Karim Franceschi Profile picture
Mar 8 12 tweets 4 min read Read on X
1/ On March 7, 2025, an Alawite hecatomb: humanity butchered in blood-soaked rituals, perpetrators proudly filming their infernal spectacle. Women wailed in horror as children were dragged from homes and slaughtered alongside husbands, fathers, and grandfathers.
2/ Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, absurdly recognized internationally as Syria’s "legitimate security forces," proudly broadcasted their atrocities: civilians forced to crawl, bark, beg—until bullets silenced their pleas; women’s and children’s bodies piled into a grotesque monument.
3/ Yet, mainstream media sanitized this massacre into oblivion. AP News callously reduced it: "Clashes in Syria between government forces and Assad loyalists kill more than 200." Victims erased, slaughter obscured, murderers legitimized. Image
4/ Al Jazeera perpetuated the lie, blandly labeling a genocidal bloodletting as mere "clashes," deliberately obscuring the truth, and hiding accountability behind a veil of journalistic cowardice. Image
5/ The United Nations, in willful blindness, ignored today's apocalypse, instead fixating on geopolitical ghost stories: "Post-Assad Syria faces critical test over eliminating chemical weapons." Detached from reality, morally bankrupt in response to atrocity. Image
6/ Amnesty International—purported champions of human rights—remain deafeningly silent. Thousands of recent posts, yet not one acknowledges the March 7 massacre. Human rights selectively upheld; inconvenient slaughter ignored. Image
7/ The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights cloaked atrocities in deliberate ambiguity: "240 people were killed, died and were martyred in different circumstances." No justice, no dignity, only bureaucratic neutrality toward genocide. Image
8/ The pinnacle of hypocrisy emerges in the international community's embrace of murderers. German FM @ABaerbock , self-proclaimed advocate of a "feminist foreign policy," eagerly legitimized HTS leader Jolani—even after his extremist disdain publicly rejected her handshake. Image
9/ Two Months before this slaughter, Baerbock brazenly urged Syrian minorities to disarm and surrender to Jolani. Countless women now bear witness to unimaginable horrors, having watched their beloved slaughtered by the very force Baerbock endorsed. Image
10/ Today, on International Women’s Day, Alawite mothers mourn in unspeakable anguish, their children butchered, their husbands and sons erased in Syria’s bloodiest massacre in years. This was not just mass murder—it was the calculated destruction of a people’s continuity, the annihilation of a generation essential to their survival.
11/ This was genocide not only by extermination but by erasure—designed to sever identity, and strip the victims even of the dignity of remembrance.

Yet the greatest crime is not just the butchery itself, but its concealment. Sanitized by media euphemisms and diplomatic cowardice, this atrocity has been washed of its horror, its perpetrators granted legitimacy by an international community whose silence is complicity.
12/ And that silence has been understood as approval. The massacre has not stopped. At this very moment, a mass killing operation is underway in the Qusour neighborhood of Baniyas, where Alawite and Christian families are being dragged from their homes and executed in the streets. Among the dead, once again, are children.

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More from @karimfranceschi

May 29
🧵Everything You Know About Sykes-Picot Is Wrong

"The Middle East was carved up by the Sykes-Picot Agreement in 1916."

We’ve all heard it. But what if that's just a convenient myth? Citing historian Ayşe Hür (@HurAyse) a deep dive in the most misunderstood map in modern history.Image
1/
First, what was the Sykes-Picot Agreement?
A secret deal in 1916 between Britain & France (with Russia's blessing) to carve up Ottoman lands into spheres of influence—not to draw state borders. Image
2/
This agreement didn’t create modern countries.
It divided control zones like this:
🇬🇧 Britain: Iraq, Jordan, southern Palestine
🇫🇷 France: Syria, Lebanon
Some regions like Mosul & Kurdistan were hotly debated.
Still, no final borders were set. Image
Read 17 tweets
May 27
🧵Part 2: From Thesis to Warfare

🎓 1999: Thesis
🕵️‍♂️ 2010–2023: Execution

As a cadet Fidan discussed his thesis as a theoretical vision, as a MIT chief during the Syrian CW, he put it into practice-- building a bloody transnational instrument of hegemony. ⬇️ Image
2/ In his thesis, Fidan praises the CIA for mastering covert empire-building; citing regime change, propaganda, and economic sabotage as successes worth copying.

In the same breath he accuses Syria, Greece and Iraq of using the PKK in their own covert actions. Image
3/ A decade later, Fidan’s in charge of MIT.
And what does he do?
Exactly what he outlined: Image
Read 9 tweets
May 27
🧵1/ I managed to get my hands on Hakan Fidan’s 1999 master’s thesis. Erdoğan’s projected successor.

He laid out his strategic doctrine long before his meteoric rise. A roadmap for a new Turkish empire built through intelligence, surveillance, and covert operations. ⬇️ Image
2/ The thesis, titled "Intelligence and Foreign Policy: A Comparison of British, American and Turkish Intelligence Systems", was submitted at Bilkent University. Written in English, it’s shockingly candid about Turkey’s strategic ambitions after the Cold War. Image
3/ At the time, Turkey's intelligence was mostly domestic, reactive, and reliant on NATO. Fidan argued this was outdated. The Cold War had ended. Opportunities had emerged: weaker neighbors, a disintegrated USSR, open markets. Image
Read 10 tweets
May 23
🇸🇾 🇨🇳 [Thread] How China seized Syria’s most strategic port—without firing a shot.

A 30-year deal.
A French shipping firm as front man.
And two weeks later, Trump reverse policy, lifts sanctions and calls the former al Qaeda chief “handsome.”

Here’s the story no one’s telling: Image
2/ May 1st: headlines said a French giant was taking over Syria’s Port of Latakia.

After some digging it turns out CMA CGM is French in name only: In 2013, China dropped €400 million for 49% of CMA’s terminals. Another $1 billion in loans turned it into a Belt & Road weapon. Image
3/ CMA CGM signs a 30-year deal to run, expand, and modernize the Port of Latakia.
€230M investment.
A new deep-water quay.
60/40 revenue split (Syria gets 60, CMA gets 40... for now).
And China, through CMA, gets something bigger: control. Image
Read 6 tweets
May 19
ENDGAME 🧵
A 10-day ultimatum has been issued. the SDF must submit to Damascus, or dissolve. Today, clashes erupted near the Tişrin Dam; just kilometers from Kobani.

This isn’t just a skirmish. This is Clausewitz culminating point of attack: the moment where offensive force must achieve decisive victory or collapse under its own momentum.Image
1/ I’ve written many threads tracing how Ahmed al-Sharaa (Jolani), now declared interim president of Syria with the endorsement of key actors in the imperial core, is navigating the passage from insurgent to head of state. Image
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2/ Every step has been meticulously calculated: The last domino piece is what Weber defined the routinization of charismatic authority, the processes of embedding ones rule in the bureaucratic, symbolic, and international forms that define modern statehood.Image
Read 7 tweets
May 6
🧵1/ Macron is about to welcome Syria’s “new president,” Ahmed al-Sharaa, to Paris.

You might know his name. Not his body count.

Meet al-Jolani, “former” al-Qaeda Emir. While the West cashes in, Syria bleeds — its worst sectarian massacre in a decade. 👇 Image
2/ You know that trope where the villain shaves, puts on a suit, and suddenly he’s in charge?

That’s literally what happened.

Ahmed al-Sharaa is Abu Muhammad al-Jolani, ex–al-Qaeda, ex–jihadist warlord, now rebranded as “Syria’s hope” after Assad’s fall. Image
3/ Once upon a time, Jolani was dropping oaths to bin Laden’s crew.
Now he’s dropping soundbites about */Insert neoliberal friendly gibberish.

It’s like if Walter White killed 10 guys in jail, then ran for mayor because he opened a free bakery.Image
Read 10 tweets

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