Syria and
Lebanon Defeating The ISIS Terrorists
By Andre
Vltchek
August 29,
2017 "Information
Clearing House"
- Whatever the West may think, and no matter
what the Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri may
say publicly, the Lebanese army, in clear
coordination with Hezbollah (which is
outlawed in many Western countries) as well as
with the Syrian army, is now pounding the
positions of deadly ISIS/Daesh, right at the
border region.
The army
began the operation on August 19, 2017, at 5 in
the morning, by firing at the terrorists’
positions in Jaroud, Raas Ba’albak and al-Qaa’
using rockets and heavy artillery. It all has an
emotional twist: the army commanders declared
that the operation was launched in honor of the
country’s kidnapped military men and martyrs.
Apparently, Lebanon has finally decided: that,
enough is enough! First Al-Nusra Front and now
ISIS have to go.
Ignore the
fact the Lebanese government went out of its way
to say that the Lebanese army is actually not
coordinating with Syrian forces, or with
Hezbollah. After all, Mr. Hariri just
recently returned from Washington, where he met
the US President who is treating Syrian
President Assad as his personal enemy, and
Hezbollah as a terrorist organization.
Personally, Mr. Hariri likes the West, and he is
very close to its loyal ally, Saudi Arabia,
where he was born.
But Mr.
Hariri was never elected. Lebanon is using a
complex and obscure “confession system”,
‘distributing political and institutional power
proportionally among confessional communities’.
President has to be a Maronite Christian;
Speaker of the Parliament is Shi’a Muslim and
Prime Minister has to be a Sunni Muslim.
Therefore,
one thing is what Mr. Hariri says, and other
what most of the people of Lebanon think or do.
Meanwhile,
the Lebanese resistance, political and social
movement Hezbollah has also declared a
joint anti-Daesh (ISIS) offensive with
the Syrian army, at the other side of the
border. The gloves are suddenly off.
Unlike one
month earlier, when Al-Nusra Front was almost
totally wiped out by the same coalition but in
the end its fighters were spared and offered a
transfer to a ‘safe zone’ inside Syria (Idlib),
this time there is not going to be any
preliminary negotiation with the most venomous
of all terrorist groups in the region. The
message is clear: either the unconditional or at
least irreversible surrender of all ISIS
terrorists, or their total destruction.
By the
evening of August 20, the Lebanese army was
already holding around 80 square kilometers
(roughly 30%) of the area that was previously
controlled by Daesh (ISIS).
Before I
departed from the Lebanese capital for Cairo,
Egypt, I drank a few cups of coffee with my good
friend, an intellectual from Syria. We were
sitting in the middle of Beirut’s Christian
neighborhood, Achrafieh.
“Let’s
take a ‘selfie’ together,” he said. I was
surprised; before he was known to despise social
media.
“We are
winning,” he said, “and that’s great... But you
never know what happens next... There will be,
surely, some terrible retaliation. Who knows
whether we’ll see each other again, you know...
Something may happen to me, or to you, on the
way to the airport.”
I knew
what he was talking about, and I have written
about the situation many times before. Lebanon,
in some of the non-Muslim neighborhoods of
Beirut, has been literally saturated with
so-called “dormant cells”, of various terrorist
organizations, particularly ISIS. At any moment
they can get ‘activated’, destroying hundreds of
lives in this beautiful but long-suffering city.
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Beirut is
nervous, edgy. Great victories in the mountains
liberated tormented local people, and Lebanon is
finally regaining its territories. But the
terrorists will not disappear from the country
overnight. They may be losing big territorial
battles, but they are still capable of
inflicting terrible casualties on the civilians
and even the military.
But so
far, everything is moving rapidly, in Lebanon
and across the border. The once astonishing
number of almost 2 million refugees on its
territory has gradually been reduced to 1.5
million, and then adjusted further down to 1.2
million. Soon it may drop well under one
million.
Syrians
are going back, confident that peace is
returning to their scarred land.
The Syrian
forces, as well as Russians, Iranians and
Hezbollah, are clearly determined to stop
the insurgency of several terrorist groups on
the Syrian territory, while China is now also
playing an increasingly important and positive
role.
Most of
the terrorist armies are directly or indirectly
supported by the West or by its close allies in
the Gulf. Turkey is also playing dangerous and
deadly games in the region.
Almost no
one is talking about the final collapse of the
Middle East, anymore. Entire nations have been
damaged; some went up in flames. Implanted
militant Islam served well both the West and
much of the Gulf. But Syria survived; it fought
bravely and determinedly, supported by its
allies and at an enormous cost, it has managed
to stop the imperialists and their brutal
extremist local offshoots.
While no
one is celebrating, yet, the mood in Syria,
Lebanon and in several other part of the region
is suddenly upbeat.
The West
is now fully discredited, while Russia has
gained great respect.
As
Lebanese and Syrian armies are, with
Hezbollah support, conducting offensive
against the ISIS, Russian jets, it is reported,
killed some 200 terrorists heading for a region
of Deir ez-Zur in Syria. In the same period of
time, US-led strikes killed at least 17
civilians in Raqqah.
Mr. Assad has no
illusions about the motives of the Western
involvement in the region. As reported on August
20 by SANA Syrian Arab Agency,
he recently gave a powerful speech:
“...This
conflict is a valuable opportunity for the West
to ‘settle the account’ with so many countries
and subjugating countries which have refused to
bow to the West’s hegemony during the past years
or decades, including Syria, Iran, the
Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, Belarus
among others, even Russia.”
President
Assad continued:
“Today
the West is facing an existential
conflict….living in a state of hysteria whenever
there is a state that wants to take part with it
in the international decision-making in any
field and in any place in the world”.
By August
27 2017, it was clear that Daesh (ISIS) fighters
were cornered, if not completely defeated. The
Lebanese Army agreed to a cease-fire in its
offensive, after terrorists decided to lay down
arms. Negotiations began. It appears that the
ISIS may soon pull out of Lebanese territory to
Syria, to a designated zone.
Victory
came at a heavy price: the Lebanese Army
helicopters were flying helicopters with body
bags containing remains of the soldiers, over
the capital – Beirut.
Across the
border (as was reported by Press TV on August
27), helicopters were used for totally different
goals:
“For
the second time this week, a helicopter
operating under the US-led coalition has
transferred members of the Daesh terrorist group
in Syria’s eastern Dayr al-Zawr Province, a
UK-based monitoring group says... Syrian sources
said that the operation was accompanied by the
US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces’ artillery
fire... The sources speculated that the airlift
was possibly meant to transfer US mercenaries
fighting alongside Daesh or the terror outfit’s
ringleaders who sought to defect...”
Tiny
Lebanon is tied to Syria with an umbilical cord.
It is a rocky, often extremely complex
relationship, but during the historic moments
like this it is clear that both countries can
and choose to act in unison. The Prime Minister
of Lebanon may like to flirt with Donald Trump
in Washington and with Saudi Arabia, but the
armies of both countries are clearly together,
fighting the same enemy. And so is Hezbollah.
To both
the Syrian and Lebanese people, it is clear who
the real enemies of the region are. And they are
definitely not Hezbollah or President
Assad.
[Original
version published by NEO]
Andre
Vltchek is
a philosopher, novelist, filmmaker and
investigative journalist. He has covered wars
and conflicts in dozens of countries. Three of
his latest books are revolutionary novel
“Aurora” and
two bestselling works of political non-fiction:
“Exposing
Lies Of The Empire”
and “Fighting
Against Western Imperialism”.
View his
other books
here. Andre is
making films for teleSUR and Al-Mayadeen. Watch
Rwanda Gambit,
his groundbreaking documentary about Rwanda and
DRCongo. After having lived in Latin America,
Africa and Oceania, Vltchek presently resides in
East Asia and the Middle East, and continues to
work around the world. He can be reached through
his website
and his
Twitter.
See also
Nasrallah: Daesh
surrenders to Hezbollah
Lebanon Defeats ISIS With
Help From Syria
