In the name of God who makes kings look over their shoulder, who makes kings to anxious to sleep, who makes kings watch his ass

Dear Syria

Assad is a butcher whose family made trillions in money off of this country since 1970.  In 1970 Israel was in a six year war with Egypt.  The leaders of israel have told us about a six day war but it was not six days. It was six years that they were embattled with the Arab kings of the middle east.  Most notably, Egypt set mines through the suez canal and blockaded oil tankers from getting to israel from the port of eilat.  This is the time that the father butcher came to Damascus. 

In 1970 the biggest project in Syria was to get steel for the electricity grid.  This money came from the gas and phosphate revenues.    Turkiye is a rival to Syria.  Any country of the east who wants to trade with the west must come through the lands of Turkiye and Syria or find another route.  Economically these countries can compliment each other or compete with each other.  The common industrial link for Turkiye and Syria is via the very massive trade of gas via the pipelines.  The pipelines are a permanent economic feature of Turkiye and Syria’s landscape.  I described in my video of the economic history of Syria how Syria has risen economically here at the turn of the century.  Syria’s economic rise is connected with phosphate and gas and the last pillar for the economy of Syria is the electrical grid. 

One month before the start of the war in Israel and Gaza there was a series of airstrikes in Syria which disabled the gas fields around Hasakah.  This was a Turkish military operation against the Syrian Kurdish authorities.  The Turkish airstrikes disabled the gas pumps the refineries and broke machinery that must be specially moulded and imported.  This Kurdish did not have the ability to repair and replace the machinery domestically and it will take more than a year to make the gas drilling operations fully operational again.  What we witnessed this summer during the bombings of the Kurdish gas fields was the capitulation of the Kurdish to the Turkish.  The Turkish should never have been allowed into the airspace of the Kurdish gas fields if they expected to preserve the capacity to pump gas.  As a consequence for the Kurdish alienation of the people of Syria who are not from a Kurdish family the Kurdish have given a motive for the discontinuation of their power in the eyes of the people of Syria.  The truth is, Syrian people are not free and safe to walk on Kurdish lands of Syria.  We wish for all of the north to be Free Syria. 

Allahu akbar

Written by Catherine Alwan, December 10, 2023 for Syria Online, International Network for Syria Communications