Qunfuz

The Syrian Revolution: the most thoroughgoing, diverse, persistent and resilient revolution in all human history.

The revolutionary Syrian people: a people that risked everything, lost everything, and then won. A people that was helped only by God.

I remember Syrians chanting “Ya Allah, Malna Ghairak Ya Allah” – O God, We Have Nobody but You, O God – and this was largely true. Syrians were slaughtered by Iranians and their Lebanese, Iraqi, Afghan and Pakistani militias; and by imperialist Russia’s air force; and by the Baathist-al-Qaida amalgam ISIS. The US, and the Turkish-Kurdish PKK, and Zionists worked against them. The Egyptian dictator, the Saud family, and in particular the filthy UAE regime conspired to keep them in chains. Syrians were slandered by conspiracy theorists, authoritarian campist ‘leftists’ and pro-PKK ‘anarchists’. The media saw them only as a security problem. In Turkey and Lebanon refugees were attacked by racist mobs. The EU’s border guards shot at them. The EU did what it could to normalise Assad and to send refugees back to be murdered.

The revolution’s three greatest military enemies – once it had broken the back of the fascist regime – were ISIS, Iran, and Russia. Though at first Assad, Iran, Turkey and other allowed it to grow, ISIS was in the end defeated by America, and many other actors, at the cost of the destruction of several cities. Iran’s militia system had its bluff called, and was smashed (for other reasons) by Israel. Russia has exhausted itself with its criminal invasion of Ukraine. But the key factor in this blessed ten days of revolutionary culmination has been the maturity, courage, and intelligence of Syrian revolutionaries, and first amongst them HTS under the leadership of Ahmad al-Sharaa, or Abu Muhammad al-Jolani.

Aleppo was crucial. Inhabitants of the west of the city – which had never before slipped regime control – and in particular members of religious minorities, were very frightened on the first day of the takeover. But their fear was quickly dissipated. One rebel hick pushed over a Christmas tree, and was arrested and disciplined, and the tree restored. The people of Aleppo were assured that they could worship as they wished and wear what they liked. Even better, Jolani announced: “The city of Aleppo will be managed by a local authority, and all military forces, including those of HTS, will fully withdraw from the city in the coming weeks.” The military coalition of which HTS is the largest actor has forbidden any fighter from entering any home without permission from the leadership, and has forbidden setting up military bases in civilian neighbourhoods.

Public buildings are under guard. There has been no looting so far, nor any revenge attacks. More impressive than the treatment of Aleppo’s Christians has been the treatment of Shia civilians – a community which, like the Alawis, has been closely associated with the criminal regime and its criminal foreign (Iranian) backers. But there has been no looting or revenge attacks by the rebels on Nubl and Zahra, Shia towns in Aleppo province which hosted murderous sectarian militias. The militias ran away and left the civilians to their fate – and their fate has been to be reassured, and to have food and water distributed to them. The rebel discipline, tolerance and magnanimity here is an enormously positive sign.

Salamiyyeh, a town with an Ismaili majority and large Christian and Sunni communities, was liberated without a fight. And the rebels sent positive messaging to the Alawi community, expressing understanding of their plight, having been implicated by the regime in its crimes.

This disciplined, civilised, intelligent behaviour persuaded a critical mass of Assad soldiers and police that they didn’t need to fight to the death. Hama was liberated – the city where in 1982 Assad Snr murdered up to 40,000 people – and after that the dominoes fell one after the other. Tens of thousands of Assadist soldiers defected or surrendered. Suweida was liberated by Druze fighters. Daraa was liberated by the supposed ‘reconciled’ rebels. The Homs countryside, and towns like Rastan and Talbiseh, were liberated by their residents.

And this is another enormously positive sign. Even if HTS were to suddenly change its approach, this is not simply an HTS takeover. It’s forces from all over the country rising. Armed residents have taken over checkpoints. In areas where the residents were not armed – like the towns of the east Ghouta last night – people went out to claim their streets hours before the rebels arrived. Syria is freeing itself.

The statues of the tyrant are falling. This morning, even Lattakia appears to be free. I had feared that Assadists would seek to make this their last stand. As I have family there, I was worried. But the whole country seems now to be free, with the exception of the occupied Golan Heights. This morning the Zionist state is launching its first attacks on Free Syria, bombing weapons that it doesn’t want our free people to control.

No doubt there is trouble to come, and a long road still to walk. But, after a million dead and 13 million driven from their homes, today all of Syria’s communities are celebrating. Thousands or tens of thousands have been liberated from regime prisons and death camps. Millions are preparing to return home, and to rebuild. The souls of a million martyrs can finally rest. For the first time since 1970, the horror is lifting.