A CHARA,

“Syria is free”, a Syrian refugee living in West Belfast, told the Andersonstown News last week. I doubt the Syrian Catholic family I stayed with in Syria in 2017 would agree. 

They live in the mountainous village of Maaloula, which is two-thirds Catholic. Their native tongue is Aramaic, the presumed language of Jesus. In early September 2013 Obama’s threats to bomb Syria signalled a jihadi attack on their village. The Sunni villagers did not warn their Catholic neighbours. They betrayed them, looted their modest homes, killed three villagers and kidnapped six, who were later murdered. Via Google Translate this family told me how they avidly supported President Assad as he had saved their lives. 

Syria is now controlled by a host of militant head-chopping jihadis competing for control. The leader of HTS, al-Jolani, has a reputation of a sectarian blood-thirsty killer. After a Western make-over he is being presented as welcoming diversity. 

However, today, the jihadist black flag flies over Damascus – that might spell “freedom” for certain brands of Sunni Islam, but it will strike fear into the hearts of the many other religious and ethnic groups. Reports are coming in of summary executions and hangings on the streets of Damascus, Aleppo and Homs carried out by the invading forces many of whom are foreign jihadi mercenaries on $2,000 a month. The funds emanate from the CIA, MI6, the Saudi Wahhabis and the Qatari Muslim Brothers. In contrast, their opponents in the Syrian Arab Army were paid $7 per month by the Syrian government, which was crippled economically by US and EU sanctions and militarily under constant bombardment by the Israelis. 

In 2017, I visited two primary schools in Homs – dubbed by the West “the cradle of the Syrian revolution”. It was deeply disturbing. Suicide bombers had targeted these schools – slaughtering 30 children and many parents. In the entrance hall were photos of each child murdered. The schools’ 'crimes': they were co-ed and multi-denominational.

But the anti-Assad narrative is that a popular, democratic revolution had been crushed by the dictatorship. That was not the message I learned from people I met in Syrian coffee shops and community centres. Rather, as JR Bradley wrote in the right-wing Spectator magazine: “there was no popular revolution against Assad...The millions-strong demonstrations in Damascus were pro-regime."

Syria under Assad was a secular country with a mosaic of religious and ethnic groupings. This was anathema to the neighbouring muslim zealots and their followers in Syria. On top of that, the country was on Washington’s hit list since 2001, post 9/11, as revealed by US General Wesley Clarke. The Neo-cons wanted to topple seven countries in five years: Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Somalia, Sudan and Iran. Obama and his Secretary of State Hilary Clinton oversaw Timber Sycamore the plan to destroy Assad’s government. 

Syria’s importance is that the Assad government was vehemently pro-Palestinian and anti-Zionist. It provided the supply chain of weaponry from Iran to Hezbollah, the liberation force in Lebanon. That conduit is now closed. That bodes badly for both the Lebanese and the Palestinians.

The Israelis always viewed the jihadis fighting Assad as allies and their fighters were regularly cared for by Israel in hospitals in the illegally occupied Golan Heights.

With the fall of Assad the Palestinian people’s genocidal nightmare will continue unabated as the world stands idly by. The mainstream media wants us to believe Assad’s removal is good for the Middle East, the fact that Netanyahu and his genocidal regime of settlers are thrilled would suggest otherwise.

Beir Bua,

Niall Farrell

Galway