This time our intrepid reporter baits a pro-Assad militiaman. This man is in Latakia which is home to most of the Alawites in the country. He himself is either an Alawite or a Christian because he fears that the rebels will make sex slaves or slaves of his wife and kids. They are only enslaving non-Sunni Muslims, so that means that he either fears that his Alawite family will be enslaved or he fears that his Christian family will be enslaved.
It is true that there is heavy fighting now in the Al Ghab Plain where the government is making some progress. The government is at the west and south of the plain fighting east from the west edge and north and east from the southern edge. The plain is north of the city of Hama.
The government has indeed made some modest gains in fighting to the north and east of the south of the plain, capturing a number of towns. The problem is that the rebels are seriously dug in, having held these towns for a long time. Most residents of the Plain are Sunni Muslims. Fighting is definitely slow going here as it is in other areas, even with Russian air support.
It is crucial for the state to hold the Latakia region as this is where the Alawites live and if the “moderate” rebels break through they will massacre of lot of the Alawi.
The “moderates” have already committed many massacres all across Syria, mostly of government supporting Sunnis and Alawites. In fact, every time you hear about an armed group coming into a village and burning all of the homes and killing all the people, especially when they torture them to death, chop them to pieces or kill them in horrible ways, it was always the rebels and never the regime.
Nevertheless, the Western “free press” and the Western “free world” has blamed Assad for many if not all of these massacres, when in fact they were all done by the rebels, often the Free Syrian Army or FSA.
I have not heard of a single major civilian massacre yet committed by Assad. Not that Assad is a nice guy, it’s just that the SAA or even the militias simply do not go into villages and line up civilians and slaughter them. They do kill people, including civilians, but they just don’t do it like that is all. If the regime wants you dead, they will either kill you with a targeted assassination or they will arrest you, put you in a military prison and torture you to death.
The FSA is only 10% of the rebels. The rest are all Islamists. I doubt if there are any rebels as secular as Assad. Most FSA groups are actually Islamists themselves. A few in the south are not, but almost all FSA groups are under the command of Al Nusra or Al Qaeda. 90% of the weapons we give to the “moderate” rebels end up with the Islamists, typically with Al-Nusra. Even any FSA groups not under Nusra command fight alongside Nusra.
Even the few moderate groups are in bed with the West. They are committed to getting rid of Assad and putting in a pro-US regime in Syria just like all of the others in the Middle East. They probably also want to make peace with Israel like the other pro-US regimes have.
So even if you support moderate rebels and want to get rid of Assad, Syria will leave the Axis of Resistance which consists of Hezbollah, Iran and Syria at the moment, as all rebels are Sunni Arabs, and they all want to end Syria’s alliance with Iran and Hezbollah, as those those two are Shia, and all of the rebels hate the Shia and especially hate Iran. On the other hand, the few moderate rebel groups do not stand a chance or beating Assad, as they are so weak and few in number.
The choice really is Assad or radical Islam. That’s all there is to it. Almost all of Syrian secular society supports Assad. Polls of Syrian Christians show that 99% of them support Assad, and many have joined the various Christian militias that have formed. In supporting radical Islamists who kill Christians and destroy churches, the US is opposing nearly all of the Christians in Syria. I mentioned destroying churches? Yes. Whenever just about any of the rebels (even apparently the FSA) conquer a town, usually the first thing they do is destroy the churches, often by burning them.
The level of support for Assad in the capital is almost fanatical and has been compared to Soviet support for Stalin during World War 2. Whether this is due to regime propaganda or if it is due to people carefully analyzing the situation and supporting Assad on that basis is not known and really it doesn’t even matter.
The US position of waging war on both Assad and waging a fake war on ISIS is the height of sheer, utter lunacy.
