(The Conversation) – What are war crimes and when did they start? – Artie, 12, Queens, New York

I imagine you’re asking about “war crimes” because you’ve heard that term mentioned lately in news about the conflicts underway in Gaza, Ukraine and Sudan. The idea may sound confusing, because war always includes killings and destruction. But special rules restrict how wars can be fought.

I am a professor who studies international law – the set of rules that defines what a war crime is.

Why do we need laws about war?

Historically, war had few limits. Individual societies occasionally attempted to control how wars were fought. But for much of human history, when nations attacked each other, it wasn’t just soldiers who died. Many civilians – ordinary people who weren’t fighting in the war – died, and whole cities were destroyed.

After wars ended, survivors from the losing country might even end up as slaves taken back to the victorious country.

There were no “laws of war” that restricted conquests by the Egyptians and Romans in ancient times between 600 and 30 B.C. No laws limited the Mongol invasions of Europe in the 13th century or the European colonial invasions of Latin American, African and Asian societies in the 18th through 20th centuries.

Even as recently as the 1940s, during World War II, U.S. and U.K. forces killed hundreds of thousands of people in their bombings of German and Japanese cities. Nazi Germany systematically murdered approximately 6 million Jews and others during the Holocaust.

When did war get laws?

There is no supreme world government that can create laws for all countries, so international law is formed by rules that countries agree to respect. These are called treaties.

In the 19th century, countries and many private groups worldwide began working to develop the laws of war.

Early treaties on war were meant primarily to protect soldiers from unnecessary pain and suffering. Countries agreed to stop using really dangerous weapons such as poison gas, for example. They also banned murdering wounded enemies and soldiers who tried to surrender, because those killings aren’t necessary to win a war.

Later, after the horrors of World War II, the laws of war were expanded to protect civilians.

Developing all these rules has taken well over a century. Nations agreed to them because everyone has a shared interest in limiting some of the worst aspects of how war is fought. The goal is to keep everyone caught up in war as safe as possible, while accepting that some innocent people will still die.

What are war crimes?

The rules of war are set out primarily in four treaties from 1949 called the Geneva Conventions. Every country in the world accepts these rules, which have been expanded several times in the years since.

The Geneva Conventions are very specific about what warring nations cannot do during an armed conflict. The things they cannot do are called war crimes.

Here is a partial list of war crimes:

• Deliberate killing that is not justified by a legitimate military objective.
• Torture.
• Inflicting severe harm on enemies.
• Taking hostages.
• Wounding or killing a soldier who has surrendered.
• Attacking civilians not participating in the conflict.
• Using certain prohibited weapons.
• Starving people as a weapon of war.

How are war crimes punished?

Most people generally agree that these are good rules and that warring countries should try to obey them. The problem is enforcement.

War crimes are committed not by entire countries but by individual people, such as soldiers who torture the captured enemy or destroy a family’s crops unnecessarily. Since individuals commit the crimes, individuals must be held responsible.

Many countries have laws stating what can and cannot be done during war. They generally reflect the rules of the Geneva Conventions. However, history shows that governments are often reluctant to prosecute their own soldiers for war crimes. Accusations of such crimes are often ignored, punished lightly or dismissed.

That’s why the International Criminal Court exists. In 1998, representatives from 160 countries met in Rome to create this world court, which can investigate, bring to trial and decide the guilt or innocence of individuals accused of war crimes and certain other international crimes.

“Justices,” Digital, Midjourney, 2025

Today, 124 countries have accepted the court’s authority. If war crimes are committed in these countries, the court can act. In 2014, for example, the head of a rebel force in the Democratic Republic of Congo was convicted of murder and deliberately attacking civilians; he was put in prison for 12 years.

However, several big and powerful countries have not consented to the authority of the International Criminal Court, including the United States, China and Russia. Many countries in which brutal wars have occurred also reject its powers, including Iraq, Israel, Syria, Sudan and Yemen. This limits its powers.

Additionally, the International Criminal Court has no international police force to arrest suspects. It relies on governments to detain people accused of war crimes and deliver them to the court.

Again, not all of them cooperate. National leaders have sometimes traveled abroad after International Criminal Court arrest warrants were issued against them and have not been arrested.

Finally, interpreting international law can be tricky.

It is a war crime to deliberately attack civilians, but countries at war with each other still bomb apartment buildings, hospitals and schools sometimes, claiming enemy forces are inside those buildings. If true, that could make the buildings legitimate military targets – though international law still requires militaries to do everything possible to minimize civilian casualties.

What next?

Right now, you may be thinking: If people aren’t punished for breaking the rules of war, do these rules even matter?

It’s a reasonable question. But consider this: Countries have had criminal laws against murder and robbery for thousands of years, yet these crimes are still committed. The concept of war crimes has been around for a much shorter time. It is not surprising that not all war criminals can be brought to justice, but I think the fact that most countries now agree that war crimes should be prohibited is important.

Plus, when war crimes are investigated and condemned, victims may feel that their suffering will not be forgotten. Even if no one is punished, proving a crime was committed has value.

International law isn’t easy to enforce, but at least most of the world now recognizes that even wars must have their limits.

Hurst Hannum, Professor of International Law, Fletcher School of Law & Diplomacy, Tufts University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Russia and Iran were major allies of Syria under the regime of President Bashar al-Assad until the totalitarian leader was ousted by rebels in early December.

The West is closely watching the new ruler’s actions, including the depth of any future ties with Tehran and Moscow.

“Syria cannot continue without relations with an important regional country like Iran,” Sharaa told Al Arabiya in a wide-ranging interview on December 29.

But relations “must be based on respect for the sovereignty of both countries and noninterference in the affairs of both countries,” he added.

Sharaa urged Tehran to rethink its regional policies and interventions and pointed out that opposition forces protected Iranian positions during the fighting to oust Assad, even though rebels knew Iran was a major backer of the president.

Sharaa said he had expected positive overtures from Iran following these actions but said they have not been forthcoming.

Sharaa, previously known by the nom de guerre Abu Muhammad al-Jolani, said that while he expects Moscow to withdraw its forces from Syria, he also spoke of “deep strategic interests” with the “second most powerful country in the world.”

“Ahmad al-Shara,” Digital, Dream / Dreamland v3/ Clip2Comic, 2024

“We don’t want Russia to exit Syria in a way that undermines its relationship with our country,” he told Al-Arabiya, without providing details.

“All of Syria’s arms are of Russian origin, and many power plants are managed by Russian experts…. We do not want Russia to leave Syria in the way that some wish,” he said.

According to flight data analyzed by RFE/RL, Russia is reducing its military footprint in Syria and shifting some of its assets from the Middle Eastern country to Africa.

To offset the potential loss of its air base in Hmeimim and naval base in Tartus, Russia appears to be increasing its presence in Libya, Mali, and Sudan, although experts say the loss of Syrian bases is a major blow to the Kremlin.

Meanwhile, Sharaa also said that organizing elections in the country could take up to four years and that a new constitution could require three years to be finalized.

The leader expressed hope that the new U.S. administration under Donald Trump — set to take office on January 20 — would lift sanctions on his country.

“We hope the incoming Trump administration will not follow the policy of its predecessor,” Sharaa said.

The rebels who ousted Assad were led by Sharaa’s Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) Islamist group, a U.S. and EU-designated terrorist organization.

Sharaa has publicly pledged to adopt moderate policies regarding women’s rights, national reconciliation, and relations with the international community, although world leaders say they remain wary of the new rulers pending concrete actions.

RFE/RL

Copyright (c)2024 RFE/RL, Inc. Used with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty

( RFE/RL ) – Russia is reducing its military footprint in Syria and shifting some of its assets from the Middle Eastern country to Africa, flight data and satellite imagery analyzed by RFE/RL appear to show.

Moscow seems to have withdrawn a significant amount of military equipment from its bases in Syria since President Bashar al-Assad, Russia’s longtime ally, was ousted from power on December 8.

To offset the potential loss of its air base in Hmeimim and naval base in Tartus, Russia looks to be increasing its presence in Libya, Mali, and Sudan. But experts say the African countries are unlikely to be viable alternatives.

Still, flight data and satellite imagery suggest Russia is transferring some of its military assets from Syria to its facilities in Africa.

Losing its Syrian bases would be a major strategic setback for Russia, which has used the facilities to project its power across the Middle East and Africa.

Moscow has said it is still in negotiations with the new government in Damascus over the future of its military bases in Syria. But the significant movement of Russian military equipment suggests it is preparing for a partial or full withdrawal from Syria, experts say.

Russia has several bases in Africa, where Moscow has boosted its military footprint in recent years. They include facilities in Libya, Mali, the Central African Republic, and Sudan.

Moving a significant amount of military equipment from Russia or Syria to Africa, however, will be costly, experts say.

File Photo by Gala Iv on Unsplash

“To carry out important operations Russia will have to pay a lot of money. Both for its air and sea fleet,” said Roland Marchal of the Paris Institute of Political Studies.

It would also be more difficult to fly cargo jets all the way from Russia to Africa loaded down with heavy weaponry, with refueling a major challenge. That also assumes Russia can secure overflight rights from Turkey, a regional rival.

Despite the costs, Russia appears to be moving some of its military assets from Syria to bases in Mali and Libya, which is home to an estimated 1,200 Russian mercenaries.

Satellite images also show increased activity in Russia’s naval base in Sudan. Moscow signed a deal to open a base on the African country’s Red Sea coast in 2019. It is unclear if the naval facility is fully operational.

Flight analysis shows Moscow sending cargo planes to Libya, with some coming from Syria and others from Russia.

There has been heavier than usual traffic in recent weeks between Russia and Libya, although it is unclear what the planes were transporting.

A Russian Ilyushin Il-76 jet — a heavy-lift workhorse cargo plane — flew from Russia to Libya on December 12, went back to Russia a day later, and immediately flew back to Libya, flight records show.

Flight records from December 16 also show an Ilyushin Il-76 jet flying from Russia to Moscow’s military base in Bamako in Mali. The jet returned to Russia the next day.

Cargo planes flying from Russia to Libya used the air space of Turkey, a NATO member.

The Washington-based Institute for the Study of War said on December 12 that Russia’s logistical challenges in reaching Africa “will increase the political leverage that Turkey will hold over Russia.”

The think tank also mentioned the “practical costs of supporting Russian operations in Africa if more cargo planes stop to refuel at other airfields.”

Mark Krutov of RFE/RL’s Russian Service contributed to this report.

Maja Zivanovic

(The Conversation) – The lightning-fast collapse of the Assad regime in Syria has sent shock waves across the Middle East. The disposal of the dictator whose family had ruled the country with an iron fist for more than half a century has triggered a potentially seismic shift in the balance of power in the region.

But there are also important repercussions beyond Syria and its neighbourhood – with Russia one of the more significantly affected powers.

Back in 2015, Assad’s regime had been on the brink of collapse. It was saved by a Russian intervention – with support from Iran and Hezbollah. Launched in the context of a growing threat from Islamic State, Russia enabled Assad’s regime to push back other rebel forces as well.

Over the years that followed, it enabled Assad to consolidate control over the capital, other key cities, and in particular the coastal region where Russia had two military bases.

The future of these bases is now uncertain. The Russian naval base in Tartus – which dates back to Soviet times – as well as an air base at Khmeimim, established south-east of Latakia in 2015, were vital assets for Russia to project military force in the Mediterranean sea and bolster the Kremlin’s claim to Russian great-power status.

Given the importance of the bases for Russia and the significant investments made over the years in propping the regime, Assad’s fall reflects badly on Russia’s capabilities to assert credible influence on the global stage.

Even if Russia somehow manages to negotiate a deal with Syria’s new rulers over the future of its military bases, the fact that Moscow was unable to save an important ally like Assad exposes critical weaknesses in Russia’s ability to act, rather than just talk, like a great power.

There are clear intelligence failures that either missed or misinterpreted the build-up of anti-Assad forces by Qatar, and Turkey’s tacit support of this. These failures were then compounded by diminished Russian military assets in Syria and an inability to reinforce them at short notice. This is, of course, due to Russia’s ongoing war against Ukraine.

The depletion of the military capabilities of two other Kremlin allies in the region — Iran and Hezbollah — further compounded the difficulties for Assad and exacerbated the effect of Russia’s overstretch. This also raises the question of whether Russia strategically misjudged the situation and underestimated its vulnerability in Syria.

But even more so, it highlights Russia’s own dependence on allies who do not simply acquiesce to Moscow’s demands — as Assad did when he provided Russia its military bases — but who actively support a wannabe great power that lacks some of the means to assert its claimed status – as Iran and Hezbollah did in 2015.

Where’s China?

Missing from this equation is China. While Beijing had sided with Assad after the start of the Syrian civil war, this support was mostly of the rhetorical kind. It was mainly aimed at preventing a UN-backed, western-led intervention akin to the one in Libya that led to the fall of Gaddafi and has plunged the country into chaos ever since.

A high-profile visit of Assad to China in September 2023 resulted in a strategic partnership agreement. This seemed to signal another step towards the rehabilitation of the Syrian regime, in Beijing’s eyes at least. But when push came to shove and Assad’s rule was under severe threat, China did nothing to save him.

This raises an important question about Chinese judgment of the Syrian regime and the evolving crisis. But there is also a broader point here regarding Russian great-power ambitions.

“Diminished,” Dream / Dreamland v3, 2024

For all the talk of a limitless partnership between Moscow and Beijing, China ultimately did nothing to save Russia from an embarrassing defeat in Syria. Where Russia needed a military presence to bolster its claims to great-power status, Chinese interests in the Middle East are primarily about economic opportunity and the perceived threat of Islamic fundamentalist terrorism.

This has clearly limited Beijing’s appetite to become more involved, let alone to bail out Assad.

Putin diminished

Russia’s position in the Middle East now is in peril. Moscow has lost a key ally in Assad. Its other main allies, Iran and Hezbollah, are significantly weakened. Israel and Turkey, with whom the Kremlin has not had easy relations over the past few years, have been strengthened.

This exposes the hollowness of Russian claims to great-power status. It is also likely to further diminish Russian prestige and the standing that it has in the eyes of other partners – whether they are China or North Korea, members of the Brics, or countries in the global south that Russia has recently tried to woo.

The consequences of that for Ukraine – arguably the main source of Russia’s over-stretch – are likely to be ambivalent. On the one hand, the ease with which Assad was deposed demonstrates that Russia is not invincible and that its support of brutal dictatorships has limits. On the other hand, there should be no expectation of anything but Russia doubling down in Ukraine.

Putin needs a success that restores domestic and international confidence in him —and fast. After all, Donald Trump does not like losers.

Stefan Wolff, Professor of International Security, University of Birmingham

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Over the following decade, Russia’s military intervention in Syria appeared to contradict Obama’s assessment. Russia’s involvement in Syria during this period was often cited as evidence of its great power status. Nevertheless, the collapse of Bashar al-Assad’s regime on December 7, 2024, highlights the limits of Russian power and its declining ability to exert influence on a global scale.

While Russia’s relations with its neighbors have frequently been strained owing to competition for influence and unresolved issues from the Soviet era, its involvement in Syria—a country neither adjacent to Russia nor part of the post-Soviet sphere—was significant. Russia’s direct engagement in the Syrian conflict marked a major shift in its Middle Eastern policy and was perceived as a challenge to the U.S. presence in the region. As Fadi Elhusseini noted, “Even at the peak of the Cold War, Russia’s (either the Soviet Union’s or the Russian Federation’s) role was limited to sending arms, military advisors, and logistical support to its Arab allies. This intervention represented a dramatic escalation in Russia’s involvement and signaled an extraordinary military engagement.”

The establishment of a military base in Latakia in 2015 represented Russia’s first substantial intervention outside its post-Soviet sphere of influence. This action not only sustained Assad’s regime for nearly a decade but also positioned Moscow as a key actor in the Middle East. Russia’s airstrikes and military presence forced Western powers, including NATO, to navigate the Syrian conflict cautiously. At the time, this was celebrated as a reassertion of Russia’s standing as a global power.

“Small Frog in Large Pond,” Digital, Dream / Dreamland v3, 2024

The events of early December 2024, however, have undermined this perception. A series of swift offensives by opposition forces reclaimed key cities, including Aleppo, Homs, and Hama, culminating in the fall of Damascus. Despite the continued presence of Russia’s military base, its inability—or reluctance—to prevent Assad’s downfall raises significant questions about the efficacy of its deterrence strategy. The Syrian opposition, while avoiding direct confrontation with Russian forces, demonstrated that Moscow’s influence in the region is far from absolute.

The implications of these developments are profound. For years, Russian military bases, like those of the United States, were regarded as a guarantee of security for allied regimes. However, the fall of Assad challenges the perception of Russian deterrence. Unlike the United States, which operates over 800 military bases worldwide and has a longstanding history of protecting client states, Russia’s military footprint is far more limited in scope and effectiveness. During the Cold War, U.S. bases served as a counterbalance to Soviet expansion, and they remain a cornerstone in countering both Russian and Chinese influence today. Russia’s failure in Syria suggests that its bases no longer function as a comparable strategic asset.

Russia may attempt to salvage its position through diplomacy or by leveraging its remaining influence in Syria. It could even claim to have facilitated the transition to protect its own interests. Yet, such efforts are unlikely to conceal the reality that Moscow failed to sustain Assad’s rule despite years of military and political investment. This failure will undoubtedly prompt potential allies to reconsider seeking security assurances from Russia, further diminishing its credibility as a global power.

A hallmark of great power status is the ability to operate effectively on multiple fronts. While Russia remains heavily engaged in the war in Ukraine, a true global power would possess the capability to uphold commitments in other regions simultaneously. Moscow’s inability to do so in Syria reinforces Obama’s 2014 characterization: Russia is not a global power but rather a regional one, capable of exerting influence in its immediate vicinity but falling short of broader global ambitions.

The fall of Assad serves as a stark reminder of the limitations of Russian power. It challenges the assumption that military bases alone can ensure sustained influence and raises doubts about Moscow’s ability to act as a reliable guarantor of stability. As the situation in Damascus stabilizes, the world is left to reassess the extent of Russia’s role in shaping global affairs. Indeed, this development may serve as a cautionary message for nations whose security heavily depends on the military bases of foreign patrons -— including those allied with the United States.

Damascus is the prize.

Damascus has an Achilles heel. It is landlocked, deep in the south of the country, and far from the port of Latakia that supplies it.

The other nearby port, Beirut in Lebanon, is a shadow of its former self, and the Lebanese government has closed the borders with Syria. You could get some things in from Iraq by truck, but the Kurdish-led, U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces have taken all of Deir al-Zor province and the checkpoint of Al-Bukamal on the Syrian side of the Syria-Iraq border has fallen to the SDF.

Food, weapons and ammunition have to come from Latakia. The truck route from Latakia down to Damascus passes through Homs.

The fundamentalist Sunni Arab militia, the HTS (Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham or the Levant Liberation Council), led by a former al-Qaeda affiliate, had Idlib. In the past week it has taken Aleppo and then moved south to take Hama. (These territories are green in the below map from “X”.)

Homs is next. If the Tahrir al-Sham takes Homs, it can cut Damascus off from resupply.

Game over.

This is the current latest status map of the Civil War in #Syria

Red: Assad’s army, the official army of Syria, aka SAA
Green: all the sub rebels groups
Yellow: kurds
[Hashtags (ignore): #Pushpa2TheRule    #SpotifyWrapped #pragyanagra #Bitcoin ] pic.twitter.com/SCnG7pUmqD

— The_Airplane_Master (@plane12429) December 7, 2024

In 2012-2013, when the fundamentalist Sunni rebels, including al-Qaeda, had taken Homs, they were pushed back out by the intervention of Iran and the Lebanese Shiite Hezbollah militia alongside the remnants of the Syrian Arab Army. The fundamentalist hopes of cutting off Damascus were dashed.

In 2015, the Sunni fundamentalists in Idlib in the north of Syria tried out a Plan B, which was simply to take Latakia itself. That would also cut off Damascus from resupply.

Iran and Hezbollah could not muster the sheer manpower to stop this from happening. The Sunni fundamentalists were getting backing from Turkey and the Gulf, and the Syrian Arab Army had seen two-thirds of its troops (mostly themselves Sunni) desert. Hezbollah probably only really has 25,000 fighters despite exaggerated claims, and they were spread thin in Syria and in Lebanon itself. (Lebanon is a small country of maybe 4.5 million citizens, and only a third or so are Shiites, and only half of Shiites support Hezbollah. So it just isn’t that large an organization).

So it is alleged that in the summer of 2015, the head of Iran’s Qods Force, the special operations unit of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, flew to Moscow and informed Russian President Vladimir Putin that Iran had done all it could. If Russia did not want to see Syria fall to the Sunni fundamentalists led by al-Qaeda — with all its implications for nearby Russian Muslim-majority areas such as Chechnya — then Putin would have to intervene.

On September 30, 2015, Russia started flying air support missions in Syria for the Syrian Arab Army, Hezbollah, and Iraqi Shiite militias, against the Sunni fundamentalists. This combination of ground forces and Russian air support succeeded in defeating the rebels and bottling them up in Idlib in the north.

Therefore, in some ways the fate of the al-Assad government was sealed when President Putin invaded Ukraine on February 24, 2022. The Russian Aerospace Forces became bogged down in the Ukraine War and were simply not available in the same way for deployment in Syria.

The Russian Federation is pulling up stakes and leaving Syria. The embassy in Damascus said on Telegram Friday that owing to the “difficult” military and political situation in Syria, Russian citizens living in the Syrian Arab Republic were encouraged to take the next commercial flight out of the country. (H/t BBC Monitoring). BBC Monitoring also reports that Russian military bloggers had warned this week that if Homs fell, Russia would lose its military bases in Syria.

Homs fell.

“Running Away,” Digital, Dream / Dreamland v3, 2024

Now veteran Iran correspondent Farnaz Fassihi reports at NYT that Iran is withdrawing from Syria.

I suggest that Tehran has no choice but to leave Syria. Without Russian air support, the couple thousand Revolutionary Guards and the remnants of the Hezbollah forces in the country, along with the tattered Syrian Arab Army, cannot hope to defeat the rebels now any more than they could in 2015. The situation is even worse than in in the summer of 2015, since Hezbollah’s forces have been devastated by the recent war with Israel, which saw their commanders blinded or crippled by Israeli booby traps and many of their tactical personnel killed or wounded in battle. Moreover, if Hezbollah attempted to deploy in a big way in Syria now, without Russian air support, Israel would hit them. Russia had offered them their only air defense umbrella, and then only as long as they were doing Russian bidding in targeting the Sunni fundamentalists.

Russian air power made the difference then. Without it, the Syrian government and its few allies are doomed.

The poor performance of the Syrian Arab Army troops at Aleppo shows again that for foreign patrons to stand up a friendly government and back a client army can often produce a Potemkin village, a facade with no reality behind it, which easily falls to pieces under some concerted pressure. This sort of disintegration afflicted the Iraqi National Army built by George W. Bush, the Afghanistan National Army built by Bush, Obama and Trump, and now the Syrian Arab Army stood up by Vladimir Putin and Iran’s Revolutionary Guards.

Indeed, a commander of the Qods Force (the special operations overseas branch of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps) and senior adviser to Syria, Brig Gen Kioumars Pourhashemi, was killed in the course of the HTS attack in northern Syria. Most Iranian media is in denial about the fall of Aleppo.

The Syrian Baath government of Bashar al-Assad is as guilty of genocide as the Israeli government, having tortured to death some 10,000 people and having killed hundreds of thousands of innocents in its war to crush the Sunni rebel forces in the teens of the last decade. The rebel HTS also has innocent blood on its hands.

The regional meaning of these events differs according to the lens through which they are viewed.

If we view the victors as Sunni Muslim fundamentalist extremists, their ascendancy will be welcomed by President Tayyip Erdogan in Turkey, who indeed may have a hand in the campaign, since he has been a patron of HTS. Erdogan has championed groups as diverse as the Muslim Brotherhood and the HTS, and while he is not himself a fundamentalist, he enjoys the soft power that accrues to Turkey from his support of groups such as Hamas, MB and others. The Turkish press is speculating that the four million Syrian Sunni refugees in Turkey might be able to return home if the Sunni rebels come to power. Likewise, Qatar, a regional champion of political pluralism that makes a place for political Islam, is a severe critic of the Baathist dictatorship, which wielded its secularism as a political cudgel. Most Sunni Muslims in Lebanon are anything but fundamentalists, but on the whole they will likely be happy about the collapse of the Baath, which they view as a totalitarian Stalinist knock-off in the hands of the Alawite Shiite sect, which discriminates against Sunnis. They are not wrong.

In contrast, the Christians both in Syria (5% of the population) and Lebanon (about a fourth of the population) are terrified today, given HTS’s past harsh record regarding religious minorities.

From the point of view of the region’s nationalist, secular-leaning regimes, this movement is an unwelcome resurgence of radical political Islam. That is how it will be viewed by President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi in Egypt, who has spent a decade crushing the Muslim Brotherhood, by Qais Saied of Tunisia, by Khalifah Hiftar, the strongman of East Libya, by President Abdelmadjid Tebboune of Algeria, by Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestine Authority, by the Democratic Union Party of the Syrian Kurds, and by Mohammed Bin Zayed of the United Arab Emirates. Bin Zayed has spent his oil money trying to put down Muslim fundamentalists around the region, including in Libya and Sudan, and he is generally on the same page as al-Sisi. Bin Zayed spent some of Saturday on the phone with Bashar al-Assad discussing the events. As noted above, outside the region these events will alarm Russian President Vladimir Putin, who had shored up the al-Assad regime beginning in 2015 with air support from the Russian Aerospace Forces.

From the point of view of those countries that feel threatened by Iran, the development will be greeted as a further sign of Tehran’s enfeeblement. Israel has humiliated Iran and its ally, Hezbollah, during the past four months, which may have emboldened the HTS to make this move. Bashar al-Assad’s Syria is one of Iran’s few firm allies in the Arab world, along with the Houthi government of Yemen, the Shiite-led government of Iraq, and the Hezbollah-influenced government of Lebanon. Syria is a key transit point for Iranian shipments of rockets and other munitions to Lebanon’s Hezbollah, and if it falls then Hezbollah– already on the ropes after Israel’s recent campaign against it — could face a bleak future.

These anti-Iran forces include Israel, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Azerbaijan, and, outside the region, the United States. All are delighted at the news. In 2012-2016 during the Syrian Civil War, the US CIA funneled billions to 40 Sunni Muslim fundamentalist groups in Syria, using Saudi intelligence as the pass-through. These groups were mainly Muslim Brotherhood affiliates and were vetted as “not al-Qaeda.” They were, however, close battlefield allies of the Succor Front (Jabhat al-Nusra), the leading organization in the current HTS or Levant Liberation Council. So the CIA was again de facto allied with al-Qaeda in Syria, as it had been in Afghanistan in the 1980s.

The prospect of the fall of Baathist Syria, however, is not without peril for these same countries, if al-Qaeda-adjacent forces come out on top. Would a wave of fundamentalist fervor in the region really benefit the bon vivant Mohammed Bin Salman of Saudi Arabia? Will the 800 US troops at Tanf in southeast Syria be threatened by the victorious HTS, given that those troops are in part a support for the leftist Kurds of Syria’s northeast that have fought it on many occasions?

Indeed, if the Jabhat al-Nusra or Succor Front, an al-Qaeda offshoot, comes out on top in the new power struggle, even Turkey may come to regret these events. Erdogan has consistently underestimated the danger of groups such as HTS and ISIL, which have their origins in al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia and which split from one another in 2012. Despite its insouciance Turkey has been hit by ISIL bombings on several occasions.

And, will Sunni fundamentalist militias marching into Damascus really be a good thing for the current extremist government of Israel, engaged in a genocidal campaign against Gaza that is justified as an attempt to exterminate Sunni fundamentalist militias? The far right Likud Party’s theory that chaos in its neighbors is good for Israel may be tested.

——

Bonus Video:

Channel 4 News: “Syrian rebels capture most of Aleppo in sudden offensive”

To end civilian suffering in Ukraine and Gaza, the UK must quit its double standards and apply international humanitarian law equally

In March 2003, President George W. Bush invaded Iraq on the pretext that Saddam Hussain had weapons of mass destruction. No such weapons were ever found, and President Bush lied to the world and the US. This war cost the lives of 4,485 Americans and the lives of 500,000 Iraqis. Moreover, this act of aggression cost the US upwards of two trillion dollars and, to boot, we are still paying the price today. How so? This war left a vacuum in Iraq so that Saddam’s generals formed Daesh or I.S.I.S. a terrorist group that is still active today..

To make matters worse, President Bush had the audacity to say that “Russia’s attack on Ukraine constitutes the gravest security crisis on the European continent since WW II.” Juan Cole notes that George W. Bush laid the foundation in Ukraine by destroying US credibility on enemy intentions and capabilities.

Before Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine, there existed ongoing talks among diplomats from NATO, including the US, and Russia. Putin regarded the dissolution of the USSR as “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century.” At a speech in 2021 Putin remarked that he was “extremely concerned about the deployment of elements of the US global defense system close to Russia.

Al Jazeera English Video: “Is the risk of direct conflict between Russia & NATO increasing? | Inside Story”

Antony Blinken, Secretary of State, did not have the wisdom to discuss with Putin the removal of anti-ballistic Tomahawk missiles from Romania, Poland and other NATO countries. Instead, Blinken, taking orders from Biden, discussed “confidence building measures” (CBMs) between Russia and NATO. This angered Putin beyond words.

Presently, we have the NATO allies in D.C., led by President Biden, who are like babes in the woods. There’s no way the Ukraine can overtake Russia. Consider this. First, for Russia’s core agenda NATO’s expansion is more important for Putin than the territorial conquest of Ukraine. Second, when Putin addressed the meeting of the Russian Defense Ministry Board in Moscow, Dec. 21, 2022, he said that “We will continue maintaining and improving the combat readiness of the nuclear triad. It is the main guarantee that our sovereignty and territorial integrity, strategic parity, and the general balance of forces in the world are preserved.”

Russia has developed the K-329 Belgorod nuclear-powered submarine able to carry six-Poseidon nuclear torpedoes. Its innovative design made it the largest submarine in the Russian Navy, circa 584 feet long and about 49 feet across.    The Belgorod submarine tested the mass-dimensional model of the Poseidon torpedo in January, 2023. The Poseidon is an intercontinental, nuclear-powered, nuclear armed autonomous torpedo 24 meters in length and a diameter of 1.6 meters. The Poseidon can travel at a speed of 185 kilometers that makes it unstoppable. It’s a strategic nuclear torpedo weapon that can target naval bases and coastal cities like New York, Los Angeles, and Miami. 

On July 10^th, 2024, the US and Germany announced they would begin “episodic deployments” of the long-range Multi Domain Task Force in Germany starting in 2026. Also, conventional long-range fire units will include SM-6 Tomahawk and developmental hypersonic weapons according to a joint statement of Germany and the US. The US also stated that F-16 fighter jets are headed to Ukraine while at the same time a dozen Ukrainian pilots are learning how to fly these planes in Arizona. NATO and the US are playing with fire and they are asking for a nuclear war with Russia. In my view, the only way NATO can avoid a nuclear war with Russia is to roll back NATO expansion entirely.