By Caleb Maupin
Russia Insider
The people of the world should ask Western leaders and their allies: Why are you prolonging this war? Why do you continue funding and enabling the terrorists? Isn’t five years of civil war enough? Is overthrowing the Syrian government really worth so much suffering and death?

In late April, President Barack Obama announced that 250 U.S. special operations troops are being deployed to Syria. Unlike the Russian and Iranian forces aiding anti-terrorism efforts in the country, the U.S. military personnel have entered Syria against the wishes of the internationally recognized government.

In terms of international law, the United States has invaded Syria, a sovereign country and United Nations member state. This is the not the first time, though — Arizona Sen. John Mccain crossed into Syria without a visa to meet with anti-government fighters in 2013.

While the new U.S. boots on the ground have officially been dispatched for the purpose of fighting Daesh (an Arabic acronym for the organization known in the West as ISIS or ISIL), they will most likely be working to achieve one of the Pentagon’s longstanding foreign policy goals: violently overthrowing the Syrian government.

As the terrorism of Daesh and other extremists grows more intense, and as millions of Syrians have become refugees, the heavy costs of the U.S. government’s “regime change” operation in Syria should come into question.

Education, health care and national rebirth

The independent nationalist Syrian government, now being targeted by Western foreign policy, was born in the struggle against colonialism. It took decades of great sacrifice from the people of Syria to break the country free from foreign domination — first by the French empire and later from puppet leaders. For the last several decades, Syria has been a strong, self-reliant country in the oil-rich Middle East region. It has also been relatively peaceful.

Since winning its independence, Syria’s Baathist leadership has done a great deal to improve the living standards of the population. Between 1970 and 2009, the life expectancy in Syria increased by 17 years. During this time period infant mortality dropped dramatically from 132 deaths per 1,000 live births to only 17.9. According to an article published by the Avicenna Journal of Medicine, these notable changes in access to public health came as a result of the Syrian government’s efforts to bring medical care to the country’s rural areas.

A 1987 country study of Syria, published by the U.S. Library of Congress, describes huge achievements in the field of education. During the 1980s, for the first time in Syria’s history, the country achieved “full primary school enrollment of males” with 85 percent of females also enrolled in primary school. In 1981, 42 percent of Syria’s adult population was illiterate. By 1991, illiteracy in Syria had been wiped out by a mass literacy campaign led by the government.

The name of the main political party in Syria is the “Baath Arab Socialist Party.” The Arabic word “Baath” literally translates to “Rebirth” or “Resurrection.” In terms of living standards, the Baathist Party has lived up to its name, forging an entirely new country with an independent, tightly planned and regulated economy. The Library of Congress’ Country Study described the vast construction in Syria during the 1980s: “Massive expenditures for development of irrigation, electricity, water, road building projects, and the expansion of health services and education to rural areas contributed to prosperity.”

Compared to Saudi-dominated Yemen, many parts of Africa, and other corners of the globe that have never established economic and political independence, the achievements of the Syrian Arab Republic look very attractive. Despite over half a century of investment from Shell Oil and other Western corporations, the CIA World Factbook reports that about 60 percent of Nigerians are literate, and access to housing and medical care is very limited. In U.S.-dominated Guatemala, roughly 18 percent of the population is illiterate, and poverty is rampant across the countryside, according to the CIA World Factbook.

What the Western colonizers failed to achieve during centuries of domination, the independent Syrian government achieved rapidly with help from the Soviet Union and other anti-imperialist countries. The Soviet Union provided Syria with a $100 million loan to build the Tabqa dam on the Euphrates River, which was “considered to be the backbone of all economic and social development in Syria.” Nine-hundred Soviet technicians worked on the infrastructure project which brought electricity to many parts of the country. The dam also enabled irrigation throughout the Syrian countryside.

More recently, China has set up many joint ventures with Syrian energy corporations. According to a report from the Jamestown Foundation, in 2007 China had already invested “hundreds of millions of dollars” in Syria in efforts to “modernize the country’s aging oil and gas infrastructure.”

These huge gains for the Syrian population should not be dismissed and written off, as Western commentators routinely do when repeating their narrative of “Assad the Dictator.” For people who have always had access to education and medical care, it is to trivialize such achievements. But for the millions of Syrians, especially in rural areas, who lived in extreme poverty just a few decades ago, things like access to running water, education, electricity, medical care, and university education represent a huge change for the better.

Like almost every other regime in the crosshairs of U.S. foreign policy, Syria has a strong, domestically-controlled economy. Syria is not a “client state” like the Gulf state autocracies surrounding it, and it has often functioned in defiance of the U.S. and Israel. It is this, not altruistic concerns about human rights, that motivate Western attacks on the country.

Syria needs reform, not terrorism

In 2012, Syria ratified a new constitution in response to the protests during the Arab Spring. In compliance with the new constitution, Syria held a contested election in 2014, with international observers from 14 countries.

One thing that distinguishes Syria from Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain, and various other U.S.-aligned regimes throughout the region is religious freedom. In Syria, Sunnis, Christians, Alawites, Druze, Jews, and other religious groups are permitted to practice their religious faith freely. The government is secular, and respects the rights of the Sunni Muslim majority as well as religious minorities.

In addition to religious freedom, Syria openly tolerates the existence of two strong Marxist-Leninist parties. The Syrian Communist Party and the Syrian Communist Party (Bakdash) openly operate as part of the anti-imperialist coalition supporting the Baath Arab Socialist Party. Communists lead trade unions and community organizations in Damascus and other parts of the country.

Though Syrian President Bashar Assad is an Alawite, his wife, Asma, is Sunni like the majority of the country. Historically, the biggest opponents of the Syrian government have been supporters of the Muslim brotherhood, with a bloody episode taking place in 1982. Hoping to heal the longstanding tension, President Assad has made many gestures of solidarity toward the Sunni community in recent years. He has made a point of engaging in religious practices not commonly done by Alawites, such as praying in mosques and studying the Quran.

Shortly after fighting began in 2011, the Syrian government granted autonomy to Kurdish regions andtransferred political authority to leftist Kurdish nationalist organizations.

Syria’s political system is certainly in need of reform and modernization, and representatives of the Syrian government such as U.N. Ambassador Bashar Al-Jaafari readily admit this. However, the civil war which has raged across Syria for the last five years, is not about reform, democratization or modernization.

The BBC published a “guide to Syrian rebels” in 2013. Among them are not only the infamous “Islamic State” organization, which now horrifies the world, but also the Nusra Front, previously known as Al-Qaida in Syria. Other organizations with names like the “Islamic Front,” the “Islamic Liberation Front,” and the “Ahfad al-Rasoul Brigades” are also listed.

While Western media presents the Syrian civil war as a “battle for democracy” led by “revolutionaries,” the primary goal of almost every insurgent organization is creating a Sunni caliphate — one that does not actually suit Sunnis though, but rather a perverted politicized version of Sunnism created by Saudi Arabia to ideologically control that region. The unifying religious perspective of the Syrian “rebels” is the interpretation of Sunni Islam practiced and promoted by Saudi Arabia, known as Wahhabism.

Foreign fighters, chemical weapons and child soldiers

A large number of the insurgents are not Syrian. Impoverished people from throughout the Middle East have been recruited to fight against the Syrian government. Facilities in Bahrain train recruits to kill, and send them to Syria.

Terrorist training facilities exist in many other U.S.-aligned Gulf states. Foreign fighters from as far away as Malaysia and the Philippines have been found among the ranks of the foreign Wahhabi insurgents that are trying to depose the Syrian government.

The flow of violent insurgents into Syria is not accidental. It has been directly facilitated by the U.S. and its allies. The CIA has spent billions of dollars on training camps in Jordan for anti-government fighters.

The U.S.-aligned regimes of Turkey and Saudi Arabia are openly supporting the Nusra Front, the Al-Qaida-linked organization that has already killed tens of thousands of innocent people in Syria. Gen. David Petraeus has called for the U.S. to join these efforts and begin sending arms directly to the Nusra Front.

The Israeli government has made a point of aiding the Wahhabi extremists by providing them medical care in the occupied Golan Heights. Israel has also made a point of targeting allies of the Syrian government with airstrikes.

While Western media has highlighted allegations that the Syrian government has used chemical weapons,Carla Del Ponte from the United Nations confirmed that the foreign-backed insurgents have long been been using sarin nerve gas and other chemical weapons.

As the insurgents make life unlivable in Syria, kidnapping for ransom, bombing schools and hospitals, beheading people, torturing people, they do it with thousands of child soldiers among their ranks. Impoverished children from across the Arab world have been recruited to work toward violently overthrowing the Syrian government, according to UNICEF.

Between 50 and 72 percent of the population lives in areas controlled by the Syrian government. Meanwhile, even USAID confirmed that the turnout in Syria’s 2014 elections was more than 70 percent.

While the barrage of foreign fighters and extremists, aligned with a minority of the population and armed by Western powers and their allies, is committed to bringing down the Syrian government, the Syrian people clearly disagree. The fact that the Syrian government remains strongly intact after a five-year onslaught shows that the country is dedicated to preserving its independence. Time magazine and other mainstream media outlets have even been forced to admit that President Assad is unlikely to be deposed.

How can the war end?

As foreign fighters have flowed into Syria, hundreds of thousands of people have died over the last five years, and Western media continues to blame the Syrian government for the conflict. However, the war would have been a very short one if not for the foreign support given to the extremists.

As an independent country with a centrally planned economy, Syria has serves as an example to the world. It has proven that without neoliberalism and Western economic domination, it is possible to improve living conditions and develop independently. The Syrian government has made huge sacrifices to aid the Palestinian people and their resistance against Israel, and this has been a contributing factor to Syria’s inclusion on the State Department’s State Sponsors of Terrorism list. Syria has close economic relations with Russia and the Islamic Republic of Iran.

The war in Syria is not a domestic conflict. This is a war imposed on Syria by Israel, the U.S., and other Western capitalist powers. The primary promoter of Wahhabi extremism around the world has been the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, a U.S. client state. Turkey and Jordan, U.S.-aligned countries bordering Syria, keep their borders open so that weapons, supplies and money can continue to flow into the hands of Daesh and other anti-government terrorists.

At least 470,000 people are dead, and millions of others have been forced to become refugees, but Western leaders and their allies do not end their campaign. The insane chorus of “Assad Must Go” has transformed a small, domestic episode of unrest into a full-scale humanitarian crisis. The war has nothing to do with the calls for democratic reform and the peaceful protests of 2011.

As Daesh now threatens the entire world, the consequences of the Wall Street regime change operation, promoted with “human rights” propaganda, are becoming far more extreme. The Syrian government rallies a coalition of Christians, Communists, Islamic Revolutionaries, and other forces who are fighting to maintain stability and defeat Takfiri terrorism. (The term “Takfiri” refers to groups of Sunni Muslims who refer to other Muslims as apostates and seek to establish a caliphate by means of violence.)

The only real peace plan for Syria is for the U.S., France, Britain, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Jordan, and other powers to end their neoliberal crusade. The internationally recognized and recently re-elected Syrian government could easily defeat the insurgents if foreign meddling ceased.

As U.S. media bemoans the humanitarian crisis, somehow blaming on the Syrian government and its president, and the U.S. directly sends its military forces into the country, the people of the world should ask Western leaders and their allies: Why are you prolonging this war? Why can’t you just leave Syria alone? Why do you continue funding and enabling the terrorists? Isn’t five years of civil war enough? Is overthrowing the Syrian government really worth so much suffering and death?

Source: RT
The town of Sheikh Maskin in Syria’s Daraa province ‒ which has turned into a gray, concrete desolation after fierce fighting ‒ can be seen on video footage filmed after Syrian government forces liberated the strategic southern town from jihadists.

The Syrian army has established full control over Sheikh Maskin, which was previously held by Al-Qaeda affiliated terrorists. The settlement, which is called the “crossroads of the south” and located in the northern part of the Daraa province, now lies in ruins with almost no buildings left undamaged.

“Our armed forces succeeded in liberating the town of Sheikh Maskin completely by following a well thought-out and researched strategy. We conducted the main attack from the north with a simultaneous attack from Garfa. Those two groups came from both sides and cornered the militants, and thus could recapture the town completely,” the commander of the fifth division of the Syrian Army said.

The recapturing of the town dealt “a major blow to the terrorist organizations and their supporters,” as well as greatly contributed to restoring security and stability to the region, the Syrian General Command of the Army and Armed Forces said in a statement, as quoted by SANA News.

The seizure of Sheikh Maskin also became a “springboard for further combat operations,” as the town located in the area surrounding the international highway between Damascus and Daraa links different parts of the province, according to the statement.

The operation was backed up by the Syrian and Russian air forces, the statement added.

Syrian army engineers are now clearing the town of mines and booby traps left by the terrorists “almost in every house and in most unusual places.”

The town was earlier a stronghold of extremists with hundreds of militants from the Al-Nusra Front, Al-Qaeda’s franchise in Syria, fighting Syrian government forces for control over the settlement.

Source: Sputnik News
The Syrian Army has reportedly destroyed a column of Daesh’s oil tankers in the country’s southwestern province of Sweida.

A column of oil tankers owned by Daesh (ISIL/ISIS) has been destroyed by the Syrian Army and the National Defense Forces (NDF) in Sweida province in the country’s southwest, according to the Iranian news agency FARS.

“A convoy of 16 ISIL oil tankers was targeted by the Syrian Army in the region of Shaghaf located [in the] southeast of Sweida province,” the sources were quoted by FARS said.

According to the sources, all of the oil tankers were set ablaze during the army’s attack, and an array of the convoy’s military guards were killed.

The army and the Syrian National Defense Forces intensified their military operations against Daesh terrorists in Sweida last month.

In particular, the Syrian troops, supported by the NDF, obliterated Daesh positions in the village of Al-Qasr in northern Sweida, sources said. Although the mostly government-held province is predominantly Druze and practices a Unitarian religion which features elements of Christianity, Buddhism and Neoplatonism, many Sunni Muslims have taken refuge in the province, fleeing areas which have been held by Islamist militants in neighboring Daraa Province. They represent a small portion of the 6.5 million internally displaced Syrians who predominantly reside in government-controlled areas of the country.

Meanwhile, the Syrian air force reportedly managed to destroy a spate of Islamic militant strongholds to the east of Damascus, killing dozens of terrorists and wounding many more.

Late last week, Syrian warplanes pummeled the militants’ positions in the towns of Hazarma, al-Nashabiyah and Hosh al-Farah.

Adding to the Syrian army’s anti-Daesh effort is the Russian air campaign, which was launched on September 30, 2015, when more than fifty Russian warplanes, including Su-24M, Su-25 and Su-34 jets, commenced precision airstrikes on Islamic State targets in Syria at the behest of Syrian President Bashar Assad.

By The Saker
Source: The Unz Review: An Alternative Media Selection
I think that a week after Ynet broke the story about a Russian military intervention in Syria we can confidently say that that this was a typical AngloZionist PSYOP aimed at inhibiting the Russian involvement in the Empire’s war against Syria and that it had no basis in reality.

Or did it?

It turns out that there was a small kernel of truth to these stories. No, Russia was not sending “MiG-31s to bomb Daesh”, nor is Russian going to send an SSNB (submarine armed with intercontinental ballistic missiles) to the Syrian coast. All these rumors are utter nonsense. But there are increasing signs that Russia is doing two thing:

1) increasing her diplomatic involvement in the Syrian conflict

2) delivering some unspecified but important military gear to Syria

The second item is the one which is most interesting. Needless to say, as is typical in these cases, the actual contents of the cargo Russia is sending by air and sea is not made public, but we can speculate. First, we know that Syria needs a lot of spare parts and equipment repairs. This war has been going on for 4 years now and the Syrians have made intensive use of their equipment. Second, the Syrians lack some battlefield systems which could greatly help them. Examples of that include counter-battery radars (radars which spot where the enemy’s artillery is shooting from) and electronic warfare systems. Furthermore, Russian sources are saying that Syria needs more armored personnnel carriers.

We know that Russia and Syria have long standing military contracts and we know that Russia is now delivering her heavy equipment by sea and the lighter systems by air. Does all that indicate some kind of game changer?

No. At least not at this point in time.

So why the AngloZionist panic?

My feeling is that one thing which makes them so nervous is that the Russian apparently have chosen the city of Latakia as their “delivery point”. Unlike Damascus, Latakia is an ideal location: it is safe but not too far away from the frontlines, and it is relatively near the Russian base in Tartus. The airport and naval port are also reportedly easy to protect and isolate. There are already reports that the Russians have lengthened the runways and improved the infrastructure at the Latakia airport and that heavy AN-124s have been observed landing there. As for the Russian Navy – it has been sending ships to the Latakia airport.

In other words, instead of limiting themselves to Tartus or going into the very exposed Damascus, the Russians appear to have created a new bridgehead in the north of the country which could be used to deliver equipment, and even forces, to the combat area in the north of the country.

This, by the way, would also explain the panicked rumors about the Russians sending in their Naval Infantry units from Crimea to Syria: Naval Infantry forces are ideal to protect such a base and considering that the front lines are not that far, it would make perfect sense for the Russians to secure their bridgehead with these units.

Furthermore, while heavy equipment is typically sent by the sea, the Russians can deliver their air defense systems by air: The AN-124 is more than capable of transporing S-300s. That fact alone would explain the AngloZionist panic.

What appears to be happening is this: the Russians are, apparently, sending some limited but important gear to provide immediate assistance to the Syrian forces. In doing so, they have also created the conditions to keep their options open. So while there is not massive Russian intervention taking place, something has definitely shifted in the Syrian conflict.

I would like to add here that while the government forces have recently lost the Idlib air base in the north of the country (and not too far from Latakia), all my sources confirm to me that the Syrian forces are in a much better position than Daesh and that the war is going very badly for the Takfiris. The Syrians have recently freed the city of Zabadan and they are on the offensive in most locations and while it is true that Daesh still controls a lot of land, most of that is desert.

To summarize the above I would say this: the AngloZionists are freaking out because their war against Syria has failed; while Daesh has created havoc and terror in several countries, there are many signs that the local countries are gradually becoming determined to do something. The US has also failed to get rid of Assad, the massive refugee crisis has triggered a major political crisis in Europe, and now the Europeans are looking at Assad in a dramatically different light than before. Russia has clearly decide to get politically involved with all the regional powers, effectively displacing the USA, and there are pretty good indications that the Russians are keeping their options open. And while there are absolutely no reasons to suspect that Russia is planning a major military intervention in the conflict in terms of quantity, there are signs that the Russian support has risen to a new qualitative level.

Two things need to be stressed here:

First, on a political level, it is still exceedingly unlikely that Russia would take any major unilateral action in this war. While Syria is a sovereign country and while a Syrian-Russian agreement is enough to legally justify any military move agreed to by both parties, Russia will try hard not to act alone. This explains why Foreign Ministery Lavrov is trying so hard to create some kind of coalition.

Second, on a military level, the country to look at is not Russia but Iran. The Iranians have a safe and secure land-line to Syria (via northern Iraq) and they have the kind of combat forces which could be successfully engage against Daesh. The same goes for Hezbollah which has, and will in the future, send its elite forces to support the Syrians in strategically vital areas. Should there be a need for a major ground operation in support of the Syrian forces, these are the forces we should expect to intervene, not the Russians.

In conclusion I would say that what we see taking place it “typical Putin”: while western leaders typically prefer high visibility actions which bring immediate (but short term) results, Putin prefers to let his opponent inflict the maximal amount of damage upon himself before intervening in gradual, slow steps. The unleashing of Daesh by the AngloZionists was a kind of a “political shock and awe” which did almost overthrow the Syrian government. When that initial “fast-acting” but short term strategy failed, Assad was still there, but Daesh had turned into a Golem monster which threatened everybody and which nobody could control. As for Assad, he was gradually downgraded from being a “new Hitler” gassing his own people into somebody who will clearly be a part of the solution (whatever “solution” will eventually emerge).

The lesson for all those who resist the Empire is obvious: the hardest thing is to remain standing after the first “blow” delivered by the imperial forces. If you can survive it (as the Donbass and Syria have done), then time is on your side and the position of the Empire will begin to weaken slowly but surely because of its own internal contradictions. When that process being, you must not fall into the trap of over-committment, but gradually occupy each position (political or other) given up by the Empire in the process of the disintegration while securing your own each step of the way.

It is way too early for any triumphalism – Daesh is still here, and so are the Ukronazis in Kiev, and the Empire has not given up on them quite yet. The good news is that the tide has now visibly turned and while there is still a long struggle ahead, the eventual defeat of the Takfiris and Nazis appears to be inevitable.