201–210 of 530 posts
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Does this sound like ISIS to you: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Psg2MYoN1FU Yes, we should be cautious and skeptical, but the views currently being expressed by HTS are fairly moderate.
There is nothing in his wiki bio that suggests moderation.
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Assad wasn’t really a stabilizing force holding back worse players, he was a desperate despot just barely holding on to power thanks to a proxy war. Now the rest of the parties have a real chance to establishing a governing coalition. Syria has always been relatively secular and the rhetoric coming from the rebel side is in marked contrast to the usual pattern in the region. The most extremist group involved HTS has…
Saddam Hussein was a brutal despot who also kept his own country’s factions from waging war on one another. It didn’t turn out well when we took him off the board.
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Slavery was common place during the Gaddafi era as well.
American education tends to concentrate on American history of slavery, so many American are ignorant about just how widespread slavery was/is in the Islamic world and how many Muslims until today consider it a regular institution explicitly endorsed by God. I certainly wouldn't like to be a black manual worker in any Arab country. Even if you aren't a formally legally enslaved person, you will be treated as one.
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What are you trying to state? There's a small number of citizen IS supporters and they're now free, along with all others who showed opposition to the regime. Ok. So what? Please don't use a general understanding of the patterns in the region to extrapolate wild takes when you don't know the specifics of each country and their people. Syrians are not Afghans are not Libyans are not whatever, as much as the west would…
"There's a small number of citizen IS supporters and they're now free" If their numbers are so small, why was the IS a global problem then, a couple of years ago?
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Anything that weakens Iran and its proxies is good news. They‘ve been the main reason for instability in the region. The cutting of supply routes to Hezbollah is another nail in the coffin for a militia that‘s kept Lebanon from eventually becoming a functional state, instead keeping it in perpetual war or near-war with Israel, which only serves Iran and the people Iran supports financially. Iran has torpedoed any att…
How do people here think an Islamist government will be also anti-Iran? They have 99% of the same goals with Assad out of the picture. There's a ton of other wrong in your comment (as if Hezbollah, alone, hindered Lebanon from being a functional state and not the decades of war and brutal massacres of their civilians), but let's focus on the main thing.
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Is a secular dictatorship that tortures its opponents any better than a theocracy that tortures its opponents? If your balls are getting crushed by the secret police, does it really matter if they do so in the name of Allah or Assad? I am as secular as they come, but I see no difference here. The root problem for me is the tyranny itself, and not its particular ideological flavor.
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>The commander of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, Abu Mohammed al-Julani, says all state institutions will remain under the supervision of al-Assad’s prime minister until they are handed over officially. Pretty unusual for a terrorist group
- It is strictly forbidden to fire bullets into the air under any circumstances, as it causes panic among civilians and endangers the lives of the innocent.
- It is forbidden to tamper with public institutions and property, as they are the rightful property of the people. It is our duty to protect and preserve them and help develop them.
- It is forbidden to encroach upon or harm any private property in any form
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Assad wasn’t really a stabilizing force holding back worse players, he was a desperate despot just barely holding on to power thanks to a proxy war. Now the rest of the parties have a real chance to establishing a governing coalition. Syria has always been relatively secular and the rhetoric coming from the rebel side is in marked contrast to the usual pattern in the region. The most extremist group involved HTS has…
Saddam Hussein was a brutal despot who also kept his own country’s factions from waging war on one another. It didn’t turn out well when we took him off the board.
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There is nothing in his wiki bio that suggests moderation.
I provided the link to hear it from the horses mouth. I'm not saying he's some wonderful person, but HTS's current agenda and recent actions are generally positive.
Reminds me of what we were told of the talibans when Biden was trying to hand them over the country. "They are not the same talibans", "they want to be a good world citizen", etc. Well that didn't age well.
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Assad wasn’t really a stabilizing force holding back worse players, he was a desperate despot just barely holding on to power thanks to a proxy war. Now the rest of the parties have a real chance to establishing a governing coalition. Syria has always been relatively secular and the rhetoric coming from the rebel side is in marked contrast to the usual pattern in the region. The most extremist group involved HTS has…
It's naive to think that peace and stability will suddenly prevail in Syria. The situation will likely follow the Libya model: total chaos, worse than when Gaddafi ruled. HTS are wolves in sheep's clothing, and they wear this disguise only to convince the world that there is no need to form another anti-terrorist coalition. They learned lessons from the collapse of ISIS. All the organizations that once had a common e…
Regardless, HTS isn’t the group that captured the capital so I don’t know why everyone is so focused on them right now. They got the ball rolling with their November 27 offensive and captured Hama but they’re still restricted to the northern provinces.
While on the topic of ISIS, I don’t think it’s the rebels we should be worried about. ISIS would never have become what it was without the former Ba’athist officers from Saddam’s regime building out its command structure and military. It’s the disaffected Ba’athists from Assad’s regime that we should be worried about.