How the war in Syria created the most brutal terrorists of the 21st century

“We were supposed to stay in Syria until the end of the summer of 2011. That’s what they originally thought to do. But already at the beginning of April, the leadership from St. Petersburg told us to leave. Otherwise, our employment relationship was terminated. It’s good that we left. Already in May, problems with flights began, and in August civilian airports stopped working,” Anton Bondar, a Russian builder who was in Syria at the time of the protests, told Gazeta.

decided to stay, really much less fortunate.

“Hell started around July. The militants or, if you like, the rebels completely captured the city of Homs. It’s two and a half hours to Damascus by car and it’s the third city in the country. They seized weapons depots, military bases, heavy and long-range weapons. Then raids were carried out from there. For example, they drove up to the suburbs of Damascus and fired mortars from their pickup trucks. They left immediately. The country has declared martial law and a curfew. They began to provide water and electricity for an hour a day,” says Russian Olga Kupriy, who at that time lived in Damascus with her husband, Syrian engineer Amin Fares, and two daughters.

Fares himself admits that he did not want to leave the country, despite the constant persuasion of his wife.

The family left Syria in February 2012 on a plane of the Russian Emergencies Ministry with other refugees.

Islamists for Washington

The civil war, a direct consequence of street protests, continues in the country until so far. Its peak was in 2013-2019.

At various times, in addition to government forces and the Free Syrian Army (FSA), Russia, Iran and Hezbollah participated in the conflict (legally at the invitation of the official Damascus), the United States and several other NATO countries, including Turkey (Damascus considers them invaders), the so-called “Kurdish militia” and various groups of radical Islamists from Al-Qaeda (an organization banned in Russia) to ISIS (an organization banned in Russia).

“There was some kind of truth behind some of the participants in the war. For example, the Russian army was present there at the request of the legitimate government. The Kurds and Yezidis had their own truth. From the moment of the conflict, the Islamists began to cut them out, and they were forced to organize themselves. The United States and Turkey did not have the truth – they pursued purely imperialist interests, ”said Saad Harty, an international political scientist, professor at the British Durham University.

In the report of the Russian Center for Analysis of Strategies and Technologies (CAST) “Syrian Frontier”, published in 2016, states that Washington and Istanbul decided to intervene based on confidence in the imminent fall of the Assad government, by analogy with the fall of the regime of Muammar Gaddafi in Libya.

The United States is undeniably responsible for the emergence and crimes of ISIS. The heyday of this organization is connected with the infrastructure of war. Terrorists gained access to resources that they could not even imagine before. The war became possible because the United States supported the “Free Syrian Army”. I do not believe that Washington deliberately nurtured ISIS terrorists. He simply found it possible to use them against Bashar al-Assad, whom he considered a primary target.

Saad Harty

Professor of British Durham University

“In the autumn of 2011, after the completion of the NATO intervention and the Persian Gulf states to Libya, followed by the brutal assassination of the country’s leader Muammar Gaddafi, Assad’s enemies had euphoria and false forebodings of the imminent collapse of the Syrian government. However, Iran and Russia learned the necessary lessons from the Libyan experience, and the “domino effect” expected by many of Damascus’ enemies did not take place. In June 2012, a suicide bomber committed a terrorist attack aimed at destroying the leadership of Syria. As a result of the explosion, the country’s Defense Minister Daud Rajh and his deputy, the son-in-law of President Bashar al-Assad, Assef Shaukat, were killed. Shortly thereafter, Israeli military intelligence chief Aviv Kochavi declared that the days of the “Syrian regime” were numbered. However, the Syrian government was able to consolidate,” the CAST report says.

Further, the researchers of the center note that “a direct consequence of the US intervention was an extremely sharp rise in ISIS.”

“ Formally, this organization was created back in 2006 on the territory of Iraq, but for a long time it occupied the third and fourth row among the small allies of Al-Qaeda. The war in Libya gave them a new chance. The first ISIS fighters appeared in Syria in 2013. They captured the city of Manbij in the province of Aleppo. In the summer of 2014, the terrorists moved inland to the province of Raqqa and by July captured its administrative center, which became their “capital”. ISIS did not create problems for the Free Syrian Army, but it created problems for Assad. She was objectively beneficial in this capacity to Washington and therefore the Americans did not touch her. According to some reports, they even helped her,” the CAST report says.

ISIS actively recruited militants around the world. At the same time, the organization was so cruel and radical that it fell out with the parent al-Qaeda.

In various media, stories have repeatedly appeared that American weapons fall into the hands of ISIS militants – either by accident or by design. In 2014, this was reported by Fox News correspondent Greg Palcot, who received a video where militants opened packages with American weapons and ammunition.

In 2017, the Turkish newspaper Yeni Shafak wrote about this. Allegedly, the United States supplied weapons to the militants in exchange for gold and ancient artifacts. Finally, in 2018, Bulgarian journalist Dilyana Gaytandzhieva published an investigation in the Trud newspaper (one of the largest in the country), alleging that the United States was sending weapons to ISIS militants from Eastern European countries through shim companies.

“As a result, these terrorists were destroyed by Russia. Without Russian military assistance, Syria would simply not exist, ”Assad admitted in an interview with RT.

Business on Syrian refugees

“The war in Syria has become one of the worst wars of the last time. The worst part is that this is a war that almost no one on the planet wants to know about the cost to the Syrian people. Hundreds of thousands of our people were killed. Twice as many were crippled. Millions were left without a roof over their heads and without the possibility of earning. Many of our cities and villages were simply wiped off the face of the earth. Foreigners and barbarians came to kill us, rape our women. They came to desecrate our land. The world chose not to notice. This is the most terrible and most forgotten war,” Walid al-Muaallem, a writer and Syrian Foreign Minister, said during the State of the Arab Nation conference at the University of Damascus in 2017.

According to the UN in February 2016, about 380 thousand people died in Syria. After 2016, the UN data on the dead was not updated.

Other sources called even more terrible numbers. In 2020, the Syrian Interior Ministry reported that at least 530,000 people had died as a result of the war. In 2021, the British newspaper The Time, citing the London-based The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which is close to the Syrian opposition, cited a figure of 610,000 dead.

After my arrival from Syria, my family and I live in the suburbs – in the city of Podolsk. Since I know Russian well, I quickly got a job. Helped Russian classmates. My case is an exception. It’s good that I ended up in Russia. I am lucky that I work in my specialty. Those who left for Europe, even very good engineers or doctors, cannot find work. Europeans only say that they respect them. In fact, the Syrians for them – the second grade.

Amin Fares

Syrian energy engineer

The conflict in Syria provoked one of the most powerful migration crises of recent times . It is significant that people from a warring country tried to get into European countries, but they tried not to let them in there. American linguist and philosopher Noam Chomsky called it “humanitarian cynicism” on CNBC. “Europe is to the same extent as the United States is guilty of starting this war, but the European countries did everything to keep the Syrians out,” Chomsky said.

According to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, as of December 2017, there are about 6.7 million Syrian refugees in 47 states. Most of the refugees are in the following states: Turkey (3.7 million), Lebanon (0.9 million), Jordan (0.6 million). Of the European countries, Germany accepted the most – 0.4 million. The rest accepted no more than 100 thousand, and in most cases – no more than 20 thousand

Ultimately, the issue of Syrian refugees became for Turkey and EU an excuse to make a business deal. Ankara at first let the flow of refugees pass through itself. Then, when it caused panic in Europe, it closed the border. She then offered to discuss compensation for continuing to keep the border “locked” for Syrians.

In October 2016, Reuters reported that Brussels would provide Turkey with €3 billion to close the border to refugees. In addition, Turkey agreed to take all illegal migrants from the Greek islands.

The business project was successfully implemented for all parties. Except refugees.

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