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Tag: Bashar al-Assad
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Syria’s al-Sharaa: Negotiations ongoing for security deal with Israel
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Syria’s interim president has confirmed negotiations to reach a security deal between his country and Israel which has repeatedly attacked its war-shattered neighbour since the overthrow of long-time Syrian ruler Bashar al-Assad in December.
Israel and Syria, who have been officially at war since 1948, reached a disengagement pact in 1974.
The accord, originally brokered after the 1973 war, established a buffer zone on the Golan Heights under UN supervision to separate Israeli and Syrian forces.
“Israel considered with the fall of the regime, Syria has pulled out from the 1974 agreement although Syria from the first moment demonstrated its commitment to it,” al-Sharaa said in a TV interview aired on Friday night.
“Negotiations are currently under way on a security agreement so that Israel would return to its pre-December 8 position,” he told Syrian state television al-Ekhbariya, referring to the day when al-Assad was ousted.
“Negotiating has not concluded yet,” added al-Sharaa, who assumed power after al-Assad’s ouster.
Last month, Israel and Syria held direct talks in Paris under US mediation.
The Golan Heights, occupied by Israel in 1967 and annexed in 1981, are a central point of contention. The annexation is not recognized internationally.
Israel deployed additional troops to the area after al-Assad’s fall and has since stepped up airstrikes in Syria, saying they aimed to prevent Syria’s weapons from falling into the hands of extremists.
Israel also bombed areas in Syria’s south and in the capital Damascus with the stated aim of protecting the Druze, after deadly violence had erupted in the Syrian province of Sweida, a stronghold of the religious minority community.
The Druze, who emerged from Shiite Islam, live mainly in Syria, but also in Israel, Lebanon, and Jordan.
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Syrian Civil War Fast Facts | CNN
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CNN
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Here’s a look at ongoing civil war in Syria.
Bashar al-Assad has ruled Syria as president since July 2000. His father, Hafez al-Assad, ruled Syria from 1970-2000.
The ongoing violence against civilians has been condemned by the Arab League, the European Union, the United States and other countries.
Roughly 5 million Syrians have fled to neighboring countries, according to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, and more than 6.8 million people are displaced internally.
According to UNICEF’s Representative in Syria, Bo Viktor Nylund, “Since 2011, nearly 12,000 children were verified as killed or injured in Syria, that’s one child every eight hours over the past ten years.” Nylund said that the actual figures are likely much higher.
When the civil war began in 2011, there were four main factions of fighting groups throughout the country: Kurdish forces, ISIS, other opposition (such as Jaish al Fateh, an alliance between the Nusra Front and Ahrar-al-Sham) and the Assad regime.
March 2011 – Violence flares in Daraa after a group of teens and children are arrested for writing political graffiti. Dozens of people are killed when security forces crack down on demonstrations.
March 24, 2011 – In response to continuing protests, the Syrian government announces several plans to appease citizens. State employees will receive an immediate salary increase. The government also plans to study lifting Syria’s long standing emergency law and the licensing of new political parties.
March 30, 2011 – Assad addresses the nation in a 45-minute televised speech. He acknowledges that the government has not met the people’s needs, but he does not offer any concrete changes. The state of emergency remains in effect.
April 21, 2011 – Assad lifts the country’s 48-year-old state of emergency. He also abolishes the Higher State Security Court and issues a decree “regulating the right to peaceful protest, as one of the basic human rights guaranteed by the Syrian Constitution.”
May 18, 2011 – The United States imposes sanctions against Assad and six other senior Syrian officials. The Treasury Department details the sanctions by saying, “As a result of this action, any property in the United States or in the possession or control of US persons in which the individuals listed in the Annex have an interest is blocked, and US persons are generally prohibited from engaging in transactions with them.”
August 18, 2011 – The US imposes new economic sanctions on Syria, freezing Syrian government assets in the US, barring Americans from making new investments in the country and prohibiting any US transactions relating to Syrian petroleum products, among other things.
September 2, 2011 – The European Union bans the import of Syrian oil.
September 23, 2011 – The EU imposes additional sanctions against Syria, due to “the continuing brutal campaign” by the government against its own people.
October 2, 2011 – A new alignment of Syrian opposition groups establishes the Syrian National Council, a framework through which to end Assad’s government and establish a democratic system.
October 4, 2011 – Russia and China veto a UN Security Council resolution that would call for an immediate halt to the crackdown in Syria against opponents of Assad. Nine of the 15-member council countries, including the United States, voted in favor of adopting the resolution.
November 12, 2011 – The Arab League suspends Syria’s membership, effective November 16, 2011.
November 27, 2011 – Foreign ministers from 19 Arab League countries vote to impose economic sanctions against the Syrian regime for its part in a bloody crackdown on civilian demonstrators.
November 30, 2011 – Turkey announces a series of measures, including financial sanctions, against Syria.
December 19, 2011 – Syria signs an Arab League proposal aimed at ending violence between government forces and protesters.
January 28, 2012 – The Arab League suspends its mission in Syria as violence there continues.
February 2, 2012 – A UN Security Council meeting ends with no agreement on a draft resolution intended to pressure Syria to end its crackdown on anti-government demonstrators.
February 4, 2012 – A UN Security Council resolution condemning Syria is not adopted after Russia and China vote against it.
February 6, 2012 – The United States closes its embassy in Damascus and recalls its diplomats.
February 7, 2012 – The Gulf Cooperation Council announces its member states are pulling their ambassadors from Damascus and expelling the Syrian ambassadors in their countries.
February 16, 2012 – The United Nations General Assembly passes a nonbinding resolution endorsing the Arab League plan for Assad to step down. The vote was 137 in favor and 12 against, with 17 abstentions.
February 26, 2012 – Syrians vote on a constitutional referendum in polling centers across the country. Almost 90% of voters approve the changes to the constitution, which include the possibility of a multi-party system.
March 13, 2012 – Kofi Annan, the UN special envoy to Syria, meets in Turkey with government officials and Syrian opposition members. In a visit to Syria over the weekend, he calls for a ceasefire, the release of detainees and allowing unfettered access to relief agencies to deliver much-needed aid.
March 15, 2012 – The Gulf Cooperation Council announces that the six member countries will close their Syrian embassies and calls on the international community “to stop what is going on in Syria.”
March 27, 2012 – The Syrian government accepts Annan’s plan to end violence. The proposal seeks to stop the violence, give access to humanitarian agencies, release detainees and start a political dialogue to address the concerns of the Syrian people.
April 1, 2012 – At a conference in Istanbul, the international group Friends of the Syrian People formally recognizes the Syrian National Council as a legitimate representative of the Syrian people.
July 30, 2012 – The Syrian Charge d’Affaires in London, Khaled al-Ayoubi, resigns, stating he is “no longer willing to represent a regime that has committed such violent and oppressive acts against its own people.”
August 2, 2012 – UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon announces that Annan will not renew his mandate when it expires at the end of August.
August 6, 2012 – Syrian Prime Minister Riyad Hijab’s resignation from office and defection from Assad’s regime is read on Al Jazeera by his spokesman Muhammad el-Etri. Hijab and his family are said to have left Syria overnight, arriving in Jordan. Hijab is the highest-profile official to defect.
August 9, 2012 – Syrian television reports that Assad has appointed Health Minister Wael al-Halki as the new prime minister.
October 3, 2012 – Five people are killed by Syrian shelling in the Turkish border town of Akcakale. In response, Turkey fires on Syrian targets and its parliament authorizes a resolution giving the government permission to deploy its soldiers to foreign countries.
November 11, 2012 – Israel fires warning shots toward Syria after a mortar shell hits an Israeli military post. It is the first time Israel has fired on Syria across the Golan Heights since the 1973 Yom Kippur War.
November 11, 2012 – Syrian opposition factions formally agree to unite as the National Coalition for Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces.
November 13, 2012 – Sheikh Ahmed Moaz al-Khatib is elected leader of the Syrian opposition collective, the National Coalition for Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces.
January 6, 2013 – Assad announces he will not step down and that his vision of Syria’s future includes a new constitution and an end to support for the opposition. The opposition refuses to work with Assad’s government.
March 19, 2013 – The National Coalition for Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces elects Ghassan Hitto as its prime minister. Though born in Damascus, Hitto has spent much of his life in the United States, and holds dual US and Syrian citizenship.
April 25, 2013 – US Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel announces the United States has evidence that the chemical weapon sarin has been used in Syria on a small scale.
May 27, 2013 – EU nations end the arms embargo against the Syrian rebels.
June 13, 2013 – US President Barack Obama says that Syria has crossed a “red line” with its use of chemical weapons against rebels. His administration indicates that it will be stepping up its support of the rebels, who have been calling for the US and others to provide arms needed to battle Assad’s forces.
July 6, 2013 – Ahmad Assi Jarba is elected the new leader of the Syrian National Coalition.
August 18, 2013 – A team of UN weapons inspectors arrives in Syria to begin an investigation into whether chemical weapons have been used during the civil war.
August 22, 2013 – The UN and the US call for an immediate investigation of Syrian activists’ claims that the Assad government used chemical weapons in an attack on civilians on August 21. Anti-regime activist groups in Syria say more than 1,300 people were killed in the attack outside Damascus, many of them women and children.
August 24, 2013 – Medical charity Doctors Without Borders announces that three hospitals near Damascus treated more than 3,000 patients suffering “neurotoxic symptoms” on August 21. Reportedly, 355 of the patients died.
August 26, 2013 – UN inspectors reach the site of a reported chemical attack in Moadamiyet al-Sham, near Damascus. En route to the site, the team’s convoy is hit by sniper fire. No one is injured.
August 29, 2013 – The UK’s Parliament votes against any military action in Syria.
August 30, 2013 – US Secretary of State John Kerry says that US intelligence information has found that 1,429 people were killed in last week’s chemical weapons attack in Syria, including at least 426 children.
September 9, 2013 – Syria agrees to a Russian proposal to give up control of its chemical weapons.
September 10, 2013 – In a speech, Obama says he will not “put American boots on the ground in Syria,” but does not rule out other military options.
September 14, 2013 – The United States and Russia agree to a plan to eliminate chemical weapons in Syria.
September 16, 2013 – The United Nations releases a report from chemical weapons inspectors who investigated the August 21 incident. Inspectors say there is “clear and convincing evidence” that sarin was used.
September 20, 2013 – Syria releases an initial report on its chemical weapons program.
September 27, 2013 – The UN Security Council passes a resolution requiring Syria to eliminate its arsenal of chemical weapons. Assad says he will abide by the resolution.
September 30, 2013 – At the UN General Assembly in New York, Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moualem says that Syria is not engaged in a civil war, but a war on terror.
October 6, 2013 – Syria begins dismantling its chemical weapons program, including the destruction of missile warheads and aerial bombs.
October 31, 2013 – The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons announces that Syria has destroyed all its declared chemical weapons production facilities.
November 25, 2013 – The United Nations announces that starting January 22 in Geneva, Switzerland, the Syrian government and an unknown number of opposition groups will meet at a “Geneva II” conference meant to broker an end to the Syrian civil war.
December 2, 2013 – UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay says that a UN fact-finding team has found “massive evidence” that the highest levels of the Syrian government are responsible for war crimes.
January 20, 2014 – The Syria National Coalition announces it won’t participate in the Geneva II talks unless the United Nations rescinds its surprise invitation to Iran or Iran agrees to certain conditions. The United Nations later rescinds Iran’s invitation.
February 13, 2014 – The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons tells CNN that Syria has shipped out 11% of its chemical weapons stockpile, falling far short of the February 5 deadline to have all such arms removed from the country.
February 15, 2014 – A second round of peace talks ends in Geneva, Switzerland, with little progress in ending Syria’s civil war.
February 23, 2014 – The UN Security Council unanimously passes a resolution boosting access to humanitarian aid in Syria.
June 3, 2014 – Assad is reelected, reportedly receiving 88.7% of the vote in the country’s first election since civil war broke out in 2011.
September 22-23, 2014 – The United States and allies launch airstrikes against ISIS targets in Syria, focusing on the city of Raqqa.
September 14-15, 2015 – A Pentagon spokesperson says the Russian military appears to be attempting to set up a forward operating base in western Syria, in the area around the port city of Latakia. Russian President Vladimir Putin says that Russia is supporting the Syrian government in its fight against ISIS.
October 30, 2015 – White House spokesman Josh Earnest says that the US will be deploying “less than 50” Special Operations forces, who will be sent to Kurdish-controlled territory in northern Syria. The American troops will help local Kurdish and Arab forces fighting ISIS with logistics and are planning to bolster their efforts.
February 26, 2016 – A temporary cessation of hostilities goes into effect. The truce calls for the Syrian regime and rebels to give relief organizations access to disputed territories so they can assist civilians.
March 15, 2016 – Russia starts withdrawing its forces from Syria. A spokeswoman for Assad tells CNN that the Russian campaign is winding down after achieving its goal of helping Syrian troops take back territory claimed by terrorists.
September 15, 2016 – At least 23 people, including nine children, are killed during airstrikes in Syria, with the United States and Russia accusing each other of violating the ceasefire in effect since September 12.
September 17, 2016 – US-led coalition airstrikes near Deir Ezzor Airport intended to target ISIS instead kill 62 Syrian soldiers.
September 20, 2016 – An aid convoy and warehouse of the Syrian Arab Red Crescent are bombed; no one claims responsibility. The strike prompts the UN to halt aid operations in Syria.
September 23-25, 2016 – About 200 airstrikes hit Aleppo during the weekend, with one activist telling CNN it is a level of bombing they have not seen before.
December 13, 2016 – As government forces take control of most of Aleppo from rebel groups, Turkey and Russia broker a ceasefire for eastern Aleppo so that civilians can be evacuated. The UN Security Council holds an emergency session amid reports of mounting civilian deaths and extrajudicial killings. The ceasefire collapses less than a day after it is implemented.
December 22, 2016 – Syria’s state-run media announces government forces have taken full control of Aleppo, ending more than four years of rebel rule there.
April 4, 2017 – Dozens of civilians are reportedly killed in a suspected chemical attack in the rebel-held town of Khan Sheikhoun. The Russian Defense Ministry claims that gas was released when Syrian forces bombed a chemical munitions depot operated by terrorists. Activists, however, say that Syrians carried out a targeted chemical attack.
April 6, 2017 – The United States launches a military strike on a Syrian government airbase in response to the chemical weapon attack on civilians. On US President Donald Trump’s orders, US warships launch 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles at the airbase which was home to the warplanes that carried out the chemical attacks.
July 7, 2017 – Trump and Putin reach an agreement on curbing violence in southwest Syria during their meeting at the G20 in Hamburg, Germany. The ceasefire will take effect in the de-escalation zone beginning at noon Damascus time on July 9.
October 17, 2017 – ISIS loses control of its self-declared capital, Raqqa. US-backed forces fighting in Raqqa say “major military operations” have ended, though there are still pockets of resistance in the city.
October 26, 2017 – A joint report from the United Nations and international chemical weapons inspectors finds that the Assad regime was responsible for the April 2017 sarin attack that killed more than 80 people. Syria has repeatedly denied it had anything to do with the attack and also denies it has any chemical weapons.
February 24, 2018 – The UN Security Council unanimously approves a 30-day ceasefire resolution in Syria, though it is unclear when the ceasefire is meant to start, or how it will be enforced.
February 27, 2018 – Within minutes of when a five-hour “humanitarian pause” ordered by Putin – from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. – is meant to start, activists on the ground report shelling and artillery fire from pro-regime positions, killing at least one person in the rebel-held enclave of Eastern Ghouta.
April 7, 2018 – Helicopters drop barrel bombs filled with toxic gas on the last rebel-held town in Eastern Ghouta, activist groups say. The World Health Organization later says that as many as 500 people may have been affected by the attack.
April 14, 2018 – The United States, France and the United Kingdom launch airstrikes on Syria in response to the chemical weapons attack in Eastern Ghouta a week earlier.
September 17, 2018 – Russia and Turkey announce they have agreed to create a demilitarized zone in Syria’s Idlib province, potentially thwarting a large-scale military operation and impending humanitarian disaster in the country’s last rebel stronghold. The zone, which will be patrolled by Turkish and Russian military units, will become operational from October 15.
December 19, 2018 – Trump tweets, “We have defeated ISIS in Syria, my only reason for being there during the Trump Presidency.” A US defense official and an administration official tell CNN that planning for the “full” and “rapid” withdrawal of US military from Syria is already underway.
March 23, 2019 – Kurdish forces announce they have captured the eastern Syrian pocket of Baghouz, the last populated area under ISIS rule.
October 9, 2019 – Turkey launches a military offensive into northeastern Syria, just days after the Trump administration announced that US troops would leave the border area. Erdogan’s “Operation Peace Spring” is an effort to drive away Kurdish forces from the border, and use the area to resettle around two million Syrian refugees.
March 5, 2020 – Turkey and Russia announce a ceasefire in Idlib, Syria’s last opposition enclave, agreeing to establish a security corridor with joint patrols.
April 8, 2020 – The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons’ Investigation and Identification Team (IIT) releases a report concluding that Syrian government forces were responsible for a series of chemical attacks on a Syrian town in late March 2017.
May 26, 2021 – Assad is reelected.
In photos: Syria’s civil war
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Israeli strike in Damascus targets Iran-aligned paramilitary officials
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An Israeli attack on the Syrian capital of Damascus on Saturday destroyed a residential building where Iran-aligned paramilitary leaders were meeting.
Precision-targeted Israeli missiles destroyed a multi-story building in the western Damascus neighborhood of Mazzeh, Reuters reported. The structure was occupied by Iranian advisers assisting Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s administration, according to the report.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a U.K.-based non-profit, said at least five people were killed in the missile attack.
An official of an Iran-aligned group in the region told the Associated Press that the building was used by officials of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard and claimed that 10 people were either killed or wounded in the attack.
The lastest Israeli attack signifies yet another escalation of already heightened tensions in the region.
Israel has intensified its airstrikes against Palestinian targets, Lebanese operatives and Iran-linked targets in Syria following the October 7 attacks by Hamas. On December 25, an Israeli airstrike in Damascus killed Iranian general Seyed Razi Mousavi, a veteran of the Revolutionary Guard in Syria.
In recent weeks, Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen have been targeting commercial vessels in the Red Sea. Tensions along the Lebanon-Israel border have increased as a result of rockets fired from Syria into northern Israel and the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.
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Jeremy Van Der Haegen
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Americans React To The Death Of Henry Kissinger
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James Kessler, Psychologist
“Look, being nice in life won’t get you a Nobel Peace Prize.”
Sharon Thatcher, Teacher
“He wasn’t just a war criminal, he was our war criminal.”
Whitney Plainfield, Administrative Assistant
“He would have hated to see anyone die painlessly and peacefully like this.”
Lisa Johnson, Dietician
“I don’t want to diminish his legacy by citing the Cambodian government’s official death toll because I know the real number was much, much worse.”
Gina Garroni, Delivery Driver
“Is that what I ran over last night?”
Christa Deacon, Guidance Counselor
“May he be as bloodthirsty in death as he was in life.”
Melissa Stevens, Mortgage Banker
“Love him or hate him, he’ll always be remembered as the best goddamn contestant Rock Of Love ever saw.”
Dan Potter, Fireman
“I sprayed some agent orange on my kids today in his honor.”
Brook Pratt, Pest Control Worker
“But he still had so many war crimes left in him.”
George W. Bush, Former President
“I remember the first day of my presidency, he was nice enough to send me an unexploded IED.”
Greg Bentley, Graphic Artist
“But he looked so young in ‘Oppenheimer’?”
Al Preston, Copywriter
“If we all close our eyes and say a racial slur at the same time, maybe he’ll come back to life.”
Carter Jacobs, Electrician
“Say what you will about the guy.”
Barack Obama, Former President
“He taught me that war didn’t have to be fair. The most important part was that it was pointless and bloody.”
Tom Buchner, Woodworker
“That’s what he gets for breaking into a house in a state with stand-your-ground laws.”
Alejandro Sotolongo, Art Director
“Let he who has not carpet bombed Cambodia throw the first stone.”
Paul Flannery, Line Cook
“This is just like Paul Walker all over again.”
Lisa Hitchens, File Clerk
“He put Cambodia on the map and almost took it off.”
Dick Cheney, Retired
“Nobody’s perfect, but he came pretty close.”
Dean Verecci, Software Engineer
“Oh thank god, the last war criminal in the American government is finally dead.”
Kevin Spell, Physical Trainer
“It brings a tear to my eye thinking of all the innocent people that will never get to die by his hand.”
Gene Schaefer, Bus Driver
“If you think that man was impressive, you should taste my wife Beth’s homemade potato salad. It’s out of this world!”
Irene Stobbs, Accountant
“Oh no, Paula and Louis’s kid?”
Nick Farrington, Dentist
“I just hope we don’t start tearing down all the Henry Kissinger monuments.”
Jessie Untermeyer, Music Teacher
“I hope he had just as much fun killing all those people as we had watching him kill them.”
George Huntington, Retired
“I’m not going to sugarcoat it—Henry had the mind of a supervillain, the heart of a serial killer, and the elegant gams of a va-va-voom showgirl.”
Bashar al-Assad, President Of Syria
“Game recognizes game.”
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Putin hijacks Israel-Gaza war to fuel tensions in the West
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The Israeli-Hamas war has given Russia a golden opportunity to sow division among its Western enemies. It’s a chance Vladimir Putin’s disinformation machine was never going to miss.
Since the outbreak of hostilities on October 7, Kremlin-linked Facebook accounts have ramped up their output by almost 400 percent, with the Middle East crisis now dominating posts from Russian diplomats, state-backed outlets and Putin supporters in the West.
The lies spread by Moscow’s digital propagandists now include claims that Hamas terrorists are using NATO weapons to attack Israel and that British instructors trained Hamas attackers.
The entrenched — and bloody — conflict represents a double opportunity for Putin.
It allows Russia to foment division in the West via targeted social media activity aimed at splitting those in support of Israel from those who back Palestine. Real-world violence, particularly against Jews, has spiked over the last seven weeks and anti-war protests by hundreds of thousands of people have sprouted up from London to Washington.
Russia’s Middle East social media onslaught also pulls public attention away from its war in Ukraine, which has become bogged down after a succession of military missteps, a mutiny by Wagner mercenaries, and a long-running counteroffensive from Kyiv.
“Taking attention off Ukraine is only a good thing for Russia,” said Bret Schafer, head of the information manipulation team and the German Marshall Fund of the United States’ Alliance for Securing Democracy, a Washington-based think tank. “The more the Western public is focused on Israel and Hamas, the less they’re paying attention to the fact that Congress is about to not fund Ukraine’s war effort,” he added. “Shining a light on other places pulls attention away from Ukraine.”
The Kremlin’s online assault mirrors Putin’s geopolitical game-playing since the Hamas attacks of October 7.
His government hosted Hamas leaders in Moscow at the end of October — apparently as he sought to play a mediation role on the release of Israeli hostages. Russia and Hamas have a common ally in Iran and Putin himself has warned that Israeli military action in Gaza could escalate beyond the region.
The Kremlin was quick to weaponize the Israel-Hamas war for its own propaganda purposes.
In the seven weeks since Hamas fighters attacked Israel, Russian Facebook accounts have posted 44,000 times compared to a mere 14,000 posts in the seven weeks before the conflict began, according to data compiled by the Alliance for Securing Democracy. In total, Russian-backed social media activity on Facebook was shared almost 400,000 times collectively, a four-fold increase compared to posts published before the conflict.
The most-shared keywords now include many phrases associated with the conflict like “Hamas” and the “Middle East,” while before the war, Russia’s state media and diplomatic accounts had focused almost exclusively on either Ukraine or Putin’s role in the world.
The near-400 percent increase in posts from Russian government-linked accounts represents a drop in the ocean compared to the millions of Facebook posts about the Middle East conflict from regular social media users over the same time period. But many of the Kremlin-backed accounts — especially those from sanctioned media outlets like RT and Sputnik — have an oversized digital reach. Collectively, these companies boast millions of followers in Europe, Latin America and Africa, even though the EU has imposed sanctions on their broadcast and social media operations.
Surfing the wave
“They use whatever they can to spread anti-West messaging,” said Jakub Kalenský, a deputy director at the European Center of Excellence for Countering Hybrid Threats, a joint NATO-EU organization tracking state-backed influence campaigns. “They surf on the wave of the news cycle because they are competing for the same audience that is consuming solid media sources.”
Such digital propaganda can have real-world effects. Some in the West now openly question how long governments can support Ukraine in its costly war against Russia in a time of economic uncertainty.
In France, for instance, the foreign affairs ministry accused a Russian-affiliated network of social media bots of amplifying anti-semitic images of Stars of David graffiti on buildings across Paris. French officials blamed Russia for “creating tensions” between supporters of Israel and those who favored Palestine. The Russian embassy in Paris said Moscow had no ties to the covert digital activity.
The goal of the clandestine campaign was to heighten real-world tensions — both in France and across Western Europe — over which side governments are backing, according to two senior European officials speaking on condition of anonymity.
“What happens online never just stays online anymore,” one of the officials said.
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Mark Scott
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Hamas is fighting ‘sacred’ war with Israel, says Hezbollah chief
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Voiced by artificial intelligence.
The leader of the Hezbollah militant group has thrown his backing behind Palestinian militants and praised the attacks that killed more than a thousand Israeli civilians, in his first public appearance since the start of the war between Israel and Hamas last month.
In a televised speech broadcast on Friday from an unknown location, Hassan Nasrallah praised the “martyrs” who have died fighting Israeli troops, denied the Hamas attacks had been coordinated by Iran, and said fighters loyal to him were “prepared to make unlimited sacrifices” in supporting their cause.
“This operation is great; this sacred operation was 100 percent Palestinian, and was implemented by Palestinians,” he said.
However, he stopped short of explicitly declaring war on Israel and opening a second front in the conflict, despite predictions that he could seek to escalate tensions dramatically.
Nasrallah has led Hezbollah since 1992, when his predecessor was killed by Israeli forces. While the group maintains it is comprised of both a political party and a separate military wing, Hezbollah has been designated as a terrorist organization in its entirety by Israel, the U.S., the U.K., the Arab League and a number of EU member states. It has close ties to Iran, which also backs Hamas in the Gaza Strip, as well as the government of Bashar al-Assad in Syria and paramilitaries in Iraq and Yemen — all of which are vehemently opposed to Israel and its Western partners.
Hezbollah maintains a tight hold over southern Lebanon, effectively ruling the region independently from the Middle Eastern nation’s elected government. Its fighters have carried out attacks and drone strikes on Israeli positions across the line of contact in recent days amid a sharp spike in violence across the region, with Israeli officials ordering the evacuation of citizens from 42 communities in the surrounding area.
Ahead of Nasrallah’s speech, schools and government buildings throughout Lebanon closed and crowds gathered in the capital of Beirut as well as in other Middle Eastern countries to watch the address. While many in the tiny nation — home to just five and a half million people — fear a renewed conflict with Israel, Hezbollah is effectively able to operate entirely independently from the state and retains high levels of support from the Shia Muslim community.
The Israel Defense Forces earlier Friday said it was on “very, very high alert” along its northern border with Lebanon.
Southern Lebanon was effectively occupied by Israeli forces from 1985 until 2000, fighting a series of military offensives and running battles with militant groups during and after the country’s 15-year civil war. Hezbollah and Israel also fought a brief but bloody war in 2006, with hundreds killed on both sides and no decisive result.
French Armed Forces Minister Sébastien Lecornu was in Beirut Friday afternoon, declaring that his country “will continue to provide support to the Lebanese Armed Forces … because the stability of Lebanon is key for the country and for the region.”
Meanwhile, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken is in Israel amid growing calls for a “humanitarian pause” in the fighting to allow Palestinian civilians to flee as Israel steps up its offensive in the Gaza Strip. Blinken reiterated Israel’s right to defend itself and said “no country would, or should, tolerate the slaughter of innocents.” However, he did call for greater protection for Palestinians amid the worsening military confrontation.
Meanwhile, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken is in Israel amid growing calls for a “humanitarian pause” | Jonathan Ernst/POOL/AFP via Getty Images The Hamas-run Health Ministry in Gaza claims that 9,000 people have been killed since the start of the conflict last month, while Israeli troops have taken control of key strategic points in and around Gaza City, telling non-combatants to leave their homes and seek safety in southern Gaza — which has also been targeted by air strikes.
More than 1,400 people have been killed on the Israeli side of the border since Hamas launched its major offensive, with fighters infiltrating the country by land, air and sea.
Laura Kayali contributed reporting.
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Gabriel Gavin
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Lebanese hold their breath as fears grow Hezbollah will pull them into war
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BEIRUT — Once again, the Lebanese are glued to their TV sets and are compulsively checking their cell phones, following every twist and turn of skirmishes on the border, trying to weigh up whether another war is imminent.
In desperation, they are asking themselves how a nation so often shattered by conflict — and pummeled by an economic crisis — is again at risk of tipping back into the abyss.
“People are exhausted — they can’t take much more,” said Ramad Boukallil, a Lebanese businessman, who runs a company training managers. “Lebanon is reeling — we have had four harsh years with the economic crisis, people are skipping meals and can hardly get by. We had the port explosion, the pandemic, a financial crash. Please God we’re not hit with another war,” he added, in a conversation at Beirut airport.
The chief fear for many Lebanese is that they could soon be the second front of Israel’s war against its Islamist militant enemies, after Hamas’ brutal onslaught against Israel a week ago that killed more than 1,300 people. While most eyes are focused on an expected retaliatory ground assault against Hamas in Gaza, Israeli forces have also declared a 4-kilometer-wide closed military zone on Lebanon’s southern border, where they have exchanged fire with Hezbollah, a Shiite political party and militant group based in Lebanon.
One person close to Hezbollah said the Golan Heights — Syrian land occupied by Israel to the southeast of Lebanon — was shaping up into an especially dangerous flashpoint, saying Hezbollah has moved elite units there in the past few days.
Finger on the trigger
For now, this border fighting appears contained, but Iran’s flurry of regional diplomacy is heightening the anxiety that Tehran could be about to commit its proxies in Hezbollah headlong into the war. Iran’s Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian warned on Saturday that if Israel doesn’t halt its military campaign in Gaza, then Hezbollah, a key player in the Tehran-orchestrated “axis of resistance,” is “prepared” and has its “finger is on the trigger.”
“There’s still an opportunity to work on an initiative [to end the war] but it might be too late tomorrow,” Amir-Abdollahian told reporters after meeting Hamas’ political leader Ismail Haniyeh in Qatar where they “agreed to continue co-operation” to achieve the group’s goals, according to a Hamas statement.
Mark Regev, an adviser to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, told Britain’s Spectator TV his country was ready for Hezbollah, which he labeled a twin of Hamas. “Hezbollah could try to escalate the situation, so my message is clear: if we were caught by surprise by Hamas on Saturday morning, we are not going to be caught by surprise from the north. We are ready, we are prepared. We don’t want a war in the north but if they force one upon us, as I was saying, we are ready and we will win decisively in the north too.”
To try to forestall any such thing happening, the United States has dispatched two aircraft carrier strike groups to the region and President Joe Biden publicly warned outside actors — taken to mean Iran and Hezbollah — not to get involved. “Don’t,” he said.
“That was music to my ears,” said Ruth Boulos, a mother of two, as she sipped coffee at a restaurant in Raouché, one of the most expensive neighborhoods in Beirut, dotted with modern skyscrapers. “Let’s hope Hezbollah listens,” she added.
At nearby tables, mostly well-heeled Lebanese Christian families could be heard debating whether the country will once again be mired in war and whether they should get out now, joining other affluent Lebanese who have been leaving because of the economic crisis that’s left an estimated 85 percent of the population below the poverty line.
That may start to become more challenging. Airlines are getting nervous. Germany’s Lufthansa has temporarily suspended all flights to the country.
Lebanon’s caretaker government has no power to influence the course of events, Prime Minister Najib Mikati has admitted. He told a domestic TV channel Friday that Hezbollah had given him no assurances about whether they will enter the Gaza war or not. “It’s on Israel to stop provoking Hezbollah,” Mikati said in the interview. “I did not receive any guarantees from anyone about [how things could develop] because circumstances are changing,” he said.
Thanks to Lebanon’s hopelessly fractured politics, the country has had no fully functioning government since October 2022. The cabinet only met Thursday amid rising concerns that the border skirmishes might lead to the war’s spillover. It strongly condemned what it called “the criminal acts committed by the Zionist enemy in Gaza.” Ministers later told media the country would be broken by war. Lebanon “could fall apart completely,” Amin Salam, the economy minister, told The National.
Scarred by war
The rocket and artillery skirmishes along the Lebanese border since Hamas launched its terror attack on Israel have been of limited scope but have killed several people, including Reuters videographer Issam Abdallah. They are not, however, entirely out of the ordinary. An officer with the United Nations peacekeepers in southern Lebanon, who asked not to be identified as he’s not authorized to speak with the media, said he thought the skirmishes were mounted to keep Israel guessing.
The Lebanese are no strangers to toppling over the precipice. There are still grim pockmarked reminders dotted around Beirut of the 1975-1990 Lebanese civil war, a brutal sectarian conflict that pitched Shiite, Sunni, Druze and Christians against each other in a prolonged and tortuous quarrel that drew in outside powers, killed an estimated 120,000 people, and triggered an exodus of a million.
In 2006 the country was plunged into war once again when Hezbollah seized the opportunity to strike Israel a fortnight into another war in Gaza. Hezbollah, the Party of God, declared “divine victory” after a month of brutal combat, which concluded when the U.N. brokered a ceasefire. Hezbollah’s capabilities took everyone by surprise, with Israel’s tanks being overwhelmed by “swarm” attacks.
Some see that brief war as the first serious round of an Iran-Israel proxy war, something more than just a continuation of the conflict between Arabs and Israelis.
No one doubts, though, that another full-scale confrontation between Israel and Hezbollah would be of much greater magnitude.
Armed with an estimated 150,000 precision-guided missiles thanks to Iran, which has been maintaining a steady flow of game-changing sophisticated weaponry for years via Syria, Hezbollah has the capability of striking anywhere in Israel and has a force that could easily be compared to a disciplined, well-trained mid-sized European army — but with a difference; Hezbollah has thousands of war-hardened fighters, thanks to its intervention in the Syrian Civil War.
Speculation is rife that air strikes on Damascus and Aleppo airports in Syria on Thursday were a step by Israel to impede Hezbollah’s arms supply line from Iran. Others see it as a warning to Syria not to get involved — Syrian support for Hezbollah could be especially important in the Golan Heights.
Hezbollah itself has been rehearsing for what its commanders often dub “the last war with Israel.” Hezbollah’s intervention on the side of President Bashar al-Assad in the Syrian Civil War was an “opportune training” opportunity, a senior Hezbollah commander told this correspondent in 2017. “What we are doing in Syria in some ways is a dress rehearsal for Israel,” he explained.
Fighting in the vanguard alongside Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, Hezbollah fighters honed their skills in urban warfare. When Hezbollah first intervened in Syria, Israeli defense analysts viewed the foray as a blessing — better to have their Lebanese arch-enemy ensnared there.
But concern rapidly mounted in Israel that Hezbollah was gaining valuable battlefield experience in Syria, especially in managing large-scale, offensive operations, something the Shiite militia had little skill at previously. Other enhanced Hezbollah capabilities from Syria include using artillery cover more effectively, using drones skillfully in reconnaissance and surveillance operations, and improving logistical operations to support big integrated offensives.
A question of timing
But will Hezbollah decide to strike now?
“I don’t think Hezbollah will open a second front,” Paul Salem, president of the Middle East Institute, and a seasoned Lebanon hand, told POLITICO. But he had caveats to add. “That assessment depends on what the Israelis do in Gaza.”
“If Israel moves in a big way in Gaza and begins to get close to either defeating or evicting Hamas, let’s say like the eviction of the PLO from Lebanon in 1982, then at that point Hezbollah and Iran would not want to lose Hamas as an asset in Gaza,” he said.
“That’s a strategic imperative that might spur them to open a second front to make sure that Hamas isn’t defeated. Another factor will be the human toll in Gaza — if it is huge that might force Hezbollah’s hand because of an angry Arab public reaction,” Salem adds.
Tobias Borck, a security research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute, said Hezbollah faces a dilemma.
When it fought Israel in 2006 it became very popular across the Arab world, but that flipped when it intervened in Syria with “people asking — even Shiites in its strongholds in southern Lebanon and the Beqaa Valley — what fighting in Syria had to do with resisting Israel, its supposed raison d’être, although it exists really to protect Iran from Israel,” he said.
“Hezbollah has to regain legitimacy and that puts an awful lot of pressure. That’s the worrying factor for me. How can Hezbollah still maintain it is the key player in the ‘axis of resistance’ against Israel and not get involved?” he added.
On Friday, Hezbollah deputy chief Naim Qassem told a rally in the southern Beirut suburbs that the group would not be swayed by calls for it to stay on the sidelines of the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas, saying the party was “fully ready” to contribute to the fighting.
“The behind-the-scenes calls with us by great powers, Arab countries, envoys of the United Nations, directly and indirectly telling us not to interfere will have no effect,” he told supporters waving Hezbollah and Hamas flags.
The question remains what that contribution might be.
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Jamie Dettmer
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Syria protests gain steam, challenging Bashar Assad as he tries to put the civil war behind him
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Anti-government protests have been gaining steam in Syria for more than a month, echoing the demonstrations that President Bashar Assad sent his security forces to crack down on in 2011, sending the country into a downward spiral that morphed into a full-scale civil war.
The demonstrations, focused predominantly in the southern city of Suwayda, were initially driven by a deepening cost of living crisis — Syria’s economy has been crippled by years of war and is straining under the weight of myriad international sanctions. But anger over the crumbling economy has evolved quickly into demands for the downfall of the Assad government.
What’s behind the latest protests?
The demonstrations in Suwayda and nearby Deraa — where the 2011 uprising began — started after Assad’s government reduced fuel subsidies and raised gasoline prices by nearly 250% in August.
Assad doubled already-meager public sector wages and pensions, but the efforts to mitigate public anger did little to cushion the economic blow. Instead, the move accelerated inflation and further weakened the Syrian pound. Millions of Syrians who were already living in poverty after more than a decade of war found themselves even worse off.
The government insists the country’s economic trouble is the result of the sanctions imposed by the U.S. and its European allies since the war broke out.
The Druze, and the Assad government’s response
Three protesters were wounded in Suwayda on Sept. 13, when armed individuals opened fire as the demonstrators attempted to shut down a branch of the ruling Baath party. The shooters went unidentified, but reports said they were plain-clothes security forces. It was the first time that shots were fired at protesters during the recent demonstrations.
Leys El-Cebel/Anadolu Agency/Getty
Overall, however, the government’s response to the loud but non-violent demonstrations in Suwayda has been restrained.
The city is the heartland of the Druze religious minority in southwest Syria, and Assad has appeared reluctant to wield overwhelming force against the group. During the civil war, the government has presented itself as a defender of religious minorities against “Islamist extremism.”
In 2010, the last year before the initial Syrian revolt, Druze made up 3% of the country’s 22 million people. Members of the community, which is concentrated in Suwayda and in the Damascus suburb of Jaramana, are generally well-educated, and it is one of the most secular groups within Syrian society. They are also a transnational minority, with a presence in Lebanon, Jordan and Israel.
After the 2011 revolt, the Druze remained largely on the sidelines of the civil war, though many young men from the community refused to be conscripted in the Syrian military. Now, at least one powerful figure within the community is advocating for resistance to central than neutrality
U.S. outreach to the Druze, and Captagon in Suwayda
Sheikh Hikmat al-Hijiri, the most influential of the so-called Sheikh al-Aql (Sheikhs of Reason) who lead the Druze community in Syria, has called for the establishment of a new democratic state and rejected the Syrian national government’s control over the region.
U.S. Rep. French Hill, a Republican from Arkansas, paid a brief visit to a rebel-held part of northwest Syria last month. Hill joined two other U.S. lawmakers for the trip, which was the first known visit to the war-torn country by American politicians in six years.
After his visit, Hill held a video call with Sheikh Hijiri, “to learn first-hand about the experiences of the Syrians living in Suwayda.”
Leys El-Cebel/Anadolu Agency/Getty
The congressman told CBS News they’d “discussed the frustrations of the local people and their peaceful protests,” and that Hijiri had informed him that Syrian government forces were “cutting off access to water and electricity” in the city. The sheikh also accused the Assad government and “Iranian militia operators” allied with it of trafficking the illegal drug Captagon in the area.
The Biden administration, in conjunction with the U.K., sanctioned several members of Assad’s own family in March for “facilitating the export of Captagon,” with the U.S. Treasury saying the sanctions package, “underscores the al-Assad family dominance of illicit Captagon trafficking and its funding for the oppressive Syrian regime.”
OMAR HAJ KADOUR/AFP/Getty
Maher Sharafeddine, a Druze writer, journalist and opposition activist from Suwayda, told CBS News that Hill had made it clear to Hijiri that he hoped relations between the U.S. and the local Druze community would deepen, and Sharafeddine hoped the initial contact could signal new support in Washington for the opposition in Syria’s civil war.
Assad welcomed back by his neighbors
Assad has held on to power through the war thanks in large part to the armed assistance of his allies in Russia and Iran. But the conflict has splintered the country, left at least 300,000 civilians dead and displaced half of Syria’s pre-war population of 23 million.
The protests in Suwayda have rattled the Syrian government, but they don’t seem to pose an existential threat. Government forces have consolidated their control over most of the country and, after years spent fighting demonization for alleged war crimes against his own people, Assad has very literally retaken his seat at the table.
Other Middle Eastern leaders have been restoring relations with the Assad government, arguing that engagement is the best way to address the flow of refugees and illegal drugs across Syria’s borders.
SANA via AP
The 22-member Arab League, which cut ties with Syria early in the war, recently reinstated Syria as a member and, for the first time in more than a decade, Assad joined the bloc’s other leaders as they met in May.
The Biden administration, however, has indicated no softening of its stance on the heavily-sanctioned Assad government.
“We don’t support normalization of relations with the Assad regime,” U.S. State Department spokesman Ned Price said bluntly in March as the U.S. worked to get humanitarian aid into parts of Syria devastated by a powerful earthquake.
Rep. Hill, after his visit to rebel-held ground in Syria and his discussion with Sheikh Hijiri, told CBS News he felt the objective for the U.S. and all other nations should be “to work for a political solution that ends Assad’s systematic destruction of his country and finds an outcome where Syrians can securely and safely return to homes and villages to live and work.”
Syria’s state-controlled media outlets have made no mention of the demonstrations in Suwayda. The Syrian Arab News Agency SANA has instead been reporting on food aid provided to the rural village of Salkhad, outside Suwayda, by Russia.
CBS News’ Ellis Kim in Washington contributed to this report.
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Syrians protest al-Assad’s participation in Arab League summit
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Idlib, Syria – Thousands of Syrians have protested across the country against some Arab countries’ normalisation of relations with President Bashar al-Assad’s government and the country’s return to the Arab League.
The protests on Friday coincided with al-Assad’s participation in the Arab League summit taking place in Saudi Arabia, marking the Syrian president’s return to the summit after 12 years.
Thousands protested in Idlib, al-Bab, Azaz, Jarabulus, and Afrin, among other cities, under the slogan, “Criminal al-Assad Never Represents Syria”.
Demonstrations also took place in six cities outside Syria: Vienna, Amsterdam, London, Vaile, Stockholm and Lyon.
In the northwestern Syrian rebel-held city of Idlib, hundreds participated in the protests.
“We demonstrated today to remind those who are seeking to normalise their relations with the al-Assad regime that the Great Syrian Revolution started spontaneously as a response to the internal suffocation we endured under the Assad regime,” Ibrahim Aboud, one of the participants in the demonstration and a displaced civilian from Maarat al-Numan in northern Idlib, told Al Jazeera.
“When we first protested in 2011, we didn’t ask permission from anyone, and we didn’t take into considering the regional and international environment surrounding Syria.”
Protesters held banners that read: ‘Syria is not represented by the criminal al-Assad’ and ‘No to normalisation with the regime’ in rebel-held Idlib [Ali Haj Suleiman/Al Jazeera] Aboud said he could not accept the Arab countries’ move, whether it was political, diplomatic, military, or economic, considering that the government has killed, displaced and imprisoned millions of Syrians for 12 years.
“We are determined to achieve the goals of the revolution and liberate Syria from the Assad regime and its thugs,” Aboud said.
‘Held him accountable’
The Arab League suspended Syria’s membership in May 2011 following the brutal way al-Assad handled the protests, as well as the civilians who started the Syrian revolution that year.
“Today, we send a message to the Arab and international community rejecting the return of the criminal Bashar al-Assad to the Arab League. They should have held him accountable instead of shaking his hands, which are stained with the blood of the Syrian people,” said Naif Shaban, a human rights activist and displaced civilian from Wadi Barada in the Damascus countryside.
“The normalisation will not change anything for us because this has been taking place under the table for the last 12 years. Today, it is happening publicly,” Shaban said
Syria’s war broke out after al-Assad’s repression of peaceful anti-government demonstrations in 2011 escalated into a deadly conflict that pulled in foreign powers and various armed groups.
More than half a million people have been killed and about half of the country’s pre-war population has been forced from their homes.
Idlib is home to about three million people, half of them displaced by the war.
Rebel-held Idlib is home to about three million people, half of them displaced by the war [Ali Haj Suleiman/Al Jazeera] ‘Our revolution will continue’
In the Syrian city of Al-Bab, about 1,000 people staged a similar protest.
Jalal Talawi, one of the protest organisers in the city, said demonstrators were showing their firm rejection of al-Assad’s presence at the summit and normalisation with this “malicious regime”.
“Many people today were displaced by al-Assad’s regime and its supporters,” Talawi told Al Jazeera.
“Our message is crystal clear: Our revolution will continue until we achieve its goal and that’s freedom and liberation from this regime.
“Al-Assad doesn’t represent us as Syrians and we sent a clear message today to everyone supporting or opposing the revolution, that we will not accept this regime and are continuing until it falls and until we get all of our detainees back. We will continue despite the entire world standing in our way.”
In Azaz, a refuge for Syrians who fled from other parts of the country amid the war, 700 people gathered to protest.
‘We greatly appreciate Qatar’s stance’
Nor was Syria’s return to the Arab League universally embraced in the Saudi city of Jeddah where the meeting took place.
Qatar’s emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani departed the city after leading the Qatari delegation at the summit. While there was no confirmation, the Reuters news agency quoted an unnamed Arab official as saying that Sheikh Tamim left the summit before the start of al-Assad’s speech.
Qatar had previously opposed Syria’s return to the Arab League. Following its return to the Arab League, Qatar’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson said the country’s position “on normalisation with the regime had not changed”.
The spokesperson added that Qatar will still support the “Arab consensus and will not be an obstacle to that”.
Shaban, a protester in Idlib, added that people “appreciated Qatar’s stance against normalisation and their support for the rights of the Syrian people”.
“We wish other countries had a similar stance,” Shaban added.
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4/23/2023: Healing and Hope; Who is Ray Epps; Nicolas Cage
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4/23/2023: Healing and Hope; Who is Ray Epps; Nicolas Cage – CBS News
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Survivors: How earthquakes added to suffering in war-torn northwest Syria | 60 Minutes
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Survivors: How earthquakes added to suffering in war-torn northwest Syria | 60 Minutes – CBS News
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In war-torn northwest Syria, earthquake survivors struggle to find medical care
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After February’s cataclysmic series of earthquakes, the world poured emergency relief into Turkey and Syria. But some of those suffering the most were nearly impossible to reach. They were already fighting to survive a war zone. Recently, we traveled to this battleground in northwest Syria to meet an American medical charity that braved the odds — bringing hands of healing and hope.
In the night, February 6th, death seemed a certainty… and life, a revelation.
Through northwest Syria, 10 thousand buildings crumbled. In towns that stood for millennia, the catastrophe was biblical.
60 Minutes
But rescue did not assure survival. Ambulances raced to a medical system in critical condition itself after 12 years of bombed hospitals and murdered doctors.
Dr. Samer Attar: There’s a chilling saying I learned in Syria that you kill one doctor it’s like killing a hundred soldiers. Because if you kill a doctor, you kill a nurse, you kill a paramedic, you blow up an ambulance, you destroy a hospital — you’re not just killing those individuals, or group of individuals, you’re just taking away hope from a community.
Samer Attar is an orthopedic surgeon from Chicago who volunteers for the Syrian American Medical Society — a U.S. charity that operates 13 hospitals in the warzone with a Syrian staff of 23-hundred.
Dr. Samer Attar: So, when the war broke out in Syria — health care providers, the health care infrastructure, came under attack because war crimes work. Crimes against humanity work. If you can get away with it, you can win.
He’s talking about relentless attacks on health care ordered by Syria’s Bashar al-Assad and his ally, Russia’s Vladimir Putin who sent his military to Syria in a prelude to Ukraine. The war began in 2011 with an uprising to end the Assad family’s 52-year dictatorship. but Assad responded by leveling his country with artillery, chemical weapons and explosive barrels dropped from planes. Fourteen million have lost their homes. Half a million are dead. Northwest Syria is in rebel hands and this is where we met the Syrian American Medical Society known as SAMS.
Scott Pelley: How many surgeries did you do?
Dr. Samer Attar: So, I did 23 on my first day. And I remember crying myself to sleep the first night. Because, it was just, the suffering was just so overwhelming.
We had met Samer Attar six years earlier where SAMS was building a hospital in a cave to shield it from attack. Today, the hospital is complete and proved its endurance in the quakes. Amany Jaqlan is a SAMS nurse in the black and white hijab headscarf.
Amany Jaqlan (Arabic translation): I was shocked at the scene…
She told us.
Amany Jaqlan (Arabic translation): Bodies were scattered on the floor, and there were [so many]. I couldn’t have imagined the extent of destruction and the number of victims.
The number, in northwest Syria, was 45-hundred dead. In the cave hospital, the lost were laid in hallways where a quick examination could change a life forever and disbelief suspended sorrow if only for a moment.
60 Minutes
Dr. Samer Attar: I remember a 22-year-old that got engaged the day before the earthquake and the next day his whole family was gone. I remember a 16-year-old who was paralyzed from the neck down, and her family was gone and she’s on a mechanical ventilator in a hospital in Syria. Who’s going to take care of her? And two orphaned teenage sisters, both with wounds in both legs requiring multiple surgeries, and a four-year-old kid with a traumatic brain injury on a ventilator.
Dr. Samer Attar: These nurses and doctors are the bravest people I’ve ever met. They were already traumatized by barrel bombs and chemical weapons. But when they talk about the earthquake, I’d never really seen so much fear, and panic and anxiety.
We found those emotions in the story of a woman rescued from this collapsed apartment building. Thirty five-year-old Zainab Ali al-Najib arrived at the cave hospital to tell Amany Jaqlan a story she could hardly believe.
Amany Jaqlan (Arabic translation): I remember a woman who came to me to say that all of her children were dead.
Rescue workers were digging for the woman’s six children.
Abdo Tarek (Arabic translation): We arrived at the collapsed building and heard a noise. We tried to reach the sound quickly, but our equipment and capabilities were limited.
The rescuers included Abdo Tarek and Sameh Fakhori, volunteers for the White Helmets, a force of 3,000 civil defense workers formed nine years ago to save victims from Assad’s attacks.
60 Minutes
Fakhori told us,
Sameh Fakhori (Arabic translation): The girl was the first one we reached by digging through the roof. Two kids were behind her.
Abdo Tarek (Arabic translation): I went down to her and cleared the debris from her hands and feet, and after an hour and a half, we were able to pull her out.
The surviving children were rushed to the cave hospital — including 8-year-old Mohammad and 6-year-old Safaa.
Amany Jaqlan (Arabic translation): After about fifteen minutes…
Jaqlan told us,
Amany Jaqlan (Arabic translation): a girl arrived, followed by another girl. There were three of them.
Three surviving children of six. We found them with their mother, Zainab.
60 Minutes
Scott Pelley: When your surviving children came in, it must have seemed like a miracle to you?
Zainab Ali al-Najib (Arabic translation): Imagine thinking you’ve lost all your kids, that everyone is gone, and then some of them are returned to you.
She told us that she had to leave one child in surgery so she could attend the funeral of another.
Zainab Ali al-Najib (Arabic translation): I try to talk to them, but nobody answers me. The silence is unbearable. I miss seeing them and hearing their laughter. If only I could meet them for just an hour. I pray that God reunites us as soon as possible. They must miss us as much as we miss them. I hope to see them soon in heaven.
Her tent stands where her apartment fell. In northwest Syria, the quakes left 53 thousand families with nowhere to go, expanding the war’s aging camps of the homeless.
Scott Pelley: What are their needs?
Dr. Mufaddal Hamadeh: Whew! What do they not need? I mean look at this. Food security is one thing.
Mufaddal Hamadeh is a Chicago oncologist and former president of the Syrian American Medical Society. He told us SAMS spends $28 million a year in syria. About 10 million of that is contributed by U.S. foreign aid.
Scott Pelley: What is your hope for Syria’s future?
Dr. Mufaddal Hamadeh: I hope that they can find hope, that they will be able to believe in the future. They feel so much left behind and the world have forgotten about them. I wish they could feel again that there… that there’s some people that really care.
We found moments of hope even amid the unholy damage in Idlib, a city, remembering 12 years of war, and still in rebel hands. Here, SAMS built a hospital from an office building. and in surgeries weeks before, Samer Attar repaired 12-year-old Suzanne’s arms and legs.
Scott Pelley: What does that moment of progress mean to you?
Dr. Samer Attar: It means that there are days where you fight bouts of helplessness and hopelessness, and you wonder what exactly you’re accomplishing– and you feel like you’re trying to empty the ocean with a small cup because it never ends, and the suffering never ends and it never seems to be going away. But it’s those, it’s those brief flashes that are enough to keep you going for another month.
There will be many months ahead with no end in sight to the war.
Scott Pelley: Have there been airstrikes since the earthquake?
Sameh Fakhori (Arabic translation): Yes, there have been airstrikes. This area experienced an artillery bombardment four days after the earthquake.
Scott Pelley: How do you explain the cruelty of conducting airstrikes against people who have just survived this terrible catastrophe?
The question, they thought, had an obvious answer. They told us, Assad is a criminal. With no prospect of peace, Dr. Attar worries now about vital follow up surgeries, physical therapy and prosthetic limbs.
60 Minutes
Dr. Samer Attar: They’re gonna struggle. And what future do they have? I keep thinking of that girl on a mechanical ventilator, who’s paralyzed from the chest down. Who — what happens to her? Who — who takes care of her? Normally in, in Syria, a big part of your community is family, but what do you do when your entire family’s been killed, and there’s nobody else around. Who takes care of you?
Scott Pelley: You have volunteered at this hospital during the war, you came rushing back after the earthquake, you have treated battlefield injuries in Ukraine as a volunteer. And I have to ask, why do you do this work?
Dr. Samer Attar: It’s not just about showing up to help out. A lot of these missions for me are about bearing witness. They’re about connection, and solidarity, and advocacy. Just being able to be here, be there, and look these nurses, look these doctors in the eye, and shake their hand, and be present with them, be on the ground with them. It just lets them know that it’s a small world, they’re not alone, we’re all connected and when the world is literally crashing down around you and collapsing, all we’ve got is each other. And that’s part of the reason why I keep coming back.
‘Each other’ and courage have been enough to steal moments of triumph.
But northwest Syria will be forced to ration mercy. Eleven thousand wounded from the quakes are on a long journey—victims of a vicious and forgotten war — sustained only by the compassion of humanitarian hearts.
To learn more about the Syrian American Medical Society, click here. To learn more about the White Helmets, click here.
Produced by Nicole Young. Field producer, Selin Ozdemir. Field producer, Mouaz Moustafa. Associate producer, Kristin Steve Broadcast associate, Michelle Karim. Broadcast associate, Matthew Riley. Edited by Sean Kelly.
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Netanyahu is backed into a corner. Here’s what he may do next | CNN
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Editor’s Note: A version of this story first appeared in CNN’s Meanwhile in the Middle East newsletter, a three-times-a-week look inside the region’s biggest stories. Sign up here.
Abu Dhabi, UAE
CNN
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When Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced his decision to delay a controversial plan to weaken the country’s judiciary on Monday, he invoked the biblical story of the Judgement of Solomon, where the king had to rule between two women, both claiming to be the mother of a child. Solomon ordered that the child be cut in two, and the woman who protested the ruling was determined to be the real mother.
Before Netanyahu spoke, supporters of the judicial overhaul had gathered in the streets following calls from right-wing politicians to come out, allowing the prime minister to make his address as protesters from both sides rallied simultaneously for the first time in weeks.
“Even today, both sides in the national dispute claim love for the baby – love for our country,” said Netanyahu. “I am aware of the enormous tension that is building up between the two camps, between the two parts of the people, and I am attentive to the desire of many citizens to relieve this tension.”
The timing of the address was likely intentional and was meant to give Netanyahu’s much-delayed speech a favorable backdrop – two competing camps demonstrating their love for the country, said Aviv Bushinsky, a former media adviser for Netanyahu who served the prime minister for nine years.
Netanyahu’s strategy has always been based on last-minute decisions, Bushinsky said, which sometimes makes it difficult to predict his next move.
Other analysts say the prime minister’s strategy brings uncertainty to Israel’s future.
“He is playing the game,” said Gideon Rahat, a professor of political science at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. “You can never know what will happen, and that’s the problem … There is no certainty in Israel, in the Israeli system, and I am not sure that he’s not happy about this.”
Bushinsky says that if it was up to Netanyahu he would have pumped the brakes on the judicial overhaul a long time ago, as it wasn’t one of the main leadership goals declared at the start of his sixth term as prime minister.
He’s standing by it because the survival of his coalition depends on it. But now, analysts say he’s backed into a corner between appeasing protesters and keeping his government intact.
Before Netanyahu announced the delay, National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir’s Jewish Power party broke the news, noting that part of the delay agreement was to establish a National Guard. That caused alarm, with some speculating on social media that Ben Gvir, who has an extremist past, was being allowed to set up his own militia.
Diana Buttu, a Palestinian-Canadian lawyer and a former spokesperson for the Palestine Liberation Organization, told CNN’s Becky Anderson on Tuesday that putting Ben Gvir in charge of the National Guard is “the equivalent of putting the fox in charge of the henhouse.”
Ben Gvir was quick to address the concerns about the new body. “Let’s put things straight: no private army and no militias,” he said in a statement published on his Telegram page.
Bushinsky downplayed the significance of the National Guard, saying it is “a comfort prize” for Ben Gvir – “a prize for the losers.”
The prime minister is now faced with very few options, analysts say. If he sides with his coalition and votes on the overhaul, crippling protests and strikes would resume. If he pulls the brakes, his coalition could collapse.
The only wiggle room the Israeli leader has, analysts say, is if negotiators reach a moderated judicial overhaul plan bill over the Knesset’s recess period, which ends April 30, and where concessions to his right-wing coalition members need not be too extreme.
Netanyahu may also be hoping for the reform bill to be shelved for the time being.
“I think Netanyahu will try to run away from this thing, hoping that things will gradually ease,” said Bushinsky, noting that the ministers who had threatened to resign should the bill not advance have all remained in their posts.
Analysts say, however, that what could once again unite the fragmented country and have the public rally behind the government is a potential security threat, either from neighboring countries or through conflict with the Palestinians.
A security crisis would reorient the government’s attention, said Yohanan Plesner, president of the Israel Democracy Institute in Jerusalem, whether it arises from conflict with the Palestinians, the Iran-backed Hezbollah group in Lebanon or others.
“Some thought that if there was a security crisis, then Netanyahu would be saved by the bell,” said Bushinsky.
Palestinians are watching the process with unease amid fears that they will pay the price of Netanyahu’s concessions to right-wing coalition members with a history of anti-Palestinian rhetoric.
“We are seeing that Palestinians are once again paying the price for Israel’s electoral choices,” said Buttu. “There may be calm in the streets of Tel Aviv … but for Palestinians, the reality remains the same.”
How Netanyahu will act remains uncertain, and not everyone is optimistic that the recess period will yield any kind of consensus or moderation in his position.
“I have not detected any indication that tells me that the prime minister is actually entering into the negotiations with a keen interest in achieving consensus … including comprises on core aspects of the judicial overhaul,” said Plesner.
Plesner notes, however, that Netanyahu and his Likud party emerged “politically injured” from the last few months, losing not only legitimacy and support in the eyes of the Israeli people, but also in the eyes of his own Likud voters.
“(It was) a dramatic erosion of their political power and political posture,” he said.
Biden, Netanyahu trade barbs over plan to weaken courts; Israel rejects US ‘pressure’
Israel’s embattled prime minister escalated a rare public dispute with US President Joe Biden on Tuesday, rejecting “pressure” from the White House after Biden criticized Netanyahu’s efforts to weaken Israel’s judiciary. Biden said on Tuesday that he won’t invite Netanyahu to the White House “in the near term,” and issued an unusually stinging rebuke of the Israeli leader’s proposed judicial overhaul. Netanyahu responded late on Tuesday, saying, “Israel is a sovereign country which makes its decisions by the will of its people and not based on pressures from abroad, including from the best of friends.”
- Background: The prime minister finally paused the legislation on Monday after a general strike and mass protests threw Israel into chaos, but he said he planned to return to the effort in the next legislative term. Critics say Netanyahu is pushing through the changes because of his own ongoing corruption trial, which he denies.
- Why it matters: The back and forth thrust into public view a simmering diplomatic dispute that has mostly been kept private over the past several weeks. Biden and other US officials had sought to quietly dissuade Netanyahu from moving ahead with his proposed reforms without creating the appearance of a rift. But now the divide appears to be opening between the two men, who have known each other for decades.
Riyadh joins Shanghai Cooperation Organization as ties with Beijing grow
Saudi Arabia’s cabinet approved on Wednesday a decision to join the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), as Riyadh builds a long-term partnership with China despite US security concerns, Reuters reported. Saudi Arabia has approved a memorandum on granting the kingdom the status of a dialog partner in the SCO, state news agency SPA said.
- Background: Formed in 2001 by Russia, China and former Soviet states in Central Asia, the body has been expanded to include India and Pakistan, with a view to playing a bigger role as counterweight to Western influence in the region. The SCO is a political and security union of countries spanning much of Eurasia. Iran also signed documents for full membership last year. Countries belonging to the organization plan to hold a joint “counter-terrorism exercise” in Russia’s Chelyabinsk region in August.
- Why it matters: Riyadh’s growing ties with Beijing have raised security concerns in Washington, its traditional ally. Washington says Chinese attempts to exert influence around the world will not change US policy toward the Middle East. Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states have voiced concern about what they see as a withdrawal from the region by the United States, its main security guarantor, and have moved to diversify partners. Washington says it will stay an active partner in the region.
US sanctions Syrian leader Assad’s cousins, others over drug trade
The US on Tuesday imposed new sanctions against six people, including two cousins of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, for their role in the production or export of captagon, a dangerous amphetamine, Reuters cited the Treasury Department as saying. The Treasury said trade in captagon was estimated to be a billion-dollar enterprise and the sanctions highlight the role of Lebanese drug traffickers and the Assad family dominance of captagon trafficking, which helped fund the Syrian government.
- Background: Regional officials say the Iranian-backed Hezbollah as well as Syrian armed groups linked to the Damascus government are behind the surging trade of captagon, smuggled either through Jordan to the south or Lebanon to the west. Assad’s government denies involvement in drug-making and smuggling and says it is stepping up its campaign to curb the lucrative trade. Hezbollah denies the accusations.
- Why it matters: There is a thriving market for captagon in the Gulf, and United Nations and Western anti-narcotics drug officials say Syria, shattered by a decade of civil war, has become the region’s main production site for a multibillion-dollar drug trade that also exports to Europe.
Saudi Arabia’s oil giant Aramco will acquire a 10% stake in China’s Rongsheng Petrochemical in a strategic deal worth $3.6 billion that would significantly expand its presence in China.
Amena Bakr, deputy bureau chief at Energy Intelligence, spoke to CNN’s Becky Anderson about what this means for Saudi-Chinese cooperation.
She said Saudi interest is in the East as the kingdom does not like “policy that interferes with their internal affairs,” a mantra that China holds sacred.
Watch the full interview here.
A Ramadan TV show is in hot water for its offensive depiction of Iraqi women, drawing condemnation from politicians in both Kuwait and Iraq.
The series, “London Class,” is produced by the Saudi state-backed media conglomerate MBC group and depicts Iraqi women working as maids for Kuwaiti women and being accused of theft.
The show follows a group of Arab medicine students at a London university in the 1980s. Much of the anger from Iraqis is directed at Kuwait.
The Kuwaiti Ministry of Information has however said the show has nothing to do with the country and was not shown on any platform there, according to Arabic media.
One Baghdad-based Twitter user condemned what he said was a repeated “stream of hatred and malice from Kuwaiti shows towards our people.”
The show was written by Kuwaiti writer Heba Hamada and directed by Egyptian Mohamed Bakir. Hamada responded to the criticism in an Instagram post, saying: “Iraq is the mother of civilization, and all Arabs lean on its shoulder.”
Mustafa Jabbar Sanad, a member of parliament in Iraq, accused the show of “erasing the value of well-known Iraqi talents … to distort the image of the Iraqi people as a whole, not just women.”
Hamada was the subject of criticism in 2019 because of a similar show she wrote called “Cairo Class,” which caused strife between Kuwaitis and Egyptians due its portrayal of Egypt. That show is being aired on Netflix.
The question of honor, particularly that of Iraqi women, has long been a sensitive issue in Kuwaiti-Iraqi relations. Former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein had accused Kuwait of insulting his country’s women, citing it as a reason for his invasion of the country in 1990.
In a 2004 court hearing in Iraq, the former president decried being held accountable for the invasion.
“How could Saddam be tried over Kuwait that said it will reduce Iraqi women to 10-dinar prostitutes?” he asked, referring to himself. “He (Hussein) defended Iraq’s honor and revived its historical rights over those dogs,” Saddam said, referring to the Kuwaitis.
Iraq made its final reparation payment for that invasion last year, having paid the Gulf nation a total of $52.4 billion.
By Dalya Al Masri
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Earthquake rescue efforts in Syria deterred by politics
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Earthquake rescue efforts in Syria deterred by politics – CBS News
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Can Putin win?
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“I am wicked and scary with claws and teeth,” Vladimir Putin reportedly warned David Cameron when the then-British prime minister pressed him about the use of chemical weapons by Russia’s ally in Syria, Bashar al-Assad, and discussed how far Russia was prepared to go.
According to Cameron’s top foreign policy adviser John Casson — cited in a BBC documentary — Putin went on to explain that to succeed in Syria, one would have to use barbaric methods, as the U.S. did in Abu Ghraib jail in Iraq. “I am an ex-KGB man,” he expounded.
The remarks were meant, apparently, half in jest but, as ever with Russia’s leader, the menace was clear.
And certainly, Putin has proven he is ready to deploy fear as a weapon in his attempt to subjugate a defiant Ukraine. His troops have targeted civilians and have resorted to torture and rape. But victory has eluded him.
In the next few weeks, he looks set to try to reverse his military failures with a late-winter offensive: very possibly by being even scarier, and fighting tooth and claw, to save Russia — and himself — from further humiliation.
Can the ex-KGB man succeed, however? Can Russia still win the war of Putin’s choice against Ukraine in the face of heroic and united resistance from the Ukrainians?
Catalog of errors
From the start, the war was marked by misjudgments and erroneous calculations. Putin and his generals underestimated Ukrainian resistance, overrated the abilities of their own forces, and failed to foresee the scale of military and economic support Ukraine would receive from the United States and European nations.
Kyiv didn’t fall in a matter of days — as planned by the Kremlin — and Putin’s forces in the summer and autumn were pushed back, with Ukraine reclaiming by November more than half the territory the Russians captured in the first few weeks of the invasion. Russia has now been forced into a costly and protracted conventional war, one that’s sparked rare dissent within the country’s political-military establishment and led Kremlin infighting to spill into the open.
The only victory Russian forces have recorded in months came in January when the Ukrainians withdrew from the salt-mining town of Soledar in the Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine. And the signs are that the Russians are on the brink of another win with Bakhmut, just six miles southwest of Soledar, which is likely to fall into their hands shortly.
But neither of these blood-drenched victories amounts to much more than a symbolic success despite the high casualties likely suffered by both sides. Tactically neither win is significant — and some Western officials privately say Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy may have been better advised to have withdrawn earlier from Soledar and from Bakhmut now, in much the same way the Russians in November beat a retreat from their militarily hopeless position at Kherson.
For a real reversal of Russia’s military fortunes Putin will be banking in the coming weeks on his forces, replenished by mobilized reservists and conscripts, pulling off a major new offensive. Ukrainian officials expect the offensive to come in earnest sooner than spring. Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov warned in press conferences in the past few days that Russia may well have as many as 500,000 troops amassed in occupied Ukraine and along the borders in reserve ready for an attack. He says it may start in earnest around this month’s first anniversary of the war on February 24.
Other Ukrainian officials think the offensive, when it comes, will be in March — but at least before the arrival of Leopard 2 and other Western main battle tanks and infantry fighting vehicles. Zelenskyy warned Ukrainians Saturday that the country is entering a “time when the occupier throws more and more of its forces to break our defenses.”
All eyes on Donbas
The likely focus of the Russians will be on the Donbas region of the East. Andriy Chernyak, an official in Ukraine’s military intelligence, told the Kyiv Post that Putin had ordered his armed forces to capture all of Donetsk and Luhansk by the end of March. “We’ve observed that the Russian occupation forces are redeploying additional assault groups, units, weapons and military equipment to the east,” Chernyak said. “According to the military intelligence of Ukraine, Putin gave the order to seize all of the territories of Donetsk and Luhansk regions.”
Other Ukrainian officials and western military analysts suspect Russia might throw some wildcards to distract and confuse. They have their eyes on a feint coming from Belarus mimicking the northern thrust last February on Kyiv and west of the capital toward Vinnytsia. But Ukrainian defense officials estimate there are only 12,000 Russian soldiers in Belarus currently, ostensibly holding joint training exercises with the Belarusian military, hardly enough to mount a diversion.
“A repeat assault on Kyiv makes little sense,” Michael Kofman, an American expert on the Russian Armed Forces and a fellow of the Center for a New American Security, a Washington-based think tank. “An operation to sever supply lines in the west, or to seize the nuclear powerplant by Rivne, may be more feasible, but this would require a much larger force than what Russia currently has deployed in Belarus,” he said in an analysis.
But exactly where Russia’s main thrusts will come along the 600-kilometer-long front line in Ukraine’s Donbas region is still unclear. Western military analysts don’t expect Russia to mount a push along the whole snaking front — more likely launching a two or three-pronged assault focusing on some key villages and towns in southern Donetsk, on Kreminna and Lyman in Luhansk, and in the south in Zaporizhzhia, where there have been reports of increased buildup of troops and equipment across the border in Russia.
In the Luhansk region, Russian forces have been removing residents near the Russian-held parts of the front line. And the region’s governor, Serhiy Haidai, believes the expulsions are aimed at clearing out possible Ukrainian spies and locals spotting for the Ukrainian artillery. “There is an active transfer of (Russian troops) to the region and they are definitely preparing for something on the eastern front,” Haidai told reporters.
Reznikov has said he expects the Russian offensive will come from the east and the south simultaneously — from Zaporizhzhia in the south and in Donetsk and Luhansk. In the run-up to the main offensives, Russian forces have been testing five points along the front, according to Ukraine’s General Staff in a press briefing Tuesday. They said Russian troops have been regrouping on different parts of the front line and conducting attacks near Kupiansk in the Kharkiv region and Lyman, Bakhmut, Avdiivka, and Novopavlivka in eastern Donetsk.
Combined arms warfare
Breakthroughs, however, will likely elude the Russians if they can’t correct two major failings that have dogged their military operations so far — poor logistics and a failure to coordinate infantry, armor, artillery and air support to achieve mutually complementary effects, otherwise known as combined arms warfare.
When announcing the appointment in January of General Valery Gerasimov — the former chief of the defense staff — as the overall commander of Russian forces in Ukraine, Russia’s defense ministry highlighted “the need to organize closer interaction between the types and arms of the troops,” in other words to improve combined arms warfare.
Kofman assesses that Russia’s logistics problems may have largely been overcome. “There’s been a fair amount of reorganization in Russian logistics, and adaptation. I think the conversation on Russian logistical problems in general suffers from too much anecdotalism and received wisdom,” he said.
Failing that, much will depend for Russia on how much Gerasimov has managed to train his replenished forces in combined arms warfare and on that there are huge doubts he had enough time. Kofman believes Ukrainian forces “would be better served absorbing the Russian attack and exhausting the Russian offensive potential, then taking the initiative later this spring. Having expended ammunition, better troops, and equipment it could leave Russian defense overall weaker.” He suspects the offensive “may prove underwhelming.”
Pro-war Russian military bloggers agree. They have been clamoring for another mobilization, saying it will be necessary to power the breakouts needed to reverse Russia’s military fortunes. Former Russian intelligence officer and paramilitary commander Igor Girkin, who played a key role in Crimea’s annexation and later in the Donbas, has argued waves of call-ups will be needed to overcome Ukraine’s defenses by sheer numbers.
And Western military analysts suspect that Ukraine and Russia are currently fielding about the same number of combat soldiers. This means General Gerasimov will need many more if he’s to achieve the three-to-one ratio military doctrines suggest necessary for an attacking force to succeed.
Ukrainian officials think Russia’s offensive will be in March, before the arrival of Leopard 2 and other Western tanks | Sascha Schuermann/Getty Images But others fear that Russia has sufficient forces, if they are concentrated, to make some “shock gains.” Richard Kemp, a former British army infantry commander, is predicting “significant Russian gains in the coming weeks. We need to be realistic about how bad things could be — otherwise the shock risks dislodging Western resolve,” he wrote. The fear being that if the Russians can make significant territorial gains in the Donbas, then it is more likely pressure from some Western allies will grow for negotiations.
But Gerasimov’s manpower deficiencies have prompted other analysts to say that if Western resolve holds, Putin’s own caution will hamper Russia’s chances to win the war.
“Putin’s hesitant wartime decision-making demonstrates his desire to avoid risky decisions that could threaten his rule or international escalation — despite the fact his maximalist and unrealistic objective, the full conquest of Ukraine, likely requires the assumption of further risk to have any hope of success,” said the Institute for the Study of War in an analysis this week.
Wicked and scary Putin may be but, as far as ISW sees it, he “has remained reluctant to order the difficult changes to the Russian military and society that are likely necessary to salvage his war.”
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Jamie Dettmer
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US pledges post-earthquake aid, but no contact with Syria’s Assad
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The United States has said it is “committed” to helping residents “on both sides” of the Turkey-Syria border devastated by deadly earthquakes, but Washington ruled out dealing directly with the Syrian government.
State Department spokesperson Ned Price told reporters on Monday that the US will deliver aid to Syria through nongovernmental organisations (NGOs) without engaging with the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, which it does not recognise as legitimate.
“It would be quite ironic — if not even counterproductive — for us to reach out to a government that has brutalised its people over the course of a dozen years now,” Price said.
“Instead, we have humanitarian partners on the ground who can provide the type of assistance in the aftermath of these tragic earthquakes.”
Two earthquakes, followed by powerful aftershocks, hit southeastern Turkey and northern Syria early on Monday, causing widespread destruction and trapping thousands under the rubble.
More than 3,600 people have been killed in Turkey and Syria, according to the most recent estimates, and that number is expected to rise.
Price said on Monday that the US has already mobilised assistance to help those affected in both countries.
But the disaster appears to have done little to soften Washington’s stance towards Damascus. The US government called on Assad to step down in 2011 as a popular uprising turned into a protracted civil war that has killed hundreds of thousands of people in Syria.
Although some US allies in the Middle East have mended ties with Damascus in recent years, Washington has said it would not change its opposition to Assad without an inclusive political settlement to the conflict.
The Syrian government remains under heavy US sanctions aimed at isolating the country economically in response to widely documented human rights violations.
On Monday, the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC), a US-based advocacy group, called for the “immediate” lifting of US sanctions to facilitate the delivery of aid to Syria.
“We commend and are thankful to existing organizations on the ground providing immediate humanitarian aid and relief to those in Syria, Turkey, and across the region. The reality is more aid and relief is needed, and time is of the essence,” ADC executive director Abed Ayoub said in a statement.
“Lifting of the sanctions will open the doors for additional and supplemental aid that will provide immediate relief to those in need.”
But Price said Washington will not change its policy of working with nongovernmental partners to help Syrians. “This is a regime that has never shown any inclination to put the welfare, the well-being, the interests of its people first,” he told reporters.
“Now that its people are suffering even more, we’re going to continue doing what has proven effective over the course of the past dozen years or so — providing significant amounts of humanitarian assistance to partners on the ground.”
Price also said the process of delivering aid to Syria and Turkey was different, but the US wants to help people in both countries.
“In Turkey, we have a partner in the government. In Syria, we have a partner in the form of NGOs on the ground who are providing humanitarian support,” he said.
Price added that Secretary of State Antony Blinken spoke with his Turkish counterpart Mevlut Cavusoglu earlier on Monday to offer condolences and convey that Washington is willing to provide “anything” that Ankara needs.
“We stand ready … to help our ally in a time of need,” said Price, adding that the same position extends to Syrian NGOs in “their efforts to alleviate the suffering of the Syrian people“.
Early on Monday, President Joe Biden said he ordered top US officials to reach out to their Turkish counterparts to coordinate “any and all needed assistance” for Turkey, a NATO partner.
“Today, our hearts and our deepest condolences are with all those who have lost precious loved ones, those who are injured, and those who saw their homes and businesses destroyed,” Biden said in a statement.
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Kyiv calls for air defenses as Putin brings his Syria tactics to Ukraine
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Russian President Vladimir Putin turned back to his bloody, destructive playbook from Syria with a barrage of rocket attacks against civilian targets across Ukraine on Monday, ramping up pressure on Western allies to supply Kyiv with the air defenses it has long sought.
Monday’s rush-hour bombardment on the streets of Kyiv, Lviv, Dnipro, Zaporizhzhia and other regions came as little surprise, given that Putin had already signaled his willingness to switch to ever more brutal tactics by appointing Sergey Surovikin, the general who oversaw Russian forces in Syria on-and-off from 2017 to 2020, as commander of his struggling war effort in Ukraine.
In a speech at an emergency meeting of his National Security Council on Monday, Putin claimed the strikes came in response to this weekend’s attack on the Kerch Bridge linking illegally occupied Crimea to Russia. Putin said Russia had deployed “high-precision, long-range weapons from the air, sea and land” to deliver “massive attacks on targets of Ukraine’s energy, military command and communications facilities.” He added that Russia would continue to dole out retribution if Ukraine continued to strike so-called “Russian” territory.
Ukraine’s defense ministry said 75 missiles were launched, 41 of which were shot down.
Moscow’s claims to precision attacks on strategic targets seemed to mask the fact that the aim was clearly to kill civilians, as the missiles struck the Shevchenkivskyi district in the heart of Kyiv during peak morning traffic. Pictures and footage taken by reporters and from security cameras show cars on fire; a crater beside a children’s playground in the Shevchenko Park and a pedestrian bridge destroyed.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Telegram that Russia appeared to have two targets in its assault: energy facilities throughout the country — and Ukrainians going about their daily lives.
“They want panic and chaos,” Zelenskyy said, in a video that appeared to have been shot on his cell phone on the streets of Kyiv. Monday’s attacks came at a time “especially chosen to cause as much damage as possible … Why such strikes exactly? The enemy wants us to be afraid, wants to make people run. But we can only run forward — and we demonstrate this on the battlefield. It will continue to be so.”
Zelenskyy also renewed his appeals to the West to provide Ukraine with additional air defenses. Kyiv has been seeking this additional firepower for weeks, arguing that Russia is likely to try to knock out Ukraine’s energy and industrial infrastructure over the winter, and it has been disappointed by the slow response.
In tweets, Zelenskyy said he had spoken with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and his French counterpart Emmanuel Macron in the wake of the strikes on the capital and other cities. With Macron, Zelenskyy said: “We discussed the strengthening of our air defense, the need for a tough European and international reaction, as well as increased pressure on the Russian Federation.”
Those discussions on air defense batteries are now likely to loom large at the U.S.-led Ukraine Defense Contact Group — also known as the Ramstein format — where senior defense officials from across the globe will gather in Brussels later this week.
Ukraine’s Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov said on Monday: “The best response to Russian missile terror is the supply of anti-aircraft and anti-missile systems to Ukraine — protect the sky over Ukraine! This will protect our cities and our people. This will protect the future of Europe. Evil must be punished.”
The butcher of Syria takes over
Surovikin was only announced as the new Russian commander for Ukraine on Saturday.
The 55-year-old general, who before his promotion had been charged with leading Russia’s Southern Military District and Russian troops in Syria, has long been an infamous figure with a reputation for being ruthless.
He was linked to the violent suppression of the anti-Soviet 1990 Dushanbe riots in Tajikistan, and was reportedly imprisoned (before being freed without charge) after soldiers under his command killed three protesters in Moscow during the failed coup against then Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev in August 1991. In 1995, Surovikin received a suspended sentence (which was later overturned) for participating in the illegal arms trade. Surovikin also played a role in Russia’s second Chechen war, commanding the 42nd Guards Motorized Rifle Division.
But Surovikin is best known — and most feared — for his command of Russian forces in Syria, where Moscow intervened to prop up Bashar al-Assad’s regime. Human Rights Watch, a non-governmental organization, listed Surovikin as one of the commanders “who may bear command responsibility” for human rights violations during the 2019-2020 offensive in Syria’s Idlib province, when Syrian and Russian forces launched dozens of air and ground attacks on civilian targets and infrastructure, striking homes, schools, health care facilities and markets.
It was not the first time Russian forces were accused of war crimes in Syria. The Kremlin’s troops, working with Syrians, undertook a month-long bombing campaign of opposition-controlled territory in Aleppo in 2016, killing hundreds of civilians, including 90 children, with indiscriminate airstrikes, cluster munitions and incendiary weapons hitting civilian targets including medical facilities.
Now, with Russian forces on the back foot in Ukraine and Putin’s full-throated rhetoric out of step with the situation on the ground in his war, Surovikin appears to be turning to his old tactic of inflicting massive damage on civilians in an attempt to turn the tide of the war.
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Zoya Sheftalovich
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