By: Kayhan Int’l Staff Writer

 

Yesterday Saudi Arabia had feted President Bashar al-Assad and welcomed him back to the Arab League with promises of billions of dollars of aid for development of Syria, while reaffirming opposition to the Idlib-based groups, including Jabhat an-Nusra by defining it and its leadership as terrorists.

Today Riyadh is playing host to an-Nusra leader Ahmed ash-Sharaa as Syria’s new president on his first foreign trip since taking the place of the exiled al-Assad in the presidential palace in Damascus, with neither the terrorist tag attached to him nor the 10 million dollar reward on his head by the US.

How this sudden change of heart by Washington and its Arab clients? Did Ahmed ash-Sharaa repent of his decades long ties with al-Qae’da, Daesh, and the other macabrely murderous outfits of the Syrian civil war that led to the death of half-a-million people and displacement of millions of others?

Did Jabhat an-Nusra, which now rules in the Syrian capital under the name of Ha’yat Tahrir ash-Shaam (HTS) apologized to the US, whose Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Barbara A. Leaf held a cordial meeting with Ahmed ash-Sharaa recently in Damascus?

Were the unrepresentative Arab regimes and their masters in Washington trying to deceive public opinion all these years while labelling Daesh and its associates ‘terrorists’, but maintaining secret ties with them because of their animosity towards Bashar al-Assad for his ties with the Islamic Republic of Iran and refusal to compromise with Israel?

It is the job of impartial political analysts to probe these points and present the facts to the public, interested in knowing what the words ‘terrorism’ and ‘terrorists’ really mean, and why Ahmed ash-Sharaa said he does not have any axe to grind against the Zionist mass murderers of the Palestinian people.

What we understand is that in the American jargon whoever is opposed to Israel’s enslavement of the Palestinians and domination of West Asia is terrorist, and whoever decides to tow the US line is not.

In other words, any person or country ready to kowtow to the US and Israel is automatically removed from the list of terrorism, and even the economic sanctions and rewards for persons are cancelled.

This is Pax Americana or more properly Pax Zionia for West Asia; hence the Saudis’ talks with the US and European regimes to help lift economic sanctions imposed on the Syrian Arab Republic during the now ended 54-year rule of the anti-Zionist and pro-Palestinian al-Assad father and son elected presidencies.