Karim Franceschi Profile picture
Jul 21 11 tweets 4 min read Read on X
Hard to believe, but they held. The jihadist wave came like a flood, trucks full of zealots chanting for blood, believing Suwayda would fall by nightfall. But the Druze didn’t scatter. They stood. They bled. They fought for every inch. A thread, 🧵 Image
2/ They poured in from all over [MAP] — until the retreat order came. From none other than Ahmed al-Sharaa, the self-declared “President of Syria.”
A man who claimed he had no control over the fighters. One order, and the entire murderous circus packed up. The purge ended early. Image
3/ The “experts”, mostly Sharaa (Jolani) apologists in nicer suits, called Sheikh Hikmat al-Hijri a troublemaker. Said he had no base. Yet the only ones still holding the line in Suwayda followed him. You don’t get that kind of defense without real backing, or a real cause. Image
4/ Even when faced with betrayal and calls for surrender, they fought... nine days, hundreds killed on both sides. But not thousands. Not another coastal massacre. Not this time. The difference?
They were armed. And they refused to bend the knee.
No matter the odds.
5/ That’s what made the difference. That’s what changed the equation.
Even Israeli airpower, cautious, late, and silent again, wouldn’t have moved without first witnessing valor.
States don’t act on morality. They act on pressure.
And Suwayda made them feel it.
6/ The Druze paid in full.
Regime forces gambled on tribal mobs and the sheer weight of the rabble, bused in by the thousands, to make up for the absence of tanks, armor, and artillery.
All to keep up appearances, to avoid an Israeli response.
But it wasn’t enough.
7/ They had drones, Starlink, veteran fighters in Bedouin garb, and overwhelming numbers, against a resistance under siege, cut off from water, power, internet, and phone signal by Damascus.
And still, they couldn’t advance.
Suwayda stood.
8/ You don’t get many stands like this in war. Most die quietly, disappeared in footnotes, replaced by lies. But the Druze armed resistance forced the world to look, to flinch, to speak. Image
9/ This wasn’t just resistance. It was a lesson in dignity, and honour, forged in blood, outside history’s polite grammar. Image
10/ And they came out on top.
The human wave of jihadis, for all their rhetoric, crashed against a Druze mountain that refused to move, and shattered like waves on rock.
What remains of their image of invincibility, built on the walking carcass of the Assad regime?
Foam.
And now it’s official: the al-Qaeda–linked “Interim Syrian Govt” has surrendered.

✅Militias expelled
✅ Regime forces banned
✅ Convoys blocked
✅ Aid allowed

Intl. inquiry coming

They won’t rewrite this like they did the coastal massacre. Suwayda will be remembered. /END

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More from @karimfranceschi

Sep 28
ASSESSMENT OF HAMAS VIDEO RELEASE
1/
Drawing on my experience as a former commander with the YPG International Battalion during the Raqqa campaign, I assess several key elements in this video.

2/
Much of the operational picture is deliberately absent. For example, sniper teams are not shown but were almost certainly employed to suppress defenses around the target site — a construction facility likely serving as a forward IDF outpost.
3/
The terrain provided unobstructed 360-degree visibility, and it is plausible that 20 or more IDF personnel were stationed there.
Read 12 tweets
Sep 27
1/ Syria is on the brink of another Civil War.
This week has been the bloodiest in months for the SDF, and the pressure is mounting. Image
2/ On 24 Sept, in Deir Hafer, Syrian government forces used two suicide drones and sustained artillery fire on SDF positions and nearby villages.

Casualties: 1 SDF fighter killed, 8 civilians killed (including children), 4 children wounded.
3/ On 25 Sept, in al-Bahra al-Wusta (east of Deir Ezzor), ISIS militants attacked an SDF position.

Casualties: 5 SDF fighters killed, 1 wounded.
Read 9 tweets
Sep 18
That’s me in 2016, one of the founders of the Antifascist Internationalist Tabur—later dubbed Antifa Platoon by Rolling Stone magazine.

Now, as Trump announces he’s designating Antifa a major terrorist organization, I want to share my own experience. You be the judge. Thread 🧵 Image
As an Italian antifascist, I carry a heritage. When I sang “Bella Ciao” with my Kurdish comrades during the siege of Kobani, I was using the same words my father had sung on the hills of Tuscany with his partisan comrades as they fought against the Nazi-Fascist occupation. /2 Image
We fought within the "The Global Coalition To Defeat ISIS". Despite media sensationalism, in reality we were little more than a small fire team within the YPG, flying the Antifa flag for a photo op. We disbanded around the time of the Tabqa battle, which was our first real engagement. /3Image
Read 16 tweets
Aug 31
In the month of August, the Turkish Armed Forces (TAF) executed twelve combined strike operations against PKK positions in northern Iraq.

Why is this happening against the backdrop of the ongoing peace process?

A thread—🧵
These operations incorporated air-delivered munitions and artillery fire support. Simultaneously, persistent unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) activity was observed across the battlespace, in support of strike coordination & damage assessment. [HPG sources]

/2
During this period, a Turkish parliamentary commission was already in motion to formalize political engagement, while the PKK undertook visible steps toward de-escalation, including a disarmament ceremony and its formal declaration of organizational dissolution.

/3
Read 7 tweets
Aug 23
Picture a bar in Nepal. Modam Kumal serves tea, makes barely enough to live. Then comes the offer: “security job in Russia.” A contract he can’t read. He signs. Weeks later, he’s not guarding doors in Moscow — he’s crawling through mud in Donetsk, under fire. Image
Now imagine Sierra Leone. Richard Kanu sells what he can, pays $3,000 for a visa. A new beginning, he thinks. Instead, recruiters hand him a rifle. His dream of wages becomes a trench. His labor — stolen, militarized. 2/8
Flash to Kyiv. A man walks to work, papers in his pocket. A van pulls up. Draft officers grab him, no warning. This isn’t rumor — it has a name: “busification.” A one-way ride from the street to a barracks, from routine life to the front. 3/8
Read 8 tweets
Aug 21
Mehmet is yet another Kurdish activist getting extradited by Germany under the absurd Art. 302 of the Turkish penal code (“disrupting the state’s unity”). Why is Europe outsourcing its borders to Erdogan’s Clepto Sultanate — a regime breaking records for jailing journalists? 🧵 Image
Italy extradited him to Germany on the promise he’d never be sent on to a third country—and his Italian asylum case is still pending. Now, in just 7 days, Berlin plans to hand him to Turkey, where Art. 302 = life without parole. /2
Germany banned the PKK in ’93. Then came §129b: a law to charge “membership in a foreign terrorist organization.” No act of violence required—being Kurdish, organizing, even raising a flag can be enough. That’s how you criminalize a people without firing a shot. /3
Read 10 tweets

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