Thursday, 17 August 2017

Syrians in Montreal remember deadly chemical attacks



 'During the first attack, in the spring of 2013, Eman Shelh didn’t understand what was happening. It was the middle of the night and someone was shouting from the minarets to close your doors, close the windows, and cover your mouths.

 Then came the screaming and the ambulance sirens and the bodies of men, women and children with no injuries or blood — but with blue lips and swollen hands, some foaming from the mouth. There were so many bodies that they had to be buried together in tunnels, she said.

 “It was like a dream, at that moment I was in disbelief,” said Shelh, 37. “You see the dust and the people suffocating. Even now sometimes I think — was it a dream or was it real? There were people dying in front of me.”



 That first attack on Harasta would be followed by three more on the suburbs of Damascus, commonly known as Ghouta, each one more intense and widespread than the last. The fourth, on August 21, 2013, using the nerve agent sarin, would kill more than 1,000 people.

 According to UN inspectors, it was the deadliest use of chemical weapons since 1988, when Saddam Hussein turned them on civilians in Halabja in 1988.

 Though Wikipedia still lists the perpetrators of the Ghouta attack as “disputed,” it would force Syrian president Bashar al Assad to give up his chemical stockpiles — or at least pretend to do so.

 But for Shelh and her family, the attacks also precipitated their hasty exodus from Syria to Jordan and finally to Montreal, where they landed three weeks ago — to safety and comfort, if not peace of mind.



 At home on a quiet street in N.D.G., Abeer, Shelh’s eldest daughter, now 15, serves mint tea, complaining in jest of having to do all the housework while her mother nurses a sprained ankle.

 “At least we can still laugh,” says her mother, speaking through an interpreter.

 The family’s sponsors — St. Monica’s Catholic parish — have furnished the apartment and filled the fridge. The only personal item on view is a black and white photocopy of a family portrait taken in Jordan and thumbtacked to the wall. Ziad Jr., now 13, appears so much older than his years.



 Like many of the Syrians who have arrived in Canada since 2015 — at last count more than 40,000 across the country and almost 10,000 in Quebec — Shelh’s family had to leave everything behind. But as the fourth anniversary of the Ghouta attack approaches, they still carry with them the memories of the horror and mayhem.

 At the time of the second attack, a few days after the first, which they believe was using chlorine gas, it had been a year since President Obama had drawn a red line at the use of chemical weapons by the Assad regime. If that line was crossed, Obama had said, the U.S. would intervene.

 Already there was little bread, water or electricity and Shelh could no longer visit her father and siblings who lived only one street away, for fear of being hit by snipers near the security checkpoint. Finally, she thought, the international community will be forced to react.

 Instead, the red line kept shifting, further and further into irrelevance.

 Shelh’s husband, Ziad Alrayes, who was an ambulance driver and paramedic in Syria, says everyone had expected the United Nations or the foreign diplomats in Damascus to intervene.

 “When we went into homes after the attacks to try and give first aid, we saw whole families who looked like they were sleeping. The most difficult part was seeing the children. … What did they do to deserve this?”



 They didn’t expect the third attack, one month later, this time using sarin gas.

 For Shelh and Alrayes, it was the last straw. Both Yousef, 6, and Ziad Jr. still suffer from that attack, with ongoing respiratory problems. Yousef, who was 2 at the time of the attack, was too little to understand how to cover his mouth or try not to breathe. Ziad Jr., who helped bury the bodies, has suffered psychologically as well, they said.

 The family waited until after dark and walked four hours into the night, Alrayes carrying Yousef in his arms, until they reached a car and driver who would drop them off 20 kilometres from the border of Jordan.

 Mariam, who was five years old, was very tired, they recalled. Abeer, then 11, got separated from the family as they joined a throng of other Syrians walking the last few kilometres.

 “I was following a woman who I thought was my mother but it wasn’t her,” she said. “I was crying and looking for my mom for an hour before I found her.”



 By the time the fourth attack hit, they had made it to the Mrajeeb Al Fhood refugee camp, run by the United Arab Emirates and the Red Crescent society, where they stayed for three months, before moving into a one-room apartment in Zarqa.

 Life was hell in Jordan, the family says. Alrayes was not allowed to work, and when he worked illegally, he was often not paid. The boss would send him on his way, daring him to complain to authorities, at the risk of being sent back to Syria.

 Ziad Jr. was the only one working, at a vegetable stand on the street. The girls went to school sporadically, but only from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m., after the Jordanian children had left the building. Meanwhile the Jordanian hospitals refused to treat Yousef for his respiratory problems. It wasn’t until their church sponsors in Canada sent money for treatment in a private hospital that he started to improve.'

How Syria continued to gas people as the world looked on



 'In the spring of 2015 a Syrian major general escorted a small team of chemical weapons inspectors to a warehouse outside the Syrian capital Damascus. The international experts wanted to examine the site, but were kept waiting outside in their car for around an hour, according to several people briefed on the visit.

 When they were finally let into the building, it was empty. They found no trace of banned chemicals.

 “Look, there is nothing to see,” said the general, known to the inspectors as Sharif, opening the door.

 So why were the inspectors kept waiting? The Syrians said they were getting the necessary approval to let them in, but the inspectors had a different theory. They believed the Syrians were stalling while the place was cleaned out. It made no sense to the team that special approval was needed for them to enter an empty building.



 The incident, which was not made public, is just one example of how Syrian authorities have hindered the work of inspectors and how the international community has failed to hold Syria to account, according to half a dozen interviews with officials, diplomats, and investigators involved in eliminating Syria’s weapons of mass destruction.

 A promise by Syria in 2013 to surrender its chemical weapons averted U.S. air strikes. Many diplomats and weapons inspectors now believe that promise was a ruse.

 They suspect that President Bashar al-Assad’s regime, while appearing to cooperate with international inspectors, secretly maintained or developed a new chemical weapons capability. They say Syria hampered inspectors, gave them incomplete or misleading information, and turned to using chlorine bombs when its supplies of other chemicals dwindled.

 There have been dozens of chlorine attacks and at least one major sarin attack since 2013, causing more than 200 deaths and hundreds of injuries. International inspectors say there have been more than 100 reported incidents of chemical weapons being used in the past two years alone.

 “The cooperation was reluctant in many aspects and that’s a polite way of describing it,” Angela Kane, who was the United Nation’s high representative for disarmament until June 2015, told Reuters. “Were they happily collaborating? No.”

 “What has really been shown is that there is no counter-measure, that basically the international community is just powerless,” she added.

 That frustration was echoed by U.N. war crimes investigator Carla del Ponte, who announced on Aug. 6 she was quitting a U.N. Commission of Inquiry on Syria. “I have no power as long as the Security Council does nothing,” she said. “We are powerless, there is no justice for Syria.”



 The extent of Syria’s reluctance to abandon chemical weapons has not previously been made public for fear of damaging international inspectors’ relationship with Assad’s administration and its backer, Russia, which is giving military support to Assad. Now investigators and diplomatic sources have provided telling details to Reuters:

 - Syria’s declarations about the types and quantities of chemicals it possessed do not match evidence on the ground uncovered by inspectors. Its disclosures, for example, make no mention of sarin, yet there is strong evidence that sarin has been used in Syria, including this year. Other chemicals found by inspectors but not reported by Syria include traces of nerve agent VX, the poison ricin and a chemical called hexamine, which is used to stabilise sarin.

 - Syria told inspectors in 2014-2015 that it had used 15 tonnes of nerve gas and 70 tonnes of sulphur mustard for research. Reuters has learned that inspectors believe those amounts are not “scientifically credible.” Only a fraction would be needed for research, two sources involved in inspections in Syria said.

 - At least 2,000 chemical bomb shells, which Syria said it had converted to conventional weapons and either used or destroyed, are unaccounted for, suggesting that they may still be in the hands of Syria’s military.

 - In Damascus, witnesses with knowledge of the chemical weapons programme were instructed by Syrian military officials to alter their statements midway through interviews with inspectors, three sources with direct knowledge of the matter told Reuters.



 The head of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), the international agency overseeing the removal and destruction of Syria’s chemical weapons, conceded serious questions remain about the completeness and accuracy of Syria’s disclosures.

 "There are certainly some gaps, uncertainties, discrepancies," OPCW Director General Ahmet Uzumcu, a Turkish diplomat, told Reuters.

 But he rejected criticism of his leadership by Kane and some other diplomats. Kane told Reuters that Uzumcu should have turned up the pressure on Syria over the gaps in its reporting and done more to support his inspectors. Uzumcu countered that it was not his job “to ensure the full compliance” of treaties on chemical weapons, saying that the OPCW was mandated to confirm use of chemical weapons but not to assign blame.

 Syria’s deputy foreign minister, Faisal Meqdad, insisted that Syria was completely free of chemical weapons and defended the country’s cooperation with international inspectors.

 “I assure you that what was called the Syrian chemical weapons programme has ended, and has ended with no return. There are no more chemical weapons in Syria,” he told Reuters in an interview.

 Sharif did not respond to requests for comment about the incident at the warehouse.



 On Aug. 21, 2013, hundreds of people died in a sarin gas attack in Ghouta, a district on the outskirts of Damascus. The colourless, odourless nerve agent causes people to suffocate within minutes if inhaled even in small amounts. Assad’s forces were blamed by Western governments. He has repeatedly denied using chemical weapons and blames insurgents for the attack.

 In the wake of the atrocity, the United States and Russia brokered a deal under which Assad’s government agreed to eradicate its chemical weapons programme. As part of the deal, Syria joined the OPCW, based in the Hague, Netherlands, promising to open its borders to inspectors and disclose its entire programme – after previously denying it had any chemical weapons.

 Syria declared it had 1,300 tonnes of chemical weapons or industrial chemical stocks, precisely the amount that outside experts had estimated. In an OPCW-led operation, costing hundreds of millions of dollars, that stockpile was shipped overseas for destruction with the help of 30 countries, notably the United States.

 But there were two significant problems. First, inspections did not go smoothly. Days after the Ghouta sarin attack, OPCW inspectors heading for the area came under sniper fire. They made it through to Ghouta eventually and were given just two hours by Syrian authorities to interview witnesses and take samples. The team confirmed that sarin had been used.

 And in May 2014 a joint United Nations-OPCW convoy was hit by explosives and AK-47 fire while attempting to get to the site of another chemical attack in the northern town of Kafr Zita. That mission was aborted. On the return journey some of the team were detained for 90 minutes by unidentified gunmen. Syria’s foreign ministry issued a statement blaming terrorists for attacking the convoy.

 Reuters was unable to determine exactly how many times the work of inspectors has been hampered, but Syrian tactics have included withholding visas, submitting large volumes of documents multiple times to bog down the process, last-minute restrictions on site inspections and coercing certain witnesses to change their stories during interviews, four diplomats and inspectors involved in the process told Reuters.

 The OPCW team has carried out 18 site visits since 2013, but has now effectively given up because Syria has failed to provide sufficient or accurate information, these sources said.



 The second problem was a switch of tactics by Assad’s forces. While the United Nations and OPCW focused on ridding Syria of the stockpile it admitted having, Assad’s forces began using new, crude chlorine bombs instead, according to two inspectors. As many as 100 chlorine barrel bombs have been dropped from helicopters since 2014, they said. Syria has denied using chlorine.

 Although less poisonous than nerve gas and widely available, chlorine’s use as a weapon is banned under the Chemical Weapons Convention that Syria signed when it joined the OPCW, an intergovernmental agency that works with the United Nations to implement the convention. If inhaled, chlorine gas turns into hydrochloric acid in the lungs and can kill by drowning victims in body fluids.

 A source involved in monitoring Syria’s chemical weapons for the OPCW said Damascus began using chlorine as “a weapon of terror” to gain a battlefield advantage when one of its bases in Kafr Zita was threatened with being overrun in 2014.

 “The base was surrounded by opposition. The government forces wanted to depopulate the area. That’s why they started using chlorine,” said the source.

 A senior official who has worked with United Nations and OPCW investigators said two helicopter squadrons dropped chlorine barrel bombs, drums filled with chlorine canisters, from two air bases. To produce such a quantity must have required technical staff and logistical support, suggesting the operation was overseen by senior commanders, the official said.

 The introduction of a new type of chemical weapon came at an awkward time for the OPCW, said the source involved in studying Syria’s chemical weapons for the weapons monitoring group. It was keen to remove Syria’s declared stockpile and reluctant to start a probe into alleged government violations that could jeopardise Syrian cooperation. The goal of removing the stockpile, which Western governments feared could fall into the hands of Islamic State, took precedence over the chlorine attacks, the source said.

 OPCW head Uzumcu denied there had been a reluctance to investigate reports of chlorine attacks, pointing out that in 2014 he set up a fact finding mission to look into them. This mission was not tasked with assigning blame, however. It concluded that the use of chlorine was systematic and widespread.

 Uzumcu said the team’s conclusions were handed to the OPCW executive council. It condemned the use of chlorine and passed the findings to the United Nations. A spokesman for the United Nations said it was the role of the OPCW to determine whether or not a member state was in breach of the chemical weapons ban.



 Kane, the former U.N. high representative for disarmament, told Reuters that Uzumcu should have tackled Syria over its lapses in reporting to the OPCW, including undeclared chemicals and a failure to report the government’s Scientific Studies and Research Centre, which was, in effect, the programme’s headquarters.

 “Why, my God, three-and-a half years later, has more progress not been made in clearing up the inconsistencies? If I was the head of an organisation like that ... I would go to Damascus and I would confront these people,” Kane said.

 Uzumcu said the OPCW was constrained by its founding treaty, the 1997 Chemical Weapons Convention. The OPCW has no obligation to act when one of its members violates the convention, he said. Determining blame for the use of chemical weapons is the task of a separate United Nations-OPCW mission in Syria, the Joint Investigative Mechanism, established in 2015. A spokesman for the Joint Investigative Mechanism referred questions to the OPCW.

 “The secretariat has fulfilled, accurately and entirely, the tasks they were asked to fulfil and will remain within our limitations as far as our mandate is concerned,” Uzumcu said.

 He said some states have suspicions that the Syrian government hid stocks of chemical precursors that might be used for the production of certain nerve agents, including sarin. But he said there was no conclusive evidence.

 Uzumcu said he regretted that relations had broken down between Russia and the United States on the OPCW executive council, which has the power to impose restrictions on Syria’s membership and report it to the U.N. Security Council for non-cooperation.

 Uzumcu said his office was still seeking answers from the Assad administration about undeclared chemicals, aerial bombs and the Scientific Studies and Research Centre, which has overseen Syria’s chemical weapons since the 1970s. Syrian officials have maintained that no supporting documentation exists for the programme, which included dozens of storage, production and research facilities.



 The Syrian crisis has had a profound effect on the way the OPCW operates. For two decades the organisation had reached consensus on most decisions, only calling on the 41-member executive council to vote on a handful of occasions. Syria marked a clear divide on the council.

 In 2016, when an inquiry by the United Nations and OPCW found that Syrian government forces were responsible for three chlorine gas attacks, the United States sought to impose sanctions on those responsible through the executive council, but then dropped the proposal, the details of which were not made public. A text drafted by Spain condemned the attacks but removed any reference to sanctions. It was supported by a majority, including Germany, France, the United States and Britain, but opposed by Russia, China, Iran and Sudan.

 The United States has since placed sanctions on hundreds of Syrian officials it said were linked to the chemical weapons programme. President Donald Trump ordered a missile strike on a Syrian air base, but division on the OPCW governing body and at the United Nations has prevented collective action against the continuing attacks.

 Western governments accused Moscow of trying to undermine investigations by the United Nations and OPCW in order to protect Assad; Syria says the inspection missions are being used by Western countries to force regime change.

 Russian officials did not respond to a request for comment.



 Former U.N. chief weapons inspector Ake Sellstrom, who is now chief scientist for the U.N.-OPCW mission, said it is critical that perpetrators of chemical attacks are put on trial to deter future use of weapons of mass destruction. His team should be reporting back to the U.N. by mid-October, he said.

 A key unsolved question is what happened to the 2,000 aerial bombs that Syria said it had converted to conventional weapons, a process that would be costly and time-consuming.

 “To my knowledge, the Syrian government never furnished any details of where, when and how they changed the bombs’ payload,” said an OPCW-U.N. source, who took part in investigations in 2015-2016. He said there clearly was “a real, high-level, command structure behind this.”

 Syrian officials did not respond to requests for comment about the bombs.



 The team is also examining the deaths of almost 100 people on April 4 when a gas attack hit Khan Sheikhoun, a town in the rebel-held province of Idlib near the Turkish border. Samples taken from people exposed to the chemicals and tested by the OPCW confirmed sarin use. Meqdad, Syria’s deputy foreign minister, said in the interview Syrian forces were not to blame, repeating earlier denials by Foreign Minister Walid al-Muallem.

 Sellstrom said the presence of sarin so long after Syria was supposed to have dismantled its chemical weapons programme posed difficult questions. “Is there a hideout somewhere, or is there production somewhere and how much is available?” he said, adding that the reported use of aerial bombs in Khan Sheikhoun could point to the Syrian forces keeping some strategic weapons as well.

 The attack means either “that someone can produce sarin today, or sarin has been hidden,” Sellstrom said.'

The Exile



 Khaled Almilaji:

 'I always knew I’d become a doctor. I grew up in a family of physicians—three of my uncles were doctors, and one ran a big hospital in Aleppo. It was like a second home for my sisters and me when we were growing up. We would do our homework in the waiting rooms and follow my uncle on his rounds, a gang of little kids carefully washing our hands before we visited patients. When I finished medical school in 2005, I started working for a pharmaceutical company while completing my residency as an ear, nose and throat specialist. In 2011, I planned to move to Germany to train as a head and neck surgeon. Just as I was about to leave, the Syrian revolution started.

 Like everyone who grew up in Syria, I knew people who had suffered under Assad’s regime. I have an uncle who was imprisoned for 15 years. He died two years after he was released, mentally and physically destroyed by his time in jail. My father, who taught Arab literature, was forced to check in with the intelligence service every month so they could make sure he wasn’t becoming politically active.

 When the Arab Spring revolutions in Egypt, Tunisia and Libya spread to Syria, I joined the movement in the streets. One morning in early 2011, I met some friends and drove to Homs, where the largest protests were taking place. We made our way to the site of the demonstration and heard the roar of thousands of people chanting and yelling. In that moment, I began to cry. I thought about my uncle and my father. I thought about all the sorrow brought on by this regime. It was the first time I had grieved. We returned every weekend, protesting with our people.

 The government’s response was bloody and terrible. They shot activists in the street. Doctors set up secret hospitals to treat people who had been hurt in the protests, and my friends and I joined them. We ran field hospitals in ground-floor apartments. We saw soldiers who had defected and were shot in the back by their own comrades. One man had been shot by a tank. His leg was a mess of shattered bones and bloody flesh. We knew what would happen if we were caught, but we didn’t care.



 In September 2011, I went to Damascus to meet with friends who were active in the protests. I stopped at an ATM and noticed a man looking at me intently. He asked for my ID. Terrified, I gave it to him and hurried outside. Within seconds, men appeared with machine guns. They shoved me into a car, and we sped off.

 A few minutes later, we arrived at the Air Force Intelligence Doctorate headquarters, where I was questioned for two hours, then sent to an interrogation prison. For two weeks, I was detained in a tiny room with 18 other men. There was no running water, no toilet. In the mornings, the guards would take a prisoner or two out of the room. When they returned, the men would be bloody, their hands broken, their skin burned with cigarettes, nails ripped off their fingers. I treated them as best I could, cleaning their wounds. The guards were experts at torturing people without killing them. They electrocuted us and hit us with cables. They hung me by my wrists, my toes just touching the ground, and left me in the heat of the sun for 24 hours. The thirst was indescribable. But the worst part was the helplessness. You never knew if this was the moment they were going to kill you.

 After two weeks, I was transferred to solitary confinement in another prison. As strange as it sounds, I felt triumphant. If the regime was afraid of us, then we were doing something right. In March 2012, after I had been in jail for six months, the door opened. By then the protests had become a civil war. I suspect they only released me because they needed the space. Suddenly, I was back on the streets of Damascus again, wearing my summer clothes in the winter cold. The first thing I did was call my parents. When I got my mother on the phone, we both burst into tears. I couldn’t hear a word she said, she was crying so hard.

 When I got back to Aleppo, I spent a month helping displaced families, trying to find them housing and medical care. But even helping protesters was a crime. One night a colleague was arrested. That’s when I knew it was time to get out.



 In April 2012, I crossed the Turkish border and made my way to a city called Gaziantep, where I had relatives. I rented a small apartment and soon sent for my parents. Gaziantep is just 65 kilometres from the border, and Syrians were slowly making their way to the city. Every day we would see injured refugees coming across the border—confused families and children, soldiers who had defected, people who didn’t know the language. They were often alone, injured and terrified.

 I wasn’t an aid worker, but I had an education and connections. When Syrians crossed the border, they started calling me. Soon I was working in Turkish hospitals, connecting refugees with their families. After six months, an old friend called me from Jordan. He was working with a charity for Syrian refugees, and he asked me to run the office in Turkey.

 For the next few months, I sent ambulances to the border so they could bring people to hospitals. Although I was helping refugees, what I really wanted to do was provide relief for Syrians who were still trapped in my country. About a year into my aid work, the Syrian National Coalition asked me to establish a humanitarian medical office in Turkey. It would be my job to try to organize care for people in the parts of Syria controlled by rebels. It was an opportunity to put my training to good use and leave the politics to other people. I could never make sense of politics. With humanitarian work, at least there’s logic. There is always a clear objective: you simply do your best to help people.

 Along with a colleague, I developed an early warning system to catch possible disease outbreaks. In 2013, we saw our first cases of polio in eastern Syria. At that point, the disease existed only in parts of Afghanistan, Nigeria and Pakistan. We reported the case to the World Health Organization and the Centers for Disease Control. They wanted to start a mass vaccination, but in that part of Syria there was no single group that could organize such a massive operation. So we did it ourselves.

 We put together 8,500 volunteers in just under three weeks. We planned all the logistics, determined to show the WHO that we could handle the job. The vaccine needed to be refrigerated at all times, so we had to figure out how to get refrigerated trucks out to rural towns. We needed to go village to village, house to house, in areas that were being barrel bombed.

 Once we showed the WHO our plan, they agreed to give us the polio vaccine. In Turkey, the government helped us distribute the inoculations, but we had to smuggle the vaccine across the front lines to reach certain parts of Syria. That first week, I was in Gaziantep, getting daily updates from the people in the field. In Aleppo, a volunteer had just finished vaccinating the children in an apartment block when the entire building was destroyed by a barrel bomb, killing him. One of my friends, a doctor managing the regional vaccinations at a health centre, was killed by an air strike. The losses were heartbreaking, but our mission was a success: in eight days we managed to vaccinate 1.2 million kids under five.

 At the beginning, no one would fund us. I had to convince my boss to use $1 million earmarked for food on the project. A month later we did another round, and donors started to take notice. By the fourth round, we had full funding from the Gates Foundation.

 Our work was all-consuming. Everyone would go home to sleep for a few hours before coming back to the office. We took on more ambitious projects—testing water in northern Syria, training doctors and nurses. When Assad began deploying chemical weapons, I went across the border myself to collect samples so we could prove that he was using Sarin. In 2014, I met two humanitarian doctors, Jay Dahman and Mark Cameron, who had come to Turkey to train Syrian nurses and doctors. I convinced them that we could be much more effective if, instead of bringing a handful of Syrians to Turkey, we crossed the border and trained people there. Eventually, the three of us formed our own NGO, the Canadian International Medical Relief Organization.



 For years, all I did was work. I barely had time to eat or sleep; I definitely didn’t have time to date. But in 2014, an old high school friend and colleague introduced me to his wife’s cousin, a 24-year-old medical student named Jehan Mouhsen. She was born in Montenegro and escaped to Aleppo as a child during the Balkan War. When the fighting started in Aleppo, she fled back to Montenegro. At first, the three of us chatted on Facebook. Soon, Jehan and I were privately messaging and chatting on Skype. Slowly, we got to know one another. Jehan was beautiful. She was serious when she needed to be serious, but she could also be incredibly funny. I hadn’t realized it, but for three years, an essential part of me had been frozen. Jehan made me feel human again. She made me feel like myself. Meeting her was a beautiful gift.

 In late 2014, I went to Geneva for work. On my way home, I visited Jehan in Montenegro for a week—a tiny, precious window of time to get to know one another before we were thrown back into our chaotic lives. That week, we walked along the shore, bundling up against the winter cold. We ate in restaurants overlooking the Adriatic Sea. I met her family, and we shared stories from Aleppo. Mostly we just talked—for hours and hours, about the mundane details of life, about our plans for the future, as if we were just two regular people getting to know one another, not two people stuck in a civil war. By the time I left, I knew she was the woman I wanted to spend my life with. When I returned to Turkey, we kept talking, and I visited her when I could. On one of those trips, in February 2015, I asked her to marry me, and she said yes. We decided to have the wedding a year later, when she had finished medical school.

 In Turkey, my NGO was taking on more demanding projects. All this time I had been doing public health work, but I had no real training for any of it, no credentials. Even when projects succeeded, a small part of me believed that it was all just a matter of luck and sheer will. In 2016, I applied for a master’s in public health at Brown University in Rhode Island. It was a fantastic opportunity to better myself and improve my work in Syria. During my interview over Skype, I explained the fieldwork I had been doing to the dean. When they offered me a full scholarship, I was overjoyed.



 The next few months were busy. My mother needed heart surgery, so my parents made their way to Germany, taking a boat to Greece and then travelling by land along with thousands of other Syrian refugees. Jehan and I followed them there that summer. Our wedding was set for July 9 in Stuttgart. We didn’t have time for elaborate planning. I spent the entire day before the wedding doing the decorations myself, draping white cloth around the hall and filling the place with flowers and balloons.

 The ceremony was beautiful. Both of our families were there. Most moving of all was the fact that some of my old friends were able to attend, people who had ended up in Germany as refugees. They were doctors who had been with me at the beginning, treating protesters in makeshift hospitals and suffering alongside me in prison. After we’d all experienced so many difficult days together, it seemed like a miracle to see them on my happiest day.

 A month after the wedding, Jehan and I got our visas. We arrived in New York City on August 15. For five days, we did all the touristy stuff—seeing the Statue of Liberty and Times Square, visiting the Met and Central Park. Then we moved to Providence, where I began my master’s. The university gave us housing in College Hill, a quiet and welcoming neighbourhood. It seemed like the perfect place to settle down, concentrate on our studies and begin our lives together.



 The fall semester was exhausting. Every morning, I would wake up at 6 a.m. for a conference with my NGO staff in Turkey (they were seven hours ahead). Then I’d work 14 hours straight on my studies. Jehan was shadowing doctors at the university, studying for the tests that would let her practise medicine in the States. It was a crazy time, but we were happy. We made friends in our classes. The courses were fascinating, and I finished my first semester with strong grades. In December, we got the best news imaginable: Jehan was pregnant.

 When the fall semester ended, I decided to go back to Turkey for a short trip. I had a week of meetings with my team and the UN, and I wanted to renew my residency permit. Jehan and I were both nervous about me leaving the country. Trump hadn’t yet been inaugurated, but we knew what he’d promised. Some of my friends—Syrian doctors who had been in the U.S. for years—said they weren’t going to risk leaving the country until they got their green cards. For me, that wasn’t an option. My work helping Syrians is the most important thing in my life. I couldn’t live with myself if I abandoned my team and my people just because I was afraid I might not get back into America.



 On New Year’s Day, Jehan drove me to JFK airport to say goodbye. She was anxious, but I told her not to worry. I would be home by January 8; Trump’s inauguration wasn’t until the 20th. After my week in Turkey, I went to the airport in Gaziantep to fly home. At the desk, they told me there had been a snowstorm in Istanbul and my connecting flight had been cancelled. They also said that something was wrong with my visa, telling me to check with the American embassy. I had no idea what they meant. I called a few Americans I knew in Turkey. They were confused, too. A few days later, after the snowstorm was over, I went back to the airport. This time, their message was clear. “My friend, you have a problem,” they told me. “And the problem is with the Americans. Your visa has been revoked.”

 I was shocked. I didn’t realize it then, but that month, before Trump’s inauguration, at least 40 visiting students had had their visas revoked when they left the United States. Many of them were from the Middle East. Maybe immigration officials were just being extra cautious. Maybe someone at the airport was flagging Syrians for travelling to Turkey. We still don’t know. On January 18, I got a call from the American Consulate in Istanbul telling me that Jehan’s visa had also been revoked. They didn’t give me a reason but asked me to reapply immediately. Two days later, I had a meeting with the U.S. Consulate in Istanbul.

 The officers interviewed me for less than five minutes. It was clear that they were just going through the motions. They had no suspicions, no concerns, no new questions. They knew I had already completed a thorough process to get my visa. And anyone who checked could see I was doing humanitarian work. I left the consulate hopeful that they would just correct the mistake and I would be able to go home in a couple of weeks. Then, on January 27, Trump announced his travel ban. My application was frozen.

 When I read the news, I wasn’t angry. Jehan and I have been through a lot. If we lost it whenever we got a piece of bad news, we would be dead by now. I phoned her that day, and we talked through our situation calmly and logically. I didn’t think the travel ban would make it through the courts. High-level administrators at Brown were bringing in powerful advocates to help get me back. Even a Rhode Island senator was pleading my case. “Everything will be okay,” I told Jehan. “I’m sure I’ll be home in a couple of weeks.”

 When the new semester started, I tried to continue my studies, watching lectures online and borrowing my classmates’ notes. In the end, I couldn’t keep up. Living in a hotel, I followed the protests that were taking over American airports. I was filled with hope as I watched Americans defending the rights of people like me. After two weeks, I rented a small apartment in Gaziantep and prepared to wait. Separated from my wife and my studies, I threw myself into my NGO, spending the days working on whatever I could. We were in the middle of building the Avicenna women’s and children’s hospital, a massive underground complex in northwest Syria that would be safe from the government’s air strikes. I spent my days fundraising and talking with engineers, figuring out logistics.



 In early February, when the courts blocked Trump’s travel ban, I spoke with my lawyers again. They told me there was a chance my visa would be accepted, but even if I was allowed back into the United States, there was no way I could keep visiting the Middle East. Because Jehan’s visa had also been revoked, she would need to leave the country and reapply as well. Who knew if she’d be accepted? The situation seemed hopeless. Jehan and I talked about having her join me in Turkey, but that would have meant starting again from scratch. All of our things were in America. We wanted to advance. The idea of leaving those opportunities behind was heartbreaking.

 When U of T offered me a scholarship, I accepted, and we applied for student visas in Canada. In June, my Canadian partners and I received the Meritorious Service Medal from the Governor General for our humanitarian work. A few days later, Jehan and I got our Canadian visas approved.

 In Toronto, the notion that everyone should be accepted and respected, regardless of their nationality or background, is something that’s practised on a daily basis. I saw it on my first day. In the airport, I looked around and saw people with different faces, different skin tones, different ethnicities, but the same spirit. To see a stable, established country like Canada using diversity to make itself richer and stronger has inspired me. This was what we were fighting for in Syria in 2011. That’s what I want for the future of my country. That’s the spirit I hope to bring to Syria when I return one day.

 For Jehan and me, the long-term plan remains the same: we want to learn everything we can before returning to rebuild the health care system of Syria. But first we’re going to start our family. Jehan is due to deliver at the end of August, and our apartment is full of baby things. Friends in Turkey and Canada held baby showers for us and sent boxes over. There’s a stroller and toys from friends from Providence. There are all of the baby clothes I bought while I was walking around in Turkey, separated from my wife. A few years ago, I never would have imagined having a child in Canada. Now I’m honoured by the fact that my daughter will be a Canadian. Hopefully she can take that with her for the rest of her life.'

Wednesday, 16 August 2017

Saudi Arabia's ultimate betrayal of the Syrian revolution



 Sam Charles Hamad:

 'It’s something of an understatement to say Syria is a ‘multifaceted’ war – often discerning the dynamics of different microeconomic and macroeconomic struggles is half the battle. But as counter-revolution sweeps across the land, the ‘geopolitical’ shifts that will affect the lives of all Syrians continue to change.

 The most prominent of these happenings has not just been the abandonment of the anti-Assad rebels by their self-declared allies, a process which began years ago, but rather a battle over the narrative of who was to blame for the catastrophe that has engulfed the Syrian revolution.

 There’s something much bigger at stake than the fate of mere Syrians in the mind of these actors: an attempt to curtail and ideologically condition the trajectory of the Arab spring.

 One could roughly split the sides in this struggle into two main blocs, though there are nuances and areas of disagreement between the two, namely the Saudi Arabia-UAE-US bloc and the Qatar-Turkish bloc. In many ways, this is an old struggle made new – one must never forget the divide that defined the calamity of the original attempts to set up coherent opposition.



 To cut multiple long stories short, Saudi Arabia refused to arm rebel forces or back opposition outfits connected to the Muslim Brotherhood or any force that wasn’t sufficiently supportive of Saudi interests, while Qatar and Turkey had a more open approach to arming and aiding groups. This is essentially the main dynamic of the divide – Saudi Arabia and the UAE are determined to ensure that democratic Islamist forces, such as the Muslim Brotherhood, are not allowed to triumph, not just in Syria but across the region.

 The contours of this clash are hardly difficult to discern. We’ve seen the Saudi and UAE-led ‘siege’ on Qatar. We’ve seen Saudi Arabia and the UAE’s own counter-revolutionary rampage across the region, most notably their support in Egypt for Abdel Fattah El Sisi’s brutal counter-revolution against the democratically elected Mohamed Morsi, of the Brotherhood-affiliated Freedom and Justice Party. In addition to this, the UAE, and to a lesser but not insignificant degree, Saudi Arabia, have ploughed their resources into backing the hugely destructive anti-Muslim Brotherhood crusade of Khalifa Haftar in Libya.

 This was the spirit that lurked behind a recent op-ed in the UAE newspaper The National, which sought to pin the blame firmly on Turkey for the current plight of the Syrian rebels. The article somewhat briefly and irresolutely mentions that Saudi Arabia has allegedly called for the Syrian opposition, or its chief negotiating body the High Negotiations Committee (HNC), to accept the rule of Bashar al-Assad as a precondition for any negotiations with Assad and his allies.

 The author also attempts to casually exonerate Riyadh for what has been a clear shift in its policy towards the Syrian rebels since the arrival of Donald Trump in the White House, claiming that it ‘considered lifting pressure from the regime in Damascus as a way to reduce its need for Iran’, before going on to say that Turkey’s alleged policy shift has been ‘most damaging’.



 Saudi Arabia and the UAE love nothing more than to justify everything they do by conjuring up the spectre of Iran, but there is absolutely no doubt that the rationale behind Saudi’s veritable abandonment of the Syrian rebels has everything to do with it falling behind Trump’s policy towards the Syrian revolution, as well as it being congruent with their specific stance against liberty in the region. Riyadh went out of its way to accommodate Trump, and while one calculation might be Trump’s rhetorically hawkish stance against Iranian expansionism, the reality is that the policy casually dismissed by the author above has been far more destructive than anything Turkey has done.

 The policy that the author claims is a way to force Assad to reduce his reliance on Iran has meant, in concrete terms, the announcement of the end of the, to quote Trump himself, ‘dangerous and wasteful’ not-so-secret CIA arms and funding programme for anti-Assad rebels. One must understand that though this programme was never even remotely adequate or even geared towards allowing rebel forces to overthrow Assad (though it did wield successes), the main function of the CIA in it was to ‘vet’ rebel brigades and ensure that weapons got over the border with Jordan – the weapons themselves were provided by Saudi Arabia.

 In other words, one of the last lifelines to the rebels, no matter how paltry, was cut off to some rebels and, far from it being a US decision alone, it was very much a joint decision by Saudi and the US. However, it was just a public confirmation of what has been a reality in Syria for two years – Saudi aid to rebels dried up.



 As per the anti-Brotherhood agenda of Saudi when it came to arming rebels, this briefly changed in 2015, following the death of King Abdullah and the assumption of the throne by Salman. Salman decided that Abdullah’s policy towards groups like the Muslim Brotherhood had been too harsh, which saw the Army of Conquest, which was led by the anti-Saudi moderate Islamist force Ahrar al-Sham, as well as groups like the MB-affiliated democratic Islamist force Sham Legion, receive Saudi-sourced TOW anti-tank missiles.

 This was in June 2015, but, after Russia intervened decisively on behalf of Assad and the US turned towards focussing solely on fight against the Islamic State group (IS), the aid to the anti-Assad rebels dried up and the momentum gained by this influx of weaponry was stalled and reversed. It was at this moment that Iranian-led pro-regime forces, buoyed by the Russian air force, began to solidify their semi-occupation of Syria.

 The author of course mentions none of this. Instead, he ironically blames Turkey for shifting its focus away from anti-Assad rebels to ‘focussing on disrupting Kurdish expansion’, adding that Turkey ‘has since worked closely with Iran and Russia … politically … and ‘militarily on the ground’.

 There’s little doubt that Turkey’s general anti-Kurdish separatist agenda fuels its current policy in Northern Syria (and liberty in Syria’s revolution ought to have no ethnic or sectarian limits), but Turkey isn’t trying to take Rojava proper – it is aiding rebels to take back villages and towns near the Turkish border that have been occupied by IS, or which the YPG grabbed under the cover of deadly Russian airstrikes.

 The YPG have imposed their rule on these areas and, in places that are not needed to cement their one-party state, have occupied the cities or handed-back control to the Assad regime. Moreover, as was the case in Aleppo and Manbij, we’ve seen the YPG directly aid the Iranian-led militias that the author accuses Turkey of working with.



 Unlike the YPG, the rebel forces that fight with Turkey remain committed to fighting Assad and refugees are able to be resettled – this and ensuring genuine ceasefires is the main calculation behind Turkey’s role in the Astana process, which contrary to the author’s sentiments, Turkey has never said was an alternative to Geneva.

 But while the author wants to paint a picture of Turkey ‘collaborating’ with Assad, Russia and Iran, and while it’s certainly true that Turkey has good relations with both, its role in Syria, while flawed, is nowhere near as destructive as the current US or Saudi policy. Look, for example, at the Saudi/US-backed Southern Front of the Free Syrian Army, which has been transformed from one of the most efficient anti-Assad coalitions to a mere shell that would, under pain of losing its funding and backing, look the other way as Iranian-led pro-Assad forces murdering Syrians to fight only IS.

 The author also tries to put the blame of the current triumph of the fascist counter-revolutionaries of Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS – al-Qaeda’s franchise in Syria) in Idlib, claiming that ‘Turkey also stood idly by as HTS weakened and fragmented Ahrar Al Sham … and forced it to give up control of a border crossing.’. It’s perfectly true that Turkey hasn’t done enough to support rebel forces in Idlib an that its policy has been conditioned by US pressure to focus solely on IS, but these are the same rebels that Saudi Arabia and the US have now officially abandoned.

 The author also misses the fact that Turkey sent rebel forces it funds into Idlib to bolster moderate forces against HTS, as well as providing medical services to injured rebels.



 Turkey, as with all other states, will ultimately put its own interests first. But this does not mean that the interests of all states are as equally cynical when it comes to Syria. Turkey did its very best to get the US to implement a no-fly zone over areas of Syria being hit by Assad, while the US wouldn’t even entertain it.

 Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia and the UAE use their powerful airforces only to commit hugely destructive war crimes in Yemen, a situation they created due to their fear of the MB-affiliated Al-Islah gaining power in a post-Saleh democracy.

 Syrians have always been let down by their allies, but with the US, Saudi and UAE allegedly on their side, they don’t need enemies.'

Sunday, 13 August 2017

How Assad And Iran Are Enabled To Win The War In Syria

Image result for How Assad And Iran Are Enabled To Win The War In Syria

 'Despite a cease-fire agreement for southern Syria that was brokered by the Trump administration and Russia, the Iranian-backed, pro-Assad coalition continues to capture areas in the border region with Jordan, the Sunni Arabic newspaper Asharq al-Awsat reported Friday.

 This happened despite the presence of a Russian observer force which is supposed to safeguard the cease-fire and prevent the presence of Iranian proxies in the border regions in southern Syria.

 “The Syrian regime-linked Team 15, in addition to Iran’s Revolutionary Guards and members of Lebanon’s Hezbollah, have already reached the Syrian-Jordanian borders and control the areas of Bi’r Saboun-Tal Assada, reaching the entire Abu Sharshouh border crossing and border posts,” the newspaper Asharq al-Awsat wrote, citing a report by an unknown German news agency.

 The report was confirmed by the Syrian Observatory For Human Rights, which reported the pro-Assad coalition’s new advances ended the presence of rebel groups along the Jordanian border in the Syrian Suweida Province, which is home to a large Druze community.

 “With this advancement, the factions are now left with no external access east and southeast of Syria, except for a border strip on the southeast border of the Damascus countryside with Jordan, in addition to a border strip with Iraq extending over the provinces of Damascus countryside and Homs, which includes al-Tanf border crossing between Syria and Iraq,” according to the SOHR.



 The Asharq al-Awsat report will no doubt raise concerns in Israel about the encroachment of Iranian-backed forces on the border area at the Golan Heights.

 Israel strongly opposed the cease-fire arrangement, which aimed to establish de-conflicting zones along the Israeli and Jordanian border with Syria.

 Last month, Israeli officials held secret talks about the cease-fire plan with their American and Russian counterparts in an unknown European capital and the Jordanian capital of Amman.

 During these talks, Israel presented the U.S. and Russia with numerous objections to the agreement, claiming the two regional superpowers were not paying enough attention to the Iranian attempts to use the chaos in Syria for advancing its imperialistic aspirations, which include the “liberation” of the Israel Golan Heights.

 The U.S. and Russia see the cease-fire as a means to neutralize the threat of the Jihadist organizations Islamic State and the former Al-Qaeda affiliate Jabhat Fateh al-Sham, which control much of the border region along the Israel and Jordanian border.

 High-ranking Israeli diplomats, however, told their American and Russian counterparts they should consider the situation from a long-term strategic perspective and focus on the emerging Iranian threat in Syria.

 The Israelis reportedly demanded that the agreement include a provision banning the Quds Force of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps and their local Shiite proxies like Hezbollah from entering a 15-mile-wide buffer zone along the Israeli border, but to no avail.

 The government in Jerusalem was shocked to find out the draft version of the agreement ignored almost all of Israel’s reservations and even contradicted Israel’s position on the issues discussed in Amman and the European capital.

 Israeli officials later revealed that the agreement didn’t even mention Iran or Hezbollah and said the draft text led Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu to publicly voice his opposition to the agreement July 16 while visiting Paris.



 The Israeli PM says the agreement not only condones, but effectively perpetuates, Iran’s presence in Syria.

 Netanyahu’s criticism led Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov to reassure Israel over its security concerns, while Secretary of State Rex Tillerson later announced the U.S. would not continue its cooperation with Russia in Syria if the Iranian backed-forces wouldn’t be expelled from the country.

 “The direct presence of Iranian military forces inside of Syria, they must leave and go home, whether those are Iranian Revolutionary Guard forces or whether those are paid militias, foreign fighters, that Iran has brought into Syria in this battle,” Tillerson told reporters in Washington last week.

 The message may have come too late, however.

 By concentrating too much on the threat Islamic State poses for the West and the U.S. in particular, the previous and current U.S. administrations enabled the rise of Iran in Iraq and Syria.

 For example, the U.S. is currently helping the Iranians cleansing the Syrian-Lebanon border region from Sunni Islamist rebels and their families by assisting the Lebanese army, which has been turned into an Iranian proxy. The U.S. is also not confronting Hezbollah, which is Iran’s major ally in the attempt to turn Syria in a new client state of the Islamic Republic.



 The lack of a clear American anti-Iran policy in Iraq and Syria “worries Israel … because it casts doubt over the depth of American commitment, the ability of the Americans to deliver, or the relevance of the ‘Art of the Deal’ to the Middle East and international politics,” wrote Yossi Kupperwasser, former Director General of the Israel Ministry of Strategic Affairs and head of the Research Division of IDF Military Intelligence, wrote last week.

 The Trump administration, however, is plagued by internal division on the strategically important issue of Iran and its hegemonic drive in the Middle East.

 Tillerson and most of Trump’s advisers on issues related to Iran appear to have adopted a strategy of non-confrontation toward Iran and its regional allies. Trump, meanwhile, indicates he wants to confront Iran over its lack of adhering to what Trump calls the “spirit” of the nuclear deal.

 On Thursday, for example, the president told reporters at his golf retreat in New Jersey that Iran “wasn’t living up to the spirit of the agreement,” and warned for serious consequences.

 “I think you’ll see some very strong things taking place if they don’t get themselves in compliance,” the president said after he made clear the nuclear deal had enabled Iran to push its destabilizing agenda for the Middle East.

 The State Department, however, sings a different tune when it comes to the developments in Syria and the cooperation between dictator Bashar al-Assad and the Iranians. Brett McGurk the U.S. envoy for the war in Iraq and Syria, said last week that soft power must be used to oust Assad, who has become Iran’s straw man in the devastated country.'



 Note 11/7/25, link broken.