Random people’s religion has nothing to do with anything related to this horror.

Thoughts and prayers.

You see, these new laws are necessary to enforce our ancient tradition. Inventing punishments out of our asses is totally 100% a traditional thing to do. The prophet totally had foreign media and NGOs in mind when he was writing the book all those centuries ago.

Finally a peertube app that makes sense! Great news!

We’ve been here before people. 2016-2020. For your mental health, zone out of anything he says. Only what he does matters.

Well, fuck.

All right, this one just came out and is actually very good. Educate yourself: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y3s3l8Z3a-U&ab_channel=OwenJones

Tell me you don’t interact with political exiles without telling me you don’t interact with political exiles. And I’m not just talking about Syrians here.

Media interviews? You know that for a decade now there are about 6 million refugees living outside Syria, right? It’s not exactly difficult to meet them and hear what they have to say.

Your mistake is in thinking that people simply asked for democracy.

Oh excuse me for listening to what actual Syrians have been saying. You obviously know better.

The movement gained its moment from the “Arab Spring” and as regimes were being toppled, someone spray painted basically “you’re next” to Assad.

Yes, that’s called a revolutionary wave. Or are those allowed for white people of previous centuries?

The rest of your comment is apologia for (brutal) state repression. Not interested.

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“Yo Dawg, I heard you like buffer zones, so I put a buffer zone in your buffer zone so you can have a buffer zone while you are in buffer zone.”

Tell me you have no concept of centering Syrians in an analysis of the situation in Syria without telling me you have no concept of centering Syrians in an analysis of the situation in Syria.

Respectfully, that’s a load of nonsense:

Paving the way for outside actors to mess with those elections.

So? If potential future foreign interference is a legitimate reason to NOT have democracy at all, then ALL democracy becomes impossible. You’re basically making the argument that democracy is impossible so Syrians should never ask for democratic reforms because …if they do sometime in the future some external actor might try to influence their election?

And it’s actually worse than that. They asked for democracy and they got bullets, chemical warfare and over a decade of destruction and dispossession. Was the threat of some potential election meddling that horrible that all of that is preferable? Ask any Syrian refugee in Lebanon if they wouldn’t trade the destruction of their country with Lebanon’s broken sectarian system.

Ultimately you’re making an argument that either they should have 100% of a good thing or 0% of the thing AND brutality for asking for the thing in the first place. And that’s utterly nonsensical.

You can guarantee that whoever comes out on top will be establishing an ultraconservative theocracy and things will be worse for the Syrian people

You actually cannot “guarantee” it. It is a possibility, but there are no guarantees. You can be pessimistic of course. But history never guarantees anything. I mentioned elsewhere in the thread that by “freedom”, I was referring to this particular moment right here, where nothing is for sure and things could go to the better or the worse. RIGHT NOW, there is uncertainty. Even if tomorrow HTS tries to enforce a khalifate or whatever shit, right now, this is a moment of freedom for Syrians. Just look at what they are saying. You can’t deny what you see. They are saying that after decades they are able to finally breathe. The future IS open, but not guaranteed.

Well, you know the movie reference: Illinois Nazis, I hate Illinois Nazis.

Anyway, we’ll find out soon enough what these guys are.

I mean very narrowly this moment right now. This moment of uncertainty where anything is possible. This is what freedom looks like: anything is possible, the best and the worst.

Not nice is an understatement. The guy is a butcher.

We are not talking about “not secular enough” here, we are talking about Al-Quaeda, get a grip. The leader guy had made an oath of allegiance to al-Zawahiri. Al-Nusra at times collaborated (and tbf also fought against) ISIS. They were also responsible for war crimes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Nusra_Front#War_crimes

Regardless, like I also said they are putting on a moderate face and say they are different now. But minority groups in Syria are rightly feeling threatened. We’ll find out soon enough it seems.

Here’s a crazy idea: maybe Turkey, Iran, and Russia (and the US, and Israel, and the EU, etc) should shut the fuck up and let Syrians decide for themselves. Crazy, right?

The are a rebranding of Al-Nusra, a split of Al-Quaeda.

This is their leader: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abu_Mohammad_al-Julani

They are putting on a “moderate” face, it remains to be seen if they mean it.