Konflikten i Syrien

‘With Aleppo retaken, Washington’s plan for regime change in Syria is off the table’
…

RT:Aleppo has been declared retaken by Syrian government forces. Does this really represent a turning of the tide?

Jim Jatras: Absolutely, it is a great strategic victory for Syria, for the Damascus government. It shows that regime change – the goal of the Obama administration and all of our allies like Saudi Arabia – is simply off the table. That is a huge thing.
…

But I think the character of the war has changed. Also the character of US policy has changed in the sense that it is clear how irrelevant the Obama administration has become. Let’s remember this final working out of a deal for the humanitarian evacuation of people and also the fighters leaving Aleppo was achieved not through the Geneva format between [Sergey] Lavrov and [John] Kerry, but rather between Lavrov and his Turkish and Iranian counterparts. In a sense, it almost shows that the US is no longer relevant to this crisis.
…

RT: What does all of this mean for the incoming administration? Does this set a different table for Donald Trump?

JJ: Absolutely. I think it really opens the door to pivot American policy away from this frankly insane notion that we need regime change, we need to be supporting these terrorist groups in Syria, to one that says: ‘Let’s go with the flow. Let’s work with the Russians, let’s work with the Syrians in order to target the real terrorists we know they are out there – not only ISIS of course, but also Al-Qaeda, Ahrar al-Sham, and all the other groups that we’ve been pretending are moderates for all these years.’

RT: You’ve said that this is going to solidify Assad. How sure are you of that?

JJ: I am sure of it because the other side that our mainstream media has not been showing is people going back to their homes; people are celebrating that the city is being liberated. Even some of the media are even beginning to admit that the humanitarian crisis they have been raising the hue and cry over, and naming and shaming and threatening war crimes to the Russians and the Syrians didn’t turn out to be what they said it was going to be.
…
RT: You’ve said that this is going to solidify Assad. How sure are you of that?

JJ: I am sure of it because the other side that our mainstream media has not been showing is people going back to their homes; people are celebrating that the city is being liberated. Even some of the media are even beginning to admit that the humanitarian crisis they have been raising the hue and cry over, and naming and shaming and threatening war crimes to the Russians and the Syrians didn’t turn out to be what they said it was going to be.

So back once more to Aleppo. No-one doubts that foreigners are fighting alongside Jabhat al-Nusra/Al-Qaida and the Salafist Ahrar al-Sham and other groups around the city. But, oddly, that’s not what we call them. We refer to them as ‘rebels’ – as if they were the Maquis fighting in the French resistance or Partisans freeing Yugoslavia from the Nazis or, indeed, the insurgents of Warsaw struggling for freedom from the German SS. Which they clearly are not. And while we know that the ‘rebels’ of eastern Aleppo have died fighting bravely, we also know that they have executed their internal enemies, slit the throats of their prisoners and that – well, since Jabhat al-Nusra is al-Qaida (and has since changed its name yet again) – they have flown passenger aircraft into very tall buildings in New York.