Don't try to count the mortars and shell that fell nearby HTS's fighter in this 9 minutes clip because you'll lose count!

An archive footage from an attack on a fortified Assad's military checkpoint in northern Hama in Sep 2017

هيئة تحرير الشام - حواجز معان - ريف حماة الشمالي 2017

Internal Security Forces have arrested the deputy (on the right) of the criminal Ali Kayali (on the left of the picture), known as Miraj Ural, an Alawite from the Turkish city of Hatay, who was directly responsible for the infamous al-Bayda massacre in the Baniyas countryside, in which, more than 300 people were killed, most of them women and children, who were burned alive or slaughtered with knives.

[Arabic below]

1. Internal Security Forces arrested Khaldoun Hussein Mubarak, a colonel and pilot in the former regime’s army, following a carefully planned security raid on his hiding place in the Jableh countryside.

The military records of this arrested criminal show that he advanced to become a fighter pilot flying MiG-29 aircraft. He served for many years in Squadron 699, part of the 17th Brigade based at Al-Seen Military Airbase, and was promoted to colonel in 2023.

Investigations revealed that he was involved in serious violations and war crimes against civilians, carrying out numerous combat sorties across much of Syria, with a particular concentration in the north.

Information indicates that the arrested was wounded in 2020 when rebels targeted his aircraft in Idlib. After recovering, he resumed operations, which continued until the fall of the former regime.

2. Brigadier General Jaber Mehrez Ibrahim was arrested following careful surveillance and monitoring. Under the former regime, he served as commander of the 138th Air Defense Brigade in the town of Saida.

Initial records and investigations indicate that Ibrahim was involved in issuing orders to kill and arrest people and suppress protesters. He also took part in military campaigns targeting villages and towns in eastern Daraa countryside, pursuing civilians and targeting their homes.

Investigations also indicate that he was directly responsible for the Saida Housing Complex massacre, in which approximately 120 people were killed. His name has also been linked to systematic arrests and torture affecting a large number of people from the province, including the child Hamza al-Khatib.

3. Former Major Suleiman Ahmad Hasan, who served in the former regime’s Military Intelligence Directorate, was arrested. He headed the Investigations Section and later the Legal Affairs Section at Branch 248, and was directly responsible for central investigations into protest cases and files concerning the opposition and defecting officers during the years of the revolution.

4. Former Major General Ahmad Mohammad Ismail, one of the most prominent commanders in the former regime’s Republican Guard, was arrested. He took part in leading attacks on Aleppo, Daraa, and eastern Ghouta.

5. Five senior officers and commanders in the former regime’s air force were arrested: Major General Mohammad Fajr Ali; Brigadier General and pilot Abdullah Ali Mualla; Colonel and pilot Nidal Hussein Saleh; Colonel Mohammad Ali Salim; and Major and pilot Taleb Abdul Karim Hasan.

The arrested criminals were involved in planning, directing, and carrying out aerial bombardments and airstrikes that destroyed residential neighborhoods and infrastructure and forcibly displaced residents.

6. Internal Security Forces in Tartus Province arrested former Major General Mohammad Ali Dargham, a prominent officer in the military establishment during the former regime.

The arrested officer’s military records show that he held several sensitive positions. He began as a platoon commander in the Defense Companies during the events in Hama Province in 1982. He later served as field commander of the 4th Division from 2009 to 2013, was then assigned as deputy commander of the 5th Division, and went on to command the 2nd Corps until late 2018.

7. The Internal Security Command in Latakia arrested Major General Jalal Kamel Saqr, commander of the 18th Infantry Brigade under the ousted regime, who was implicated in war crimes and arbitrary arrests of civilians.

The arrested man also served as chief of staff and deputy commander of the 14th Division, then as its commander until mid-2016. He subsequently moved to the Operations Authority in Damascus, where he remained until his discharge on May 1, 2017.

8. The Internal Security Command in Latakia Province, in cooperation with the Counterterrorism Department, arrested 11th Infantry Division commander Major General Haytham Suleiman Barakat and Brigadier General Marwan Suleiman Barakat.

Information confirms that Haytham Suleiman Barakat was involved in suppressing and arresting civilians, imposing extortion payments, and financial blackmail.

Information indicates that Marwan Suleiman Barakat was involved in military operations carried out by the 15th Infantry Brigade, part of the 5th Division, in Daraa Province, where he served as head of the Artillery Section from 2011 to 2019.

9. Internal Security Forces announced the arrest of Hassan Khalaf al-Sajjan, of the Air Force Intelligence Branch in Daraa, who is accused of torturing and killing civilians during the years of the Syrian revolution.

1

ألقت قوى الأمن الداخلي القبض على المدعو خلدون حسين مبارك، العقيد الطيار في جيش النظام البائد، إثر مداهمة أمنية محكمة استهدفت مكان اختبائه في ريف جبلة.

وتشير السجلات العسكرية للموقوف إلى تدرجه كطيار مقاتل على طائرات (Mig-29)، حيث خدم لسنوات طويلة ضمن السرب 699 التابع للواء 17 المتمركز في مطار السين العسكري، وصولاً إلى ترقيته لرتبة عقيد عام 2023.

وكشفت التحقيقات تورط المذكور في ارتكاب انتهاكات جسيمة وجرائم حرب بحق المدنيين، عبر تنفيذه طلعات جوية قتالية مكثفة شملت معظم الأراضي السورية وتركزت بشكل كبير في مناطق الشمال.

وتشير المعلومات إلى أن الموقوف أُصيب عام 2020 إثر استهداف طائرته من قبل الثوار في إدلب، ليعود فور تعافيه لاستئناف عملياته التي استمرت حتى سقوط النظام البائد.

2القبض على العميد جابر محرز إبراهيم، الذي شغل منصب قائد اللواء 138 دفاع جوي في بلدة صيدا إبان عهد النظام البائد، وذلك إثر ‏عملية رصد ومتابعة دقيقة.‏

وأظهرت السجلات والتحقيقات الأولية تورط إبراهيم في إصدار أوامر بالقتل ‏والاعتقال وقمع المتظاهرين، فضلاً عن مشاركته في حملات عسكرية استهدفت قرى ‏وبلدات ريف درعا الشرقي، وملاحقة المدنيين واستهداف منازلهم.‏

كما تشير التحقيقات إلى مسؤوليته المباشرة عن مجزرة مساكن صيدا التي راح ‏ضحيتها ما يقارب 120 شخصاً، وارتباط اسمه بعمليات اعتقال وتعذيب ممنهجة ‏طالت عدداً كبيراً من أبناء المحافظة، من بينهم الطفل حمزة الخطيب.‏

3

القبض على المقدم السابق في مخابرات النظام البائد سليمان أحمد حسن، الذي عمل في شعبة المخابرات العسكرية وتولى رئاسة قسم التحقيق ثم الشؤون القانونية في الفرع 248، وكان مسؤولاً مباشرة عن التحقيقات المركزية في قضايا التظاهرات وملفات المعارضة والضباط المنشقين خلال سنوات الثورة

4

القبض على اللواء السابق أحمد محمد إسماعيل، من أبرز قيادات الحرس الجمهوري بالنظام البائد، شارك في قيادة هجمات على حلب ودرعا والغوطة الشرقية.

5

القبض على خمسة من كبار ضباط وقيادات سلاح الجو في النظام البائد:

اللواء محمد فجر علي والعميد الركن الطيار عبد الله علي معلا والعقيد الركن الطيار نضال حسين صالح والعقيد محمد علي سليم والمقدم الطيار طالب عبد الكريم حسن

الموقوفون متورطون في تخطيط وإدارة وتنفيذ قصف جوي وغارات أسفرت عن تدمير أحياء سكنية وبنى تحتية وتهجير قاطنين قسراً

6

قوى الأمن الداخلي في محافظة طرطوس تلقي القبض على اللواء السابق محمد علي درغام، أحد الضباط البارزين في المنظومة العسكرية خلال عهد النظام البائد.

وتشير السجلات العسكرية للموقوف إلى تدرجه في عدة مناصب حساسة، بدءاً من عمله قائداً لفصيل في سرايا الدفاع إبان أحداث محافظة حماة عام 1982، وصولاً إلى توليه القيادة الميدانية للفرقة الرابعة بين عامي 2009 و2013، ثم تكليفه بمهام نائب قائد الفرقة الخامسة، فقائداً للفيلق الثاني حتى أواخر عام 2018.

7

• قيادة الأمن الداخلي في اللاذقية تلقي القبض على اللواء جلال كامل صقر قائد اللواء 18 مشاة لدى النظام المخلوع، والمتورط بجرائم حرب وعمليات اعتقال تعسفي بحق المدنيين

• شغل المقبوض عليه أيضا منصب رئيس أركان الفرقة 14 ونائب قائدها، ثم قائدا لها حتى منتصف عام 2016، لينتقل بعدها إلى هيئة العمليات في دمشق والتي استمر فيها حتى تسريحه بتاريخ 1 أيار 2017

8

• قيادة الأمن الداخلي في محافظة اللاذقية بالتعاون مع إدارة مكافحة الإرهاب تلقي القبض على قائد الفرقة 11 مشاة اللواء هيثم سليمان بركات والعميد مروان سليمان بركات

• المعلومات أكدت تورط هيثم سليمان بركات في قمع واعتقال مدنيين وفرض الإتاوات والابتزاز المالي.

• المعلومات تشير إلى تورط مروان سليمان بركات في العمليات العسكرية التي نفذها اللواء 15 مشاة التابع للفرقة الخامسة في محافظة درعا حيث شغل منصب رئيس قسم المدفعية بين عامي 2011 و2019

9

قوى الأمن الداخلي تعلن إلقاء القبض على حسن خلف السجان في فرع المخابرات الجوية بدرعا والمتهم بتعذيب وقتل المدنيين خلال سنوات الثورة السورية

From 2017 Archive. Before going to battle in western Aleppo.

In a training video by the HTS posted in June 2023

An Assad's soldier roaming in his observation post at Akeel Village in Aleppo's western countryside was gunned down in the head by an HTS sniper in 2023.

Outpost was cleared with 15 Assad's soldiers either killed or injured during the operation. While two of our brave fighters were martyred.

Arabic title:

لحظات تحبس الأنفاس من انغماس قوات النخبة التابعة لهيئة تحرير الشام في نقاط الجيش النصيري في باشكوي شمال حلب.

Arabic title:

مراسل درعا يقدم الإصدار المرئي المميز تحرير سرايا رسم الحلبي في ريف القنيطرة

2014 - JaN

Scene by HTS in Idlib, December 2019.

[Original NEW Edit]

Nasheed title:
عجبت لمن تغطيهم دماء ويبتسمون في فرح شديد.
A rare recording that was dedicated for HTS by a nasheed artist from Yemen.

I compiled this edit from some of the most epic photos of HTS units training sessions + photos from Muhajireen units working closely with HTS + a video clip from Amjad to wrap up the edit after running out of good photos.

Brigadier General Abdulaziz al-Ahmad, Head of Internal Security in Latakia Governorate:

📌Internal Security Directorates in Latakia Governorate, in cooperation with the Counterterrorism Branch, carried out a series of targeted and meticulously planned security operations that resulted in the arrest of a number of pilots implicated in committing war crimes against the Syrian people

📌A total of nine pilots were arrested: Brigadier General Manhal Anwar Saleh, Brigadier General Sami Ibrahim Mahmoud, Brigadier General Ghayath Ali al-Rahia, Colonel Isa Ezzedine Khadour, Colonel Marwan Salah Nafesh, Colonel Bashar Samir Wannous, Lieutenant Colonel Ayham Hamza Aliya, Captain Ayham Ahmad Daoud, and Captain Ammar Isa Junaidi

📌The aforementioned individuals participated in committing numerous crimes and violations against the Syrian people in several Syrian provinces, exploiting their military positions and their expertise in combat aircraft and helicopters

📌Their crimes resulted in a large number of casualties, including both dead and wounded, and caused severe damage to cities and towns, in addition to displacing residents and destroying homes, buildings, and civilian infrastructure

#Syrian_News

قائد الأمن الداخلي بمحافظة اللاذقية العميد عبد العزيز الأحمد:

📌مديريات الأمن الداخلي في محافظة اللاذقية تنفّذ بالتعاون مع فرع مكافحة الإرهاب سلسلة من العمليات الأمنية النوعية والمُحكمة أسفرت عن إلقاء القبض على عدد من الطيارين المتورطين بارتكاب جرائم حرب بحق الشعب السوري

📌بلغ عدد المقبوض عليهم 9 طيارين وهم العميد الركن منهل أنور صالح والعميد سامي إبراهيم محمود والعميد غياث علي الرحية والعقيد عيسى عز الدين خضور والعقيد مروان صلاح نافش والعقيد بشار سمير ونوس والمقدم أيهم حمزة عليا والنقيب أيهم أحمد داوود والنقيب عمار عيسى جنيدي

📌شارك المذكورون في ارتكاب العديد من الجرائم والانتهاكات بحق الشعب السوري في عدد من المحافظات السورية مستغلين مواقعهم العسكرية واختصاصهم في سلاح الطيران الحربي والمروحي

📌أدت جرائمهم إلى سقوط أعداد كبيرة من الضحايا بين قتيل وجريح وألحقت أضراراً جسيمة بالمدن والبلدات فضلاً عن تهجير الأهالي وتدمير المنازل والمنشآت والمرافق المدنية

#الإخبارية_السورية

The two fronts are the Aerial Intelligence Branch in Zahraa neighborhood, the other is the adjacent Liramoon town in western-northern Aleppo countryside.

This was both a response to the shameful reconciliation with Assad suggestion by Russia and Turkey, and a live training for infantry group to work under all weather conditions.

Arabic title:

صولة من صولات كسر المصالحات - تلة بركان

Yet we see online trolls from Iraq threatening Syria like they could do anything when they tried occupying our country.

مشاهد من هروب المليشيات الرافضية أثناء واستسلام مجموعة منهم أثناء تحرير قرية معراتة في ريف حلب الجنوبي 2015

The same airbase Israel air stroke a few days ago.

Today we see Iranian-backed online trolls say: "we can invade Syria in mere hours whenever we went".

An average of theirs when they tried doing so back in the day: 👆

تحرير منطقة الحرش في محور خان طومان جنوب حلب

See full article bellow the summary.

Response article's title: Washington Post Says Syria Must Prove It Can Be Trusted by the USA - But Washington Has Far More to Answer For

Summary:

• A Washington Post columnist claimed today that Syria’s schools teach “radicalism,” warning that “Islamists serve openly” in its military - without defining who he means by “Islamists.”

• The article slides between “Islamists,” foreign fighters, extremists and jihadists as though the terms were interchangeable, promoting a familiar Islamophobic association between Muslim identity and terrorism.

• It fails to mention that Trump’s Syria envoy publicly confirmed Washington’s acceptance of the transparent integration of approximately 3,500 foreign fighters into a designated Syrian army division.

• Its educational claims rely on Alma, an Israeli security advocacy centre founded by a former Israeli military-intelligence officer—not an independent investigation of Syria’s national curriculum.

• The Washington Post is positioning itself to the right of the Trump administration on Syria while ignoring the far-right extremism Washington tolerates among its Western partners and within Israel’s government.

• Washington accommodated the Assads when they served American interests and sent detainees—including Canadian citizen Maher Arar—to be tortured in Syrian prisons.

• The Obama administration abandoned its chemical-weapons red line, prioritised agreements with Iran and proposed military coordination with Russia while Russian and Iranian forces were keeping Assad in power.

• The United States did not “pull Syria out of Iran’s orbit.” Syrians overthrew Assad, expelled Iranian forces, severed Tehran’s corridor to Hezbollah and forced Russia into a drastically reduced position.

• Syria is not, as receiving a blank cheque. It is giving Washington major geopolitical gains despite having far more reason to mistrust the United States than Washington has to mistrust Syria.

Full article: https://radiofreesyria.com/washingtons-leaders-need-to-prove-they-can-be-trusted-by-syria/

---

The United States accommodated the Assads, outsourced torture to their prisons, abandoned Syrians to Russia and Iran, and endorsed Israel’s annexation of Syrian land. Yet the Washington Post says it is Syria that must earn Washington’s trust.

In a Washington Post article published today, Ilan Berman declares that “Syria’s leaders need to prove they can be trusted.” The subtitle warns that Syria’s schools “still teach radicalism” while “Islamists serve openly in its military.”

The article reveals considerably more about Washington’s prejudices and selective memory than it does about Syria.

The article starts with the now-customary tired Islamophobia. Its most basic term—“Islamist”—is never defined. Berman does not identify which military personnel he’s referring to, what they presently believe, whether they advocate violence or what conduct supposedly makes them unfit to serve. Instead, the terminology slides imperceptibly from “Islamists” to “foreign fighters,” “extremists,” “foreign jihadists” and “militants,” as though all were synonymous.

They are not. A foreigner is not necessarily an extremist; an Islamist is not necessarily a jihadist; and a practising Muslim serving in a Muslim-majority country’s military is not presumptively a terrorist.

If particular soldiers committed war crimes, retain allegiance to transnational terrorist organisations or advocate sectarian violence, Berman should name them and present evidence. If “Islamist” merely means a Muslim whose political outlook is influenced by religion, the headline is not a security assessment but a religious test—one the Post would never apply to Christian nationalists serving openly in the US government or Jewish supremacists serving openly in Israel’s cabinet.

WaPo allegations vs truth

The article’s central allegation concerning foreign fighters is also contradicted by the public record. Berman claims their removal was a central American condition for sanctions relief and presents their integration into Syria’s military as evidence of Damascus’s failure to comply.

In June 2025, however, Trump’s Syria envoy Thomas Barrack publicly confirmed Washington’s understanding with Damascus over the transparent integration of approximately 3,500 foreign fighters into a designated Syrian army division. Barrack explained that bringing them under state command was safer than abandoning thousands of armed, experienced men to possible recruitment by ISIS or al-Qaeda.

Berman has taken a policy the Trump administration understood and accepted and repackaged it as evidence that Syria defied Washington. Here we see the supposedly liberal Washington Post positioning itself to the right of Donald Trump’s administration, demanding a more punitive approach while repeatedly condemning Trump’s extremism elsewhere.

The article’s educational evidence is similarly questionable. Its sole foundation is a report on the Dar al-Wahi al-Sharif religious school network by the Alma Research and Education Centre, an Israeli security advocacy centre founded by Sarit Zehavi, who spent 15 years in Israeli military intelligence and retired as a lieutenant-colonel in the IDF’s Northern Command. A previous investigation by L’Orient Today found that nine of Alma’s 20 personnel were Israeli military veterans, including a former head of Israeli censorship and former intelligence officials.

That provenance does not automatically make every textbook excerpt false. It does make independent verification essential—particularly when Israel is occupying Syrian territory, bombing the country and declaring that it will not withdraw.

Berman does not say that he examined the original textbooks, verified Alma’s translations, consulted independent Arabic-speaking educational specialists or sought responses from Syria’s education and religious-affairs ministries. Nor does he establish that one expanding religious school network represents Syria’s national curriculum. Nevertheless, the Post’s headline converts a report about that network into the sweeping declaration that Syria’s “schools” teach radicalism.

Confusing aggressor with victim

Incitement against Jews or Christians should be condemned and removed wherever it appears. But Berman also treats maps identifying historic Palestine and hostility towards Israel as self-evident proof of ‘jihadist indoctrination’. In reality, Syria is currently being attacked and occupied by Israel. Opposition to an occupying state is not synonymous with hatred of Jews, just as rejection of Russian occupation in Ukraine is not hatred of Russians. Nor is Alma a neutral authority entitled to decide which Syrian responses to Israeli occupation are permissible.

The provenance of Berman’s own argument deserves scrutiny too. He is senior vice-president of the American Foreign Policy Council, a Washington national-security think tank that works directly with Congress and the executive branch. His affiliated programmes include AFPC’s “Countering Islamic Extremism Project,” and his books include Winning the Long War: Retaking the Offensive Against Radical Islam. He has consulted for the CIA and the US Departments of State and Defense and has a substantial record of writing from an emphatically pro-Israel perspective.

Again, that background does not automatically invalidate his argument. But it makes his undefined use of “Islamist” and “radicalism,” and his dependence on an Israeli military-linked organisation, legitimate matters of public interest.

Double standards on extremism

Berman’s concern about radicalism is spectacularly selective. Washington is courting European far-right movements that speak of “civilisational defence,” portray Muslims and migrants as demographic enemies and seek to restructure Western politics along ethno-religious lines. It simultaneously arms and protects an Israeli government containing ministers who advocate annexation, permanent occupation and mass Palestinian displacement.

Those extremists are not fringe activists. They hold state power, command armed forces and determine the fate of millions living under occupation. Yet their ideology is called politics, national security or civilisational defence. A vaguely defined Muslim presence within Syrian institutions, by contrast, becomes proof that the entire country may be untrustworthy.

The Washington Post is not resisting this Islamophobic double standard. In publishing a headline that treats “Islamists serving openly” as inherently sinister without defining the word, it is promoting it.

More fundamentally, Berman constructs trust as a test imposed by an innocent and reliable United States upon a suspect Syria. History supports almost the reverse.

Decades of US complicity with the Assads

Washington’s opposition to the Assad dynasty was never principled or consistent. When Hafez al-Assad joined the US-led coalition against Saddam Hussein in 1990–91, the United States rewarded him with improved relations, inclusion in the Madrid peace process and acquiescence in Syria’s domination of Lebanon. Assad did not become less dictatorial or murderous. He became useful.

After September 11, Washington made direct use of the torture system it now recalls only when condemning Assad. In 2002, US officials detained Canadian citizen Maher Arar at JFK Airport and rendered him through Jordan to Syria. He was confined in appalling conditions and tortured for almost a year despite never being charged with a crime. Canada later cleared him, apologised and paid compensation. The United States has never apologised, while the Obama administration helped prevent his claim from reaching court. And while his case is well-known, it’s far from the only such incident, with Assad’s jails being a favourite destination. So Washington did not merely overlook Sednaya and Assad’s other prisons. It sent suspects to them to be tortured because it knew what Assad’s interrogators, trained by a former Nazi official, would do.

During the Syrian revolution, meanwhile, Barack Obama announced a red line against chemical-weapons use, then declined to enforce it when Assad crossed it. His administration resisted meaningful measures to protect Syrian civilians and increasingly reduced their revolution to a counterterrorism problem.By 2016, his administration was proposing intelligence-sharing and coordinated strikes with Russia against ISIS and Jabhat al-Nusra. Russia was not a neutral counterterrorism partner. It was Assad’s principal air force, bombing hospitals, markets and opposition-held cities while Moscow and Damascus routinely stretched the word “terrorist” to cover virtually anyone resisting Assad.

At the same time, Obama prioritised securing and preserving his nuclear agreement with Iran while Iranian forces, the IRGC, Hezbollah and other foreign militias kept Assad in power. Whether or not strengthening Tehran and Moscow was Washington’s intention, it was the foreseeable result of American policy. Syrians seeking freedom were effectively abandoned beneath the Russian-Iranian military juggernaut.

Israeli coordination with Russia in Syria

Israel, Washington’s closest regional ally, was not opposing Russia’s Syrian intervention on behalf of the Syrian people. It maintained extensive military coordination with Moscow, operated a deconfliction mechanism with Russian forces and saw Benjamin Netanyahu cultivate a close personal relationship with Vladimir Putin. Israel attacked selected Iranian assets when they threatened Israeli interests, but it did not support Syrians’ struggle to dismantle the system that had invited both Russia and Iran into their country.

Then, in 2019, the United States became the only country in the world to recognise Israel’s purported sovereignty over the occupied Syrian Golan Heights. Washington retains that recognition while Israel occupies additional territory seized since Assad’s fall, conducts repeated airstrikes and ground incursions, destroys Syrian military capacity and declares that it will not withdraw.

American officials occasionally issue cosmetic protests. They impose no meaningful consequences. Yet Berman describes Israel simply as a “neighbour” naturally alarmed by Syrian forces. Israel’s occupation, far-right government and territorial expansion apparently raise no equivalent questions about reliability or radicalism.

Against this long, inglorious history of US collusion with a brutal hereditary dictatorship, it is extraordinary to depict sanctions relief as a generous American wager on an unproven Syria.

Punishing Syrians for Assad’s crimes

The US sanctions architecture was built ostensibly to constrain Assad and those responsible for his atrocities. Assad fell. Continuing to strangle Syria afterward would have punished his victims, prevented reconstruction, encouraged state failure and created precisely the deprivation in which ISIS and foreign interference flourish.

Nor did Washington “pull Syria out of Iran’s orbit,” as Berman claims. That formulation appropriates a Syrian achievement.

The United States did not overthrow Assad. Syrians did. The United States did not expel Iran’s forces and allied militias. Syrians did. The United States did not sever Tehran’s principal land corridor to Hezbollah. Syrians did.

The United States did not defeat Russia’s project to preserve Assad indefinitely and dominate Syria’s strategic facilities. Syrians did, forcing Moscow to accept a sharply diminished and restructured position under greater Syrian control.

Washington gaining from Syrians’ achievements

Washington is now collecting the geopolitical dividends of a victory achieved by people it repeatedly declined to protect.

Since Assad’s fall, Syria has confronted ISIS, intercepted Iranian-linked weapons intended for Hezbollah, dismantled Captagon factories and trafficking networks, cooperated with the IAEA, reduced Russia’s strategic control and assumed security responsibilities that allowed American troops to leave. Despite more than a thousand Israeli attacks and hundreds of incursions, Damascus has responded through diplomacy rather than opening another regional war.

These are concrete outcomes advancing American interests. They are not “hope” and they were not delivered by American coercion.

Syria is not receiving a blank cheque. Its authorities remain under continuous scrutiny, conditionality and threat of renewed sanctions. The strategic transfer of value runs substantially in the opposite direction: Syria is giving Washington outcomes that successive American administrations sought and failed to obtain.

America did not liberate Syria from Russia and Iran. Syrians liberated themselves after American policy had helped abandon them to both. Damascus is now choosing to make its victory serve shared interests with the West.

After Washington accommodated the Assads, used their torture chambers, abandoned its chemical-weapons red line, helped enable Russian and Iranian entrenchment, coordinated indirectly with Assad’s protectors and endorsed Israel’s annexation of Syrian land, the remarkable question is not whether the United States can trust Syria.

It is why Syria is still willing to trust the United States—and whether Washington can finally prove itself worthy of that trust.

Blurred for compliance with platform rules.

Description: a group of the Assad's army Republican Guard advanced one point (3 blocks) into Marj Al-Sultan Town in Easter Ghouta in the countryside of Damascus, the Jabha (HTS older group's name) observed their movement and prepped a coordinated attack to clean the position and retake it, and they were successful at that.

In August 2019, during the Russian-led invasion on southern Idlib and Northern Hama, a battalion of Assad's forces breached one of the defense trenches in Idlib's borders, the team holding the position lost the ground, and one of the two attacking enemy forces advanced beyond the trench while the other stationed there, the HTS, despite being short on men, sent one reinforcement car to repel off the second enemy's wave and successfully forced into retreating! When they pulled back the advanced enemy's wave (the first line) started engaging wuth the HTS fighter coming to them from behind, they fired multiple tank shells but the HTS fighters luckily (with Allah's support) evaded the shells.