Hero commander killed in Syria – when the war is nearly won

Major General Zahreddine led operations against the Islamic state (ISIS) near Deir Ezzor, the city which had been besieged for over three years and where the inhabitants were liberated as late as last month through a daring action that finally broke the siege. Zahreddine’s military vehicle was struck by an ISIS land mine during the last operations around the city.

Zahreddine commanded an elite formation of the Republican Guard and was known as “The Lion” to his men and the rest of Syria. He was for the Syrians the embodiment of the courageous and daring military leader, hated by his enemies and adored by his men – he was leading his operations from the front. For the so-called international community supporting the “rebels” – who are in reality ordinary terrorists and criminals – Zahreddine became the boogeyman.

Those who want to topple the secular Syrian state, where minorities and religions co-exist, paint the Syrian officer with his fancy sun glasses and characteristic beard as both a type of modern warlord and evil “butcher” for president Bashar al-Assad and his army. This portrait was spread through the Western mainstream media, which sides with the terrorists.

Major General Zahreddine led operations against the Islamic state (IS) front the front line. Photo: SAA

But also that is normal for the war in Syria – the “Revaluation of all values”: terrorists are valued over defenders, Islamist preachers are valued over elected parliamentarians, the Saudi king is valued over the Syrian president. And illegal migrants are valued over those who stay in their country to defend it.

Especially the last valuation made Zahreddine furious in the last weeks of his life. “To those who fled Syria to another country, I beg you don’t ever return, because even if the government forgives you, we will never forgive or forget,” he said. He added: “If you know what is good for you, none of you return.” Strong words, indeed. Young Syrian men who heeded the call of Angela Merkel and abandoned their country to seek fortune in Europe are seen as cowards and traitors by those who stayed to fight.

The official position of the Syrian government is that migrants should be given the chance to be repatriated to their homeland. They will be needed to rebuild the country. So one day later Zahreddine explained on Syrian state TV: “I was talking after I had seen the bodies of many Syrian soldiers who had been executed and beheaded and chopped into pieces. I was addressing Daesh (ISIS) people who had done these things. Of course our fellow citizens who have gone abroad are most welcome to return. We adhere to law and the instructions of the government and president.”

After the victories of the Syrian army, many terrorists have fled to Europe, and often back to notorious immigrant ghettos from where they once travelled to built the Caliphate of their dreams. Major General Zahreddine’s message sounds like a direct answer to many Europeans of the political right who say: “The more terrorists the Syrian army kills, the less come (back) to Europe.”

But against who exactly was Zahreddine fighting his war? Against Syrians? Is it an internal, Syrian “civil war” like Western mainstream media claims?

Yet again it turns out that the truth is the exact opposite to what Western mainstream media claims. Here Zahreddine was putting his finger on the predicament of Europe: A large number of terrorists fighting in Syria are sponsored, equipped and armed through different European channels – not counting the US-American, Turkish, Gulf Arab and Israeli sources. A large number of terrorist fighters are of non-Syrian origin. And this has been going on since the first days of the war in Syria.

In reality it is a global military operation against a country which refused and still refuses to obey the globalist domination, embodied by Washington, Brussels and their proxies in the region. While the West claims to embrace multi-culture and tolerance for different religions, they do everything possible to slander and crush Syria, the only well functioning multi-ethnic and secular state in the region where Christian, Druze, Alawite, Syriac and other minorities have lived without fear. Issam Zahreddine is himself such an example, since he as a Druze felt a strong obligation to defend the country that had given him so much. Instead, the main ally of the West in the region is Saudi Arabia, a fundamentalist monarchy, where the preaching of Christianity is punishable by death.

Already back in 2011, during the so-called “Arab Spring”, it started as a foreign destabilisation operation against Syria, which led the country into a full destructive war scenario. Large parts of the country’s infrastructure, that was built in the economic upswing during the last decades, but has been destroyed by American aerial bombardment under the disguise of fighting terrorists. The US is operating illegally in Syria, without invitation by the Syrian government or a UN mandate. Many of the industries, especially those situated in the country’s financial hub Aleppo, has been dismantled and stolen by Turkey.

Issam Zahreddine was adored by his men and. Photo: SAA

Within a short time the Middle Eastern country became a magnet for international Islamist terrorists, many of them illegally entering Syria via Turkey and Jordan. Western intel services and special units were and still are providing training, arms and logistics for the so-called “rebels”.

On several occasions during my own reportage trips to Syria, soldiers were showing me captured war material from the terrorists – produced in the West, delivered by the West. Ordinary Syrian army men knew already very early: This war doesn’t know any borders, it is not limited to Syria. The terrorist fighters will carry the war also to its source – to the West. Already in 2012 a Syrian militia man protecting his hometown against jihadist militants said to me: “This war will cause a refugee crisis, millions of people will be on the move and terrorists will hide in the migrant stream to Europe – and they won’t change their criminal behavior after they arrived.”

Geopolitics can be a “boomerang”: The effects of the Syrian war campaign are today visible in Europe. The terrorist attacks in several European capitals, increasing crime and violence, the sound of Salafi nasheeds (religious chants) in European refugee camps are a direct consequence of turning Syria from a civilized nation into a bloody battle ground.

But this is no way a surprise for those who rule Europe. That this would be the result, had been clear, even to them. Still we hear the establishment repeating today that Syria is “suffering under its dictator Assad” while at the same time advancing the lunacy of a “refugee welcome” campaign. It is not a coincidence that the same decision-makers are promoting a war in Middle East and open borders in Europe. They know very well about the boomerang effect – and want to use it to change the societies in the Middle East and Europe at the same time for once for all.

Zahreddine knew very well that he was not just defending his homeland, but fighting a global war against the “bulldozers” of Western globalist forces whose tools are war, waves of migration and cheap standardised products. Europe is continuing to change for the worse. Some pessimistic analysts forecast violent scenarios as a result of the migration policy. Europe’s defence structures themselves are today dismantled by liberal ideologists. They are seem more concerned about the career chances of transgender soldiers than about future security challenges.

A European army with a military commander like Issam Zahreddine, would have counted itself lucky.