Unraveling Syria: Many Citizen Militias Fighting Against Assad

Many good people sincerely believe that the Syrian revolution is a CIA-Mossad plot against Bashar Assad, who they think is against Israel. Other well-meaning people are convinced that that ISIS is a CIA-Mossad plot to undermine the legitimacy of the Free Syrian Army.

“95% of ISIS weapons are from Russia who are likewise arming Assad and therefore Russia profits both sides of the engineered conflict,” insisted an FSA supporter. “If FSA was supported by USA - then Assad would be gone, tried and sentenced to death for his war crimes against all of Syria 4 years ago and ISIS would not exist.”

In order to try and clarify the mystery of who’s who in the Syrian war, I talked to Ahmed, a Syrian-American opponent of the regime, whose family members recently fled the country. His family has suffered brutally under the Assad regime for decades.

He wanted me to be aware that the Syrian uprising began after 40 years of oppression. Spontaneously in 2011 some young kids in the south of Syria in the city of Dara wrote “Freedom! Freedom” on a wall. They were arrested by the secret police. One kid’s body was returned to his family after being tortured to death. The other kid was returned alive with his fingers chopped off.

Protests against the government spread throughout the country over the next month. Law enforcement shot live ammunition at demonstrators. Townspeople started gathering to defend the demonstrators with personal arms such as AK-47.

Within six months, low rank Sunni army personnel started mass defections from the military, because they did not want to shoot their own people. The high ranking officers are all Alawite. The ex-military Sunnis turned freedom fighters started gathering and made connections in border areas in Turkey and Jordan. The Syrian border with Turkey is mountainous and there are many villages, which makes it easy to escape. But the border with Iraq is desert and it is very difficult.

There was no Islamic movement the first year of the uprisings. Only small arms were used on both sides. The second year, 2012,  the Assad regime became increasingly unstable and started sending in tanks and doing aerial bombardment of civilian populations. At this point, humanitarian volunteers from Bosnia, Chechnya, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, Iraq started pouring in for emotional and religious reasons. The local population welcomed them on an individual basis. There was no official organization. The people started grouping and making connections in nearby countries where they could travel and visit.

As the movement got bigger, the original freedom fighters who defected from the army went to retire in nearby countries for a number of reasons: There was no financial support for their families, and they were not people of high ideology who want to die for the sake of Islam. Neighboring countries hosted 2000 high ranking Syrian ex-officers to keep as assets to use for future influence, when it appeared the regime would fall. However, these officers cannot leave. They are kept in some kind of camps or living quarters..

Then, the Syrian government asked for help from Iran and Lebanon’s Hizbollah to fight for the Shia. The Syrian government is not Shia. Shia is a sect of Islam. They are Muslims. The Alawite are not Muslims. Historically, France declared Alawites as Shia. But Syria is not Shia.

Many people mistakenly believe that Syria is defending Al-Aqsa, even though on the Israel/Syria border, nobody ever tried to attack Israel. This is Israel’s most stable border, protected by Assad. Iraq is under the influence of Iran. Iran doesn’t want Syria to be Sunni.

At this point, there are hundreds of fighting groups, said Ahmed, who says he truly believes that ISIS was started by foreign agents but lost control “just like the Taliban.” The majority of the leaders of ISIS are high-ranking Iraqi ex-army officials, who used to work for Saddam Hussein. The Iraqi army was the 4th largest army in the world. They are now working with foreign intelligence and serving in ISIS and getting income from foreign countries, plus plunder.

Ahmed said that the majority Syrian population does not want a conservative Islamic state. They are Islamic liberals. They like to have fun. They have no interest in fundamentalism or “radical Islam.” Western injustice and aggression leads to IS politics, he said.

I asked, “When there is no government and everything is destroyed, wouldn’t it be natural for the town to meet at the mosque, and if there is no law, it would be easiest to use Islamic law?”

“People will go back to their natural religion when there is no infrastructure other than the madrasa,” stated Ahmed, who has spent significant time in Afghanistan. However, he did not feel that Syria was anything like Afghanistan. 

In the 1970’s, Wahhabis from Saudi Arabia came to indoctrinate Syrians but people argued against them. Nevertheless, like Bosnia, Syrians will welcome those who help to control Syria and establish order and peace.

Ahmed said the west is pushing Syria to the point where they will say, “Please bring anyone, even another Alawite, to get rid of Assad” to stabilize the region. No matter what, it will take 25-50 years to rebuild the country to what it was.

Regarding the Free Syrian Army, he said there are three kinds: those who gave up and left the country, those who will fight for whoever pays more, and those who are controlled by third parties. He had a higher opinion of al-Nusra, whom he said number in the thousands, not hundreds. The majority of al-Nusra are Syrians not foreign fighters. They have the best fighters. They have good individual support but also have influence with high rank people. Both Saudi Arabia and Jordan try to send their infiltrators to get high ranks to try and get influence or reward.

The “sincere fighters” don’t belong to any big party or private agenda. The majority of Syrian fighters belong to loose small groups. Around Homs and Damascus, in the revolution areas, there could be 15-20 small groups of 100, 200 or 300 militia men for every local area. Some groups make Islamic council and unify with groups like al-Nusra or Ahrar al Sham.

I mentioned the news that Iranian General Mohammad Ali Allahdadi was killed in an Israeli airstrike in Syria along with six Hizbollah fighters in the Golan Heights. Ahmed said that on that same day, the Syrian opposition shot down a small plane that was filled with high ranking Iranian, Jordanian and Hizbollah officials. He theorized that the media gave Israel credit for the killing in order to downplay the powerful news of the Syrian resistance.

Regarding foreign funding, he mentioned a few weeks back there was a local militia named Hazen that took money from America but then gave it to al-Nusra.

Lessons from the Boston Massacre

A trial says as much about the people holding it as it does about the person who is on trial. What will this trial say about Boston? Will Boston’s noble heritage be disgraced or upheld? As jury selection begins this week in Dzhokhar’ Tsarnaev's trial, let us ask ourselves: what would John Adams do? Put simply, he would defend the accused Boston Marathon bomber.

John Adams, an attorney and revolutionary, insisted upon representing the British soldiers that gunned down rioters in the spring of 1770, so that they would not be lynched by a mob but rather, receive a fair trial. It is the historical tradition of Boston, to uphold the Constitution and Bill of Rights no matter how severe the crime. Indeed, Adams gave such an impassioned speech at the trial that the jury, rather than execute the unpopular defendants, was moved to acquit 6 of the 8 soldiers and reduce the charges of the remaining two to manslaughter. The strong defense of even one’s political enemies not only demonstrated the future US President’s moral character but forms the basis of Constitutional law.

The most basic concept of the fair trial is that the defendant shall be presumed innocent until proven guilty. I have been in attendance at nearly every pre-trial hearing for Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, and I can assure the public that no meaningful evidence has been revealed. Most everything remains in sealed documents that have not yet been discussed. Therefore, any opinion that any person claims to have about the case, if not obtained from court documents, has been obtained illegitimately via made-for-TV movies that never claimed to be more than fiction. The amount of arrogant, willful ignorance amongst the jury pool is sickening.

Many tweets are circulating that demonstrate extreme prejudice: 


“I’m just gonna say this… I hope #Tsarnaev gets shanked tonight so we don’t have to go through this trial.. #sorrynotsorry”

“Jury duty coming up. Really hoping for the Tsarnaev case so someone can deliver him a fair chance at the electric chair.”

“So Pamela has to report for federal jury duty on Monday. 1st day of the Boston bomber trial voir dire. Can’t believe it. Yeah, we’re prejudiced!”

Harvey Silvergate argues in the Boston Globe that due to the prevalence of such extreme sentiments among the locals who were personally affected by the bombings, Judge O’Toole ought to have moved Tsarnaev’s trial out of Boston, “out of an abundance of caution, erring on the side of a fair trial that is supposed to be the norm especially when the death penalty hangs in the balance.” He further states: “O’Toole instead is erring on the side of expedition. Efficiency can be overrated when justice, and our own adherence to civilized and constitutional norms, hang in the balance.”

I can think of no greater stupidity than to allow “blind faith” in a man’s guilt sway a trial of this importance to our nation. This is a huge test of what the Founding Fathers stood for. We must insist on clear evidence, not hearsay, not doctored photos, not unsubstantiated news reports, no secret evidence - Bostonians deserve to watch not only a fair trial but proceedings that seek to “unravel the mystery” of the bombings. All we know for sure right now is that we don’t know anything. No bomb making materials were found in either brother’s apartment. The FBI claims they “don’t know” where the bombs were made. Does the prosecution even have a case? This is a valuable question, based in our Bill of Rights.

Even if the Tsarnaev brothers are guilty of some or all of the charges, it's still important to ask deeper questions, like who put them up to it. The truth could be rather complex. MLFA attorney Charles Swift opined: “Just because the government is lying doesn’t mean the defendant is innocent.” I fear that this rush to declare the kid guilty and then execute him is covering up a much bigger story. Even if the bigger story is just that law enforcement failed miserably and then tried to cover its mistakes by exaggerating the “Islamic threat,” embellishing and inflating the story into mythical proportions in order to explain their inability to protect the public from harm.

The Massachusetts Constitution, Article XIII states that “In criminal prosecutions, the verification of facts in the vicinity where they happen, is one of the greatest securities of the life, liberty, and property of the citizen.”

Unfortunately, the government has worked overtime to remove the evidence from the scene. The mailbox, the tree that were hit with shards of shrapnel have been removed so that we cannot determine the direction of the blast. Officer Collier's car has been refurbished and put back into use, the boat where Tsarnaev was captured has been removed from the property and replaced with a new boat, witnesses have been deported and jailed, intimidated or killed/died mysteriously; including law enforcement witnesses! Will the truth ever come out? If so, how?

Boston should stand strong and insist that the government follow the laws of our land and actually demonstrate the veracity of its accusations with hard evidence. If we allow murderous hysteria to take over Boston, then we are acting in the tradition of Salem.