Thread by @MaxBlumenthal

Here I am near the border of Jobar, a neighborhood east of Damascus occupied by the Saudi-backed Jaish al-Islam until early last year. Militia control extended close to the tall building behind me. The one I’m in is in a mostly Christian area was hit by a mortar in April 2018.

I visited Emile Aboud, director of a budding cultural center here. Aboud worked with youth on art projects during the war. “Our goal was to resist the dead culture of the fundamentalists,” he said, “and to give the youth a vision beyond the war.”

Like everyone I’ve spoken to so far in Damascus, Aboud described US sanctions as the next stage in the war, with the goal of preventing Syria from rebuilding. He laments the rise of a nouveau riche that made a business off the war while average ppl that resisted lost everything.

Aboud said that after the experience with foreign backed religious extremists like Jaish al-Islam, Nusra etc, youth in Damascus are more socially progressive than ever. Co-habitation is normal now & 40 new bars have opened in the old city.

Posters honoring Syrian army soldiers killed in the war against foreign backed extremists are everywhere in Damascus. 60,000+ died on the government side, according to pro-opposition SOHR.

In the upper left is a poster of George, a soldier who was killed in the war. His image is atop La Mariontte, bar in the old city of Damascus, because his mother lives next door.

I ate a meal at Elissar, beautiful restaurant in old Damascus. The waiter said it was a favorite spot of Robert Ford, the fake US ambassador who oversaw the arming of “rebels.” Will never understand US officials who enjoyed Damascus & worked to destroy it. alternet.org/grayzone-proje…

This is the tomb of Roqayyah, the daughter of Imam Hussein. A Shia man I spoke to inside said the shrine would have been destroyed if the foreign backed fundamentalists had gotten inside Damascus.

I’m in Damascus at GTFU conference of trade unions. Labor leaders from the US, Canada, Latin America, Italy, Czech Republic, Korea & Middle East are here. I’ll update this thread in a few hours with highlights from the conference & what I’ve gathered in the street so far.

I’m here in hopes of providing a few days of perspective from inside the territory where most Syrians live, one that has been ignored by a Western media that has provided the mood music for a ruthless proxy war and now, an economic war.

With Ibrahim Darwish, a hospital worker who was hit by a “rebel” mortar on his way home from work. He woke up in a hospital missing his right leg. “There were mortars falling on my neighborhood but I gave my promise to serve my country no matter what,” he said.

This is Hadeel Khader. Her father was a civil servant in Syria’s electricity company. In July 2012, he was killed in a bombing by foreign backed insurgents in the Damascus countryside. “This was a war against Syria and its laborers,” Hadil said.