On 6 December, my Arab friends told me that Hayat Tarir al-Shams, a group consisting of just about all Syrians with no outside connections was about to take all of Syria. asked my Arab friends, 'How can you call people from Xinjiang Syrians?' They replied, 'There are maybe a dozen people from Xinjiang, and a total of about a hundred from other countries, but almost everyone in Hayat Tarir al-Shams was born in Syria, and they represent all Syrians, Sunnis, Alawite, Shi'a, Druze, and Christian.'
Russia said that Aleppo had fallen to a combination of jihadists and Turkish army forces with many of the members from Xinjiang and the nearby countries, but they would never be able to go past Aleppo.
And then Hayat Tarir al-Shams took Damascus, while Israel took just about everything south of Damascus and the Turkish flag now flies above Aleppo, while the Daesh flag flies over Damascus.
Members of al-Qaeda and ISIS joined to form al-Nusrah, then renamed themselves Hayat Tarir al-Shams. Some Western reporters in Syria say that a rather large number are not Arabs, but are Sunni Muslims from Xinjiang and countries near Xinjiang, and the group contains no one who is not Sunni. But do you believe them, or actual Arabs (not Syrian Arabs) who say almost everyone in Hayat Tarir al-Shams is a born Syrian, and they represent all of Syria? They certainly heard it in Arabic, and I assume it was Syrian Arabic (or the accent of an Arab country near Syria), but a Sunni Syrian might have been surrounded by Uygurs while saying, 'There's no one here but us Syrians, and many of us are Alawites and Christians and all the other religious sects in Syria.'
CNN are running videos of people describing their horrible experiences in Syrian prisons, videos that are in Arabic (of course) with English subtitles for the CNN intended audience, but Arabs have taped and Instagrammed and Facebooked the videos, and they don't need the subtitles. The prisoners, kept for months without any food or water or sunlight and subjected to vicious beating, came out of their cells after the CNN crew broke open the door which had been left locked, and they looked well dressed, neatly barbered and shaved, and tanned. But one must believe what they say, and most of the Arabs I know say they are obviously telling the TRVTH, the whole TRVTH, and nothing but the TRVTH. (Some of the people who have been covering the Middle East for years, such as Vanessa Beeley and Eva Bartlett, say Hayat Tarir al-Shams are killing people, but are trying to do so privately, and no one is broadcasting any videos of the killings. I only found videos on Telegram that claim to be graphic evidence of Tayat Harir al-Shams atrocities, but it's not clear if one can verify that evidence, but it's on Telegram .
And Hayat Tarir al-Shams aren't killing anyone, they have always been peaceful, according to my Arab friends, who heard their horror stories of life under the Assad regime, and don't believe any of the Telegram videos.
Thousands of Syrians fled to Lebanon, but Lebanon handed them over to Hayat Tarir al-Shams for execution, so that didn't work.
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But what about Russia? Former president Bashar al-Assad's father brought the Soviets into Syria, and they had a large presence, and fought with Syria to prevent regime change. But now Russia had greatly reduced the Russian presence in Syria from the Soviet presence, and had no idea Hayat Tarir al-Shams would be taking over part of Syria. For now, the northeastern third of Syria, the part with all the oil, is held by the US and Kurds. Erdogan wants all that to be a Kurd- and American-free part of the New Ottoman Empire (Erdogan won't call it that, but Russia do). What used to be southern Syria is now part of Israel, and Jolani, head of Hayat Tarir al-Shams says that Syria will strongly support Israel and do whatever Israel ask. He also says he wants Russia to remain, and Erdogan is welcome to Aleppo.
But Russia are now very weak in Syria, the troops on those Russian bases are not well protected, and could be subject to jihadi attacks, so it's looking like Russia will have to tell Jolani, 'Thanks, but no thanks.'
And that will mean that Russian influence in the Middle East will end, to the very great delight of the US. The Soviets were a world power, but Russia are just a regional power. Still, the Wehrmacht didn't have much luck fighting the Soviets in the Soviet Union, and it's not clear that NATO would be all that successful if they tried to fight Russia inside Russia or the countries adjacent to Russia.
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Before, Syria had Russian anti-aircraft weapons, and Russian help training Syrian soldiers to use them, so Israel could never fly over Syrian territory. Now, Syria has absolutely no anti-aircraft, so Israel are free to fly over Israel whenever it suits them. Before, Israel wanted to bomb Iran, but the only route to Iran is over Syria, so US planes formed a vast sheet so Israeli planes could fly above the sheet, and Syria knew not to shoot down a US plane. Now, no need for US protection, Israel can bomb Iran whenever they wish. So far, Israel has just been bombing Syria to make absolutely certain that Syria won't be able to put together any antiaircraft protection of any kind. And Hayat Tarir al-Shams have absolutely no problem with this. I'm guessing regular bombing runs on Iraq and Iran will start soon.
Russia have been sending antiaircraft batteries to Iran, so Israel will not be able to bomb Iran, they'll have to use rockets, but rockets were enough to kill everyone in the Iranian Embassy in Syria, and they should be able to do whatever damage Israel wants to do to Iran. Israel wants US help carpet bombing Iran, but US equipment hasn't been doing all that well against Russian antiaircraft in the Ukraine, and Russia do not want Iran to fall to a US/Israeli military intervention and regime change. I fear we shall soon see how well US piloted US jets do against Russian antiaircraft batteries.
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The PRC has been strictly non-interventionist. If the PRC gets a contract to build a port or airport or railway or whatever, and the US military force regime change to a government that only uses Western contractors (the country gets ripped off, but the senior government officials are very well paid).
Read Confessions of an Economic Hit Man by John Perkins: they go to a country like Indonesia, the IMF and/or World Bank offer a loan at 10%, and the 'expert' promises a return of 20%, so the returns from the project will make the loan payments with a lot left over.
The IMF and World Bank insist that the country use their contractors who take the money and leave, so no project generating any return, and the loan must be repaid or the country will be blockaded. The country have to sell subsistence cropland to Western buyers who use it for cash crops, leaving many without any food, and all the countries mineral resources must be sold to Western buyers who take the minerals and dump waste in the rivers, leaving the people no safe drinking water. But the heads of state are very well rewarded as most of the population see their lives becoming much worse.
If the West engineer regime change to someone who will take those Western loans that are incredibly profitable to the West instead of the PRC loans that would have resulted in good profits for both the natives of the country and the PRC, the PRC never interferes.
But the PRC desperately needs Iranian oil, enough to send a Naval Fleet that could overcome the US Naval Blockade of Iran, so the PRC could buy as much oil as Iran could produce.
But if the US forces regime change in Iran to a government that gladly accepts US sanctions on selling oil to the PRC, will the PRC still do nothing? At what point, if any, do the PRC decide that non-interventionism is no longer a viable policy?
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The US plan is to destroy Iran and Russia and cut the PRC completely off from their oil, then pressure the Gulf States to sanction the PRC and not give them any oil. The fact that, in the '40s, the US produced 75% of the world's oil, so the allies had plenty of oil for their airplanes and tanks, while the Axis did not, was one thing that helped the Allies win the war. Probably not nearly as much as the Wehrmacht trying to attack the Soviet Union, but still, having all the oil helped the Allied efforts, and the US is hoping that cutting off all oil and gas will greatly weaken the PRC and make regime change fairly facile.
Or maybe the US will convince the PRC that non-interventionism isn't really such a good policy.
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I fear we will learn a great deal in 2025 that we'd rather not know.
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