What could be seen in the video footage was a nearby large-scale complex of buildings, not visible on any available free satellite image, offered by Google, Bing or Yandex. First, I thought the claim and the location was not accurate but then I realized that in fact, between the “Youth Housing Complex” and the “Automated Bakery”, clearly visible in the footage, a 16 hectares area was developed to what Syrian activists told me was named the “New Market” or “New Trade Center” of al-Bab.
To understand my speechlessness and the exposure of Assad-ISIS business ties behind that finding, one has to look into the history of al-Bab during the Syrian war. The city was widely untouched by the conflict until 2012 when rebels managed to oust regime forces until July that year. But the liberation lasted not long. In the summer of 2013, ISIS militants started to build a presence in the town and in November, they took over the city.
Why is this relevant?
Satellite imagery shows that the street network for the “New Market” project was already established by the Assad regime in 2009. At the same time, not one single building was placed between those streets for five years. In August 2014, the area looked still the same with a couple of building materials being located across the streets. What happened then is another case of intense Assad-ISIS coordination and cooperation despite claims by the Assad regime and its backers Russia and Iran, that they consider ISIS a terror organization, “funded and supplied by the West.”
Over the next 12 months - September 2014 until September 2015 - ISIS realized the long-planned regime design, constructing 18 buildings, 16 of them market halls. Fee-required satellite imagery material from “Terra Server” proves that what was not possible under regime rule for four years and rebel rule for one year was realized in a cooperation between ISIS and Assad within less than 12 months.
It remains to be seen what exactly was behind the joint project of ISIS and Assad in al-Bab, but the exposure is another piece in the puzzle, proving the “all-out war of the Assad regime against ISIS” to be mere propaganda. Al-Bab is located roughly halfway between the always regime-held parts of Aleppo province and oil-rich Raqqa province, long held mainly by ISIS.
The regime and its international backers (including those in the West) always called Assad-ISIS ties a smear campaign, aimed at discrediting the regime.
The truth is that Assad was and is ISIS’ best business partner and largest source of income. The Euphrates Shield footage-based exposure of the mutually planned and executed al-Bab “New Market” project in 2015, a year of alleged exclusive hostilities between Assad and ISIS, is another proof of the close ties between the two terrorist entities.
-------------------------------------------------
Julian Röpcke is a newspaper editor and political commentator, based in the German capital, Berlin. With a degree in Political Geography and Sociology, Mr. Röpcke started analyzing geopolitical conflicts after the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003. He covered the “Arab Spring” as well as the evolving conflicts in Syria and Ukraine from their very beginning. Julian Röpcke works for BILD, the largest newspaper and leading online news portal in Germany (@JulianRoepcke).
التعليقات (0)