Published: 2024-12-18
Updated 2024-12-19: Jonothan Cook’s excellent article was added as an additional reference.
Updated 2024-12-23: Added Vijay Prashad’s article.
Updated 2025-01-09: Added another Craig Murray article to sources.
SitRep
Recent Antiwar headlines describe the state of Yemen, Syria, Lebanon and the occupied territories of Palestine due to the recent actions of the Israeli Zionists, US (and its Zionists) and its UK collaborators, and neo-Ottoman Turkey employing lawless, jihadist mercenaries for violence and infiltrators for bribery to destroy the Syrian state:
Israeli Defense Minister Says Israeli Military Will Occupy Gaza After War
Israel Continues to Flaunt Ceasefire, Military Demolishes Homes in Southern Lebanon
HTS Leader Julani Says Syria Won't Be Used as a 'Launchpad' To Attack Israel
Turkey Masses Troops on Syria Border, Large Scale Invasion May Be Imminent
US Effort to Extend SDF Ceasefire With Turkey in Northern Syria Fails
US Launches More Airstrikes in Syria, Claims 12 ISIS Fighters Killed
US Says It Launched Airstrike on Houthi 'Command and Control Facility' in Yemen
The common factor in all of these locations is, from these territories resistance groups have worked against the hegemonic ambitions of the genocidal, Israeli Zionists and their imperial supporters from the US and Europe. As Jonothan Cook noted, Western media have quite some work to do to bend this human catastrophe into an acceptable narrative:
The media is suddenly deeply concerned to clarify the difference between militant jihadism and Islamic national resistance, and insist that the latter is respectable.
As Jonothan notes, this reveals a hypocrisy when compared to Western media’s (and governments’) treatment of Hamas, an Islamic national resistance movement. But, no matter, nobody remembers the lies of the Western media.
If the US has had trouble meeting its quotas for enlistment in its military, what are they going to say now? We fought the 2003 war in Iraq because "Weapons of Mass Destruction"! There were none, just as Scott Ritter said!! But, we fought al Qaeda because they attacked us on 9/11! But you are collaborating with them!! Oh.
Damascus
The designation of who actually seized Damascus is, despite the common assertion that it was HTS, not entirely clear. James Corbett of The Corbett Report cited Ahmad Sharawi of the Long War Journal in his weekly newsletter which addressed the events in Syria. Corbett agrees with many others that the fall of Syria is of enormous geopolitical significance.
Sharawi names the "Southern Operations Room" as the group of groups which took Damascus:
SOR spearheaded a significant offensive in southern Syria, capturing key areas with assistance from local opposition groups. Following the withdrawal of the Syrian Armed Forces and allied pro-Assad militias, SOR swiftly took control of the city of Daraa and its surrounding towns. Subsequently, the coalition claimed full control of the Quneitra Governorate, prompting Israel to reinforce its forces in the Golan Heights.
By December 8, Damascus fell to SOR forces, leading to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s flight from the country. The rapid collapse of Assad’s forces was attributed to SOR’s expansive offensives, which disrupted morale and eroded defenses. As of December 9, 2024, SOR controls the majority of southern Syria.
Crooke's Analysis
The first two thirds of Alastair Crooke's recent article serves as the core text below, with the odd in situ [addition], or interspersed paragraph.
Syria has entered the abyss – the demons of al-Qa’eda, ISIS, and the most intransigent elements of the Muslim Brotherhood are circling the skies. There is chaos, looting, fear, and a terrible passion for revenge scalds the blood. Street executions are rife.
Maybe Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham (HTS) and its leader, Al-Joulani, (following Turkish instruction), thought to control things. But HTS is an umbrella label like Al-Qa’eda, ISIS and An-Nusra, and its factions have already descended into factional fighting. The Syrian ‘state’ dissolved in the middle of the night; the police and army went home, leaving weapons depots open for the Shebab to loot. The prison doors were flung (or prised) open. Some, no doubt, were political prisoners; but many were not. Some of the most vicious inmates now roam the streets.
The Israelis – within days – totally eviscerated the defence infrastructure of the state in more than 450 air strikes [now exceeding 800]: missile air defences, Syrian air force helicopters and aircraft, the navy and the armouries – all destroyed in the “largest air operation in Israel’s history”.
Syria no longer exists as a geo-political entity. In the east, Kurdish forces (with U.S. military support) are seizing the oil and agricultural resources of the former state. Erdogan’s forces and proxies are engaged in an attempt to crush the Kurdish enclave completely (although the U.S. has now mediated a ceasefire of sorts) [which failed]. And in the south-west, Israeli tanks have seized the Golan and land beyond to within 20 kms of Damascus. In 2015 the Economist magazine wrote: “Black gold under the Golan: Geologists in Israel think they have found oil – in very tricky territory”. Israeli and American oilmen believe they have discovered a bonanza in this most inconvenient of sites.
And a big impediment – Syria – to the West’s energy ambitions has just dissipated.
The strategic political balancer to Israel that was Syria since 1948, has vanished. And the earlier ‘easing of tensions’ between the Sunni sphere and Iran has been disrupted by the rude intervention of ISIS rebrands and by Ottoman revanchism working with Israel, via American (and British) intermediaries. The Turks have never really reconciled themselves to the 1923 Treaty that concluded World War I, by which they ceded what is now northern Syria to the new state of Syria.
Within days, Syria has been dismembered, partitioned and balkanised. So why do Israel and Türkiye still bomb? The bombing started the moment Bashar Al-Assad departed – because Türkiye and Israel worry that today’s conquerors may prove ephemeral, and may soon themselves be displaced. You don’t need to own a thing in order to control it. As powerful states in the region, Israel and Turkey will wish to exercise control not just over resources, but over the vital regional crossroads and passageway that was Syria.
Inevitably however, ‘Greater Israel’ is likely, at some point, to butt heads with Erdogan’s Ottomanesque revanchism. Equally the Saudi-Egyptian-UAE front will not welcome the resurgence of either ISIS re-brands, nor the Turkish-inspired and Ottomanised Muslim Brotherhood. The latter poses an immediate threat to Jordan, now bordering the new revolutionary entity.
Such concerns may push these Gulf States closer to Iran. Qatar, as purveyor of arms and funding to the HTS cartel, may again be ostracised by other Gulf leaders.
Israel's strategy can be learned from their statements and seen from the "Bantustans" which they created in the Palestinian territories. Their strategy is to dismember Syria into a collection of smaller more ethnically and religiously homogeneous regions. This, as Craig Murray and others have observed, is a process of removing Arab pluralism from southwest Asia. Israeli Zionists are Jewish extremists who wish for other "pure" enclaves. This in itself justifies their own extremism. It also aids in playing one off against the other, by injecting hatreds between groups; the classic “divide and conquer” . The Zionist ambition is the total opposite of the European Enlightenment: pluralism and tolerance are to be eradicated. They, like the jihadists, will mercilessly and lawlessly kill anyone who does not subscribe to their religio-ethnic-supremacist absolutism.
Syria is being purposefully dismembered for the purposes of Israel and Turkey for different reasons. The US is facilitating this for its own reasons, more related to energy dominance and general support for the Zionists. The UK is participating because the UK's intelligence services are subservient to Langley.
[Image from Jonothan Cook’s “Israel, not the 'liberators’ of Damascus, will decide Syria’s fate”.]
We have exactly the complex mixture of political objectives during a war over which Col. Wilkerson and others expressed alarm.
The new geo-political map poses many direct questions about Iran, Russia, China and the BRICS. Russia has played a complex hand in the Middle East – on the one hand, prosecuting an escalating defensive war versus NATO powers and managing key energy interests; while, at the same time, trying to moderate Resistance operations toward Israel in order to keep relations with the U.S. from deteriorating utterly. Moscow hopes – without great conviction – that a dialogue with the incoming U.S. President might emerge, at some point in the future.
Moscow likely will draw the conclusion that ceasefire ‘deals’ such as the Astana Agreement on jihadist containment within the boundaries of the Idlib autonomous zone in Syria are not worth the paper on which they were written. Türkiye – an Astana guarantor – stabbed Moscow in the back. Likely, it will make the Russian leadership more hard-nosed over Ukraine, and of any western talk of ceasefires.
Iran’s Supreme Leader spoke on 11 December: “There should be no doubt that what happened in Syria was plotted in the command rooms of the United States and Israel. We have evidence for this. One of the neighbouring countries of Syria also played a role, but the primary planners are the U.S. and the Zionist regime”. In this context, Ayatollah Khamenei quashed speculations about any weakening of the will to resist.
Türkiye’s proxy victory in Syria nonetheless may prove Pyrrhic. Erdogan’s Foreign Minister, Hakan Fidan, lied to Russia, the Gulf States and Iran about the nature of what was being cooked-up in Syria. But the mess now is Erdogan’s. Those that he doubled-crossed will at some point extract pay-back.
Iran seemingly, will revert to its earlier stance of gathering together the disparate threads of regional resistance to fight the Al-Qa’eda reincarnation. It will not turn its back on China, nor the BRICS project. Iraq – recalling the ISIS atrocities of its civil war – will join with Iran, as will Yemen. Iran will be aware that the remaining nodes of the former Syrian Army might well, at some point, enter into the fight against the HTS cartel. Maher Al-Assad took his entire armoured division with him into exile in Iraq on the night of Bashar Al-Assad’s departure.
China will not be pleased at events in Syria. The Uyghurs played a prominent part in the Syria uprising (there were an estimated 30,000 Uyghurs in Idlib, under training by Türkiye (which sees Uyghurs as the original component of the Turkic nation). China too, will likely see the overthrow of Syria as underlining putative western threats to their own energy security lines that run through Iran, Saudi Arabia and Iraq.
Finally, western interests have been fighting over Middle Eastern resources for centuries – and ultimately that is what lies behind the war today.
Vijay Prashad’s article on the implications of the change of government in Syria considers all of the above players and the consequences for the Sahel (in Africa), should Russia no longer have access to its air base in Khmeimim.
Suffering
The human catastrophe in Syria is a combined US/Israel/Turkey/UK/Qatari and sometime Saudi and Jordanian operation of 13+ years which has cost hundreds of billions of US dollars, paid to hired guns, operatives, bribed officials, the US military, the Israeli military, weapons companies and the usual war profiteers including the journalists who have supported it.
War is an immoral racket, causing untold human suffering. Wars do not happen, they are engineered.
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Sources
A New Geo-political Map Is Unfolding - the End of Syria (And of "Palestine" for Now), Alastair Crooke, The Unz Review, 2024-12-16
The Day the Media Decided Militant Jihadism Was Respectable, Jonothan Cook, Antiwar, 2024-12-16
Israel, not the 'liberators’ of Damascus, will decide Syria’s fate , Johnathan Cook, Jonathan Cook, 2024-12-18
The Big Happening, Big Serge, Big Serge Thought, 2024-12-23
How the West Rebranded Al-Qaeda's Jolani, Alan MacLeod, Consortium News, 2024-12-17
US veterans: Didn't we fight Al Qaeda terrorists for a reason?, Brandan P. Buck, Responsible Statecraft, 2024-12-17
The End of Pluralism in the Middle East, Craig Murray, Consortium News, 2024-12-11
Will Section 12 Die of Shame?, Craig Murray, Craig Murray, 2025-01-07
Analysis: Who liberated Damascus? Unpacking the Southern Operations Room’s emergence, Ahmad Sharawi, Long War Journal, 2024-12-09
How to Understand the Change of Government in Syria, Vijay Prashad, Scheerpost, 2024-12-22
The Fall of Syria: What You Need to Know, James Corbett, Corbett Report, 2024-12-15
Episode 469 - A Brief History of the War on Syria, James Corbett, The Corbett Report, 2024-12-11
📽️ MP4
Israeli Defense Minister Says Israeli Military Will Occupy Gaza After War, Dave DeCamp, Antiwar, 2024-12-17
Israel Continues to Flaunt Ceasefire, Military Demolishes Homes in Southern Lebanon, Jason Ditz, Antiwar, 2024-12-17
HTS Leader Julani Says Syria Won't Be Used as a 'Launchpad' To Attack Israel , Dave DeCamp, Antiwar, 2024-12-17
Turkey Masses Troops on Syria Border, Large Scale Invasion May Be Imminent, Jason Ditz, Antiwar, 2024-12-17
US Effort to Extend SDF Ceasefire With Turkey in Northern Syria Fails, Jason Ditz, Antiwar, 2024-12-16
US Launches More Airstrikes in Syria, Claims 12 ISIS Fighters Killed, Dave DeCamp, Antiwar, 2024-12-16
US Says It Launched Airstrike on Houthi 'Command and Control Facility' in Yemen , Dave DeCamp, Antiwar, 2024-12-16
Israeli Airstrikes on Western Syria Cause Massive Blast, Dave DeCamp, Antiwar, 2024-12-16
Israel To Expand Settlements in Occupied Golan Heights, Dave DeCamp, Antiwar, 2024-12-15
Ukraine's Foreign Minister Meets With HTS Leaders in Damascus, Dave DeCamp, Antiwar, 2024-12-30
Türkiye and Ukraine in Syria: Upscaling the Proxy Wars, YesXorNo, 2024-12-05
Alastair Crooke : A War Without Limits, Judge Napolitano - Judging Freedom, Judge Napolitano - Judging Freedom, 2024-12-16
[NEW GUEST] : Kevork Almassian : Who Gains From the Syrian Collapse?, Judge Napolitano - Judging Freedom, Judge Napolitano - Judging Freedom, 2024-12-16
Scott Horton : How DC Provoked the New Cold War, Judge Napolitano - Judging Freedom, Judge Napolitano - Judging Freedom, 2024-12-17
Col. Larry Wilkerson: Will Israel's Expansion Policies Trigger Catastrophic Consequences?, Dialogue Works, Dialogue Works, 2024-12-17
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