While the hugely divisive civil war has displaced many millions of people across Syria, there is some reason to be hopeful, at least for some, as the UN Refugee Agency today confirmed that almost half a million Syrians have been able to return to their homes.
The returnees are mostly in government-held areas like Aleppo, Hama, Homs, and Damascus, and are reflective both of an improvement in security in those areas, and the displacement of rebel factions to other parts of the country, though that ironically included rebels’ families, adding them to the still-displaced list.
What they were returning home to is another matter, particularly in long-contested cities like Aleppo, where many likely found their homes looted, shelled, looted some more, and are lucky if they weren’t leveled outright in fighting or in rival factions walling themselves off from one another.
The figure was also overwhelmingly internally displaced persons, 440,000 compared to just 31,000 returning from abroad, which may be reflective of the reality that no place in Syria is really a stable place to remain a displaced person, and many may simply be deciding that trying to return home is a risk worth taking.
Hey ….. WELL DONE SYRIA!
Keep up the good work – and get rid of the rest of those unwanted foreign insurgents.
Its a damned good sign that Syrians want to return to their country and help to rebuild it. It also goes to show that Assad is popular with Syrians and not as western media portray him. It may be good if citizens were provided weapons to defend themselves against terrorists trying to infiltrate the country. A peoples army so to speak.
In fact it has been happening for a while. Citizen group started out as sel-defence militias, as Government forces were initially overwhelmed by the geographically dispersed terrorist groups, and were in danger of not being able to protect key infrastructure — utilities, rosds, ports and energy. As a result, terrorists were able to infiltrate large urban areas and conduct large scale bombings of gas stations, bus stops, markets, etc. But once Army focused on defending key assets, many townships and villages were left undefended. Since that time, militias in vulnerable areas were formed, and armed by the Army. The strongest are Alawi militias, helped by Lebanese and Iraqi militias. Our media snd politicians see Iran everyehere, but these self-help militias were born out of the need for self preservation. Other large militia groups are Christians, various nationalities, but majority Syrians. And Palestinians are large groups. Many other Sunni locals joined them. Majority of Syrian Army are in fact Sunni.
It is also deceptive to count relicated groups and their families as “displaced”. Any time a relocation deal is reached — it has always resulted in split between locals and foreigners. When locals decide to turn in their weapons and refuse to be managed by infiltrated Al-Qaeda under whatever name — the foreigners must go. They have no roots. The real question is — who will tske them eventually. The religious indoctrination is so extreme, that these groups and their families are living in a cult like environment. During the holliest of Mislem holidays, they conducted the most gruesome and vicious campaigns of mass muder, indiscriminately, treting all those victims as “non-Moslems” and assuming the rightto call others appoststes to justify murders. Those consumed by the cult, are blisfully unaware of their exploitation for geopolitical aims. Assad is without doubt popular.
I do NOT believe that the srtrife in Syria is a civil war. I believe it is a colonial putsch attempt using mercenary forces gone wrong and thrawted by an ally.
Agreed, for the class rebellion in Syria is no different then that in every democracy, namely the 51% most wealthy hoarding all the land, wealth and power.
The solution to refugees is for them to be able to go home. It is important that they were driven out by the Western-backed rebels, and able to go home when the government backed by Russia and Iran defeats those Western-backed rebels. Europe is suffering from the actions of the US and its Gulf allies.
All that misery heaped upon the harmless, all because
the Western powers so love to have Israel maximize
the profit in trading war materials for Middle-East oil.
HEALTHCARE
When 60% of Americans earn $7.75 an hour, less the $16k a year, what little health insurance they do receive is near worthless, as the deductibles they could never afford. So, 60% of Americans without health insurance means that, 198 million Americans have no healthcare.
So, our government, the medical industry and insurance industry telling us that only 44 million Americans are without healthcare, with such fake news, is it any wonder that we never organize in self-defense.
The top forth of society, the ruling-class, to a man they all tell us that no one will die because TrumpCare will cause 22 million more people to go without healthcare. But, if having healthcare does not increase longevity, then worthless is healthcare and we should stop paying the medical industry over $3.5 trillion a year to keep us healthy.
Also we are told that it harms the moral fabric of society to force the ruling-class to give healthcare to the poor. Problem is, only the top 40% of society own wealth as it is the property we own above what is needed to have a comfortable life. Fact is, all wealth is property belonging to the 1 billion suffering hunger. Truth is, life is a free gift that we do not deserve, which means that we own nothing, that everything we have belongs to those who have less and most guilty must we feel if ever we fail to give all we can give.
ONLY SOLUTION
So, giving tax payer funded healthcare to the bottom 60% of society, 198 million Americans, this would increase taxes to the top 40% by an additional $5 trillion, over and above the current $3.5 trillion. A total of $8.5 trillion, an amount that is 11 times more then we spend on the military.
Now the good news is, if everyone made a reasonable effort to eat a healthy 10% fat diet and gave up their addictions, as bad health is 95% self inflicted, for a fact the medical industry would go bankrupt. For a reality, everyone working in medicine could be put to work rebuilding infrastructure and the $3.5 trillion could be dedicated to mass transit.
So much for the meme that ‘Putin’s campaign in Syria is to flood the EU with refugees in order to destabilize it’. The Neocons are shameless.