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Syrian government falls in end to 50-year rule of Assad family

apnews.com

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Re: Syrian government falls in end to 50-year rule of Assad family

#211

Post by jajko »

j_maffe wrote: post #170
lukan wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Sure, it can always be worse" Yes, I would argue the islamic state was indeed worse. And so far I see nothing preventing them or a similar force taking hold again. I mean turkey is the moderating factor here and turkey under Erdogan has gone the authorian islamic way since a while.

Drawing analogies between Erdogan and the IS is wild.

Well his son made hundreds of millions / billions from selling directly oil from ISIS held lands, since nobody else wanted to deal with them. His daughter personally built and supervised hospitals in Turkey specifically built to treat wounded ISIS fighters. These are verified public informations, although they obviously deny it.

Erdogan is as much pro-ISIS as one can be. Maybe just a political game during complex conflict to fight against US-supported kurds at all costs, maybe not. We don't know.

Re: Syrian government falls in end to 50-year rule of Assad family

#212

Post by lukan »

sabbaticaldev wrote: post #204
lukan wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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?

10 years ago. They were a problem because they used American cars, clothes, weapons and media.

Ah, so you claim they were a american controlled group?

While the US spend lots of effort on hunting them?

Keeping the flames high, to play firemen?

I don't think that there was a need of more flames, for that theory to be plausible. Occasionally some western weapons likely did found their ways towards IS as well, but they rather captured the bulk of it. Or do you have other sources?

Re: Syrian government falls in end to 50-year rule of Assad family

#213

Post by postingawayonhn »

aprilthird2021 wrote: post #163
Simon_ORourke wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> * how will Turkey negotiate with this facing the pkk and Kurdish nationalism? Hopefully Turkey does the honorable thing, recognizes an independent Kurdish state and apologizes for decades of oppression, murder and state-sanction terror? Unlikely though.

It's surprising to me that many here in HN see Turkey as the state terrorists over the Kurds, when the main party of Kurdish independence from Turkey is a literal terrorist group who committed a terrorist attack killing innocent civilians in Turkey just over one month ago! It feels to me that when HNers agree that a people should be sovereign (the Kurds), they ignore the terrorism. When they don't agree (the Palestin…

> a literal terrorist group who committed a terrorist attack killing innocent civilians in Turkey just over one month ago!

Not condoning the attack, but it's also not that black and white. It was an attack on a defense contractor.

Re: Syrian government falls in end to 50-year rule of Assad family

#214

Post by jampekka »

j_maffe wrote: post #169
MoreMoore wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

> There's not even any hope of it. I love it when online commenters display more confidence in their opinions than experts in the field. Really shows how much value their opinion has.

What experts expect Syria to get better? The rebels are led by a rebranding of al-Nusra Front which is widely designated as an islamist terrorist organization.

Re: Syrian government falls in end to 50-year rule of Assad family

#215

Post by wiseowise »

TheAlchemist wrote: post #175
wiseowise wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All of this is irrelevant if Ukraine crumbles first.

Same goes for Russia, and is all seems pretty relevant. The article seem to indicate that it's much more sustainable for the West than for Russia.

It’s not sustainable for Ukraine.

Re: Syrian government falls in end to 50-year rule of Assad family

#216

Post by lm28469 »

20kleagues wrote: post #111

I would love to hear what the Syrian hacker news community has to say about this. I’m reading so many comments here but not sure how many are from actual Syrians who probably have a deeper understanding and hope/fears about what comes next.

That's your daily reminder that HN is a bubble in a bubble

Re: Syrian government falls in end to 50-year rule of Assad family

#217

Post by cnlevy »

cm2187 wrote: post #190
postingawayonhn wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Well, you haven't read it properly then:

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abu_Mohammad_al-Julani]

> When asked about al-Nusra's plans for a post-war Syria, al-Julani stated that after the war ended, all factions in the country would be consulted before anyone considered "establishing an Islamic state". He also mentioned that al-Nusra would not target the country's Alawite minority, despite their support for the Assad regime.

Idlib governance

> In response to the unrest, al-Julani made several concessions. He released hundreds of detainees from a previous summer's security operation, including his former deputy Abu Maria al-Qahtani, who had been arrested along with 300 others in a purge of his movement. He also promised local elections and increased employment opportunities for displaced persons, while warning protesters against what he termed treachery. [38]

Re: Syrian government falls in end to 50-year rule of Assad family

#218

Post by cladopa »

theowss wrote: post #180
bbor wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any regime change that involves freeing many thousands of women and children from prisons notorious for torture and mass-executions seems like a decent one! The future is uncertain, but it's not like "everyone chills out and gets into their hobbies" was an option -- it's gotta be one of the most war-ravaged places to exist in human history.

[flagged]

Please don't use the word "liberal" to refer to something outside the US, because the concept of "liberal" only exist there.

This concept of neoMarxist sympathies of educated people(white collar workers) in urban areas and Ivy Leagues, that focus extremely on sex and wokeism, that concept only exist in the US.

In Europe "liberal" means he who follows economic liberalism, that is being part of the "right".

In Asia and Middle East is even weirder. Iran is probably the place of Earth that had more Empires in its History. Nationalism, ethnic identity and religion is way more important than anything else, specially on Sha's time. If you call communists people you are referring to Chinese land type of communism instead of industrial, very different from Europe or the US one.

I had a great time skiing on Iran back on the day.

Re: Syrian government falls in end to 50-year rule of Assad family

#219

Post by postingawayonhn »

brabel wrote: post #101
postingawayonhn wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have heard this argument before, but I'm not particularly convinced. Either way pretty much all their pre-war modern equipment has already been destroyed. Now they're fighting with really old stuff like T-55s pulled from storage, newly manufactured equipment, or whatever North Korea thinks it can spare.

Your impression of Russia's war capabilities is vastly mistaken. "According to Joseph Fitsanakis, professor of intelligence and security studies at Coastal Carolina University, “Russian military production is currently outpacing that of the US and all of NATO member states combined. This may be hard to believe, but Russia is obligated to do it if it is going to outpace the support given to Ukraine." Source: https://w…

I partly agree, in that by drip feeding Ukraine supplies we have given Russia time to build up their production rates. And my earlier comment was disputing the idea that drip feeing the supplies was some kind of intentional strategy.

With regards to the broader claim that Russian production is outpacing that of the west. Yes, with artillery shells that's probably true, though we are continuing to ramp production. There aren't really any other areas though where a combination of western production + stock drawdowns couldn't supply Ukraine with greater quantities of material.

Re: Syrian government falls in end to 50-year rule of Assad family

#220

Post by lkramer »

MoreMoore wrote: post #155
guerrilla wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That could only be strange for him if he doesn't understand the structure of the war or he hasn't been following current events. Assad was only able to take back Syria with air support from Russia, ground support from Hezbollah and re-enforcement by Iran and other Iranian aligned groups in Syria. Russia is busy and drained of resources because of its misadventure in Ukraine, Hezbollah is reeling from it's shocking lo…

> That could only be strange for him if he doesn't understand the structure of the war or he hasn't been following current events. Maybe he doesn't. There's nothing wrong with that. It feels surreal to me and like it came out of nowhere. I'm also sort of frustrated that none of the coverage or comments I see go into how this happened or what lead to it. Nobody is trying to figure out or explain what's actually going…

I feel this BBC article covers it pretty well: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c99x0l1d432o
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