Fleeing for their lives from Arab militias on the rampage is nothing new for the Sudanese people escaping over the border into Chad – their exhausted faces encapsulate the devastation and suffering they have been experiencing over decades.
On December 24, 2024, Russian expert Yevgeny Satanovsky, president of the Russian think tank Institute of the Middle East, wrote an analysis in the Russian journal “Russia In Global Politics” about the situation in Syria. Satanovsky stated that the war in Syria has been “unambiguously won not just by the local Islamists, but by Turkey and its ally – the Emirate of Qatar.” He then added: “As for the possibility of maintaining the Alawite autonomy in Latakia with Russia’s help… do not get your hopes up.”
Former Sudanese president Omar al-Bashir was finally removed from power after six months of peaceful protest earlier in 2019. The protesters were hopeful for a new beginning but their quest for a civilian government has been shut down by a military council that includes Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, generally called Hemedti, the leader of a paramilitary unit called the Rapid Support Forces that has its roots in the Janjaweed. Tsega Etefa explains who the Janjaweed are and why their presence doesn’t bode well for peace in Sudan.
SUMMARY
The government of Sudan is responsible for “ethnic cleansing” and crimes against humanity in Darfur, one of the world’s poorest and most inaccessible regions, on Sudan’s western border with Chad. The Sudanese government and the Arab “Janjaweed” militias it arms and supports have committed numerous attacks on the civilian populations of the African Fur, Masalit and Zaghawa ethnic groups. Government forces oversaw and directly participated in massacres, summary executions of civilians-including women and children – burnings of towns and villages, and the forcible depopulation of wide swathes of land long inhabited by the Fur, Masalit and Zaghawa. The Janjaweed militias, Muslim like the African groups they attack, have destroyed mosques, killed Muslim religious leaders, and desecrated Qorans belonging to their enemies.
Families protest amid claims men who went to work in UAE were given military training and then sent to Libya to guard oil fields
Sudan’s government has been accused of failing young men who claim they were tricked into guarding Libyan oil facilities by a security firm from the United Arab Emirates.
In his Friday sermon, Syrian Islamic Scholar Sheikh Mustafa Al-Joulani, dressed in military fatigues, declared that polytheists, including Russians, Shi’ites, and Alawites, would burn in Hellfire, while the mujahideen would live in Paradise. “I bring you the glad tidings of Allah’s victory and conquest,” he said. Al-Joulani continued to bring the “glad tidings” of the victory of the “real men” who love death, just like the “sons of mut’a pleasure marriages” – meaning Shi’ites – love life. He also claimed that while the Shi’ites sought to turn Damascus into a Shi’ite city, Allah intended for it to remain Sunni. The sermon was uploaded to @Aljawhara_K3d on YouTube on December 30, 2024.
In a video from 2015 that has resurfaced on January 4, 2025, Syria’s new Minister of Justice Shadi Al-Waisi is seen overseeing the execution of a woman who was accused of prostitution. Al-Waisi reads out the woman’s sentence from a shari’a court. The execution was redacted from this video.
In a January 1, 2025 interview on Alaan TV (UAE), Syria’s new Minister of Justice, Shadi Al-Waisi, who was seen presiding over a 2015 execution of a woman accused of prostitution in a shari’a court, discussed the regime’s plans to implement shari’a law in Syria. He emphasized that Muslims make up roughly 90% of the Syrian population, and the government will reflect the will and aspirations of the people. As a result, the implementation of shari’a will play a “major role” in the coming days. Al-Waisi explained that the shari’a will be implemented in line with the conviction that 90% of Syrians hold “at the heart of their beliefs.” He concluded that the state will not impose anything on the people.
Introduction
Over the past four years, Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) has tried to transform itself from a faction of the Global Jihad movement into the de facto local military and governing power in north-west (NW) Syria. This shift requires the group to seek sources of funding other than al-Qaeda and its donors; consequently, HTS has undertaken a slow but steady takeover of the economy in NW Syria, from financial services and oil and gas to internet and telecommunications. This paper lays out how that process has taken place and provides a detailed look at the economics of HTS.
The rebels who’ve taken control of most of Syria haven’t published a budget or donor list. Their fundraising is opaque, and methods have changed wildly in the past decade.
Speculation swirls online and in conversations over which countries — Turkey, Arab and Gulf states, Ukraine, even the CIA or Israel — may have helped them with cash, weapons or training.