Well, now that is quite something.

It was a painful 13 years, just watching the pain Syrians were goping through. and that would not even register on the scale of what the Syrians felt.

But they did it. Its time for them to breathe, to celebrate.

The stories and videos coming out of places like Seydnaya are horrific and I hope those freed are able to get good physical and mental health care - they will need it.

Since I have been following this conflict from the start and I used to post about it on this website, I thought I might aswell post about something good that has happened.

Potential spoilers

A lot could still go wrong and a lot of parties will want to make sure that even in its current state the revolution fails. Saudi Arabia and UAE especially have a self-interest agenda where they want to show that overthrow of dictatorships will always lead to disaster.

This has made them invest in destruction from Tunisia to Algeria to Libya, Egypt and the UAW has even ventured into destabilising countries that were not part of the arab spring, such as Sudan and Somalia.

The US will also be looking for its piece of the pie - the National Security Council coordinator Brett McGurk has spent the majority of the last decade trying to reshape the middle east and trying to create a hostile Kurdish enclave that will need foreign assistance to survive.

Its the same tactics as used by Britain and Fraance when dividing the middle east. Their main aim was that it could never rise again. To do this they created minority administrations that would always need foreign assistance to surive (and would have to subdue the local civilian populations).

What about the self-titled "Axis of Resistance"?

Support for actions should never be given based on identity - who the actors are - but on what they do. If someone does good, it should be supported. If someone does bad, they should be opposed. If someone is oppressed, their oppression should come to an end.

What Iran (and Hezbollah) did in Syria was wrong and the utmost of evil. It cannot and should not be ignored. Their crimes were hienous and costs hundreds of thousands of Syrian lives, injured many more on top.

The majority of the Syrian population was displaced and scattered, whether internally or to exile.

Return of refugees

Given that many Syrian refugees would be wanting to return home, you would think the far right european parties that have been pushing xenophobia will be happy. However, atleast Paul Goulding of Britain First is not happy at all. its almost as if they needed excuses to keep pushing xenophobia.

There will be many refugees returning to Syria and they will need help. However they should probably take their time to ensure that there is a peaceful environment to return to, because if there is civil strife, escaping again may be impossible.

Gaza

The Syrian people (like most people around the world, especially in Muslim majority countries have always stood with the Palesinians. Unfortunately, they have not been in a position to help, as they had Assad's regime buffering the areas closest to israel.

Now that that is over, it does not mean the Syrian people will "storm Jerusalem". They first need to fix their own country, however that will unfortunately mean they cannot help  Gaza for the forseeable future.

However Israel has already made it clear it sees the will of the Syrian people as its enemy and has already broken armistice agreements with Syria and extended its occupation and also attached military sites to stop the new controllers of Syria from obtaining serious weaponry.

The hostility is there, and it will lead to an eventual confrontation. This time the Syrian people will be behind their armed forces and results can be different.

However anyone suggesting that freedom for Syrians is bad because "what about Gaza?" have got their blinkers on. They are callous to muslim lives or stupid - none of us are free until all of us are free.

Even many of us in the west with no lineage leading back to Syria have had dificulty dealing with the brutality that took place in Syria.

Outside the external spoilers, it is still possible that intra-syrian still ocurrs. Inshallah they are able to avoid it but there will be many instigators and many outside elements just waiting for a spark they can latch on to and abuse to sow chaos.

Hama

As an aside, there was a prisoner released from Sedanya prison who had been in prison since the time of the Hama uprising and Massacre in around 1982. His crime? refusing to bomb his own people. I cannot even imagine someone having been prison longer than I have been alive. I hope he has good remainder days and I pray that he and others are rewarded in paradise for the sacrifices.

It may have taken 42 years but Hama is free again, along with the rest of Syria.

Turkey

Turkey is both a winner and a loser in Syria. They stuck with the people despuite the heavy price. The government supported Syrian groups until the end.

However, despite some people trying to suggest the opposite, the last two weeks were not orchestrated by Turkey and Turkey has spent the last 3 years trying to weaken the main group that carried it out - the HTS. It tried so hard to lure people away from the group, that it allowed criminal and thuggish elements to remain or join its preferred groupings and some of these have since shown themselves to attempt looting and other crimes. They seem less disciplined that the HTS who seem to have both moderated by dropping their extremist elements and also professionalised.

A second victory and loss for Turkey has been the long term support for syrian refugees. They have hosted between 3 and 4 million syrians in Turkey for over a decade now, and also gave security/military support to Syrians that were sheltering near their border.

However while the government, lead by President Erdogan and its followers have generally been generous to refugees, a lot of divisions have been exposed in Turkey aswell.

The opposition was not only exrtremely xenophobic to the extent it did not care if Syrians lived or died, they preferred a solution involving Assad. Indeed even 24 hours before Assad's overthrow, the Turkish oppoisition sought a deal with Assad and wanted to throw the refugees into his pits of hell.

Now that Assad has been overthrown, the Turkish are marketing their xenophobia in the most callous ways, advertising free bus tickets to deport the Syrians in their areas. They know that most Syrians will leave - the queues at the Turkish border have been huge -  but the opposition are not willing to even afford them the dignity and security to do it in a controlled manner.

So Turkey has won by supporting the oppressed Syrian populations, but also lost by exposing its divisions, which have over the past few years extended to make just under 50% of the population support xenophobia.

While most syrians will have a warm place in their hearts for Turkish hospitality they received, such xenophobia has a good chance of poisoning the relations going forward. That will not just be a loss for Turkey, it is something people wanting to spoil the revolution will try to exploit and it willl hurt the whole ummah.

Curating news sources

Many media outlets have been exposed both by their reporting on Syria and on Palestine. It seems that in the western world there are very few actual journalists - most are just peddlers of press releases and will repeat that they are told to say.

A good idea to get accurate news is to get sources from many sides and preferrably on the ground where the news is about to get a good sense. However this is not always possible and sometimes major events allow us to expose supposedly trusted media outlets and "journalists".

Two such events in recent times are the Gaza genocide and the Syrian revolution. if someone is posting against either, you can consider their output compromised and potentially polemic as they will be posting in favour with a side they identify with instead of posting accurate news or analysis.

I feel like naming names of people who support the syrian revolution but also support Israeli genocide, or are against israeli genocide, but support Syrian genocide by Assad and his supporters, but I will not be able to cover accurately enough to make it useful, so i will just point out that this is a good way to see how much weight you can put on a news source - do not support anyone who is against freedom of Syrians or freedom of Palestinians.

Eyes on Gaza

The Syrians should be celebrating. We should also join them in their celebrations. However we should also keep our eyes on Gaza, we may not be able to do many acts to help, but prayer is the weapon of the believer.

We need to be witnesses to what is happening, help where we can, do dua where we can't and like in Syria, justice will prevail. It may take time, it may be painful process, but the Israel regime will fail. Maybe not today, but it has sowed the seeds for its own demise.