Hostages to Jihad – Austin Tice, The Long Missing American in Syria – Part One

Austin Tice was not held by Bashar Al-Assad as Western claims allege

Sheri Laizer | iKurd.net

Introduction

Thirteen years ago, in August 2012, American journalist, Austin Tice, was abducted in Syria. The sole evidence as to his fate arose in the form of a leaked 46 second video. This was wrongly dismissed by Western commentators. Jabhat al-Nusra, Al-Qaeda’s branch in Syria, the first incarnation of the group that now controls Damascus had said they had taken him. Tice was their perfect victim: a former US Marine who had deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan. After as many as 700,000 people have been killed in Syria it is improbable one man’s remains could ever be found. He was not held in any of the prisons that have been emptied since the toppling of Bashar al-Assad on 8 December 2024. The new Syrian ‘government’ knows the truth. Are business interests getting in the way of exposure?3

Last images

Three rough pickups are filmed from behind by an invisible fourth vehicle. They bump and jolt along the broken surface of a rough valley shrouded by high hills.4 A fighter is stationed beside a machine gun fixed in position on the back of the middle vehicle, flanked to front and rear by the convoy. The back doors have been left open for reconnaissance. The jumpy, hand-held image shows the video has been taken from the moving vehicle following behind. It may have been shown out of sequence by the jihadists in arriving at their chosen location rather than as they slowly depart, job done, and recede from view through the valley.

A jump cut in the video reveals a noisy rabble pushing and dragging a blindfolded Western hostage up a slope through a patch of scrub and trees. They reach a rocky summit amid chants of Allahu Akhbar. Some of the armed men wear black vests over their loose robes and dangle rifles from their hands as they push and shove their quarry upwards. 5 As the pack climbs the slope, one of the militants wearing a red and white checked kafffieh and armed with an RPG faces away toward the slope.

At this point, a short sequence is taken from behind Austin Tice; a branch catches in his olive-green shirt. His captors pay this no attention and continue roughly dragging him up the hill close between them towards the summit. Just before they get there he is shown, still blindfolded, breaking down, pausing, leaning in towards his closest captor and uttering the Koranic Shahada ‘There is no God but Allah’. Perhaps he thinks this will make his captors more merciful, but they have already objectified him as ‘the other’. He seems to understand it has had no effect and aware of his dire situation he lapses into English, moaning, ‘Oh Jesus, oh Jesus’, then ‘Allah,Ya Allah’ – not as in prayer but in the alternative sense of ‘Oh, hell, this is very bad!’

The captors face away from the camera; their hostage is shown side-front-on to identify him. He appears tired and his hair is long and untidy behind his blindfold. His beard is just a little longer than in the last images of him wearing the same clothes when reporting about the Free Syrian Army outside Damascus. There is a characteristic frenzy to this video like with a group of hunters gaining on their quarry. No one talks to the victim. They fly no banners. This is a private show.

Video evidence misconstrued by Western commentators

The video dates to sometime after August 13, 2012, when Austin Tice was last seen. The film showing him being manhandled appeared some weeks later, via YouTube, on September 26, 2012. This was interpreted as proof he was still alive rather than as evidence that these were more likely his last recorded moments.

Think tanks and assorted specialists were quoted trying to debunk the video as ‘staged.’ Tice and his captors were clearly not acting. Their body language is all too real. As one journalist who knew better, Theo Padnos, points out, if this was staged where was the costume department? Who were the film crew, the broadcasters? Having set out on the quest of Austin Tice not long after this video first appeared, he fell into the same hands. Al Nusra told him they had also taken Tice – apparently no one was listening nor listens now.

The robes

The hostage’s captors are dressed in the robes and turbans of senior Emirs and the kaffieh of fighters customarily associated with Al Qaeda and other Jihadist militant groups of the period.

An analyst with the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, Elizabeth O’Bagy, claimed this was not the style of clothing worn in Syria but that is mimicked what was worn in Afghanistan suggesting it is ‘staged.’6 Conversely, such garments were exactly what the senior cadres of Al Qaeda and ISIS were wearing but these analysts chose to disparage the video in seeking to blame the Assad government for Tice’s capture.

Posted and leaked on YouTube

The video’s means of posting online on YouTube suggests it was leaked and for that reason, it would not contain any logo or symbol denoting the organization responsible. Syrian government intelligence had long since infiltrated jihadist groups and they can have accessed the footage via their network. Such infiltration is well documented. For example, in the 2015 book, ISIS – Inside the Army of Terror the Director of Syrian General Intelligence, Ali Mamlouk, reportedly commented in a 2010 (pre-revolution) meeting with US diplomats on the method the government used when dealing with jihadists, “We do not attack or kill them immediately. Instead, we embed ourselves in them and only at the opportune moment do we move,” he said.7

The leadership of Al Qaeda in Syria, embodied in Jabhat al-Nusra (Jabhat al-Nusra li-Ahl min Mujahedi al-Sham fi Sahat al-Jihad – The Support Front for the People by the Levantine Mujahedin on the Battlefields of Jihad) frequently chose to wear such robes associated with Islamist purism in areas where they have established control.

This video is not footage of an attack on an armed enemy for them to wear military fatigues but is the probable lead up to an execution. Its title ‘Austin Tice is alive’ was probably only good for those last remaining moments. He has not been seen since. (Alleged prison sightings and a body found were of other Western detainees).

ISIS and Jabhat al-Nusra celebrated Eid al-Adha jointly in mid-October 2013. The photo below used by Aaron Y. Zelin is unsourced as to how he came by it.8 It shows the same mixed types of robes, kaffieh, vests and turbans. An Nusra’s members sit on the left beneath their banner, ISIS fighters on the right.

Even later when the leader of the Al Qaeda franchise in Syria, Abu Mohamed al-Jolani (now the ‘interim president’ of Syria under his real name of Ahmed al-Sharaa), publicly announced his entity’s amicable and expedient “separation” from Al Qaeda, the Shura Council members dressed this way for the camera, as below.

This is the same logo that appears behind Abu Mohamed al-Jolani (centre) wearing a turban and a combat jacket. His two ‘brothers’ wear the style of robes the think tanks denied. To al-Jolani’s left sits Sheikh Abu al-Faraj al-Masri, killed in Idlib by a US drone strike on October 3, 2016,10 and to his right, Sheikh Abu Abdullah al-Shami.

The Washington Institute perpetuated US policy to topple Bashar al-Assad and casually sought to lay the blame for Austin Tice’s disappearance at their government’s door. Assad had declared all along that he did not have Tice. That falsehood has recently resurfaced.

Several close commanders that had been active with al-Jolani defected or were eliminated when they disagreed with him. These included his Iraq-born deputy, Abu Maria al-Qahtani, who was assassinated on April 4, 2024, after being detained by HTS on suspicion of treason. 11 It had been Abu Maria al-Qahtani that had freed Theo Padnos after two years under torture, delivering him to the UN in the Golan Heights buffer zone. Abu Maria al-Qahtani ‘s secrets have died with him; Theo Padnos’s have not. He is a rare survivor.12

Foreign hostages sold, traded, killed – rarely spared: Theo Padnos got lucky

Theo Padnos wrote of his two-year punishing captivity by al-Nusra, in a book called Blindfolded: A Memoir of Capture, Torture and Enlightenment.13

More recently, and most pertinently, Theo authored an article for Rolling Stone after al-Nusra (rebranded as Haya’t Tahrir al-Sham) had seized control in Damascus just before Christmas last year.15 “Ask the people now in Damascus where Austin Tice is”, he advised. This advice has gone unheeded.

Most Western hostages seized in the same period were being executed by the jihadist groups that had captured them in Syria or Iraq, and the grisly details were increasingly circulated on video. As Theo explained, “I know why I made it out alive. What happened was when the ISIS men decided to form their own little group, they took their own prisoners from our prison and that was where James Foley and a few of the European hostages [went]. Jabhat al-Nusra, the al-Qaida people, took their prisoners and went the other direction.

They had a little divorce. And the reason why I survived is because Jabhat al-Nusra eventually lost a war that they were having with ISIS and they needed cash, so they bartered me for cash…They were making these very captivating films and they were discovering what a drug social media can be… the chief al-Qaida guy was already in touch with Qatar, who eventually ransomed me out of Syria.” 16

During a knife point interrogation, Theo had also come up against ISIS spokesman in chief, Abu Muhammad al-Adnani. 17 He was also subjected to being shown the beheading of James Foley by al-Nusra.

Media saleability intersects with Western policy

Several very long articles concerning the American (and British) hostages captured in Syria and Iraq were published by leading American magazines and journals. These highlighted the psychological suffering of the hostages’ families in the absence of hard news on the whereabouts of their loved ones. Many of these pieces sought to pin the hostages’ disappearances on the Syrian government rather than on the jihadists. Their remit tied in with the FBI’s evasiveness and government policy to damn Assad come what may even if it meant slanting the truth.

James Foley who was one of those to be executed had been taken across into Syria from Turkey on American Thanksgiving Day in November 2012. He was not killed by the Syrian government as the FBI had initially sought to allege. 18 His execution by beheading occurred much later on August 20, 2014. It was carried out by the ISIS partner to the divorce, and it was shown in full on video two years after the leaked, partial footage of Austin Tice being manhandled by the jihadists.

Why Austin Tice was the ideal victim of Al Qaeda/Al-Nusra

As a member of American military personnel Austin Tice had been commissioned to the theatre of war against al Qaeda in Iraq and Al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan. He had signed up for the Marines after just one term at Georgetown Law School and in 2005 he was commissioned as a second lieutenant and had been deployed twice to Iraq. He then started law school again on his return home in 2008. Dissatisfied with classroom life he signed up as a reservist for Afghanistan in 2011. In 2011, he deployed with the Marine Corps for three months at Camp Leatherneck in southern Afghanistan. 19

Tice’s subsequent incarnation as a freelance war correspondent would only have suggested further to his captors that he was an enemy agent. A group within the FSA had smuggled him with them into Syria during Ramadan, disguised in hijab as a woman on July 30, 2012. Soon after celebrating his 31st birthday in the Sunni Damascus suburb of Daraya, he disappeared from view.

He had been making plans to travel the short distance by road from Damascus to Beirut. His satellite phone stopped transmitting on 13 August.21 The YouTube video of him was leaked 6-7 weeks later. If it had been filmed by an infiltrator in al-Nusra and then leaked this delay would have given the agent time to get clear.

Background on the neoconservatives’ plan to bring about regime change in the Middle East

The Study Group on a New Israeli Strategy Toward 2000 proved influential amongst us neo-conservatives. Its 1996 plan “A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm” was drawn up for Benjamin Netanyahu as Israel’s premier.

The term “clean break” refers to their proposal that Israel ‘break’ with the 1993 Oslo Peace Accords and help bring regime change across the Middle East. As American Professor of Anthropology, William O Beeman, from the University of Minnesota stated in an article posted on September 11, 2013: “The 1996 plan explicitly calls for attacks on Iraq, Syria and eventually Iran. It states: “Israel can shape its strategic environment . . . by weakening, containing, and even rolling back Syria. This effort can focus on removing Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq — an important Israeli strategic objective in its own right — as a means of foiling Syria’s regional ambitions.” 22

It looks to have been a highly accurate prediction.

By 1997, the Washington think tank, Project for the New American Century’s (PNAC) produced a Statement of Principles. The vision would exert strong influence over the George W. Bush Administration’s Foreign Policy. Advocating increasing the strength of ties with friendly countries, those considered ‘hostile to our values and interests’ were to be ‘challenged.’

In 1998, the founding authors, William Kristol and Robert Kagan focused their diatribe on Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. One of its later documents published in 2000, Rebuilding America’s Defenses was strongly rejected by many international critics as a ‘global Pax Americana unrestrained by international law’ 23 such as the world has witnessed since 9/11. The first stage was Iraq. The second stage was Syria, and finally it was to be the turn of Iran…we have had a recent taste of this terrible policy. 24

The Free Syrian Army’s complicity with transnational Islamic extremists

In December 2012, the Free Syrian Army (FSA) backed by Turkish Islamist president Recep Tayyib Erdogan kidnapped NBC correspondent, Richard Engel and his five-man film crew. This was followed by a succession of Europeans being taken hostage the following year and some seventy Syrian reporters who were all killed between 2012-2013.

The US government refused to pay ransoms for its own hostages. The French government did so and got more hostages out alive. US media also ‘spun’ the reporting on the abductions of its nationals further imperilling the lives of anyone freshly arriving in the conflict zones.

The FSA had twice handed Theo Padnos back to al-Nusra’s merciless jailors after he had managed to escape; he had mistakenly trusted in them. It was only the ransom money that eventually saved him.

Al Nusra told Theo Padnos they had taken Tice. Western mainstream and US reports ignore the implications of this revelation. Their focus has been on running anti-Assad stories – and still is.

The FSA also sold Jewish-American, Steven Sotloff, to ISIS for cash in August 2013, a year after Austin Tice had disappeared. ISIS beheaded Sotloff. A family spokesman, Barak Barfi, declared that Sotloff had told a friend when he had just entered Syria minutes before being kidnapped. Someone on the Turkish border had called ISIS. They then set up a fake checkpoint to trap Sotloff and those crossing the porous frontier with him. The so-called ‘moderate’ FSA group claimed to have received between $25,000-$50,000 for handing him to his death.25

Another American hostage, aid worker, Peter Kassig, had served with the Army Rangers in Iraq before being discharged after only four months to be kidnapped later in Syria. A State Department official called his parents informing his mother generally, “We know your son has been taken in Syria. We don’t have an embassy there. We don’t have people on the ground. We don’t have any diplomatic relationship with them, so we can’t do anything to help you.’ 26 Such was the pattern. Kassig was executed by ISIS. Female hostage, Kayla Muller also met her death.27

The FSA, later rebranded as the misnomer Syrian National Army (SNA) worked directly with ISIS and Al-Qaeda/al-Nusra. Syrians for Truth & Justice (STJ) revealed that the following ISIS members were active in brigades under the FNA umbrella:

1. The Military Police service, led by Ahmed Ibrahim al-Kurdi and affiliated with the Ministry of Defense of the Syrian Interim Government, headed by Abdulrahman Mustafa and operating under the National Coalition for the Syrian Revolution and Opposition Forces, under the presidency of Naser al-Hariri

2. Tajammu Ahrar al-Sharqiya (Gathering of Free Men of the East), led by Abu Hatem Shaqra

3. The Eastern Army (Jaysh al-Sharqiya), led by Major Hussein Hamadi

4. Martyrs of Badr Army (Jaysh Shuhada’a Badr), led by Abu al-Hasan Shuhada’’a

5. The Mu’tasim Division, led by Mu’tasim Abbas

6. The Sultan Murad Division, led by Fahim Issa

7. The al-Hamza/al-Hamzat Division, led by Sayf Abu Bakr

8. The Malek Shah division, led by Mahmoud al-Baz.

Many hundreds of Syrian and transnational mercenaries were also deployed to Libya, Azerbaijan and then routed back into Syria. The STJ reported human rights violations warranting a report to the UN saying it cited 27 names of former IS members now positioned in the SNA as 11 first and second-level leaders, 6 security officials, and 10 members of different ranks.

“The 27 were part of a total number of “65 former IS members currently active in the ranks of the SNA…STJ obtained evidence of violations committed by these individuals while they served in IS, and later in the SNA. Furthermore, we identified which SNA groups the individuals joined — many which recruited Syrian civilians and fighters to fight as mercenaries in Libya and Azerbaijan.1

These militants and mercenaries acted with impunity. Most already had a violent past. Al-Nusra’s leader, Ahmed al-Sharaa had such a past. Moreover, when Al Qaeda in Iraq permitted him to lead its franchise in Syria he took with him a number of leading ISIS figures. In Iraq since Saddam Hussein was forcibly removed by the Americans, his tough stance on Al Qaeda was undermined. Al Qaeda flourished in his absence.

Al Sharaa set up Jabhat al-Nusra with the following leading ‘b rothers’ from the Islamic State in Iraq (al-Dawla) according to the testimony in March 2013 of Abu Suhayb al-Iraqi to Aymenn al-Tamimi who got close to the group by initially posing as a sympathiser:

All the leading cadres in the group were either Iraqi or were graduates from Iraq’s arena of jihad. For example:

The amir of the ‘eastern region’ (Dayr al-Zor and Hasakah) is Iraqi.

The head of rigging explosives in the eastern region is Iraqi, and he is now the security official after he graduated the cadres working in rigging explosives.

The amir of Latakia is Iraqi, the amir of Idlib is Iraqi, the amir of Deraa is Jordanian from among the mujahidin in Iraq.

The head of the Shari‘i Commission is Iraqi.

The Jabha’s general military official is among the mujahidin in Iraq and was Shaykh Abu Mus‘ab’s personal bodyguard.

The head of the General Shari‘i Commission in Aleppo is from Iraq.

The general military official for Raqqa city is from Iraq.

The general security official for Raqqa is from Iraq

Abu Muhammad al-Adnani is from the mujahidin in Iraq’s arena

The amirs of Damascus’s sectors are from Iraq.

The amir of eastern Homs is from the mujahidin in Iraq.

The borders and coordination official, who is the Dawla’s general coordination official and is connected to al-Jowlani, is from the mujahidin in Iraq.

Aleppo’s general military official is from Iraq, and Aleppo’s deputy governor is from Iraq.

The Jabha’s general administrator is from Iraq.

Idlib city’s general military official is from the mujahidin in Iraq.

The head of research and military development is from the mujahidin in Iraq.

Aleppo city’s general security official is from Iraq.

The covert units that have worked inside Raqqa city and laid the ground for its liberation were from Iraq.

The head of military manufacturing is Iraqi and is the one who currently makes missiles.

All these people were sent by order of Shaikh Abu Bakr (May God protect him) to work in al-Sham and strengthen Jabhat al-Nusra’s pillars, and there isn’t one among them who doesn’t follow al-Jowlani’s orders…” 29

Now, convince us, that these seasoned ISIS officials that were deployed with al-Sharaa to Syria from Iraq in 2011 did not wear robes or execute hostages.

Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad was not in the picture. Foreigners illegally on Syrian soil that the government arrested were those that were joining the armed groups seeking to overthrow it.

Interested parties appear to be keeping up the (probable) fiction that Austin Tice is either still alive or that he was held by al-Assad and was executed by the government. Neither scenario fits.

A recent BBC report citing former Syrian colonel, Bassam al-Hassan, reported the claim that al-Assad had executed Tice. Not only this has been rejected by Austin Tice’s family who prefer to believe he is still alive and will yet materialise, others can see behind the smoke screen: here is yet another attempt to blame al-Assad for anything and everything. He is not there to say otherwise. 28

A recent podcast claimed by CBS to add to the story adds nothing useful or new at all. Like the BBC report it too focuses on Bassam al-Hassan.29

Most unusually for someone sanctioned by the West, Bassam al-Hassan reportedly met with CIA and FBI agents at the US Embassy complex in Beirut: “Western intelligence sources familiar with the details of Al Hassan’s claim that President Assad gave the order to kill Mr Tice are sceptical that he would directly give such an instruction, as he is known for having mechanisms for distancing himself from such actions” the BBC managed to get in. 30 It is more likely that the Americans were trying to do a deal with the defector to shift the culpability for Tice’s demise onto Assad’s shoulders by positioning one of his (former) elite as the mouthpiece – just as with the fake claims used against Saddam Hussein by Curveball and the like. 31

As Theo Padnos also observes: “There’s another guy, a certain Safwan Bahloul 32, quoted in a recent Washington Post story about Tice. According to him, the Austin Tice mountain video thing was indeed a regime production. Um…if that’s true, it would have required cars, costumes, actors, a trip out into the countryside. The Syrian government had never done anything like this. But let’s say they did. Could you find out a bit more about this film production? Talk to the costume guy? The actors? Where was it filmed exactly? The Post did have a reporter in Damascus apparently. If the person was doing her job which she wasn’t, she would have looked into this.”33

Complicit from the outset in helping to bring Assad down, including through the chemical weapons falsehood, (the Douma incident was facilitated by the White Helmets),34 think tanks are not trustworthy sources. They should re-examine the leaked video showing Austin Tice in extremsis and the people who kidnapped him who are now running Syria. Strongly criticised for grave human rights abuses from the outset, a useful document produced by the Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR) on 31 January 2022, The Most Notable Haya’t Tahrir al-Sham Violations Since the Establishment of al-Nusra to Date catalogues the crimes.35

Now they are in it for the cash.

Back to the video evidence

Austin Tice’s actual moment of execution has not been leaked but it is implied through the merciless body language of the jihadists as they thrust him carelessly onward to the rocky elevated site in the wilderness they controlled; Austin is about to be sacrificed, and they have told him so. His terrified reaction was, ‘Oh Jesus, Oh Jesus.’ (Jeez!). It is implied by the unrelenting cries of Allahu Akhbar – a cry characteristic of extremists when carrying out attacks or massacres, the most recent rounds of killings of Alawites, Christians and Druze in Syria. 36

The sad irony of seeking help from Ahmed al-Sharaa

In blind faith, Austin Tice’s mother, Debra, recently sought the help of the former leader of Al Qaeda in Syria, now running Damascus, to find her son. She reportedly said, “During my time in Damascus, I have been privileged to meet with the new leadership of Syria. It was so wonderful to learn that they are dedicated and determined to bring home my son.” She also professed her faith in the sincerity of Donald Trump. 38 39

1 Sheri Laizer is the author of Martyrs, Traitors & Patriots – Kurdistan After the Gulf War, Zed Books, 1996, Into Kurdistan – Frontiers Under Fire, Zed Books, 1991, and two forthcoming titles, Iraq & the Middle East Conflagration, and Stealing Syria: From ISIS & the Hijacking of the Arab Spring to the Betrayal of Bashar al-Assad.
2 Theo Padnos (Peter Theo Curtis) is the author of Blindfold: A Memoir of Capture, Torture and Enlightenment, Scribner, February 2021, Undercover Muslim: A Journey into Yemen, Random House, 2011, etc.
3 https://kurdistanmonitor.org/tom-barrack-ubako-and-the-shadow-economy-of-syrian-reconstruction
4 On the YouTube footage dubbed Austin Tice is Alive he was still alive, but for how much longer? Had he jst been told he was about to be executed, and hence his reaction?
5 In the sequence at 0.21 a local landmark is visible.
6 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MUwrEdDy1m0 – A cut version of what was leaked to YouTube
7 The 2015 book, ISIS – Inside the Army of Terror details at pages 112-113 citing Ali Mamlouk from a meeting in February 2010 between the USSD’s Coordinator for Counter terrorism and the Syrian Vice Foreign Minister, Faisal al-Miqdad.
8 https://ctc.westpoint.edu/jihadi-counterterrorism-hayat-tahrir-al-sham-versus-the-islamic-state/
9 https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/syriasource/nusra-front-accuses-us-of-betraying-syrian-revolution-calls-for-continuing-jihad/
10 https://x.com/Conflicts/status/783037731672846336
11 https://english.iswnews.com/34422/assassination-of-second-in-command-of-tahrir-al-sham-in-northern-syria/ Others included Saudi national, Dr Abdullah al-Muhaisyni and Abu Ahmad Zakour.
12 Blindfold: A Memoir of Capture, Torture and Enlightenment by Theo Padnos, Scribner, February 2021.
13 Ibid.
14 https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2014/08/24/342943833/al-qaidas-syrian-affiliate-frees-u-s-journalist-held-since-2012
15 https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/syria-militants-austin-tice-1235214331/
16 https://www.wbur.org/hereandnow/2021/02/16/theo-padnos-blindfold-memoir
17 https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2021/05/theo-padnos-blindfold/618402/
18 https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/07/06/five-hostages
19 https://www.texasmonthly.com/articles/the-road-to-damascus/
20 https://news.rice.edu/news/2022/abducted-journalist-austin-tice-named-james-baker-iii-prize-excellence-leadership-honoree
21 Ibid.
22 https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/2788-syria-and-neoconservative-agenda
23 The Road to 9/11: Wealth, Empire, and the Future of America, Peter Dale Scott, University of California Press, 2008, p. 192
24 https://ikurd.net/?s=Trump+attacks+Iran+without+congressional+approval
25 https://www.france24.com/fr/20140909-rebelles-vendu-steven-sotloff-famille-otage-etat-islamique-decapitation-syrie
26 Op. Cit, The New Yorker
27 https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/pr/isis-militants-charged-deaths-americans-syria
28 https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cvg72g960pxo
29 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yERqa7tSmpU Gareth Browne tries to blame Assad.
30 https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cvg72g960pxo
31 https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/feb/15/curveball-iraqi-fantasist-cia-saddam
32 See: General Safwan Habib Bahloul https://x.com/Amandalavan1/status/1878475271185064187
33 Personal communication, August 14, 2025
34 See my article https://ikurd.net/syria-the-wests-red-line-2023-09-22
35 https://snhr.org/blog/2022/01/31/57274/
36 https://ikurd.net/syrias-massacres-christians-alawites-2025-06-26
37 In an Amnesty International report published in July 2016, the al-Nusra Front was accused of torture, child abduction, and summary execution.
38 https://thehill.com/homenews/media/5096087-austin-tice-mother-syria-trump-al-sharaa/
39 https://hostageaid.org/hostage-aid-debra-tice-meet-with-new-syrian-leader-mr-ahmad-al-sharaa/

Sheri Laizer, a Middle East and North African expert specialist and well known commentator on the Kurdish issue. She is a senior contributing writer for iKurd.net. More about Sheri Laizer see below.

The opinions are those of the writer and do not necessarily represent the views of iKurd.net or its editors.

Copyright © 2025 Sheri Laizer, iKurd.net. All rights reserved

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