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Wednesday, February 24, 2016

"Villages that remained loyal to the Syrian regime have paid a steep price"


And, of course, the MSM in the West, all of which is owned by just a handful of the elite (powers-that-be) that want Assad out and a secular Syria destroyed, would rarely tell you anything about it, unless it was something the MSM could use to smear the legitimate government of Syria.  

Just think for a moment how low the powers-that-be have sunk to when they prefer to side with al-Qaeda and affiliates (which includes all jihadis, whether they go by a myriad of exotic names or just by ISIS or IS) in order to rid Syria of Assad in favor of Saudi Arabia's wahhabi-style governance. To think that the Anglo nations under Israel's and KSA's pressure and influence, sided with the bad guys will always bring a bad taste to the mouths of folks who know what's going on in this world and will never hide our heads in the sand, NO MATTER WHAT.

Robert Fisk at Independent UK
Syria civil war: The untold story of the siege of two   small Shia villages - and how the world turned a blind eye
Villages that remained loyal to the Syrian regime have paid a steep price
This is the untold story of the three-and-a-half-year siege of two small Shia Muslim villages in northern Syria. Although their recapture by the Syrian army – and by Iranian Revolutionary Guards and Iraqi Shia militias – caught headlines for a few hours three weeks ago, the world paid no heed to the suffering of these people, their 1,000 “martyrs”, at least half of them civilians, and the 100 children who died of shellfire and starvation.

For these were villages that remained loyal to the Syrian regime and paid the price – and were thus unworthy of our attention, which remained largely fixed on those civilians suffering under siege by government forces elsewhere. ....

....Wanous was deeply upset in recalling this. Had some of the calls came from people he knew personally? I asked. “Yes”, he said. “The ones who threatened me often were from my own police force. They came from my own policemen – of course, they had my mobile number. Some calls came from sons of my own friends.” Of Wanous’s 15‑man police force, five stayed loyal to him. The other 10 defected to Nusra. ....

....Many of the civilians died because their wounds could not be cared for. We ran out of petrol early on. They cut off all electricity.” ...

....When the siege began, Wanous said, the Syrian government resupplied the villagers with food, bread, flour and medicine. The helicopters also dropped ammunition. There were three or four flights every day during the first year. “Then at about five o’clock, at dawn, on 30 June 2013, a helicopter came to us with some returning villagers from Aleppo and a staff of seven teachers for our schools who were to hold the school exams here,” Wanous said. “Someone in Mayer fired a rocket at the helicopter and the pilot managed to steer it away from the village and it crashed on the hillside outside in a big explosion. There were 17 on board, including the pilot and extra crewman. Everyone died. The bodies were in bits and all were burnt. That was the last helicopter to fly to us.” The wreckage of the helicopter still lies on the hillside....

...But what of their Sunni neighbours? One old woman holding a grandchild in her arms said it would be “very difficult” to forgive them, but her younger companion was more generous. “Before the attacks, we were like one family,” she said. “We didn’t expect we would ever have a problem in the future. But we are simple people and we can forgive everybody.” ...

....But there was one imperishable sight on the walls: a newly minted poster showing the faces of Vladimir Putin, President Bashar al-Assad and Sayed Hassan Nasrallah, the Lebanese Hezbollah leader. Rarely, if ever, have the forces of Russian Orthodoxy, the Alawite sect and Shia Islam been brought so cogently together. ....

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