The butcher Assad returns in the free-for-all war

For those who had the misfortune of seeing yesterday’s TV images from Ghouta, on the outskirts of Damascus, most likely can’t stop wondering if mankind has completely lost its way: how is it possible that Bashar Assad, who after slaughtering 250 thousand, is still in power and again murdering children?

This is happening in Ghouta: children with head injuries, parents screaming, and desperate civilians scrambling to find to shelter from the intense bombing while frantically digging to pull those alive from the rubble. This is Bashar Assad: he bombs his own capital in order to take advantage of the momentary distraction of the rebels who are helping the Turks in Afrin, where the battle is now against him and the Kurds, this time his allies.

In Ghouta Assad attacks the rebels, in Afrin he deploys his forces against the Turks, who formerly helped the rebels, including ISIS, with whom it had a period of agreement that has been now broken.

But don’t worry: it’s a momentary affair, a horrible mess of shallow interests, with no one being able to raise its flag victoriously. It’s been written that there’s a new great danger of war in Syria: but the war is already underway here, and it pits Russia and America against each other, earmarked by the cruelty of ISIS, Al Qaeda, Hezbollah, the Iranians, and Erdogan’s crazy Turkey, the extremist invention of a self-nominated sultan’s mind, a member of NATO.

Everyone knows that Erdogan’s foremost intention is to take advantage of the Syrian War in order to eliminate his historical enemy, the central focus of his Ottoman delirium. On Tuesday, Erdogan phoned Putin to tell him to keep his ally Assad in check and to block him from coming to the aid of the Kurds in Afrin. Assad announced on Monday that “popular forces” would enter Afrin to defend them from “Turkish aggression”. The Kurds, who fought bravely in the fight against ISIS, expected that the Americans would have come to their rescue.

It didn’t happen, Russia has in turn abandoned them: Turkish aggression would have worsened, to its advantage, the enmity between the U.S. and Turkey. U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, however, had the foresight to go to Ankara on February 16. Meanwhile, Iran, now a friend of both Turkey and Russia, with whom it will hold a summit to decide Syria’s future (poor people), where it has boots on the ground, obviously sided with its friend Assad against Turkey.

On Monday, Erdogan called Iranian President Hassan Rouhani. He spoke with him broadly about “cooperation in the fight against terrorist elements” and “plots to disintegrate the region”. But Iran supports Assad in the confrontation with Turkish forces: “Iran neither wants to see Kurdish expansion nor a Turkish presence in Syria,” said a source close to the Kurdish YPG organization. In short, this time Assad can shoot on the Turks and in return the Turks can return fire on Assad, who is forever supported by Iran and its proxy Hezbollah. Russia hasn’t gotten into the game: too many friends fighting it out on the field. Who is deeply entrenched in the game and ready to conquer terrain however is Iran: Israel has warned Iran not to test its resolve, but it knows very well that among all the countries throughout the world it’s Israel which is most wanted by the ayatollahs, no matter where their appetites  are aimed to in this very moment.

Translation by Amy Rosenthal