Takfiri Terrorists Pushing for a Third Ma'an Massacre?

Adam Larson aka Caustic Logic
March 23, 2017
(imcopmplete) 

Hama offensive: the Islamist multinational forces in Hama province are trying hard to break the pattern of defeat they've suffered lately. In recent days they've overrun several towns and are pushing further on several fronts, including towards the city of Hama itself, and getting dangerously close. Hama has never remotely been overrun by rebels, just much of the provincial countryside. Latest Peto Lucem map (Twitter) shows a bad situation trying to form.

This will be routed, but perhaps not easily. I haven't followed in detail, but will catch up (random prominent link: SyriaDirect report on the advances). In lieu of newsy analysis, some recent history as a backgrounder...

Along the north-eastern immediate front-line area (cropped below), note the villages of Ma'an, Tulaysia, al-Zughba, still holding under government control, but threatened. These (and others, unclear all which) are primarily Alawi (Alawite) villages, maybe sparsely-populated by now, and hopefully with good evacuation plans. The same foreign-sponsored Takfiri terrorists have overrun these villages in the past, and it was horrific and genocidal.

In late 2012, as rebels struggled to create the huge green area shown above, they were frustrated by the holdout areas they say hosted attacks on them, as they expanded towards crucial Morek. In mid-December, they launched the "Ma'an Offensive" to take out this and other Alawi towns. Not to sectarian ... it just had to be done - military strategy. Up to December 23, rebels updated us on their push right up to their stated goal. A fighter jet was shot down. Quietly, Islamists showed off videos of dozens of soldiers and local militiamen slaughtered and dumped outside Zughba. But ... Did they ever take Ma'an? They remain vague.

The SOHR heard and reported with some worry that Islamist rebels did overrun and occupy the town, from Dec. 24-26. Rebels don't confirm. A week later, they announced by the way, there was a massacre in Maan on Dec. 25. Rebels had been there but left, and then regime forces came in, and massacred the few Sunnis in town. As reported to Der Spiegel, in Holocaust-sensitive Germany, "members of the Shabiha militia in the village of Maan, in Hama province, have beheaded 23 people." We suspected there was a 2012 Ma'an massacre (ACLOS page), but no one else reported it (the SOHR didn't have this part reported to them).

In February 2014, they did it again, smashing defenses and raising the black Shihada flag over Ma'an, abducting nearly 100 citizens after executing dozens of others in a 2014 Ma'an massacre. About 40 civilians and 20 soldiers were reportedly killed. As usual, they primarily killed fighting age men, every one they could get their hands on. And they usually count from age 13 up, with a vague or non-existent upper end. No massacre there was reported this time. Instead, most of the dead were apparently laundered as victims of two Shabiha massacres in Sunni towns nearby (26 men and an older boy were shot dead in Souran, and all 17 mixed-family killings happened over in Jalama).

A few others got laundered in different ways. They say regime shelling hit a bus near Tamanah (was in northbound, maybe, fleeing from Ma'an on the one axis they left open for civilians to escape by? Maybe.) After it was hit, rebels in the area boarded it and photographed three women they found with heads sliced apart byt eh "shelling," but looking more like the work of a sword. This is the kind of investigative reporting regime-change supporters rely on for their lists of unacceptable regime crimes.

We have no direct proof, but it's likely the 80 or so hostages, mostly women, children, and elderly, were used as raw material for various alleged attacks by government forces over the following months. Notably, almost every fatal chlorine gas attack rebels phoned in during 2014 was nearby and after the Ma'an raid. Allegedly, these attacks managed to kill just members of "displaced" families. In the first case, the chlorine apparently failed, and they say two immediate deaths (a young girl and an old man) actually died of head wounds from the barrel bomb's impact, but they didn't show these wounds to see if they too might be sword-shaped. 

One detailed report explains the 2014 massacre in Ma'an, plus the little-known 2012 massacre there, as we had noted. (SyriaNews.cc) Now in March, 2017, they're pushing forward in the same area, perhaps more savvy, but also more desperate to deal some major blows to their enemies - the people of Syria. Hopefully there won't be a third Ma'an Massacre. But it wouldn't be surprising if there was such a blatant crime against humanity, and if there is, it will be yet more innocent blood crusting the hands of those criminals sponsoring these genocidal gangs of terrorist mercenaries.