Tag Archive for: Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham

‘One Bad Apple for Another’: Islamist Rebels Topple Syrian Dictatorship

Islamist rebels backed by Turkey abruptly toppled Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad on Saturday, ending a 50-year family dynasty in a little over a week. After a decade-long civil war, a coalition of jihadist groups captured Syria’s second-largest city, Aleppo, last weekend before advancing rapidly south with swelling ranks. To everyone’s surprise, the rebels arrived in Damascus on Saturday, hours after Assad secretly fled the country.

With his generals planning to hand over power peacefully, Assad escaped Syria, skipping a prepared address to the nation and leaving his cabinet with no idea of his whereabouts. Hours later, he turned up in Moscow with his family, where they received political asylum. The Russian foreign ministry announced that Assad had resigned and that his prime minister would facilitate a peaceful transfer of power.

As instructed, Prime Minister Mohammad Ghazi al-Jalali called for free elections, while the rebels declared Syria “free of the tyrant” and released hundreds of prisoners held in Saydnaya prison, dubbed the “human slaughterhouse,” where as many as 13,000 people were executed since 2011.

The Assad regime was brutal and inhumane, and its swift collapse underscores just how fragile it had become, after years of corruption, civil war, and an economic crisis. The regime was “in worse shape than we thought,” said Swedish government think tank security analyst Aron Lund.

Its sudden collapse also underscores just how fragile its allies have become. The Assad regime had been weak for years, propped up only by the aid of Russia and Iran. Now, Russia’s military might is so tied up in Ukraine that it is renting soldiers from North Korea. Consequently, Russian air strikes against the rebels tailed off after only a few days, with some speculating that Russia cut a deal to maintain its military bases. Now it suffers the international embarrassment of abandoning a close ally without even putting up much of a fight.

For its part, Iran’s network of terrorist proxies has suffered heavy losses in their unjustified war against Israel, particularly Hezbollah, which operates out of neighboring Lebanon. Iran declined to send reinforcements due to the threat of Israeli air power, and it ordered its militias to stay out of the fight. Still, rebels, who allowed the Iranian embassy in Damascus to be looted after they seized the city, may prove far less cooperative with Iran. Assad’s fall takes a hefty bite out of Iran’s regional security plan, cutting off routes to resupply and rearm Hezbollah in Lebanon.

It’s unclear what sort of government will succeed the Assad regime, and who will run it. The rebel coalition that toppled his regime represents a hodge-podge of factions that lack unifying interests. A key leader of the rebel march southward was Abu Mohammed al-Jawlani. Wanted by the U.S. government to the tune of $10 million, al-Jawlani is affiliated with al-Qaeda and leads a faction of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), a U.S.-designated foreign terrorist organization (FTO). Meanwhile, other parts of Syria remain under the control of U.S.-backed rebel factions, including northeastern Syria, where a Kurdish government holds sway.

In other words, someone threw a cup of dice into the middle of the geopolitical chessboard. And, while we’re still counting the score, it’s safe to assume that no one can declare Yahtzee!

As for establishing a free and fair democracy, there are precious few examples where jihadist rebels toppled a dictator, and the result was a stable, Westernized system of government. Even if such a government was established, there is always the danger of leaving a power vacuum that might be filled by remnants of ISIS, bringing further chaos and suffering to the region.

As happened in Libya and other toppled dictatorships, “We might see a big, quick victory, and then the problems start,” an unnamed Western diplomat suggested to The Wall Street Journal.

All we can say for sure is that Russia’s and Iran’s influence in Syria has waned, while Turkey’s influence has increased. As the state sponsor for the rebel groups that toppled Assad, Turkey will likely have some influence over the government that takes shape on its southern border. “What is significant is the fact that these rebels were Turkish-backed, and so this is an extension of Turkey’s influence southward into the former borders of Syria,” Travis Weber, vice president for Policy and Government Affairs at Family Research Council, told The Washington Stand.

A NATO member with an Islamic maverick streak, Turkey is not fully aligned with either the U.S. or with its adversaries, and Turkish leader Recep Erdogan has ambitions to recapture the glory of the Ottoman Empire.

As the Islamist rebels marched on Damascus, foreign ministers from Russia, Iran, and Turkey met at a conference in Qatar to discuss the future of Syria.

“Many will be taking note of the fact that … that continuous string of Iranian and anti-Israel influence from Iran to the Mediterranean has been broken,” Weber observed, but “those who are celebrating this as some universal win … [are] taking the wrong approach.”

“We must be under no illusions that the rebel forces are somehow a friend of Western values,” Weber warned. “Their posture towards Israel, ideologically, is likely very hostile as well.”

“So,” he concluded, “we will have to see how things shake out regionally, but in a sense, we’re trading one bad apple for another.”

AUTHOR

Joshua Arnold

Joshua Arnold is a senior writer at The Washington Stand.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2024 Family Research Council.


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In Syria, be careful what you wish for: Sharia law and new wave of refugees is more likely than ‘democracy’ following fall of Assad and U.S. meddling

Why, exactly, did Washington back Sunni rebels taking down Assad, and if Washington wants a Turkish-backed Sunni Muslim caliphate in Syria, should we as Christians cheer Washington getting its way? 

All of those in the West celebrating the fall of the Assad regime in Syria had better be careful what they wish for.

I’ve heard some awfully dumb statements coming from conservative circles in recent days about the “stunning” nine-day collapse of Syria. It’s not so stunning when you learn that the American CIA had been planning the offensive for months with the full support of its NATO ally Turkey.

One prominent regular guest commentator on Fox News has come out and said both sides in the Syrian Civil War are made up of really bad guys, but that he was hoping the coalition of “rebels” which include the former El Nusra, al-Qaida and other Sunni Muslim terrorists would win. Why? Because they’re against Russia and Iran, whom he fears more.

But even that nonsense pales in comparison to some of the other chatter out there in conservative and even Christian circles, where I’m hearing it said that there is “hope” now for a democratically elected constitutional republic to emerge in Syria. Where is there another example of such a government — of, by and for the people — anywhere in the Middle East? I would actually go further and say I don’t see a government anywhere on Earth right now that reflects those vaunted principles.

Let’s face it: The U.S. didn’t support the rebels who overran Syria because they thought Assad was too brutal of a dictator. They supported them because it was yet another way to deal a black eye to Russia.

Instead of Russia and Iran running the show in Syria, now we face the very real possibility that Russia and Iran will be replaced with Turkey and the Muslim Brotherhood.

Syria’s new jihadist regime has reportedly already started rounding up the Christians.

But, however unjustified, the celebrations continue here in America in certain Christian and conservative circles. Yay, we beat Russia again! Score one for the good guys!

Even some of the most sincere Christian supporters of the state of Israel are celebrating the fall of Assad. However brutal of a dictator he was, at least Assad, being from the Alawite Shia sect, was one of the religious minorities in Syria. As such, he protected other minorities in the country, which includes Christians.

Now, with the Sunnis in control of the country, we should expect nothing other than oppression, if not open slaughter, of Syrian Christians. That’s what Sunni Muslim regimes always do when empowered. That’s their history. Read the works of historian Raymond Ibrahim and you will get acquainted with this history. A good place to start would be to study the history of the Ottoman Empire and what they did to the Armenian Christians.

For a peek at who HTS and its comrades really are, take a look at this 3-minute video, where they say openly that their next goal is to take over Jerusalem.

The West and Israel are playing with fire. They think they can use one portion of Islam to punish the other portion. They think the portion backed by Iran is “more evil” than the portion backed by Turkey. I fear they are in for a rude awakening.

Watch the video below for a sneak peek at exactly the type of folks we are talking about here. These Islamist rebels are filmed celebrating the taking of Damascus by promising that it’s just the start and that they will take Jerusalem next to free all the Gazans.

WATCH: Hayat Tahrir al-Sham the Syrian rebels who just took over Syria

If the West thinks Iran was the biggest threat to the Middle East, and Assad was the nastiest brutal dictator, they are about to learn what real brutality looks like.

The American Russophobic mentality has served as a blinder to those who conduct U.S. foreign policy. We could have made peace with Russia after the Cold War. Instead, we expanded NATO right up to the edge of Russia’s border and placed Western troops and weapons in those former Soviet-bloc countries. Then we militarized Ukraine, placing more sophisticated missile systems there, and told Ukraine it was OK to fire them into Russia proper. Imagine if Russia had done that in Mexico? Trained Mexicans to fight Americans, then sent them super-sophisticated missile systems and told them to go ahead and start firing them into Texas. How would the American government react to that. Oh, but it gets worse. In our hypothetical scenario, when the American government finally gets tired of being attacked by Mexicans armed with Russian weapons, we invade Mexico to stop it, only to be called a perpetrator of “naked aggression” by the Russian government and its media propagandists.

How would that work out?

I think you know what would happen. It would be tantamount to a declaration of war by Russia on America and World War III would ensue.

That, my friends, is what’s going on, only in reverse. And that is why we are now engaged in World War III. Syria is just the latest salvo in the Third World War. Don’t expect it to be the last, because now we are in a tit-for-tat escalation.

Pray for peace. Prepare for war.

©2024 . All rights reserved.


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CALIFORNIA: Muslim migrant indicted for attempting to provide financial support for jihad terror group

He is a Russian national. Was he vetted when he came to the United States? Of course not — not in any effective way, anyway. That would have been “Islamophobic.”

 

“Sacramento Man Accused Of Trying To Provide Financial Support To Terrorist Group,” 

CBS13, February 19, 2021 (thanks to Henry):

SACRAMENTO (CBS13) – A Sacramento man is accused of attempting to provide financial support to a foreign terrorist organization, the United States Department of Justice announced on Friday.

A federal grand jury on Thursday returned a single-count indictment against Murat Kurashev, 34, who is also a Russian national, according to Attorney McGregor W. Scott of the DOJ’s Eastern District of California.

Kurashev allegedly tried to provide financial support to terrorist organization Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, which is based in Syria….

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EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.