Syria

Syria: interim government, SDF sign integration pact

Syria’s interim president Ahmed al-Sharaa and Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) chief Mazloum Abdi signed an agreement to integrate the Kurdish-led SDF into Syria’s state institutions. A statement by the Syrian Presidency said a pact was reached to “integrate all civil and military institutions in northeast Syria [Rojava] under the administration of the Syrian state, including border crossings, the [Qamishli] Airport, and oil and gas fields.” The statement emphasized that “the Kurdish community is indigenous to the Syrian state, which ensures this community’s right to citizenship and all of its constitutional rights.” (Image: Rudaw)

Syria

Podcast: Free Syria and the Kurdish question II

In Episode 268 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg examines the continued fighting in Syria since the fall of the Bashar Assad dictatorship in December. The recent outburst of violence in the Alawite heartland on the Mediterranean coast made headlines, but this week also saw anti-regime protests by Druze in Syria’s south. And fighting has never stopped between forces aligned with the new transition government and those of the Kurdish autonomous zone in the northeast. The situation is complicated by continuing military adventures on Syrian territory by foreign powers—Israel, Turkey, Russia and the US. Will Syrians be able to overcome these challenges and forge a democratic and multicultural order, in repudiation of sectarianism, ethno-nationalism and Great Power intrigues? (Photo: SOHR)

Syria

External, internal challenges for Syrian Revolution

Apparent Assad loyalists have taken up arms against Syria’s transitional government in the Alawite heartland of Latakia on the Mediterranean coast. Fighting meanwhile continues between the Turkish-backed Syrian National Army (SNA) and Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in the northeast, while Israel grabs a “security zone” in the south and continues intermittent air-strikes. Elsewhere in the south, the Druze of Suweida protest their perceived exclusion from the transition process. All this as Russia opens talks with the new authorities in a bid to keep its military bases in Syrian territory. (Map: PCL)

Syria

US aid freeze escalates Syria crisis

Just weeks after US President Donald Trump’s order to freeze foreign aid, Syrians are already seeing medical clinics providing urgent assistance close, water distributions slow down, and bread distribution in many displacement camps grind to a halt. After nearly 14 years of war, the UN estimates that 16.5 million people across Syria are in need of aid. While the December overthrow of Bashar al-Assad has lifted the siege conditions in the country’s north, the need for relief among those facing severe privation, food insecurity, and mass internal displacement remains unrelenting. (Photo: UNHCR)

Syria

Renaissance for Syrian Jews?

In a video published on social media, a representative of the new transitional government in Syria spoke with Bakhour Chamntoub, head of Damascus’ small remnant Jewish community, promising “peace and security” and even calling on Syrian Jews abroad to return to the country. Said the representative, Mohammad Badarieh: “Good evening everyone… from the home of the head of the Jewish community in Damascus, Bakhour. Reassure us that you’re alright.” Replied Chamntoub: “Thank God, all is well.” Referring to Syrian Jews outside the country, Chamntoub acknowledged: “They don’t believe there will be peace, and that they can return home.” But, addressing the diaspora, he echoed the pledge of the transition government: “You will be safe, there will be peace and quiet, and God willing, you’ll return, everyone to his house, to his neighborhood, and to his people….” Chamntoub added that he hopes for the restoration of the city’s ancient Jobar synagogue, which was badly damaged in shelling by the Assad regime. (Photo: Chrystie Sherman)

Greater Middle East

Rojava and the Rohingya: fearful symmetry

Three weeks after the fall of the Bashar Assad dictatorship, the only fighting in Syria remains between Arab and Kurdish militias—holding grim potential for destabilization of the democratic revolution. Kurds had been persecuted and even denied citizenship under the Assad regime, but the invasion of their autonomous territory of Rojava by the Turkish-backed rebels of the Syrian National Army (SNA) drove them into a paradoxical tactical alliance with the dictatorship. The tragic situation in Burma’s Rakhine state mirrors this disturbing reality. The Muslim Rohingya people had been persecuted, denied citizenship and finally targeted in a campaign of genocide by the military, but are now facing attacks by the Buddhist-supremacist rebels of the Arakan Army—driving some Rohingya into a paradoxical tactical alliance with the military junta. In Episode 258 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg offers this analogy in the hope that the peoples of Burma can unite across religious lines to defeat the junta, and that Syrians can find a way toward co-existence in the new revolutionary order and avoid ethnic war. Listen on SoundCloud or via Patreon. (Photo of Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army-ARSA rebels: Burma News International)

Syria

Syria: UN calls for protection of mass graves

The Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Syria (CoI) has called on the new authorities in Damascus to protect mass grave sites and relevant documentation. The statement comes after the CoI visited former prisons and detention centers in the country, including the notorious Sednaya prison and Military Intelligence Branch 235 facility. This was the first such visit since the conflict began in 2011. The team was dismayed to find that much evidence and documentation which could have helped families trace disappeared loved ones had been damaged, taken, or destroyed. The CoI urged establishment of a specialized unit to coordinate the protection and preservation of such evidence. (Image: UNHCR)

Syria

Israeli troops fire on Syrian protesters

One was wounded as Israeli troops opened fire on Syrian protesters near the village of Maariyah, in southern Daraa province. Local residents gathered at a position the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) had established in the area, chanting “Free, free Syria; Israel get out!” One protester was shot in the leg. The IDF said its soldiers had fired in response to “a threat.” The incident came after villagers said that the troops, stationed in an abandoned Syrian army outpost, were preventing local farmers from accessing their fields. Maariya is near the Israeli-annexed Golan Heights, but outside the demilitarized “buffer zone” established by a 1974 ceasefire agreement between Israel and Syria. The news appears to confirm reports that IDF troops have advanced beyond the “buffer zone.” (Image via Twitter)

Syria

Podcast: Free Syria and the Kurdish question

Amid jubilation following the overthrow of long-ruling dictator Bashar Assad, the only fightingin Syria is now between Arabs and Kurds—as the Turkish-backed Syrian National Army (SNA) expels the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) from the town of Manbij. Ankara’s design is clearly to expunge the Kurdish autonomous zone in the northeast region of Rojava. Yet there are also positive signs of an accommodation between the Rojava Kurds and the new revolutionary administration in Damascus. In Episode 256 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg examines the new political landscape in Syria and tries to identify a way forward—past the threat of ethnic war and toward a multicultural democracy. Listen on SoundCloud or via Patreon. (Image: Rudaw)

Syria

Syrian ex-officials indicted for war crimes

The US government unsealed an indictment charging two former high-ranking officials of Syrian Air Force Intelligence with war crimes. The indictment accuses Jamil Hassan and Abdul Salam Mahmoud of cruel and inhuman treatment, including the torture of detainees, some of whom were US citizens, at the Mezzeh military airbase prison in Damascus. These actions were part of a broader pattern of human rights violations aimed at silencing opposition to the Assad regime. If convicted, the defendants each face a maximum sentence of life in prison. (Image: Mapping MENA)

Syria

Syrian revolution met with US, Israeli air-strikes

The same day the Assad regime fell and rebel forces took Damascus, the US military carried out a series of air-strikes against Islamic State positions across central Syria. The Pentagon’s Central Command announced that it “struck over 75 targets using multiple US Air Force assets, including B-52s, F-15s, and A-10s.” The targets included “ISIS leaders, operatives, and camps.” Also that day, Israeli warplanes conducted dozens of raids across Syria, including in Damascus. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) counted more than 100 Israeli strikes on military and industrial targets, including a research center believed to be linked to chemical weapon production. Israel said it was acting to stop weapons from falling “into the hands of extremists.” Israel has additionally seized control of a demilitarized “buffer zone” in the Golan Heights, saying the 1974 disengagement agreement with Syria had “collapsed” with the rebel take-over of the country. (Photo of B-52 bomber: USAF via A&SF)

Syria

Syria: after the fall of the regime

As Syrian rebels advanced on Damascus in a surprise lightning offensive, the Rojava Kurds seized territory from the Bashar Assad regime, and the Druze took up arms in their own region. After years of the lines in the conflict being frozen and the genocidal Assad dictatorship being “normalized,” the unthinkable happened and the dictator fled. Suddenly the 13-year aim of the Syrian Revolution has been realized—the fall of the regime. But the lead rebel faction, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), has an ugly past, its partner the Syrian National Army (SNA) is in the political orbit of Turkish aspiring dictator Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, and the threat of Arab-Kurdish ethnic war in northern Syria looms closer. Amid a conflict now dominated by armed actors, can the unarmed civil resistance that began the revolution 13 years ago re-assert itself, and revive the secular-democratic spirit of 2011? In Episode 255 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg takes a hard look. Listen on SoundCloud or via Patreon. (Photo of Aleppo Citadel in rebel hands via social media, e.g. Twtter)