Attention to the Unseen

The New York Times reports: Israeli ground forces advanced beyond the demilitarized zone on the Israel-Syria border over the weekend, marking their first overt entry into Syrian territory since the 1973 October War, according to two Israeli officials speaking anonymously to discuss sensitive developments. The Israeli deployment came amid a successful push by rebel groups in Syria to drive President Bashar al-Assad out of power and out of the country, prompting neighboring states to brace for more regional instability created…

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The Times of Israel reports: Israeli Air Force fighter jets on Sunday struck dozens of targets across Syria, taking out weaponry that Israel feared could fall into the hands of hostile forces, in light of the dramatic fall of the Bashar al-Assad regime some two weeks into a lightning offensive by rebel groups. Also on Sunday, the Israel Defense Forces seized control of a buffer zone between the Israel-Syria border in the Golan Heights, in what it described as a…

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Congratulations to the Russian Federation for accepting their first ever Syrian refugee: Bashar Al Assad. So progressive ❤️ — Karim (@Idlibie) November 30, 2024 Reuters reports: Syria’s former President Bashar al-Assad is in Moscow with his family after Russia granted them asylum on humanitarian grounds, a Kremlin source told Russian news agencies on Sunday, and a deal has been done to ensure the safety of Russian military bases. Russia’s Foreign Ministry said earlier that Assad had left Syria and given…

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Anne Applebaum writes: [A]fter a well-organized, highly motivated set of armed opponents took the city of Aleppo on November 29, many of the regime’s defenders abruptly stopped fighting. Assad vanished. The scenes that followed today in Damascus—the toppling of statues, the people taking selfies at the dictator’s palace—are the same ones that will unfold in Caracas, Tehran, or Moscow on the day the soldiers of those regimes lose their faith in the leadership, and the public loses their fear of…

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It’s time to end the illegal, counterproductive war to overthrow the Syrian government of Assad.https://t.co/c8oyV3QOWS — Tulsi Gabbard 🌺 (@TulsiGabbard) August 12, 2016 Timothy Snyder writes: Gabbard appears on the world stage as a defender of a million violent deaths. She is an apologist for two of the great atrocities of the century: the Russian-Syrian suppression of the Syrian opposition to the Bashar al-Assad dictatorship, which has taken about half a million lives, most of them civilians, some of them…

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The New York Times reports: The United States has been passing messages indirectly in recent days to the rebel groups that led the lightning offensive to topple President Bashar al-Assad of Syria, officials said. Now that the groups have taken Damascus and succeeded in pushing Mr. Assad out of power, President Biden and his top advisers are debating the extent to which they should engage directly with them going forward, the officials said. The United States started passing messages to…

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Reuters reports: Syrian rebels declared President Bashar al-Assad‘s ouster after seizing control of Damascus on Sunday, forcing him to flee and ending his family’s decades of rule after more than 13 years of civil war in a seismic moment for the Middle East. The Islamist rebels also dealt a major blow to the influence of Russia and Iran in Syria in the heart of the region, allies who propped up Assad during critical periods in the conflict. The rebels said…

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Reuters reports: Syrian government forces abandoned the key city of Homs on Saturday after less than a day of fighting, leaving President Bashar al-Assad’s 24-year rule dangling by a thread with insurgents also advancing towards the capital Damascus. Since the rebels’ sweep into Aleppo a week ago, government defences have crumbled at dizzying speed as rebels seized a string of major cities and reignited a rebellion in places it had long seemed dead. The fall of Homs and threat to…

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The Times of Israel reports: Syrian rebel forces on Saturday made major advances in their offensive against Syrian government forces, with reports saying rebels were closing in on the capital Damascus from the north, east, and south, as regime troops reportedly pulled back from bases around the country to fortify positions around the capital city. CNN reported Saturday that the US was increasingly believing that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime could collapse within days. Reuters similarly cited American and other…

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Hassan Hassan writes: The stunningly successful offensive by Syrian rebels last week accomplished what years of bloodshed by larger factions could not. Within four days, the rebel group, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, captured much of Aleppo, one of Syria’s largest cities, and now controls most of Aleppo Province and all of Idlib Province. Long-entrenched front lines held by government forces and fortified by Russian firepower crumbled. Underlying the success of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham is a crucial development: It has evolved from…

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Middle East Eye reports: Iraq’s Shia forces, including major Iranian-affiliated armed factions, have unanimously decided not to send fighters to Syria to defend Bashar al-Assad from the rebel advance, officials and commanders told Middle East Eye. Last week, Syrian rebels led by Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham launched an offensive on Assad’s forces, seizing the major cities of Aleppo and Hama in a matter of days. The advance, which is now bearing down on Homs, has greatly concerned Iraqi leaders, who consider…

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Alexey Kovalev writes: “Spare people” with low “social value” is how Russian parliamentarian Aleksandr Borodai described his compatriots sent as cannon fodder to Ukraine in a leaked tape, the authenticity of which he later confirmed. Expendable manpower, he explained, can be thrown at Ukraine’s “bravest [and] boldest,” and “exhaust the enemy to the maximum.” Borodai isn’t just anybody: He’s a political consultant from Moscow who declared himself prime minister of the so-called Donetsk People’s Republic in Ukraine in 2014, and…

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The Guardian reports: Islamist insurgents have captured the Syrian city of Hama in a battle to seize a vital location on the road to Damascus, marking the latest challenge to Bashar al-Assad’s control of the country. Militants led by the group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) entered the city from the east on Thursday after surrounding it during five days of fighting with forces loyal to Assad. Video circulating online suggested that the insurgents had captured a military airport outside Hama,…

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