After ISIS was defeated in Iraq and Syria, al-Baghdadi fled to Idlib, which was under the control of his old friend, al-Sharaa, the current leader of HTS which drove out Assad. On October 27, 2019, in the village of Barisha, on the outskirts of Idlib, an American commando group, on orders of President Donald Trump, attacked al-Baghdadi and he killed himself with a suicide vest.
The winners and the losers are well known, and their motivations for fighting. The Syrian people are split between the winners and losers. There is a minority segment satisfied and overjoyed at having an Islamic State in Syria. However, most Syrians want a secular democracy, with equal rights among all religious and ethnic communities. Most Syrians want a job, to see refugees come home, and to experience a political climate where everyone has a voice to be heard. If the HTS, and the future Syrian government after the transition period cannot deliver what the majority of the population wants, then the period culminating on December 8, 2024, might become known as the first revolution.
Steven Sahiounie is a two-time award-winning journalist.
This article is originally published at MideastDiscours
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