Popular discontent in YPG militia-held areas as violations peaked

 'Most areas under the control of the YPG militia have been in a state of popular unrest because of the militia practices and violations, which reached their peak in the recent period, and as a popular reaction, the people and some tribesmen began carrying out a popular movement that developed into armed clashes and attacks on military sites and checkpoints in the rural areas of Raqqa province.

 Dozens of youths from the Bukhmis tribe left Wednesday in the town of Mansoura in the western countryside of the province, attacked and burned some of the YPG militia's barriers, and managed to control a military headquarters run by the so-called Asayish, the security arm of the YPG.

 The move comes after a young man from the clan was shot dead by YPG militiamen while he was trying to escape in an attempt to arrest him to be taken to forced conscription camps.

 The protests reached the eastern districts of Deir al-Zour province, where the tribesmen of the "Shu'aytat" clan also decided to go out to express their resentment at the situation in their villages of deliberate neglect of services, forced recruitment of young people and the implementation of arbitrary arrests.


 The "roadmap" presented by the YPG to Russia to reach an agreement with the Syrian régime on the fate of northeastern region of Syria raised the fears of the people of those areas, especially since a small part of their residents fought against the régime at the beginning of the revolution and some are still fighting even now with the factions In northern Syria.

 The map will be under a Russian guarantee and pave the way for the militia to join the Assad army and recognize him as the "president" of the country, said Saleh Musallam, the representative of the YPG's political wing the PYD.. "The map included a decentralized administration of our regions, and the distribution of wealth in the north-east of Syria in addition to the border crossings and gates."

 "Suhaib al-Jaber," a member of the network "Furat Post," specialized in reporting events in the Eastern region said" that the main cause of protests, whether in Raqqa or other areas is the resentment of the population against the practices of YPG militia and violations on the one hand, and fear of hidden ties with the Assad régime, especially after the Kurdish units repeatedly announced their intention to reach a final settlement with the Assad régime, and this is an important reason that drives hundreds of thousands of people wanted by the régime to action.

 As a direct measure, YPG militia launched a large-scale raid in the town of Mansoura, west of Raqqa, aimed at arresting and forcibly recruiting participants in the protests and sending them to other areas to get rid of them in order to avoid their re-demonstrations.

 According to identical sources, more than 50 youths were arrested by the militias and taken to the detention centers in conjunction with the imposition of a curfew on some streets of the town.

 Deterioration of service and humanitarian conditions are pushing the population to revolt.
All areas of eastern Euphrates under the control of the YPG suffer from deliberate neglect of services despite the abundant funds resulting from the sale of oil, and the theft of millions of US dollars of financial aid by YPG forced the people to take to the streets.

 The villages of Abu Hamam, Granagh and Al-Kashkiya in the eastern suburb of Deir al-Zour witnessed for the second time in a row in less than a week the emergence of popular demonstrations to express dissatisfaction with the policies of the protection militia, where the protesters insisted on the implementation of their demands, including the allocation of part of the oil revenues to activate services and repair houses damaged by shelling as well as their emphasis on the need to stop arrests for the purpose of forced recruitment.

 "Civilians are in constant discontent and discontent in all respects, suffering from a lack of water, electricity, sewage services or even waste disposal," Al Jaber said. They also complain about the problem of removing rubble and recovering the bodies of their victims, which pushed them to protest several times denying the Kurdish units presence in the region. "

 "What these civilians need is humane treatment," said a Furat Post member. "They are not slaves at the al-Assad farm and for the YPG, and that's what they have said over and over again."

 Al-Jaber noted that the demonstrators' efforts and demands seem to have been displeased with YPG, which has been increasingly constrained by the curfew, which has become the standard weapon against which these protests sometimes reach 20 hours out of 24 hours.


 The spokesman for the Supreme Council of the Syrian tribes and clans, Mudar Hammad al-Asaad, led by the Free Army and Turkey, called for intervention and the expulsion of the YPG militia from the eastern Euphrates region, stressing that they received daily appeals and demands from the residents.

 Al-Asaad told Arabi21 website that the YPG militia "are working to kill the remaining residents of the region under the pretext of fighting terrorism, following the policy of demographic and geographical change in the region. This happened in Hasakah, Raqqa and Manbij, as Arab guys had been taken to the war fronts, most of them children, where hundreds of young Arabs have been killed in the past months by involving them in the battles of the Kurdish YPG-dominated "Syria's Democratic Forces" to achieve the separatist project that seeks to apply.

 A few weeks ago, a group of Arab tribes in Manbij issued separate statements calling on the Turkish army to enter their city and kick out the militia, stressing their readiness to provide all kinds of support to implement this.

 Turkey has mobilized tens of thousands of troops in the border area east of the Euphrates to launch a military operation against the protection YPG militia, but US President Donald Trump's proposal to create a safe zone has contributed to delaying the process. Turkish leaders have agreed to accept according to a set of conditions agreed between Washington and Ankara.'

Rebellion in Daraa against the Assad régime, dozens of young people demonstrate

 'Dozens of people from the city of Daraa demonstrated on Tuesday to express their refusal to join the military service in the forces of the Syrian régime.

 According to local sources, dozens went out to protest the practices of the regime's intelligence services, the ongoing arrests, the imposition of forced recruitment on young people, and to demand that the crisis committee to abide by its commitments not to take the wanted to military service according to the time specified during the negotiation process.

 On Monday, hundreds of young people from the town of Nawa in rural Daraa joined the recruitment centers in the presence of Daraa Governor, Mohammed Khalid Al-Hanous, Secretary of the Baath Party branch Hussein Al-Rifai and the Negotiations Committee after the intelligence sent threats to the wanted and dissidents to punish them in the event of absence.

 It should be noted that the recruitment division of the Syrian régime sent to the reconciliation areas recently lists of thousands of wanted for compulsory and reserve military service, and circulated names at checkpoints and barriers and demanded their arrest.'

Mass Arrests by Assad Regime Triggers Renewed Protests in Dara’a

 'The wave of protests in the province of Dara’a, the birthplace of the Syrian revolution eight years ago, were renewed following the Assad régime’s security forces’ arrest of dozens of young people in the town of Musaifra in eastern rural Dara’a.

 Local activists reported that the province is on the verge of a new uprising because of the Assad régime’s security forces’ harassment of the local population and the frequent raids on civilian homes, the most recent of which targeted many homes in the town of Musaifra in search of people who are wanted by the regime.

 The new wave of random arrests targeted dozens of military-aged people and former FSA fighters.

 In response, new anti-régime graffiti appeared on the walls in the neighboring town of al-Sahwa calling for the overthrow of the Assad régime with all its symbols. The graffiti also rejected compulsory service in Assad’s army as they reaffirmed commitment to the principles of the Syrian revolution.

 Despite the so-called the reconciliation agreement in place, the Assad régime’s security services continue to raid civilian homes in Dara’a province. A civilian was killed in one of these raids in southern rural Quenitra while two others were detained a few days ago.

 In recent weeks, Dara’a has witnessed the scrawling of new anti-régime on the walls defying the Assad regime and threatening its presence in the province. The revolutionary movement has intensified since last month despite the Assad regime’s tightened grip on the province.

 A new video was published on social media showing the flag of the Syrian Revolution raised on the minaret of a mosque in the town of al-Karak al-Sharqi. Such moves will likely threaten the Assad régime’s grip on the areas that fell to its forces following brutal military campaigns in the past few months.

 President of the Syrian Coalition Abdurrahman Mustafa earlier said that the revolution “will not stop," and that the Syrian people "will not give up their fight for freedom.”

 Dara’a province, the cradle of the Syrian revolution, last week saw renewed anti-régime demonstrations in central Dara’a city emphasizing the revolution would continue until the overthrow of the régime with all its symbols. Various areas across the province also saw the scrawling of anti-régime graffiti on the walls denouncing the régime and its security apparatuses.'

Nothing compares to Syria

 This is the 4000th post on my blog, News of the Revolution in Syria. 99% of which represents the views of others, many revolutionary Syrians, collated over the last seven years. I think I've learned something about Syria and the world as a result, and I hope it can do the same for others.


 The short version of what I've learned is encapsulated in the video above. Here is the text : "In 2011, the Syrian people rose up in revolution against the dictatorship of Bashar al-Assad and declared that they now live in Free Syria where there would be liberty instead of mass arrests, justice instead of torture, and dignity instead of rape.

 To symbolise their new country, they adopted the Free Syrian flag, with a black stripe at the bottom, a green stripe at the top, and three red stars on a white background in the middle, and you can see it flying wherever there are Free Syrians.

 We can sit and watch as Assad rips the country apart, pretend it's some 4-5 way civil war where we don't know who will come out on top if Assad is overthrown. The truth is, the only way the country is ever going to be put back together again is as Free Syria.

 Please ask your government to supply the Free Syrian Army with anti-aircraft missiles so they can stop the bombing or if you live in Russia or Iran, please ask your government to leave Syria now. Thank you very much."


 The key points I was trying to make:

 1. It's a revolution. It isn't a civil war. It isn't a foreign intervention to get rid of Assad or the result of previous interventions.

 2. It isn't complicated. It isn't a multi-sided conflict. It is a genocide driven by Assad's need to stay in power. The position of other players in the conflict is either to line up with Assad, or to show greater or lesser opposition to him. It is the question of his survival that is the central dividing line of everything happening in Syria.

 3. The central reason for the conflict continuing was the exact reverse of the picture overwhelmingly presented in the world's media and by those supposedly progressive. It wasn't that the West had fed the conflict by backing the opposition, but that those words had been mere shadows while Free Syrians had bombs rained down upon them. It is our lack of the support to the opposition that means Assad has managed to stay in power, and he has visited barbarity without compare in the world today on the Syrian people to protect his throne.


However, we're in 2019, Assad is still in place, and the media story is Syria's Civil War is coming to an end. And so even among people opposed to Assad, there is a tendency to accept narratives that work in his favour. Most notably in relation to Syria, it is common to hear people saying that all states and politicians are as bad.  Specifically are these points.

 1. All Western leaders want to keep Assad in power. This is used to excuse those on the hard left that have opposed any assistance to the Syrian opposition, by claiming that centrists and right-wingers are no better. It is not true. It is those like Jeremy Corbyn that have invited mouthpieces for the Assad régime to come and speak in Britain, that have repeated Assad's lies about his chemical attacks, and supported the normalisation of his régime and demonised the opposition to him as a Western régime change plot at every turn.. Western policy, the left and fascist right excepted, has generally been to get Assad out, but they have deferred to Washington as the key player to bring this about. The US in turn, under President Obama's administration did have a policy of of preventing adequate support going to the rebels, that they might have a fraction of fighting power Russia and Iran give to Assad.

This however, isn't because of some demonic pact among world leaders to keep Assad in power, or to stop revolution from spreading. It was a specific policy choice, one that could have been reversed. It came about because President Obama's administration wanted to avoid foreign engagements, because of the bruising experience in Iraq, and because it wanted to obtain a nuclear deal with Iran and was prepared to see Iran dominate Syria in exchange.

 2. Other powers are just as bad. What Saudi Arabia or Israel do is just as bad, so the only people who can be allies are those who take exactly the same position in opposition to all of them, anyone else is just as bad as the Assad supporters. This isn't true. Talk to anyone who has experienced prisons in Israel and Syria and they will tell you the latter are far worse. Talk to doctors who know that if coordinates of hospitals are given to the Israelis they tend to avoid them, if they are given to Assad or Russia they bomb them. And while Saudi Arabia is fighting a bloody war in Yemen, one complemented by Iranian backing for the child soldier army of the Houthis that steals aid and attacks civilians deliberately, it is not torturing a nation to death the way Assad is.

 The Syrian revolution is the most distorted and lied against event in our lifetime. It has few enough friends as it is. I think that those who support the revolution should be given credit regardless of my disagreements with them on other issues. And when people give succour to Assad, it should be the first thing raised not the last. I would hope that approach would be followed by other supporters of the Syrian revolution, rather than cutting off all of those without an identical alignment.

 3. The real progressives in Syria are the YPG (aka "the Kurds"), and Turkey is allied to Assad. it isn't true. I finally wrote a piece about the YPG (also rebranded as the Syrian Democratic Forces to make them look like a separate organisation from the PKK that tries to break up the Turkish state by terrorist means) last year, called Rojava is Omelas. They are a cult round their leader Ocalan, whose portrait they paraded round Raqqa when they rook it from ISIS. They have collaborated with Assad against Free Syrians from the beginning of the revolution. Territory that they lose to Free Syrians should be a cause for celebration, despite the destabilisation the YPG continues to attempt in those areas.

  Untrue stories about Turkey fill the news and opinion columns whenever Syria comes up. From Owen Jones and the Labour leadership claiming in 2014 that the problem in Syria was Turkish support for ISIS, to claims today that Turkey is trying to hand over Idlib to Assad in return for Russian support in the northeast. Just because Turkey has diplomatic relations with Russia does not mean their interests are identical. Every few months the Turkish government announces that Assad is a mass murderer who cannot be allowed to govern Syria indefinitely. This is always ignored, and whenever a Turkish government spokesperson says that Assad might stay for a few months during a transition, it is taken as meaning that Turkey (or "Erdogan" as it is often tried to be personalised into a dictatorship) thinks Assad can stay forever. You do not have to agree with all of Turkey ruling AK party's policies, or even most of them, to recognise that it finds itself on the side of those opposed to Assad, even if it wants to use its own forces in Syria as sparingly as possible, just as it always wanted to keep the war on the Syrian side of the border and not go to war with Assad itself. 

 4. The Islamists are just as bad as Assad. This is something many Free Syrians believe, but I think they are wrong. There was a Syrian solidarity conference in London in early 2014 at which a leftist called Joseph Daher declared that all the Islamist groups were as reactionary as Assad and had to be fought as much as he (that is when leftists aren't deriding the taking up of arms entirely). I turned to a Syrian I'd just met who turned out to be a respected writer on Syria, and asked if Assad was the greatest threat, what if he couldn't be defeated without some alliance with the Islamists. The answer I got was "I don't know," and I haven't heard a better one since.

  I'm an atheist, and I believe people have the right to smoke what they like, so I wouldn't be comfortable being ruled by Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), the Islamist group now dominant in Idlib. But compared to be ruling by Assad, or forces that would surrender to Assad as the supposedly moderate groups in southern Syria did last year, it would be preferable by far. During the first five years of the revolution, HTS and its predecessors deliberately killed 350 civilians. Assad killed a thousand times that many.

 I've seen people argue that because Assad let some future HTS leaders out of prison as he was imprisoning secular activists, they must be working for him. It doesn't follow. The revolution's last advances, conquering Idlib in 2015, relieving the siege of Aleppo once in 2016, and taking the Manshiya district of Daraa, were all because the rebels from FSA and HTS fought together, not against each other. I find myself comparing it to the situation in Germany in the 1930s, where Communists and Social Democrats were so obsessed with their differences that they couldn't unite to stop the rise of Hitler and the Nazis. In the words of Malcolm X on my T-shirt below, Free Syria by any means necessary.


 Maybe I'm wrong on some points. In that case I would hope that I would learn from my mistakes. Just as I would hope that those who thought it were better not to intervene after Assad killed 1500 people in the sarin attack in August 2013 would recognise that not stopping him then is what has allowed years more of mass murder. Or that those who claimed there would be a genocide against the Kurds in Afrin or that Turkey would use their observation posts in Idlib to hand the province over to Assad would learn when those things didn't happen. Mostly people, as Talleyrand wrote of the Bourbons, have learned nothing and forgotten nothing. For me the two things that most surprised me was finding out that as early as 2015 Saudi Arabia was offering support to Assad if he kicked out the Iranians, and the collapse of the Southern Front into surrender agreements in 2018. I hope I learn something more generally from that.

 So this is my blog, and I commend it to you. If people have suggestions on the layout, I'm open to advice. I don't label most posts with the original author, as much of it is taken from news stories where I was only interested in the contributions of Syrians, and not the potted and misleading accounts of the situation otherwise provided. As I wrote in a piece called Assad Will Fall, I think the unstable nature of Assad's torture-theft régime means he will never be able to crush the resistance, and my hope is that sooner than anyone dare imagine the revolution will be successful, and this blog will be history.

How the Assad régime has exploited “evacuation deals” to redirect Isis against the rebels

 Omar Sabbour:

 'In September 2018, when the Assad régime was preparing to launch its (now on-hold) offensive against rebel-held Idlib in northern Syria, a rather surprising report emerged in the Times. The report alleged that the régime had transported 400 Isis fighters from the province of Deir Al-Zor, where the group has been under siege by the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces and the régime, to the vicinity of Idlib.

 Idlib had been Isis-free since 2014, when opposition fighters managed to expel the fighters that had briefly held territory. In early 2018, the group staged a brief comeback, but were once again repelled.

 The Assad régime has long claimed its aim is to "fight and crush terrorism", so the idea that it aided and abetted Isis fighters may seem shocking. But in fact, the claim of a régime-Isis deal was not the first of its kind. Over the past two years, a pattern has emerged, where the Assad régime and Isis have co-existed on the battlefield while attacking rebel forces. The two so-called enemies have struck evacuation deals, and the Assad régime has been accused of smuggling Isis fighters into rebel-held areas.


 The flow of Isis fighters into rebel-held areas begins with the evacuation deals. The first one to be agreed between the régime and Isis was publicly recognised to have taken place in August 2017, with the involvement of the Lebanese militia Hezbollah. A month later, another deal would be announced for the evacuation of ISIS fighters trapped in a pocket of territory in the countryside of Hama in north-west Syria, surrounded by régime-held territory. Late that month, the régime announced it had reached an agreement in which the besieged fighters would surrender.

 The Assad régime claimed the deal as a victory. As reported by pro-régime media, the régime declared that Isis had been “completely defeated” in the province of Hama. On 4 October, one prominent régime-sponsored national newspaper, Al-Watan, declared that “Daesh is no longer present in Hama province” and that the Syrian Army had taken “complete control” of the region.

 According to the September evacuation deal, Isis fighters would be evacuated from their besieged Hama pocket to Isis-held territory in Deir Al-Zor, some 200 miles east.


 But this did not happen. Instead, military maps shared by pro-régime, opposition and neutral monitors during the subsequent period all demonstrate that the group was simply relocated a few miles further north onto the frontline with rebel forces. Looking at the maps shared by pro-régime sources, it seems that the only way Isis could move out of its besieged Hama pocket and affix itself onto the rebel frontline was by passing through régime territory – namely, a corridor in the area of Ithriyah. One media activist in the area claimed that the régime had “opened its barricades along 13 kilometers to allow Isis to cross from its control areas”, whilst moving south in exchange to take control of the vacated Isis pocket.

 Viewed from this perspective, evacuation deals have not “fought and crushed terrorism”, but instead allowed the Assad régime to redirect it against rebel-held groups.


 Between October 2017 and January 2018, both the Assad régime and Isis launched assaults on rebel-held Idlib. The Assad régime would go on to succeed in recapturing the eastern portion of the province – home to a crucial highway linking Damascus to Aleppo, as well as critical electricity supply lines running through the area.

 While Western media did cover the régime's entry into Idlib, the simultaneous Isis incursion was far less well reported. This began on 9 October in the northern countryside of the province of Hama. The rebels preparing to fight encompassed a plethora of factions, from the extremist Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (commonly known as HTS, the successor of the former Al-Nusra Front), to the Free Syrian Army coalitions.

 A small and besieged Isis pocket situated east and south-east of the city of Hama was vacated, to be replaced with a new and huge Isis presence north-east of Hama. While the régime and Isis did clash in January, the main régime operation to take control of the new, larger Isis territory did not begin until February. Within four days, the Syrian régime would take control of it in its entirety - recapturing more than 100 towns, villages and hamlets. At the same time, rebels again accused the régime of facilitating the infiltration by “evacuated” Isis fighters into their territory, after arresting hundreds of suspected militants.


 The tactic of using militants to sow chaos is a tried and tested one of the Assad régime: in the mid 2000s, Assad was suspected of allowing jihadis to pass through Syria in order to destabilise the US occupation of Iraq, and has regularly been accused of deliberately releasing Islamist prisoners in 2011 to undermine the idea of a democratic revolution.

 But if the Assad régime is redeploying Isis fighters within Syria, it is playing with fire. Four months after the Hama deal, rebels in the southern province of Dara’a would report the systematic infiltration of Isis fighters from régime-held areas. The consequences would affect civilians in régime-held areas as well as those under control of the opposition.

 The birthplace of the 2011 uprising, by the start of 2018, Dara’a was dominated by a coalition of more than 50 major Free Syrian Army (FSA) factions, known as the Southern Front. In May, rebels in Dara’a claimed to have arrested Isis infiltrators. They accused the régime of attempting to use an “evacuation deal”, this time concerning the Yarmouk refugee camp and areas south of Damascus, to facilitate their entry into the southern regions.

 In an interview recorded in June, a commander in the FSA’s Southern Front – whose name at the time was willingly provided, but which we have decided to withhold due to the sensitive situations of former rebel fighters who have since signed “reconciliation” agreements with the régime – declared: “The régime is trying to smuggle the Dawaesh [a pejorative term for Isis fighters used by Syrian rebels] of Southern Damascus, particularly from the Hajar Al-Aswad and Tadamon areas [adjacent to the Yarmouk refugee camp], through the province of Sweida into the direction of Dara’a”. One of the factions of the Southern Front reported capturing 19 suspected Isis fighters on 24 May at a border crossing in the area of Al-Lajat.

 On the same day, another rebel commander from a different Southern Front faction reported capturing a further 20 Isis fighters at the checkpoints of the city of Eastern Mleiha, followed by a further four three days later. The commander also claimed that the Isis fighters had arrived as a result of a “deportation-transfer”.

 According to this commander, Isis fighters were sorted according to importance. The rank-and-file Isis fighters were transferred to the city of Suwaida, in Sweida, where they met middlemen who took them to the eastern border of the province, and handed them over to local smugglers. They in turn took them over the border into rebel-held territory, usually to the city limits of the city of Eastern Mleiha. Higher-ranking Isis fighters – the commanders and leaders known as "emirs" – were taken in groups of three. The rebel group Jaish al-Islam reported their capture in the area of Tafas of two foreign emirs, an Algerian and a Jordanian.

 The rebels’ complaints about infiltrators were largely ignored. A month later, Isis launched a massacre in the neighbouring province of Sweida.

 The province of Sweida is dominated by the Druze, followers of a monotheistic faith that many consider separable from mainstream Islam. Isis views members of the heterodox Druze community as heretics. Whilst the Druze of Sweida cannot be put strictly in the same “opposition” bracket as their counterparts in Idlib and Dara’a, the area has nonetheless long resisted the imposition of full régime control. Sweida has long been a semi-autonomous province where security is controlled by local Druze militias, most important amongst them the Rijal Al-Karama or the “Men of Dignity” grouping. The group has long attempted to establish itself as a “neutral” force in the conflict - crucially, refusing to be conscripted by the régime in areas outside of Sweida.

 One testimony of what happened in July 2018 has been widely circulated among activists in the province. In it, a local man in his fifties from the village of Shbeika recounts the events of the day:

 “At 4.30 in the morning, they [Isis fighters] were knocking on the doors of the houses in the village: the woman or the man of the house would open the door and find the knife in the middle of their chest the moment they opened the door. Then they would slaughter the children with knives, leaving one boy to witness it, leave him terrorised so that he can relay the image. By the time the [rest of the] people found out and the sun came out, it took four hours, and they had already killed the people they had killed.”

 The attacks sparked widespread anger amongst Druze locals, not just against Isis, but the régime, which was blamed for a conspicuous lack of security. Angry locals expelled the régime’s provincial governor from a funeral held for victims of the attack.

 Some locals suspected the régime of being complicit in the attacks, in particular as punishment for refusing to participate in the régime’s offensive in the neighbouring province of Dara’a. During the Dara’a offensive, the “Men of Dignity” declared that they would adopt a stance of “positive neutrality in the ongoing conflict between the sons of the same nation”. Indeed, a month before the Isis attack, Russia would attempt to designate the group a “terrorist” grouping.

 Understanding the political status of Sweida during the war helps explain why Isis fighters would be relocated to its vicinity instead of Deir Al-Zor. Fighters from an “evacuation deal” agreed between the Syrian régime and Isis – following the former’s recapture of the Yarmouk refugee camp and adjacent areas south of the capital Damascus in May – were evacuated in large convoys to the desert east of Sweida (known as the Badia), much to the annoyance of Druze locals. This evacuation deal was at the time additionally reported by pro-régime media – which even offered claims that régime officials had entered the Yarmouk refugee camp to directly negotiate with ISIS commanders.

 The Shbeika witness’s accusation of regime complicity in the attacks went beyond one of passivity:

 “The régime provided everything logistically to allow this to happen… The coordination was blatantly obvious. They withdrew their forces a month ago, they took away the weapons three days beforehand, they cut off the electricity, they put them [ISIS] to the east of Sweida, where they’ve been training for three or four months, moving them in their green buses.”

 The witness even claimed that the régime had withdrawn the weapons of locals in the area a few days before the attack. Other local reports also made this accusation. The main local Druze militia in the area accused the Syrian régime of failing in its duty to protect the community, and an activist with the Suwayda 24 network told Reuters: “There was a complete absence of the Syrian Army, which was not present at all, and the people who tried to defend the area were its locals.”

 The régime claimed that the Syrian Army played a key role in pushing back Isis attackers. Following the massacre however, footage began to emerge of angry Druze locals and notables confronting régime officials. In one video, an elderly Druze notable is seen asking a Syrian Army officer a series of questions: “Why were the weapons taken away three days before the attack? Why was electricity cut from this village? Why were the Dawaesh [pejorative term for Isis fighters] moved from the Yarmouk camp to here?”

 Without addressing the accusations, the régime officer attempted to pacify the anger by repeating official rhetoric: “The conspiracy is on a scale bigger than you can imagine. We need to respond by strengthening our bonds, under the political and military leadership of the [Army] guys here”. At this point the officer was interrupted by an angry member of the crowd: “It is our boys that protected the area, not you”. The régime official attempted to continue – “This is a victory for Syria” – before again being rebuked by a member of the crowd: “This is a victory for the Jabal [Druze Mountain]”.

 Despite the outcry, days later the Syrian régime would subsequently again relocate an estimated 400 Isis fighters to Sweida’s desert. The relocation was again reported on by pro-régime media.

 An unwitting consensus of pro-régime, pro-opposition as well as Druze sources clearly demonstrate how the régime has capitalised on evacuated Isis fighters in Idlib and Dara’a/Sweida. It remains to be seen whether in any potential future régime offensive on Idlib, we will once again see a phantom Isis presence “re-emerge out of thin air” – as one pro-régime outlet once put it– in the area.'

The Syrian Clan Coalition is ready to replace the American presence in Syria

 'The head of the Syrian Clan Coalition, on Thursday, expressed the readiness of the "Tribal Army" to go to the east of the Euphrates to fill the American void in Syria.

 "The army is composed of 10,000 fighters. It aims to fight the terrorist organizations and the Syrian régime," Abdulkarim al-Fahel said. "The army's priorities are to liberate the city of Manbij and then to turn east, to be a legitimate alternative to the American presence."

 He explained that the expanded conference held by the Arab tribes two weeks ago in the city of A'zaz north-west of Aleppo, including more than 1200 people representing all Syrian clans, in addition to the presence of representatives of the factions of the Free Syrian Army and popular organizations and relief in coordination with Turkey.

 He pointed out that the meeting discussed ways to face the new challenges of the revolution and the full readiness to deal with them, and the development of civil administration in the liberated areas, and provide security and services to citizens and displaced persons of Syrians, stressing that everyone gave up on the Syrian people and left them alone to die under the régime''s barrel bombs and air strikes and the missions of its allies Russia and Iran-backed sectarian militia.

 It is noteworthy that the Supreme Council of Tribes and Syrian tribes held its first conference last year 2018 in the city of Azaz in the countryside of Aleppo; in an effort to unite the Arab tribes in Syria under one title and one vision.'

The Crushing of the Society and Dismantling of the State

 'SNHR has released its annual special report for the year 2018 which was entitled: “The Crushing of the Society and Dismantling of the State”. The report documents the most notable violations of human rights by the main parties to the conflict in Syria during the last year.


 Fadel Abdul Ghany, chairman of SNHR, says:

 “Since 2011, the Syrian régime has perpetrated various forms of brutal violence against society, including the arrest and torture of tens of thousands, and the killing of hundreds of thousands of others, along with the displacement of half of the Syrian people, which has been an intentional and deliberate goal of this ruling authority in order to crush society, punish it and subject it to the rule of the family, forever. Consequently, there is a complete termination of any opportunity or even any idea of a new popular movement due to the high cost paid by the community for demanding freedom, dignity and political pluralistic transition. However, the ruling family hasn’t cared about the material or human cost in order to achieve this brutal goal, even if this causes the dismantling of the entire Syrian state”

 According to SNHR’s database, 6,964 civilians, including 1,436 children and 923 women (adult female), were documented as being killed at the hands of the parties to the conflict in 2018. Of this total, 4,162 civilians, including 713 children and 562 women, were killed by Syrian régime forces, and 467 civilians, including 169 children and 51 women, were killed by Russian forces. 2018 saw also the death of 417 civilians, including 175 children and 90 women at the hands of International Coalition forces.

 Further, the report records that Kurdish Self-Management forces killed 285 civilians, including 29 children and 26 women, while extremist Islamist groups killed 478 civilians; of this total, ISIS killed 446 civilians, including 82 children and 41 women, while 32 civilians, including seven children and one woman, were killed by Hay’at Tahrir al Sham.

 The report documents that factions of the Armed Opposition, in 2018, killed 84 civilians, including 14 children and seven women, all of whom were either killed by executions, indiscriminate shelling, or torture. Lastly, the report records that 1,107 civilians were killed in attacks whose perpetrators could not yet be identified, or in attacks by border guards affiliated with neighboring countries – Lebanon, Jordan, and Turkey.

 According to the report, 2018 saw approximately 7,706 cases of arbitrary arrest, including 504 children and 699 women (adult female). The Syrian régime was responsible for the arrest of nearly 5,607 of these individuals, including 355 children and 596 women. Extremist Islamist groups arrested at least 755 individuals, divided into 338 arrested by ISIS, including 28 children and 13 women, and 417 individuals were arrested by Hay’at Tahrir al Sham, including 15 children and three women. The total number of detainees arrested and imprisoned by factions of the Armed Opposition was nearly 379 individuals, including 23 children and 13 women, while Kurdish Self-Management forces arrested 965 individuals, including 83 children and 74 women.

 The report states that 976 individuals were documented as being killed under torture in 2018, including 951 individuals who died due to torture at the hands of Syrian régime forces, and nine in detention centers of factions of the Armed Opposition, while one woman died due to torture at the hands of ISIS.

 The report also outlines the most significant violations against medical personnel by the parties to the conflict, through acts of killing of medical personnel and targeting of medical facilities in 2018, documenting the deaths of 53 medical personnel and 108 attacks on medical points and facilities. The Syrian-Russian alliance was responsible for the majority of these violations, killing at least 38 medical personnel and carrying out 85 attacks on medical facilities and clinics.

 In addition, the report states that 24 media workers were killed in 2018, with 63 percent of this total killed by Syrian régime forces and their Russian allies.

 The report also documents six attacks in which chemical weapons were deployed in 2018, in Idlib and Damascus Suburbs governorates, all by the Syrian régime. Meanwhile, cluster munitions were deployed in 13 attacks, with seven of these carried out by Syrian régime forces, and the remaining six by Russian forces. According to the report, Incendiary weapons were used in 28 attacks on Syrian territory last year, with 11 of these attacks carried out by Syrian régime forces, and 14 by Russian forces, while the remaining three attacks in this category were launched by International Coalition forces. The report also notes that at least 3,601 barrel bombs were dropped by Syrian régime forces in 2018.

 As the report details, 2018 was another year of massive waves of forced displacement, with hundreds of thousands of people forced to leave their homes and land by military operations launched by the parties to the conflict, especially the Syrian-Russian forces, which were by far the main parties responsible for the displacements. The report states that nearly 670 thousand people were subjected to forced displacement in 2018, including 134,000 who were forcibly displaced as a result of agreements and truces which contravene international humanitarian law.

 The report stresses that the UN Security Council must take additional steps following the adoption of Resolution 2254, which states unequivocally that all parties should: “… immediately cease any attacks against civilians and civilian objects as such…”. Also, the report states that the Security Council should refer the Syrian case to the International Criminal Court and hold all perpetrators accountable, including the Russian régime whose involvement in war crimes has been proven.

 The report calls on the Security Council to ensure the security and safety of millions of dispossessed Syrian refugees, especially women and children, who have been displaced to countries worldwide, and to ensure their safety from arrest, torture or enforced disappearance if they choose to return to areas controlled by the Syrian régime.
The report also recommends that the relevant United Nations agencies make greater efforts to provide humanitarian and food aid and medical assistance in the areas where fighting has ceased, and to camps of internally displaced persons, and to follow up with the States that had pledged to make necessary contributions.

 The report emphasizes that the OHCHR should submit a report to the Human Rights Council and other organs of the United Nations on the incidents mentioned in this report since these attacks were perpetrated by the parties to the conflict.

 Moreover, the report calls upon the international envoy to Syria to condemn the perpetrators of the crimes, including massacres, and those who were primarily responsible for dooming the de-escalation agreements to failure, and to redirect the peace process to its natural course after Russia’s attempts to distort it and to place the Constitutional Commission prior to the transitional government.

 The report calls on the international community to take steps at the national and regional levels to form alliances to support the Syrian people, to protect them from the daily killing, and to lift the siege, as well as to increase support for relief efforts.

 The report further calls for the implementation of the “Responsibility to Protect” (R2P) norm, after all political channels through the Arab League’s plan and then Mr. Kofi Annan’s plan were exhausted, proving as fruitless as the Cessation of Hostilities statements and Astana agreements that followed. Therefore, steps should be taken under Chapter VII of the United Nations Charter, and the norm of the “Responsibility to Protect”, which was established by the United Nations General Assembly, should be implemented. In the current situation, the Security Council is still hindering the protection of civilians in Syria.

 The report demands the Syrian régime end its indiscriminate shelling and targeting of residential areas, hospitals, schools and markets, stop its torture that caused the death of thousands of Syrian citizens in detention centers, reveal the fate of some 82,000 Syrian citizens arrested by the security services after concealing their fate to date, and comply with UN Security Council resolutions and customary humanitarian law.

 The report stresses that the Russian régime should launch investigations into the incidents included in this report, make the findings of these investigations public for the Syrian people, and hold the perpetrators involved accountable. Also, the Russian régime should compensate all the damaged centers and facilities, rebuild and rehabilitate them, and compensate all the victims’ families, who were killed by the current Russian régime, as well as compensating all the wounded.

 The report further adds that the Russian régime, as a guarantor party in the Astana talks, should take steps to stop the wrecking of de-escalation agreements, and apply pressure on the Syrian régime in order to end all indiscriminate attacks, and should begin making progress with respect to the detainees’ issue by revealing the fates of 82,000 forcibly disappeared persons by the Syrian régime.

 The report calls on the international coalition forces to unequivocally acknowledge that some of their bombardment operations have resulted in the killing of innocent civilians. The report calls on international coalition forces to launch serious investigations and take speedy steps to compensate and apologize to the victims and others who were affected.

 Lastly, the report calls on the states supporting the SDF to apply pressure on these forces in order to compel them to cease all of their violations in all the areas and towns under their control, and urges these states to cease all forms of support, including weapon and otherwise.'

Holding Obama Accountable for Syria

 'Like so much else in the last two years, the three-week political Sturm und Drang over American troops’ withdrawal from Syria says less about a fissuring present and more about a fractured past. Donald Trump’s now-modified withdrawal order (four months, not 30 days, unless he changes his mind again) was another sloppy policy move, but one that’s widely misunderstood. Media chatter aside, Trump’s pullout represents not a new direction in foreign affairs but a coarse coda to a decade of institutional error that we need to understand before we can repair.

 The central fact behind the withdrawal has been often stated but never explained. There were between 2,000 and 4,000 non-combat-assigned troops in the region, so why yank them out now? And that’s exactly the point. No matter the proximate cause behind Trump’s decision—the conversation with Erdogan, an isolationist sop to his base, an impulse move—keeping or leaving the troops made absolutely no difference in the bigger scheme.

 It made no difference for a simple reason. The chips had already fallen between 2009 and 2015, when the Obama administration executed its post-Bush pivot toward Iran and its regional proxy, Syria, and away from America’s allies in the region for 30 years: Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Egypt, and Israel. This is the situation Trump inherited, and Trump is not a fixer, he’s a canary in the coal mine. As with “build the wall” and “drain the swamp,” his slogan about Syria—“It’s yours, I’m leaving”—isn’t a pivot, it’s an epitaph. He doesn’t know how to fix our crises, and he doesn’t care. His only purpose is reactionary: to call the crises what they are and point a finger at the people who made them this way.


 Which brings us to James Mattis and Brett McGurk, key creators of our Syria predicament, whose resignations over Trump’s decision made them the latest symptoms of a trend wherein makers of problems that created Trump become lauded defenders of the system that opposes him.

 McGurk, a career diplomat, was Barack Obama’s appointee as deputy assistant secretary of state for Iraq and Iran and then as special presidential envoy for the Global Coalition to Counter the Islamic State. As such, he was responsible for carrying out the then-president’s regional strategy—determined by Obama and finessed by Rob Malley, head of the National Security Council’s Middle East Desk—wherein the missions of combating Bashar al-Assad and fighting ISIS were folded into Obama’s main foreign policy ambition, the since-repudiated Iran nuclear agreement of 2015.

 Mattis, the head of the United States Central Command under Obama and secretary of defense under Trump, was slightly more hawkish than Obama but still an institutionalist who saw his role in the Trump era as preserving the status quo. That status quo, left over from Obama, was to sweep the surfaces: Avoid a confrontation with Iran, which supported Assad, and make space for Iran’s ally Russia, which also supported Assad, to tamp down the Syrian Civil War, root out the obviously disruptive regional actor—ISIS—and keep the “peace.”


 What did this maintenance act mean in practice?

 It meant keeping U.S. soldiers in Syria to support vetted Syrian opposition groups that were forbidden to engage any violent element except ISIS: practically, preventing them from focusing on the main reason ISIS exists in Syria at all—Assad and the extremist resistance he engenders. A supplement to this strategy was partnering with the YPG, a Kurdish militia in Syria that has worked with Assad and, now, will likely want to negotiate an arrangement with the Assad regime which will see the regime return to the areas currently in Kurdish hands.

 It also meant refusing to formulate a serious response to Assad’s chemical weapons attack on civilians in April 2018. Surely, with prompting from Mattis, Trump could have been moved to shape a coherent anti-Syria strategy consistent with his urge to marginalize Iran: Hit the Ayatollah by pressing Assad. Instead, despite extensive evidence that a nerve agent was used, Mattis pushed against intervention, and the result was a watered-down show of force that deterred Assad not at all.

 Further, it meant tacitly allowing Iran to maintain control in Lebanon by backing the Iranian-influenced, order-oriented, do-nothing Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF). This was the Mattis-McGurk game plan: Under the pretext of “preserving Lebanon’s stability,” and of turning the LAF into a “partner in the war on ISIS,” they would back the status quo in Beirut—an Iranian-friendly army. By backing this status quo, they gave carte blanche to Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed terrorist group. Armed with advanced weaponry, Hezbollah keeps Lebanon in disorder and menaces Israel, further destabilizing the region.

 Finally, on the eastern border with Syria, in Iraq, it meant delivering resources to the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRCG) to prosecute the anti-ISIS campaign, meaning that the U.S. anti-ISIS mission in Syria ended up empowering the Iranians in both Lebanon (via the LAF and Hezbollah) and Iraq (via the IRGC). Since Syria is an Iranian ally, and both are Russian clients, this means that Russia’s influence now extends from Central Asia to the Mediterranean.


 All of this is what McGurk helped design under Obama and Mattis acquiesced to under Trump, and the results are both tragic and frightening. Five hundred thousand Syrians have been killed, 5 million made refugees within the country and 6 million outside it. Beirut remains a party town but is governed by a Shia militia. A threatened Saudi Arabia wages a costly war in Yemen against Iran’s proxies there that has put 8 million people at risk of starvation. Iran is not only a murderous tyranny on the cusp of nuclear weapons but now also the key regional mover. And Iran’s and Syria’s patron Russia, our avowed enemy, has extended its influence. These are not consequences that 2,000 to 4,000 American troops had any hope of ameliorating—which is to say, they’re not consequences that Trump’s withdrawal decision had any effect on at all. They’re the consequences of 10 years of missteps, which turn on a single origin point: Obama’s post-Bush foreign policy fantasy that we could right all wrongs in a region that turns on fierce interstate competition by pacifying Iran, its most ruthless state competitor.

 But none of this is being talked about—and it probably won’t be. The partisan charade will only intensify, as Trump’s clumsy withdrawal gives his enemies an excuse to pounce. Left and center Democrats will forget their own histories of inaction and rush to speak up for the interventionist vagaries they opposed. Some hawkish internationalists will attack Trump as “worse than Obama”: a legitimate expression of horror at the president’s humanitarian deafness that still obscures the underlying problem by personalizing it. Others, like Lindsey Graham, will haggle over the withdrawal timing—another distinction without a real difference. And Mattis and McGurk will be treated in the media histories of the moment as “grownups in the room,” figures in the “resistance,” fodder for a thousand patriotic tweets and maybe even a book or two.

 We need to push back against all this obscuring. For, as we argue around each other, Iran maneuvers with ever more impunity. ISIS cells plot their regrowth. Assad, to whom we have given a complete victory, persists in his despotic vocation: maybe the first genocidal killer in half a century that America has chosen to forget committed genocide. And Russia, a threat at home and abroad, gains proxies up to the Mediterranean. We won’t fix this situation, one we created, by railing against the finger-pointer in the White House. We’ll only fix it by looking at what we did wrong in the first place and, from that lesson, taking a wholly different approach: treating the ayatollah, Assad, and Putin as our main regional adversaries—a bloc of hostile actors that we need, calmly and firmly, to maneuver against.'

How a Syrian photographer and a rapper are documenting a Syria under siege

 'Last summer, Tim ­Alsiofi saw a lake for the first time in almost 10 years. It was Eid Al Fitr, and Alsiofi and some friends travelled from Idlib into the Aleppan countryside, where they spent the day swimming, playing in the lake and learning to fish. After seven years of war, much of it spent trapped in besieged Ghouta, some of the children had never before seen a lake.

 Alsiofi’s photographs of his friends and their children frolicking in the water open Yours Truly, From Idlib, a photography book capturing the joys and sorrows of daily life in a war zone. In a publication produced in English, Arabic and German by the Heinrich Boll Foundation in Beirut, Alsiofi shares stories from his years living in besieged Ghouta and from Idlib, where he was forcibly displaced last spring.


 Alsiofi was 18 when the ­Syrian uprising began in 2011. He was studying sound engineering and music at an institute near his home in Ghouta, but as protests turned violent and the conflict began to worsen, he was forced to abandon his studies. Two years later, he found a new direction.

 “In 2013, Ghouta was impossible to reach. All the entrance points were closed off and it was impossible even for a loaf of bread to enter Ghouta. The people were like skeletons moving in the streets because of starvation,” he recalls on the phone from his home in Idlib. “That’s when I decided to... turn my attention to photography. I used to take pictures before the war started, but I didn’t specialise in it until 2013.”

 Alsiofi bought a professional camera, taught himself to use it and took to the streets, seeking out scenes of day-to-day life in a besieged city. His photographs were intended to create a counterpoint to the propaganda being produced by the Syrian government and by the rebel factions occupying Ghouta, who were imposing their own rules on civilians and conscripting young men to fight.

 “I documented all of it, so if one day they tried to say that they treated people well, we will tell them: ‘These are the pictures and this is the history you made’,” he says.

 Unlike the journalists present in Ghouta, who focused on capturing images of violence and death, Alsiofi wanted to focus on life.

 “The main reason for my work was the civilian, and only the civilian,” he explains. “I held the camera for the civilian – that oppressed human who is getting shot with bullets. All these weapons didn’t solve the problem, they just destroyed the country, and we’ve ended up with martyrs and civilian victims. I have nothing to do with these stories. I concentrated on the humanitarian subject, on people’s daily lives. It’s not an event or a drama, it’s just life in between the lines, which the channels don’t broadcast.”


 For Yours Truly, From Idlib, Alsiofi and the Heinrich Boll Foundation’s team selected more than 150 photographs taken in Ghouta and Idlib. Alsiofi sent voice notes describing the situations in which the photographs were taken, which were turned into captions by Syrian rapper and writer Hani Al Sawah, who is based in Beirut.

 The opening images, taken at the lake, provide a moving and uplifting introduction to Alsiofi’s work. In one, ­Shaker, 12, grins at the camera, one eye closed against the sunlight, his hair and skin glistening with water from a whole day spent in the lake, trying to catch fish. Another shows Asala, 8, the daughter of a local fisherman, who taught Alsiofi and his friends how to use a fishing rod.

 From here, the book delves back into the past, featuring friends and neighbours who lost their lives in Ghouta and whose absence overshadows even the happy moments in Idlib, as well as stories of survival and unexpected moments of joy amid the conflict.

 At an exhibition celebrating the launch of the book, Bente Scheller, director of the Heinrich Boll Foundation’s Beirut offices, emphasised that the photographs aim to show the realities of life during wartime, and should not be misrepresented as part of a narrative suggesting that life in Syria has returned to normal or that refugees should return home, as many in Lebanon are under pressure to do.

 “We live in great fear that Idlib will face the same fate as Ghouta,” says Alsiofi, who is one of an estimated three million civilians trapped in Idlib, one of the last areas of Syria still under rebel control. “It is crucial therefore to show that there are civilians living here, millions of them, who have experienced so much tragedy and yet they still carry on with their lives. It is vital for them to get support and not be labelled as terrorists and extremists merely for having opposed Bashar Al Assad and his rule.”


 His images from Ghouta help to highlight the terrible cost of war. One captures a little boy smiling as he holds fresh bread made from wheat, after weeks of subsisting on bread made from cattle feed. In another powerful image, Alsiofi captures another boy with his back to the camera, surveying a table that has half-collapsed, spilling bread on to wet, muddy ground. Alsiofi describes watching the starving child’s dilemma as he tried to decide whether to scavenge bread splattered with the seller’s blood, ultimately walking away empty-handed.

 “The photos I captured looked nice aesthetically, but their backstories were sad, and so I found excruciating tension between what I saw at first glance and what I learnt when understanding the stories,” Alsiofi writes in the preface to the book.


 Alsiofi documented the journey of about 1,500 civilians from Ghouta to Idlib in spring last year, on buses provided by rebel group Jaish Al-Islam and then the Syrian regime. His photos in Idlib dwell exclusively on civilian life, but the shadow of war is never far away. One captures people dancing at a wedding in Idlib, celebrating love in the absence of those left behind in Ghouta, while another shows a woman picking olives on the first visit to her fields after a regime attack forced her to flee her village.

 “We lived in the most dangerous area in the world, which means we are the strongest people in the world. This was the side that I tried to show, always,” he says.

 From the weeping father of two brothers who died fighting against one another in rival rebel factions, to images of children playing on a makeshift swing they have made from an unexploded bomb, Alsiofi’s photographs capture the horror of war and the resilience of the human spirit.

 “I am not… looking for sympathy for all the suffering we have gone through and continue to do so, but, on the contrary, I want to show how strong my people are,” he writes. “All we need is some stability, freedom and the needed resources, and we will choose life over and over again.” '

Rehabilitating Syria's Assad, the greatest criminal of our time

 Mansour al-Omari:

 'In the days prior to, and since the US president's announcement a fortnight ago that the US would withdraw from Syria, a flurry of Arab leaders have moved to restore their relations with the Assad regime.

 A week of PR moves saw the Sudanese president visit Damascus on 16 December, and Syria's senior security adviser, Ali Mamlouk - a man who is wanted by French prosecutors for collusion in war crimes - visit Egypt on 22 December.

 In addition, the King of Jordan stated on 23 December that "our relations with Syria will return to what they were before". The UAE reopened its embassy in Damascus on 27 December, and Tunisia resumed direct flights with Syria after seven years​. Finally, Bahrain stated last Friday that 'work continues' at its Syrian embassy.


 These announcements may have been the work of previous under-the-table agreements, but they all issued almost identical pretext: Supporting Arab unity and confronting regional interference in Syria.

 Indeed, several factors likely also contributed to these developments, including pressure from the Russians and the rocky relations between Gulf states. But Trump's surprise US withdrawal announcement - perceived by many as the decisive sign of an Assad victory - was perhaps the encouragement Arab leaders needed to get behind the Assad regime diplomatically, and publicly state their support.


 Many Syrians, including victims of Assad and human rights defenders, have voiced their concerns about these developments According to Mohammad al-Abdallah, CEO of the Washington-based Syria Justice and Accountability Center. For him, re-legitimising the Assad regime sends a clear message that he can do whatever he wants to Syrians.

 Abdallah adds that "at the very least, there should be a set of conditions before such normalisation, like the release of detainees, the disclosure of the fate of missing persons, and the abolition of Law 10", which allows authorities to seize property without due process or adequate compensation.

 For Abdallah, Trump's decision has opened the doors wide to the concept that "Assad has won, and there is no use of perceiving him as an enemy".


 Joan Farso, a Syrian Kurdish humanitarian worker in Syria, says that the UAE and Bahrain's recent decision will not help restore stability, adding that the main issues that should be addressed are reconstruction, releasing detainees, the fate of the missing persons, and forming a transitional government; one "that guarantees the rights of all Syrians".

 Restoring normal relations with Assad, without holding him accountable for the mass atrocities in Syria, or conditioning restored relations on addressing crimes and human rights violations, sends a crystal clear message to other Arab leaders that you can massacre your own people and remain a member of the international community.


 Will other Arab countries also restore their relations with Assad? Can they be relied on to address the injustices the Syrian people have suffered, and continue to suffer? Will they respect international treaties when Assad's arrest warrant is issued?

 In reality, as long as Assad is power, transitional justice in Syria will remain a myth. While the perpetrator continues to control the legal and executive systems in Syria, cries for justice will only grow louder.

 Many say the war is over, but that does not mean the suffering and crimes have stopped. Instead, the Assad regime has gained ground, and tightened its grip over a population it can oppress, silence, detain and kill using torture.

 Justice cannot be buried under the ruins of the victims own homes, and with the bodies of their loved ones.

 Today Syria has millions of victims, with the most documented mass atrocities in history. The matter is not that a person was robbed, or attacked by someone's dog. This is a nation that was massacred, displaced, destroyed from the outside, and from within.


 Ignoring justice destroys the values the Syrian society should be built on, if it is to one day be a healthy, stable society.

 In addition, justice is important not just for Syrians, but for the whole world. EU countries must use their values and judicial systems to hold the criminals accountable, making sure they will not turn into a safe haven for perpetrators of war crimes, and crimes against humanity.

 They must send a message that the international community will not be complicit and remain silent in the face of such brutality. This, importantly, also strips the extremists of their favourite recruiting tool: injustice.

 Perhaps the rehabilitation of the greatest criminal of our times will go on, unencumbered. Rights organisations and Assad's victims may not be able to stop this, but at the very least, they should be supported in their efforts towards justice, and blocking regime attempts to falsify history which add salt to the wound by turning the perpetrator into a national hero.

 And those who so freely normalise the Assad regime should keep in their hearts and minds a tiny space to consider his victims and survivors, who will live out their lives in the shadow of his regime's atrocities.'

Our revolution will continue, it isn't waiting for you

 From September 2018, when Idlib was expecting an imminent Assad offensive. Displaced Syrians from Homs, Aleppo and Ghouta took to the streets to protest and renew the slogans of the Revolution in support of Idlib, accompanied by Abdul-Baset al-Sarout, the Syrian football goalkeeper.

 # Syria ... our land, a paradise! Our beautiful country, our beautiful soil!
    Even your Hell is Heaven!    O Homs, land of Arabism
    Difficulties do not deter us, for we are champions, well known to all!
    We are the famous Idlib!     
    Syria ... our land, a paradise!   #


 Abdul-Baset al-Sarout: 

 "A message to Putin and de Mistura, and to all the world's conferences:    
Victory is from God. We're waiting for them at the frontlines, and anything else is pointless.  The frontlines and the trenches we're digging are what's important. Whoever wants to join us, we're waiting for you.  No more statements or lies. We're at the frontlines, for whoever wants to join us. Our revolution will continue, it isn't waiting for you. May God support us."


 # We swear to God that we shall continue our revolution!
    We won't forget our martyrs' blood!
    Prophet Muhammed is our leader forever!
    The Free Syrian Army crushes Assad forever!
    One, one, one, Homs and Idlib are one!
    One, one, one, the Syrian people are one! #