By Shaza
Source: SANA
Daraa – A new batch of displaced Syrians on Wednesday returned home coming from refugee camps in Jordan via Nassib border crossing.

SANA reporter said that a new batch of displaced Syrians returned on Wednesday from al- Azraq camp in Jordan heading for their areas liberated by the Syrian Arab Army from terrorism after providing them with all the basic services.

The returnees, numbered 19600 since the re-opening of the border crossing on October 15th, returned to Syria, using temporary passage tickets, head of the Immigration and Passports department at Nassib crossing Mazen Ghandour said.

For their parts, a number of the returnees expressed their joy for their returning home after the Syrian Arab Army restored security and stability to their villages and towns.

By Jay Tharappel

Palm Sunday rallies used to be about protesting war and demanding nuclear disarmament until the focus shifted over the past many years towards championing the rights of refugees, however, the greater task should be to expose and restrain the role played by the Anglo-American alliance (including Australia) in fueling the proxy-wars that created the vast majority of those who were made refugees in the first place, but for that the consciousness of the west needs to be weaned off a saviour-complex that sees third-world societies as comprised of ‘victims’ who need to be saved, and ‘tyrants’ who need to be defeated.

What those wars have in common with the refugee rights movement is both are fueled by a neo-colonial saviour-complex that targets and encourages westerners to think about ways they can save people in third-world countries from their own governments. When directed at Australia’s horrific mandatory detention regime, this saviour-complex serves a worthy humanitarian purpose, however when confronted with war-propaganda designed to ‘manufacture consent’ for regime-change, this saviour-complex lends itself to backing covert wars of aggression with great enthusiasm. What needs to be understood and accepted is that the refugee crisis over the course of the past few years was caused, far less by people fleeing oppressive governments, and far more by the covert wars waged to topple the governments of their homelands.

In keeping with this saviour-complex, the western corporate media presents the Syrian war as a one-sided conflict between the government, derisively referred to as the “Assad regime”, and ordinary civilians who we are told are being killed, simply because they protested for democracy (see here). The portrayal is one of contrasting a cartoonishly evil ‘tyrant’ with an insatiable desire for inflicting arbitrary evil, against a homogenised mass of civilian victims whose suffering is blamed on the failure of the west to intervene.

None of this is logical for the simple reason that in Syria, the driving force behind the war is the attempt to militarily overthrow the government, NOT the government resisting that attempted overthrow. Therefore, the demand that Syrian government to stop the war on their end is to objectively aid the attempts of anti-government forces to seize state power. War is not an ideological contest over a spectrum of political beliefs, rather a struggle with limited choices for those directly affected by it. Therefore, the question of whether one “supports Assad” is entirely meaningless because although many Syrians are critical of their government, that doesn’t automatically mean they’d support the armed overthrow of the state by the actual forces attempting it. By that same token, it makes no sense to claim that one supports the overthrow of the Syrian government but NOT the forces that are attempting it.

Who are those actual forces? From the very beginning of the conflict in March 2011, the war against the Syrian government has been dominated by Islamic fundamentalists fighting to establish a theocracy inspired by the Wahhabi movement that rules Saudi Arabia. They espouse an ideology that routinely denounces the secular character of the Syrian government, appeals to Sunni-majoritarian chauvinism, calls for the marginalisation of religious minorities, and in the case of the Shia Alawite community to which the Syrian president belongs, calls for their outright genocide, accusing them of being “more disbelieving than the Christians and Jews”, to quote the 14^th century scholar Ibn Taymiyyah whose works were revived by the Wahhabi movement.

These forces waging war on the government also threaten the secular freedoms that women had won in Syria over many decades, completely subjugating them in the areas they control, forcing them to don the veil, and reducing them to mere property. A recent UN sponsored report on gender-based violence titled ‘Voices from Syria 2018’ is dominated by horrific accounts primarily from areas held by anti-government Wahhabi militias. It found that “in 66% of communities in Idleb” which is almost entirely controlled by anti-government forces, “adolescent girls are affected by child marriage as well as 28% of girls below the age of 12”, and “observed girls below the age of 10 being married in Idleb governorate, including marriage to foreign members of armed factions” (p. 116).

Photo: Top, School children in government held Aleppo. Bottom, School children in Al Qaeda held Idlib

Throughout the war, the town of Kafranbel gained prominence in the corporate media as being emblematic of “free Syria” because of all the photos from the town of men (suspiciously no women) holding large English-language banners, targeting western audiences, calling for western intervention against the Syrian government. However, in that same town, according to that previously mentioned report, “extremist groups impose more restrictive rules for women and girls compared to before the crisis”, which is why according to one girl from that town, “we used to live comfortably, and now we are monitored and have to wear a veil and they stop us from leaving the house” (p. 123). According to an adolescent girl from that same town, and this is truly disgusting, “girls get married at a young age as when they are married young they cannot get pregnant” (p. 116). Unsurprisingly the report also states that “religious authorities were reported to be conducting the weddings” (p. 117), implying therefore that these disgusting practices, illegal according to Syrian law, which sets a minimum marriageable age of 17 for women, are sanctioned by the Wahhabi militias controlling these towns.

The corporate media constantly accuses the Syrian government of targeting and bombing civilians, but what they rarely mention is that civilians are barred from leaving by these armed militias themselves. The most brazen case of this is from November 2015 when Jaysh al Islam, one of the militias controlling Eastern Ghouta, published videos showing mostly women civilians being paraded around in cages, used literally as human-shields, justifying their actions as a deterrent to the national army’s attempts to take back the area. More recently this month, reporting for the Independent, Patrick Cockburn interviewed a man named Ghafour who lives in Eastern Ghouta and sympathises with the insurgency who said, “I tried to send my family out, but the opposition militants prevent all families leaving”. The article also cites a UN sponsored report which states that “women of all ages, and children, reportedly continued to be forbidden by local armed groups from leaving the area for security reasons”. The only reason the article’s title blames “both sides” for “preventing civilians escaping” is because men living under siege are suspected of having been former fighters, making them liable to be interned, or conscripted by the national army.

Photo: “Moderate Rebels” parading pro-government civilians in cages, using them as literal human shields

Not only are the forces waging war against the government far more reactionary than the status quo, they’re also far more reliant on external support than on internal discontent. As early as September 2012 one of the co-founders of Doctors Without Borders, Jacques Beres, who had treated wounded anti-government fighters in Aleppo, stated that more than fifty percent of them were foreigners – this is coming from someone who can be seen in videos online participating in protests in Paris against the Syrian government. Similarly, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights which is the leading anti-government source, foreigners are roughly half of the insurgent dead. Yes, the Syrian government’s strength is also bolstered by foreign volunteers, especially Hezbollah and Iranian-backed militias, however there’s no denying that the government is by far the more indigenous force – the Syrian Arab Army alone has lost around 100,000 soldiers, which is roughly at least a quarter of the total war death-toll.

Observers of war may believe that a certain level of oppression justifies the armed overthrow of the state in question, but that doesn’t mean that the attempted armed overthrow being witnessed was entirely caused by that real or perceived oppression. This is especially true of third-world countries with a history of resisting colonialism and fighting for their independence. For them the external enemy is a genuine threat, whereas for the former colonial powers of Europe and their settler offshoots (like Australia), there is no external enemy capable of overthrowing them. This probably explains why the anarchist obsession with toppling the state exists only in countries that aren’t threatened by external powers.

All the evidence shows that attempts to violently overthrow the Syrian government are internally unpopular. Naturally the western corporate media scoffed at the 2014 presidential election results in which the Bashar al Assad won 88 percent of the vote with a 73 percent participation rate against two other candidates. However, what cannot be denied is that these results are entirely consistent with the perception of those attempting to topple the state, whose admissions cannot be accused of being self-serving. In November 2012, Rania Abouzeid, reporting for Time Magazine, quoted a Free Syrian Army fighter saying, “the Aleppans here, all of them, are loyal to the criminal Bashar”. Two months later Reuters reporter Yara Bayoumy interviewed a Free Syrian Army militant in Aleppo who put “support for Assad at 70 percent”.

Photo: Most Syrian soldiers are conscripts drafted to defend their towns and cities, not professional volunteers. They fight to protect their families, not necessarily for the President.

For countries with powerful external enemies, it is not inconceivable therefore that external support to a minority among their population can magnify and multiply their ability to challenge the state. According to leaked emails obtained by Wikileaks, US and British special forces were training fighters inside Syria to fight the Syrian govt as early as 2011. The CIA has spent at least $1 billion on “Syria-related operations” including the training of up to 10,000 fighters in Turkey, according to the Washington Post. By May 2013, Qatar had spent up to $3 billion arming the insurgency according to the Financial Times, and in that same month, the European Union had lifted their oil-sanctions on Syria making it legal for European companies to buy oil from al Nusra and Islamic State, thereby fuelling the war on Syria via the theft of its resources. Then there are the economic sanctions on Syria that have contributed to the twelve-fold devaluation of the Syrian currency, driving up the price of food and medicine, making it extremely difficult for Syrian refugees to send remittances home to their families. For more information about the sanctions, see ‘Break the sieges? What about the economic siege on Syria?’ which I wrote for Al Masdar News in September 2016.

Given all these external factors intended to topple the government, the notion that refugees are fleeing because of the Syrian government is nothing more than a propagandistic distortion popularised by an apparent poll conducted by ‘The Syria Campaign’ in 2015 claiming that “70% of refugees are fleeing Assad”, however this claim turned out to be fake news. According to the poll’s actual raw data, 70 percent of the 889 respondents in Germany said the Syrian military “was responsible” for the fighting, but because the respondents could choose multiple options, 74 percent also chose anti-government militias. Similarly, 77 percent said they feared arrest by the Syrian military, but the figure was even higher for anti-government militias at 82 percent. It would therefore make even more sense to claim that 74 percent of Syrians are fleeing anti-government militias. That however wouldn’t suit the agenda of manufacturing consent for a no-fly-zone over Syria – a euphemism for a direct invasion targeting the Syrian military and nuclear-armed Russia, and another example of the neo-colonial saviour-complex being weaponised to justify military aggression. For more information about this fake news, see ‘How “The Syrian Campaign” Faked Its “70% Fleeing Assad” Refugee Poll’ by Tim Anderson, writing for Global Research.

The broad trend regarding refugees over the course of the war is that Syrians have left their homes when the government loses territory (to the Islamists), and tend to return when the government takes back that territory. When I travelled to the Syrian cities of Damascus, Lattakia, and Tartous in July 2015 (when Islamic State was at the height of its territorial control) everyone from local government officials to ordinary citizens were of the view that the populations of their cities had tripled. This makes sense given that roughly half the total number of Syrian refugees are internally displaced, and the overwhelming majority of them live in government-controlled cities. In Lattakia this made complete visual sense given the high number of cars with ‘Idlib’ and ‘Aleppo’ number plates – residents even jokingly referred to their city as ‘New Aleppo’. However, after Aleppo was taken back by the government in December 2016, people started returning in droves as evidenced by a report by the International Organisation for Migration, which stated that in the following year, between January and October 2017, “a total of 714,278 internally displaced Syrians returned to their places of origin within Syria” – a movement largely explained by people returning to parts of Aleppo that the government had retaken.

Photo: Syrians celebrate Christmas in Aleppo after the government liberated the city in December 2016

In Australia, the pro-refugee movement does nothing to address the original cause of the refugee outflow, exactly because the actions of the United States and its allies have contributed to the original cause, politically, diplomatically, and militarily. Demanding that we accept responsibility for taking in refugees caused by the policies endorsed by our government is necessary but not enough. We should demand an end to the relentless demonisation of the Syrian government, an end to the sale of Australian weapons to Saudi Arabia (which are being used to pulverise Yemen for the apparent crime of actually pulling off a popular revolution) and an end to the crippling economic sanctions on Syria that punish millions of ordinary people for refusing to side with foreign powers wanting to topple their government.

All the evidence shows that the forces waging war against the Syrian government are unpopular, reactionary, and infinitely more reliant on external support than they are on internal discontent with the government. The reason Syrian refugee flows have stabilised over the past year is because the government is winning the war, whereas had it been toppled, the result would have been a failed state falling prey to a direct military occupation. This is exactly what happened in Afghanistan after the Soviet-backed socialist government of President Najibullah was overthrown in 1992 by warlords armed and funded by the United States, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, who seized control of the country, massacring, raping and looting their way through Kabul, completely levelling the capital city in the process, causing an unprecedented outflow of refugees that continues to this day, thereby softening up the country for direct invasion by the United States in 2001. The only reason this history hasn’t repeated itself in Syria is because of the sheer determination of the Syrian people to resist the most well-funded dirty-war in modern history.

By Vanessa Beeley
Source: 21st Century Wire
My latest trip to Syria was spent in Aleppo and Damascus. During my time in East Aleppo I was struck by the hive of activity, pockets of industry, rebuilding the stricken neighborhoods, stone by stone. Despite lack of electricity and water, in each street and alleyway, the sound of welders and the beat of hammers, rang out.

The sparks from a trio of welders spilled onto the pavement where we sat and drank coffee with residents, returning to their communities that had been so fractured by the almost 5 year occupation of these districts of East Aleppo, by Nusra Front-led extremist brigades.

In Jaramanah, Damascus we met with many internally displaced people. The estimated 6.4 million IDPs in Syria have almost invariably, fled to Syrian government controlled areas for refuge from the US Coalition extremist factions who have driven them from their hometowns and villages across Syria.

This area had historically been Druze and Christian populated. Now it has been crowded with Syrians from all walks of life, backgrounds and regions. All spoke to me of their hardship under the US Coalition armed & funded extremist & terrorist factions. Many had been driven from their homes by the armed mercenary forces, suffering hideous wounds in the process.

One old man from Talbiseh in Homs had lost one leg, been shot in the spine and had his remaining foot crushed by the Nusra Front brigades who had invaded his village and driven inhabitants from their homes by force. He was selling bread on the street, provided by his wife, to pay for an apartment with no roof. He “spat” on the “freedom and democracy” that his attackers have brought to his life, according to the western corporate media.

I asked him what he wishes to happen now. He fixed me with a direct gaze and simply said, ” I want to go home.”

Everyone we spoke to from Raqqa, Homs, East Ghouta, Daraa – all said the same thing. They dreamed of going home, back to the lives they had before the “conflict”, back to their pre-war, peaceful lives. Many of the women did not want to be photographed, their husbands were fighting in the Syrian Arab Army and their lives would be in danger if their image were to be made public. One such woman, from East Ghouta, Hadia, told me:

“We had “freedom” before the crisis. These so called “freedom fighters” brought nothing but suffering, they drove us from our homes. They brought nothing but weariness, loneliness, death and poverty”.

Another woman told us that her two brothers had been kidnapped when the US Coalition extremist factions had invaded her home town in Northern Syria. For the last six years, she has had no information regarding their whereabouts. She clings to the hope that they are still alive. She has a son fighting in the Syrian Arab Army and she prays they are victorious so she can return to her home, after 6 years selling fresh mint & vegetables on the streets of Damascus to eke out a living and to provide for her family. When we asked her about the “freedom fighters”, she laughed, “they are losers – thanks to them I am here and paying for my accommodation while they live in my house”

The daughter of one of these women also spoke to us. Shyly she explained that she missed her home, she missed her school and she wanted, more than anything, to go back, “when it was safe“.
“Nothing is the same here, nothing is like my home”

Aleppo
During my time in Aleppo, we visited the Sid Al’Ose street and square in the Alsh’ar district. In this area, Nusra Front and associated extremist brigades such as the Turkish funded, Abu Amara, had executed civilians accused of being “shabiha” – loyal to the Syrian government or simply refusing to adhere to the extremist ideology of the occupying forces. Forces backed, promoted and armed by the western and Gulf state nations working to destabilize Syria and enforce “regime change”.

Life had returned to quasi-normalcy in this vibrant street. We spoke to shopkeepers and residents, all of whom shied away from talking about the horrors they had witnessed, preferring to erase such memories from their psyche.

One shopkeeper, however, did tell us that the area next to his shop was where the terrorists had brought the bodies of 7 civilians who had been murdered at the Bayan hospital (see above photo), close by. They had been shot multiple times and one had been flung from the multi-storey roof of the Bayan hospital. Their bodies had then been dumped outside the lock-up, in the street, as a warning to residents to stay where they were and not to attempt to escape East Aleppo for the safety of West Aleppo.

Kids in the Alsh’ar district. This street was occupied by over 1500 foreign and Syrian mercenaries, operating as Abu Amara brigade and Nusra Front, according to residents. (Photo: Vanessa Beeley). August 2017.

The following report from Russia Today further demonstrates the reality (admitted by the UN) that over 600,000 external refugees have returned to Syria, since the SAA and allies have advanced militarily and cleansed entire swathes of Syrian territory of the US Coalition-armed and funded, terrorist-led insurgents.

“Aleppo, a city retaken by Damascus from rebels in December last year, has become a major destination for displaced Syrian returning home in 2017 as numbers of returnees to Syria spills over 600,000, according to the UN.

Over the first seven months of 2017, over 600,000 displaced Syrians returned home, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) said Friday, citing its own figures as well as those of the UN Migration Agency and partners on the ground. The returnees are overwhelmingly internally-displaced people, but 16 percent returned to Syria from other nations, primarily Turkey. The number almost matched that recorded in the whole of 2016.

An estimated 67 percent of returnees went to government-controlled Aleppo Governorate, with the provincial capital itself being the primary destination.

The city of Aleppo – the largest in Syria prior to the conflict – was retaken by the government army last year, aided by Russia, with hostilities ending in mid-December. For years before that, it was divided between two parts, held respectively by government forces and by a disjointed collection of militant groups, including hardcore jihadists. The battle for the city ended with a ceasefire deal, which allowed remaining rebel forces and their families leave Aleppo and go to Idlib governorate, which currently remains a rebel stronghold.

Earlier an increasing number of refugees returning to their homes in Syria was reported by the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), which said more than 440,000 internally-displaced persons and 31,000 refugees in other countries had done so over the first six months of 2016. Aleppo and other government-controlled governorates like Hama, Homs and Damascus were mentioned as destinations for the returnees.

“Given the returns witnessed so far this year and in light of a progressively-increased number of returns of internally displaced people and, in time, refugees, UNHCR has started scaling up its operational capacity inside Syria,” the agency said.”

Despite its deep wounds and scars, Syria will rebuild and it will emerge, renewed, stronger, and more resilient than ever before. From out of the fire of neocolonialism, will be born a new more powerful Syria, wiser and reinforced by new alliances, the much strengthened historical alliances and expanded geopolitical savvy.

Photograph by Vanessa Beeley.

Source: Fars News
Thousands of civilians could manage to escape the militant-held neighborhoods in the Eastern part of Aleppo city and were hosted in the army-controlled regions.

More than 3,000 civilians, who had been taken hostage by terrorists in the Eastern districts of Aleppo, could flee these neighborhoods after more lands were captured by the government forces on Sunday.

The fleeing civilians were warmly hosted in army-controlled regions.

After the Syrian army and its allies intensified their operations in Eastern Aleppo, more civilians, who were used as human shields by the militants, could flee from the region.

On Sunday, 600 more civilians also managed to escape from the terrorist-controlled areas in Eastern Aleppo.

On Friday, a 23-member group of civilians left Eastern Aleppo. The group comprised of civilian residents of Hanano Housing Project district, mostly women and children. Hanano was captured by the army on Saturday afternoon.

Also, a sum of 10 civilians and seven militants managed to flee the Eastern districts of Aleppo on Tuesday, and reached a Syrian army post outside the city.

Moreover, the two families comprising 10 civilians escaped the terrorist-controlled areas via Hananou region last Sunday.

They disclosed that they had tried many times to exit Eastern Aleppo, but every time they were blocked by the terrorist groups, adding that the terrorists blocked civilians’ access to food and medicine to force them to join the militant groups as people were living in very difficult conditions.

They also stressed that the people in the terrorist-controlled areas cannot escape; “if they could no one would stay there”. “Militants have closed off all roads and corridors to the outside world to use people as human shields.”

A newly-released video also showed that a team of Syrian and Russian forces carried out a rescue operation to save two families fleeing from the Eastern districts of Aleppo city.

The video showed ten civilians who managed to leave the Eastern districts of Hananou, were rescued by the Russian and Syrian forces.

“Details of this operation are secrets due to security reasons. Terrorists are monitoring any moves even at night time and open fire at any detected target immediately,” a field source said.

“Although, one does not need to go a long distance to leave this regions (militant-held neighborhoods), but the large number of militants and their 24-hour-long guards have made any attempt to escape the city a dangerous move,” the source went on to say.

The Arabic service of RT said in a report that this operation was the first of a kind to rescue civilians in the Eastern districts of Aleppo, adding that a series of similar operation will be carried out to rescue more people from the Eastern parts of the city.

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: SANA
Damascus – Deputy Prime Minister for Services Affairs, Local Administration Minister Omar Ghalawanji stressed the importance of unifying and coordinating efforts in relief works with the International organization for Immigration (IOM).

During his meeting with head of the IOM William Lacy Swing and the accompanying delegation, Ghalawanji added that the government is exerting great efforts to bring citizens back to their cities and towns after Syrian Arab Army restores security and stability to these areas.

Ghalawanji pointed out that about 1.7 million citizens have returned to their original areas of residence after the government repaired and restored infrastructure and public facilities in these areas, noting that the government is still overseeing more than 500 temporary housing centers and providing their occupants’ basic needs, as well as launching new projects for makeshift housing centers in Damascus Countryside and Homs, each of which contains 2,000 residence and are funded entirely by the government.

Ghalawanji talked about “My Project” program launched by the government in cooperation with the Syria Trust for Development, which aims at giving small loans to needy families to secure their needs and enhance local economies.

The Minister also reviewed the mechanics of the work performed by the Higher Committee for Relief which he chairs, and the measurements taken to facilitate the access of humanitarian and food convoys to all areas, particularly areas besieged by terrorist organizations.

Ghalawanji said that the government provided the necessary facilitations for UN agencies and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in cooperation with the Syrian Arab Red Crescent (SARC), noting that since the beginning of 2016, 150 joint convoys entered 37 areas which are difficult to reach, which benefited around one million citizens, adding that tens of billions of Syrian Pounds were paid in compensation to citizens whose homes and shops were damaged with full funding from the Syrian government, in addition to spending more than SYP 35 billion for the restoration and rehabilitation of public facilities.

He said that the government began making zoning plans a number of areas in the provinces as models for reconstruction projects in the next stage, adding that preparations are under way for a comprehensive project to restore life to the Old City in Homs in cooperation with a number of international organizations.

In turn, Swing said that his visit to Syria aims at observing the work of the Higher Committee for Relief, as well as assessing the needs on the ground, and discussing mechanisms for enhancing cooperation between the Committee and the IOM.