Sunday 31 January 2016

Starving Madaya’s Rebel Commander Speaks

 

 'A former baker, Abu Abdulrahman leads the local unit of Islamist faction Ahrar al-Sham. He was detained in 2005, as he tried to fight in Iraq. Sent to Sednaya prison, where the regime sent many Islamists, he became friends with Hassan Abboud, the future leader of Ahrar. He and Abboud were among the detainees released by the Assad regime in 2011.

 Now Abdulrahman is in Madaya, cut off since Hezbollah and regime forces tried to overrun the nearby town of Zabadani last July. Despite a ceasefire deal in late September, the Syrian military maintained its blockade, allowing in only one aid delivery weeks later. Prices for food skyrocketed in the town, people were reduced to eating grass and leaves, and up to 75 people have reportedly died from starvation.

 Abdulrahman says he and the hundreds of rebels under his command have tried to surrender multiple times, but Hezbollah will not accept their terms. The commander first offered to leave, if the rebels retained their guns and were guaranteed safe-passage to opposition-held territory. Then, he said weapons would be given up, if the disarmed rebels were escorted out of town by UN officials. Finally he offered to stay in the town as “a police force” for the local community.

Speaking about the rebels’ blockade of 12,500 people in two regime enclaves in northwest Syria, Abdulrahman says:

 "I am against any civilians being put under siege. Let me be clear, speaking for myself: I am against the Jaysh al-Fatah siege in Fu’ah and Kafraya."

 He continues, “After the war, I hope we can live together: Alawites, Christians, Sunnis, and Shiites, in a state of law. Someday I hope we will get along, and things will be as they were before.”

 And what of the claims from Russia and the Assad regime that rebels have caused the starvation by hoarding food?

 Abdulrahman responds, “When Madaya goes hungry, we go hungry. These are vicious lies.”

 He referred to his five children, saying that his youngest son is afraid to leave the house and go to school, and that he cries for hours on end when food runs scarce: “Can you imagine that? I am the commander, and even my child is starving.”

 A female resident offers further testimony. She says that a supposed “protest” by women and children as aid was delivered was stage-managed by Russia and Hezbollah. Claiming that she was one of the women brought out of Madaya to a barricade, she says the group was told to condemn the rebels and praise President Assad in exchange for food and safe passage from the town.

 Meanwhile, Abdulrahman prepares for more siege and struggle. He says he once “had so much respect for the way [Hezbollah] defended their homeland”. But now “I have to see Hezbollah as my enemy now: they cut down our trees and starve our children”.'

Saturday 30 January 2016

We are Syria’s moderate opposition – and we’re fighting on two fronts

Free Syrian Army fighters in Aleppo

 Asaad Hanna: 'There has been talk of a number of “moderate” fighters who are open to co-operation. David Cameron has talked about the existence of 70,000 fighters opposing Daesh, and there is reason to believe the number is yet higher. I want to unpack this a little.
Last October the UN special envoy for Syria, Steffan de Mistura, invited Syrian military factions to engage in dialogue with the regime through the so-called Four Committees Initiative. The initiative was rejected by the factions out of mistrust, but it did reveal the elevated number of opposition fighters that were active in Syria: 74 military factions signed the rejection statement, the smallest of which numbered 1,000, while others totalled more than 10,000.
 Crucially, none of these 74 are internationally classified as extremists. The moderate opposition is not a myth. Syrians do not need foreign fighters to help them fight Isis; they have indigenous fighters, better acquainted with the land and able to confront any aggressor, particularly where there is firm international will to support them to do so.
 The Syrian armed opposition is fighting a war on two fronts: against Assad and against Daesh. Assad’s barbarity has driven Syrians from their homes and resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Syrians over the past five years.
 On the other side, we are facing Daesh, a terrorist group whose creation Assad must take some of the responsibility for. Daesh is helping the Assad regime by fighting us, the armed moderate opposition. The relationship between the two should not be in doubt.

 Whenever we have made advances and secured victories, Daesh has defended the Assad regime. For example, we have seen Daesh launch offensives in order to draw Free Syrian Army forces away from battle, to ease pressure on the regime. During a battle near Qardaha – the birthplace of Bashar al-Assad – the armed opposition was achieving great victories until Daesh suddenly launched an attack on a key military position in the nearby city of Aleppo, killing a number of Free Syrian Army commanders. Just three days later they withdrew, at which point they handed the area over to regime forces.
 The moderate opposition remains firm in its struggle to combat the Syrian regime, as well as the growing threat from terrorism in Syria. The Free Syrian Army welcomes any hand extended to help bring the Syrian people closer to gaining their freedom, without being deflected from its goals or the fundamental principles of the revolution.
  “I will tell God everything I saw” was the last sentence uttered by a Syrian child before he died of injuries caused by one of the Assad regime’s barrel bombs. Almost half a million Syrians have paid with their blood, and the bloodshed needs to stop. The opposition wants to ensure that barbarism doesn’t triumph in Syria, neither Assad’s nor Daesh’s, and that the country is returned to the Syrian people.'

Reaction To U.N. Envoy's Video Shows Difficulties Of Syria Peace Talks

A car passes in an area that was destroyed during the battle between the U.S. backed Kurdish forces and the Islamic State fighters in Kobani, north Syria, in 2015.

 Staffan de Mistura: "We've heard what you've been telling us ... enough bombing of my city where I am, and I don't know who is bombing me. I just see bombs coming down. Rockets, anything."

Shakeeb Al-Jabri: "Dear Mr. de Mistura, We'd like to remind you that "peace" was the first cry of the Syrian Revolution. We'd also like you to know that we know exactly who is bombing us. And so do you. If you want to trust you, at least name them."

Tuesday 26 January 2016

Syrian children in bombed-out Aleppo 'protest' against Iranian intervention as President Rouhani visits Europe

Syrian-children-Iran-5.jpg

  "As the Iranian President continues his landmark visit to Europe, Syrian children have been photographed with posters calling on leaders to oppose his alleged intervention in the country’s civil war.

 Pro-rebel activists in Aleppo, where civilians have been indiscriminately bombed during continuing battles between the Syrian regime, anti-government rebels and Islamists, claimed to have photographed the children in the rubble of their former homes.

 They were seen holding posters accusing Hassan Rouhani of being “responsible for crimes committed by the Iranian regime in Syria” and addressed Francois Hollande, asking the French President to force his counterpart to withdraw troops."

 As if there were any doubt about the Iranian invasion of Syria, or the bombing of these children's homes. Even when the Syrians being killed by Assad have their story reported at all, every effort is taken to cast doubt on their veracity.

Monday 25 January 2016

David Nott interview: War surgeon reveals how healthcare workers are being 'systematically' targeted in Syria

Dr David Nott at his offices; he is calling for a no-bombing zone in Syria protected by the international community

  'As he looks back over photos of his last visit to Aleppo, Syria, he pauses for a moment over a picture of two young doctors, smiling at the camera in their blue scrubs.

 “He was an anaesthetist I knew. He was killed two weeks ago last year. An air-to-ground missile,” Dr Nott says, sad but matter-of-fact, pointing to one of the pair. “And he was killed not long before,” he says, indicating the other. “Doctors are targeted.”
 In the grim logic that has taken hold among the forces of President Bashar al-Assad and his allies, “healthcare is seen as a weapon”, he says. “You take out one doctor, you take out 10,000 people he or she can no longer care for.”
 “Nearly nobody is reporting this, the direct attacks on healthcare and healthcare workers,” he told The Independent last month, citing figures from the NGO Physicians for Human Rights, which recorded 23 attacks on medical facilities in Syria in October and November last year – all but one by Syrian government or Russian forces.
 The United Nations Office for Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs also reported that 20 health facilities were struck or damaged by aerial bombs dropped by the Assad regime or its allies in October and November, and that many aid organisations have had to scale back or suspend their operations as a result of increasing attacks. In December, Amnesty International said Russian air strikes had killed hundreds of civilians – and hit medical facilities.
 Aid workers believe the increasing frequency of such attacks suggest a strategy. Nott has long been convinced that both Syrian – and now Russian – forces are intentionally hitting hospitals: a view that is shared by the Foreign Secretary, Philip Hammond, who accused the Russians of deliberately targeting civilians, hospitals and ambulances after speaking to Syrian civil defence workers in Southern Turkey earlier this month. 
 “The nature of the bombing has changed so completely in the past few months. It has to be the Russians,” Dr Nott says. “Russian jets fly very high up. Syrian jets fly lower, firing rockets and missiles. The Russian planes tend to be 10,000ft up and you don’t see it, you just see the weapon hitting the hospital,” he says.
 “The British are fighting Isis – fair enough – but this is happening daily and has been forgotten about.”
 In 2013, he called for humanitarian corridors to be set up to support populations trapped in conflict zones. Now, he says, a no-bombing zone is urgently needed over Aleppo and Idlib provinces, which the international community should set up, even if it meets with Russian opposition.
 “It has to be achieved. Somebody has to stand up and say, ‘The humanitarian situation is so bad that this has to be achieved’. It is a systematic destruction of the healthcare system: a weapon of war which Syria and Russia are using at the moment. That has to stop.

 Make it an area refugees could come back to, protected by a peacekeeping force – I’m sure Assad and Russia would not start attacking any Americans that were there.” '

Sunday 24 January 2016

Syria's real life stories

Image result for Syria's real life stories

Robin Yassin-Kassab:

 
"Living conditions are absolutely unbearable, in some places people are actually starving to death. There's constant barrel bombing, etc., etc., chemical weapons, and so on. Having said that, the inspiring thing, and the thing the media really hasn't covered very well, is that there are over 400 democratically elected local councils in Syria.

 Now this is something that is quite amazing, and I can't understand why we're not talking about it much more, because in the previous decade the West was invading the Middle East, to bring them democracy supposedly, on the back of tanks, and that didn't really work out. Now, out of necessity, in places where the state has collapsed, or has been driven back; people have got together, they've organised elections, and they've got local councils that are trying to keep life going in the most difficult of situations. These people should be part of the solution.

 They've done it in different ways in different places, but in some ways they are elections as we would recognise here. So, for example, in the south, where the dominant militia is the Southern Front, a group of Free Army militias, they have refused to enter into alliances with Jabhat al-Nusra, the al-Qaida group, they have had no problem at all with people organising elections in the south. The leaders of militias were not allowed to stand, so we've got civilian councils.

 And the reason why those people must be part of the solution, is not only because they are democrats, but because they would allow for a decentralisation of power in the future. Now for example, currently in Syria, because of this war, we have explosive polarisations, ethnic and sectarian. In the future, it may be, in a liberal, coastal city like Tartous, which has many Christians and Alawis living in it; the local council may decide - when they get their own local council, it's under régime control, so they don't have their own, at least not in public, at the moment - if they have their own local council, they may decide that alcohol should be freely available in Tartous, whereas a conservative Sunni city like Hama or Deir Ezzor, they may decide, the local council in the area may decide that alcohol should be illegal. In that way, with decentralisation, you could allow for people with very different ideas and traditions in the same country in the future.

 Most people are not able to leave the country. You need at least one or two thousand* dollars to get someone to smuggle you over the border. There are however some people who have decided to stay, either because they've seen some neighbours who've gone off to live in Beirut for a year, and their money run out, and they came home and the army had taken their house, or another family was living in their house, or their furniture had been stolen, and they wished they'd never left. There's that. And there is also the issue that some people are so committed to the situation, that if they are going to die, they want to die on their own soil, and they want to stay doing the best they can for their community.


 We've seen the absolute depravity of the human being in Syria over the last five years. We've seen absolute horrors, people torturing children to death, a mass rape campaign; at the same time, we've seen really inspiring human stories of people being self-sacrificing, and creative, and intelligent, in the most difficult of circumstances.

 We saw Mr. Fallon, the British minister, the other day pointing out that 80% of Russia's bombs are not dropping on ISIS. They're dropping on the opposition to both Assad and ISIS, the people that we need for a solution. Now a peace process under the aegis of the power that's backing Assad and murdering the Syrian people is not going to work, it's not going to be acceptable, it's not going to begin to work. And it's rather irresponsible to be pretending we've got a peace process going on, when this enormous catastrophe on the Eastern Mediterranean, with huge implications for everybody's security, is still escalating and intensifying, the Russian intervention has made it much, much longer, it will go on for years more I would expect. It's getting much worse, it's a huge problem, it's growing exponentially, and we're pretending there's a peace process, when there isn't.

 I remember the story of my friend Aziz Assad from Salamiyeh. He was in prison for two years before the revolution started, when he was 19, for writing an article for a French magazine. As soon as he came out of prison, the revolution started, and he was involved in the local coordination committee in Salamiyeh. He then became a media activist working with the Free Army. And then he ended up leaving the country, because he was being threatened by ISIS and Nusra and people like this, as well as being in danger from the Assad régime. This kind of encapsulates the tragedy of the whole thing.

  I remember Raed Fares, the director of the media centre in Kafranbel, he's a great character; I remember him being being asked, 'If you'd known what was going to happen, would you have come out 
in the spring of and demonstrated?" And he said, no, absolutely not, if had any idea that this would happen, that so many people would die, the country would be burned, no, I would have stayed at home. But here we are now, this is the situation we find ourselves in, there's no going back, and all we can do is keep going. Of course many of them are now out of the country, or dead, or disappeared; but there are still hundreds of local councils, for example, in Syria, which not many people talk about. Everybody's heard of ISIS, nobody's heard of the Syrians who have organised democratically selected local councils, which are keeping life going in the most difficult of circumstances, in the war zone. So those people still exist, and a lot of the ones outside have said to us that they want to go back; as soon as they feel safe they will go back and continue agitating for freedom and democracy.

 I'm not against bombing ISIS, if the people doing the bombing, as I think the British are at the moment, are very careful to try and not hit civilians, which will help the ISIS narrative. I think that ISIS is being pushed back, certainly from the Kurdish areas. I think the West should be working far more with Arab opposition militias, people who've already driven ISIS out of their areas, to continue driving ISIS further back. Having said that, none of that is going to change the big problem, because even if ISIS itself is defeated, something will come and replace it. Jabhat al-Nusra, for example, the al-Qaida franchise, which is less extreme than ISIS, it's also much more intelligent at embedding itself in Syrian society, and a lot of people who don't like al-Qaida's politics in Syria, are willing to work on the battlefield with al-Qaida, with al-Nusra, because they see the greater enemy as the régime which is barrel bombing them.

 At the moment, the Syrian people are being attacked by Iran, by transnational Shia militias, by Russia - 80% of Russia's airstrikes are not hitting ISIS, they are hitting the opposition to ISIS and Assad - and there are British and French planes mixed up in there too, and there are American planes. The Syrian people on the ground, all they can see is, everyone is bombing us, the western Christians, the Eastern Christians, the Shia are attacking us, maybe it's because we're Sunni Muslims. The only thing they're not attacking is Bashar al-Assad, the man who is responsible for 95% of the civilian casualties, and the vast majority of the displacement.

 So the narrative, or the vacuum, which allows these transnational jihadis to step in and take advantage, that's the real problem that has to be dealt with, and so long as Assad and his allies are bombing people from the sky, this radicalisation will continue and grow."


*Corrected from "hundred".

Saturday 23 January 2016

Dignity - Dani Qappani from Moadamiyeh



السالب والموجب من قلب المعضمية ... داني قباني .. رسالة صادقة مخلصة تاريخية . أرجو من كل سوري في المغتربات إرسالها إلى أصدقائه الأجانب .
Posted by ‎توفيق الحلاق‎ on Thursday, 21 January 2016

Friday 22 January 2016

UN Accused Of Allowing Assad Regime To Censor Syria Aid Plan



  'The United Nations altered a key humanitarian aid plan for Syria after consultation with the Assad regime, including deleting references to “besieged” areas such as Madaya where thousands of people are starving. The edits include:

 The removal of all instances of the words “besieged” and “siege” in reference to areas where nearly half a million people in Syria are thought to be trapped.

 The redaction of any mention of a programme to remove landmines, unexploded bombs, and missiles.

 The removal of references to violations of international humanitarian law, such as aerial attacks on medical facilities and the targeting of civilian areas.

“These so-called colleagues of ours that are famed to have everyone’s best interests at heart took it upon themselves to make changes because of what the Syrian government had very obviously directed them to do. There were three or four personalities on the Damascus [UN] end that went to work on it right away. There was a lot of toning down of some of the language, they rewrote entire sections… it was a full filtering system basically and this is what caused the bilateral uproar.


 
“The document turned from a humanitarian aid document to a political document after the Syrian government changes, rather than centring on what the civilians really need,” said a coordinator from another NGO, who wished to remain anonymous to protect his relationship with the UN. “I totally understand that the UN should not take sides, but at least they should be on the side of the civilians.” '


Thursday 21 January 2016

Secret Syria Network Saves Lives with Air Raid Warnings

W460

 'In Syria's coastal Latakia province, Abu Mohammad sends a warning from his phone to a secret network of colleagues: "Caution: A Russian plane just took off in your direction." Moments later, activists in a rebel-held area in northwestern Syria sound warning sirens that prompt civilians to take cover before incoming air raids. The message, sent via the mobile application WhatsApp, is part of an effort by a network of civilian and rebel coordinators across Syria who call themselves "the monitors".

 From positions near government-held military airports, they use messaging services or walkie-talkies -- depending on Internet coverage -- to warn activists, medics, and rebels about incoming aerial attacks. "I know when the plane takes off, and as soon as it does, I tell people that a plane is coming towards them. As soon as the news reaches people, they either hide in their bomb shelters, or some people hide in underground tunnels."

 Even before the Russian campaign began, activists had begun trying to find ways to minimize casualties in air strikes. "When the regime began using warplanes and helicopters on cities, people started thinking of ways to warn civilians," activist Hassaan Abu Nuh told AFP via the Internet. "After a lot of attempts at other things, they decided in the end to hook walkie-talkies up to the loudspeakers in the minarets of mosques."

 Russia's role in the Syrian conflict has added a new challenge for the monitors, who say they have been able to decode intercepted messages in Russian. "After a while, the guys on the ground were able to break the Russians' communication code -- as well as monitor the planes by sound and sight," Abu Nuh says. "These warnings have saved the souls of many civilians... this is life or death for people in these areas." '

Doctor Hissam Saad: “We will start building a new, free Syria: a democratic, multi-ethnic, and multi-confessional country”

хирург7

 'My name is Hissam Saad and I am 60 years old. I am a surgeon who before the revolution ran a medical practice for over 20 years. I am a husband and father of three children; my eldest son, Sarmad, served in the army before the revolution.

 When the Arab Spring broke, I, as a surgeon, could not stay away from it, becoming intensively involved in all areas of the revolutionary movement and participating in all rallies. Bashar Assad is a dictator; you probably know that he started shooting at people who gathered for rallies. Though I am a Christian, I went to the mosque where we all gathered before the rallies. All Syrian rallies come out of mosques: a mosque is not only a place of worship but also a meeting venue, a place where people of various religions can get together at a certain time and day; not only it is a place for Muslims or Christians but for all those who want to get together to stand up against a dictator.

 Soon after the revolution started, the Free Syrian Army was formed. At first, its fight against the despotic regime was met with support; over time, however, all of its supporters turned away from the FSA and now the Army gets no support at all.
 ISIL was created by command of the Syrian and Iraqi regimes to shift the agenda from social and economic issues and onto religious matters.
 Sarmad saw the regime’s troops do terrible things to protesters, shooting and killing them. Two of his army comrades who refused to shoot at protesters were executed at once. Sarmad had always been a free man loathing anger and aggression. When they killed his friends, he and 23 other soldiers left the regime’s army, moving from the southern part of Aleppo to its western part where the Free Syrian Army was stationed.
 After Sarmad left the army, the regime’s security service men came to my clinic to break everything there and threaten me. It happened 5 months after my son’s defection. But even after that I continued to work at the clinic, participating, as a free Syrian, in rallies, shooting and posting videos in social networks to let people know what was going on.
 On November 23, 2012, I was arrested at the clinic and taken to one of the security service departments, department 255, where they kept me for 7 months. Then they transferred me to department 285.
 They beat me. They beat me with a strap, kicked me with their boots, they beat me with everything they could. They broke my fingers. I am a surgeon and they broke all my fingers. They would lift me by my shoulder and leave me hanging like this for 3 hours. But the worst of all the torture I endured was cold (it was wintertime and I had no clothes on) and hunger: we were starving; they would not let us eat. They tortured me mentally threatening to rape my mother and daughter; they humiliated me as a human being and as a doctor. When they questioned me, I was standing before them stark naked, blindfolded, with my hands tied. It all lasted for 7 months.
 All this will end if the whole world continues its pressure and starts using all available means to stop the dictator, the murderer.
 Even if the regime succeeds in making Syria fall apart into several states, this will mean nothing: we will continue to fight no matter what. We’ll fight for a hundred years if we have to. Syria must be one country. After Assad goes, we will start building a new, free Syria: a democratic, multi-ethnic, and multi-confessional country.'

Yassin al-Haj Saleh: “Syria is a unique symbol of injustice, apathy and amnesia”

صوري 1

 'I am impressed by many people from many European countries, mostly individual volunteers. Their generosity, courage and humanity dignify the human race. I was touched by a message from a Norwegian woman who was in Lesbos helping refugees. As for governments, while it is not fair to include all of them in one category – Germany is not like Hungary, Sweden is not Denmark – I think they are unified in building higher walls in the face of the influx of refugees, specifically the poorest and most vulnerable ones.

 The global powers have so far been putting the cart before the horse by targeting Da’esh only, ignoring the root cause of the militarisation, radicalisation, and sectarianisation that has occurred over the past five years, namely the Assad regime. This is a short-sighted and failing policy, not to mention unethical. It is a prescription for an endless war.

 By the way, I think this enchantment with Da’esh that began in the summer of 2013 has deep connections with the sordid chemical deal between the US and Russia, which practically informed the Assad regime that it was okay to kill people with other tools, not with the one we had forbidden. The mainstream media was obedient in highlighting whatever Da’esh did and sidelining the crimes of the regime in order to legitimise that despicable deal between the two big global keepers of the peace (read: war). Da’eshmania is a way of suppressing the shame of that deal. Media and power elites want the masses to remain mesmerised, with their minds fixated on those exotic decapitators, who are absolutely different from us and our dear masses.
 I want to add one additional thing concerning this fascination with Da’esh. I suspect that the mad extent of killing and control that Da’esh is practising in the regions it occupies is the level the power elites in the “civilized world” aspire to imitate. That violence has an essential virtue: it pushes past the limits of what can be done to the population at home, giving the power elites everywhere a sense of mastery and freedom. If this can be done there, it will be possible here someday. Da’esh is the laboratory test the elites like to peep at and hope to imitate someday. It is their utopia and our dystopia. That is why the population in the West should be anxious of what has been happening in Syria for the past five years. Do not defend us, defend yourselves!
 Turkey’s record is mixed: it welcomed around 2.5 million refugees. Our situation here is acceptable and, so far, Tukey has had a consistent position towards the Shabeeha regime in Syria, but it caused a lot of trouble because of it is irrational and unjust concerns about the Kurds on both sides of the border. France’s position was mostly a consistent one, too. Both countries were clear all the time that the culprit is the regime and it should be overthrown and they tried to act accordingly, but were kept back by the United States. Washington has been the worst enemy of the Syrian revolution, worse even than Russia, which was a clear enemy from the first moment, along with Iran and the latter’s satellites in Lebanon and Iraq. I am not an essentialist anti-imperialist who thinks that imperialism is an essence hidden somewhere in the US, maybe at the White House, the Pentagon, or the CIA, but I tried hard to locate any positive elements in the Syrian policy of Obama’s administration in Syria. The world at large has become a worse place, especially after the chemical deal which was a big gift to Da’esh and al-Nusra Front (and, of course, to Assad), than it was before.
 As for internal players: I think one can identify obscurantism as the position of saying that there are no “good guys” in the Syrian conflict; they are all bad. I see this as an essentialist, Da’esh-like way of approaching our cause. I do not imply that there are no bad guys, there are many; neither do I want to say that there are many good guys, which is of course true, unless one is Robert Fisk, Patrick Cockburn, or Vladimir Putin. Rather, I want to make a paradigm shift from that reactionary distribution of labels of good and bad, to the actual dynamics of the struggle. I alluded before to the chemical massacre in which 1,466 Syrians were killed at the hand of the Assad regime, and to the chemical deal between the Americans, Russians and the regime. What was that deal? There were four actors, not three, at the time: the regime, the Americans, the Russians and millions of Syrians who had been resisting the thuggish regime for more than two years and four months, peacefully at the beginning then with arms. The regime gained not only its survival from that sordid deal but also impunity; the Russians managed to save a client regime and won a greater recognised role in the region and the world, while America (and from behind the scenes, Israel) succeeded in disarming the regime of the dangerous weapons that were thought of being deterrent to Israel. The party that was completely sacrificed is the one who had just lost 1,466 people in one hour: the rebellious Syrians. That is why that deal was despicable and its “heroes”, especially the one named Barak Obama, were extremely villainous.
 Due the regime’s brutality and the baseness of the big egos of the globe, a dynamic of radicalisation, Islamisation and militarisation, was triggered and changed everybody in the country, myself included. In September 2015, I was in Oslo for a few days, where I appeared on a TV programme. Before this show, the presenter asked me, if I was “moderate”. No, I am not, I replied. She was alarmed, but she wanted to be sure: “But you are secular, aren’t you?” For the discursive habits in the West, ‘moderate’ implies that siding with us (“We are the centre of the world.”) and “good” are synonyms. You are “extremist” and “bad” whenever you side with your own people.
 Of course, I am bad.'

As Syrian men go missing, women take new leadership roles, and bear new burdens

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 'They survive shelling and barrel bombs from the Syrian government and, more recently, airstrikes from Russia. Some have been living under siege with little food and hardly any medicine or electricity for almost four years. With so many men killed or missing, it’s up to the women to run their community, and they’re making a difference in people’s lives, including their own.

 Like 25-year-old Zein, who refuses to leave Aleppo despite the daily shelling. She recalls the time when the peaceful uprising started to turn violent, and a shortage of trained medical staff compelled her and fellow activists to volunteer at their local field hospital.

 A few months ago, the Syrian government carried out an airstrike on the field hospital, and several of Zein’s activist friends were killed. Now she spends most of her time doing humanitarian relief work, and she leads an all-male team of aid workers as they distribute food and medicine to families in the area.

 “I’m usually the one who goes up to the front line despite the snipers and fire fighting in order to deliver a basket of goods to some family stranded there. The guys are too jittery to do it, and they’re amazed when I do,” she said, referring to the team she leads.

 “Before the war, women mainly stayed at home, cooking and caring for the family. But now, men work in a field hospital? Well so do I. Men have started to carry arms? Well, we have here in Aleppo an all-women’s brigade, and they fight on the front line. I’m not necessarily for the idea of carrying arms, but this has really changed perceptions. That a woman can do anything a man can do.”

 Maimona is a 30-year-old activist. She heads a child welfare organization called Herras, Arabic for guardianship, and oversees schools that are struggling to stay open. She describes women in their thirties, forties, even older, enrolling in adult education to earn their high school diploma.

 Many of these women have gone on to work in field hospitals or schools — Maimona estimates that 80 percent of the people working in those places now are women.

 “Perhaps this is a silver lining. When we started the Syrian revolution, it was also a revolution for women. And when the war is over, women’s accomplishments will remain.” '

Why Is It So Difficult for Syrian Refugees to Get Into the U.S.?



 'The al-Haj Ali family comes from Khirbet Ghazaleh, a town of 16,000. It is 15 miles from Daraa, where the revolution against Assad began, in 2011, after his security forces arrested and tortured a group of students for writing antigovernment slogans.

 The al-Haj Ali twins were only 13 at the time. They had nothing to do with the protests. Nor did anyone else in the immediate family. Although they listened to news reports of the Assad government’s ferocious attacks on civilians, they saw little indication, at first, of the violence around them. There was the odd black helicopter in the sky. And once, when Waseem was taking Azizeh to driving school, they watched a group of protesters carrying olive branches stream out of Daraa. Only later did they realize these were people fleeing a massacre by Assad’s forces.

 Then the airstrikes began. Government security forces raided the family’s home dozens of times. Their cousins, who lived next door, were imprisoned and tortured. Still, the al-Haj Alis hung on; they adapted to living in a war zone, spending evenings in the dark. Then, one morning in August 2012, they learned from a television news report that Azizeh’s brother, a high-ranking official in Assad’s military, had defected overnight to Jordan. His family would most likely be punished, with death, in his stead. He hadn’t warned them. He couldn’t: His phone was bugged, and sending a message would only have further endangered them. The al-Haj Alis never slept at home again. Within days, they left Syria for Jordan by car. Azizeh feared they’d be unable to make it across the border and was even more terrified that the names of her family members would be on a blacklist and that they would be arrested. Mahmoud handed their keys to a neighbor whose house had been flattened by airstrikes. ‘‘If we’re not back by sunset,’’ he told her, ‘‘you can have our house.’’

 If Ahmad and Mohamed had stayed in Syria, they might be dead by now — either killed by the Assad government’s barrel bombs or fallen among the young men who have joined up with the Free Syrian Army. When one of their friends or cousins fighting with the F.S.A. is killed, the boys study the photographs of his death, often posted on Facebook in tribute, with a mixture of envy and guilt.'

Wednesday 20 January 2016

WOMEN ARE ACTIVE BEHIND THE LINES IN SYRIA’S CIVIL WAR

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 'Women in the city of Deir Ezzor have supported the Syrian revolution in various ways since its beginning. During the early stages of the revolution, women held active roles, including those that were viewed as exclusively male-dominated, such as carrying weapons in the armed opposition.

 In March 2011, the first demonstrations calling for the Syrian regime’s ouster took place in Deir Ezzor. Women started to join the protests alongside men early on. By the summer, women had a significant presence in the protests.

 “When the armed revolution started in Deir Ezzor and the opposition brigades took over the city’s central neighborhoods, the regime tried to retake the city but failed,” she said. “Without warning, it started brutally bombarding those neighborhoods. The attacks forced the residents to leave their homes and migrate to other cities.
 “Work then became limited to carrying weapons to fight the regime or working in field hospitals,” she continued. “Because of that, women’s presence was limited. However, some women carried weapons briefly during the Republican Guards’ campaign to stop the protests. One well-known woman was a nurse known as Um al-Thuwar [Mother of the Protesters], because the youth of the Free Syrian Army (FSA) considered her their mother.’’
 In January 2013, after the regime siege had lasted several months, the armed opposition freed the al-Huweqa neighborhood’s eastern entrance and used it to transfer supplies in and out of the city. This marked the end of the siege and the beginning of what the city’s residents call the “period of freedom.”
 During this period, women had the freedom to work in other fields as well. For example, the rights organization al-Mar’a wa al-Tifl Hayat was established in June 2013 in Deir Ezzor’s al-Ummal neighborhood.
 In an interview in Urfa, Turkey, Baida’a al-Hassan, the organization’s director, explained, “Our activities focused on raising awareness of women’s rights. We held seminars in our center and visited women in their homes. The organization also started two training centers. At the first we taught sewing and at the second, called Ahla Talla, we taught hairstyling.
 “The purpose behind these centers was to teach uneducated women professions so that they would be able to support themselves,” al-Hassan continued. “Additionally, the organization established the Shaady Rabbah School in al-Hamediya area and the al-Amal Kindergarten in al-Ummal. Through these two schools, we managed to secure jobs for many unmarried women.”
 “On July 14, 2014, ISIS seized a neighborhood in Deir Ezzor city and shut down all the civil society organizations, including ours, and confiscated our organization’s equipment. We stopped operating for two months,” Heba said.
 “However, the extremist group and its horrible treatment of civilians would not stop us from working,” she continued. “We decided to go back to our activities, but with a new approach. We used to hold public seminars, but today we hold them secretly inside homes with a limited number of attendees. We cannot assemble large groups of women because the whole operation might get discovered.”
 Heba emphasized that one of most important issues discussed during these seminars is how women can change their behavior to protect themselves from ISIS. Another topic is how to turn away an ISIS “suitor” if he proposes to a woman. That matter has been, and still is, a danger to women of Deir Ezzor.'

Russia Is Bombing Syria’s Children — These Are Their Stories



 'Abdel Rahman was standing outside his family home in the tiny Syrian village of Marayan on a November afternoon when the Russian rocket hit, knocking him to the ground. He felt fine when he came to moments later, he said, and tried to get up. That’s when he realized both his legs had been blown off. “I looked up and my brother was screaming, but I lost consciousness,” he recalled.
 About a month later, Thaer was gathering firewood when another Russian missile hit. He struggled to get up, but couldn’t. His father, Abdel Jalil al-Zein, first took his son to a local doctor, who stuck needles in his toe. There was no response. He loaded him into his car and drove him to the field hospital along the Turkish border, and when medical personnel there couldn’t help his son either, he obtained the permissions to cross into Turkey. Doctors eventually found a piece of shrapnel lodged in his spine. It has paralyzed him from the waist down, probably for life.
 The two teenagers still hang out, but now they are permanently disfigured. They lie in the sitting room of a rented apartment in the Turkish town of Reyhanli, where they now live. Al-Zein lies on the bed with a catheter running from him, and Rahmoun lies on a mat a few feet away — one a double amputee, the other a paraplegic.
 “I know that God will eventually give us our rights,” said al-Zein.
 Two hours before Ahmed Zaki Assi, a spokesperson for the Islamist rebel group Ahrar al-Sham, spoke to BuzzFeed News, Russian forces strafed his group’s positions in Maraat Numan, near where he was speaking from in Idlib province. The war has gotten tougher, he acknowledged, but it remains better than the situation in 2011, when Assad’s forces could open fire on peaceful protesters without consequence, or in 2013 when Iran and Hezbollah first entered the war in support of Assad.
 “We’ve had harder conditions before,” he said, speaking via Skype. “The revolution is weakened because of this, but it’s not going to be ended by the Russian raids or others. On the ground, the revolutionaries advance. But the weapon that we can’t respond to is airpower. We cannot address airpower with our rockets.”
 Mohammed Katoub was teaching the doctors and nurses about sexual violence against women when the Russian airstrikes began. A missile landed 400 meters away from the clinic, one of more than 100 care points and medical centers operated by the organization inside Syria. “I was explaining the difference between rape and sexual assault,” he remembers. “We ran into the streets because it is much safer than inside a facility.”
 Zakaria Ibrahim, 26, an anesthetist at a gynecology clinic in Azaz, was working when a Russian missile struck within 10 meters of the facility, setting parts of it on fire. “Now the hospital is closed,” he said, as he waits for a lift home near the Turkish border after finishing a rotation.
 “The idea is to weaken the civilians to make those living under the opposition areas feel life is hell,” he said. “By targeting bakeries, schools, and hospitals, you make people lose all hope.” '

Friday 15 January 2016

FSA adviser: IS cannot be eliminated without us



















 'The FSA is deployed from Syria’s south to its north. It is mostly present in Daraa and Quneitra, represented by the Southern Front, and in the capital, Damascus, the FSA is positioned in the Jobar neighborhood, one of the most contested areas. Al-Rahman Corps and the Shuhada al-Islam Brigade [Martyrs of Islam Brigade], which are also part of the FSA, are stationed in western and eastern Ghouta. In northern Syria, the FSA is significantly present in Aleppo, represented by Thuwar al-Sham, al-Sham Front and Sultan Murad Brigade. [The FSA-affiliated] Jaish al-Nasr [Victory Army], the Glory Army and the Central Division are stationed in Hama’s countryside, while the largest number of FSA fighters deployed on the coast is represented by the 1st and 2nd Coastal Squads and the 10th Brigade.

 The one hindering the establishment of this safe zone is none other than the US. This is not just an allegation. Rather, repeated statements were issued in this respect, [including] by Pentagon spokesman John Kirby, who said on July 1, 2015, that at that moment, the US did not see a need for the establishment of a safe zone in Syria.
 Meanwhile, the regime’s air force dropped dozens of barrel bombs on Aleppo and Darayya, and the killing of civilians led to daily waves of displacement. Indeed, if a safe zone were established, more than 70% of the people heading to Europe by sea would change their minds. Syrians are not thrilled about the suicide journey to Europe, but they are in search of a safe haven. If such a zone is established, many Syrians will return to this region. We are people who love their country, and we have our culture and our own professions.
 The only reason Syrians are migrating is that for four years now, we have been killed by the deadly weapons of Assad’s regime, and we have lost hope of being saved by the international community.
 The FSA has been fighting IS since before 2014, even before anyone in the world ever thought of fighting this organization. Our fight against IS in the northern countryside of Aleppo and in other areas is independent of any international plan. IS cannot be eliminated without the FSA. We have a history of struggle against all of those who killed Syrians. Therefore, no one can question the FSA’s objectives when it fights IS, because its project is purely Syrian, and it aims to protect Syrians rather than serve other agendas.
 The US is gradually moving from a neutral position toward being a partner in crime as it allows Assad and his allies to kill Syrians. Scary massacres are being committed against Syrians, who have been left to starve to death under siege in the city of Madaya and [killed] by chemical weapons. Syrians are paying a high price as a result of the US policy failure in Iraq and its weakness in the Middle East in general. It is not required that the US send fighters on the ground. This is not what we want. What we want is for Assad to be prevented from targeting civilians and for the [supporters] of the Syrian revolution [i.e. Turkey, Qatar and Saudi Arabia] to be allowed to provide rebels with qualitative weapons. The US supports the Syrian Democratic Forces, which include al-Sanadid Army, one of the regime's militias. We, however, do not trust these forces, and they not surprisingly getting weapons that are hundreds of times more numerous than the weapons received by the FSA.
 Russia’s declaration that it supports the FSA is ridiculous as all facts prove the contrary. Russian airstrikes are ongoing around the clock, targeting our sites and locations. Our position is clear: We will not coordinate or cooperate with Russia.'

A Syrian Response to Obama's Final State of the Union

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 'Most people, including most Syrians, are quite willing to believe President Obama’s boast that the “United States of America is the most powerful nation on Earth. Period.” And they likely nodded in agreement when he said that “when it comes to every important international issue, people of the world do not look to Beijing or Moscow to lead—they call us.”

 The trouble from a Syrian perspective is that calling on the U.S.—and President Obama—for help is exactly what the Syrian people have been doing for years, ever since the early months of their revolution back in 2011, when pro-democracy protesters were marching peacefully, demanding respect for their basic rights, and giving the world a reason to hope. As President Obama himself noted at a time: “we see it in the courage of those who brave bullets while chanting, 'peaceful,' 'peaceful.'” Syria’s peaceful pro-democracy activists could never understand why President Obama chose to turn his back on them, allowing the regime to get away with mass murder, and for radical forces to emerge and hijack their revolution. In the meantime, when their oppressor called on his friends, Iran and Russia, for help, they came rushing in.
 Trump wants us to fear the others in our midst, and all around us, Obama merely wants us to be indifferent to their suffering. The first calls us names, the other merely treats us as nobodies, as a people who cannot be motivated by a simple desire for freedom, but only by a desire to settle some centuries old vendettas. 
 This brings me to Obama’s willingness to refer to the current situation in the Middle East as “a transformation … rooted in conflicts that date back millennia.” This used to be how the right wing referred to the Middle East. It used to be a vocabulary that liberals like Obama spent their time decrying.
 The conflicts in the Middle East have nothing to do with what happened a thousand years ago, a fact a person with President’s Obama’s academic background should know well. Some Middle Eastern leaders might use such rhetoric to inflame sentiments, but the reality is far simpler: on the one hand we have a greedy, corrupt, and authoritarian ruling elite fleecing its people, and using them as fodder for wars meant to expand their influence and enrich their coffers.
 By showing indifference to mass slaughter and dismissing the idea of humanitarian intervention as tantamount to creating another Vietnam or Iraq, President Obama in his own way has helped diminish America in the eyes of the world, just as he allowed Syria to diminish and be torn apart.   
 Yet now we have to listen to the President waxing poetic about the meaning of leadership, saying that “Leadership means a wise application of military power, and rallying the world behind causes that are right.”
 Understand how this translates to a Syrian: I never thought your cause was right, which is why I never rallied anyone behind it.
 President Obama spoke of conflicts in the Middle East lasting a generation, but here is what he did not tell us: what kind of a region, what kind of a world, does he expect to see in a generation, as he leaves extremists, terrorists, mass murders and Russian and Iranian imperialists to shape unmolested our realities, and as he leaves pro-democracy forces with no one to help them?'