[IsraelTimes] A new report by the Institute for Monitoring Peace and Cultural Tolerance in School Education (IMPACT-se) notes significant progress in Egypt’s education reform, with 80% of schoolchildren now studying from revised textbooks. The changes promote peace, tolerance and coexistence while rejecting violence and extremism, IMPACT-se says.
The revised elementary curriculum has removed or restructured antisemitic and anti-Israel content. For instance, Israel is presented as a legitimate peace partner, and Christian Education textbooks reference Jewish historical connections to Jerusalem. Grade 9 students study the Israel-Egypt peace treaty, with students learning of the “advantages of peace for Egypt and the Arab states.”
However, prejudice persists in unrevised materials used in higher grades, which still depict Zionism negatively, the group says. These textbooks are slated for reform as part of Egypt’s ongoing 12-year curriculum overhaul, currently in its seventh year.
[IsraelTimes] A UK high school is encouraging students to join a “collective fast” this coming Friday to raise money for Gaza amid Israel’s war with the Hamas terror group.
George Green’s School, located in London’s Tower Hamlets, has held a series of fundraiser events in recent weeks for UNICEF’s Gaza Appeal for Children in Crisis, and after raising more than £1,000 (roughly $1,270) across two bake sales and two sports tournaments, the school is now encouraging students to join a “Collective Fast Event” this coming Friday.
“On 13th December, both staff and students will come together in a collective fast, demonstrating our solidarity and raising awareness,” the school states on a fundraising page for the event. “Through this initiative, we aim to gather much-needed funds to provide food, medical aid, and other critical resources. Every donation, no matter the size, will make a significant difference.”
The UK’s Jewish Chronicle newspaper says that it obtained a copy of the letter sent to parents in an effort to encourage their children to sign up for the event.
“We are asking students to sign up for the fast and raise sponsorship,” the letter states. “We are already halfway to our target of £2500 but need your support.”
Speaking to the news outlet, a parent of a Jewish student at George Green’s School says that the event, and a previous one like it last December, instills a feeling of “shame” in her child and other Jewish students.
“The school has decided who is good and who is bad. Judaism has been portrayed as bad,” she tells the Jewish Chronicle. “No one is going to go out and announce [they are Jewish] at that school.”
In response, the school’s principal Jon Ryder tells the Jewish Chronicle that the event is “entirely voluntary,” but that it is “well-supported by members of the school community, including students, parents and staff.”
Posted by: Fred ||
12/13/2024 00:00 ||
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Link ||
[11133 views]
Top|| File under: Devout Moslems
#1
But! Now, stop and think about all the Baby Daddies floating around in the US Metro's and Voter Plantations. Stop now and imagine the greatly reduced odds of 1/2 Brothers & 1/2 Sisters, not just 1st cousins, "accidentally" hooking up?
"Life under Shari'ah is nice,"
Grunted unblinking Englishmen, thrice.
"Mohammedan Heaven
Turned up to eleven!"
"So light!"
"And so stinking of... spice!"
[DAILYMAIL.CO.UK] President-elect Donald Trump ...The cad! Twice caught beating wimmin!... 's border czar Tom Homan has revealed that the nation's largest mass deportation effort will begin in reliably Democrat Chicago, aka The Windy City or Mobtown ...home of Al Capone, the Chicago Black Sox, a succession of Daleys, Barak Obama, and Rahm Emmanuel... Homan, 63, the former acting head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement during Trump's first term, laid out his plans to remove migrants colonists who illegally crossed the southern border.
'Chicago is in trouble because your mayor sucks and your governor sucks,' Homan told the crowd at the Northwest Side GOP holiday party where attendees included Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker and Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson ...Hizzonner da Mare of Chicago. He was elected in April 2023 to replace the disastrous Lori Lightfoot and immediately set about out-Richtering her. A member of the Democratic Party (naturally), Johnson previously worked as a social studies teacher in the city's stellar public schools system. He helped organize the 2012 teachers strike. Prior to becoming Da Mare, he served on the Cook County Board of Boodlng Commissioners from 2018 to 2023... He went on to call them both 'terrible,' while also urging them to follow in the footsteps of New York City Mayor Eric Adams ...Hizonner da Mare of Noo Yawk. As a Manchurian candidate, Hizonner was all in favor of law and order and that kind of stuff. Once in office, a bunch of his friends found cushy jobs with the city, the windows kept getting broken, and Soros-funded DA Alvin Bragg remained right where he was. Most people comfort themselves with the thought that he's not Bill di Blasio but that's pretty small comfort with kids who actually go to school getting bumped off while standing in front of them. But he's a Dem, so the rubes will vote for him next election too, so he's what they deserve... and 'come to the table' for discussions, according to the Chicago Sun-Times.
Homan also warned Johnson, who had vowed to fight the Trump administration's deportation plan, not to 'impede' his efforts.
'If he doesn't want to help, get the hell out of the way,' Homan said.
'If he knowingly harbors or conceals an illegal alien - I will prosecute him.'
[IsraelTimes] Raids could cause contamination, harm evidence in ongoing investigations, says Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) chief Fernando Arias, after Israel attacked stockpiles to keep them out of extremists’ hands.
He clearly doesn’t understand the difference between war and peacetime courts. Poor him — he won’t be getting what he wants. Article goes on at length, but really we only need the blurb, dear Reader.
#1
Really? Well, how about we drop some nukes on the sites to make sure they're nice and not contaminated. Nuke temps are more than sufficient to totally destroy any and all chemical weapons.
#2
See how well the jihadis are at cleaning up nerve agent residue. Offer them extra raisins. Letting them seize intact munitions is Buttigieg level stupid.
Posted by: Super Hose ||
12/13/2024 15:03 Comments ||
Top||
[IsraelTimes] Corruption, underpaid soldiers, poor morale and dependence on Iran and Russia led to desertions and military collapse as rebel advance stormed through Syria without much of a fight
Twenty-three-year-old Syrian military conscript Farhan al-Khouli was badly paid and demoralized. His army outpost in scrubland near the rebel-held city of Idlib should have had nine soldiers but it just had three, after some had bribed the commanding officers to escape serving, he said.
And, of the two conscripts with him, one was regarded by his superiors as mentally unfit and not trusted with a gun, Khouli said.
For years, the Salafist tough guys of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, formerly al-Nusra, before that it was called something else ...al-Qaeda's Syrian affiliate, from which sprang the Islamic State... (HTS) had sat behind the nearby frontline, with Syria’s long civil war frozen. But on Wednesday, November 27, Khouli’s commanding officer — at another post behind the frontlines — called his mobile phone to tell him a rebel convoy was heading his way.
The officer said the unit should stand its ground and fight.
Instead, Khouli put his phone on airplane mode, changed into civilian clothes, dropped his rifle and fled. As he walked along the road back south, other groups of soldiers were abandoning their posts too.
"I looked back and saw everyone walking behind me. When they saw one person flee, everyone started to toss their weapons and run," he told Rooters this week in Damascus, where he has found work at a horse stable.
In a little less than two weeks, the rebels would sweep into the capital Damascus, toppling former president Bashir al-Assad as his army simply melted away. The rout abruptly ended a 13-year conflict that had killed hundreds of thousands of people.
Rooters spoke to a dozen sources including two Syrian army deserters, three senior Syrian officers, two Iraqi militia commanders working with the Syrian army, a Syrian security source and a source familiar with the thinking of Lebanese terror group Hezbollah, one of Assad’s main military allies.
The sources, along with intelligence documents Rooters found in an abandoned military office in the capital, painted a detailed picture of how Assad’s once-feared army had been hollowed out by the demoralization of troops, heavy reliance on foreign allies particularly for the command structure, and growing anger across the ranks at rampant corruption.
Most of the sources asked not to be named because they were not authorized to talk to media or feared retribution.
Since the war began in 2011, Assad’s army command had come to depend on allied Iranian and Iran-funded Lebanese and Iraqi forces to provide the best fighting units in Syria, all the senior sources said.
Crucially, much of the Syrian military’s operational command structure was run by Iranian military advisors and their militia allies, they said.
But many of the Iranian military advisers had left this spring after Israeli air strikes on Damascus, and the rest departed last week, said the Iraqi militia commanders, who worked alongside them.
Hezbollah fighters and commanders had already mostly left in October to focus on the escalating war in Leb ...an Iranian satrapy until recently ruled by Hassan Nasrallah situated on the eastern Mediterranean, conveniently adjacent to Israel. Formerly inhabited by hardy Phoenecian traders, its official language is now Arabic, with the usual unpleasant side effects. The Leb civil war, between 1975 and 1990, lasted a little over 145 years and produced 120,000 fatalities. The average length of a ceasefire was measured in seconds. The Lebs maintain a precarious sectarian balance among Shiites, Sunnis, and about a dozen flavors of Christians, plus Armenians, Georgians, and who knows what else? It is the home of the original Hezbollah, which periodically starts a war with the Zionist Entity, gets Beirut pounded to rubble, and then declares victory and has a parade. The Lebs have the curious habit of periodically murdering their heads of state or prime ministers... with Israel, the source familiar with Hezbollah thinking said.
The Syrian army’s own central command and control center no longer functioned well after the Iranian and Hezbollah officers left and the military lacked a defense strategy, particularly for Syria’s second city of Aleppo, a Syrian colonel, two Syrian security sources and a Lebanese security source familiar with the Syrian military said.
By contrast, rebels in the northwest, on paper numerically far weaker than the army, had spent years consolidating under a single operations room that coordinated their groups and units in battle, an International Crisis Group report said after the fall of Aleppo.
Rooters was unable to contact a current representative of the armed forces. Syria’s new most powerful figure, HTS chief Ahmad al-Sharaa told Rooters on Wednesday he would dissolve Syria’s security forces. Iran’s mission to the United Nations ...a lucrative dumping ground for the relatives of dictators and party hacks... , the Iraqi militias and Hezbollah did not respond to requests for comment.
THE FALL OF ALEPPO
As Aleppo came under attack in late November, army units were not given a clear plan but were told to work it out for themselves or to fall back to the strategic city of Homs to try to regroup, two Syrian security sources said.
Aleppo fell without a major fight on November 29, just two days after the offensive began, sending shockwaves through the military, three senior Syrian officers said.
What was left on the ground was a Syrian army severely lacking in cohesion, all the sources said, describing multiple units that were undermanned because officers were accepting bribes to let soldiers off duty, or had told soldiers to go home and were collecting their salaries themselves.
In 2020, the army had 130,000 personnel, according to think tank IISS’ Military Balance report, describing it as significantly depleted by the long civil war and transformed into an irregularly structured, militia-style organization focused on internal security.
In the days ahead of the regime’s collapse on Sunday, the United States had information of broad levels of desertions and military forces changing sides, as well as some elements fleeing to Iraq, a US official, speaking on condition of anonymity
... for fear of being murdered... , said.
Rooters could not establish the overall manpower shortage in the military or current force strength.
The Syrian army sources described officers and troops alike as demoralized by pay that was consistently low even after painful military victories earlier in the war and by reports, which Rooters could not verify, that Assad’s close family were growing immensely rich.
On November 28, the General Command of the Army and Armed Forces issued a telegram, ordering all troops to be on full combat readiness, according to a military document found by Rooters at an Air Intelligence office in Damascus.
In a sign the regime was desperate, Syria’s Air Intelligence Directorate, a key agency close to the Assad family, accused its men of "laxity" at checkpoints throughout the country after one was overrun by rebels in the south on December 1, and warned of punishment "without leniency" if they did not fight, the document seen by Rooters shows.
Despite the orders and threats, increasing numbers of soldiers and officers began to desert, all the sources said.
Instead of confronting the rebels, or even unarmed protesters, soldiers were seen by residents of Syrian cities, and in many videos that began circulating online, abandoning their posts, changing into civilian clothes and going home.
Rooters journalists entering Syria on Sunday found army uniforms still strewn across Damascus streets.
CORRUPT OFFICERS
The corruption and poor morale went up through the ranks.
Many midranking officers had been growing increasingly angry in recent years that the army’s sacrifices and successes during the war were not reflected in better pay, conditions and resources, two serving, one recently retired and one defected officer said.
In 2020, Russia and The Sick Man of Europe Turkey ...the only place on the face of the earth that misses the Ottoman Empire... agreed a deal that froze the frontlines after Assad retook all major cities and the main highway linking Damascus to Aleppo, further partitioning a country also split by Kurdish-controlled areas.
But Syria’s economy continued to reel from US sanctions and reduced foreign aid, said Aron Lund, a fellow at Middle East-focused think tank Century International. Rampant inflation ensued.
"Things just got worse for everyone, except for the oligarchs and elites around Assad. That seems to have been incredibly demoralizing," Lund said.
While decrees in 2021 roughly doubled military salaries to keep up with inflation that topped 100 percent that year, buying power rapidly fell anyway as the Syrian pound crashed against the dollar.
Col. Makhlouf Makhlouf, who served in an engineering brigade, said that if anybody complained about corruption they were called in for questioning at a military court — something that had happened to him more than once.
"We were living in a scary society. We were afraid to say a word," Makhlouf said. He had been stationed in Hama but deserted before the city fell to the rebels on December. 5, he said in an interview in Aleppo on Tuesday.
Anger had been building particularly over the past year or so, a serving senior military intelligence officer said, saying there was "growing resentment against Assad," including among core high-ranking supporters from his Alawite minority community.
YEARS OF DECAY
Khouli’s military experience illustrated the army’s problems — and helps explain his lack of loyalty.
He was drafted for the obligatory 18-month service at age 19, after having paid-off an officer to delay his service for a year.
When his service period expired, he was ordered to remain in the army indefinitely. He deserted but was later picked up by a patrol, put in prison for 52 days and then sent to the remote outpost near Idlib.
He was paid 500,000 Syrian pounds ($40) a month. Army rations were often pillaged before arriving. Sometimes his entire pay went on buying more food, he said.
Comrades with money would pay officers $100, which he lacked, to get out of service, Khouli said. Khouli’s brigade was supposed to have 80 soldiers, but in fact there were only 60, he said.
He described bad treatment from officers, including being assigned heavy manual labor digging earth berms in both very hot and very cold weather and during nights.
Rooters was not able to verify independently the details of his experiences.
One former major described the use of forced conscripts as a "fatal mistake."
A former army logistics serviceman, Zuhair, 28, said in an interview in Damascus on Tuesday he had seen officers steal and sell electricity generators and fuel. "All they cared about was using their positions to enrich themselves," he said.
He had fought for Assad for years but he had cousins among the rebels and when they advanced, he cheered, he said. "I don’t know how to describe how happy I am," he said.
OVER RELIANCE ON ALLIES
To fight back the earlier opposition uprising, which began with protests in 2011, Assad relied on allies. Russia sent jets that bombed rebel positions, Iran ...a theocratic Shiite state divided among the Medes, the Persians, and the (Arab) Elamites. Formerly a fairly civilized nation ruled by a Shah, it became a victim of Islamic revolution in 1979. The nation is today noted for spontaneously taking over other countries' embassies, maintaining whorehouses run by clergymen, involvement in international drug trafficking, and financing sock puppet militias to extend the regime's influence. The word Iran is a cognate form of Aryan. The abbreviation IRGC is the same idea as Stürmabteilung (or SA). The term Supreme Guide is a the modern version form of either Duce or Führer or maybe both. They hate JewsZionists Jews. Their economy is based on the production of oil and vitriol... sent military advisers and fighters from Hezbollah. Iran-backed militias from Iraq and another group it formed from Afghan Shi’ite fighters also came.
Their fighting skill and well-being contrasted with Syria’s own soldiers. An Iraqi militia commander serving near Aleppo said he knew of a Syrian platoon meant to consist of 30 soldiers that had only eight present.
The militia often invited those soldiers to eat with them out of pity at the poor condition of their rations, the commander said.
Hezbollah and allied militias regarded the regular Syrian forces with little more than contempt, the Iraqi militia commanders and a source familiar with Hezbollah thinking said.
They did not trust them for important operations and often would not fight alongside them, those sources added.
OCTOBER 7 CHANGED EVERYTHING
Iran’s presence in Syria was curtailed in the months following the attack on Israel by Tehran-backed Hamas ..a contraction of the Arabic words for "frothing at the mouth",... on October 7, 2023, the Iraqi militia commander based near Aleppo and an Iraqi military adviser based in Damascus said.
Israel’s response to Hamas’ incursion, which killed 1,200 people and resulted in the kidnapping of over 250 hostages, included escalating strikes on Iran-linked targets, including in Syria.
On April 1, a strike killed top commanders from Iran’s Revolutionary Guards at a building in an Iranian consular compound in Damascus. Israel has not confirmed or denied responsibility for the strike, but it was widely attributed to Israel.
The Iraqi sources both said the number of Revolutionary Guards commanders present in Syria dropped significantly after that. One said Syria’s military operations command became ineffective as a result, a situation exacerbated by the withdrawal of Hezbollah in October.
Russia conducted air strikes on rebels as they advanced on Hama and Homs, both sides said at the time, but unlike in earlier phases of the war there were no effective ground forces able to benefit.
By Saturday, December 7, Russia was calling for a political transition. The Kremlin and Russia foreign ministry declined to comment for this story. Russia, the Kremlin said on Tuesday, had "spent a lot of effort" to help Assad during the civil war but the situation had then deteriorated.
In Aleppo, Syrian forces had relied on Hezbollah to provide operational command, an Alawite Syrian army colonel said. Without Iranian advisers or Hezbollah, the army could not hold onto territory near the city, the colonel, the Iraqi commander and the Iraqi adviser said.
Iraqi militias sent more fighters to Syria last week, but they found all the contact channels to Iranian military advisors had been cut, the Iraqi commander said.
On Friday, after rebels had taken the city of Hama, the Iraqi groups were told to leave, he said.
"The battle for Syria was lost from day one," the Iraqi military adviser added.
[IsraelTimes] As Tehran ramps up uranium enrichment while suffering regional setbacks, countries tell UN they will ‘use all diplomatic tools to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon’.
[Rudaw] Hundreds of prisoners who were freed from the notorious Sednaya prison, following the fall of the Bashir al-Assad regime, have been admitted to hospitals across Syria to receive treatment following years of abuse.
Mohammed Salmu was only 19 years old when he was arrested and put in the infamous prison in Damascus. His relatives still do not know the reason behind his arrest.
Salmu has spent at least 43 years in the Syrian regime prisons.
He's severely traumatized, lost his memory, and is unable to speak.
"His condition is zero. He's worn out and has lost his memory. He doesn't respond and doesn't talk at all, he's scared. When we try to talk to him, he startles and scares you, me, and people around him," said Ahmed Hussein, his son-in-law.
Salmu is one of the thousands of freed inmates receiving treatment at the Syrian hospitals, including al-Mouwasat Hospital, after they endured the worst kinds of torture in Syrian prisons.
Alla Ramadan, another prisoner, has been missing for over 14 years. His mother has been looking everywhere for her son, but to no avail.
"I can't find him. He's been missing for 14 years. 14 years and no signs, he went and never came back," Ramadan's mother said in tears.
"He didn't participate in demonstrations, neither did he do something wrong. They took him, and I'm not sure if he's dead or alive. I'm still looking for him. May God punish the perpetrators," she added.
More than 100 freed prisoners are currently admitted to al-Mouwasat Hospital in Damascus, with the majority of them suffering from trauma, lost the ability to speak, and unable to recognize their loved ones.
"Frankly, their condition is extremely exhausting. But we like the fact that they feel secure and we are by their side. And we provide medicine based on the condition of the detainee," said Nadin Matni, Head of the ambulance team at Al Mouwasat Hospital.
According to the Syrian Network for Human Rights, more than 136,614 people, including 3,698 children and 8,504 women, were detained in Syrian prisons during the Syrian civil war between March 2011 and December 2024.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights estimated in January 2021 that 30,000 detainees were brutally killed by the Assad regime in Sednaya from torture, ill-treatment, and mass executions since the outbreak of the Syrian civil war.
Notorious Syrian prison deeply traumatizes Kurdish man
[Rudaw] A Kurdish man was finally found in the infamous Sednaya prison near Damascus after disappearing from the border town of Suruc (Pirsus) in Turkey’s Sanliurfa province over five years ago.
Aydin Dagac disappeared in Suruc five years and six months ago. Until now, there had been no information about him, but he was found and freed by rebels led by Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) when they broke into prisons after ousting Bashar al-Assad.
The experience has left him severely traumatized. His mother, Nayide Dagac, describes him as someone with a mental illness. His time there left him suffering from PTSD and his mental illness has worsened.
At his family home, Dagac wanders as if he is still in prison, moving from one corner to another and unable to accept reality - that he is free.
Syria’s civil war dramatically reignited late last month when a coalition of rebels led by the jihadist Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) launched a blistering offensive against the Syrian army, seizing the northern cities of Aleppo, Hama, Homs, and culminating their victory by capturing the capital Damascus as Assad fled the country, ending over five decades of Baathist rule.
Celebrations across Syria, sparked by the fall of the regime, were abruptly halted as chilling stories about the inmates of the Sednaya prison in the Damascus suburbs began to emerge. These stories provide a disturbing look into how the Assad family brutally treated prisoners during their decades-long rule.
Sednaya has become a symbol of the regime's brutal repression, notorious for torture, sexual assault, and mass executions.
People from across Syria have traveled to Sednaya, hoping to find traces of loved ones arrested during anti-government protests throughout the 14-year Syrian civil war.
Timmerman told CBS News senior foreign correspondent Elizabeth Palmer that he had been trying to make his own way out of the country after walking out of the prison where he'd been held for more than half of a year. He said he was detained upon entering Syria without permission seven months ago after spending a month in neighboring Lebanon.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken, speaking to reporters in Aqaba, Jordan, briefly addressed the discovery of Timmerman.
"In terms of an American citizen who was found just today, I can't give you any details on exactly what's going to happen except to say that we're working to bring them home, to bring them out of Syria and to bring them home," Blinken said. "But for privacy reasons, I can't share any more detail than that at this point."
A U.S. official previously told CBS News the government was aware of the reports that an American had been found outside Damascus and that it was seeking to provide support, but the official declined to provide any further detail out of respect for his privacy.
Timmerman said two men armed with AK-47s broke his prison door down Monday with a hammer.
"My door was busted down, it woke me up," Timmerman said. "I thought the guards were still there, so I thought the warfare could have been more active than it ended up being… Once we got out, there was no resistance, there was no real fighting."
Timmerman said he had gone to Syria for Christian "spiritual purposes" and that his experience in prison "wasn't too bad."
"I was never beaten. The only really bad part was that I couldn't go to the bathroom when I wanted to. I was only let out three times a day to go to the bathroom," he said.
Timmerman said he left the prison with a large group and started walking away. He said he had been trying to head toward Jordan.
He said he "had a few moments of fear," when he left the prison, and hadn't really processed that he was free.
"I still haven't really thought about that. I've been more worried about finding a place to sleep each night since then," he told CBS News. "So I've been working, really."
Timmerman said he hadn't been afraid to approach people to ask for help or a place to sleep at night on his journey.
"They were coming to me, mostly," Timmerman said, adding that he'd spoken with his family three weeks ago, through a phone that he had while in prison. He said he had been allowed to use it.
"I'm feeling well. I've been fed and I've been watered, so I'm feeling well," Timmerman said.
Timmerman was named as "Travis Pete Timmerman" on a missing person's bulletin published by Hungarian police in August, which said he had been last seen at a church in the country.
A missing person's bulletin published by the Missouri State Highway Patrol said that Timmerman, whose first name was listed as Pete, had been last seen in Budapest. The bulletin said the date of his last contact had been June 2, 2024, and that he was 29 years old when he went missing.
Posted by: trailing wife ||
12/13/2024 00:00 ||
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[11131 views]
Top|| File under: Govt of Syria
#1
.@CNN Syrian prisoner rescue is totally, definitely, absolutely, irrefutably, emphatically, infallibly and categorically not fake not even a tiny little bit.
And if you're speculating otherwise, you're a bigot fake news Nazi who belongs in a gulag.
[Rudaw] Around 800 Yazidi women and dozens of Peshmerga fighters, who once were Islamic State ...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that they were al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're really very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allah around with every other sentence, but to hear western pols talk they're not really Moslems.... [ISIS] captives, are believed to be held in a prison under the control of Syrian rebel forces, according to a rights activist.
Araz Jalal, a representative from the Egypt-based International Organization for Development and Human Rights, told Rudaw’s Nasir Ali this week that al-Nusra ...formally Jabhat an-Nusrah li-Ahli al-Sham (Support Front for the People of the Levant), also known as al-Qaeda in the Levant. They aim to establish a pan-Arab caliphate. Not the same one as the Islamic State, though .. ... Front (Jabhat al-Nusra), which has been rebranded as the Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham, formerly al-Nusra, before that it was called something else ...al-Qaeda's Syrian affiliate, from which sprang the Islamic State... (HTS), is still "holding 800 Yazidi women and girls who had been held hostage by the Islamic State (ISIS)" when the group attacked their hometown of Shingal in 2014.
Syria’s civil war dramatically reignited late last month when a coalition of rebels led by the jihadist HTS launched a blistering offensive against the Syrian army, seizing the northern cities of Aleppo, Hama, Homs, and ultimately capturing the capital Damascus as Assad fled the country, ending over five decades of Baathist rule.
Celebrations across Syria, sparked by the fall of the regime, were abruptly halted as stories about the inmates of the Sednaya prison in the Damascus suburbs began to emerge.
Hundreds of prisoners who were freed from the notorious prison, following the fall of the regime, have been admitted to hospitals across Syria to receive treatment following years of abuse. Families have flooded the hospitals looking for their long-lost loved ones.
Rudaw’s cameras inside the prison on Wednesday captured workers digging through walls and the ground, following social media rumors suggesting that more inmates might be in hidden sections of the prison.
Jalal also said that after the fall of ISIS in Iraq, nearly 60 Peshmerga fighters were held hostage by the holy warriors who were taken to Syria but have not been found yet. He believes that they were kept alive because they needed them for hostage exchange deals.
He added that after ISIS lost most of its territory in Syria, the Peshmerga hostages must have been transferred to the HTS or Syrian regime prisons.
"According to our information, about 60,000 prisoners have been released from Syrian prisons, but hundreds more have not yet been released," Jalal said.
[PUBLISH.TWITTER] It’ll be interesting to see what, if anything of all this frantic effort, will be confirmed by President Trump after he is formally sworn into office — and everyone knows it.
USCENTCOM Commander Visits Lebanon
Today, Dec. 11, Gen. Michael Kurilla traveled to Beirut, Lebanon and met with Gen. Joseph Aoun, Commander of the Lebanon Armed Forces and Maj. Gen. Jasper Jeffers, the Co-chair of the implementation and monitoring mechanism for the cessation… pic.twitter.com/cO8GhZWSVP
… for the cessation of hostilities between Israel and Lebanon. The leaders discussed ongoing efforts to advance a lasting cessation of hostilities between Israel and Lebanon via the mechanism, which is chaired by the U.S. and assisted by France, the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL), and the Israel Defense Forces.
Gen. Kurilla was present at the implementation and monitoring headquarters today during the ongoing first Israeli Defense Forces withdrawal and Lebanese Armed Forces replacement in Al Khiam, Lebanon as part of the agreement. “This is an important first step in the implementation of a lasting cessation of hostilities and lays the foundationfor continued progress,” said Gen. Kurilla.
Gen. Kurilla and Gen. Aoun also discussed the ongoing, evolving security situation in Syria, the impact it has on stability in the region, and ways to increase the military to military partnership between the LAF and CENTCOM.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
...Hizzonner da Mare of Chicago. He was elected in April 2023 to replace the disastrous Lori Lightfoot and immediately set about out-Richtering her. A member of the Democratic Party (naturally), Johnson previously worked as a social studies teacher in the city's stellar public schools system. He helped organize the 2012 teachers strike. Prior to becoming Da Mare, he served on the Cook County Board of 
..a contraction of the Arabic words for "frothing at the mouth",...
...al-Qaeda's Syrian affiliate, from which sprang the Islamic State...
