Exactly. My mom is from a North African country and is Arab (not of Arab descent but of black African descent) so yeah of course she has nothing in common with a gulf Arab but the thing that makes her Arab is culture/history/language.

When have I actually defended the Iranian leadership?

Nah I’m talking about Assad, he gassed his people

Again when have I defended Iranian leadership

This video shows how most of the so called Free Syrian Army is mainly made up of Salafi extremists. As well as how many of the so called “freedom fighters” and depictions of refugees and civilians are propaganda.

This is bull. The revolution had its roots in the young population who at first which were looking to peacefully protest. They were disillusioned with corruption and nepotism that’s common in the Arab world now and pre 2010s.

Assad released many extremists from prisons and openly let them highjack the original protesters cause as a way to vilify them. You can see that by how progressively more violent he became in bombings for Aleppo for example. The more leverage he had to call them extremists, the more killings were afforded to him.

The shared culture a Maghrebi Arab has with a Syrian Arab is about as much as any ethnic group in the Maghreb has with another ethnic group in the levant. It's not a point worth making, there are still dozens of differences outside that and ethno-religious groups within the Arab label, take Alawites for example which are their own ethno-religious group in many ways even though they are also Arab. It's an umbrella term really, diaspora with no ties to their culture other than knowing they are "arab" don't know this so they think they're all so similar and ironically adopt an insanely orientalist perspective on that entire side of the world, they overdramatize, think they're all this exotic samey-same people that should just set their minor differences aside and unite, it makes no sense

Well many people of the Levant don’t have as much in common with Gulf/Khaleeji Arabs. If look at North African Bedouins who are labeled as Arab less often than Lebanese or Syrians, you can see how there’s a dissonance in who we consider Arab. They’re much more closer to the ‘pure’ Arabs of the gulf than a lot of Levantines are.

Within the countries themselves there’s a big difference, south Jordanians are much closer in looks, language, and culture to Saudis than northern Jordanians.

It’s definitely multifaceted in what determines someone being Arab.

See above post I made

You know that Assad released the prisoners at the behest of the protesters right lol
EDIT: here’s the source
google.com/amp/s/www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-12870679.amp
google.com/amp/s/www.csmonitor.com/layout/set/amphtml/World/Middle-East/2011/0531/Syria-s-Assad-offers-amnesty-to-political-prisoners

Yea exactly Levantine Arabs on a genetic level are way more distinct from the gulf and the Maghreb. Also remnants from pre Islamic/Arab culture are way more prevalent ( don’t know if it’s the best term to use but there is a lot of Mediterranean influence) also it just depends on which region of your respective country that you’re actually from

Because not all the protesters were Islamic extremists

Him releasing terrorists in the same timeframe was a way to aid propaganda that paints all of them as extremists.

Why else would he supposedly do something his enemies want? He had no gripe on bombing thousands of peaceful protesters; he wouldn’t care to release anyone from prison unless it benefited him.

The Russians and Assad regime considered regular doctors and journalists as enemies of the state and had no gripes on bombing them for years. Hundreds of thousands of innocent dead.

They offered amnesty to them for rebellion when the only thing they were guilty of was protesting. This came only after they had squashed most of the rebellion and already had won. Just another tactic to frame them as not being brutal.

There’s 0 evidence for this claim lol. You should blame the Islamist protesters not the government which was just responding to pressure.

Prove its false. There’s plenty of documented cases of prisoners released by Assad who were islamist extremists. Easily provable because they ended up dead eventually. He knew they were extremists and released them instead simply killing them like the rest — what does this say?

The revolution was originally started by moderate youth, Christians, and various other groups of civilians. It was painted as something else to benefit the suppression effort, it spiraled out of control because outside forces exacerbated the issues and funded Islamists. Assad obv didn’t want war but he didn’t mind killing as many civilians as possible in the name of fighting extremists either.

I know that some prisoners were Islamist and some were not. Assad released them all cuz protesters wanted it. There’s no evidence that he was trying to promote radical Islam just to bomb people. Also seeing that he’s a Shia (Alawite) why would he knowingly release elements that inherently want to kill him and everyone who belong to his sect

He wasn’t promoting radical Islam, he released them so the legitimate opposition to his corrupt regime became corrupt itself. He could have easily executed all captured islamists but he didn’t.

It benefited him to do this and the strategy worked.

You should read and look into what normal Syrian civilians went through; who were first protestors back in 2011.

You’re believing a narrative if you think the opposition against Assad started as an extremist movement. From the very beginning he had the military killing university students and intellectuals before the war even started.

Which mind you worsened the situation for everyone since this gave the extremist groups more legitimacy in the eyes of Syrians. Lesser of two evils.

I didn’t say it started as an extremist movement (if it came off that way I apologize that’s not what I meant) There were progressive secular protests in the cities. And right wing religious protests in the rural areas. It was the latter group that formed the armed opposition and received billions in funding from the CIA, Saudi Arabia, Turkey etc. The release of the prisoners was not intended to corrupt the secular movement (talked about this in the post before) more so it was Assad trying to please the protesters which ultimately ended up backfiring on him.

This is framing it as if he cares about what the protestors want or their well-being.

He wouldn’t have been brutally suppressing them pre-war if this was kind of man he is. He would have also left the country in exile much sooner if he remotely cared. This doesn’t even address the propaganda machine he was running which is counter intuitive to what you’re trying to infer.

Regardless someone who has no gripes about leveling Aleppo to the ground and killing hundreds of thousands of innocent to maintain power is indefensible.

You can try to play politics with it but that’s the reality here. Any non-corrupt human being would have stepped down.

He started the problems and had no issue escalating the death and suffering further until he won.

Atleast someone like Mubarak who was also garbage saw that stepping down was better for everyone as a whole.

That’s a non answer. He brutally suppressed the protesters while trying to appease them at the same time. He just wanted them to end so he could stay in power, No one said he did it out of kindness.

No offense but that’s ridiculous. I question your entire perspective you think he cared the least bit about the protestors or ‘appeasing them’

He was slitting their throats and lining bodies in rivers in Aleppo before the start of the conflict even began Where was his appeasement for protestors then? HE escalated the situation.

He released known terrorists this is verified. The protestors weren’t on the same side of them and had completely different end goals besides getting rid of Assad. What you’re inferring makes no sense.

assad defense itt

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