Syrian interim president Ahmed al-Sharaa's White House meeting [22] with Donald Trump followed the removal [23] of his Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS [24]) from the list of designated "terrorist organizations" both at the State Department and at the UN [25]. It also coincided with strikes against [25] ISIS by his security forces, raising the prospect of his government being invited to join the US-led [26] Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS [27]. The Washington visit also came just a month after al-Sharaa's similar trip to meet Vladimir Putin in Moscow [28], where a deal was brokered allowing Russia to keep [29] its military bases [30] in Syria. Amid all this, Syria continues to see forced disappearances [31] and other abuses [32] targetting Druze [33], Alawites [34] and Kurds [35]—pointing to the looming threat [24] of an ethnic or sectarian internal war. The US troop presence [36] in Syria is largely embedded [37] among the Kurdish forces in the east. As al-Sharaa becomes a new "anti-terrorist" partner (or proxy) for the Great Powers, will these troops be withdrawn—providing a "green light" for the Damascus government to attack the Kurdish autonomous zone [24]? In Episode 305 of the CounterVortex podcast [38], Bill Weinberg weighs the risks at this critical moment in Syria's transition process [24], nearly one year after the fall of the Assad dictatorship [39].
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Production by Chris Rywalt [42]
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