Lighting the Syrian Fuse

Another Tragic Chapter in American Foreign Policy

On December 8, Islamist Sunni Muslim rebel forces identified as the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) occupied Damascus, the capital of Syria, effectively overthrowing the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Bashar al-Assadi had been president of Syria for 24-years, since his father died in 2000. His father, Hafez al-Assad, was a Syrian Air Force General, who had taken over the Syrian government in a coup in 1971.  Bashar al-Assad and his family were flown to Moscow by their Russian allies.

The CIA estimates that Syria’s population is about 23.9 million. Syria is about 87 percent Muslim. Most, about 74 percent, are Sunni Muslims. About 13 percent are Shia Muslim. Most of the Shia Muslims, about 12 percent of Syria’s population are Alawite Shia Muslims, who are much more moderate in religious beliefs and practices than Sunni Muslims in the Middle East. About 3 percent are Druze. The  Druze are monotheistic Arabs, but do not consider themselves Muslims. Christians were 10 percent of the population—over 2.2 million people—before the 2011 civil war began to  the overthrow the Assad regime. Due largely to violence and persecution by radical Sunni Arab Muslims, the Christians have been reduced to less than 3.8 percent of the population. Some Christian organizations estimate the Christian population of Syria is now less than 300,000. The Sunni Muslims are divided between Sunni Arabs and Sunni Kurds, who make up 9 percent of the Syrian population. The Kurdish language is related to Iranian, while Arabic is a Semitic language. Genetically, the Kurds are most closely related to Armenians, Georgians, Azeri, and Jews

Seven Important factors to remember

First, the Alawites had ruled Syria for 53 years, and almost all government and military power, and the lion’s share of wealth was in the hands of Alawites. 

Second, the moderate Alawites have always had close economic relations with the Christians and protected the Christians from Sunni hostility to Christianity.

Third, the Muslim Brotherhood, the most powerful Sunni Muslim organization in the world, favors hardline fundamentalist (Salafist) Islam and is dedicated to ridding predominantly Muslim countries of liberal, moderate, secular, or apostate leadership. This Brotherhood doctrine is called Takfir. The so-called “Arab Spring” of 2011 was largely a Muslim brotherhood driven campaign to rid Egypt, Syria, Tunisia, Libya, and a half-dozen other countries of secularist Muslim leaders, but especially Syria where a Sunni majority was ruled by a Shia Alawite moderate.

Fourth, U.S. President Obama’s foreign policy in the Middle East and North Africa was close to being Muslim Brotherhood foreign policy.

Fifth, according to retired U.S. Army General Wesley Clark, following the 911 Terrorist Attack, President George W. Bush had a plan to change the Middle East to American liking by attacking or undermining by regime changes seven nations—Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Iran, Somalia, and Sudan.

Sixth,  Bashar al-Assad had plans to build a Syrian pipeline competing with U.S. interests, and he relied on Shia Muslim Iran and Hezbollah for holding back Sunni majority dominance and its probable Islamist consequences.

Seventh, the CIA and British MI6 have been conducting a demonizing campaign against Bashar al-Assad since 2011. Much of what the American public knows about Assad, a soft-spoken former London ophthalmologist, is CIA propaganda, distortion, and lies.

Lies and character assassination are standard CIA and MI6 practice for accomplishing regime change. They are also a factor in influencing elections in allied states. These propaganda lies are usually “leaked” to friendly media that will accomplish CIA  propaganda goals. False flag events are sometimes used to justify U.S. or allied interventions. Several sarin gas attacks on civilians in Syria were blamed on Assad, but acclaimed American investigative reporter Seymour Hersh’s sources indicate that at least two, in 2013 and 2017, have the fingerprints and smell of false flags, and strongly suggest all are false flags. Some in the captive mainstream media have attempted to debunk Hersh, but their efforts are far from credible.

See:  Seymour M. Hersh · The Red Line and the Rat Line: Erdoğan and the Syrian rebels.  Also: Seymour M. Hersh · Whose sarin?

Nevertheless, most of Western mainstream media keep spreading outrageous lies and propaganda without a shred of scrutiny and with little conscience. We need a foreign policy and intelligence system that serves the American people and Congress with highly scrutinized and unvarnished truth.

Information on the Syrian economy has become strangely scarce. It is obvious that the 2011 “civil war” devasted the economy, which has never recovered. In 2011, Syria ranked about 146  of 191 counties in PPP per capita GDP at $6,078. The 2023 world average was $22,452. According to the World Bank, Syria’s PPP per capita GDP had fallen to $2,914 in 2021. Syria’s economy is based principally on agriculture, oil, and tourism. Beginning in 2014, 900 U.S. troops occupied the major oil and wheat producing area of the country, thus depriving  the Assad regime and Syria of two major economic resources. In December 2023, the U.S Senate voted 84 to 13 to retain control of Syrian oil. The five Republicans who voted against retaining Syrian oil resources were prominent libertarian leaning conservatives: Rand Paul, Mike Lee, J.D. Vance, Mike Braun, and Tommy Tuberville. The U.S. State Department also began enforcing intense economic sanctions on Syria in 2011. The mainstream media is blaming Syria’s poor economy on the Assad regime, but it is fairly obvious that U.S. foreign policy has played a significant role in damaging the Syrian economy and hurting the Syrian people.  

The HTS takeover of Syria took only about two weeks. Moreover, HTS militia strength is estimated to be only 5,000 to 10,000, whereas the Syrian Army was supposed to have about 170,000 troops with Air Force and Navy personnel bringing the total to about 189,000. There was hardly any fighting between HTS and the Syrian Army, yet the whole Syrian Armed Forces collapsed. The likely reasons are low motivation and bribery of higher ranking officers and NCOs. Also, the majority of Syrian Army troops are Sunni Arabs rather than Shia Alawites.  Bribery and low motivation were the same approximate factors that caused the American trained Afghan Army to collapse on U.S. withdrawal in 2021. HTS is apparently financed and backed by Turkey, and Turkish intelligence officers seem to be directing HTS through HTS leader and Commander and Chief Mohammed al-Julani.  The new HTS Prime Minister of Syria is Mohammad al-Bashir, at least until March 1, 2025

Who funded this bribery? Several high-ranking retired military and intelligence analysts have speculated it was the CIA and British MI6.  My experience and knowledge lead me in the same direction. Certainly, Israel has benefitted temporarily, but I cannot see Israel benefitting for long with a radical Islamist enemy on its northern border. Turkey may get some advantage from it, but their relationship with Russia and BRICS is jeopardized. Russia and Iran would seem to have lost some advantages, but time will tell who really gains or loses. Unfortunately, Syrian Christians seem like the biggest losers and are facing existential calamity. President Biden apparently thinks he has scored an important victory, but it is beginning to look a lot more like shameful chaos than victory. It also probably increases the probability of regional war and even wider nuclear exchange.

Al-Julani’s background is ISIS and al-Qaeda radicalism, but he has been holding press conferences to assure the foreign public that he has moderated his radicalism. HTS was founded in 2017 and is a northwestern Syria local militia development rather than Syria-wide phenomenon. Its main area is in the northwestern state of Idlib,  bordering Turkey. Also of interest is that many HTS militia are not from Syria at all. Many come from Western Asia or the Caucus.

The Russians and Iranians gave Assad warning about Turkish President Erdogan’s displeasure with Assad over the Kurdish situation and Turkish involvement in motivating HTS. The Kurds are a troublesome minority in Turkey and have ambitions to unify Kurdish-majority areas in southeastern Turkey, northern Syria, northern Iraq, and northwestern Iran into a Kurdish nation of Kurdistan. The Kurds were U.S. allies against ISIS in the Syrian civil war. The Russians and Iranians were not surprised by the Turkish use of HTS to dethrone Assad, but they were surprised by the complete collapse of the Syrian Armed Forces.

Alexander Mercouris reported Saturday evening on his London broadcast a new revelation on Russian actions. In the two weeks before evacuating Assad and his family to Russia, the Russian Air Force killed over 2,000 HTS fighters on the march, a substantial portion of their strength. The Russians now have an understanding with HTS, and HTS is not interfering with movement of Russian troops throughout Syria. The Russians appear to be evacuating critical air defense and intelligence systems from Syria, but are concentrating troops near two air bases in southwestern Syria. The Russians are angry with Turkish President Erdogan but are negotiating some issues with him. Turkey is a new member of BRICS.

On December 8, USAF aircraft struck 75 ISIS targets in Syria, using the A-10 Warthog, F-15 fighters and B-52 bombers. There is a genuine concern that the HTS victory will actually turn out to be an ISIS victory.

 In 2011, there were about 2.2 million Christians in Syria that benefited from Shia Alawite commerce and the Assad regime’s protection from radical Islam. Islamic radicalism, however, thrived during the civil war. Some Christian organizations estimate the number of Christians in Syria may have fallen below 300,000. The civil war, foolishly backed by the Obama administration, initially by the Trump administration, and now by the Biden administration, was really an al-Qaeda dominated fundamentalist Muslim Brotherhood attempt to overthrow the decidedly moderate Shia Muslim regime of Bashar al-Assad.  Also during this time,  ultra-radical ISIS version of Sunni Islam emerged.  Trump began to see the truth, however, in 2017.

HTS leaders are promising no harm will come to Christians, but that completely contradicts the doctrinal basis of Islam in the Quran and the Traditions of Muhammad (Sunna). It also completely contradicts the record of Islamic genocide of Christians in Turkey and Syria.  From 1900 to 1923, the Ottoman Empire and National Turkish regimes exterminated 3.5 to 4.3 million Armenian, Greek, Assyrian, Maronite, and other Christians. Aleppo is Syria’s largest city with 2.1 million people. In 2011, there were over 300,000 Christians there. That number is down to 25,000, and those are rapidly fleeing HTS occupation.

The new dominance of Jihadic style Sunni Islam in Syria has placed the lives and future of hundreds of thousands of Syrian Christians in serious jeopardy. But American foreign policy makers did not consider that in their moral compass.

Donald Trump has a mandate from the American people. He and the Republican Congress need to drain the U.S. foreign policy and intelligence swamp.