{"id":15070,"date":"2017-09-09T15:58:00","date_gmt":"2017-09-09T15:58:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/algerienetwork.com\/international\/?p=15070"},"modified":"2018-12-22T18:55:09","modified_gmt":"2018-12-22T18:55:09","slug":"the-west-might-hardly-believe-it-but-it-now-seems-the-syrian-war-is-ending-and-assad-is-the-victor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/algerienetwork.com\/international\/the-west-might-hardly-believe-it-but-it-now-seems-the-syrian-war-is-ending-and-assad-is-the-victor\/","title":{"rendered":"The West might hardly believe it, but it now seems the Syrian war is ending \u2013 and Assad is the victor"},"content":{"rendered":"<ul class=\"caption meta inline-pipes-list\">\n<li class=\"author\"><a title=\"Robert Fisk\" href=\"http:\/\/www.independent.co.uk\/author\/robert-fisk\">Robert Fisk<\/a><time title=\"Thursday 7 September 2017 10:30 BST\" datetime=\"Thu, 09\/07\/2017 - 10:30\" data-microtimes=\"{&quot;published&quot;:&quot;1504775700000&quot;,&quot;display&quot;:&quot;1504776600000&quot;,&quot;changed&quot;:&quot;1504791043000&quot;}\"> Thursday 7 September 2017 10:30 BST<\/time><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>While we\u2019re all waiting for Trump to start World War Three, we\u2019ve not spotted that the military map of the Middle East has substantially, bloodily changed. It will be years before Syria and Iraq (and Yemen) are rebuilt \u2013 and the Israelis may have to go to Putin to clear up the mess they\u2019re now in<\/p>\n<p>A message came through from Syria on my mobile phone last week. \u201cGeneral Khadour kept his promise,\u201d it read. I knew what it meant.<\/p>\n<p>Five years ago, I met Mohamed Khadour, who was commanding a few Syrian soldiers in a small suburb of Aleppo, under fire from Islamist fighters in the east of the city. At the time, he showed me his map. He\u2019d recapture these streets in 11 days, he said.<\/p>\n<p>And then in July this year, I met Khadour again, far out in the east of the Syrian desert. He was, he said, going to enter the besieged city of Deir ez-Zor before the end of August. I reminded him, a trifle cruelly, that the last time he told me he\u2019d recapture part of Aleppo in 11 days, it took the Syrian army more than four years to retake. That was long ago, he said. In those days, the army had not learned to fight in a guerrilla war. The army were trained to retake Golan and defend Damascus. But they had learned now.<\/p>\n<p>Indeed they had. Out in the desert, Khadour said he was going to bomb the town of Sukhna \u2013 the Russians would do much of the bombing \u2013 and his Syrian troops would break through from there to Deir\u00a0ez-Zor, which had been surrounded by Isis for three years with its encircled 80,000 civilians and 10,000 soldiers. Khadour said he\u2019d reach Deir ez-Zor by 23 August. He turned out to be almost dead on target. Now he is heading towards the rest of Deir ez-Zor and then towards the Syrian-Iraqi border.<\/p>\n<p>So it seems \u2013 after the capture of the city is complete and when Khadour is on the frontier, and now that Aleppo is totally in the hands of the regime and only Idlib province remains a dustbin of largely Islamist rebels (including al-Qaeda), many of whom were allowed to travel there in return for surrendering bits of Syrian cities \u2013 that what has always been unthinkable in the West is now happening: Bashar al-Assad\u2019s forces look to be winning the war.<\/p>\n<div class=\"dnd-widget-wrapper context-sdl_editor_representation type-video\">\n<div class=\"dnd-atom-rendered\">\n<div class=\"image\">\n<div class=\"bc_container\">\n<div id=\"5500839092001\" class=\"video-js vjs-mouse vjs-paused vjs-controls-enabled vjs-workinghover bc-player-2d3d4a83-ba40-464e-9bfb-2804b076bf67_default vjs-plugins-ready vjs-contextmenu vjs-contextmenu-ui vjs-player-info vjs-errors vjs-ima3-not-playing-yet vjs-ima3-html5 ima3-loading-spinner not-hover vjs-user-inactive\" tabindex=\"-1\" role=\"region\" data-video-id=\"5500839092001\" data-embed=\"default\" data-player=\"2d3d4a83-ba40-464e-9bfb-2804b076bf67\" data-account=\"624246174001\" aria-label=\"video player\"><video id=\"5500839092001_html5_api\" class=\"vjs-tech\" tabindex=\"-1\" src=\"blob:http:\/\/www.independent.co.uk\/16d75d14-31a9-4f9b-a199-4cdedf6b74c1\" poster=\"http:\/\/brightcove.vo.llnwd.net\/e1\/pd\/624246174001\/624246174001_5502145781001_5500839092001-vs.jpg?pubId=624246174001&amp;videoId=5500839092001\" preload=\"metadata\" width=\"300\" height=\"150\" data-account=\"624246174001\" data-player=\"2d3d4a83-ba40-464e-9bfb-2804b076bf67\" data-embed=\"default\" data-video-id=\"5500839092001\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\"><\/video><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"dnd-widget-wrapper context-sdl_editor_representation type-video\">\n<div class=\"dnd-atom-rendered\"><\/div>\n<div class=\"dnd-caption-wrapper\">Qom Elias Syrian refugee camp fire: Locals in Lebanon help residents who lost everything<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>And not just \u201clook like\u201d. Hassan \u201cTiger\u201d Saleh, Syria\u2019s favourite army officer \u2013 referred to twice by the Russian defence minister \u2013 broke his way into the compound of the 137th Syrian army brigade at Deir ez-Zor and relieved the soldiers there, while Khadour, his commanding officer (they are personal friends), is set to liberate the airbase in the city.<\/p>\n<p>How many remember the day when the Americans bombed the Syrian soldiers close to that airbase and killed more than 60 of them, allowing Isis to cut it off from the rest of the city? The Syrians have never believed the American claim that they made a \u201cmistake\u201d. It was only the Russians who told the US air force they were bombing Syrian forces.<\/p>\n<p>The Brits already seem to have got the message. They slyly withdrew their military trainers last week \u2013 the men intended to prepare David Cameron\u2019s mythical \u201c70,000 rebels\u201d who were supposedly going to overthrow the Assad government. Even the UN\u2019s report that the regime killed more than 80 civilians in a gas attack this summer got little play from the European politicians who used to play up war crimes in Syria and supported Donald Trump\u2019s pointless Cruise missile attack on a Syrian airbase.<\/p>\n<p>And what of Israel? Here is a nation which truly counted on the end of Assad, going so far as to bomb his forces and those of his Hezbollah and Iranian allies while giving medical help to Islamist fighters from Syria in Israeli cities. No wonder Benjamin Netanyahu was so \u201cagitated\u201d and \u201cemotional\u201d \u2013 Russian descriptions \u2013 when he met Vladimir Putin in Sochi. Iran was Russia\u2019s \u201cstrategic ally\u201d in the region, Putin said. Israel was an \u201cimportant partner\u201d of Russia. Which was not quite the same \u2013 and not what Netanyahu wanted to hear.<\/p>\n<div class=\"dnd-widget-wrapper context-sdl_editor_representation type-gallery\">\n<div class=\"dnd-atom-rendered\">\n<div class=\"image\">\n<div class=\"container grid-mod-gallery\" data-scald-gallery=\"5104866\">\n<h2 class=\"gallery-title\">Aleppo before the Syrian Civil War<\/h2>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"full-gallery\"><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>The repeated victories of the Syrians mean that the Syrian army is among the most \u201cbattle-hardened\u201d in the region, its soldiers used to fighting for their lives and now trained in coordinating troops and intelligence from a single command headquarters. As former St Antony\u2019s College associate scholar Sharmine Narwani put it this week, this alliance now has political cover from two permanent UN Security Council members, Russia and China.<\/p>\n<p>So what will Israel do? Netanyahu has been so obsessed with Iran\u2019s nuclear programme that he clearly never imagined \u2013 in company with Obama, Hillary Clinton, Trump, Cameron, May, Hollande and other members of the political elites in the West \u2013 that Assad might win, and that a more powerful Iraqi army might also emerge from the rubble of Mosul.<\/p>\n<p>Netanyahu still supports the Kurds, but neither Syria nor Turkey nor Iran nor Iraq have any interest in supporting Kurdish national aspirations \u2013 despite the military use by America of Kurdish militiamen in the so-called Syrian Democratic Forces (it being largely Kurdish rather than \u201cSyrian\u201d, not \u201cdemocratic\u201d at all and scarcely a \u201cforce\u201d without US air power).<\/p>\n<div class=\"dnd-widget-wrapper context-sdl_editor_representation type-video\">\n<div class=\"dnd-atom-rendered\">\n<div class=\"image\">\n<div class=\"bc_container\">\n<div id=\"5531706172001\" class=\"video-js vjs-mouse vjs-paused vjs-controls-enabled vjs-workinghover bc-player-2d3d4a83-ba40-464e-9bfb-2804b076bf67_default vjs-plugins-ready vjs-contextmenu vjs-contextmenu-ui vjs-player-info vjs-errors vjs-ima3-not-playing-yet vjs-ima3-html5 ima3-loading-spinner not-hover vjs-user-inactive\" tabindex=\"-1\" role=\"region\" data-video-id=\"5531706172001\" data-embed=\"default\" data-player=\"2d3d4a83-ba40-464e-9bfb-2804b076bf67\" data-account=\"624246174001\" aria-label=\"video player\">\n<p><video id=\"5531706172001_html5_api\" class=\"vjs-tech\" tabindex=\"-1\" src=\"blob:http:\/\/www.independent.co.uk\/40e1770f-ffa6-4c94-8233-ec0c2398492d\" poster=\"http:\/\/brightcove.vo.llnwd.net\/e1\/pd\/624246174001\/624246174001_5531703921001_5531706172001-vs.jpg?pubId=624246174001&amp;videoId=5531706172001\" preload=\"metadata\" width=\"300\" height=\"150\" data-account=\"624246174001\" data-player=\"2d3d4a83-ba40-464e-9bfb-2804b076bf67\" data-embed=\"default\" data-video-id=\"5531706172001\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\"><\/video><\/p>\n<div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"dnd-widget-wrapper context-sdl_editor_representation type-video\">\n<div class=\"dnd-atom-rendered\"><\/div>\n<div class=\"dnd-caption-wrapper\">Footage reportedly shows young Syrian refugees being beaten by Turkish soldiers at border<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>So while we\u2019re all waiting for Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un to start World War Three, we\u2019ve not spotted that the military map of the Middle East has substantially, bloodily changed. It will be years before Syria and Iraq (and Yemen) are rebuilt, but the Israelis, so used to calling on Washington for help, may have to go back to Putin again to clear up the mess they\u2019re in.<\/p>\n<p>Those in the Israeli political right who claimed that Assad was a greater danger than Isis may have to think again \u2013 not least because Assad may be the man they\u2019ll have to talk to if they want to keep their northern border safe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Robert Fisk Thursday 7 September 2017 10:30 BST While we\u2019re all waiting for Trump to start World War Three, we\u2019ve not spotted that the military map of the Middle East has substantially, bloodily changed. It will be years before Syria and Iraq (and Yemen) are rebuilt \u2013 and the Israelis may have to go to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":15590,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[20,27],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-15070","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-moyen-orient","8":"category-syrie"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/algerienetwork.com\/international\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15070","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/algerienetwork.com\/international\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/algerienetwork.com\/international\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/algerienetwork.com\/international\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/algerienetwork.com\/international\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15070"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/algerienetwork.com\/international\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15070\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/algerienetwork.com\/international\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15590"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/algerienetwork.com\/international\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15070"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/algerienetwork.com\/international\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15070"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/algerienetwork.com\/international\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15070"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}