Tag: Syria

Has Trump Cut a Deal To Get U.S. Troops Out of Syria?

Posted on by Lone Candle

“Syrian President Ahmad al-Sharaa and Gen. Mazloum Abdi make an odd couple. Abdi is a Kurdish rebel leader whose secular army boasts all-women units and fights alongside the U.S. military. Sharaa, formerly known as Abu Mohammad al-Golani, is a former franchisee of Al Qaeda who runs the new Islamist government in Damascus.

Yet the two men, both of whom traded in their military fatigues for ill-fitting suits, were shaking hands and grinning for the camera on Monday. They had an agreement—at least in principle—for Abdi’s Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) to merge into the government in exchange for Sharaa recognizing Kurds’ hard-won rights. The exact details would be hammered out by the end of 2025 by a newly formed committee.”

…

“President Donald Trump has long wanted to pull U.S. troops out of Syria. But his previous attempt to do so, in October 2019, was a violent catastrophe. Turkey took Trump’s withdrawal announcement as a green light to attack the SDF, and hawks in the administration played what they openly called “shell games” to keep U.S. forces in the country anyway.

A deal between the SDF and the central government might be the best opportunity for a graceful U.S. exit. In fact, Syria TV claims that the deal between Abdi and Sharaa was inked as a direct response to Trump telling his generals to pull U.S. troops out of Syria.”

https://reason.com/2025/03/14/has-trump-cut-a-deal-to-get-u-s-troops-out-of-syria/

‘Pray for us. They’ve arrived’: How Syria descended into revenge bloodshed

Posted on by Lone Candle

“Monitoring groups including Syria Network for Human Rights (SNHR) – an independent UK-based group – said over 1,000 people died in the violence, more than half killed by forces aligned with the new authorities and others by Assad loyalists. SNHR said the dead included 595 civilians and unarmed fighters, the vast majority Alawite.”

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“The mass killings were mostly carried out by gunmen from various factions aligned with the new government, including GSS, according to several of the witnesses.”

https://www.yahoo.com/news/pray-us-theyve-arrived-syria-134559936.html

Syria & the Fall of Bashar al-Assad – Why Assad’s military folded and what’s next

Posted on by Lone Candle

By 2024 Assad’s army was significantly weakened by multiple causes, and so were Assad’s allies.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rOzXlat-TcE

Syria’s Rojava Revolution Is in Grave Danger

Posted on by Lone Candle

“Kobane, Syria, was home to one of the most famous military turning points in history. A small force of Kurdish guerrillas, pressed between the advancing Islamic State group and the Turkish border, was supposed to have fallen quickly in a tragic last stand. Obama administration officials said as much. Instead, the Kurds of Kobane successfully held out for six months, enough time for the cavalry—the U.S. Air Force and rebels from elsewhere in Syria—to arrive.”

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“Kobane came under attack again. With the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s government in Damascus and the uncertainty over what comes next, Turkey has been seeking an opportunity to wipe out its Kurdish opponents and carve out a puppet state in Syria’s north. With air cover from the Turkish Air Force, militias known as the Syrian National Army (SNA) overran the nearby city of Manbij and marched toward Kobane.
“In the last war, the people fled to Turkey. This time, it will be a genocide,” Berivan Hesen, a member of Kobane’s local government who lived through the Islamic State group’s siege, said via text message on Tuesday. “They are all ISIS by a different name.” Hesen notes that many of the people living in Kobane now had fled from other parts of Syria under Turkish and SNA control, such as Afrin, where the same forces have committed looting, rape, and torture since occupying it in 2018.

The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) agreed to “American mediation” with Turkey, the SDF’s Gen. Mazloum Abdi announced on Tuesday night, withdrawing forces from Manbij in hopes that Kobane would be spared. (The next day, Turkey launched drone strikes across North and East Syria.)”

https://reason.com/2024/12/11/syrias-rojava-revolution-is-in-grave-danger/

Biden missing in action as Turkey inches closer to full-blown war against US-allied Kurds in Syria

Posted on by Lone Candle

Biden missing in action as Turkey inches closer to full-blown war against US-allied Kurds in Syria

https://www.yahoo.com/news/biden-missing-action-turkey-inches-205703408.html

An Israeli Military Legend Lays Out Scenarios for a New Middle East

Posted on by Lone Candle

“In 2015, when the Assad regime was about to collapse, the opposition force had the upper hand on their way to Damascus. And then, who came to help Assad? The Russians with an air force, against which the rebels didn’t have any air defense. And Hezbollah came to help Assad on the ground. Iranians delivered money, weapons and some Shia militia. What happened this time? All three players were absent. The Russians were in Ukraine. Hezbollah was destroyed by Israel. And the Iranians were deterred by Israel. So the Syrian army was left alone.”

…

” I can see four scenarios. The first one I call the “Libyan scenario.” After the fall of Qaddafi, everybody fought with everybody to have dominance. In the end, Libya was stabilized by two main entities. But only after many, many years of internal war with the support from outside forces like Turkey, Russia and Egypt. The second scenario is some kind of “former Yugoslavia model.” Each one of the sects will have its own autonomy, and they will be smart enough not to fight each other. The third scenario is a jihadist state ranging from an extreme ISIS type to a Taliban in a moderate sense. The fourth scenario is a political Islam kind of country under the model of Turkey and Qatar. A political Islam, not jihadist Islam.”

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/12/11/what-the-future-of-syria-might-look-like-00193792

What is Captagon, the synthetic stimulant that earned billions for the Assad regime in Syria?

Posted on by Lone Candle

“On Sunday, just hours after the Islamist Hayat Tahrir al-Sham group, or HTS, captured Damascus and took power, its leader Abu Mohammad al-Jolani stood up in front of a crowd of supporters inside the capital’s historic Umayyad Mosque and declared: “Syria has become the biggest producer of Captagon on Earth, and today, Syria is going to be purified by the grace of God.”
The future remains uncertain when it comes to the powerful forces of a cartel economy driven by billions of dollars, high demand and a fragile transitional government.”

https://www.yahoo.com/news/captagon-synthetic-stimulant-earned-billions-220420441.html