Syria is the mother of all mysteries. Even the Romans couldn’t figure out all the intrigues, plots, factions, coups and assassinations that were common there. Nor could they understand or deal with its hotbed of religions and weird sects.
Two thousand years later, not much has changed. This week, irregular forces of a former al-Qaida outfit named Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) appeared out of the countryside and seized Syria’s second most important city, Aleppo. Syria’s dormant 14-year-old civil war suddenly went critical. A few days later, the newly re-emergent Tahrir stormed the important Syrian city of Hama. In both cases, Syrian government forces of the ruling al-Assad family simply and inexplicably melted away after fighting the jihadists for 14 years.
I have a personal interest in this fight. In 2017, my Eric S. Margolis Foundation to protect animals joined the Four Paws group out of Vienna to mount the daring rescue of an entire zoo in Aleppo. The wretched animals there, bears, huge tigers, lions, dogs, and chimps had been trapped in the city’s private zoo by years of war. While they starved, the war between various jihadist factions and government troops raged as Aleppo, once Syria’s second city, was relentlessly reduced to rubble.
I also went to Hama while trying to visit the magnificent Crusader castle Krak des Chevaliers. There, the troops of President Hafez al-Assad (father of the current ruler Bashar,) were slugging it out with jihadists. Tens of thousands died in the fighting. Much of Hama was also reduced to ruins.
A sizeable portion of Syria’s 23 million people are Alawites, a mysterious breakaway Muslim sect from the Shias that many majority Sunni Muslims call heretics. Turkey’s minority Alevi Muslims are often confused with the Alawis, whom they brand as heretics. Poor Alawis flocked to the army where they eventually seized power, led by iron-fisted General Hafez al-Assad. Lebanon’s Druze, a mysterious mountain sect, are sometimes close to the Alawites. Maronite Christians also are highly influential, so too Druze and Armenians. Lebanon’s civil war, which I covered, ran from 1975 to 1990 until the Syrian Army ended the bloody conflict.
As a veteran war correspondent, it seems to me that at least many foreign powers are now backing HTS. The US and Israel have been trying to overthrow the Assad regimes since 2011. Israel wanted to cement its hold on the strategic Golan Heights that it captured from Syria. The US, which now occupies the oil producing NE third of Syria, has at least 9,000 troops there and, with Israel, helps the jihadists while publicly denouncing them.
Turkey, whose leader hates Assad, is also highly active in Syria and is most likely providing logistic support to HTS and other jihadist groups while also battling leftist Kurdish groups. Add Russian air units near Latakia, occasional help from Hezbollah groups and minor operations from small Iranian forces. In short, the evolving war in Syria looks increasingly like the awful, madhouse Thirty Year’s War in the 1600’s.
Interestingly, Israel’s far right coalition leaders keep referring to their ambition to ‘remake the face of the Mideast.’ This obviously refers to genocide in Gaza, the open-air prison camp for Palestinians driven in 1948 from their homes in what is today Galilee. But Israel’s expansionist hard right also has its gaze fixed on Lebanon around the Litani River, the region’s last remaining free water source. It has also long coveted southern Syria, including Damascus, and overthrowing President Bashar al-Assad, a staunch supporter of the Palestinians. Remember, also, that large parts of Iraq are now occupied by US ground forces and air bases. So, a ‘new face’ of the Levant may be indeed emerging out of its current chaos.
Reprinted with permission from EricMargolis.com.
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