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- Hacker News
- Y'all-Queda making deals with Al Queda would not have been on my bingo card a decade agoby JohnTHaller
- [dupe] Discussion on source: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49430240
- There's not much discussion there. That submission was raided by comments from new accounts and it got penalized by HN.by imadj
- Hopefully the Syrian state officials are not corrupt and sign the best deals for the country, rather than siphoning off bribes for themselves and selling Syria to foreign companies who extract egregious profits.by fsuts
- >are not corrupt
They got promoted and de-sanctioned precisely because they are corrupt and worse, actual terrorists.
by coldtea - > Hopefully the Syrian state officials are not corrupt
They're already literally Al-Qaeda islamist terrorists. Imagine if, moreover, they were also corrupt.
Rotten to the core doesn't begin to describe such individuals. They've got buddies at the helm in Iran: they slaughtered 30 000 unarmed civilians and publicly hung athletes... In January 2026.
Wonderful people.
- Many essential tech services like ChatGPT, Gemini, Coursera, Udemy, Stripe and many others are still sadly unavailable to people in Syria even though sanctions have been lifted and the legal barrier no longer exists.by imadj
- Woah, what a loss. I'm pretty sure that's one of the worst problems they are going through as a country /sby gonzalohm
- Give them some time - the rescinding of the designation only just happened.
- They don't have food and safety, ChatGPT, Gemini, Coursera, Udemy, Stripe are way low on their priorities.by coldtea
- > Many essential tech services like ChatGPT, Gemini, Coursera, Udemy, Stripe and many others are still sadly unavailable to people in Syria
But this is a wonderfull thing. We really do not need this crap in EU, but here we are, trying to be "independent".
by hulitu - Sounds like a perfect opportunity for alternatives (like Chinese models) to move inby usrnm
- Stretching the definition of the word "essential" there.by Blazara
- Great news! I'm sure when the students had an uprising (funded by US spy agencies) to overthrow Asad, this is exactly who they wanted- an Al Queda fundamentalist to rule over them! Another win for the West!by wutangson1
- Please let's wait and see a bit before judging him a 'fundamentalist'.
He joined Al-Qaida when he was young, during the US invasion of Iraq, and spent years in a US prison where he grew his network, link to a particular faction of Al-Qaida that isn't that religious (ok, Islam is weird and way too hard to explain in a digression, let's leave it at 'not that religious' to avoid a 500 lines tunnel).
Kurds were extremely skeptical at first, but it seems at least some are happy with how things are proceeding (they are more involved than expected in drafting the new constitution that will take place in 2030).
It might sadly go to a dual government like Iran use to have before 2026, which is hurting my atheist self, but let's be honest, a dual government in the region is way, way more democracy than expected.
by orwin - > Ahmed Hussein al-Sharaa[g] ... has served as the president of Syria since 2025.
> Born in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, to a Syrian Sunni Muslim family from the Golan Heights, he grew up in Syria's capital, Damascus. Al-Sharaa joined al-Qaeda in Iraq shortly before the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq and fought for two years in the Iraqi insurgency. From 2005 to 2011, he was captured and imprisoned by American and Iraqi forces. His release coincided with the onset of the Syrian revolution against the Ba'athist regime of Bashar al-Assad. In 2012, with the support of al-Qaeda's central command, al-Sharaa founded Jabhat al-Nusra, also known as al-Nusra Front, to depose the Assad regime.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ahmed_al-Sharaa#Split_from_al-...
You have to jog to keep up with politics in the Middle East.
by roenxi - Most of IS is now in Europe. Thanks USA.by MachineMan
- Al'Qaeda head-chopper with a $10 million bounty on him will obviously be the Trump/Israel favorite - as it keeps Syria unstable. And they can revert the stay of execution and bomb Syria anytime they like.
Might want to read this: https://edition.cnn.com/interactive/asequals/syria-army-comm...
by lenkite - I'm sure his CIA handlers showed him an ominous powerpoint of all the Taliban officials circa 2001 and where they are now (hint: basically all dead) and made it quite clear that you don't screw around too much externally if you want to keep your job.
That whole region is a real fucking shame. Iran, Syria, Lebanon, they all could've been doing at least as well as Turkey if history had taken a different path.