Arriving at the gates of spring 2018, there is no new outbreak of hope in Syria. The expectations of the 2011 Arab Spring are far from... Enough! In the French magazine, journalist Thomas Clerget synthesized that “despite the seven years of suffering, the Syrian ‘endless war’ is not seen as an immediate solution. (...) The hardening of violence in Syria today shows that the political process is completely stamped, as the violence is motivated by the desire to take military advantage of all the players in conflict.”

Given that all the powers that want to send something in the Middle East are intervening in Syria, they are fiercely fighting to consolidate their military position in order to be prepared for a solution that they say will have to arrive at once. As is usually done in hard matches, everyone wants to show that they are capable of risking any daring play.

This has been done by Israel, which will summarise here the analysis of Clerget, when it attacked Syria on 10 February and directly attacked the positions of the Iranian army. Israel joins the United States, in cooperation with the Gulf monarchies, in considering Iran as its main enemy. We must somehow weaken the Shia arc which is said to be spreading through Iraq from Tehran to the Mediterranean in Lebanon.

Iran has been vital in the survival of the Bashar al-Assad government, even though it has helped it in a more discreet way than Russia in recent years. In addition to economic support, it has sent the Guardians of the Revolution and supported the Shia militias in the area. “If Russia has become superior in the skies of Syria since 2015, those who maintain the unity of the territory together with the Syrian army are militias for Iran,” says Clerget.

On 7 February another red light was ignited in the escalation of the conflict. Between 200 and 300 Russian mercenaries were attacked and killed by U.S. aircraft working for the Syrian Army in the Deir-Ezzor region. Despite the fact that Moscow has deployed its troops in Syria, between 1,500-2,000 Russian mercenaries are fighting, carried by the company Wagner, officially ignored by the government of Vladimir Putin.

Another major battle is that of the Afrín region, which shows how complicated the conflict is, with the Olivo operation that Turkey has organised to take the Kurds out of YPG. Russia has given asylum to the Kurdish militiamen in Afrín and prevented them from moving to Turkey. The curious thing is that the Kurds are collaborating with the United States in the rest of the camps, even the Yankees have forgotten that the YPG are a leftist movement. But the motto of all wars “the enemies of our enemies can be our friends”, if it appears somewhere in Syria.

What happens is that the Kurds have de facto come to control one-third of Syria. A new state between Syria and Turkey? Too many changes for beyond Turkey.

Russia has given the Kurds an ultimatum by withdrawing from Afrín, as explained by analyst Piotr Apokov: "Turkey's threat will eventually force the Kurds to seek their place in Syria. They will be raped, both because Damascus and Moscow have the power to give guarantees to the Turks, and because their independence would not protect them from Turkey’s anti-terrorist operations.”

But if the Russian plan were to go well, if the Kurds were to surrender, Damascus would be left as an ally of the Kurds to the Turks. To know how that would leave the relationship between the Kurds and the United States ...

War of the 21st century see Gouthan

The other decisive battle is fought in eastern Goutha. Goutha Este, Damascus district, stood out in the protests against Bashar Al-Assad in 2011. The then 1.5 million inhabitants have been declining, especially since government troops surrounded and besieged Iran in May 2013 with the help of militias and Hezbollah.

The people of Goutha, who on their streets have seen militias of many classes from the first hour revolutionary militias, have had to learn how to survive week by week instead of basic supplies, including food and tap water. Today, an estimated 400,000 people remain in eastern Goutha, half of them children and young people.

If in Aleppo, Al-Raqa, Deir-Ezzor or Afrin the geopolitical components of the Syrian war are reflected in their confusing complexity –EE.UU, Israel, Russia, Iran, Turkey, Saudi Arabia...– The martyrdom of the eastern population Goutha demonstrates what it has of the civil war, or, if you will, of an authoritarian government.

Since last November, aircraft from Syria and Russia have been bombing daily, in addition to the siege since 2013, both bombings and air strikes against the Goutha. The crushing is even more serious and systematic since December, with the help of artillery. Fairs, hospitals, people waiting for rare bakeries or food distribution, housing blocks... The first week of the aggression resulted in the deaths of 500 people, and since then the deaths have multiplied. The humanitarian truce agreed by the United Nations on 24 February did not last until the following day, since since then the five daily hours of calm announced by Vladimir Putin from Russia have not been more successful.

Amnesty International has denounced that the strategy of Al-Assad and the Russians of Gouthan is “Either they leave, or they die there” [We leave or we die]: to blow up the population to defeat the armed opposition that protected them among them, to negotiate later the flight of live civilians and gudaris. The document “Syria, Strategy for Surrender or Death” outlines how rebel groups, but mainly the government of Damascus, use this strategy.

It is true that the geopolitical clash between the major world powers, primarily the United States and Russia, plus the smaller powers such as Israel, Turkey, Iran and the Gulf States, spill over everything into the war in Syria, to the point of polluting the information that comes from there. But you just have to watch a short video that Anadolu pulled out of the air to Gouthari, which is on the Internet, which takes two minutes, to find out what that crime is.

The suffering of the seven years of the Syrian population is terrible. An estimated 500,000 deaths have been recorded since 2011, including 30% or 40% civilians, and two million more injured. (...) 5.4 million people of 22 million people have had to flee, 6.1 million more are within the country away from their homes. The UN estimates that 13 million people suffer from severe medical care.