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🟡 Syria Update — Day 16:

🟡 Turkey’s Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan met with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken regarding their nations’ roles in Syria’s post-Assad transitional phase. Both officials reportedly reaffirmed their commitment to preventing the resurgence of ISIS in the region. Minister Fidan expressed his country’s dedication to ensuring that groups Turkey considers terrorist organizations do not seize power in Syria.

🟡 Mazen Al-Hamada, a prominent Syrian activist known for his recollection of torture in President Assad’s notorious prison system, was laid to rest in Damascus in a public ceremony. Mazen’s body was found with signs of torture among dozens of others in the Sednaya Prison, known by Syrians as the “Human Slaughterhouse.”

🟡 Famous Al-Jazeera TV host Faisal Al-Qassem recently called for mass beheadings by guillotine of Assad loyalists on social media. Faisal Al-Qassam hosts the program “The Opposite Direction,” which has long been considered highly controversial. Critics allege that Faisal has long been paying lip service to groups such as ISIS and Al-Qaeda, and has at times invited people to his show who held sympathetic views towards the aforementioned groups.

🟡 Around 90,000 Syrians have fled to Lebanon following the Assad government’s collapse, according to Lebanese newspaper Al Akhbar. Since Sunday, 7,000 people officially entered Lebanon, but thousands more crossed illegally. Most are minorities from former government-protected areas, reportedly forced out by militant threats and attacks.

🟡 The Kurdish administration in northeast Syria has declared a prisoner amnesty to mark the fall of the al-Assad regime, The Associated Press reports. In Qamishli, families celebrated outside Navkur prison as freed detainees reunited with loved ones. This follows similar actions by rebel forces in areas previously under al-Assad’s control.

🟡 UN Secretary-General António Guterres has expressed concern over Israel’s repeated airstrikes in Syria, citing violations of the country’s sovereignty and the 1974 ceasefire agreement. Speaking through his spokesperson, Stéphane Dujarric, Guterres urged an urgent deescalation of violence and emphasized the need to uphold the ceasefire, which he insists remains valid.

🟡 Israeli airstrikes on Syria have continued unabated since the overthrow of Bashar Al-Assad on December 8. So far, the Israeli Air Force has struck more than 500 targets in Syria and dropped an estimated 1,800 bombs, according to reports by Mehr News Agency.

🟡 Massive protests erupted in Manbij after factions from the “Fajr al-Hurriya” operations room, part of the Turkish-backed SNA, seized the city, accusing them of theft, looting, arrests, and killings. The factions captured Manbij after eight years under SDF control, who had taken it from ISIS in 2016.

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🟡 Syria Update — Day 15:

🟡 Independent UN experts have decried Israel’s targeted aerial strikes on Syria as blatantly unlawful, with their clear attempt at preemptively disarming Syria in order to render it defenseless against further acts of aggression. George Katrougalos, UN special rapporteur on the promotion of democratic and equitable international order, described the strikes as “attacks without provocation against a sovereign state.”

🟡 The de-facto authorities in Damascus have reportedly set in motion a campaign to confiscate firearms from civilians. Critics say this move could help entrench HTS rule and root out the possibility of any major opposition. Others point to the ruling being issued in light of weapons being looted from numerous storage facilities.

🟡 Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, the speaker of the Iranian Parliament, has commented on Assad’s toppling, saying that the event did cause disruption to the Axis of Resistance, but that the Axis will adapt to the new circumstances and come out stronger.

🟡 The Arab Socialist Ba’ath Party, which up until Sunday December 8 had ruled Syria continuously since 1963, has decided to disband all activities in the country, marking the end for the Ba’ath Party in Syria.

🟡 The tomb of Syria’s late President Hafez Al-Assad, father of the deposed President Bashar Al-Assad, has been burned down by rebel fighters in Damascus.

🟡 Religious and ethnic minorities in Syria continue to face uncertainty about their safety in the country. Armed rebel gunmen reportedly entered the shrine of Sayyeda Zeinab in Damascus, which holds significance for Shiite Muslims worldwide.

🟡 The Pentagon will maintain its 900-strong troop contingency in Syria under the pretext that ISIS could possibly grow stronger and exploit the power vacuum in the country.

🟡 Commander-in-Chief of the Kurdish-led and US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces, Mazloum Abdî, stated that his troops have been forced to pause anti-ISIS operations due to the persistent threat from Turkish-backed SNA forces. Commander Abdî further noted that they have already seen ISIS exploiting the new power vacuum to grow stronger.

🟡 The Turkish Air Force struck the public security headquarters of the Syrian Democratic Forces in the city of Raqqa in eastern Syria. Experts noted that it is highly unusual for Turkey to strike this deep inside Syrian territory.

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As the national crisis triggered by last week’s short-lived declaration of martial law in the Republic of Korea (ROK) continues to unfold, many Koreans are left reminded by the ROK’s dark history of martial law. Read on.

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Today is the 43rd anniversary of the start of one of the worst massacres in modern Latin American history, the El Mozote massacre perpetrated by US-trained forces in El Salvador. From December 11 to December 13, 1981, a right-wing death squad slaughtered almost the entire population of the village of El Mozote. Over 1,000 people, mostly women, children, and elderly people, were brutally murdered.

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