Jura The idiot
General
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source:Hassan is among the Assad regime figures that foreign-based Syrian lawyers and activists and their Western colleagues would seek to prosecute in a hypothetical war-crimes tribunal. “Suheil al-Hassan is a barbaric figure. He is associated with countless massacres [from] when Bashar feared his regime was going to collapse in 2012 and was thinking of establishing a fallback Alawite rump state,” Anwar al-Bounni, a human rights lawyer victims of Syrian-regime torture, told me.
The Russian military and state media, meanwhile, seem to have an unlimited appetite for the Tiger’s exploits. Press releases and have described him as “one of Syria’s most renowned military commanders,” and have depicted his Tiger Forces as invincible. In the summer of 2017, for instance, Russian Ka-52 helicopters conducted a night-time air raid on an ISIS target in the province of Deir Ezzour, clearing the way for Hassan’s Tiger Force to with a ground assault. Russia’s defense ministry called this “a virtuosic tactical landing operation behind militants’ lines,” while also noting that Russian military advisers controlled the operation.
Moscow has openly embraced Hassan. Gerasimov awarded him with a sword during a ceremony at Hmeimim for his apparent “valor” in the operation. (A year earlier, he had been given one of the Russian army’s highest .) Aside from Assad, who holds the military rank of field marshal and is Syria’s commander-in-chief, Hassan was the only Syrian military commander to attend a meeting with Putin at Hmeimim base last December to mark the defeat of ISIS. “Your Russian colleagues told me that you and your men fight incisively, courageously and in a results-oriented way,” Putin told Hassan in Russian, according to footage broadcast by RT. “I hope this cooperation will allow us to achieve more success going forward.” Hassan, seated across from Putin, put his hand on his heart and nodded with gratitude.
How long will Russia continue its assault on eastern Ghouta? The deaths of some two-dozen people in Damascus since February 18 from rebel mortar shells, some of which reportedly landed close to the Russian embassy, appear to be a good enough reason to continue the barrage. Meanwhile, the area’s two largest rebel factions, the Turkey-backed Failaq al-Rahman and Saudi Arabia-supported Jaish al-Islam have insisted the ceasefire must allow for humanitarian and medical aid deliveries to the beleaguered zone, in accord with the UN resolution. Both pledged this week to help remove the most extreme insurgents from eastern Ghouta. But Russia and the Assad regime have repeatedly accused them of taking civilians hostage and preventing them from evacuating through designated humanitarian corridors. Sporadic fighting and bombing has continued.
With the battle in eastern Ghouta not yet over, some supporters of Assad, which means lion in Arabic, are already of the Tiger’s certain victory at the “gates of the lion’s den” in Damascus. The Tiger himself to a bride waiting for him and his men to “dress her in the robe of victory.”
How will this end for Hassan? While Moscow may love him, opponents of the Assad regime that I spoke to have speculated that the Tiger, a powerful, popular partner for the Russians within a regime configured to worship one paramount leader, may have become too successful for his own good. The Assad regime, they said, will likely seek to eliminate him and blame it on the “terrorists”—the fate of many inside the regime who have tried to steal the lion’s thunder.
