The local journalist shining a light on Aleppo

 'After the Free Syrian Army entered Aleppo in mid-2012, media workers started acquiring more freedom, and international news outlets made their way to the city.

 Life in Aleppo does not resemble life anywhere else in the world. My city has been ripped apart by war and has seen things that defy the imagination. Words can’t do them justice. It's a city full of love and war, childhood and death, pain and suffering. It's considered one of the most dangerous cities in the world as it gets bombed every day with barrels of explosives and slaughtered with a knife by Islamic State in the eastern countryside. I've seen the lives of innocent people destroyed by death and disability. Houses are no longer safe in Aleppo. There is nowhere left to hide. And no one knows how long it's going to last as the international community turns a blind eye to these forgotten tragedies.

 I hope one day to see smiles back on the faces of the country's children after Assad is overthrown and the Islamic State group is disposed of. Only then can we build a free and peaceful Syrian state.'

Why Stop the War don’t want to listen to Syrians

 'The Syria Solidarity Movement UK was formed to give solidarity to the people of Syria in their struggle for a democratic and free Syria. Our membership is made up of Syrians, and friends of Syrians. Our positions are led by the needs and demands of Syrians suffering brutally at the hands of a criminal regime.

 Stop the War oppose any action against Assad. This puts Stop the War against the Syrian civilians who are being bombed by Assad, it puts them not just against Syrian revolutionaries but also against Syrian doctors, against Syrian White Helmets rescue volunteers, and against Syrian civil society activists, all of whom call for international action to stop Assad’s bombs. This is why Stop the War don’t want to listen to Syrians.

 Their statement lists three claimed lies about their 2nd November meeting: that Stop the War’s Andrew Murray had called for support for the Assad government to fight ISIS, that Syrians were prevented from speaking at the meeting, and that Police were called to the meeting to control protesters.

 Andrew Murray’s “strong and credible government” is one where there is no change of regime, and no demand for Assad to step down: in other words, a continuation of the Assad regime. Stop the War did allow Muzna Al-Naib to speak in the meeting, but only when other members of the audience called for her to be heard. She was the only Syrian allowed to speak, she was interrupted, and for the rest of the meeting all other Syrians were deliberately ignored by the Chair, Diane Abbott, even when other speakers Catherine West MP and Caroline Lucas MP said they wanted to hear from Syrians.

 Stop the War deny that Police were called to the meeting to control protesters. This is the most blatant and astonishing falsehood. Police in the Houses of Parliament were called to the meeting. Syrian and Arab audience members were repeatedly told “you are going to get arrested.” One Syria Solidarity activist was prevented from re-entering the meeting by Police who arrived in numbers and were visible to all at the doors of the meeting by its end.
If Stop the War’s slogan “Don’t bomb Syria” is to have any meaning, let them demand the end of the regime whose bombs have killed so many.

 If Stop the War oppose imperialism let them demonstrate their sincerity outside the Russian Embassy. Let them demonstrate with placards calling for Russia to stop bombing Syrian hospitals.

 Lastly, if Stop the War are against war, let them stop denying war crimes; for this is their latest response, publishing a claim that Assad wasn’t responsible for the Ghouta chemical weapons massacre, “because it was so obviously not in Assad’s political and military interests.”
He asks “what would happen to the Syrians that have supported the regime” if the Free Syrian Army win. The question Matt Carr fails to grasp is what is happening to millions of the dictator’s victims right now? The Free Syrian Army are the people who have defended their homes, freedom and justice against Assad for the last five years and against ISIS for the last three, and who are now being bombed by Assad’s ally Putin. The Free Syrian Army are not the ones levelling neighbourhoods and driving millions from their homes.

 Syrian civilians need protection from Assad’s mass murder. Stop the War have nothing to offer them, and so they stop their ears.'

A perilous journey

 "My name is Khalid. I'm 24. I escaped from Syria and I have been in this asylum centre for three months."

 "I joined the protests – but kept it secret from my family. My mother would have locked me in my room to protect me. We marched in glorious unity. When the security forces shot us, it hardened our defiance ..."

How Syria's 'Rebel Mother' Rebuilt Her Life In Turkey

 'Early on, Najlaa brought her two sons, Hussein and Amr, with her to the protests, and rallied other women to join her. What began as a few women marching down the streets in their traditional chadors quickly evolved into an energized movement, with women chanting slogans and waving placards denouncing Assad.

 When she arrived in Aleppo, she didn't stop supporting the revolution. Najlaa worked to help injured people and made signs for the rebels. Soon, her work forced her to flee again, this time to Azaz, where some of her relatives lived. Then her 9-year-old son, Amr, was injured by one of the many improvised bombs that rained down on the city as forces loyal to Bashar al-Assad battled the Free Syrian Army. Najlaa knew she had to flee. She arrived in Turkey with her two sons and the clothes on their backs.

 Najlaa has begun to rebuild Syria in Turkey. On a recent day at the center, women in hijabs carefully pulled needles through cloth, making the Syrian revolution’s equivalent of Barbie dolls. “We called her Hajier, first martyr of the revolution,” Najlaa said as she held a doll with a kind face and golden-brown braids made of string.

 The achievements of these women are now the only thing that brings her joy, Najlaa said. They also give her hope that someday they will be able to return to a peaceful Syria. “The war will end. Nothing lasts, the war will end, and it will then be clear to women that the more work they put in, the more they will harvest.” '

Syria's Swimming Sisters Find New Home

 ' "I was not afraid of dying, because if anything happened I could swim to arrive at the island. But the problem was that I had 20 persons with me," said Sarah. "In Syria I worked in a swimming pool to watch people not drowning, so if I let anyone drown or die I would not forgive myself." '

 Syria is dying every day in the Mediterranean, but humanity endures. Everyone who can leave is leaving.

 'After the conflict began, the Mardini family moved around to avoid the fighting and tried to ensure their daughters could keep on swimming. Ysra, now 17, even represented Syria at the short-course world championships in Turkey in 2012. But as the war intensified fellow swimmers drifted away.

 "We were 40 or 50 swimmers, and now we are maybe 10 or 7 swimmers in Syria," said Sarah. "We want to have a future. I want to be in college, I want to be an international swimmer and my sister too. But if we stay there we will not reach that because the situation is not OK in Syria." '

Why is Russia bombing my town?

  Raed Fares:

 'While Russian President Vladimir Putin claims that he is bombing Islamic State “terrorists” in Kafranbel, this cannot be true, or there is no way I would be able to move about freely. Kafranbel is known for its moderation and civil activism; I know that these are Putin’s real targets.

 If civil activism in Kafranbel declines, though, I will blame Russia. One reason for our thriving civil society is that we are being defended by Free Syrian Army fighters who grew up in the town and are firmly committed to democracy. These fighters, who have received U.S. assistance, serve as a check on any extremist groups that try to cause trouble. Russia is bombing the pro-democracy fighters of Kafranbel most heavily, almost as if it wants the extremists to grow stronger. For this reason, Russia has emerged as an enemy of civil society here. Local activists have taken the rare steps of burning a Russian flag and protesting alongside local Free Syrian Army fighters to highlight this point.

 It’s hypocritical for Putin to bomb Kafranbel in the name of “fighting extremism.” Kafranbel residents have gone to great lengths to empower women; monitors note the decline of women’s rights in Russia since Putin took power. Residents of Kafranbel have worked hard to create an inclusive and tolerant atmosphere; Putin’s state priests have declared a “holy war” in Syria after less than a month of combat. I’ve been under bombardment in Syria for four and a half years without declaring a “holy war.” Why does Putin find it so hard to restrain himself?

 Americans should not be so passive in the face of Putin’s farcical anti-Islamic State campaign. Kafranbel’s thriving civil society is in many ways modeled after that of the United States, and in some cases has even received U.S. funding. Putin long ago made clear that he is no fan of civil society in general, so when he assaults the free people of Kafranbel (or Ukraine), Americans should take notice. I hope that the American people will come to the defense of Kafranbel and all Syrians who are fighting for democracy, because their country’s current behavior, as a bystander to atrocities against free people, cannot possibly be a true reflection of what the United States stands for.'

Stop the War Coalition lie about being lied about

 Omar Sabbour:

 'In response to Stop the War statement regarding Parliamentary meeting event on the 4th November 2015.

 Lie No.1: Regarding “Andrew Murray’s support for the Syrian regime”

 During the meeting Andrew Murray called for the support of the Syrian Army and the Iraqi Army in the fight against ISIS. This will be on record of the footage that Stop the War Coalition have yet to release of the meeting (unless they choose to edit it).

 It should be noted that it is not the person of Assad himself which has caused the destruction in Syria, it is an entire military-security-intelligence apparatus of a fascist (self-defined nationalist-socialist) state. It is not Assad himself who has been dropping bombs every single day for the past 4 years, raped thousands of women and men, or tortured to death thousands of detainees, it an entire state set of apparatuses. Indeed, the long touted “political solution” supported by the International powers since 2012, whereby despite perceptions of “difference” between the US and Russia there has been a consistent unanimity on the necessary retention of the structures of the Syrian state and only disagreement on the fate of the person of Assad, has been rejected repeatedly by the revolutionary Syrian people. They can keep Assad if they think that they’ll maintain his regime. We only need see what happened in Egypt when a figurehead and some of his cronies were removed, only to be replaced by a worse one propelled by a vindictive ancien régime.

 Andrew Murray’s support of the Syrian state is beyond dispute, as is wide swathes of the Stop the War coalition. They seek to play on “technicalities” of not directly stating “we support Assad”. Indeed President Sisi of Egypt says exactly the same thing when asked about his support for Assad in Syria, claiming “we must support the Syrian state, its not about the person”. The reader familiar with Stop the War coalition’s writings over the duration of the Syrian conflict, and their mocking writings about the Syrian resistance and existence of non-Assad Muslim “moderates”, will recognise this fact – never mind the absence of a (naive) outright “declaration” (which immediately opens up the movement to criticism as well as historical infamy), which is reserved for the Communist Party of Great Britain and the BNP, Stop the War’s leadership and outlets have (with rare exceptions) repeated close-to verbatim the narratives of the Syrian and Iranian governments.

 Their rhetoric of a “sovereign Syria in which Syrians decide their fate”, for example, is taken right off the Russian manuscript. The irony of those proclaiming this maxim being entirely reliant on non-Syrian forces (Iraqi militias, Iranian revolutionary Guards, Hezbollah and now Russia’s airforce), whereby an independent regular “Syrian army” is practically no longer existent, entirely reliant on Iranian-sponsored militias, seems to be lost on those proponents.
Finally, it should be noted Andrew Murray’s (the Chair of Stop the War coalition) declaration of the necessity of supporting the “US-backed” (in fact US-created) Iraqi Army; this is another ironic contradiction for the “anti-imperialist” Stop the War coalition to support “Western-backed” forces in the Middle East, and is one from the few that will be seen in this article.

 Lie 2: Regarding “allowing Syrians to speak”

 This is indeed an audacious claim by Stop the War coalition, and reflects the general strategy in this statement of “the best way of defence is offence”. One Syrian was allowed to speak (which is what was already claimed), Muzna – she was interrupted and following that point not a single Syrian, of whom there were many and who were holding their hands up for the full remainder of that meeting’s duration, were given the chance to speak – whilst (with a few exceptions) practically every non-Syrian present were given that opportunity (including known Stop the War organisers, despite them being the organisers), including one man who proceeded on a historical lecture of the “fake” background of the Arab Spring. Ms Abbot’s statement on Daily Politics that “she didn’t know who the Syrians were” warrants no response.

 Lie 3: Regarding “police being called”

 This is perhaps the most blatant and astonishing falsehood by Stop the War coalition. Police present on the premises of parliament were called – in quite an extraordinary example of attempting to play “fast and loose” with the truth Stop the War attempt to distinguish this here by stating that the constabulary wasn’t called. The “constabulary” was not called, police already present in the vicinity of parliament were. Indeed many of the police on parliament premises were armed with machine guns – more than could be said of “the constabulary”; though those who were summoned to the meeting were not armed. Police arrived in numbers and were visible to all at the doors of the meeting by its end, something which any attendee at that meeting can attest to. One of the Arab attendees denied the opportunity to speak by the panel was also talked to by police after the meeting. Prior to that the Syrian and Arab audience members were repeatedly told “you are going to get arrested [if you continue]”. We are actually surprised that Stop the War have gone to the lengths of denying this instead of letting it “die down”. We urge Stop the War coalition to release unedited footage of the meeting which can serve to be the judge as to who is telling the truth and who is not.

 It should be noted Stop the War coalition had a pro-Iraq war MP on platform, Crispin Blunt. The fact that they did this as an issue, regardless of our differences on Syria, shows how shallow their actual emotional connection is to the real life realities of “imperialism”. An SSM supporter present mentioned this to the panel, and (expectedly) received no response.
Other statements made at the meeting by prominent leaders of Stop the War coalition should also be noted, such as by Lindsey German: “some people here [the Syrians] might not see ISIS as a big problem, but it is”, an implication more reminiscent of traditional right-wing and Zionist arguments used in debate with Muslims, as well as snide remarks by another prominent Stop the War figure stating: “this is the democracy they want” in the direction of emotional Syrians “interrupting” the panel. Again we note the convergence of wide swathes of the “far-left” with the far-right in their support for Assad (the latter alliance is natural, seeing that Assad’s regime is an archetypal fascist-structured regime), whereby shared opposition to the “mainstream” establishment and a closet admiration of how far a departure such “fortress states” are from their own disliked systems informs their overlap on Syria.

 The repeated smear used by Stop the War that Syria Solidarity “supported the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan” is a blatant falsehood – there is not a single SSM member that supports the aggression and invasion of Iraq – which is more than could be said for the panel that “Stop the War” hosted last Wednesday – nor the decade of sanctions that killed a million Iraqis (according to the UN) before that, and our members continue to argue that the invasion should not be forgotten simply because it is in the past. It is ironically Stop the War who find themselves actively support the axis which gained power out of the invasion of Iraq, that of Russia-Iran–Sisi-Maliki-Assad. It is the anti-Maliki, anti-Sisi, anti-Assad axis that we support, three rulers Iran either supported or is in the process of normalising relations with (Iran sent an envoy to Sisi’s inauguration and is currently in talks). It is the Syrian people who hosted the refugees of Iraq and it is the Iraqi people in those areas who suffered the most from the invasion, in Fallujah, Ramadi, Tirkrit and Anbar, who stand in solidarity with the Syrian people against their tyrant. They need no lectures from people who live thousands of miles away and enjoy the benefits of the “imperialist” state.

 Our issue with Stop the War coalition is not that it is “against intervention”, as they would prefer to pretend. It is about them consistently no-platforming Syrian voices for the past 4 years, consistently peddling the Syrian regime’s narratives, consistently making sarcastic “snide” references about the hundreds of thousands of the Syrian people who remain engaged in the revolution (both its military and civil aspects) being extremist, or the millions more of their supporters being extremist sympathisers (something Assad himself once declared, when he stated ‘millions of Syrians are providing sanctuary for “terrorism”’, inadvertently acknowledging the scale of popular opposition to him), consistently peddling neoconservative-like War on Terror narratives (used by every repressive post-colonial regime in the region), and now blatantly coming out in support of the Syrian military and state. We should note our great surprise and disappointment of Ms Caroline Lucas doing the same in that meeting with regards to the latter.

 Since 2011 and the very short-lived retrenchment of “War on Terror” language post-Iraq groups such as “Stop the War” have accounted for some of the biggest parts of the resurrection of this narrative, all to support Iran’s counter-revolutions. Let us also make clear, that we like most Syrians once defended Iran and its allied parties, Iran threw away the goodwill of the non-sectarian Muslim peoples by embarking on a path of counter-revolutionary “stability”, which they now use to tout as the “only island of stability in the Middle East” (substitute for “only democracy in the Middle East”) and which has achieved them global recognition.

 Stop the War’s (main) leadership’s understandings of the conflict are to such an extent far off from what is happening on the ground, that in a perverse twist of “fate” Stop the War’s leadership has spun a web of simplistic (click-baiting) contradictions so wide that it now often finds itself ignoring instances of Western intervention (yet alone Russian ones), its supposed raison d’être:

 Refusing to cover the US bombing of Syrian revolutionary forceswhich killed up to 150 rebels, before the onslaught of Russia’s intervention. This was due to the inconveniences that such a contradiction posed to the narrative they have been promoting for the past 4 years.

 Supporting the US-backed Iraqi Army whilst engaging in a quasi- reporting blackout of its historical collapse in 2014, which was almost unanimously the reason for the rise of ISIS. 

 However, the links of the US-backed Iraqi Army with the “resistant” Iranian regime posed an uncomfortable narrative – blaming Syrian revolutionary forces, who were amongst the firstto fight ISIS, long before the “secular” (Western-rhetoric, clean-shaven) regime, who viewed them as “apostates worse than infidels”. Instead, despite the indisputable fact that US “support” (which in fact has been restricted Arab support provided through US-aligned Turkey and Jordan) for the Syrian revolutionaries cannot be compared to that given over a decade to the US-constructed modern Iraqi Army. The monumental collapse of a decade long US-trained Iraqi Army which provided the main justification for the US occupation of Iraq until 2011 should have been one of the most effective criticising points against the US policy in Iraq – instead, this was largely brushed under the carpet due to Iran’s allegiance with the Iraqi Army.

 Supporting the “imperialist-aligned” Kurdish PYD and hosting them on their platforms. In August an invitation by a local Stop the War coalition branch (Birmingham) to a Syrian member of a Syria Solidarity was rescinded at the request of the National Office due to “Syria solidarity’s support of military intervention”. Incidentally there were a range of views within Syria solidarity on the question of intervention, as there is amongst revolutionary Syrian circles, and some members have written against arguing for it – however Syria solidarity’s policy reflects that of refugees, internally displaced Syriansand Syrian civil society groups, not its members’ individual opinions – because we believe in actual agency of “other” peoples, not their use as pawns in anti-establishment posturing when convenient, which represents simply another form of Western narcissism and orientalism. The same meeting hosted a PYD member.

 Opposing the “Western-backed” Sisi regime – a firm ally of “Western-attacked” Bashar al-Assad.

 Not mentioning historical relations between the UK and the Assad regime, most importantly that the Sarin gas used in Syria had been imported from the UK.This would undermine the “Assad is hostile to West” narrative and entail “rectification”, and so exposing “imperialist complicity” is temporarily put on hold.

 A significant example of Stop the War’s detachment from the post-2011 Middle East was provided in August, when STWC provided a platform to “revolutionary, Arab Spring” pro-Houthi speakers (the Houthis are allied with Saleh’s counter-revolution in Yemen) in a public meeting in London. After the meeting one of the panel speakers was quoted as stating “Ali Abdullah Saleh is a man and a hundred men”, in response to heckling by an attendee who challenged the Houthi alliance with Saleh and disparaged their claimed “revolutionism”. The fact that this basic knowledge of the Houthis being in alliance with the tyrant Saleh’s forces in Yemen was not known by the organisers is indicative. This in a sense was a real life manifestation of a Press TV article, citing the “revolutionary” Houthi movement in the same breath as “Saleh declares support for Houthis”.

 To be clear, this is not to state that we are for the Saudi intervention in Yemen, but to present a microcosm of Stop the War coalition’s Arab Spring “understanding”. We do not propagandise for the Syrian revolution’s allies, whether Saudi, Qatar or Turkey. The same however cannot be said of Stop the War coalition, who consistently carry out exactly that role for the Iranian state, even during a historic rehabilitative rapprochement with the West (including most recently the opening of the Iranian embassy for the first time in four decades in London).

 Likewise, Stop the War’s ostensible ignorance of the “Western-supported” Sisi’s support for the “Western-attacked” Assad, and the scale of support for Assad in Egyptian media since Sisi’s “election” as president is similiarly indicative. Sisi has not only been diplomatically supporting Assad, as is seen with Putin’s latest plea to include Egypt in Vienna’s “peace” talks, but has also been sending him arms (for more see here, here, here and here). Stop the War’s oblivion to all this indicates that whilst such reports may be of common awareness for those in the region, there is a massive gap in ‘transmission’ to those in the West. This is precisely why we have tried to make the case of the necessity of providing opportunities for regional voices. This does not necessitate that they are correct simply by virtue of their backgrounds, but that if what they say is intellectually deemed to make sense then this means that they may very well know a lot more.

 In expressing support for the counter-revolutionary Saleh-Houthi alliance in Yemen, the Iraqi Army and the Syrian regime, Stop the War coalition proved itself not as a supporter of the Arab Spring, but an English-language propagandist of Iran’s counter-revolutions in the region (which has incidentally established it for the first time in 40 years as a recognised global player and “partner” for stability) – a Press TV translated into a social movement, if you will. Stop the War still continues to issue illusory pamphlets of “Syria is about a covert Western attempt to attack Iran” – even whilst a landmark Iranian relief sanctions deal was achieved with thousands of its troops stationed in Syria (which incidentally would entail tighter sanctions if that was supposedly the case, not their lifting) and even whilst the US is a de-facto ally of Iran in Iraq.

 That these faux pas occur should not be surprising – it is the natural consequence of an elitist, statist, theory-based approach, which in essence is not substantively about foreign politics and foreign events, but (domestic) anti-establishment politics.

 Let us finally note, that Stop the War Coalition’s narrative of a Western plot against the “resistance” state of Assad (a former Henry Kissinger and later War on Terror ally) is the same one cited and repeated by every single Arab ruler who faced the uprisings of the Arab awakening, dynastic-republican and monarchical: from Mubarak (who claimed that“he knew” the US wanted to overthrow him ever since they asked him to have elections in 2005), to Al-Sisi (whose regime and media claim that the Muslim Brotherhood is a US proxy organisation), to Ali Abdullah Saleh (a former firm US ally who, when abandoned, cited a “Zionist-American” Spring), to Ahmad Chalabi (the Iraqi politician who was the falsifying architect of the US invasion of Iraq, claimed a “Western conspiracy” in defence of his ally Assad), to Maliki (appointed by the US in its post-invasion transitional government, even before he was elected as Prime Minister) – these all had a few things in common: they were all tyrants, they all supported one another, they were all former “imperialist” allies, they all received support and played off both global powers (US and Russia), and they all claimed the same “foreign plot” when their populations rose up and when their embarrassed sponsors eventually had to abandon them.

 For Stop the War coalition to regurgitate propaganda of the Middle East’s felool elites is a tragedy, for it is these same elites that justified US-aligned foreign policy by their leaders, only for them to hurtfully declare a plot when their US trustees abandoned their leader. Is this what constitutes radical politics?

 Until then, perhaps STWC should change its role and title, and declare its new role as an “Adopt grievanced discarded puppets” lobbying group/charity.'

Despite Russian strikes, Syrian rebels hold ground

 ' "There is a sort of competition now among the factions to excel in defending the areas so none of them can get accused of being a traitor for losing a strip of land," said Hadi Abdullah, an opposition activist who travels with the rebels to the front lines to report on fighting. "They come to the rescue of each other on their different turf."

 "The regime is collapsing and only the Russians are propping them up," said Ahmed Saoud, a commander in the 13th Division, another American-based FSA faction that has gotten new infusions of TOWS and ammunition. "Even though we are the weakest link in the Syrian conflict, we will win with our weapons." '

 "American-based" should presumably read "American-backed", but is still a misnomer, it is the regional states that are supplying the weapons, the Americans' role has been to sanction the supply of weapons like manpads, and to groups that it doesn't like, including those that might advance too fast against Assad.

Government using thousands of disappeared as cash cow

 'The Syrian government is using a policy of subjecting thousands of people to enforced disappearance as both a means to crush opposition and to make large amounts of money for itself, said Amnesty International in a new report today.

 Amnesty’s 70-page report - Between prison and the grave: Enforced disappearances in Syria - reveals that the Syrian authorities are profiting from widespread and systematic enforced disappearances amounting to crimes against humanity, through an insidious black market in which family members desperate to find out the fate of their disappeared relatives are ruthlessly exploited for cash.

 As part of this black market, “middlemen” or “brokers” are paid bribes ranging from hundreds to tens of thousands of pounds by family members. Such bribes have become “a big part of the economy” according to one Syrian human rights activist. A lawyer from Damascus also told Amnesty that the bribes are “a cash cow for the regime … a source of funding they have come to rely on”.

 The report gives a tragic insight into the psychological trauma, anguish, despair and physical suffering experienced by family members and friends after an enforced disappearance. Saeed, whose brother Yusef was forcibly disappeared in 2012, said his mother never stops crying now. “Sometimes in the night I wake up and she is awake, looking at his picture and crying,” he said.

 While some states and the UN have condemned enforced disappearances, much more is needed than words of censure. More than a year and a half ago, in February 2014, the UN Security Council adopted Resolution 2139, which calls for an end to enforced disappearances in Syria, but it has yet to take further steps to ensure it is implemented. “States supporting the government of Syria, including Iran and Russia, which has recently begun military operations in Syria, cannot wash their hands of the mass crimes against humanity and war crimes being committed with their backing. Russia, whose patronage is essential for President Bashar al-Assad’s government, is in a unique position to convince the government to end this cruel and cowardly campaign of disappearances.” '

Civil SocietyThreatens Assad and Islamic Factions

 'The regime forces laid siege to the city, indiscriminately attacking Aleppo with warplanes, barrel bombs, and heavy artillery, all while sowing the countryside with land mines. Additionally, Assad directly targeted the provincial council’s headquarters, severely damaging its ability to work in an efficient and effective manner. Thousands of civilians, faced with certain death should they remain in their homes, fled Aleppo in the first waves of what became the mass exodus from Syria’s industrial capital.

 Salim, the pseudonym of a member of Aleppo’s provincial council, speaks mournfully about what could have been, “We (civil society and local governance groups) were able to restore electricity to most neighborhoods and reopen schools. Shoppers once again flocked to streets packed with vendors and salesmen, and the markets were busy. If the international community had only instituted the no-fly zone, Aleppo would be free today, and nearly a million people would not have fled to Europe.”

 In rural Idlib, the infighting that plagued the national bodies in exile carried down to the provincial council, further harming its effectiveness. Similarly, the politicking and fighting between the Free Syrian Army (FSA) affiliated armed groups and moderate Islamist groups such as Ahrar al-Sham and Suqur al-Sham carried down to the local councils. Though Jaish al-Fateh’s administrative profile continues to expand, and an honest appraisal of its capabilities and impartiality cannot yet be rendered, activists expect the Idlib Province Administration to eventually resemble civil administration at the Bab al-Hawa border crossing with Turkey. Run by Ahrar al-Sham, locals consider Bab al-Hawa to be fairly and effectively managed, especially in light of it being run an armed group.

 The array of popular movements and local councils in which tens of thousands of Syrians are already participating serve as the very essence of any democratic system. The fact that the Assad regime, ISIS, and other Islamist factions have displayed such vitriol for Syrian civil society underscores just why it remains so important.'

Amnesty accuses regime of 'disappearing' 10s of 1000s

 ' “It was days before we found out,” said Mrs Alabbasi. “Now I do barely sleep at night. We don’t know where they are or how they are, we don’t even know if they are alive.” A dentist by trade, Rania had also been Syria’s national chess champion several times over. When military intelligence officers arrested her, they stole her awards, along with money, jewellery, the family cars, according to her sister. They also took her six children. “What chance is there for a child when adults barely survive those prisons? Her youngest is just two years old,” said Mrs Alabbasi. “We think of them every day.”

 The Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR), a monitoring group, has collected the names of 58,148 who are believed to have been forcibly disappeared since March 2011, the first month of Syria’s revolution, and who remain missing.

 Raneem Ma’touq, a 24-year-old fine arts student from Homs, was forcibly disappeared for two months in 2014. Taken from her house at gunpoint in the night, she spent months inside a 3m cell shared with 10 other women. During one brutal interrogation, she said she became hysterical, singing at the top of her lungs. “I was punished for that,” she said. “The director... hung me almost by the throat and kept hitting me. But others had it worse.”Ms Ma’touq’s ordeal is not over. Her father Khalil, a renowned human rights lawyer who defended hundreds of political prisoners and prisoners of conscience, is also missing, arrested from his car in Damascus during October 2013.

 Amnesty International said on Monday that it believed the regime’s disappearances had been carried out as part of “an organised attack against the civilian population that has been widespread, as well as systematic, and therefore amount to crimes against humanity".

 Waiting for news of Rania, Mrs Alabbasi said she had given up asking why the family’s ordeal had begun. “In Syria you cannot ask the regime why it does this,” she said. “They do not need an excuse to do what they want.” '

‘The world closed its eyes to what is happening in Syria’

 'Anwar al-Bunni was bundled into a car, blindfolded and beaten. He was charged with seeking to overthrow the regime, threatening public order, incitement to sectarian hatred and being in contact with foreign powers.

 He was sentenced to five years, which he was forced to spend not among political prisoners but criminal detainees. Some rules were specially adapted for Bunni: he was forbidden from having any reading material other than official Syrian newspapers. “They put me in with murderers, to push me more and more,” he says.

 In the years since his release from prison, a catastrophic four-year war has torn Syria apart. The world’s response has caused Bunni to revise his view of just how much outsiders care. “The world has closed its eyes to what is happening in Syria,” he says in a phone interview from Germany, where he now lives with his family.

 He criticises western states for indicating they may be willing to see Assad remain in power for the duration of any political transition and dismisses the view that Assad should be strengthened as a bulwark against Islamic State (IS). “Daesh (IS) came from outside Syria. It was Bashar and his party that let them come.”

 Particularly galling, he says, is the impunity with which the Assad regime can act. “There is no future for Syria if the people responsible for war crimes are not brought to justice. The world is wasting time while people are suffering and dying. Nobody has taken a decision to end this tragedy.” '

The Syrians Who Refused to Give Up

 Robin Yassin-Kassab:

 'Samar Yazbek’s shocking, searing, and beautiful new book, The Crossing: My Journey to the Shattered Heart of Syria, describes three visits to Idlib province in northern Syria, an area liberated from the Assad dictatorship “on the ground but betrayed by the sky.” Bashar al-Assad’s forces had been driven from the rural border zones. From a distance, however, via warplanes and long-range artillery, they implemented a policy of scorched earth and collective punishment.

 Through self-organized committees and councils, Yazbek is told, “each region now has its own administration, and every village looks after itself.” This—Syrians’ willed self-determination, Syrian creativity amid destruction—is the positive story so often missed in the news cycle, and it represents a hope for the future, faint though it is. The activists know they are working against insurmountable odds, but continue anyway. They document atrocities and reach out to international media, an endeavor that has so far failed to bear tangible fruit. When they can, they laugh—it’s “as though they inhaled laughter like an antidote to death.”

 Her constant companions, protectors, and fixers are men of the Free Syrian Army, “an extremely diverse set of groups, with varying characteristics and attitudes—from the cruel to the compassionate.” They ought to be called “armed people’s resistance brigades,” she opines, given that they are “really just ordinary people such as one might meet in the street.” These locals, trying to defend their communities, are starved for funds, weapons and ammunition. “If we had anti-aircraft guns,” one complains, “Assad would have fallen long ago.”

 It’s an extra mark of Yazbek’s courage that she chose to travel in this difficult territory even though she’s an Alawite, a member of the Shia-offshoot sect to which Assad and most of his security chiefs belong. “The Alawites can’t stay in Syria,” she is told by a militia leader, one of the hundreds of extremists released from regime prisons in 2011 even as non-violent democrats were being rounded up en masse. Between regime violence and Islamist reaction, the space for dissident Syrians like her is shrinking. But it’s in part awareness of this tragedy that makes her hosts so eager to accomodate her. “They didn’t want to believe what was happening was a sectarian war,” she writes, “and their proof was my presence.” '

Former ISIS hostage: don't be afraid of ISIS

 'To our understanding, the main battle for Syria and Iraq has taken place between the forces of Assad's regime and the ISIS. One aspiring to establish a Caliphate, the other trying to hold on to his throne at all costs. Yet, Henin proceeds to establish the many ways in with the ISIS and Assad's regime are complicit with one another. Take for example, the number of times the Islamic State has actually fought the Syrian army over the course of the bloody war:

 The ISIS fought the Syrian army when they seized the Menagh air base.

 They also fought the army when they captured Division 17 in Raqqa (now capital of the declared Caliphate). Here they also captured a neighbouring airport.

 The IS has also taken part in small-scale battles near Alleppo, Lattakia and Al-Qamishi.

 This is the comprehensive list. And for a war that's claimed 200,000 lives and displaced half the country, the number of battles remains suspiciously small.

 In fact, as of 2014, ISIS was earning $3 Million every day in the form of oil revenues. And a large portion of this oil is, to this day, sold to Assad. This complicity may be surprising. But it is not necessarily illogical. Because Assad stands to gain from the existence of the ISIS. It legitimizes his position as leader of the Syrian people. The "Assad or chaos" slogan is one he manipulates and brandishes with much success. The ISIS is the bogeyman. And by focusing on the malaise that is the ISIS, we are playing right into Assad's hands.

 The Syrian people, as well as the Iraqis, would never accept the leadership of the Islamic State. It is an organization fraught with infighting and deceit. It cannot provide a viable Government in either country. It simply does not have the structural efficiency to. Additionally, the fear of the ISIS seems more potent than it is because of their ingenious PR campaign. We find ourselves shaken by their videos. We replay them time and again on television, further feeding into the deliberately cultivated fear. We are concerned that a future fighter of the ISIS may be among us. And in all this, we fail to recognize the sporadic, disorganized violence for what it is.

 The real threat remains Assad. In his absence, the Sunni majority will not feel compelled to align with the fanatic jihadis. The moderates will rise again. The conflicts will begin to resolve themselves. But the first step is to dethrone the ISIS from the status of "super-terrorists". It's what they want. And they are not a credible threat to the world.'

Carnage Caused by Syrian Regime Attack Near Damascus

 'At least 70 people were killed and 550 injured after airstrikes and shelling hit a marketplace on the outskirts of Syria's capital Damascus, according to the medical aid organization Doctors Without Borders, which quoted medics on the scene as saying the wounds from the attack were "worse than anything they have seen before."

 The attack occurred on Friday in the city of Douma, east of Damascus, and was reportedly carried out by Syrian government forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad. Graphic footage from the aftermath of the bombing showed rescuers attempting to pull the dead and severely wounded from piles of debris and rubble.

 "This was an extremely violent bombing," said the director of an MSF-supported hospital in the area. "The wounds were worse than anything we've seen before, and there were large numbers of dead. We had to do many amputations… We did our best to cope, but the number of critically wounded was far beyond what we could handle with our limited means."

 MSF noted that bombing of civilian infrastructure such as hospitals and markets has increased in the areas around Damascus in recent weeks. In Douma, medical workers struggled to treat the influx of casualties from the latest airstrike because the nearest makeshift hospital had been bombed the previous day.

 Nearly 40 percent of people treated in MSF-supported facilities in East Ghouta, an agricultural area in the Damascus countryside, have been women and children under 15 years old, the group said. "This massive bombing on a crowded market and the repeated destruction of the few available medical facilities breaches everything that the rules of war stand for," said Brice de le Vingne, director of Syria Operations for MSF.'

Never mind the Russians, IS is destroying itself

 'This week it was revealed that another mass slaughter by the extremist group had taken place, involving the summary execution of 224 of the group's fighters. They were suspected of attempting to defect to al-Nusra Front, and follows rumours that al-Qaeda's franchise in Syria is growing in popularity due to Russian air raids being aimed at them and other rebel groups - but not IS.

 A month of heavy Russian bombing in Syria, falling almost exclusively on rebel-held towns and cities, has left IS militants in the north and east largely unscathed. It has allowed the extremists to direct their forces to defeating their rebel adversaries in Aleppo province, and cutting off the regime's lifeline to the southern Aleppo city. But the focus on fighting rebels rather than the regime has led many fighters to question the reasons for fighting "other Muslims". The IS leadership still refers to opposition groups - including al-Nusra Front - as "apostates", while most of its fighters are well aware that it is Bashar al-Assad's forces who are doing most of the killing in Syria. "There's senseless violence which a lot of fighters consider un-Islamic… people didn't join to spend half of their time fighting other opposition groups, they went to Syria to fight Assad and Shia domination of the region," the defence analyst said.

 The economy is in tatters, and recent efforts to introduce a gold currency suggest amateur and impulsive responses to their economic woes. Meanwhile, the health system - which was once referred to by IS idealists as being a mirror of the UK's National Health Service - has collapsed. Ironically, Russia and the regime are also appear to be targeting hospitals in rebel-held territories - making the overall situation for Syrians grim. But the fact that in IS territories public hospitals lie in waste while the group's leadership is treated with relatively high-standards highlights a discrepancy in its claims of moral leadership. It also underlines a very apparent gulf in wealth between the leadership and subjects in their territory, and most Syrians understand clearly that the projection of IS' utopia to the outside world is shrouded with lies. If we imagine the near future, IS will no longer be able to rely on popular support - and without an inexhaustible supply of manpower and money, its project is doomed.

 Even its capable and die-hard supporters have proven unable to defeat experienced opposition groups such as the Kurds and Free Syrian Army that offer more representative leadership and goals. In the end, the fate of IS might be decided by the fact that its population and ranks are voting with their feet and fleeing the territory.'

How to stop the bomb Syria bloc

 The most pro-Assad part of Andrew Murray, Chairman of the Stop the War Coaltion's, diatribe is,

'It is now pretty obvious that bombing by western powers is not going to roll back Islamic State. That could only be done by the forces of strong and sovereign states in Iraq and Syria, able to mobilise support from all sections of the people.'

He rolls back from that a little in this,

'Such preconditions only serve to prolong the conflict and to give either government or opposition hope that foreign military and diplomatic support could somehow lead to all-out victory.'

There is a clear difference between the estimation of the Russian and US interventions. Although he says,

'All foreign military intervention in Syria should end immediately,'

one is,

'the Anglo-American war front in the Middle East,'

while the other is,

'Our bipartisan armchair strategists are obviously riled by Russia’s escalating military involvement in Syria. But it is a fact.'

A couple of lies in series in response to the Cox/Mitchell letter, that Britain has been arming Syrian rebels, and that has escalated the refugee flow.

'Of course, if humanitarianism was really a consideration, Britain would have stopped funding and arming the Syrian civil war some time ago. It would be welcoming far more refugees from the conflict zone it has fuelled.'

A lie about those wanting to stop Assad and Russia's war on Syria. That they wanted Britain to go to war with Assad in 2013,

'In 2013 they were urging war against the Syrian government over its alleged use of chemical weapons.'

Two untruths, that Western funding caused the uprising against Assad to militarise, and that the uprising caused the rise of ISIS,

'The rise of Islamic State to control much of Syria’s territory – a consequence of the civil war fostered by the western powers, amongst others – seemed to offer another excuse for intervention.'

 

The argument against a no fly zone is asinine. Assad is doing the bombing, a no fly zone would stop him.

'The reality of “no fly zones” and “safe havens”, benign as they sound, is regime change. That is the clear aim of the proposal. Assad government forces – or those supporting it – would be the target.'

Of course the areas already cleared of régime forces by the moderate opposition would be the major beneficiaries, but that's not even on the radar of someone who knows so little about Syria.

'In Syria today, the winners from a war to set up safe-havens – an operation which would also require the deployment of grounds troops into Syria – would most likely be IS. It would be best placed to expand into many of the areas cleared of regime forces.'

People who supported revolutions used to be called socialists, not neo-conservatives. Shame on Andrew Murray for this slander, and that on the Free Syrian Army he claims is only a figment of Washington imagination.

'Such plans fuel the fantasises of neo-conservatives on both sides of the Atlantic who dream of creating a “third force” capable to taking over Syria in opposition both to Assad and to Islamic State.'

Too Weak, Too Strong

 'The Russian air strikes that have been taking place since the end of September are strengthening and raising the morale of the Syrian army.'

 That would be the Syrian army that has been retreating across Hama despite the Russian airstrikes. The pro-Assad lies are strong in this one.

 'Literally from the front line.'*

 No, a liar who has embedded himself with Assad's minders in hotels in Damascus, who never sees the destruction Assad does, never talks to the people he's doing it to, and who is quite capable of making up his presence at an incident Brian Williams style.[http://notris.blogspot.com/search?q=patrick+cockburn]

 'It needs partners on the ground who are fighting IS, but its choice is limited because those actually engaged in combat with the Sunni jihadis are largely Shia.'

 This is another lie. It is the Free Syrian Army that has been fighting against ISIS in Northern Syria for the last two years.

 'Shia leaders dismiss the idea, much favoured in Washington, that a sizeable moderate, non-sectarian Sunni opposition exists that would be willing to share power in Damascus and Baghdad.'

 A series of untruths. The opposition is not just Sunni, but Christian, Alawite and atheistic too. None of them are willing to share power with the torturers and rapists of the Assad régime, but want a democratic pluralist state. The Shia leaders, Iran and its proxies, don't want to share power, they've been pursuing a genocide in Syria precisely against the Sunnis above all.

 'In the swathe of countries most directly involved in the conflict – Iran, Iraq, Syria and Lebanon – there are more than a hundred million Shia, who believe their own existence is threatened if Assad goes down, compared to thirty million Sunnis, who are in a majority only in Syria.'

 The figures show what a nonsense the excuse for supporting Assad in his genocide against Sunnis is. Very reminiscent of the Israeli claim that if they stop oppressing the Palestinians the Israelis will all be killed.

 'A few miles further on, in the town of Tal Abyad, which the YPG had captured from IS in June, a woman ran out of her house to wave down the police car I was following to say that she had just seen an IS fighter in black clothes and a beard run through her courtyard. The police said there were still IS men hiding in abandoned Arab houses in the town.'

 The allegation that Arab residents are member of ISIS is the justification for ethnic cleansing by the Kurdish forces, as Amnesty has noted. As with Assad, or the Russian bombing that Cockburn laments "has taken attention away" from the failure of the US campaign against ISIS, these war crimes just aren't part of his narrative.
[https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2015/10/syria-us-allys-razing-of-villages-amounts-to-war-crimes/]

 'Between 2011 and 2013 it was conventional wisdom in the West and much of the Middle East that Assad was going to be overthrown just as Gaddafi has been.'

 And it was only massive military assistance from Russia, which had to be bolstered by thousands of troops from Hezbollah, and thousands more from Iran's other proxy militias, that saved it from rebels who couldn't get their hands on anti-aircraft missiles, let alone the tanks and aeroplanes Assad has.

 'In late 2013 and throughout 2014, it was clear that Assad still controlled most populated areas, but then the jihadi advances in northern and eastern Syria in May revived talk of the regime’s crumbling.'

 If you read Cockburn through 2013 and 2014, you'll see repeated assertions of the strength of Assad, that he controls all the provincial capitals, that the army is strong, that all communities still supported him. As the régime has continued to hollow out, it is his assessment that has proved to have nothing in it, not that that Assad is a dictator who has relied almost entirely on force rather than consent since 2011, and now is a dead man walking with only a skeleton apparatus of power, who would be gone in five minutes if Iran and Russia left him to it, and will only last five minutes when the more united than ever Syrian rebel forces kick Iran and Russia out of their country.

 'Russian air support won’t be enough to defeat IS and the other al-Qaida-type groups.'

 Russian air support isn't going to do anything to defeat ISIS when it is used overwhelmingly against the Free Syrian Army. In fact the Russian bombing of the FSA has enabled ISIS to cut the régime's access to Aleppo, leading to the bizarre situation where the opposition has been asked to open a supply route by aid agencies to the area controlled by the people barrel bombing them. Russia's intervention is a disaster all round, but you'll never discover why from a study of Cockburn on its own.

*[http://discussion.theguardian.com/comment-permalink/62403589]

The horrors of Syria. We can end them

 'The West let the best strategy be the enemy of the good in Syria – and now we have seen the enormous price of not intervening, as it fell to Tony Blair to argue this week, in his partial mea culpa for the invasion of Iraq. The UK’s efforts in Syria have only tinkered at the edges of a humanitarian catastrophe. When Assad crossed Barack Obama’s stated red line in his use of chemical weapons in August 2013, the US president stood back and did nothing. All the time, Syria’s people faced slaughter – and now Vladimir Putin has stepped into the vacuum to shore up the faltering regime of the murderous Bashar al-Assad.

 I saw the humanitarian and security situation decline throughout three six-week visits to Syria in 2012, 2013 and 2014. Later, I told of what I saw in interviews: the children blown apart by barrel bombs; the snipers targeting pregnant women.

 An oft-repeated line was that all the anti-government protagonists are equally extreme, equally impossible Western allies. I can say that from my experience that they are not. Towards the end of my time there in 2014, I went to visit a Catholic Church in Aleppo. There, having tea with the priest, were a group of Free Syrian Army fighters, their rifles slung across their chests as they chatted amicably. The Church had been protected by the Free Syrian fighters and the priest respected for the kindness he showed to many sick and dying people. In March this year, I was shocked to hear that this kindly priest had been killed. Not by supposed Islamist rebels intent on destroying all those of other religions; but by a barrel bomb dropped by one of Assad’s helicopters.

 The West has so far abrogated its moral responsibility to the Syrian people and has paid a price not only in the hundreds of thousands of desperate refugees flocking to Europe’s shores but also in Putin’s audacious power play, so that we find ourselves in a situation where Russia, Iran and Hizbollah are leading this brutal dance.

 All the major powers involved are now to meet at a peace conference in Austria. Here’s what they must secure: a safe haven in Syria, probably from Aleppo northwards, which is free from air attacks and allows humanitarian access via corridors which can be policed by the UN or by a western coalition with the Gulf states and Turkey.'

One man's perilous journey from Syria to Europe

 "Please help us! The régime of Bashar al-Assad is killing us. Please! Every day there is blood..."

 Abu Salah was a blacksmith, who fled after his home town in Homs province, one of the first in Syria to rise up in revolution, was destroyed by the Assad régime.

'Wonderful' Windsor welcomes Syrian family

 'Al Hayik spent almost a month behind bars after he and other lawyers went on strike to protest the widely publicized torture killings of two young children at the hands of government agents. His boys, both university dental program students, spent a similar amount of time being tortured and interrogated after they joined protests sparked by politically active classmates being tossed to their death from university highrises by government thugs.

 But lawyer Al Hayik, 51, his wife Lina Alnatour and their seven children wouldn’t flee their homeland until later, after their homes, their wealth and their hopes had all but vanished.

 After government shelling damaged their villa in southern Syria, they moved to their city apartment in the capital Damascus, which, unfortunately, according to Al Hayik, was in a neighbourhood of 50,000 people targeted and destroyed by the forces of President Bashir al-Assad. They returned to their damaged villa but, by then, what had started as a peaceful “revolution” had morphed into civil war, with militias, radicals, foreign fighters and government troops locked in a battle of attrition with everyone else in their gunsights.'

 It is Assad who arrested and tortured them, it was Assad who flattened the homes of 50,000 people in their neighbourhood. So it seems to be false editorialising to say that everyone is shooting at them, to claim this is a civil war and not a revolution against Assad's genocide.

Russia Bombs Hospitals. Lefties Shrug

 Sam Charles Hamad:

 'Nowhere in any of Greenwald’s output will you find actual recognition of the victims of the Russian strikes and the circumstances that led to their deaths. The mention of Syrian casualties of Russian strikes by Greenwald features only as a means to point out U.S. hypocrisy.

 And this gets to the heart of the matter—Syrians facing brutality from the Assad regime and Russia can’t feature among the left because they are deemed to be unworthy of support due to their real or imagined proximity to the West. By some delusional twist, Syrians fighting for liberation are deemed to be the aggressors representing imperialism, while the Assad regime and Russia are seen as being the resistance to such imperialism. Amidst all the destruction wrought by the Syrian war, one perhaps small though significant casualty is the idea that the left could overcome the contradictions of its own history to reaffirm its founding principles.

 It claims to oppose Islamophobia, yet you can read a wide range of leftist writers invoking visceral appeals to Islamophobia and orientalsm by essentializing the Syrian rebels as “jihadis,” with deliberate obscurity. It claims to oppose the “war on terror,” yet the Manichean logic of the Bush era is reproduced in support of Russia’s intervention. It claims to be “anti-imperialist,” yet you have no less a figure as Noam Chomsky so absurdly and pathetically claim that Russia’s intervention in Syria is not “imperialist” since “it’s supporting a government,” while he endorses the conservative “realism” of Patrick Cockburn, whose writing has often come down on the side of the Assad regime.

 The brutal array of crimes committed by the Assad regime, Iran and Russia against the Syrian people are swept aside in some imagined geopolitical game that leftists think is unfolding. Internationalism is about breaking down the barriers that separate people and uniting struggles around the world—it’s not about constructing these delusional, byzantine buffers that determine which struggles we can and can’t support.

 If that is indeed to be a feature of the dominant form of leftism in the modern era, one which determines that one can be outraged by an American war crime in Kunduz but not a Russian one in Sarmin—I want no part of it.'

FSA rebels reject Russia military help

 "Vladimir Putin is assisting a regime that indiscriminately kills their own people," Issam al-Reis said. "How could we trust the Russians' help?"

 Mr Issam said the FSA would continue fighting President Bashar al-Assad, who "was not part of the solution" to ending Syria's civil war. "If the Syrians stood with Assad he would not ask for invaders to come to Syria."

 This must have come as a bit of a shock to the interviewer, Gavin Esler, who only a couple of weeks ago was telling us the FSA didn't really exist.*
*[http://notris.blogspot.co.uk/2015/10/does-free-syrian-army-no-longer-exists.html]

Rebel Defiance as Assad Forces Get Bogged Down

 ' “The Russians are burning and flattening everything,” explains Abdul Rahman, a commander with the Ahfad Omer battalion, arguing the scorched-earth tactics are reminiscent of what the Russians did to the Chechen capital Grozny in 1994, reducing it to rubble. “There are 50 or 60 airstrikes a day,” he said. The difference is the Russians are not bombing a built-up city, but spread-out villages, some the poorest in northern Syria.

 “The solution is simple. It is not complicated. Assad, his inner circle, the security apparatus and all the intelligence agencies, all have to go,” said 35-year-old Zakaria Malahefji, a former higher education teacher and political officer of the 3,000-strong Fastaqim Kama Umirt.

 Having withstood more than three weeks of Russian bombing and Assad ground assaults, the rebels say they are relieved they have lost little territory, just five villages in the southern Aleppo countryside. “Our fighters are skilled fighting in the towns and all we need are Kalashnikovs,” said Col. Mo-hamed al-Ahmed, spokesman of militia alliance Al-Jabha al-Shamiyya (Shamiya Front). “The Assad regime knows it can’t fight in the city — so it is choosing to fight in the countryside,” added al-Ahmed, a Syrian Air Force pilot defector.

 Months before the Russian intervention, commanders lamented the difficulty in finding new recruits. That has changed, at least in rural areas. Now locals are eager to fight, so too are youngsters among the refugee population in neighboring Turkey. “Since the Russians came many people want to fight,” said al-Ahmed, sitting in a bare, dismal office in a ramshackle building adjacent to the wasteland in the Turkish border town of Kilis. “Before they said they didn’t want to kill fellow Syrians, but now they want to confront the Russians.” '

The Syrian army is a myth

 'The FSA was mainly born as part of the Syrian opposition project, which comes under the umbrella of the political coalition council that includes all of Syria’s religious and racial components. Sunnis, Kurds and Christians have served as its chiefs and its leaders include Alawites, Druze, Turkmen and others. However, Assad whom the Russians and the Iranians defend, no longer represents anyone, not even his small Alawite sect upon which he inflicted the biggest massacre against its sons as he forced them to engage in battles during the past four horrific years.

 There are in fact Syrian traffic police in Damascus; however there’s nothing called “the Syrian army” in the sense which the Russians keep mentioning. Even their Iranian allies avoid using the term “Syrian army” as they consider themselves Syria’s armed forces.

 It’s not only the Syrian army which has evaporated. During the past four years of the war, the structure of the security forces’ institutions and intelligence apparatuses, which were once described as among the strongest in the world, have been destroyed. Therefore, the Russians and Iranians must not try and paint a false picture regarding what’s happening in Syria. The truth is no longer a secret due to the several parties fighting there. There is currently no state, no system, no legitimate president, no security forces and no army in Syria.'