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Sat, 07 Dec 2024 23:54:31 -0800
zerosugar from private IP, post #18802683
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Syria
Assad is really out. I wonder if he will at least release a video to his people. I am just really really shocked he left. This guy was basically like a king and
so was his father before him. I think he should have stayed and fought even if it meant dying like Gaddafi. Anyway, will wait and see. They are saying
Assad’s plane possibly crashed. I will refrain from giving my opinion on the opposition at this time and on other countries involved on either side. It’s an
all around sad and crazy situation for so many people.
#Politics
Sun, 08 Dec 2024 06:02:03 -0800
Andy from private IP
Reply #12168724
That would be funny if Putin sabotaged Assad's plane. One less asylee!
Sun, 08 Dec 2024 06:50:58 -0800
zerosugar from private IP
Reply #11223853
I don't think he was planning to go to Russia, but to Abu Dhabi. Jordan and Egypt had supposedly offered him asylum as
well. Still possible he was on his way to Russia, as maybe he did not trust these Arab countries wouldn't turn him over to ICC. Another crazy twist is that some
are suspicious of a Gambian plane. It would be insane if he decided to go to an African country. Members of the Syrian military reported they were basically
told to stand back and do nothing. Jolani just entered. There was not even a battle. I think it's too early to assess what Jolani will do, but he was with a
branch of Al Qaeda offshoot group.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/12/06/jolani-syria-hts/
P.S. I sort of wonder if he survived what his life will be like. He isn't the type of guy who will become some influencer posting frequently on social media.
Then again, I don't see him being as low key as Ahmadinejad, but maybe more like Aisha Gaddafi. She had an art exhibit recently. I can see Assad going back into
photography and eventually having a gallery.
Sun, 08 Dec 2024 14:59:26 -0800
whiteguyinchina from private IP
Reply #11769342
Your career options after being a deposed dictator are a bit limited imho
Wed, 11 Dec 2024 06:27:04 -0800
zerosugar from private IP
Reply #10650179
They just selected a very scary PM. Jolani made it seem like he was extending an olive branch and allowing the PM
Assad appointed to stay in power.
Isis are now entering the Alawite villages as per many videos posted on telegram. There are foreign fighters there too not just Syrians, one foreign fighter
entered a hospital and murdered an Alawite solder and a Kurdish soldier. Heartbreaking that the USA wanted to support these criminals. Heartbreaking that Assad
just abandoned his people with no word. He should have left peacefully back in the early days of the war and appointed somebody moderate for a transitional
government.
BTW, I am a westerner of course, but I spent enough time in the Northern Lebanese city of Tripoli to know quite a bit about these guys and the hate they have
for anybody who is not Sunni. Even the ones who seem moderate and dress Western have this mindset. The French colonialists lclearly knew what they were doing in
seeking out the Alawites as allies. I don’t hate Sunni btw and many seem peaceful, but in their hearts, they believe anybody who is not their faith is not
worthy of paradise. This is why I had a hard time connecting with people who believed I was damned.
Wed, 11 Dec 2024 06:44:23 -0800
zerosugar from private IP
Reply #13286404
They escorted out the old PM. They first made it seem like they were extending an olive branch to the other side by
letting the old PM stay. Now they just appointed a PM. Also, weren’t Israel and the USA for democracy? Notice how no election now. Just an appointed
government.
See below:
On the same day, a video was published showing al-Jalali being escorted in Damascus by Tahrir al-Sham militia.
On the old PM
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohammad_Ghazi_al-Jalali
This is their new PM. See the flag behind him.
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/middle-east/who-is-mohammad-al-bashir-syrias-caretaker-prime-minister/amp_articleshow/116198755.cms
Wed, 11 Dec 2024 10:07:05 -0800
whiteguyinchina from private IP
Reply #19602131
i have no idea why syria is of any interest to these various powers, such as russia or usa or chayna. but it seems usa
benefits from this outcome. the other side lost an ally, but not sure if that ally was worth anything in the first place. what strategic value did syria have
anyway? why was the us and russia in there? no idea.
in the micro context you destabilize a country, in the macro context you score a small win on the geopolitical chessboard. i would guess no one in washington or
london is losing much sleep over muslims killing muslims.
Wed, 11 Dec 2024 10:10:43 -0800
whiteguyinchina from private IP
Reply #11400129
https://www.eurasiareview.com/09122024-the-geostrategic-importance-of-syria-geography-power-and-global-influence-analysis/
well this kind of educated me
Wed, 11 Dec 2024 10:53:15 -0800
marlon from private IP
Reply #10147146
Russia needs Syria for a military base & a warm-water port, so they can keep going their operations in Africa,
whatever it is.
the USA has dozens of foreign military bases but Russia has only one.
Wed, 11 Dec 2024 11:25:34 -0800
whiteguyinchina from private IP
Reply #11945772
Yea it seems like the Iran needs Syria for something such as whatever
Wed, 11 Dec 2024 11:41:26 -0800
TribalBarConnection from private IP
Reply #11160051
Rip Lion of Damascus.
Wed, 11 Dec 2024 12:05:22 -0800
marlon from private IP
Reply #19856126
👍 yeah the Black Sea sucks because of Turkey.
Polar ports suck.
Russia is like a landlocked country.
Wed, 11 Dec 2024 12:21:24 -0800
TribalBarConnection from private IP
Reply #11872548
It's why they have wanted to take Dardanelles for centuries.
Wed, 11 Dec 2024 13:51:57 -0800
zerosugar from private IP
Reply #14532655
Syria is filled with natural resources. Assad himself transferred like over 100 billion to Russia and bought about 20
apartments in this fancy high-rise supposedly. I am shocked at how this man lived, even fancier than the wealthy Gulf Arabs. In public, he seemed simple and
humble. One of my friends is Alawite and her family are still there and terrified. I told her to tell them to try to cross into Lebanon or Turkey or something,
but then the rebels will assume they are war criminals trying to escape and kill them. She contacted an old friends of hers who lives in the part of Syria that
Israel entered and where some fighting occurred. She just wanted to ask her friend who is Sunni if her family were ok and the friend rudely started talking to
her like she was a criminal, telling her that if she knows anybody who was in the military or with Assad that she needs to report them to the new government and
that she knows "you people" know a lot of them. This girl used to be one of her best friends.
What's funny is that when Assad first fell, my friend was happy. Her family were happy too. The Alawite lived so poor even under Assad and he just abandoned
them and left them to the wolves to be blamed for his crimes. People I saw online had so much hope Jolani would do the right thing and even claimed he would
name a Christian as mayor of Hama. People including the Alawite even thought it was beautiful how he prayed when he arrived to Damascus. Now, just a few days
later, the rebels are showing their true face.
They are also burnt Hafez al Assad's (Bashar's father) grave today. I thought burning graves was haram in Islam and one of the worst things ever. Whether he was
good or bad, it's still a grave and still part of Syria's history. They could have simply closed off the area and left it for tourists to see how Syria used to
be and how this family built these extravagant monuments while people starved and were forced into war. They are basically destroying an entire country, but
having a Wahhabi or Takfiri or whatever you want to call them militia group carry off the old PM when Jolani previously told him he could stay is crazy.
here are some points I notice:
1) Hezbollah and Assad messed up by fighting so much for the Palestinians and being basically the only forced in the Arab world who care about Palestine. Even
Hafez al Assad before Bashar. They thought they were going to be principled and fight for the little guy, but the "little guy" who are mostly Sunni extremists
consider them scum anyway. It's almost nonsensical that they made the Israel/Palestinian conflict their mission. Nasrallah should have focused on Lebanon and
occasionally gone into Syria to help against the extremists. He should have never made Palestinians his mission because that made him a target for Israel. The
funny thing is Palestinian militia groups sabotaged Lebanon in the Lebanese Civil War anyway. I of course feel bad for the innocent Palestinian civilians caught
in crossfires, but that shouldn't have been Nasrallah's mission. He also shouldn't have been so visibly aligned with Iran because everybody dislikes Iran.
2) The downfall of Hezbollah makes me see how strong they really were. They were carrying Assad on their back. The Iranian military alone seem to be useless and
Russia are not too focused on Ukraine.
P.S. Putin's hilarious save face that he is in touch with the opposition is hilarious. They don't care about him and will take his bases.
3) Assad should have just left in the early 10s and handed over power to somebody moderate so a peaceful transition could have happened while keeping nut jobs
under control. Now he escaped and left this vacuum for these groups to just take over. If he would have left properly, maybe they could have transitioned to a
sort of confessional system like in Lebanon which seems to have had relative peace after the Lebanese Civil war.
4) Syria will be like Iraq or Libya now.
Wed, 11 Dec 2024 14:06:44 -0800
zerosugar from private IP
Reply #16874773
I became extremely interested in Syria during my time in Lebanon. My host who was Sunni and from Tripoli (Northern
Lebanon) was driving me through an area called Jabal Mohsen. I was just a young girl and basically knew almost nothing about Lebanon or Syria aside from the
singer Haifa. There were all these big billboards and posters of this old white looking man. The old man didn't look Arab or Levantine at all, well what my idea
of what Arabs and Levantines should look like. In my head, I assumed maybe he was some French or British ambassador who had been charitable to the people! lol.
I asked my host who was this old man. He responded that the old man was Hafez al Assad, the old president of Syria. I responded that the old man looked so
western. He told me its because he was from an ethno religious group called the Alawite. He started to tell me how the Alawite and the Druze are secret
religions that you have to be born into and with the Alawite, even amongst themselves, only a select few of the men are taught the religion. I found his so
fascinating. That night on my phone, all I did was google about them and try to learn as much as possible and really there is not much! They were not accepted
as Muslim until the 1970s when the liberal Shia cleric Musa al Sadr who was later kidnapped in Libya declared them Muslim. The Belgian Jesuit old orientalist
Henri Lammens considered them a crypto Christian group. Some anthropologists have noted they appear to have Kartvelian origins and there are like elements of
Greek mythology in their religion. The only thing that is known about them which they are public about is they believe in reincarnation and are not supposed to
eat female animals. A man who tried to publish some of their secrets in the 1950s and escaped into Lebanon was assassinated. There was even an offshoot group of
the Alawite started by a guy named Salman al Murshid. Their religion is called the Murshidis. When I was in Lebanon, the Sunni guy told me the Alawite have a
holiday called hiding day where everybody gets into a closet and who touches who first has to have sex with that person regardless of age or if related. When I
asked some Alawite this years later, they laughed and told me it's the Murshidi who do that. Who knows the truth? lol.
The Druze religion seems to be sort of like Hinduism. They do not allow marriage to outsiders and some outsiders who marry non Druze are even threatened with
death.
Anyway, the Levant is such a diverse region. Most Americans think of Gulf Arabs when they think of the Middle East, but these people are vastly different than
Gulf Arabs. At most, they are merely Arabized. I also believe haplogroup J1 is not native to the Levant, but rather arrived west with the spread of Islam.
Wed, 11 Dec 2024 14:14:05 -0800
zerosugar from private IP
Reply #12628554
@whiteguyinchinaTest We did
not win ultimately in Iraq or anywhere else just as we lost in Afghanistan. Maybe there is no winning. If you think about it, it seemed like a victory in Iraq,
but years later, we had to pick up the peaces with ISIS. Many members of ISIS were disenfranchised soldiers from Saddam's old army. abu bakr al-Baghdadi was an
IraqI who lived adjacent to a mosque during the American occupation. He became radicalized as he heard a cleric speak and as he witnessed American soldiers
disrespecting the people and throwing Qurans in the street. They watched the Shia and Kurds hang Saddam and even though Saddam was not religious himself, he
still was a Sunni ethnic. Today, Sunni around the world view Saddam as this lion of the Sunnah.
I am not sure how Syria is a win, but Assad should have tried more to align with the West and maybe he wouldn't be gone. I do just feel for all the Christians
and Alawite and other groups who will be harmed. The rebels will not protect them nor will they protect so much of the beautiful history in that country.
Wed, 11 Dec 2024 14:49:56 -0800
marlon from private IP
Reply #12895106
the Middle East has all these arbitrary borders
https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/syria-map-control-factions-civil-war-a5730e6f?mod=hp_lead_pos9
Wed, 11 Dec 2024 19:39:30 -0800
zerosugar from private IP
Reply #19989789
The funny thing is I went over some of my old articles and Ron Paul has been writing since 2021 about Jolani and how
Washington was trying to reposition him.
Here is a recent article Ron wrote. Btw, I’m not a libertarian. I dislike their economic policies, but he writes some decent articles on International
Relations.
https://ronpaulinstitute.org/al-qaeda-rides-again-in-syria/
Excerpt:
As Christians around the world prepare to celebrate Christmas, a hell has been unleashed inside Syria with the seizure of the country by the re-named
“al-Qaeda in Syria” now called Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS). Its leader is a former deputy commander of ISIS, Abu Mohammed al-Julani.
While neocons and the mainstream media in the US and Europe celebrate the overthrow of the Assad government – a priority since the Obama Administration – as
with previous US “liberations” in Libya and Iraq the outcome is proving to be anything but liberating. Christian churches are being ransacked and believers
abused.
Sharia law has been announced by the new justice minister, Shadi Alwaisi.
Wed, 11 Dec 2024 19:41:46 -0800
zerosugar from private IP
Reply #16391155
Here is an article from 2021 from Ron Paul Institute.
https://ronpaulinstitute.org/how-washington-is-positioning-syrian-al-qaedas-founder-as-its-asset/
Wed, 11 Dec 2024 19:52:56 -0800
zerosugar from private IP
Reply #19762309
@marlonTest that's a good article too
and scary. its terrifying all these militias and how it can spill into neighboring countries. I wonder sometimes if Biden purposely did all this to make things
hard for Trump going forward. I see Syria as being a huge mess for some time. This is bigger than Iraq and Libya imho.
Wed, 11 Dec 2024 19:55:12 -0800
whiteguyinchina from private IP
Reply #16805655
Yea it's messed up. I feel the middle east wars of America were meant to destabilize the entire region so that no
other power could control it. That is. The deatabilization wasn't the consequence of the wars, it was the goal.
Wed, 11 Dec 2024 20:01:19 -0800
marlon from private IP
Reply #11175469
more migrants to Europe too
@19856126 TribalBarConnection 👍
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