Today, November 27, marks one year since the sudden Syrian rebel offensive landed them in control of Aleppo in 3 days, and in Damascus in 10 days, with the complete collapse like a house of cards of the 54-year hereditary monarchy of the Assad family. Everywhere they marched, the hated tyranny collapsed; no Syrian soldier considered it worth risking their lives for. Thousands of people gathered everywhere they arrived, stunned at the very idea that that the totalitarian nightmare that had caged their lives for as long as they had known had suddenly vanished into history. (I wrote this <https://theirantiimperialismandours.com/2024/12/07/the-syrian-revolution-returns-with-a-bang-extraordinary-collapse-of-the-genocidal-regime/> around a year ago).
The prison doors were flung open everywhere, especially Sednaya, the empire of evil, the capital of the Assad family’s Torture & Disappearance Inc. Thousands were released, even more stunned that their torturer was suddenly gone and they could breathe the air of freedom, could walk out and curse without being killed or jailed again. Many had lost their minds, did not know their names. Many had been there for decades. A 57 year old man saw the light, jailed at 17 for no particular reason at all, as far as he remembered, a student from Lebanon. The pilot who had been ordered to bomb the rebellious city of Hama in 1982 and refused, jailed for this heroic disobedience, saw the light of day after 42 years. A Palestinian man of about 60, who had tried to shake the hand of Ahmad Jibril, a ‘Palestinian’ traitor who headed the misnamed ‘Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – General Command’ (not to be confused with the actual PFLP), an organ of Baathist regime intelligence – but did so from his seat rather than standing up – had likewise been thrown into Sednaya for this slight 39 years earlier – and was now released. Some 600 Palestinians were also released, including 67 Hamas cadre, but 1300 Palestinians had been tortured to death in captivity, including 94 Hamas cadre, on top of some 7000 ‘disappeared’. But the release of mere thousands – perhaps 25,000 – was a huge disappointment. Because at least 130,000 were known to have disappeared. The releases left over 100,000 unaccounted for – ‘disappeared’ by the regime, after it finished torturing them, into mass graves scattered around the country. The since updated database of the Syrian Network for Human Rights now puts the figure at 177,057 people forcibly disappeared <https://snhr.org/blog/2025/08/30/fourteenth-annual-report-on-enforced-disappearances-in-syria-on-the-occasion-of-the-international-day-of-the-victims-of-enforced-disappearances/>. To be clear, this is on top of the 600-700,000 killed in the regime’s counterrevolutionary war itself, during which it destroyed entire cities and entire chunks of the country, in many places leaving no homes standing at all, a Gaza-like moonscape over much of Syria. *Why November 27? Addressing false discourses* To step back, why November 27? The name of the offensive – ‘Operation Deterring Aggression’ – demonstrates how little clue the rebels had when they began that the regime would collapse in 10 days. They thought they were, literally, deterring the regime’s aggression. Full article: https://theirantiimperialismandours.com/2025/11/28/one-year-since-the-syrian-rebel-offensive-that-toppled-assad-what-is-the-situation-today/ -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. View/Reply Online (#39651): https://groups.io/g/marxmail/message/39651 Mute This Topic: https://groups.io/mt/116692416/21656 -=-=- POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. #4 Do not exceed five posts a day. -=-=- Group Owner: [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://groups.io/g/marxmail/leave/13617172/21656/1316126222/xyzzy [[email protected]] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
