Tel-Chai Nation

One of Syria's worst dictatorships has fallen to other Islamists:

Reports from the Middle East indicate that the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad has fallen, with the dictator fleeing the country as rebel forces entered the capital city of Damascus.

Unconfirmed social media reports also suggest that Assad’s plane crashed.

The part about whether Assad's plane crashed appear to be inaccurate, unfortunately. But he has been deposed, and has fled to Russia.

The sudden collapse of the Assad regime, dating back over half a century to the rule of Hafez al-Assad, Bashar’s father, has rocked the Middle East and could mean the Iranian regime, a Syrian ally, is in danger.

Assad was one of the most notorious tyrants in the world, one who used chemical weapons against his own people. His regime nearly fell in the civil war that erupted during the Arab Spring in 2011, but he was shored up by Russian and Iranian forces.

President Vladimir Putin used Syria to restore Russia’s presence in the Middle East for the first time since the Cold War, while Iran used Syria as a conduit to Hezbollah in Lebanon, sending weapons and advisers.

Assad had bombed rebel-held cities with no regard for civilian life, and torturing suspected rebels and dissidents. President Barack Obama drew a “red line” in 2012 when he said the U.S. would intervene militarily if Assad used chemical weapons, but then failed to act.

President Donald Trump launched airstrikes against the regime in 2017 after a chemical weapons attack, firing nearly 60 cruise missiles at Syrian air bases, which had the intended effect.

Trump reduced the U.S. troop presence in Syria, though small forces remained to counter threats from the so-called “Islamic State,” or ISIS, which still operated in the country. Turkey also had an interest in Syria, targeting Kurdish militias operating in Syrian territory.

While Trump's said the USA shouldn't intervene in what's going on now, these "rebels" appear intent on imposing Islamic sharia upon what's left of the Syrian piecemeal, and that's something that shouldn't be allowed to continue, any more than the Taliban's reimposition of sharia in Afghanistan. Other than that, it's understandable why some can't care less if these Islamofascists tear each other apart.

An interesting advantage for Israel is that the IDF was able to take over a buffer zone on the mountain between Israel and Syria:

On Friday, the IDF said that it had reinforced Israeli positions on the Golan Heights, the plateau seized by Israel from Syria during the Six-Day War of 1967. (Syrian forces had used the Heights to shell the Israeli villages below for years.)

On Sunday, Israel’s Army Radio reported that the IDF had moved tanks into the demilitarized zone between Syria and Israel, an area that is supposed to be free of any military presence under the disengagement agreement that ended the Yom Kippur War in 1973. In that war, Syria and Egypt conducted a surprise attack on Israel during the holiest day on the Jewish calendar; Syria nearly overran the Golan Heights before IDF reservists pushed it back.

It's seriously time to take back that area; Syria's never deserved it, nor any other area where Islam's had a foothold. For now, Assad won't be missed, but ultimately, even the terrorists now taking over Syria's remnants can't be allowed to maintain their reign of terror for long. As Reuters was actually willing to point out:

Western and Arab nations fear that the HTS-led rebel coalition may seek to replace Assad's regime with a hardline Islamist government, or one less able or inclined to prevent the resurgence of radical forces, three diplomats and three analysts told Reuters.

"There is strong fear inside and outside the region of the power vacuum that Assad's sudden collapse may cause," said Abdelaziz al-Sager, director of the Gulf Research Center, a think tank focused on the Middle East. He cited the civil wars that followed the toppling of Iraqi president Saddam Hussein in 2003 and Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi in 2011.

One senior Western diplomat in the region, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told Reuters that - with the rebel forces fragmented - there was no plan for how to rule Syria, a complex nation divided into various sects and ethnic groups, each with its own regional power base.

The senior diplomat expressed fears that lawlessness in Syria could allow the flourishing of extremist groups like Islamic State (IS), which in 2014 swept through large swathes of Syria and Iraq and established an Islamic Caliphate before it was driven out by a US-led coalition by 2019. [...]

So far, Washington had mostly thrown its support behind Syrian Kurdish groups, such as the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), whose areas of control are in northeast Syria. These groups, however, are in conflict with one of the main victorious rebels factions, the Syrian National Army (SNA), backed by regional power broker, Turkey, which opposes Kurdish influence.

Any movement that supports the Religion of Peace cannot be upheld, that's for sure.

Update: a number of European countries are now suspending asylum applications from Syria, hopefully out of concern terrorists could infiltrate.

Labels: dhimmitude, Egypt, iran, islam, Israel, jihad, Lebanon, libya, military, misogyny, political corruption, racism, Russia, sexual violence, syria, terrorism, turkey, war on terror