Does The US Want ISIS To Control Syria? Removing Assad Will Do Just That

US actions to weaken Syrian govt will empower ISIS – UK consultancy

Published time: 21 Apr, 2017 20:49

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Any attempt to act against the Syrian government will make Islamic State and other terror groups in the country stronger, London-based consultancy IHS Markit said in a recent report, calling such situation an “inconvenient reality” for Washington.

Over the last 11 months, 43 percent of Islamic State (Is, formerly ISIS/ISIL) military actions carried out were against the Syrian government forces of President Bashar Assad, the open-source data gathered by IHS Markit’s Conflict Monitor revealed.

The US-backed “moderate opposition” accounted for 17 percent of IS fighting between April 1, 2016 and March 31, 2017, with the remaining 40 percent being the jihadists’ skirmishes with rivaling rebel groups.

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Western media ‘inflate’ Syria death toll to justify intervention – Assad

“It is an inconvenient reality that any US action taken to weaken the Syrian government will inadvertently benefit the Islamic State and other jihadist groups,” Columb Strack, senior Middle East analyst at IHS Markit, said as cited by the company’s website.

Strack described the current state of events in Syria by comparing Assad’s forces “the anvil to the US-led Coalition’s hammer.”

“While US-backed forces surround Raqqa, the Islamic State is engaged in intense fighting with the Syrian government around Palmyra and in other parts of Homs and Deir al-Zour provinces,” he said.

According to the analyst, weakening the Syrian forces, which are already overstretched on a large front, may lead to the jihadists moving from the desert to populated areas in the west of the country, which endangers such cities as Damascus and Homs.

Strack believes that Deir ez-Zor is currently the main strategic goal for Islamic State, as capturing the largest city in eastern Syria would allow the group to gain “a new major population center from which to run the Caliphate” after losing Mosul and Raqqa.

According to IHS Markit, the area controlled by IS in Syria and Iraq has shrunk by almost 40 percent over the last two years.

The group, which used to reign over 90,800 square kilometers in January 2015, now holds around 48,500 square kilometers of land.

IS territorial “losses were largely driven by a greater commitment from the US to back the Syrian Democratic Forces, but also by major Syrian government advances east of Aleppo and around Palmyra,” Strack said.

READ MORE: 'Pentagon always has irrefutable proof to justify US aggression' – Russian MoD

IHS Markit is considered on the leading providers of information, analysis and solution, boasting over 50,000 customers in highest business and political circles.
Washington, which wants President Assad removed from power, has been backing the so-called “moderate opposition” with funds and weaponry for years. The rebel fighters received money, training, ammunition, including TOW guided anti-tank missiles, which was funded by the US, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and American allies.

The foreign support led to a surge of Islamist groups in the country as the “moderate rebels” were reported to have lost their weaponry to the jihadists from Islamic State and Jabhat al-Nusra or joined the ranks of the radicals voluntarily.

READ MORE: 'Highly provocative': Lavrov says agreed with Tillerson no future US strikes on Syrian govt

Meanwhile, on April 7, the Americans launched 59 Tomahawk missiles at the Syrian Shayrat airbase. The attack, which killed 14 people, mainly civilians, was a response to an alleged use of chemical weapons in Idlib province blamed by Washington on Assad without any investigation.

After the strike, White House spokesman Sean Spicer stressed: “We hold open the possibility of future action” against Syria.

ISIS Destroys Anything That Is Not Strictly Islamic. They Have No Sense Of History. They Are The Worst People In The World And If Trump Destroys Them, We Will Celebrate Their Demise

ISIS Destroys Ancient Theater, Tetrapylon In Palmyra, Syria Says

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January 20, 20177:23 AM ET

CAMILA DOMONOSKE

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A 2015 photo shows the Tetrapylon (Monumental Entrance), which was reconstructed after 1963 by the Directorate of Antiquities of Syria, in the ancient oasis city of Palmyra. The ancient structure has reportedly been destroyed by ISIS.

Joseph Eid/AFP/Getty Images

Two famous ancient structures in the city of Palmyra have been destroyed by ISIS forces, Syria's antiquities chief says.

The Tetrapylon and the facade of the city's Roman theater have both been almost completely demolished, the official says, according to NPR's Alison Meuse.

"Activist Khaled al-Homsi, who is from Palmyra, shared satellite imagery to Twitter, which appears to confirm the scale of the damage," Alison reports. "The face of the Roman theater is a pile of rubble and only four of the Tetrapylon's 16 columns appear to be standing."

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Khaled AL Homsi @PalmyraPioneer

Photos show the size of the damage to the Roman theater and the Tetrapylon in #Palmyra.
destroyed by criminals #ISIS

5:08 AM - 20 Jan 2017

 
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Alison notes that this is the second time over the course of Syria's six-year civil war that the Islamic State has seized control of Palmyra. ISIS first captured the ancient desert city in 2015. The extremist group held it for more than a year before the Syrian government seized it back — and then lost it again last month.

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ISIS Beheads 81-Year-Old Scholar Who Tried To Protect Antiquities

The first time ISIS claimed Palmyra, they reportedly slaughtered men, women and children in the streets. They beheaded the 81-year-old scholar who was the director of antiquities in the city. And they devastated the UNESCO World Heritage Site's antiquities and monuments, unleashing what NPR's Frank Langfitt called, "an orgy of demolition."

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Palmyra's Ancient Arch, Destroyed By ISIS, To Rise Again In London

"Using dynamite, fire, bulldozers and pickaxes, the wrecking crew targeted 2,000-year-old Greco-Roman temples, monuments and stone statues," Frank wrote last year.

THE TWO-WAY

PHOTOS: Ancient City Of Palmyra After ISIS Was Driven Out

ISIS often claims it destroys ancient sites because it considers the pre-Islamic art works heretical. But the group reportedly loots antiquities for profit, and as Washington Post reporter Liz Sly told Morning Edition in 2015, ISIS gets "masses of publicity every time they blow up or destroy something that is valued by the world."

When government troops recaptured Palmyra in 2016, they discovered the extent of the damage. The famed Temple of Bel was blown to pieces. The Temple of Baalshamin was destroyed. Artifacts in the museum were smashed. The iconic Arch of Triumph was in ruins.

The facade of the Roman theater in Palmyra, shown in 2014, has been destroyed by ISIS, Syria's antiquities chief says. From the 1st to the 2nd century, the art and architecture of Palmyra, standing at the crossroads of several civilizations, married Greco-Roman techniques with local traditions and Persian influences.

Joseph Eid/AFP/Getty Images

After the last ISIS occupation of Palmyra, NPR's Kevin Beesley noted that while the damage to the city's historical sites was massive, "some of the major structures remain."

For instance, he said, the ancient Roman theater was still standing — but now that, too, has been destroyed.

Will Christians And Jews Awaken Before Terrorists, Liberals, Islamists, Arabs, Europeans Try Destroy Israel

A Call on All Christians to Defend Their Birthplace and the Homeland of the Jewish People

 January 10, 2017   0 Comment

gatestoneinstitute.org, Petra Heldt

• We need ensure that the Old City of Jerusalem, the heart of Judaism for more than 3,000 years and the seat of Christianity for 2,000 years, will not be allowed to be Islamic as part of what would soon be an Islamic country, and very likely a terrorist one. In such a state, all polls show that the next vote will be to install Hamas.
• Based on the Hamas Charter that denies Israel’s right to exist, the vote could complete eliminating Jewish — and Christian — history and replacing it with Islam.
• What drives Western politicians to be servants aiding the destruction of Judeo-Christian culture in the Middle East and Europe? Why does the Paris peace conference prepare for the destruction of the Jewish State while Christians are murdered in Muslim countries in historically unparalleled numbers?
• Christians will not be silent when all these places will be voted to go to those who will destroy them — as they destroyed Palmyra, Antioch, Nisibis, Niniveh, and in late 2014, Iraq’s oldest Christian monastery, St. Elijah, leveled by the Islamic State.
• The streets of Paris must hear the protests against the attempted rewriting of history at the peace conference and any subsequent Security Council vote. Such protestors are like “a man who would built up the wall and stand in front of God in the gap on behalf of the Land” (Ezekiel 22:30) — so that the only bastion of democracy, the very defender of Christianity, the last keeper of Judeo-Christian heritage in the Middle East and Europe will continue to prosper.

Christians’ collective consciousness must stop the planned peace conference in Paris on January 15-17, and prevent the presumably intended UN Security Council (UNSC) vote on a Palestinian State as a 22nd Muslim state, in the midst of the one Jewish State. We need to ensure that there will be no capitulation to the Islamization of the Middle East and Europe. We need to ensure that the Old City of Jerusalem, the heart of Judaism for more than 3,000 years and the seat of Christianity for 2,000 years, will not be allowed to be Islamic as part of what would soon be an Islamic state, and very likely a terrorist one. In such a state, all polls show, the next vote will be to install the terrorist group Hamas. That would mean the eventual destruction of all Judeo-Christian heritage, as we have been seeing throughout the Middle East.

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) on 13 October 2016 gave preliminary approval to a resolution that denies Jewish ties to its most holy religious sites: the Temple Mount and the Western Wall. The vote in Paris could firmly establish the Temple Mount as a Muslim place. Since UNESCO’s rewriting of history, by renaming ancient Biblical sites Islamic, such as Hebron’s Cave of the Patriarchs and Rachel’s Tomb near Bethlehem, even though there was no Islam until the seventh century (hundreds of years later), Muslim guards on the Temple Mount already attempt to impose UNESCO’s revisionist agenda. On January 1, 2017 the Waqf (an Islamic trust to preserve whatever has ever occupied by Muslims for Allah, forever) forced the eminent Israeli scholar of archaeology, Professor Gabriel Barkay, not to use the word “Temple Mount” but the Muslim word for the place. After Israeli police intervention, Barkay continued his talk using the abbreviation “TM.” He refused to behave like a dhimmi (second-class, “tolerated” citizenship for non-Muslim minorities).

A similar event in October 2016 took a different direction. Visiting the Temple Mount, Cardinal Marx and Bishop Bedford-Strohm, the preeminent Catholic and Protestant representatives of the German Churches, respectively, accepted orders and removed their crosses. After huge protests in Germany against the banning of the cross on the Temple Mount, the Cardinal Marx apologized. Bishop Bedford-Strohm, in contrast, did not apologize but blamed Israeli security — an allegation Israel rejected.

The Paris conference could well make the Temple Mount Judenrein and Christenrein [free of Christians and Jews] and accelerate dhimmitude in Europe.

An aerial view of the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, and much of Jerusalem’s Old City.  (Image source: Andrew Shiva / Wikipedia)

For 3000 years, Jewish history says that “Jerusalem is built up like a city that is united together” (Psalms 122:3). Ever since, Jerusalem has been the undivided capital of the Jewish homeland. Neither relentless terror, nor multiple wars, nor cynical boycotts against the Jewish State have succeeded in destroying Israel’s history. In a rough move, however, the Paris peace conference and a subsequent Security Council vote could accomplish just that: the end of Jewish history in its homeland. Based on the Hamas Charter that denies Israel’s right to exist, the vote could complete eliminating Jewish — and Christian — history and replacing it with Islam. It would terminate Israel, the only thriving, beautiful, prosperous, and truly democratic country in the Middle East. It would end freedom of worship, which Israel guarantees for people of all religious faiths, from around whole world. It would end the inspiration for Judeo-Christian culture and for the faiths of Jews, Christians, and, yes, of Moslems, which Israel provides.

What drives Western politicians to be servants aiding the destruction of Judeo-Christian culture in the Middle East and Europe? Why does the Paris peace conference prepare for the destruction of the Jewish State, while Christians are murdered in Muslim countries in historically unparalleled numbers? Why are millions of Christians kept in the dark about the intended destruction of their birthplace on the Temple Mount from where, on Pentecost, the disciples of Jesus were empowered to carry the faith to the whole world? Not a few answers point to greed for might and money. It might be one of the Christians’ last chances to rescue and honor the Judeo-Christian patrimony, which has been built with love and faith and passed on through many perils over millennia.

Christians of this age are grateful to Israel for enabling the biblical faith, more than ever, through numerous archaeological findings on the Temple Mount, in the City of David, in Qumran, on Massada, in Beersheva, in Bethlehem, in Tekoah, in Ariel, at the Jordan river, in Jericho, in Capernaum, Megiddo, Nazareth, Tel Dan, and a hundred other biblical places in the Land of Israel.

For this, Christians will not be silent when all these places will be voted to go to those who will destroy them — as they destroyed Palmyra, Antioch, Nisibis, Nineveh, and in late 2014 Iraq’s oldest Christian monastery, St. Elijah, leveled by the Islamic State. It was reported how ISIS seized the Christian site, forcing the Christians to convert to Islam, paying a special tax or be killed. This is the reality familiar to Christians and Jews in the Middle East for more than a millennium.

The Judeo-Christian culture is based on history transmitted in Holy Writ. That needs to be addressed in public, on social media, in print media, on television and radio — on all media. The streets of Paris must hear the protests against the attempted rewriting of history at the peace conference and any subsequent Security Council vote. Such protestors are like “a man who would built up the wall and stand in front of God in the gap on behalf of the Land” (Ezekiel 22:30) — so that the only bastion of democracy, the very defender of Christianity, the last keeper of Judeo-Christian heritage in the Middle East and Europe will continue to prosper.

Rev. Dr. Petra Heldt is Director of the Ecumenical Theological Research Fraternity, Jerusalem.