generalspeaking

Hollowing Out Syrian Rebellion

"Moscow wants Ankara to reconcile with the Assad regime."
"Turkey's reliance on Russia to protect itself from the [Kurdish separatists] and prevent a new surge of refugees, this time from Idlib, may therefore force it into an accommodation with Damascus that it has successfully resisted until now."
Joost Hiltermann, International Crisis Group

"Idlib's fate now rests with Turkey and Russia."
"Although on opposite sides of the conflict -- Ankara supports the rebels and Moscow is one of Assad's major allies -- the two powers share an interest in averting a humanitarian catastrophe."
"Their diplomacy on the matter is likely to culminate September 7 when they meet in the Kazakh capital, Astana, along with Iran."
Louisa Loveluck, journalist,Washington Post Beirut bureau

"We can't go back because of [the risk of] neighbours' petty revenge."
"They snitch on you and call you a traitor and the next thing you know you're languishing in prison, for nothing."
"My town is filled with regime forces and thugs. How do they expect me to return?"
Syrian refugee in Lebanon

"A Syria with ten million trustworthy people obedient to the leadership is better than a Syria with 30 million vandals."
"[The country's] cancerous cells [of resistance will be] removed completely."
Maj.Gen. Jamal al-Hassan, senior Syrian military official

Bashar the destroyer

Bashar al Assad is preparing to confront and oust the last of the Syrian Sunni rebels who have for the past seven years, attempted to remove him from his power base. Syrian Sunnis represent a majority population in the sectarian-riven country that is barely a nation, while Assad rules with the support of the Shiite Alawite minority. He was hanging on to a slender strip of Syria with the rebels having succeeded in occupying a good portion of territory, the Sunni terrorist Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant holding a major portion, when Russia stepped in as his salvation.

Even with the considerable assistance of the Iranian Republican Guard al Quds special forces, augmented ferociously by Shiite Islamist groups loyal to Iran, along with combat-seasoned Hezbollah forces, Syria's president was hard put to sustain himself -- even ordering his military to use inhumane and internationally illegal chemical weapons, along with barrel bombs, siege and starvation to target Syrian civilians living in the Sunni areas alongside the rebel groups.

When, with the help of Russian bomber jets, the Syrian military attacked rebel-held and ISIL strongholds, civil infrastructure was totally destroyed and with it the countless lives of civilians unable to protect themselves from the military might of Russian air power and Syrian determination to slaughter the opposition all of whom were named 'terrorists' irrespective of age, health, non-combatant realities -- amid condemnation by the United Nations.

Now all that is left to be reclaimed is Idlib province; rural, neighbouring the Turkish border. And when that order for the Syrian military and its allies comes to rampage through Idlib, the catastrophic blood-letting and-shedding that characterized the disarming, exodus, and slaughter of those caught in the fray in Homs, Aleppo, the suburbs of Damascus and countless towns and villages, will be repeated in the onslaught of Idlib: "There is a perfect storm coming up in front of our eyes", as Staffan de Mistura, United Nations' envoy to Syria put it.

Are they the next to leave?

To be sure, it is not only the remnants of the Syrian Sunni rebels that will be mopped up and destroyed as 'terrorists', but Islamist 'militant' factions as well, some of which are recognized as formerly affiliated with al-Qaeda, just as ISIL was; Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, for one, a terrorist group that never hesitated, like the regime, to slaughter civilians. But it is the huge refugee camps teeming with displaced Syrians living in endemic poverty whose presence is so seriously threatened where up to 1.6 million people are reliant on international food aid.

Turkey, unwilling despite its border proximity to Idlib, to accept any more than the three million Syrians it still houses, leaves a situation where displaced Syrians are being told to return to their homes. Homes which for the most part, no longer exist in destroyed towns and villages where an influx of Shiites await their presence and all the sinister connotations that comes with that reality. The creation of a humanitarian corridor where the displaced could gather was considered and rejected.

The regime speaks of "liberation" of Idlib from the thousands of "terrorists" held to be holding their own there still. Leaflets dropped by the Syrian army targeting rebels and their supporters urge their surrender: "Until when will you and your families live in fear and anxiety?"; "How long will your children remain without hope of future?", they read. As for Russia, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavroy speaks of the militants as "festering abscesses" to be "liquidated".

The Russian navy is scheduled for a major exercise in the Mediterranean, possibly for the purpose of offensive preparation by Syrian government forces. However, interpreted by Reuters as "aimed at deterring the West from carrying out strikes on Syrian government forces". As if. Civil society in the West is bored with the atrocities carried out in Syria against unfortunate civilians; so commonplace even as they are horrendous and deplored with passion.

Labels: Atrocities, Civil War, Rebellion, Russia, Slaughter, Syria

posted by Pieface @ Saturday, September 01, 2018