Mereja Forum

[sarcasm]

It has now been over a decade since Syria erupted into civil war. The uprising was spontaneous and spread like wildfire. Within weeks, President Bashar Assad had lost control over huge swaths of Syrian territory. The Assad family’s demise appeared inevitable. Rather than flee, however, Assad increased the brutality.

Neither fighting nor atrocities in Syria were random. Both sides fought for control over Homs, a small city literally at the crossroads of the country: Whichever faction controlled Homs could control commerce across Syria. Meanwhile, both Assad and the radicalized opposition sought to cleanse regions along sectarian or ethnic lines. The Syrian air force focused its assaults on Sunni population centers in order to change the demography of the Sunni heartland. Turkish-backed forces pursued a similar strategy of demographic transformation as they sought to pursue an ethnic cleansing in Syrian districts along the Turkish frontier of their native Kurdish populations.

While Russia, Iran, and Lebanese Hezbollah came to Assad’s defense and Turkey supported the radical Sunni opposition, moderate forces found no patron, especially as the Obama administration chose to sit on the sidelines. There was some support for the Syrian Kurds as they struggled against the Islamic State, but it was little, late, and undercut by former President Donald Trump.

Today, Assad has largely reestablished control over Syria. Moving forward, even if the United States follows the Arab lead to normalize relations with Assad, U.S. leverage over the Syrian dictator will be minimal. Assad now associates survival with intransigence and feels mass murder and ethnic cleansing pay off.

Today, Ethiopia is rapidly becoming the new Syria.

In November 2020, Tigrayan leadership rejected Ethiopian Premier Abiy Ahmed’s order to postpone elections. They feared that he sought to follow the path of self-described reformers who consolidate dictatorship . Abiy reacted with fury, sought to decapitate the Tigrayan military leadership, and then dispatched the Ethiopian army to Mekelle, the capital of the Tigray state. While Ethiopian officials insisted Abiy’s battle was just with the Tigray People’s Liberation Front, the army not only denied food to the entire Tigray Region but also closed Tigrayan businesses in Addis Ababa and rounded up ethnic Tigrayans in internment camps. To be a Tigrayan in Abiy’s Ethiopia is to be a dead man walking.

Continue reading https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opin ... -new-syria

[TGAA]

The Lazy white knuckleheads are so amazingly predictable they don't even raise their fingers to call and ask their embassies to ascertain what is going on the ground. Let alone Syria and Ethiopia. Syria and Libya were not the same or Yemani for that matter, but for their doom and gloom scenario to be believable every conflict has to be painted the same. It just tiring mundane journalism of the west with its endless echo chamber. Weyeane is gasping its last breath they are talking about Syria!?