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[Merged] Syrian Civil War heats up again/Damascus about to fall

Well now Russia says he is in Moscow and has been granted asylum.
 
Russia could have prevented this if they weren't wasting valuable resources on their invasion of Ukraine.
 
MinnesotaBrant said:
I watched a news program about this. I think that Isreal is cautious but liking how this is going. It's kind of the enemy of my enemy is my friend kind of thing sounds like
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The sense I'm getting from Israeli news is that Israel believes that the overthrow of Assad weakens Iran. Additionally, Israel is reportedly systematically destroying Assad's military bases, armories, and arms production facilities in southern Syria, eliminating another threat to Israel.
 
The Don said:
Yes.

While it is very good news that the Assad regime appears to have fallen, what looks likely to replace it (ISIS 2.0) isn't an improvement for those of us who consider a secular democracy to be the preferred system of government.

Syria will also be fertile ground for an ongoing proxy war between Hezbollah (representing Russia and Iran), ISIS 2.0 and the various groups supported by Turkey and the west. IMO it doesn't look good for the Syrian people.
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It's rich for Europeans to come crying about the lack of secular democracy in the middle east, after self righteously abdicating themselves from such matters.

There was a huge opportunity here, to depose a tyrant, drive off insurgent rabble, and create space for free and fair elections. But no. Now the sovereign state formerly known as Syria is a miserable pile of Islamofacists and an easy playground for Israeli aggression.

Good job, Europe.
 
theprestige said:
It's rich for Europeans to come crying about the lack of secular democracy in the middle east, after self righteously abdicating themselves from such matters.

There was a huge opportunity here, to depose a tyrant, drive off insurgent rabble, and create space for free and fair elections. But no. Now the sovereign state formerly known as Syria is a miserable pile of Islamofacists and an easy playground for Israeli aggression.

Good job, Europe.
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Since when has Europe interfering in Middle Eastern affairs ever been a good thing? The place is like it is precisely because they did, 100 years ago.
 
theprestige said:
It's rich for Europeans to come crying about the lack of secular democracy in the middle east, after self righteously abdicating themselves from such matters.

There was a huge opportunity here, to depose a tyrant, drive off insurgent rabble, and create space for free and fair elections. But no. Now the sovereign state formerly known as Syria is a miserable pile of Islamofacists and an easy playground for Israeli aggression.

Good job, Europe.
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How did that PNAC work out anyway?
 
steenkh said:
Is the Hisbollah still active inside Syria?
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From what I read they discussed and delayed action for a few days, then finally sent a few hundred to defend Homs - and there was some pretty heavy fighting around Homs.

But that became pointless when Damascus fell from the other direction, so they noped right back across the border into Lebanon again.
 
I'm sure a Sunni extremist regime in Syria will be great for Middle East peace.
 
Israel says they bombed over 100 targets in Syria today, mostly weapon depots.
I heard speculations that Israel and Turkey actually helped with the final push, in exchange for promise of moderate new regime. Which is nice idea.
Destroying the depots might be part of the deal. Or it's all bollocks and we'll get the good old "Near east kind of peace" ..
 
webfusion said:
"To the displaced all over the world, free Syria awaits you."

"The new Syria will be a place where everyone coexists in peace, justice prevails and rights are established, where every Syrian is honored and his dignity is preserved, we turn the page on the dark past and open a new horizon for the future." -HTS

And there you have it.
Peace.
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I'm not holding my breath, but a lot of knowledgeable people think that al-Jawlani has truly moderated and does not want to establish an Islamist regime in Syria.
 
Shame this couldn't have happened several hundred thousand civilian deaths ago. Maybe the new HTS regime will be at least marginally better than Assad? Maybe...
 
Dr.Sid said:
What's happening now looks certainly promising. But Taliban also looked promising for a while after the US left.
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Wow
 
Dr.Sid said:
But let me guess .. no photo ..
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The Jerusalem POST, as is their (bad)habit, illustrates their story about this (uncomfirmed) situation of Russia now claiming he is being offered asylum in Russia. They use a picture of Assad & Putin together. Ecccchhhh, this ain't journalism, it's just laziness on their part (which is common, because when they don't have an actual real-time picture, their editors just insert whatever random stock image they've got handy).
www.jpost.com

Moscow extends lifeline to Assad, offers asylum to family

Despite Russia allegedly helping Assad, Syrian opposition forces have guaranteed the safety of Russian military bases and diplomatic missions.
www.jpost.com www.jpost.com
 
This is what happens when you don't get out of town fast enough.

Ihab Makhlouf - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org

Ihab Makhlouf (Arabic: إيهاب مخلوف; 21 January 1973 – 8 December 2024), also known as Ehab Makhlouf, was a Syrian businessman, a brother of Syrian businessman Rami Makhlouf, Syrian intelligence officer and businessman Iyad Makhlouf and maternal cousin of former Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
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Makhlouf was shot to death on 7 December 2024 as he and a number of others, including his brother Iyad, were trying to flee Damascus after the city's fall into Syrian opposition hands; Iyad was wounded in the shooting. Makhlouf was 51.
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webfusion said:
The Jerusalem POST, as is their (bad)habit, illustrates their story about this (uncomfirmed) situation of Russia now claiming he is being offered asylum in Russia. They use a picture of Assad & Putin together. Ecccchhhh, this ain't journalism, it's just laziness on their part (which is common, because when they don't have an actual real-time picture, their editors just insert whatever random stock image they've got handy).
www.jpost.com

Moscow extends lifeline to Assad, offers asylum to family

Despite Russia allegedly helping Assad, Syrian opposition forces have guaranteed the safety of Russian military bases and diplomatic missions.
www.jpost.com www.jpost.com
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TBF, Russia is really pushing it, including Putin. Which makes Assad actually making it to Russia more likely. It hasn't been even 24 hours. But after that I call lack of photos very suspicious.
 
I see similarities with the fall of Afghanistan to the Taliban, with the resident Superpower seeing the writing on the wall and decide to let a (more or less) bloodless takeover happen instead of sinking men and resources into a lost cause.
 
Interestingly, Israel has occupied the Golan Heights buffer zone in order to protect it from bad actors but pinkie swear to give it back to Syria just so long as the new regime is not unfriendly to Israel. I expect them to be occupied indefinitely and would not be shocked to find settlers moving in in due course.

www.bbc.com

Israel seizes Golan buffer zone after Syrian troops leave posts

PM Netanyahu said the 1974 disengagement agreement had "collapsed" with the rebel takeover of Syria.
www.bbc.com www.bbc.com
 
theprestige said:
It got derailed by the political fallout of 9/11. What's Europe's excuse, twenty years on?
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The reason- not the "excuse"- is that, having seen the appaling consequences of following the US into a poorly thought-out and devastating attempt at regime change in Iraq, many people in Europe realised that this approach was not productive. This was especially true in the UK, where we were lied to by our government, and tricked into support for this murderous fiasco.
We came to the conclusion that you cannot bomb people into liking you, nor can you impose a new government on a country, especially as one as fractured as both Iraq and Syria are, without entailing massive numbers of civilian deaths and destabilising, not just the country, but the entire region.
I think it might be better, theprestige, if you could give any good reasons why you think that an American-led invasion of Syria, now or at the start of the insurgency, might have succeeded.
 
The Don said:
Interestingly, Israel has occupied the Golan Heights buffer zone in order to protect it from bad actors but pinkie swear to give it back to Syria just so long as the new regime is not unfriendly to Israel. I expect them to be occupied indefinitely and would not be shocked to find settlers moving in in due course.
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Across the Lebanese frontier, 'settlers' (frontiersmen) are already pushing for that.

See: Uri Tzafon Movement, a religious Zionist organization that has held online conferences calling for Jewish settlement in southern Lebanon, in areas which it claims are historically connected to the Jewish people.
 
theprestige said:
It's rich for Europeans to come crying about the lack of secular democracy in the middle east, after self righteously abdicating themselves from such matters.

There was a huge opportunity here, to depose a tyrant, drive off insurgent rabble, and create space for free and fair elections. But no. Now the sovereign state formerly known as Syria is a miserable pile of Islamofacists and an easy playground for Israeli aggression.

Good job, Europe.
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Which huge opportunity are you talking about?
 
Do you think Assad is in the same block of flats as Segal, Snowden and the Salisbury Cathedral lads?
 
a_unique_person said:
HTS toppled Assad, they didn't conquer all of Syria.
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They didn't even do that exactly, they started the uprising that toppled Assad not all those fighting along side them agreed with them. I think unless it goes improbably well, this is just a new era in the civil war in Syria.
 
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