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In the summer of 2015, the Assad régime forces collapsed in the northwest province of Idlib, town after town falling to the rebels, culminating in the humiliating siege of the Tiger forces led by the star military officer Suheil al-Hassan, in the National Hospital in Jisr al-Shugour. You wouldn’t have read this in the media at the time. Taking the lead from régime apologists like Patrick Cockburn, the mainstream narrative was that Assad had defied predictions of his demise and was the strong and stable leadership Syria needed as the only alternative to al-Qaeda and ISIS taking over the country with the aid and acquiescence of the West and its allies. An analysis dishonest in a number of aspects, such as Assad fighting ISIS rather than cooperating with them, but significantly, he had only survived because of the massive foreign intervention in his favour and an equally significant indifference by those powers rhetorically opposed to him. Russia provided a billion dollars of weaponry a month and UN Security Council vetoes against censure for his crimes, Iran provided tens of thousands of troops from its proxy Shia jihadist militias, firstly Hezbollah from Lebanon, but moving on to recruit from as far away as Tajikistan. The US blocked any anti-aircraft weapons that could have stopped Assad’s barrel bombing, and refused to take action to bring him to account even when he blatantly crossed President Obama’s red line by using a whole bunch of chemical weapons in 2013. http://notris.blogspot.com/2018/10/assad-will-fall.html _________________________________________________________ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
