Turkey specifically built to treat wounded ISIS fighters. These are verified public informations, although they obviously deny it.
Erdogan is as much pro-ISIS as one can be. Maybe just a political game during complex conflict to fight against US-supported kurds at all costs, maybe not. We don't know.
I was giving you the benefit of doubt all this time, but your comments about my country confirms to me that you're misinformed. For all I hate Erdoğan and his attempts to undermine democracy, and I want to see him gone sooner or later, Turkey is as much an Islamic authoritarian state as USA is a Christian authoritarian one under the rule of Trump. There seems to be a tendency to exaggerate the realities on the ground for some reason, and I suspect this is fueled by bots.
I said going the authorian islamic way, not that you are already a califat. Sorry for the missunderstanding, I am aware that turkey is all in all still quite democratic and secular and we seem to both not like the direction Erdogan is heading. My point was, Erdogans influence over the SNA is not comforting me.
Why are you relating authoritarianism with "Islamic way" or even the Caliphates? I've never seen anyone make this claim before, which is, to be honest, quite absurd.
Edit: Also your linked article no longer reflects the current stance of Russia.
That link I gave is propaganda BS. It claims the syrian army gave the terrorists( SDF) control over the new areas, while in reality they fought with US support against iranian and syrian regime militias. So that iran could not send support without fighting their way through it, maybe a turning point in this war.
It was just to illustrate that Erdogans goals are not peace, after Assad is gone.
The sentence "I said going the authorian islamic way,", implies that there is an "authoritarian Islamic" way. What is that? Because it sounds like you're implying that the religion has intrinsic authoritarian aspects to it.
The issue is that in the West people hear one of Erdogan's pep-talk speeches against Israel on CNN and assume that he means everything.
They don't know that Turkey has been delivering oil to Israel all the time and that Israel is in favor of the current events in Syria.
If all of Turkey, the U.S. and Israel support the Syrian rebels, we may assume that the goal is to install a U.S. friendly government (perhaps supervised by Turkey) and have more buffer states against Iran.
What experts expect Syria to get better? The rebels are led by a rebranding of al-Nusra Front which is widely designated as an islamist terrorist organization.
The rebels aren’t led by any one group and HTS only has control over some northern provinces. There’s at least four major alliances in play between dozens of rebel groups at the moment, and there’s no one frontrunner to take over.
Why do you insist that it will go the way of Libya? The rebels are calling for a peaceful and democratic transition of the government and the protection of all minorities. They've stopped using Islamist rhetoric for almost 10 years. This is as good of a regime change in Syria as it gets.
There is no counter-example of thriving democracies developed after western regime change projects. On the other hand, there’s Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya.
If the examples springing to mind were in 1945 then that says a lot about how US efforts are going in the modern era. There is no real comparison to how the US handled defeated powers in WWII and how the State Department handles regime changes from ... I want to say the 60s onwards. All the people involved in Germany or Japan's reconstitution are dead (Ed Deming, we miss you; heros of the peace are the most impressive ones).
Which is a shame because the 1950s strategy of investment and prosperity made the world much better and the modern strategy of destabilisation tends to make it worse.
>Almost seven million Syrian refugees might have the chance to return home and rebuild now. That’s great news.
Just because they might have chance to return home and rebuild doesn't mean that they will. Somalis arrived in the 90's, and they never returned back there except for vacations.
I don't know that "what kind of news is it" is the right way to look at this. Things happen, without a reckoning of whether they are convenient or inconvenient to the most powerful military forces in the world. The people who just overthrew the Ba'athists are Salafists; their leader has (had?) a $10MM price on his head from the US for leading the al-Nusra front, which was (is?) al-Qaeda in Syria, and was almost a component of ISIS (HTS => IS-Ish). It's not who most people on HN would pick to overthrow Assad! But then again: why would any of us have a say in who overthrew Assad?
> The people who just overthrew the Ba'athists are Salafists; their leader has (had?) a $10MM price on his head from the US for leading the al-Nusra front, which was (is?) al-Qaeda in Syria, and was almost a component of ISIS (HTS => IS-Ish).
The Salafists (HTS) sparked this series of events with the November 27 offensive and cut off Hama but the Southern Front and US backed SFA forces were the ones to actually capture Damascus.
Who overthrew Assad is debatable but the former Al Qaeda affiliate isn’t in control of the capitol. Between the SFA and SDF, they’re only one voice at the table.
HTS was at some point related to al-Qaeda. This hasn't been the case for almost 10 years. The biggest sign that this isn't only appearances is that they've pivoted from religious rhetoric to that of liberation. I don't care who the US has a price on. It's not a sign of anything at this point.
Religious rhetoric is the rhetoric of liberation to the people who believe in that religion. Only to outsiders does it seem different, and that's partly why they do it. For the record, I think Assad gone is a win no matter who takes over. I think democracy ultimately is better than brutal suppression, even if it means a country aligns away from my own in the process.
> Religious rhetoric is the rhetoric of liberation to the people who believe in that religion.
That's a blanket statement that's simply untrue. There are plenty of Muslims (arguably the majority) who believe religion shouldn't play a role in politics. Syrians are considered generally leaning towards secularism.
It is indeed as if the Nazis were overrun by ISIS, but the ISIS people are saying they're reformed and they're not going to do all the crazy shit ISIS did. On the other hand: look what was there before. Right?
Possibly, but it also shows how weak Russia is and how limited their presence in Syria was (because they sent everything to Ukraine). Russia can be defeated in Ukraine, but the west will need to step up support.
Since the 2022 Russian invasion, the West has provided 200bn in aid to Ukraine [0]. And Russia has been winning on the ground lately. It seems the West is thinking more aid will not change the outcome, but only diplomacy will.
Russia has not been winning on the ground. It's two and a half years into the war and Russia is still stuck contesting edge territories. Russia has overwhelmingly larger numbers, but with as high as 7:1 casualties to Ukraine and with a significant increase in casualties over the last eight months.
The frontline is stabilized and the ruble is collapsing. What exactly is being won here?
The western aid was an important lesson on the importance of proper timing for investments: it was always too little to win, but too much to loose outright. Had Ukraine been able to strike with full force from the beginning, the world could look very different right now.
Russia has been gaining tiny amounts of ground while suffering massive losses. Latest estimates say casualties are currently averaging 1,500 a day.
Total casualties since the start of the war (less than 3 years ago) are 600,000+. That's about 200,000 more than more than the US sustained in Korea, Vitnam, First Gulf War, Afghanistan, and The Second Gulf War combine.
Heh, if you call few meaningless villages per day winning. Whats really happening is decimation of russian armed and naval forces (and young population) dramatically to the point where russia is regional power at best, not any form of superpower anymore and its weapons are often considered as subpar. They almost emptied massive cold war stockpikes of more sophisticated technology.
Which seems to be US plan since beginning, give enough support to make them bleed but not really corner them existentially to trigger nuclear strikes.
We can see a massive success here, mostly due to very predictable russian stupidity and primitive emotions at controlling positions. Well done CIA, well done indeed, hopefully this will make world a better place in the future. But it can easily backfire too.
This Russian losses are primarily not young people actually. There’s been somewhere in the ballpark of 600-800k casualties (I believe the latter) which has been a huge struggle for the labor force. But, in fairness, it hasn’t been the young folks.
Anything that weakens Iran and its proxies is good news. They‘ve been the main reason for instability in the region. The cutting of supply routes to Hezbollah is another nail in the coffin for a militia that‘s kept Lebanon from eventually becoming a functional state, instead keeping it in perpetual war or near-war with Israel, which only serves Iran and the people Iran supports financially. Iran has torpedoed any attempts at normalizing relationships between Arabs and Israel even though most in the region just want to move on and prosper. It also weakens Russian influence in the region, who’ve had the same aim as Iran: Sow chaos and destruction to weaken US allies and prevent anyone aligned with the US from taking the lead in the region.
> Iran has torpedoed any attempts at normalizing relationships between Arabs and Israel
What about the recent peace/trade deals between Israel and UAE and Qatar? The Qatar one was most surprising to me because Qatar has excellent relations with Iran, partly due to their sharing of one of the world's largest natural gas fields.
So far it's been one step forward, one step back, due to Iran, see the now frozen rapprochement between Saudi and Israel. But thankfully all signs point to Iran's influence waning, which is now accelerating in part thanks to Israel ignoring the Biden administration's calls for another premature ceasefire that would only allow Iran to rearm their proxies and keep the untenable status quo that ultimately harms everybody in the area alike.
> see the now frozen rapprochement between Saudi and Israel.
As I understand, this has nothing to do with Iran, and everything to do with the Saudis want a promise for two state solution before they will agree to a treaty with Israel.
How do people here think an Islamist government will be also anti-Iran? They have 99% of the same goals with Assad out of the picture.
There's a ton of other wrong in your comment (as if Hezbollah, alone, hindered Lebanon from being a functional state and not the decades of war and brutal massacres of their civilians), but let's focus on the main thing.
Basic psychology. Iran has tried to kill these rebel forces since the Arab Spring, and now you think they will suddenly become friends of Iran once in power? Not going to happen.
As far as Lebanon goes, decades of wars are mainly a result of Lebanon's dysfunctional sectarian political system. But having Hezbollah run around and exchange fire with Israel doesn't improve the already bad situation.
But basically psychology vs the core of their foundational ideology? Idk, their ultimate goals are clearly similar to Iran's. Former enemies have become allies many times in this region.
Decades of wars have nothing to do with Israel invading the country and installing the extreme right wing Fascist inspired Phalange party into power after 1982? The very event which led to the founding of Hezbollah? Okay
Hamas is Sunni and Iran is Shia. Sunni and Shia don't really matter in these contexts. And if you think Islamist rebels hate Shias more than they hate Israel and the USA, it's a toss-up, imo
If it didn't matter then all the arab nation would all be aligned, but it matters and they aren't. The Saudis vs Iran is still driving a lot of the faction movement in the region.
The Sunni world is mostly fine with Israel, other than Hamas of course, which is why Hamas had to work with Iran (although it seems like it backfired on Iran)
I feel like you are intentionally saying ridiculous things, so really no point in talking. The idea that "the Sunni world is mostly fine with Israel" is such a ridiculous idea it's not worth discussing further with you.
I am aware of the history. But your assertion that only Iran wishes to attack Israel is untrue. Al-Qaedas very foundational idea was to hurt the Saudi government for allying with the US (and by extension Israel). And these rebels are all former Al-Qaeda or worse.
You think they will be pro-Western before they will be anti-Israel? It's a very risky gamble to make.
They don‘t have to be pro anything. Al Julani’s family themselves had to flee the Golan heights due to Israel’s occupation, so I doubt they‘ll become best friends. All I‘m saying is it weakens Iran and that‘s a good thing. Few in the area are enthusiastic about Israel, but most of them are at a point where they just want to move on and the biggest hindrance has been Iran and its proxies.
But most of the countries in the area are dictatorships, where they don't need to abide by public sentiment. Public sentiment in almost all these countries is that they want to stop what Israel is doing to the Palestinians. Egypt's one and only election was to elect a leader who promised to change that, and he was of course deposed by the military (with Israeli help). If the rebels do set up a government where the voices of the people are heard, it will be bad for Israel (and vis a vis, good for Iran, presumably).
"how will Turkey negotiate with this facing the pkk and Kurdish nationalism?"
Aside from the coming back of ISIS, that is the major unresolved conflict potential I see.
I see no compromise, the fight between the PKK and Turkey has been too long and bloody. Best case kurdish autonomy is becoming stable and established a bit away from the turkish borders, but the SDF won't give up their weapons to Islamists, if they should become the new government. And why would they?
But I am open for miracles. Like turkey releasing Öcalan to become local president in the kurdish areas in Syria, to start a serious peace process. In the sense of - you get this land, but stop the fight for secession in Turkey. The PKK would likely take that deal.
But turkey wouldn't. Öcalan and the PKK are terrorists and that's it.
> replacing a secular evil government by.. jihadists in a loose coalition. WCGW?
that's what strikes me the most. All the newspapers have rebranded "ISIS" "the rebels". The headline would be otherwise "ISIS milicia takes over Syria" and somehow that's good news. I don't know who coordonates the rebranding, but clearly there is coordination, almost every newspaper in every country I checked followed it. It's a spectacular exercise in opinion manipulation.
> When asked about al-Nusra's plans for a post-war Syria, al-Julani stated that after the war ended, all factions in the country would be consulted before anyone considered "establishing an Islamic state". He also mentioned that al-Nusra would not target the country's Alawite minority, despite their support for the Assad regime.
Idlib governance
> In response to the unrest, al-Julani made several concessions. He released hundreds of detainees from a previous summer's security operation, including his former deputy Abu Maria al-Qahtani, who had been arrested along with 300 others in a purge of his movement. He also promised local elections and increased employment opportunities for displaced persons, while warning protesters against what he termed treachery. [38]
I see his experience as governor of Idlib matching his moderate rhetoric. He has clearly evolved his views from his younger years of international jihadist towards syrian nationalism, including tolerance of minorities that make part of the syrian people, and economic development (christmas trees and free mass, or a more reliable electricity supply than Damascus for example)
I agree with the other commenter; I don't believe this language, which seems to be directed towards western audiences for self-serving reasons.
- "He also mentioned that al-Nusra would not target the country's Alawite minority, despite their support for the Assad regime"
In the past, al-Julani (or al-Golani) has explicitly demanded Alawites convert to Sunni Islam,
- "But any Allawite considering taking advantage of Golami’s kind offer must meet certain conditions. They must not only stop supporting Assad, but they must convert to Nusra’s brand of extreme Sunni Islam or, in other words, stop being Allawites. Christians will be given a grace period before they have to start pay jizya, a special tax, and Golani takes for granted that Sharia will be implemented. “The basics remain the same,” says Lund, “and they’re extreme enough to be borderline genocidal even when sugar-coated by Al Jazeera.”"
And the surrounding context of that quote is apropos, too: "They had earlier forcibly converted hundreds of Druze to their fundamentalist variant of Sunni Islam." These people have no intention of coexisting with different religious groups—they intend to violently convert them, and eradicate their religions.
I provided the link to hear it from the horses mouth. I'm not saying he's some wonderful person, but HTS's current agenda and recent actions are generally positive.
You mean what he tells CNN while he is trying to get US support?
Reminds me of what we were told of the talibans when Biden was trying to hand them over the country. "They are not the same talibans", "they want to be a good world citizen", etc. Well that didn't age well.
You are arguing between different flavours of jihadist groups, none of which I would refer simply as "rebels" or showing them taking over as a positive thing.
I don't know that I agree with this characterization. Was Assad particularly stable? Was he able to prevent rebel groups effectively?
HTS of today might be different from HTS of the past, but that's very much could be just their propaganda. We'll see. Given "guaranteed evil" vs "probably evil" I'd probably prefer the lesser evil.
I very much suspect Russia is fully focused on Ukraine and cannot or will not project force in the region.
Iran has been remarkably restrained over the past little while, and I suspect they want to keep things cool and not hot.
Looking at the speed with which the Syrian military now unraveled, the government was an empty shell of its former self.
Russia was in no position to intervene. First, the development was too quick. Second, the best units are on the Ukrainian front and redeploying them would certainly inspire the Ukrainian General Staff to probe the Russian defenses. Third, the Russian general (Kisel) tasked with leading the Syrian detachment was/is an incapable commander, sent there as a punishment.
> * how will Turkey negotiate with this facing the pkk and Kurdish nationalism?
Hopefully Turkey does the honorable thing, recognizes an independent Kurdish state and apologizes for decades of oppression, murder and state-sanction terror? Unlikely though.
Why would they? They can just steam-roll across all freely available western Syria until they encounter Israeli forces coming from south, and then roll across eastern Syria until United States starts dropping bombs on them, at which point they will likely stop and start thinking about more permanent borders.
It's surprising to me that many here in HN see Turkey as the state terrorists over the Kurds, when the main party of Kurdish independence from Turkey is a literal terrorist group who committed a terrorist attack killing innocent civilians in Turkey just over one month ago!
It feels to me that when HNers agree that a people should be sovereign (the Kurds), they ignore the terrorism. When they don't agree (the Palestinians), the terrorism takes center stage.
Some guys doing bad stuff, say other guys doing bad stuff are really bad - trust us - and thus have them added to the definitive naughty list. In case you're in any doubt, there are lots of bad people and folks out there, but believing there's one definitive list is pretty much Western chauvinism writ large.
I largely agree with you that "terrorism" is a designation solely used to denigrate ones enemies. That's the point I'm making. As soon as one group does what we call terrorism, but we agree with them, the label falls off
It is a sign that propaganda is getting to you if you find yourself seriously considering their talking points. Is it better if a million people die "in the name of stability" quietly being tortured to death in jails behind closed doors over a span of a decade all while further tens of millions live in misery or half that number die in a let's say 3 year war, but we see it all on TV and there is real chance of freedom and democracy thereafter? Also, it is a huge win for all the depots's propaganda efforts that today in many western countries people have been convinced "democracy doesn't work" because there are issues in their countries. If "it doesn't work" it's not that much different from a dictator, right? And if that is true, why are we helping in foreign wars that prevent the spread of the autocracy (Ukraine now, possibly Taiwan tomorrow). If democracy is a lie, there is no point to risk our wellbeing for Ukraine. Wrong. There is no more important cause in the world than stopping depots. Yes, democracy is not ideal, but it is as if comparing being angry you got a different topping on your pizza order vs starving to death. That is literally the difference. So my blood boils when I hear people online talk about "stability" (and by extension) "why are we spending money on Ukraine when the infrastructure is falling apart here". Because Ukraine is about the survival of our way of life, it is order of magnitude more important than local issues. Take an example from history.
When general Patton won over Germans in WW2 he wanted to continue to overthrow USSR and free countries like Poland and the rest Soviets took over when they colluded with Nazis to split Europe by half. But he was told no, Poland was sold to Stalin for "a pack of fa.s" so to speak alongside the rest of Central Europe. USSR had no nuclear weapon at the time and was a country in ruin. But with the coerced resourcefulness of all the countries like Poland, Belarus, Ukraine, Czech and so on (all modern manufacturing was based in "Soviet republics" with few notable exceptions, rocketry and aviation - Ukraine, computing/electronics Poland and Belarus, advanced machinery - East Germany and so on, later Soviet planners started moving people around to "closed cities" and other special places within Russia, but that's where most of them came from). As a result USSR developed nuclear weapons in record time and was a match for the free world militarily for a long time which few times almost ended our civilisation. If Paton was allowed to continue back then? None of it would've happened. We still live the bad consequences of this decision today.
Democracies have also done irreversible errors. Hitler after all was elected. So was Trump. Twice.
Democracy is very fragile, it requires that the players respect the rules of the game. But in reality, some players use democratic processes to undermine democracy itself and establish their own regime with a democratic shell.
* destabilising a region already in flames
* replacing a secular evil government by.. jihadists in a loose coalition. WCGW?
* Russia used port and airfields to maintain a presence in the Med and for nefarious purposes in Africa. What do they do now, to replace them because I doubt "nothing" is the answer.
* does Iran feel a need to do "stupid things" now to prop up regional Shia politics?
* could this be bad for Ukraine?
* how will Turkey negotiate with this facing the pkk and Kurdish nationalism?