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Who is still interested in Syria and its revolution? Nobody, or almost. The war has been going on for almost nine years, and only a few can remember the hope that was lifted when Damascus finally seemed to tremble. This war, now, if not finished, can no longer be won by the insurgents, and the future victors, less worried than ever about the consequences of their acts, shamelessly indulge in the most despicable crimes. Lies, a solid and ancient tradition of Moscow power, are no longer appropriate to defend its ally and client, and violence is unleashed as never against the civilian populations of the Idlib region, until it systematically hits hospitals. In France, where we are quick to ignite for the slightest rubbish, the silence which reigns makes us accomplices, first of all the current horrors then of those which will not fail to occur in reprisals. History is not a restart, but a sequence, sometimes predictable.
Die for Idlib?
In the face of this disaster, which will weigh on and will continue to weigh on the coming decades, we must recognize the Machiavellian skill of the Syrian regime. Like all tyrannies, his essential, if not unique, goal is to survive, and he demonstrates an imagination that has only been matched by the complete lack of moral limits. We knew very quickly what his response to the demonstrations of March 2011 would be, and those who speak to us today about the (real) barbarism of the jihadists to defend Bashar al-Assad forget that the first crimes then committed in Syria were by the Syrian authorities against their own children.
The same also forget that it is the regime which, with a boldness and a cold intelligence which we have not been able to conceive and even less to detect, in 2011 freed the jihadists and other salafists whom it kept warm in order to destroy the revolution from within. Applying on an unprecedented scale the unfortunate formula of an American officer in Vietnam, the Syrian president has chosen to destroy his people and ravage his country in order to save his state. To implement such a policy, one needs a determination that Westerners are unable to oppose these days and that they cannot even compete with.
The Syrian strategy, the ultimate illustration of what is a total war, consisted in favoring the growth of an enemy so hated that the adversaries of the mode had, in fine, to turn to him in order to protect themselves. The growth of the jihadist movement in Syria, inevitable as soon as certain cadres were free and the revolution became a civil war, did not need any extra help to grab our attention. And the emergence, out of all control, in 2012, of the first lines of volunteers destined for the Syrian-Iraqi jihad offered the regime a new opportunity.
In 2013, Damascus therefore made contact via dedicated channels with certain Western services in order to express its concern and propose the establishment of dedicated cooperation. On the one hand, the Syrian SRs said, no doubt rightly, worried about the scale of the phenomenon, hundreds of volunteers joining the ranks of insurgent groups and the army losing ground despite the unlimited support granted by Russia and Iran. On the other hand, these same services offered to transmit information about these recruits - without it being clear what they really knew - and it is obvious that this was, above all, to create an axis of cooperation, even a minimal one, making it possible to affirm when the time comes that it was time to focus together on a common enemy. In the longer term, these channels, however modest, would one day serve to reconnect the threads of dialogue. Strategy is still a profession.
With audacity and skill commensurate with the stakes, the master spies of Damascus, who were also not so sure of their coup (their allies in Moscow and Tehran were even less so), therefore favored their immediate adversary in order to divert their distant enemy from his purpose. The maneuver, opposite to that implemented by al-Qaeda in the 1990s, was not without difficulties but it seems to have succeeded: driven by their public opinions, spurred on by a jihadist threat which they do not know how to deal with. unraveling, and seduced by the immediate profitability of a raid on an ISIS camp, the Westerners quickly abandoned the Syrian revolution, too complex, too random, too indecisive - but is that not characteristic of revolutions , after all ?"
You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:
https://www.lemonde.fr/blog/aboudjaffar/2020/02/21/guernica-de-syrie/
