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Syrian Refugees are Going Home, the West is Ready to Attack

Text and Photos by Andre Vltchek. Originally published by New Eastern Outlook.


“How many years have you been living in Beirut?” I asked my barber, Eyad, after he told me, beaming, that in three months from now, he will be returning home, to Damascus.
Even one year ago, such conversations would not be easy to commence. But now, everything has been changing, rapidly and, one wants to believe, irreversibly.
Although nothing is truly irreversible, the better things are on the ground in Syria, the more threatening the West is becoming, particularly the United States. Now it is, once again, intimidating Damascus, ready to attack the Syrian army, something that could easily drag Russia and others into a lethal confrontation. The war! The West is clearly obsessed with perpetual war in Syria, while most of the Syrian people are passionate about bringing back an everlasting peace.
“6 years,” replied my barber, preparing his razor. I detected sadness and indignation in his voice, “6 years too many!”
“After you go back, then what? Are you going to open your own salon in Damascus?” I was curious. He is the best barber I have ever had, a real master of his trade, quick and confident, precise.
“No,” he smiled. “I never told you, but I’m a mechanical engineer… About being a barber; I learned the trade from my grandfather. In the Arab world now, millions are doing something that is not their main profession… But I want to return home and help to rebuild my country.”
I knew nothing about Eyad’s political affiliations. I used to consider it impolite to ask. Now I sensed that I could, but I didn’t. He was going back, returning home, eager to help his country, and that was all that mattered.
“Come visit me in Damascus,” he smiled, as we were parting. “Syria is a small country, but it is enormous!”

*

On February 24 2017, The New York Times, unleashed its usual vitriolic sarcasm towards the country which hosts enormous number of Syrian refugees – Lebanon:
“About 1.5 million Syrians have sought refuge in Lebanon, making up about a quarter of the population, according to officials and relief groups, and there is a widely held belief in Lebanon that refugees are a burden on the country’s economy and social structure.
Mr. Tahan, a gregarious man who sought to portray himself as the refugees’ benefactor, dismissed the idea that they are harming the country’s economy and straining social services. He said the government pushed that view to get more money from the United Nations.
Refugees, he said, benefit the Lebanese, from the generator operators providing them with electricity, to the owners of shops where they spend their United Nations food vouchers, to landowners who benefit from their cheap labor. It is an argument often heard from international organizations, which say the burden of hosting the refugees is largely offset by the economic stimulus they provide, not to mention $1.9 billion in international aid in 2016 alone, the United Nations says.
Mr. Tahan said he expected the Syrians to stay for years, based on his experience in Lebanon’s civil war.”
One would hardly encounter such a tone when the New York Times is describing the ‘refugee crises’ in the European Union. There, several super-rich and much more populous countries than Lebanon keep pretending that they simply cannot absorb approximately the same amount of people as has been sheltered by the tiny Middle Eastern nation.
In 2015, which is considered the ‘height of the refugee crises’, much less than 1.5 million people entered the European Union, seeking asylum there. Some of those 1.5 million were actually ‘refugees’ from Ukraine, Kosovo and Albania.
I covered the refugee crises from Lebanon, Jordan, Turkey, but also the so-called ‘crises’ in Greece (Kos) and France (Calais). The West, which by then had already destabilized half of the world and almost the entire Middle East, was demonstrating extreme selfishness, brutal indifference, racism and a stubborn refusal to repent and to comprehend.
Whoever Mr. Tahan of the New York Times is, and whatever his agenda, he was wrong. As this report goes to print, the number of Syrian refugees living in Lebanon is dropping continually, as the Government in Damascus, supported by Russia, Iran, China, Cuba and Hezbollah has been winning the war against the terrorist groups, armed and supported by the West and its allies.
It is actually the West – its NGO’s and even their government agencies – that are “warning” the Syrians not to return home, claiming that “the situation in their country is still extremely dangerous.”
But such warnings can hardly deter the flow of refugees, back to Syria. As CBS News reported on February 2, 2018:

… The 36-year-old is back home in Aleppo. He returned last summer – depressed, homesick and dreading another winter, he couldn’t bear life in the German city of Suhl.
Germany, he said, “was boring, boring, boring.”

The number of Syrian immigrants on the Lebanese territory has already dropped below 1 million, the first time since 2014, according to UNHCR.
People are returning home. They are going home by the thousands, every week.
They are moving back from Lebanon, Jordan, Turkey, and even from that once imaginary paradise – the European countries such as Germany – which somehow failed to materialize, and even to impress many people from a country with one of the oldest and greatest histories and culture on Earth.

*

Mohammad Kanaan, an industrial maintenance student at ULF in Lebanon, explains:

When I was in Syria, I had been studying mechanical design and development for three years… Due to the crises and war I was forced to leave. Afterwards I was forced to stop my education for three more years. Then, thanks to UNESCO initiative, I was accepted to study here in Lebanon… Following the war on Syria, I became more motivated to continue in my field of study. Specifically, since the infrastructure needs restoration and factories will soon be operational. The country needs many people armed with knowledge…”

The West did not expect such determination from the Syrian refugees. It was used to those migrants who have been coming from countless ruined and destabilized countries; people who were able to do just about anything and to say anything, as long as they were allowed to stay in the West.
The West tried to turn Syrians into precisely these kinds of immigrants, but it failed. In December 2014, I reported from Iraq’s autonomous Kurdish region:

“Not far from the oilfields, there is a massive refugee camp; this one is for the Syrian exiles.
After negotiating entry, I manage to ask the director of the camp – Mr. Khawur Aref – how many refugees are sheltered here? “14,000,” he replies. “And after it reaches 15,000, this place will become unmanageable.”
I am discouraged from interviewing people, but I manage to speak to several refugees anyway, including Mr. Ali and his family, who came from the Syrian city of Sham.
I want to know whether all new arrivals get interrogated? The answer is – “Yes”. Are they asked questions, about whether they are for or against the President Bashar al-Assad? “Yes, they are: everybody is asked these questions and more…” And if a person – a truly desperate, needy and hungry person – answers that he supports the government of Bashar al-Assad, and came here because his country was being destroyed by the West, then what would happen?” I am told: “He and his family would never be allowed to stay in the Iraqi Kurdistan.”

*

I met Syrian refugees all over the Middle East, as well as in various European countries. Almost all of them felt nostalgic, even desperate, about being away from their beloved land. Most of them wanted to return. Some of them couldn’t wait for the first opportunity.
I knew Syrians who had visas in their pockets, even to such places like Canada, and they decided, at the last moment, not to leave their Motherland.
Syria is truly a unique country.
The West did not expect; it was not used to such determination from the people whose lives it destroyed.
“We are now going West, we have to go,” I was told by a Syrian lady with two children clinging to her, who was waiting in front of the Municipal Building on the Greek island of Kos. “We do it for our children. But mark my words; most of us will soon be going back.”
They are going back now. And the West does not like it; it hates it.
It likes to whine about how it is being used by ‘those impoverished hordes’, but it cannot really live without the immigrants, particularly from such educated countries like Syria.

*

Not only did the Syrian people fight bravely, defeating the brutal invasion of the Western-manufactured, trained, and financed, backed terrorists. But now the refugees are turning back on false and often humiliating comfort of the exile in Europe, Canada and elsewhere.
Such attitude ‘has to be punished’. For such courage, the Syrian cities and victorious Syrian army may be soon bombed and attacked, directly by the US and possibly also by the European forces.
In Beirut, as I was finishing this essay, I was visited, briefly, by two of my friends, Syrian educators, one from Aleppo, and the other, from Damascus.
“It is getting tough again,” I said.
“Yes,” they agreed. “In my neighborhood, in Damascus, two children were killed by the bullets fired by the terrorists, just before I left for this trip.”
“The US is saying it may attack the country, directly”, I uttered.
“They are always threatening,” I am told. “We are not afraid. Our people are determined, ready to defend our nation.”
Despite the new dangers, emboldened, the Syrian people are flowing back to their country. The Empire may try to punish them for their courage, patriotism and determination. But they are not scared and they are not alone. The Russians and other allies are ‘on the ground’ and ready to help defending Syria. The entire Middle East is watching.

*


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Seamus Padraig
Seamus Padraig
Mar 24, 2018 10:18 PM

One would hardly encounter such a tone when the New York Times is describing the ‘refugee crises’ in the European Union. There, several super-rich and much more populous countries than Lebanon keep pretending that they simply cannot absorb approximately the same amount of people as has been sheltered by the tiny Middle Eastern nation … [The West] likes to whine about how it is being used by ‘those impoverished hordes’, but it cannot really live without the immigrants, particularly from such educated countries like Syria.

This is something I really dislike about André Vltchek: he likes to conflate Western governments with their people. Well listen up, Vltchek:
It is not the Western people who wanted or caused this damned war. When the British and American government put a Syrian intervention (invasion, really) up for a vote back in 2013, the result came back 90% no!
It is not the Western people who wanted or who benefit from the refugee situation. For years, people is these supposedly ‘rich’ countries have seen their retirement benefits cut and their social spending slashed (Hartz IV, etc.) because, they are told by their governments, ‘there is not enough money’. But then they see that these same governments have nearly unlimited funds for refugees. (The money has to come from these governments, because none of it is coming from the UN in this case.) Those governments assure their citizens that, after a year or two of government sponsored job training and language learning, the refugees will be qualified to work. But then the citizens realize that they’re being asked to make fiscal sacrifices … so that they can pay to train their own future competition! Naturally they’re pissed!
To vote against any of this, the bought-and-paid-for Western press insists, is Fascism! Extremism! … and, of course, the dread Populism!

Mikalina
Mikalina
Mar 24, 2018 11:35 PM
Reply to  Seamus Padraig

My salary as a Public worker is paid for from the proceeds of selling arms to Saudi Arabia which are killing Yemeni children. Yes, I’m a bit miffed at having to work 6 years longer before I can get my pension, but at least my grand daughter isn’t dying of cholera.
Get some perspective.

Seamus Padraig
Seamus Padraig
Mar 25, 2018 9:23 AM
Reply to  Mikalina

If I’m against the war on Syria, why would you assume that I’m in favor of the war on Yemen? My problem with Vltchek is that he always wants to represent these cases as ‘us’ versus the third world, as though ‘we’ actually wanted these damn wars or stood to gain anything from immiserating the rest of the human race. The people of the West, however, are also victims of corrupt the élite that rules them and are increasingly aware of this. Getting rid of that élite, however, is going to be a labor of Hercules. Baring an act of God, it certainly isn’t going to happen in short order. With Trump and Brexit, we have already seen that they have the power to easily de-fang any vote against them. (Trump slowed them down for about a year or so, but with the appointment of Bolton, it’s obvious that his campaign agenda is as dead as a door nail. And I don’t think I have to tell you about what’s happened to Brexit at the hands of the supposedly ‘Euroskeptic’ Tories.)

antirepublocrat
antirepublocrat
Mar 25, 2018 9:42 PM
Reply to  Seamus Padraig

Ninety-five percent of Americans who voted, voted for one of two warmongers on the ballot. Trump wasn’t quite as obvious, but he did say war is OK if you take their oil. Less than 5% voted Green or Libertarian. Unless you’re part of that 5%, Vltchek is right about you.

Seamus Padraig
Seamus Padraig
Mar 25, 2018 11:15 PM

FWIW, I actually vote Green. But you need to understand that, owing to the nature of the Electoral College, etc., it doesn’t matter much anyway. If you vote from a ‘safe’ state like mine, then the usual party–either D or R, depending on the state–is going to cart off with all your state’s electoral votes as usual. And if you live in a ‘swing’ state, then voting for a third party is just going to swing the electoral college votes from your state in favor of one of the two major party candidates (the so-called ‘spoiler’ effect).
As far as Trump was concerned, he actually was slightly better than Hillary on at least two foreign policy questions: Russia and Syria. Both of them, though, were pretty bad on the subject of Iran. So it has been instructive for me that the Russia-issue is precisely where the system chose to attack Trump after he unexpectedly won the election. That strongly suggests that they believed he was being serious on that issue. That being said, the jury’s still out on him.

padre
padre
Mar 23, 2018 5:45 PM

I don’t think, the Russians will “go away”, they are painfully aware, that they are next on the list,right after Iran!

milosevic
milosevic
Mar 24, 2018 4:00 AM
Reply to  padre

I keep watching this video, over and over again. It makes me feel happy. I wish I was a Russian citizen, so I could vote for Vladimir Putin.
Death to the Anglo-Zionist Empire.

Mr.Tea
Mr.Tea
Mar 23, 2018 1:56 PM

The Royal Navy had lage scale WMD decontamination drills scheduled for Salsbury on the 6th March.
I imagine all the chaps and kit were in place on the 5th at the latest which would be perfect for putting on a show when the false flag/hoax took place on the 4th.
https://www.royalnavy.mod.uk/news-and-latest-activity/news/2018/march/06/180306-toxic-storm-for-royal-marines-in-major-chemical-exercise

bevin
bevin
Mar 23, 2018 1:30 PM

I’m not sure that I agree, Harry. I think that Iran becomes much less relevant if Syria is conquered.
The objective is, after all, to reduce all of Syria’s neighbours to pulverised, balkanised shards of Bantustans. Lebanon, without Hezbollah reverts to ‘Christian’-fascist management and Jordan is totally under the control of the Apartheid state.
If Syria is crushed and Hezbollah wiped out then I am sure that Iran, under the guidance of someone like Rouhani, can be accommodated.
Indeed it will have to be because if it continues to integrate itself into the Russian-Chinese axis it will be ‘game over’ for the Empire. And the living museum of nasty nazi politics will be forced into the same sort of lengthy rehabilitation that the Germans went through after the last war.
And let us hope that it was the last world war because, as we know, the most dangerous time of all is when the tyrant lies wounded, impotent and livid with anger with only one more card to play. It’s what the Jabotinskyites-who have the cheek to name their Iron Dome after the master’s Iron Wall- call the Sampson option.

Harry Law
Harry Law
Mar 23, 2018 2:13 PM
Reply to  bevin

bevin, “If Syria is crushed and Hezbollah wiped out”, that,I think you will agree is a big if, Russia will not allow Syria to be crushed, hence they said any US attack on Damascus would be met with the source of the attack being destroyed [here I assume aircraft carriers or missile equipped destroyers in the Med] the Russians are very serious about this, if not they would not only lose their bases in Syria [leased for the next 50 years??] but more importantly lose face and have to admit defeat. In my opinion this will not happen, especially when they have most of the peoples [not the satraps obviously] of the Middle East on their side. Iran has been offered membership of the Shanghai Cooperation Council [a security block] led by China, they will soon join, making any military threats against them problematical in the extreme. In my opinion both Israel and Saudi Arabia have a past and a present, but no future.

Harry Law
Harry Law
Mar 23, 2018 1:11 PM

To understand the geopolitical situation in Syria one has to understand that Syria is regarded as the low hanging fruit, which the ‘West’ has to remove in order to face off against Iran which is the real target. The West backed the “moderate” terrorists even though they knew the US weapons they were supplied with via Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey ended up in the head choppers hands. General Mike Flynn said the aims of the US in Syria was to go along with establishing a Caliphate in large parts of Syria, because that was what its friends [especially Saudi Arabia] wanted. Flynn said Obama went along with this. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LOTiuszCl0c Of course once Syria was neutralized Hezbollah would be next [the head choppers said, once Assad was defeated all the minorities in Syria would be under threat [they chanted Alawites to their graves etc] facing that existential threat Hezbollah had no other option than to face that threat in Syria. The axis of resistance Iran, Iraq, Syria and Lebanon backed by Russia and to a lesser extent China are winning the war, Israel and the sectarian Saudis are losing badly and will lose more in the future. Enter the US, the Saudis say why should we pay protection money [100’s of billions of arms sales and promises to keep the petro dollar afloat and do the US bidding] when they [the US] will not “cut the head off the snake [Iran] who pose such a threat to us and our close friend Israel? Enter, stage right John Bolton ‘The untold story of John Bolton’s campaign for war with Iran’ http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/why-a-john-bolton-appointment-is-scarier-than-you-think-mcmaster-trump/ The US are losing the Middle East, I promise you they will not go quietly, Many lives will be lost before they realize the game is up, hence the US and Israel are going ape shit about the 100,000 Hezbollah missiles and the unknown number of accurately guided missiles Iran and Syria have pointed at Israel, and if those rockets hit Metropolitan Tel Aviv [where most of the Industrial infrastructure and Population are, no more Israel. As a final note Professor Postal at MIT calculated that the Iron Dome anti missile system intercepted just 5% of the rockets Hamas fired in the last Israeli massacre of the Palestinians https://thebulletin.org/evidence-shows-iron-dome-not-working7318