One month ago, during a meeting in Beirut, a senior western diplomat was venting his frustration: when would international sanctions be lifted from the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad? Though the dictator had few friends, it seemed that the brutal killing and torture of hundreds of thousands of protesters had succeeded in finally crushing Syria’s 13-year revolution.
It was time to face facts, the diplomat said. Assad had won the war, and the world needed to move on.
As diplomats in Beirut talked, rebels in Syria were planning. A year earlier, figures in the Islamist opposition group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) in north-west Syria had sent a message to rebels in the south: get ready.
Maybe.
I don’t think he can afford to though, it’s not about Assad personally, but his offers of comfortable Asylum for dictators are only good as long as he honors them.
Those offers are there to keep dictatorial Russian client states in line.
True. I since found out Assad will be in the same region as some 4 or 5 other failed Russian stooges (Georgia, Ukraine etc). I guess Putin does need to keep that appearance up. Until he runs out of stooge states hes trying to deal with that is… can’t be many left. Belarus?