Syria hit the headlines again for all the wrong reasons over the past few days, as anti-government forces comprising former ISIS and Al Qaeda fighters took over the city of Aleppo in a lightning attack.
“The fall of Aleppo is very significant,” says Dr Waiel Awwad, a senior international journalist based in New Delhi. “It is like Bombay in India, a major industrial city of Syria. It has the central bank, the railways, the textiles, the industry, everything is based in that city,” said Dr Awwad, who’s also a Distinguished Advisor (West Asia), Tillotoma Foundation.
Explaining the importance of the city, he noted that “During the first occupation, most of the 1500 factories in Aleppo were dismantled and taken to Turkey. Though the residents are repulsing these terrorists, but it is a significant fall, no doubt about it,” he said.
“Since 2011 we have been facing terrorism and terrorist organisations recognised as such by the U.N., he said in this edition of The Gist.
“These include the Al Qaeda and ISIS, which has been creating havoc inside Syria. And those parts of Syria which these terrorists occupied, like Aleppo, we liberated along with most parts of Syria in 2013 and 2016. But a major part of Syria was occupied by Turkey, which was known as the Idlib province, which is in the northern and eastern Syria, and another third was occupied in north and western Syria illegally by the United States,” he said.
“The Americans are sheltering 60,000 terrorists from ISIS, according to the U.N. agencies, and Turkey’s President Erdogan is sheltering and training more than 55,000 terrorists in Idlib, where they have been since 2012, since the revolt against the Syrian government,” he added.
“Most of them have changed their names to pretend that they are a modern terrorist organisation, but everybody knows they are from Uzbeks, from Turkmenistan…you can hear the language they are speaking, you can see them on the streets…they have no belonging to the Syrian opposition,” said Dr Awwad.
“But because of the war on Lebanon and Gaza by Israel, you can see that the Israelis have failed in their operations in Gaza, and in Lebanon there was a ceasefire, but immediately after it, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu wrote to Assad saying he was dealing with flame and fire,” he noted .
“Immediately after this, the intelligence agencies of Israel and Turkey met, and soon after this attack (on Aleppo) took place. They have conquered a part of Syria again. But if you wait, they will be repulsed.”
To understand the role of Russia, the U.S., Turkey in the war in Syria, and an insider’s view of why the country is so important in the global geopolitical matrix, watch the full interview.
