BEIRUT (AP) — The fall of Syrian President Bashar Assad’s government Sunday brought to a dramatic close his nearly 14-year struggle to hold onto power as his country fragmented amid a brutal civil war that became a proxy battlefield for regional and international powers.
Assad’s downfall came as a stark contrast to his first months as Syria’s unlikely president in 2000, when many hoped he would be a young reformer after three decades of his father’s iron grip. Only 34 years old, the Western-educated ophthalmologist was a rather geeky tech-savvy fan of computers with a gentle demeanor.
But when faced with protests against his rule that erupted in March 2011, Assad turned to the brutal tactics of his father in an attempt to crush them. As the uprising hemorrhaged into an outright civil war, he unleashed his military to blast opposition-held cities, with support from allies Iran and Russia.
International rights groups and prosecutors alleged widespread use of torture and extrajudicial executions in Syria’s government-run detention centers.
The Syrian war has killed nearly half a million people and displaced half the country’s pre-war population of 23 million. As the uprising spiraled into a civil war, millions of Syrians fled across the borders into Jordan, Turkey, Iraq and Lebanon and on to Europe.
Conduct a thought experiment and imagine the article wasn’t written by that think tank.
What part of the article is wrong and why? I will note, it doesn’t exactly embrace HTS. Please be specific. Happy to agree it is a bad source if you provide reasoned arguments and alternative data/analysis.
The BBC article doesn’t provide any context beyond the following two sentences:
The BBC article does not discuss public policy in rebel controlled areas or address HTS’s recent statements.
I am not claiming to know the right answer. I don’t speak Arabic, I’ve never been to Syria and my in-person knowledge is largely limited to Syrian friends and acquaintances with whom I’ve lost contact with.
I am genuinely curious about more in-depth information.
I suggest setting this piece aside and researching Idlib, a region in NW Syria where the rebels have had control for years. Whatever PR makeover they’ve attempted, we should be looking g what they’ve actually done with power to date. There’s not a ton of easily found, recognizably-sourced information out there about how a rebel group is governing a contested region. But the word from my family in Syria is that they’ve instituted a Taliban-like atmosphere based on Islam, requiring women to cover and all the rest.
That’s not good. I was hoping they would move towards more open, inclusive governance.
I guess we’ll see how things develop, but this is not good sign.
The entire history of this region, the regime, and the civil war are a parade of bad signs. I don’t know of any credible reason to look at this optimistically at this moment except ignorance or momentary intoxication from the fall of a longstanding regime. The Middle East is a playground for the imperial ambitions of the US, Turkey, Iran, China, Israel and Russia. Any spark of real, altruistic democratic spirit will be immediately snuffed out.
Today it’s called think tank, yesterday it was propaganda. You don’t read propaganda and think it’s good and fine, do you?
The article claims many things and, being propaganda, doesn’t give any proof. Ah… These events published in social media that everyone seems to know, described in such a fascinating writing style, but somehow are never linked to, embedded, ripped… At the beginning of the article. First two sentences. Bullshit from the start.
Not just a think tank, a think tank that is an unofficial representative of a foreign nation, deceptively sounding like something American.