When will the Western public opinion recognize its governments’ hypocrisy??
In 2021, US reporter Martin Smith interviewed Abo Mohammad Al-Jolani, the former Al-Qaeda’s leader of Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham (HTS)(1) just few months after the US State Department “Reward for Justice” program announced a financial reward of $ 10 million for information on HTS leader, Al-Jolani!!!! (2l
The goal of the interview was to polish the HTS leader before the western public opinion , turning a blind eye to the fact that this group has killed hundreds of civilians and has arbitrarily arrested thousands and has persecuted Syrian Christians in Idlib.
The Syrian Network for Human Rights [SNHR] was quoted by the “Voice of America” website [VOA] (3)as saying: “At least 500 civilians were killed by the radical group between 2012 and 2021. More than 2,300 people remain either arbitrarily detained or forcibly disappeared by HTS.”
The website also anonymously quoted a local journalist as affirming that since the beginning of March, protests have erupted in at least 20 locations in Idlib demanding the release of prisoners held by the extremist group and an end to its security grip on the enclave.
Bassam Alahmad, executive director of Syrians for Truth and Justice (STJ), said the HTS “has been trying to impose its radical ideology on the local population and it has carried out numerous abuses and constant arbitrary arrests against civilians, asserting that there have been many cases of torture and even torture murders.
On March, 15, 2024,SNHR reported that HTS “personnel” physically and verbally assaulted four journalists and media workers who work with different Arab and local news media channels and agencies, while they were covering the anti-HTS in Sabaa Bahrat from a platform specifically designated for media coverage. The assailants beat the media workers and tried to forcibly drag them off the platform, injuring two of them in the process.
The SNHR added that another reporter for an international media agency in Idlib governorate was assaulted and abused by HTS while he was covering the anti-HTS protest held at the same place. (4)
On March,3,2024, HTS arrested 30 people, including 4 women, for their participation in protests against Al-Jolani, according to NORTH website. (5)
The sources of the above mentioned reports are not Syrian official ones. They are affiliated to the western-backed armed opposition groups in Syria.
Here, we should remind ourselves that the UK alone has provided £ 2.81 billion in “humanitarian” aid since 2012. Over the past 18 months alone, the UK government has poured $150 million into Idlib, funds that will be received and managed by groups including the White Helmets.
In November 2019, the investigative reporter Vanessa Beeley had the opportunity to interview a former resident of Yakubiyah, a predominantly Syrian Christian (Armenian and Catholic) town located west of Idlib city and around 10km from the Syrian border with Turkey. Aline K (her full name is withheld for her security) was in Lebanon when the armed gangs first entered her hometown in 2012/13 but she decided to return to Yakubiyah to assess the situation. (6)
When Aline returned to her home she found it occupied by a mother and children. Aline asked them to leave but when she came back the next morning, armed militants had taken control of the house and Aline, like so many of her neighbours, was forced to abandon her house. She told Beeley:
“The terrorists looted all the houses, they entered houses and checked what’s inside it, another group came and took everything inside, they took everything they could carry, they emptied houses, they emptied them.”
According to Aline, the White Helmets were working with and for the terrorist groups. Aid received from outside was distributed first to the armed groups before meagre supplies were handed out to civilians. Aline did not see the White Helmets performing “humanitarian” activities, they were focused on further looting and the destruction of historic buildings, including the churches.
In 2018, “moderate rebel” promoter Charles Lister attempted to claim that the White Helmets were benevolent caretakers of Christian artefacts and communities in Yakubiyah. This cynical remodelling of reality was swiftly exposed by former resident and Syria commentator, Camille Otrakji.
Prior to the start of the terrorist war on Syria, approximately 10,000 Christians used to live in Idlib governorate in a free way. But this number reduced to 200 ones until the end of 2021. They are distributed in the two cities of Jisr al-Shughour and Idlib and in the towns of al-Qeniya, Ya’qoubiya, al-Jedaida, Halouz, and al-Ghassaniyah. The majority of them are Greek Orthodox.
Rabi’ Jallouph, a pseudonym for a Christian man, lives with his wife in an area near al-Qeniya town, west of Idlib, northwestern Syria. His four children immigrated abroad along with hundreds of fellow Christians.
On March 2022, NORTH website quoted Jallouph, 52, as saying: “Between 2015-2018, up to 95% of the population of his village emigrated. That was the time Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS-formerly al-Nusra Front) took full control of the city and all aspects of life and started to tighten the noose on the Christian community.Properties of the Christians were seized, churches were locked up and Christian people were denied to perform their religious rituals.”
Jallouph, who owns an agricultural land forcibly give 2,5% of the citrus crops every year as a “tax” considering them as alms to HTS terrorists.(7)
In July 2019, Suzanne Der Kirkour, a Syrian Christian woman was tortured and raped repeatedly by Al Qaeda terrorists before being stoned to death in Yaquibiye, Idlib. Suzanne was 60 years old, she had asked the terrorists to leave her farmland which triggered this barbaric attack and murder. The criminal desecration of Christian property and churches in Idlib has been a longstanding strategy of the extremist groups and their White Helmets adjuncts. (8)
in September 2013, the West-backed terrorists “targeted and occupied the ancient Maaloula town in Damascus countryside , where the language of Christ, Aramaic, is still spoken, but once liberated in 2014, Syrian values of tolerance and religious pluralism prevail again,” according to the first edition of Mark Taliano”s “Voices from Syria” book. (9)
Besides all these brutal acts against civilians , the west-backed terrorist groups systematically targeted every businessman, small or big, whether he has a factory or a workshop in Aleppo city, if he does not want to meet their demands and buy them weapons, according to report published by Reuters in October, 2012. (10)
“I was attacked three or four times and they tried to kidnap me many times,” said the Syrian businessman Fares Shehabi.
In one attack, assailants riddled one of his factories with gunfire and tried to plant explosives in it, he said. He was moving around with bodyguards, sometimes in disguise.
Thousands of factories were looted, while many industrialists had paid protection money to gangs, with monthly fees ranging from $4,000 to $5,000 plus a down payment that can go up to $100,000 depending on the size of the factory.
Despite the war that waged on it between 2012 and the end of 2016, Aleppo has managed to restore its position as the main producer of medicines, textiles, household equipment, laurel soap, olive oil and foodstuffs after its liberation from terrorist groups.
Syrian people do not want the West’s democracy and freedom. They were living in peace and their country was developing before 2011.
Basma Qaddour
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- https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/documentary/the-jihadist/transcript/
- https://www.newarab.com/news/us-warns-hts-leader-jolani-hes-still-most-wanted
- https://www.voanews.com/a/protests-grow-against-powerful-jihadist-group-in-syria-enclave-/7518396.html
- https://snhr.org/blog/2024/03/16/snhr-condemns-htss-assault-of-media-workers-in-idlib-city/
- https://npasyria.com/en/111752/
- https://www.rt.com/op-ed/472844-white-helmets-syria-terrorists-aid/
- https://npasyria.com/en/73751/
- https://www.rt.com/op-ed/466589-syrian-christians-terrorists-protection/
- Mark Taliano, “Voices From Syria” book, first edition, Global Research, 2017, Chapter I “ In Their Own Voices”. (pdf version)
- https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSL5E8LG31V/
READ MORE:
Video: Crimes Against Syria – Global ResearchGlobal Research – Centre for Research on Globalization
Bin Laden’s Rep in Syria. Fully supported by Canada of course/ August, 2018 – Mark Taliano
