Bashar al-Assad has just visited Aleppo for the first time since the reconquest, in 2016, of this bastion of the revolutionary insurgency. The Syrian leader was accompanied by his wife and three children. The elder, named Hafez as his grandfather, the founder of the Assad dynasty, is, Despite its 21 years, already presented as the designated heir . The Syrian dictator even briefly went to the mosque of the Omeyyads of Aleppo, whose emblematic minaret, target of a government bombardment in 2013, still lies in the rubble. Because the reconstruction of the country remains very laborious, the regime refusing to rehabilitate the former rebel districts. The goal is, in the ruins of Syria, to recall what it costs to oppose the despot, but also to avoid encouraging a possible return of potentially protest refugees.
Located a few kilometers south of Damascus, the suburbs of Hajar al-Aswad draws its name from the “black stone” which would have been placed by the prophet Mohammed himself in one of the angles of the Kaaba, the saint of holy of Islam in Mecca. This disadvantaged district was historically populated by Syrian refugees, expelled in 1967 from the Golan Plateau, during the Israeli occupation of these strategic heights. In a community of exile and poverty, he was flanked north of the Palestinian refugee camp in Yarmouk, who became like him, in 2012, a stronghold of resistance to the Assad.
regime
While Yarmouk underwent a ruthless seat in 2013-15, during which nearly two hundred civilians died of hunger, Hajar al-Aswad was the scene of fierce fighting, first between the regime and the insurgents , then between these and the jihadists of Daesh, finally masters of the area, until they were expelled in 2018. These cycles of clashes left Hajar al-Aswad in ruins, a desolation that the Assad regime has practically left In the state.
Lucrative Captagon traffic 2>
The Syrian despot continues to be less concerned with the fate of his compatriots than by the exploitation of the resources essential for the preservation of his regime. The embezzlement of international aid to the population, which has constituted a major spring of such preservation, is now less lucrative for the Assad than Captagon traffic, this amphetamine whose regime has become the main producer in the Middle East.
But the Syrian dictatorship, always inventive when it comes to generating new income, now exploits the manna of the ruins which she herself caused. The end of Hajar al-Aswad’s end of the world has indeed seduced Jackie Chan himself, to the point that the Hong Kong Star of Kung-Fu, who has become one of the most prominent producers in Beijing, decided to turn her next big budget film.
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