An expert's view of the fall of Assad
+ SYRIA ANNEXED BY WESTERN KLEPTO-CIVILISATION
Here we go again with my English translation of 2 articles, originally in Italian.
(All emphasis and footnotes mine in both).
The first one is a short article published on Movisol.org yesterday, Friday 13th December 2024.
An expert's view of the fall of Assad
Among the countless comments on what is happening in Syria, former US State Department official Chas Freeman (photo), one of the speakers at the Schiller Institute conference on 7-8 December [2024], offered Pascal Lottaz, for the Japanese blog Neutrality Studies, an assessment worth reflecting on. Freeman, an esteemed diplomat who also served as ambassador to Saudi Arabia in his career, pointed out that it is too early to draw conclusions about what led to the collapse of the government and what the Syria of the future will look like, but there are profound geopolitical implications that need to be considered.
To begin with, Israel and Netanyahu are the big winners. Israel first neutralised the forces identified as Iran's long arm, striking Hamas in Gaza, decapitating Hezbollah and decimating its ranks, and now it is removing the bridge in Syria that Iran used for logistical support of Hezbollah. The Israeli goal is to “fragment Syria... through divide and rule”. This would mean that Tehran now faces Israel directly, as there is no longer a “forward deployed deterrent force” to protect Iran. Freeman suggested that this might convince Tehran to restart its military nuclear programme, although there are no indications so far.
As for the correlation of forces that led to the fall of President Assad, Freeman said there are “many foreign hands”, but the full picture is still “a bit murky”. Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) turned out to be a “well-trained and well-led army... with a full panoply of new weapons”, including tanks. The former US diplomat implied that this was due to the support of Turkey and, to some extent, Ukraine, but also mentioned the CIA - which he said has had a hand in Syria since 1947 - and France.
In an earlier interview, Freeman had identified the role of US-issued sanctions, which have crippled the economy in general and damaged army morale, as well as the US takeover of Syria's oil fields. Daily blackouts have taken their toll, eroding popular support for Assad.
As for the role of Turkey and Erdogan, the Turkish interest is to eliminate Syrian Kurdish factions allied with the PKK and to return the 5 million Syrian refugees in Turkey [i.e. from Turkey to Syria]. Both Turkey and Russia put pressure on Assad to negotiate with the HTS, but he refused. Consequently, Freeman speculated that “it is not unlikely” that Turkey and Russia have “ruled him out”, leading Ankara to provide military training to the HTS. Russia is reportedly negotiating with the HTS to maintain its main base in Syria.
On the subject of the HTS, Freeman joked that Western media propagandists call Jolani, the HTS leader on whom a ten million dollar bounty issued by the US hangs, a “liberal democratic jihadist”, but time will tell.
Israeli PM Netanyahu wasted no time in proclaiming his victory and starting to carve up Syria. The Times of Israel reported that IDF forces have occupied Syrian territory on the Golan Heights, which Netanyahu, who visited the area on 9th December [2024], called necessary “to protect the border”. Netanyahu obviously hopes that Israel's military victories will be a protective factor for him as he goes to court to face numerous corruption charges.
Regarding speculations of negotiations between Turkey on one side and Russia and Iran on the other, these have been finally put to sleep by Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan, who has revealed that his country convinced the other two parties not to respond militarily to the offensive led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) and the Turkish-backed Syrian National Army (SNA) in Syria, which ended with the fall of Damascus and the exile of Assad and his family, as reported by Al Mayadeen today.
The second article was published on Comidad.org on Thursday 12th December 2024:
SYRIA ANNEXED BY WESTERN KLEPTO-CIVILISATION
Democracy does not exist, it is just the mythological label for the expensive public relations apparatus that is electoralism. We live in a system where it is not you who makes the money, but money makes you; and this also applies to electoral candidacies. The little “coup d'état” carried out by the Romanian Constitutional Court against a “Putinist” candidate does not therefore strike at the evanescent “democracy” but precisely at the expensive public relations apparatus, which is no small event. Electoralism can sometimes mistakenly intercept petty motives, such as the Romanians' instinct for self-preservation, and momentarily have undesirable effects for the local and international oligarchies; but the electoral system is designed precisely to cushion and mislead any dissent. Fraud or boycotts by ministerial bureaucracies can also be resorted to; in particular cases, even physical elimination can be used. Usually, however, it is enough to provide the people's elected representatives with an emergency alibi to allow them a convenient escape from their election promises. On the other hand, the fact of nullifying an election result with smoky reasons such as the use of Tik Tok, denotes a total lack of lucidity, i.e. it is a typical case of self-intoxication with one's own propaganda, taking one's own phantoms seriously.
Fortunately, in our dear little Italy, we do not have such inconveniences, since we have gone directly from the first republic to the second monarchy, with the “Head of State” [the President of the Republic] who does not have to undergo electoral scrutiny, but is the one who appoints the ministers, blocking the undesirable ones; furthermore, he presides over the Supreme Defence Council, playing the role of guarantor of the “western positioning”, i.e. of that colonial bond called “alliance” and which the local oligarchy seeks and cultivates because it acts as a business backstop and cover against the subordinate classes. In the first republic, parties controlled banks and industries through the IRI [Istituto per la Ricostruzione Industriale, i.e. Institute for Industrial Reconstruction], so they still counted for something; whereas today, parties and their leaders perform a purely decorative and playful talk-show function. Many say they admire the fact that the Meloni government is the only one in Europe that is not in the balance, but they do not tell us that Meloni is not in danger of falling for the banal reason that she counts for nothing. Symbols also contribute to confirm the role of absolute monarch of the so-called “President of the Republic”, such as the fact that he resides at the Quirinale palace and occupies the royal box at La Scala [theatre in Milan], where this year Mattarella has had himself replaced by sending not only the President of the Senate [Ignazio La Russa], which is the second highest office of the State, but above all Senator [Lialiana] Segre [of Jewish origin and holocaust survivor], so as to reaffirm his loyalty to the “western” camp.
From a historical and cultural point of view, the category of “West” is very vague; however, it is very precise from the point of view of the Penal Code, when it speaks of the crime of money laundering; a laundering, however, done well, so as to escape [prosecutor Nicola] Gratteri's wit. For example: now that Stellantis is going to take more public money from [Industry] Minister [Adolfo] Urso, how is he going to steal it and turn it into private wealth? The Italian Embassy in Tel Aviv explains, letting us know that Stellantis has signed an agreement with the Israeli Authority for Innovation, which provides a series of “start-ups”, i.e., new companies created ad hoc to act as a backbone for the money. The money officially allocated to Mirafiori and Pomigliano goes to Israeli start-ups. One understands why Israel is untouchable. Our embassy in Tel Aviv lets us know that ENEL1 also does the same thing; and ENEL is a joint stock company in which the government is a shareholder. Western civilisation can thus be defined as an international kleptocracy that steals public money by laundering it through banks, non-profit foundations and start-ups. Every time you go to the petrol pump and pay excise duty, be moved by the thought of contributing to Western klepto-civilisation.
Contrary to rumours, our “President of the Republic” holds much more power than the US president, who does not have the weapon of the dissolution of chambers at his disposal. Because of his constant concerns about electoral approval, the US president is blackmail-able by donors and does not have the material time to be able to concentrate on the machinery of power; thus even the “spoil system” is often ineffective, since the US president cannot know exactly where to place his men and perhaps only fills those executive posts that are more conspicuous but less decisive. A man like Biden could boast of his knowledge of the apparatus, but it is no coincidence that he arrived at the presidency when he was already mentally incapacitated, as is also his vice-president Harris, who too often appeared in public hilarious and under the influence of alcohol. The claim that Putin sacrificed Syria to a deal with Trump over Ukraine therefore has no basis. If anything, the deal on Syria's skin was with Erdogan, since it is Turkey that controls access to the Black Sea, which is the real bone of contention in the Ukraine affair. We would then need to know in what terms the partitioning of Libya by the Turks and Russians is proceeding.
Official information tells us about Turkish interests in Syria by focusing on the need to tackle the Kurdish threat and to repatriate the millions of Syrian refugees now settled in Turkey. In reality, the Kurdish threat has grown precisely because of the destabilisation of Syria from 2011 onwards; just as the problem of the millions of refugees has always arisen because of that destabilisation; a destabilisation, however, that could never have been accomplished if the Turkish government had denied assistance and hospitality to jihadist bases. It is therefore not a question of mere Turkish “interests” but of Turkish imperialism being so aggressive that it is willing to take its own risks.
Putin is not so clueless as to waste his time with someone like Trump, nor can he generally believe that there is any point in negotiating with US presidents, since the latter would not have control over the implementation of whatever decisions they take anyway. However, this does not mean that the Russian president is reliable with his allies; assuming and not conceding that “reliable allies” can really exist. In fact, the expression “reliable ally” is just an oxymoron, since alliances are not very good for mutual security, while they are very good for mutual corruption. Today, even Bashar Al Assad joins the list of people tricked by Putin, along with Saddam Hussein, Gaddafi and the Armenians. What has really happened in these last weeks in Syria, we may never know. We are still being fed an illusion of information these days that omits essential details, so that we do not know whether the Syrian army has handed over its weapons or not. The only thing that is certain is that the jihadists' lightning march from Idlib to Damascus was merely a performance for the Euro-American media. Assad has always been the subject of rubbish articles portraying him as a bloodthirsty and corrupt dictator, without providing any precise reference for the accusations. Translated from political correctness, “bloody and corrupt dictatorship” means that there were not enough banks, non-profit foundations and start-ups in Assad's Syria to do any decent laundering.
It should be remembered that the Russians only arrived in Syria in 2015 and that in 2012 Assad had had his heroic moment, when with his conscript army he had managed to withstand the siege of Damascus by jihadists supported, financed and trained by the USA, the UK, France, Turkey, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Israel; and the latter even then was constantly bombing Syrian troops and bases supporting the jihadists of Al Nusra. Even in 2012, many generals and officers had already abandoned Assad, but he still managed to prevail. The good old days when one was not just an “ally”.
I will conclude the following statement released today by Ahmad al-Sharaa, also known as Abu Mohammad al-Jolani, as quoted by Al Mayadeen (all emphasis mine):
We are not looking to engage in a conflict with Israel and cannot bear such a battle.
…although Syria's interim government is asking the UN Security Council to take action to force Israel to halt its attacks on Syrian territory and withdraw from northern areas it has entered, in violation of the 1974 Disengagement Agreement, as reported in another Al Mayadeen article. Whoever thinks that the Syrian “rebels” are going to give trouble to Israel is a fool: they just let Israel destroy all the Syrian military capabilities (see for instance this other Al Mayadeen article) and let the Israeli “Defense” Forces advance up to ~15 km from Damascus (as reported by Al Mayadeen), without opposing any resistance! Do not let be fooled by a some videos of a few terrorists threatening Israel - what can they do without any military equipment Instead, watch out for the new “turn of events”: the war between Israel and Iran!
Now that Israel has destroyed all Syrian air defences (as per Al Mayadeen), it can violate Syrian airspace without worry and with impunity. In fact, I think that it is not a coincidence that over the last few days the head of the US Central Command (CENTCOM), General Michael Erik Kurilla, visited Israel and met with Israeli Chief of General Staff Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi, the Israeli Minister of Defense Israel Katz, the Commander of the IDF's Northern Command Major General Ori Gordin, and the Israeli Air Force Commander Major General Tomar Bar, as reported by CENTCOM itself and Al Mayadeen.
Finally, I recommend the latest post by Richard Silverstein on his Tikun Olam blog (on possible future Israeli attack on Iranian nuclear sites) and the latest article by Simplicius The Thinker (for a more detailed account of recent developments in Syria):
Italian multinational manufacturer and distributor of electricity and gas
"...return the 5 million Syrian refugees to Turkey".
I think you mean "return the 5 million Syrian refugees from Turkey to Syria".