From the October War to Julani’s Puppet State: Half a Century of Manufactured Defeat

Julani can cancel holidays, but he cannot cancel memory. He can abolish Martyrs’ Day, but he cannot unmake the martyrs. History, inconveniently for him, is stubborn.

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When History Repeats as Farce

Every once in a while, I scroll through the latest headlines from Syria and think: We’ve been here before. Different decade, same playbook.

A few days ago, the news broke that Abu Mohammad al-Julani — the man once known as al-Qaeda’s emir in Syria, now rebranded as the “president of New Syria” — abolished two of Syria’s most symbolic national holidays: the October War Day and Martyrs’ Day.

If you’ve followed Syriana Analysis long enough, you know what that means. This is about the deliberate erasure of resistance from national consciousness.

So tonight, I want to step back — way back — to October 1973, when Arab soldiers crossed the Suez Canal and Syrian tanks roared across the Golan Heights. Because if you trace the line of CIA and MI6’s funding pipelines, you see a straight, unbroken chain of political engineering. Different actors, same script.

Part One: 1973 — The War That Shattered the Myth

On October 6, 1973, while Israel was observing Yom Kippur, the Arab armies struck.

Egyptians crossed the Suez Canal, destroying the so-called Bar Lev Line, while Syrian forces surged into the occupied Golan Heights. For the first time in a generation, Arabs were advancing rather than retreating.

In Cairo and Damascus, radios blasted victory songs. In Tel Aviv, panic.
The Israelis had believed their own propaganda — that the Arab armies were incapable of coordinated warfare, that divine favor was a permanent strategic asset.

But that October afternoon, God took the day off.

Egypt’s plan was genius in its simplicity: water pumps blasted through sand embankments, tanks rolled across makeshift bridges, and in six hours, the Egyptian army shattered Israel’s “impregnable” defense line. Meanwhile, on the northern front, Syria’s armored divisions nearly broke through to the Galilee before U.S. intervention tilted the balance.

Washington responded with Operation Nickel Grass, an emergency airlift funneling tens of thousands of tons of military aid to Israel. The Soviet Union countered with shipments to its Arab allies. For a few tense days, the world teetered on the brink of a superpower confrontation.

When the dust settled, the map barely changed, but the psychology did.
The myth of Israeli invincibility was gone.

For the first time since 1948, Israel bled. Its soldiers died, its cities panicked, and its aura of omnipotence cracked.

That, not the territorial lines, was the true victory of 1973.

Two Leaders, Two Choices

From that war came two very different paths.

Anwar Sadat used the momentum of the October War to justify peace with Israel. He argued that Egypt had regained dignity and could now afford to negotiate.

Hafez al-Assad, on the other hand, learned a different lesson: never depend on foreign patrons and never trust Western mediation.

Sadat’s gamble culminated in the Camp David Accords of 1978. He promised Egyptians peace, prosperity, and an end to endless wars. What they got instead was dependency: IMF loans, U.S. aid, and a deep economic restructuring that tied Egypt’s hands.

Yes, the Americans delivered $1.3 billion a year in military assistance — a steady intravenous drip that still flows today. But Egypt’s freedom of action was amputated in the process.

As for Israel, it returned the Sinai but expanded everywhere else.
Peace with Egypt didn’t moderate Zionism; it emboldened it.

Assad chose the opposite. No peace with Israel without the return of the Golan. No betrayal of the Palestinian cause. No normalization for the sake of Western applause.

The price of that defiance was heavy — sanctions, isolation, and a specter of destabilization. But it preserved something money can’t buy: sovereignty.

And that’s when Washington realized it couldn’t seduce Damascus. It would have to pressure it.

The Brotherhood Insurgency: Terror as Diplomacy

Enter the Muslim Brotherhood, Washington and London’s favorite hammer when diplomacy fails.

Between 1979 and 1982, Syria faced a violent insurgency. Car bombs rocked Damascus and Aleppo. Government officials were assassinated. In 1979, Brotherhood militants massacred dozens of Alawite cadets at the Aleppo artillery school. In 1980, they nearly assassinated Assad himself.

Western media, then as now, framed it as an “uprising against dictatorship.”
But declassified CIA assessments tell a different story.

In a 1980 Alert Memorandum, the CIA mused that a “Sunni regime might be able to strengthen its position by attaining an accommodation with Muslim Brotherhood extremists.”

Allow me to translate from bureaucratic language: the Brotherhood could be used as leverage.

MI6 maintained channels with Brotherhood exiles in Jordan and Iraq.
Saudi Arabia bankrolled them under the cover of “Islamic charities.”
Saddam Hussein’s Iraq offered sanctuary.

It was a regional operation disguised as a domestic rebellion.

The timing is almost comedic. Sadat had already signed a peace with Israel. Washington was urging Assad to follow suit. Assad refused, and suddenly, Islamist terror exploded inside Syria. Coincidence?

When the Syrian army crushed the Brotherhood in Hama in 1982, the West howled in moral outrage. But it never acknowledged who armed the insurgents or why.

This was the prototype for every “pro-democracy uprising” that would follow: weaponized religion, media spin, and Western intelligence pulling the strings.

The New Proxy: Julani and the MI6 Franchise

Fast-forward to 2011. The slogans change — “freedom,” “democracy,” “Arab Spring”, but the architecture remains identical.

Out of chaos emerges Abu Mohammad al-Julani, a veteran of al-Qaeda, conveniently parachuted into the Syrian war with impeccable timing. Julani’s faction, first Jabhat al-Nusra and later Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), becomes the dominant power in Idlib.

The Western media calls him a “local rebel leader.” I call him what he is: an imported warlord with foreign backing.

Craig Murray revealed that the outgoing head of MI6, Richard Moore, openly admitted that Britain had cooperated with HTS — providing intelligence, training, and “support” from bases in Lebanon. He exposed the NGO Inter-Mediate, run by Tony Blair’s former chief of staff Jonathan Powell, as a conduit for British funding and political rehabilitation of Julani.

Klarenberg’s investigation filled in the rest. London didn’t just arm HTS; it rebranded it. Through Inter-Mediate and other NGOs, the UK financed “governance” projects, media training, and psychological operations in Idlib. Even former U.S. ambassador Robert Ford participated in outreach to HTS leaders.

In short, Julani didn’t rise despite the West. He rose because of it.

If Hafez al-Assad faced the Brotherhood insurgency of the 1980s, Bashar al-Assad faced its 2.0 version — sleeker, digitized, wrapped in NGO language, and broadcast live on Western mainstream press.

The Makeover: How to Turn a Jihadi into a Gentleman

Now, let’s talk about Julani’s PR campaign.

The same man who once posed in fatigues with a Kalashnikov suddenly appeared on multiple Western media wearing a blazer, quoting governance manuals, and discussing “stability” and “counter-terrorism.”

You have to hand it to them. The rebranding was almost artistic.

Western think tanks jumped on the bandwagon. Papers appeared with titles like “Rethinking Julani: From Extremist to Statesman?” It was like watching Dracula launch a vegan cooking channel.

These reports weren’t written for Syrians. Syrians know Julani’s prisons, his torture chambers, his arbitrary taxes. They were written for Western taxpayers to make funding HTS feel less like sponsoring terrorism and more like “supporting civil administration.”

Behind the scenes, millions in British and American aid flowed through so-called humanitarian NGOs. Julani consolidated his control, while the people sank deeper into poverty and fear.

Then came the pièce de résistance: elections.

The Pantomime of Democracy

Once upon a time — and I promise this isn’t a fairy tale — Syrians were told they were on the cusp of a grand democratic experiment.

For over a decade, western politicians and their loyal press chorused the same refrain:

“Support the people’s movement, topple Assad, and democracy will bloom in Damascus like jasmine in the spring.”

What they left out was that this so-called “democracy” would one day be led by none other than Abu Mohammad al-Julani, a man whose résumé makes Bin Laden look like a Sunday school teacher.

Fast forward to October 2025. Julani, the self-anointed president of “New Syria” — or should we say the CIA and MI6’s favorite audition tape — staged what his media handlers breathlessly called “elections” for a brand-new People’s Assembly.

If you’re picturing ballot boxes, long lines of hopeful citizens, and ink-stained fingers raised proudly in the air, you’re in the wrong theater.

This production had no audience, no suspense, and certainly no people. It was the kind of play where the director already wrote the ending and handpicked the cast months ago.

The math itself gives away the joke. The People’s Assembly boasts 210 seats, but only 140 are technically “up for grabs.”

The other 70 are Julani’s personal gift basket — reserved for loyalists, cronies, and whoever else he needs to keep this house of cards standing.

Imagine a poker game where the dealer not only shuffles the deck but also decides half the winners before the cards hit the table.

That’s “electoral reform” in Julani’s Wonderland.

Now, let’s follow the plot as described by critics. It begins with Julani himself appointing an “Electoral High Commission.”

This noble body then forms little subcommittees — three handpicked folks per province — who, in turn, select members of an Electoral College.

Sounds familiar? Yes, like the U.S. system, except here there’s no messy campaigning, no debates, and absolutely no participation from the general public.

If you’re not in the inner circle, you don’t vote, you don’t run, and you don’t matter.

Congratulations, democracy achieved!

But even this charade has its limits. Entire regions — Suwayda in the south, home to the Syrian Druze, and the East Euphrates, home to Kurds and Arabs — were simply crossed off the guest list.

Julani explained the snub by pointing to “ongoing conflict” in those areas. How convenient. Because the areas controlled by Julani are beacons of stability.

Of course, Syrian state media dutifully rolled out its thesaurus of propaganda: “elections,” “participation,” “legitimacy.”

But scratch the surface and you’ll find only stage props — committees appointing committees, smoke and mirrors leading to the same predetermined outcome.

It’s a pantomime designed not to empower Syrians but to entrench divisions, all under the guise of constitutional order.

The so-called People’s Assembly is less a parliament and more a rubber stamp, ready to bless Julani’s decrees with the illusion of consensus.

In the end, Julani’s elections are neither democratic nor Syrian. They are the political equivalent of a counterfeit brand — a knockoff parliament assembled in Idlib’s backroom bazaars, sold to the world as the genuine article.

But Syrians know better. They know when the ballot box is empty and the parliament is a puppet show.

So next time you hear breathless reports about “New Syria’s democratic process,” remember: this isn’t a story of people choosing their leaders. It’s the story of a leader choosing his people.

And in this theater, the tickets are free, but the audience never shows up.

Erasing Memory, Manufacturing Defeat

Julani’s latest decree abolishing October War Day and Martyrs’ Day was an act of psychological warfare.

October 6 commemorates the 1973 Arab assault that restored Arab pride.
May 6 honors the martyrs executed by the Ottomans in 1916 — the moment Syrians began defining themselves as a modern nation.

By erasing both, Julani is telling Syrians: Your resistance means nothing. Your history begins with me.

It’s the same colonial tactic repackaged for the 21st century: erase the victories, glorify the collaborators, and call it modernization.

The pattern is painfully familiar.
When Sadat signed Camp David, Western media hailed him as a “peacemaker.”
When Assad crushed the Brotherhood, they called him a “butcher.”
When Julani bans national holidays, they call it “reform.”

The words change, but the logic never does: resistance must be delegitimized; submission must be romanticized.

What History Teaches

Half a century of Arab history boils down to a few brutal lessons:

1. Western governments don’t create allies; they manufacture dependencies.

2. Normalization with Israel may bring aid, not dignity.

3. Every insurgency in Syria — from the Brotherhood to al-Nusra— has foreign fingerprints all over it.

4. Whenever Damascus refused to kneel, someone else was funded to make it bleed.

Julani is not an exception; he is the continuation of the same external project, rebooted for the era of social media and NGOs.

He is, to borrow a metaphor, the software update for an old operating system called “regime change.” And like all software written in London and Langley, it eventually crashes.

Memory as Resistance

From the October War to Julani’s fake parliament, the thread that binds Syria’s modern history is the systematic attempt to erase the idea of independent will.

That’s why memory matters.
That’s why holidays matter.
Because when people forget who they are, they become easy to govern or easy to occupy.

Julani can cancel holidays, but he cannot cancel memory.
He can abolish Martyrs’ Day, but he cannot unmake the martyrs.

History, inconveniently for him, is stubborn.

—Kevork Almassian is a Syrian geopolitical analyst and the founder of Syriana Analysis.