From a friend on Facebook - in response to the Thornberry quote above.
1. As Kasparov has pointed out: how do you measure the actual popularity of a dictator in a state run on terror for 48 years?
The metaphor he uses is how can we know how popular the *only* restaurant in a town really is, especially when it is run by the local mafia and all aternatives are systematically torched.
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2. Even criticising Assad in print or aloud lands you in detention, almost definitely tortured, possibly killed. Never mind actually organising a protest or genuine political opposition.
The 15 branches of Syria's intelligence apparatus, the mukhabarat, count some 50,000 to 70,000 full-time officers, along with hundreds of thousands of part-time personnel and informers. By 2011 it was estimated there was one intelligence officer for every 240 or so Syrians.
“The garbage collectors are intelligence agents,” a protester told the Associated Press after 120 people were killed in two days of protests in April 2011. “Sometimes we think even our wives are working with the intelligence. All the phones are monitored. We live in hell.”
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3. From the very beginning Assad adopted a sorched earth policy. Those who attended protests were rounded up, even doctors who treated wounded protestors were charged with 'abetting terrorism' and arrested. The message was very clear: you show allegiance to the regime or you risk rape, detention, torture, murder, PTSD, exile and your home and community relentlessly shelled and bombed.
Here is testimony from Marie Colvin from Homs in 2012:
‘Every civilian house on this street has been hit. We're talking about a very poor popular neighborhood. The top floor of the building I'm in has been hit, in fact, totally destroyed. There are no military targets here. There is the Free Syrian Army: Heavily outnumbered and out-gunned - they have only Kalashnikovs and rocket-propelled grenades. But they don't have a base. There are more young men being killed, we see a lot of teen-aged young men, but they are going out to just try to get the wounded to some kind of medical treatment. So it's a complete and utter lie that they're only going after terrorists. There are rockets, shells, tank shells, anti-aircraft being fired in parallel lines into the city. The Syrian Army is simply shelling a city of cold, starving civilians.'
To talk about 'underestimating Assad's popularity' in such conditions is grotesque and willfully ignorant.
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4. Assad has had a huge military advantage over the rebels. The full power of a state military, including an airforce, helicopters, heavy artillery and scud missiles. It has also been backed by the world's 3rd most powerful army (Russia) who brought cruise missiles, advanced fighter bombers, helicopter gunships, cluster, bunker busting and thermite bombs and a UNSC veto to the table. On top of this it had Iran, and Gen. Solemani, regarded as the ME's most experienced and feared operative. He organised Shia militias battle-hardened in Iraq and Hezbollah to join the fight.
The rebels meanwhile were armed with what they could capture off Assad plus relatively unsophisticated and minor arms from their backers such as KSA. No airforce, no surface to air or ballistic missiles, very little heavy artillery and few tanks.
The only reason they have survived for 7 years against overwhelming military odds is the thing they did have: support of the population, sometimes only as the lesser evil.
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5. Despite these power differentials, Iranian representatives and Assad had to travel to Moscow in 2015 and beg Putin to intervene.
The reason: the Assad regime was on the edge of collapse and defeat after 4 years of fighting a poorly armed insurgency.
How does Emily explain that? is she just unaware of it or has she chosen to ignore it?
One of the main reasons that Assad had to beg Putin for help was because of mass desertions from his army. No one except regime loyalists wants to fight for him, because they know what it means: killing their own community members, taking orders from Iranian and Russian commanders who despise them and taking part in sickening war crimes and collective punishments.
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What we have here is the Shadow Foreign Secretary ventriloquizing Assad himself. It is an extraordinary betrayal of a revolution. Note how she is implying both that the rebels have tried to mislead The West, and that Assad might have some legitimacy. This is laying the ground for the restoration of diplomatic relations. Labour are now, when it comes to Foreign Policy, the party of fascist apologism.