When westerners see ‘enemy’ governments fall, or civil wars erupt, they are
led to think they are the geopolitical equivalent of a natural event.
Nothing could be further from the truth
By Jonathan Cook: The
long-harboured aspirations of the US, Turkey and Israel to topple the
Syrian government, mainly through their rebranded al-Qaeda allies,
succeeded at lightning speed.
Damascus fell days after Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) forces under Abu Mohammad al-Jolani
surprised observers by breaking out of their small north-western
enclave in Syria and seizing the country’s second city, Aleppo.
Bashar
al-Assad’s government and his army, it turned out, were paper tigers.
Or they were, once their chief allies – Russia, Iran and Hezbollah in
Lebanon – had been forced onto the back foot. Preoccupied with troubles
closer to home, they could no longer offer the military support Assad
depended on.
Israel’s rampage across Lebanon and its military intimidation of Iran – as well as Nato’s increasing efforts to pin Russia down in Ukraine
– unfroze the main battle lines in Syria, arrived at several years ago
between Assad’s army, al-Qaeda’s franchise in Syria and Kurdish forces
in the north-east.
Backed by Turkey, a member of NATO – and more
covertly by the CIA and MI6 – HTS and the so-called Syrian National Army
(SNA) were able to drive south unhindered.
