Al-CIA-da: Mission accomplished, case closed, immunity included

On August 24, 2026, the US State Department removed Syria from its list of terrorism sponsors, delisted the al-Nusra Front, and unblocked twelve men whom the same agency had once listed as recruiters, financiers, and field commanders for al-Qaeda's Syrian affiliate. On the same day, in the same order, two new names were blocked. Twelve out, two in, one workday. This isn't rehabilitation; it's an immunity order.

The distinction between terrorist and state guest is not determined by evidence, but by a list. Therefore, it is not morality that should be put to the test, but rather immunity: that of those removed from the list, that of the state in its administration, and that of the apparatus that maintains both lists.

Twelve out, two in, one workday

The implementation is clearly stated on the US financial watchdog's website: Syria is no longer a sponsor of terrorism ; the al-Nusra Front, also known as Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, has been removed from the sanctions list. The official gazette lists the twelve individuals whose sanctions were lifted individually and reports two new sanctions in the same document . Same agency, same legal basis, same date.

Things get interesting when you look up what this apparatus previously wrote about its newly unblocked operatives. On November 10, 2016, the Ministry of Finance jointly designated four men. Abdallah al-Muhaysini was stated to have launched a campaign in April 2016 to recruit 3000 child and youth soldiers in northern Syria. Jamal Husayn Zayniyah was said to be responsible for the abduction of the nuns of Maaloula. Abdul Jashari, whom those who recycle the data like to claim is Albanian, was born in Skopje according to the official gazette, and Ashraf al-Allak commanded fighters in Daraa.

Three of these four men have been unblocked since August 24. The fourth, Zayniyah, was re-blocked on the exact same day, this time with the label Hurras al-Din instead of al-Nusra. Alongside him, a Qatari donor was also affected, now directly linked to al-Qaeda. Same man, same agency, new label. For anyone who has ever sought proof that these lists reflect alliances rather than facts: here it is, in official form.

The most striking contradiction comes from a Kuwaiti. Shafi al-Ajmi is number one on the list of twelve unblocked names. He remains on the United Nations' list as one of the most active Kuwaiti fundraisers for the al-Nusra Front, having publicly admitted in 2013 to collecting donations disguised as charity and smuggling weapons. His brief justification was last updated on May 12, 2026. Since then, the organization's name has carried the suffix "formerly listed." In plain terms: The man remains sanctioned because he financed something that is no longer prohibited.

From wanted poster to the office chair

The man who appointed Jashari as military chief in 2014 was then called Abu Muhammad al-Jolani and was listed as QDi.317 on the United Nations sanctions list. Today he is Ahmed al-Sharaa and is the President of Syria. The Security Council removed him from the terrorist list by resolution on November 6, 2025, along with a travel ban and asset freeze. We already commented on this in the appropriate tone when Damascus fell.

This completes the immunity. A sitting head of state is personally protected from foreign criminal courts as long as they remain in office. The path from wanted poster to untouchability doesn't lead through a court, an acquittal, or even a single witness testimonial. It leads through a change of power of the kind that voters had tanks to protect them from.

The clock is ticking, but only for the victims.

And now the part that no one mentions in the celebratory atmosphere. States are generally immune from prosecution in American courts. The only breach in this wall is the terrorism exception, and this applies exclusively to states on the list of sponsoring terrorism. If a state is removed from the list, the right to sue is revoked, with a grace period of six months . From the end of February 2027, no American who was tortured in a Syrian basement will be able to sue that state.

The case of war correspondent Marie Colvin, who was deliberately shot and killed in Homs in 2012, illustrates what such a process looks like. A federal court awarded her family $302,511,836 on January 30, 2019. Five years of investigation, defecting officers, smuggled government documents. Damascus didn't even bother to appear; the verdict was handed down in absentia. There won't be future cases like this because the door has closed. Not because torture has stopped, but because the label of "torture state" has changed. We've already calculated here that immunity is primarily a question of jurisdiction, not morality.

The screenplay was already available in 1996.

The goal was never a secret. In 1996, a working group led by Richard Perle presented a strategy paper to Benjamin Netanyahu recommending a break with the Palestinians and a pushback against Syria. Netanyahu ignored it, but Perle subsequently pursued the approach for Washington. Under George W. Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, and Douglas Feith rose to the top of the Department of Defense, and Perle took over its advisory council. This can be seen in the minutes of the US Senate , where a senator simply had the entire chain of events recorded in 2004.

The perfect enemy image was created in front of a live camera. In March 1997, a CNN team sat in a mud hut in eastern Afghanistan and produced the first television interview with Osama bin Laden . In May 1998, a US network followed suit with a full hour of airtime , just over two months before the attacks on the embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam that left more than two hundred dead. This doesn't prove an intelligence operation, but rather the airtime. And that was clearly enough.

And the director? He's sitting in the audience.

The question remains: who managed this personnel for years? Maher Arar was taken to Syria by American officials in 2002 and tortured there for ten months in a cell the size of a grave. A Canadian commission of inquiry later concluded that there was no evidence whatsoever that he had ever committed a crime. Canada apologized and paid ten million dollars. In the US, his lawsuit was dismissed in 2009 by a vote of seven to four , and the Supreme Court didn't even hear it in 2010. The reasons given: foreign policy, national security, and secrecy.

The special investigator was appointed in 2008 because the CIA had destroyed its interrogation videos. He subsequently reviewed 101 cases involving detainees and brought no charges . No one was ever held accountable for the videos. The only court that could theoretically examine this immunity is now itself under sanctions: Nine of the eighteen judges of the International Criminal Court, both vice-prosecutors, and the former chief prosecutor are cut off from the American financial system . Anyone attempting to examine this immunity becomes a case themselves. That this business of exploiting the enemy image has its own accounting system has already been revealed elsewhere.

Twenty-five years of the War on Terror have left no military lesson, but a legal one: no one is a terrorist; one becomes a terrorist through registration and ceases to be one through deletion. Whoever governs the right country at the right moment receives a state visit instead of an arrest warrant. Whoever was in the wrong cellar at the wrong time gets a reprieve until the end of February 2027. And an apparatus that never prosecuted its own people and sidelined the judges who could have tried calls the whole thing "normalization"!