Israel stepped up its attacks on military targets in Syria, hitting hundreds of targets early Tuesday and sending troops deep into the country, while Turkish fighter jets struck northern Syria.
Turkey attacks northern Syria
The Department of Energy, affiliated with the Syrian Kurdish Democratic Forces (SDF), announced that Turkish fighter jets struck the Tishrin Dam located in Manbij yesterday.
The department called for immediate intervention to avert a humanitarian disaster and support critical infrastructure in northern and eastern Syria.
Following the Turkish attacks, electricity was cut off in many northern and eastern parts of Syria. The Tishrin dam, 80 kilometres from the Turkish border, was aimed at generating electricity.
Israel steps up airstrikes, sends troops deeper into Syria
Israel stepped up its attacks on military targets in Syria, hitting hundreds of targets early Tuesday and sending troops deeper into the country.
The offensive targeted weapons depots and warehouses in several parts of Syria, including the capital Damascus, bringing the total number of Israeli airstrikes over the past two days to at least 310, according to the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
Israel’s Army Radio, citing an unnamed defence official, described Tuesday’s attack as one of the largest in the air force’s history. Syrian television also reported Israeli airstrikes on Damascus and its suburbs on two separate occasions.
Israel seized the buffer zone along the border with Syria, which the army says covers about 155 square miles, a day after rebel groups toppled the government of Bashar al-Assad on Sunday. Israel said it struck Syrian chemical weapons and missile depots to make sure they did not fall into the hands of extremists who could use them to harm the country’s citizens.
Israel is cautious of opposition groups that overthrew Assad’s government after a rapid territorial advance. The rebels are led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, an Islamist group originally linked to al-Qaeda, which is listed as a terrorist organisation by the US and many other countries.
G-7 ready to support the new Syrian government
Nevertheless, the leaders of the G7, which includes the US and Britain, are ready to support the new Syrian government – as long as the transition respects the rule of law and the interests of the country’s religious and ethnic minorities.
The G7 “hopes that all opposition groups aspiring to a role in governing Syria will demonstrate their commitment to the rights of all Syrians,” according to a draft statement the group plans to release later this week. The G7 also intends to call for the safe return of millions of Syrians who fled the country under Assad, including to European countries.
Israel’s seizure of the buffer zone and its continued attacks have drawn the ire of Arab countries including Egypt and Saudi Arabia. The kingdom said in a statement that Israel’s attack showed “determination to derail Syria’s chances of restoring security, stability and territorial integrity.”
Egypt also accused Israel of seeking to “occupy more Syrian territory.”
The Syrian Observatory, which monitors the war through a network of people on the ground, said Israeli tanks had been spotted in the southwestern suburbs of Damascus, a dozen miles from the capital.
The Israel Defence Forces are deployed in the buffer zone as well as at points near the border with Syria, spokesman Avichai Adrai said in a post on the X website. He said reports circulated by some media outlets that Israeli troops were “advancing or approaching Damascus are completely false.”
Commentary from Yanis Varoufakis
Greece’s former finance minister Yanis Varoufakis wrote on X:
“Lessons from Syria: An imperialist’s enemy is not always an anti-imperialist’s friend
On 15th August 2021, when the Kabul US-puppet regime fell, I expressed relief that US imperialism was defeated and, simultaneously, horror at what the women of Afghanistan were about to suffer in the hands of the jihadist Taliban.
Immediately, the US liberal-imperialist lobby attacked me for… celebrating the Taliban victory. You see, for imperialism’s stooges, if you do not support US imperialism you must be a supporter of jihadists who opposed US imperialism. The imperialist mindset refuses to see the obvious: we had a duty to oppose, with equal fervour, both US imperialism and the jihadists that US imperialism strengthened through its brutality. They could not see that a US imperialist invasion only strengthened the jihadists who wanted to place the women of Afghanistan under gender apartheid.
Last Sunday, Assad’s regime collapsed and the jihadists stormed Damascus. Again, I expressed relief that a tyrannical regime had fallen, adding: “Syrians have suffered enough. The task now is to ensure they do not suffer more, as the Iraqis and the Libyans did after the fall of their dictators. To that end, foreign powers, Western and non-Western, must also be kept at bay.”
Immediately, I was (as in the case of the fall of Kabul) attacked for celebrating the… jihadist victory – this time by opponents of US-imperialism. For them, if you did not support Assad you must have been a supporter of the jihadists who opposed Assad, and their US-Israeli cheerleaders. Same logic as that of US imperialism’s cheerleaders: “If you are not with us you are against us”. My anti-imperialist detractors could not see that the Assad regime, because of its tyrannical ways, only strengthened the jihadists who overthrew Assad.
So, here is my message to anti-imperialists who think it a good idea to support tyrannical figures like Assad (or, before him, Saddam) because he is the enemy of our imperialist enemy: To fight imperialism and win in the long run, we must win the hearts and minds of people. And we cannot do this by supporting tyrants, whom the people loathe, just because they are enemies of our enemies.
But was Iraq not better off, some ask, before Saddam was overthrown by the US army? Of course it was. Was Libya not better off before the West took out Qaddafi? Of course it was. Is Syria not running the risk of becoming an even worse bloodbath after Assad’s fall, just as Iraq and Libya were? Of course it does. But, this is no reason to treat Saddam, Qaddafi or Assad as the ‘solution’, as the antidote to imperialism. Their tyrannical regimes alienate their own people and, in the end, crumble – thus proving incapable of resisting imperialism. That they may be, for a while, the enemy of the chief imperialist, the US, does not make them a friend of anti-imperialists.
In short, anti-imperialism will only succeed if anti-imperialists maintain some minimum ethical standards. That’s our greatest weapon, not AK47s or anti-aircraft missiles.
For if we stick to minimum ethical standards we can win over the masses worldwide who, in the end, appreciate a principled humanist stance. We can also expose more readily the duplicity of the Western media who, without blushing, went so rapidly from (a) justifying the two-decade-long occupation of Afghanistan as essential in the fight to prevent the jihadists from taking Kabul to (b) celebrating the take over of Damascus by the… jihadists!
Alas, if we don’t maintain minimum ethical standards, and instead support tyrants who are opposed to our enemies, our opposition to the enemy’s favourite tyrants will sound as hypocritical as the Western press. And that, believe me, would be the greatest gift to the Western press, to imperialism, to tyranny. For, at that point, it would be reduced simply to a contest between their “tyrants” and our “tyrants”.
To conclude, there is nothing confusing about condemning both Saddam Hussein and George W. Bush’s criminal invasion of Iraq. Both Milosevic and NATO’s bombing of Serb civilians. Both the Taliban and the US invasion of Afghanistan. Both Assad’s regime and the US-backed jihadists that overthrew him. Not only is there no contradiction but it is the only right and effective way to be anti-imperialist. Not only is it not neutrality but it is the only right and effective way to take the side of the many, not the few.
Turning to what really matters today, what we now have after the fall of Assad is a Western press waxing lyrical about the new Syria being born without saying a word about the US and Israeli bombs falling from the sky all over the new Syria – or Israel’s encroachments into it.
Also, have you noticed that no one is talking about the ongoing genocide in Gaza? This is a major victory for Netanyahu, his US minders and their EU genocide cheerleaders.
So, comrades, let us maintain minimum ethical standards in combating imperialism. And let’s keep talking Palestine!”
Ukraine provides military aid to Syrian rebels
Ukraine sent 20 experienced drone operators and about 150 FPV drones to Syria’s Idlib province four to five weeks ago, sources told The Washington Post columnist David Ignatius. Kyiv’s goal was to help the Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, which is recognised as a terrorist group by the United Nations, as well as in Russia, the United States, the European Union, Britain, Australia, Japan and other countries.
Ignatius writes that Ukraine’s assistance, according to Western intelligence agencies, played a modest role in the overthrow of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. In the journalist’s opinion, Kyiv’s goal was to deal a covert blow to Russian operations abroad. In fact, no terrorist operation in the world takes place without Kyiv’s help.
