The Islamic State terrorists have been wiped out in Syria but they have been replaced with another terrorist organization.

The Islamic State terrorists have been wiped out in Syria but they have been replaced with another terrorist organization. These deranged fucktards for Allah call themselves "Hayat Tahrir al-Sham".

Syria can't be fixed. Muslim terrorism can't be fixed. America has wasted enough taxpayer money and enough American lives in never ending religious wars. It's time to get out and just watch Muslim scum kill each other.

It would be easy to prevent terrorism in America without wasting American lives in religious wars. Just don't let Muslim scum get in. No exceptions.

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Wikipedia - Casualties of the Syrian Civil War

Estimates of deaths in the Syrian Civil War, per opposition activist groups, vary between 353,593 and 498,593.[1] On 23 April 2016, the United Nations and Arab League Envoy to Syria put out an estimate of 400,000 that had died in the war.[2]

UNICEF reported that over 500 children had been killed by early February 2012.[3][4] Another 400 children were reportedly arrested and tortured in Syrian prisons.[5][6] Both claims were contested by the Syrian government.[7] The United Nations stated that by the end of April 2014, 8,803 children had been killed,[8] while the Oxford Research Group said that a total of 11,420 children died in the conflict by late November 2013.[9] By mid-March 2018, the opposition activist group Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) reported the number of children killed in the conflict had risen to 19,811, while at the same time 12,513 women were also killed.[1]

Additionally, over 600 detainees and political prisoners died under torture by the start of 2012.[10] By February 2017, Amnesty International estimated between 5,000 and 13,000 people had been executed in government prisons.[11]

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Wall Street Journal - As Islamic State Fades in Syria, Another Militant Group Takes Root. Idlib extremists vow to conquer Damascus and impose Shariah as U.S. weighs quick pullout.

By Sune Engel Rasmussen April 18, 2018 182 COMMENTS

A new and dangerous extremist group spawned from al Qaeda is consolidating power in northwestern Syria, while the U.S. has focused on fighting remnants of Islamic State elsewhere in the country and striking the Assad regime’s chemical-weapons facilities.

Since surfacing as the country’s most potent militant group, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham has battled Western-backed rebel groups to extend its control across Idlib province, enforcing its version of Shariah and raising funds by taxing flows of people and goods.

The group’s leader, Abu Mohammad al-Julani, a former al Qaeda fighter, has vowed to conquer Damascus and impose Islamic rule across Syria. in a January speech, he exhorted followers to engage in “a war of ideas, a war of minds, a war of wills, a war of perseverance,” according to the SITE Intel Group.

Thousands of fighters with the group—an offshoot of the Nusra Front, al Qaeda’s former Syrian affiliate—have dug in around Idlib, analysts say, as the U.S. concentrates on Syria’s other battles and moves toward what President Donald Trump has said would be a quick exit from Syria.

“The area seems to be out of focus for Western powers,” said Hassan Hassan, a Washington-based analyst with the Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy, a think tank. “The jihadis are having a honeymoon there.”

The group has also fought fiercely against adversaries. In February, after four months of fighting, it announced the surrender of Islamic State cells it defeated in Idlib. In March, it claimed the capture of about 25 villages in Aleppo and Idlib provinces, capturing tanks and armored vehicles.

This month, the group has been fighting Syrian government forces with artillery and snipers in Homs, Hama and Aleppo.

In areas under its control, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham has set up a religious police force similar to that of Islamic State, residents say. It initially rewarded children with sweets for memorizing the Quran, but soon moved to breaking hookah pipes as part of a smoking ban and ordering clothes shops to cover heads of mannequins. Beauty salons were told to ditch makeup, Idlib residents say.

In its propaganda, the group likens Syria to a frail ship that can be kept afloat only by Islamic rule of law. Shariah ensures that “the ship doesn’t sink,” goes a slogan of the group. Griping of shortages under its rule, residents retort: “There is no water, so the ship can’t sink.”

The group has jailed men and women who socialize without being related, residents say, and closed a university in the town of al-Dana late last year because it held mixed-gender classes. In the town of Saraqeb, where residents last year faced down threats from extremists and held the first direct elections in Syria since 1953, the group has seized control of the local council.

“Yes, we are a conservative society, but these actions are very extreme,” one young resident of Idlib said.

Compounding the anarchy in Idlib has been the recent arrival of nearly 50,000 people, including rebels, from Eastern Ghouta outside Damascus, the scene of a brutal crackdown by the regime of Bashar al-Assad.

The new arrivals have exacerbated a humanitarian crisis in Idlib, already home to about a million internally displaced Syrians. The poor conditions and lack of jobs has proved fertile ground for the recruiting efforts of extremist groups, which promise to pay anyone willing to fight for a living wage.

For now, the Syrian regime has been fixated on crushing smaller pockets of fighters, including with the suspected use of chemical weapons in Eastern Ghouta on April 7, an attack that killed dozens of civilians. But Damascus is now expected to eventually turn its attention to the high concentration of militants in Idlib in what could be as bloody a fight as the battle for Aleppo, which fell in 2016.

A week after the apparent chemical-weapons strike, U.S. President Donald Trump ordered military strikes on several regime targets alongside British and French allies. The attack hit facilities connected with Syria’s chemical-weapons program and was unlikely to diminish the regime’s conventional capabilities.

Mr. Trump had days before vowed a drawdown of U.S. troops, with Islamic State on the verge of defeat. After the weekend’s strikes his administration stepped up efforts to replace the U.S. military’s 2,000-strong contingent in Syria with troops from allied Middle Eastern countries.

Meanwhile, some U.S. officials have expressed worries over the resilience of other extremist groups now supplanting Islamic State. Brett McGurk, presidential envoy to the international coalition fighting Islamic State, has called Idlib “the largest al Qaeda safe haven since 9/11.”

U.S. troops in Syria are mostly focused on eastern Syria, joining Kurdish and other fighters battling the shrinking pockets of Islamic State militants. Turkey has been fixated on preventing a Kurdish militia that it considers terrorists from expanding on its southern border.

As a result, a hodgepodge of armed groups, many with extremist agendas, have thrived in Idlib, to the detriment of other forces opposing the Assad regime. “The space for moderate opposition continues to close in the northwest,” said a senior Western official who tracks Syria closely.

Hayat Tahrir al-Sham now seeks to control important administrative sectors across Idlib through a body it calls the Salvation Government, which generates revenue by charging residents for electricity and water. HTS also controls the Bab al-Hawa border crossing with Turkey.

Members of HTS couldn’t be reached for comment.

“The Salvation Government tries to win people’s hearts by providing services,” one 27-year-old man in Idlib said. “At the same time, they try to dominate people.”

Some have pushed back cautiously. University students attend classes in the open. Hospitals have threatened to close if the group interferes in their work. Among its many critics, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham is privately known as “Hitish,” an echo of the pejorative acronym “Daesh” that people disdainfully use for Islamic State.

—Nour Al Akraa and Nazih Osseiran contributed to this article.

Appeared in the April 19, 2018, print edition as 'New Islamist Group Rises in Syria.'