Syria's nearly 14-year civil war has ended for now with the defeat of Bashar al-Assad's government. Armed jihadist groups led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), a renamed version of al-Nusra, took Damascus almost without firing a shot.
In fact, it was such an interesting revolution(!) that the last prime minister of Syria, Mohammed Ghazi al-Jalali, handed over his post to HTS leader Abu Mohammed Colani in front of the cameras in an official ceremony.
- Why did Assad lose?
Have Russia and Iran left Damascus alone?
What is the share of the US and Turkey in this outcome?
Many more questions can be added to the above questions, and many different answers can be given.
But I would like to ask another question.
“Rafid Ahmed Alwan al-Jenabi”
How many people remember this name now?
Al-Jenabi was an Iraqi biologist who fled Saddam Hussein's regime in 1995 and gave the Americans justification for the invasion of Iraq by fabricating false reports to American and German intelligence that Iraq possessed biological weapons and could transport them in trucks.
Al-Jenabi told the Guardian newspaper after the invasion of Iraq and the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, “I was given the chance to topple the Iraqi regime by telling a lie. I and my sons are proud to have brought a little bit of democracy to Iraq.” He said.
The same al-Jenabi, after hundreds of thousands of Iraqis lost their lives as a result of the US invasion, was again asked by a Guardian reporter if he regretted it, “I'm sorry. But there was no other way to bring freedom to Iraq.” and admitted that he had lied.
So why did I remember Rafid Ahmed today?
After Syria fell under the control of HTS, the world was again subjected to a massive bombardment of images and information.
In particular, the images purporting to be from Sednaya Prison in Damascus are horrifying.
Prisoners who lost their minds, those who were tortured with medieval torture instruments, and more than that, dozens of corpses piled up and shrouded in the prison!
Since we know that the truth is the first to be killed in wars, every news and image coming out of Syria had to be treated with suspicion by journalists.
Moreover, considering the human rights records of Middle Eastern regimes, regardless of their character, it is certain that Syria, where there has been a civil war for nearly 14 years, will have experienced many human rights violations.
However, there were also images that did not conform to the ordinary course of life.
For example, if a regime has committed a massacre in a prison, shouldn't it be expected to take the bodies out of the prison and bury them before handing over the city?
And the Damascus government had enough time to do it.
On the other hand, HTS troops entered Damascus, opened the prison doors and released the prisoners, which were broadcasted live to the world, and in those images, the prisoners who came out of the prisons looked more joyful and enthusiastic than exhausted and starved for days.
In fact, some of the images were suspicious even at first glance.
Take this image for example.
It was enough to drag and drop the image into Google Images to realize that this image, which was allegedly recorded in Sednaya prison and for which dozens of video clips were made, was actually a wax sculpture made to depict the torture of prisoners in the former Saigon prison in South Vietnam.
Another image by artificial intelligence was confirmed by the confirmation website.
But could it be that those who shared this image as real did not think of this method?
It is impossible for the trolls, who are the world's best at producing and disseminating fake images and montage videos/photos, not to think about this. But they don't want to tell the truth.
When I wondered why they were doing this, I was struck by their silence on another issue.
The great silence for the Israeli tanks that entered Syria as soon as Assad was overthrown and were at the gates of Damascus!
In fact, those who spread these images because they could not speak out against the Israeli occupation and they knew that HTS would not speak out against Israel “The tyrant Assad was worse than Israel” They are willingly competing in bending the truth, in other words, in lying, in order to be able to say.
It is not for nothing that it is said that in war, first the truth dies, then the people.