ANALYSIS "[Retaking the city of Aleppo] was a huge boost to Assad, who in 2015 had been within weeks of losing control of Damascus and probably the country. Foreign powers who backed the opposition, and once demanded his removal as a condition for peace, have accepted that is no longer a politically feasible demand. The election of Donald Trump as US president further diminished prospects for the opposition. His predecessor, Barack Obama, had denounced Assad and offered limited political and military support to the ‘moderate opposition.’ President Trump, by contrast, has said that his focus in Syria will be fighting Islamic State, and has talked about working more closely with Russia to do so," Emma Graham-Harrison writes for the Guardian. "Unlike the acts of extremists Islamic State (IS), and Jabhat Nusra, the actual words and deeds of Syria's forgotten revolutionaries have rarely been translated and broadcast by the western media. Abo Mariam and Abdul Wahab Mulla are two Syrians who even educated readers have probably never heard of. ... These activists routinely condemned every rebel-attack on government-held areas resulting in the deaths of innocent civilians and demanded accountability for all war crimes. Not only do the Assad regime, JFS and their extremist allies censor these voices, but they are omitted by those who, to this day, still do not believe that Syria had a true, organic uprising," Loubna Mrie writes for The New Arab. "The war in Syria has no boundaries. While we 'Make America Great Again' we must do things that matter to our national security as part of that overall mission. The failure to fund critical humanitarian programs for children in refugee camps, for example, means that an entire generation of Syrian children will be lost. This represents a major downward pull on global stability. The war in Syria is not just a Syrian issue, or a Middle Eastern issue. It is an American issue and a strategic threat," Samantha Vinograd writes for USA Today. |
