Damascus’ stifled voice from the left

 'As the uprising went through its gradual transition towards militarization, the Syrian Revolutionary Youth attempted to sustain the peaceful side of the uprising, maintaining that peaceful activism and armed struggle can go hand in hand. While generally supporting the Free Syrian Army, they frequently held banners criticizing what they considered violations by the armed opposition groups and insisted on defending national unity and rejecting sectarianism.

 The Palestinian flag was lifted alongside the Syrian revolutionary flag; chants in solidarity with Palestine, and Gaza in particular, were chanted alongside slogans in solidarity with besieged and rebellious Syrian towns and cities; the names of Palestinian martyrs were mentioned in protests alongside the names of Syrian martyrs; young women and men protested and sang side-by-side; and calls for bread, gasoline and a dignified life for all were inseparable from their calls for the downfall of the regime, and the achievement of civil liberties and political freedom.

 This December 30 marks one year since the arrest of seven of the collective's activists from a Rukneddine home by Syrian security forces. Their arrest remained largely unpublished with the families of the detainees demanding anonymity out of fear for their children’s well-being. Anonymity did not help. All but one of the seven detainees taken during that night raid have been reportedly killed under torture as confirmed by their cellmates.'

The South Will Rise Again

 'Bashar al-Assad is well aware that the relative endurance of rebel rule in Daraa challenges his narrative that the West must choose between his regime and the terrorists. In the coming months, it is likely that the regime will try to retake Daraa to prevent just this sort of a secular, nationalist alternative from emerging. Therefore, any international efforts to “freeze” the conflict in areas such as Aleppo should take into account that the regime may use any freed-up forces and assets in order to turn its firepower southward. Freezes in fighting in the north should not come at the expense of those in the south, where rebel rule is providing one of the few blueprints for how Syria could emerge from this crisis.'

Response to “Selling ‘Peace Groups’ on US-Led Wars”

 'The real crime of CISPOS is not advocating “regime change” in Syria but calling attention to the genocidal policies of the Baathist tyranny. It is quite depressing that people on the left can stoop so low as to sweep its crimes under the rug but a lot of this has to do with Islamophobia. As the term phobia implies, there is fear and hatred of the Syrian poor who invoke Islamic rhetoric in a desperate struggle to keep their spirits up in a war that has cost 200,000 lives. If Syria were as populous as the USA, this would equate to 3 million dead, all within four years.'

Response to the attack on Syria peace activists

 Andrew Scott Berman:

 'Nothing better describes this descent into dogmatism and betrayal of solidarity than the tragic attitude of many who call themselves “anti-imperialist” towards the people of Syria. For 50 years the Assad family and its cohorts have ruled that nation with a tyranny that rivals the worst in human history. All opposition is crushed with the iron fist of massacre and industrial-level torture.

 And while the situation in Syria has indeed been made complex by the intervention of many outside forces with contending interests, the base of the conflict, a popular rebellion against tyranny, remains.

 Today, there are some, but not enough, US peace groups that recognize this and stand, in the best tradition of the US peace movements, stand in solidarity with the Syrian people’s quest for a just society. Far too many, totally ignorant of Syria’s proud history, see the conflict only in terms of the role of the US, with meaningless slogans like “No US War on Syria”, while by far the greatest death and destruction in Syria is now caused by the despotic Assad regime, armed to the teeth with Russian and Iranian supplied weapons.'

Broadcasting House

 Maureen Lipmann has been an apologist for the Israeli government for many years, see her dig about descending rooftops (as the IDF kills families) in Gaza here. It is the abandonment of Syria by many of those who see themselves as pro-Palestinian and by the liberal media that have made this a propaganda coup for supporters of Israel, because it's true.

 "My story is the seven million Syrian refugees, that's going to run, and run, and run, and we're not doing anything about it at all. I think we're taking ninety people, ninety refugees, and we have to somehow look at history, and say, this is exactly what happened in 1938, when they wouldn't take any refugees from Germany, and it resulted in the Holocaust; and just because we're frightened of Assad, another military dictator, it doesn't mean we shouldn't help.

 I have seen no pictures, I've seen nothing on 24-hour news. I am well accustomed to seeing every rooftop that descends in Gaza, because that's where all the reporters are, in the same hotel, all chatting away, and swapping photos; but as far as Syria's concerned, they're absolutely petrified to do anything or report on anything."

 Angela Rippon: "That was picked up on one of your sister programmes on Radio 4, on PM, when Eddie Mair did that amazing programme where he gave over half the programme to Dr. David Nott, who is a surgeon who has spent the last twenty years going to places of conflict around the world, to help as a surgeon; and he's now spent six weeks of the last two years in Syria, and he was making precisely that point. He did a brilliant interview where he said the terrible injuries he as a surgeon was seeing, in that hospital, but the point that he was making, was that the reason why nobody is taking any interest there any more was that the journalists are not there because it is too dangerous, and therefore it has fallen off the news agenda."

Escaping Assad’s Rape Prisons: A Survivor Tells Her Story

 'During one session, the commander tied her legs apart and they beat a male detainee viciously in front of her with his head jammed between her spread legs.'

British doctor's gloom treating victims of Aleppo siege

 Dr. David Nott:

 "Things started going wrong in about January, February, when the Syrian régime started using barrel bombs. Barrel bombs are this barrel full of TNT, maybe 500kg of TNT, which are dropped from about 6000 feet from a helicopter, and two or three or four of them are dropped at a time. It had 2 million people last year, there are only 350,000 this year, it's because for the last 6-8 months, it's been completely destroyed by barrel bombs...It was child after child who had horrendous wounds, you couldn't really do much for, so the results from surgery were atrocious. The acute pain that families were suffering from their people, their family members dying, and not being able to help them, that was the worst part of it."

Gulf-Iranian Proxy War Spills Onto the Soccer Pitch

 Proxy war, one of the big lies of the Syrian conflict, designed to make the Syrians struggling from freedom invisible, replaced with bogeymen from the Gulf. Everywhere else can have popular revolts, but Syria only a Saudi-inspired civil war. Maybe the Palestinians cancelled because the Iranians have helped Assad kill thousands of Palestinians since 2011, and is still bombing and besieging the Palestinian refugee camp of Yarmouk.

Meet the Accidental Warriors of the Free Syrian Army

 'We were in Aleppo when the Assad régime dropped a bomb on a busy street.
"Aren't you done with our blood, you pig? Criminal! Criminal!" '

 The US is not supporting the rebels the way the Russians and Iranians are supporting the régime, with billions of dollars of weaponry and thousands of men. Precisely the excuse President Obama gave recently for not supporting them in 2012 was that they were farmers and dentists and pharmacists.

ISIL has killed our dreams

 'Young Yusuf Abdullah, 28, was forced to leave his village in Deraa province after ANF [al-Nusra Front] gunmen threatened that he either join them or be killed.

 "I am a supporter of the revolution in Syria," he said, "but I am also against extremist terrorist groups that take advantage of youth, threaten them and steal their dreams at gunpoint." '

The Islamic State is failing at being a state

 “When stuff breaks down, they get desperate. It doesn’t have a whole lot of engineers and staff to run the cities, so things are breaking down.”

 ISIS exists because the world abandoned Syrians fighting against Bashar al-Assad, and so a vacuum grew up in the desperation of the areas outside his control, where his siege and bombing made any sort of government impossible, and so these Four Lions style barbarians, who didn't waste energy fighting Assad nor he them, could destroy the Syrian revolution. If Syrians were given the means to deal with Assad, ISIS would soon be a distant memory.

 Things are a little more tricky in Iraq, where American support for Iranian-backed Shia sectarian hegemony has put many Sunnis on the same side as ISIS, but the central problem is not the limited amount of American bombing that has killed some ISIS and some civilians, but their toleration of the Iranian-backed militias that have committed mass murder , particularly in Syria, and their refusal to give the Free Syrian Army the support it needs to eradicate the greatest source of violence in the region, the Assad régime.

Foreign jihadis change face of Syrian civil war

 The way the headline spins it, "jihadis" fighting Assad are the problem, but the truth is that the abandonment of Syrians by the world is the problem, and the majority of the problem with foreigners are those who have gone to support the totalitarians with little local support, Assad and ISIS.

 “They provided decisive support in many battles. We were desperate for anyone to help us, but nobody – not the UN, not Nato, not even other Arab states – stepped up to do so. So the foreigners came. Some of them are good, they want to fight Assad and help us, but many have turned bad. They come for the money, for women. They destroyed the revolution.”

In One Corner of Syria, Christmas Spirit Manages to Survive

 Assad kidnaps and kills journalists. Those who go to Damascus to report his side are safe though.

 'They have almost come to blows after the Assad contingent tried to seize passing Western journalists and deliver them into the custody of the regime, which retains control of a few security installations in the city center.'

WHO says Syria opens Aleppo for medical aid

 Good. Not that the Syrian government is facing prosecution for the crime of not letting it through until now. Hopefully this is a sign of Assad's weakness, that his Russian patrons will no longer give him cover for all of his war crimes.

 The author of the piece says, 'all sides of the conflict have also prevented medicine from crossing front lines;' it has been the régime, not the Free Syrian Army, that has systematically denied passage of medicines, as well as bombing hospitals and kidnapping and murdering doctors.

Escalating Assault on Rebel-Held District

 'Government shelling on the area has intensified since the breakdown of talks between the warring parties in early October 2014. Since October 2013, the government has restricted the ability of al-Waer residents to leave the area and has limited, and at times completely blocked, deliveries of humanitarian assistance to the estimated 70,000-100,000 civilians still there. Most recently, on December 16, 2014, an attack left a reported 36 dead including at least 33 civilians.

 “While attention has moved on from Homs, tens of thousands of civilians are suffering and others dying in al-Waer,” said Nadim Houry, deputy Middle East and North Africa director. “The Syrian government should not be allowed to use its unlawful siege tactics at such a high price for the civilian population.”

 In addition to shelling attacks, residents also told Human Rights Watch that government or pro-government snipers, including those positioned in the Homs al-Kabeer Hospital area and the al-Gardenia Tower in the Old Homs neighborhood, have also targeted civilians including women and children.'

Syrian rebels prepare to defend ruined Aleppo

 “Hezbollah are the most powerful and the Syrian army takes orders from them,” said a local leader on the eastern edge of Aleppo, where regime scouts probe most nights. “The Iraqis were also here, along with the Houthis from Yemen, but they have all gone home [to fight wars]. We can deal with what’s left.”

 So not a war determined by regional agendas on all sides, but one in which foreign powers have pitched in to help Bashar al-Assad, and his victims have been abandoned.

 “Somebody has to win this war,” said Samer Zeitoun, a local leader. “I hope it’s us and I hope it’s soon.”

Documenting the tragedy of the Syrian revolt

 "To begin with, they were very influenced by their parents' revolution rhetoric, but they gradually opened up and began talking about their lives and their dreams."

 Maybe their parents know that the victory of the revolution is the only way they will have lives and dreams.

On Nir Rosen’s Definitions of ‘Sectarian’ and ‘Secular’

 Thomas Pierret:

 'Rosen’s report also includes the baffling claim that most rebels did not take up arms to defend themselves, but “out of religious zeal and political extremism”. So, from 2011 on, tens of thousands of ordinary Syrians picked up arms in a context of bloody repression of demonstrations, mass round up and torture, followed by shelling and air bombing of civilians. By 2012, Rosen was writing, on the basis of his own observations, that by cordoning off their neighbourhoods, the rebels had allowed people to demonstrate without being shot at by security forces, which strikingly looks like a defensive move to me. But after two more years of meticulous research (was it in SANA’s archives?), Rosen eventually managed to isolate the one main independent variable behind the militarisation of the uprising: it was “religious zeal and political extremism”. It is that simple: why care about the context when you can make sweeping essentialist assumptions about Sunni extremism?'

Don't Drift Towards Assad to Tackle Isis

 Alyn Smith:

'The overwhelming call on the ground, Jarah tells me, is for Europe to help the rebels. We must send a message of hope to the Syrian people: that we will not let them down. Rami Jarah, an independent Syrian journalist who reported from Aleppo during coalition strikes against ISIS, tells me that no Syrian, living under continuous bombardment for the last three years, can understand why any Western democracy would even consider collaborating with a war criminal like Assad. Public opinion is already baffled, if not disgusted and angry, that the United States and its allies have decided to bomb ISIS in Syria without laying a finger on Assad's warplanes. Civilians living in Aleppo now feel like they are being bombed by the regime during the day, and by the coalition by night. The way they see it, nobody cares about them - not even Europe.'

The Assad Regime’s Political “Achilles’ Heel”

 'If, as remains most likely, the U.S. and its coalition partners disappoint Assad’s hopes, the regime will come under increasing strain internally. Having lost the crucial advantage of its previous, relative superiority over the armed rebellion, the regime will need to generate even greater domestic and external resources, but these are already at the limit and cannot be increased without a high political price.

 Domestically, it will struggle to retain its already loose control over the semi-autonomous military and economic actors whose rise it encouraged as a means of devolving the burden of defence and revenue generation in loyalist areas. And if the regime appears unable or unwilling to protect vulnerable population centers or to mitigate the financial strains of loyalist communities, its home front may start to crumble.

 The regime clearly believes that loyalist constituencies have no choice but to continue fighting, but its margin for maneuver is narrowing. It realizes that credible reforms would set it on the path to dismantling itself, but by insisting on an exclusively military approach, it takes itself closer to the point where it has no political or social cushion domestically.'

Future Israeli Strikes in Syria: Shifting Dynamics?

 '(1) An attack by Israel against the assets of Assad/Hizbollah (2) prompts an attack in response by the Assad regime against the rebel groups (FSA and IF) and the population; (3) consequently, the opposition is weakened and ISIS is strengthened, (4) which undermines the efforts of the US in the war against the Islamic State, (5) and as a result, the US will demand that Israel now refrain from attacks in Syria.'

 Yes. Israel and Russia aren't about to come to blows over Syria, as the geopolitical analysts were claiming last year. Assad responds to Israeli strikes by killing civilians, and nobody seems to think that a cause to take action against Assad. The mass of the Syrian population see America as failing to help rather than being the main enemy, but when the US tolerate Assad, people are pushed towards the extreme jihadis, partly because of the US' support for Israel.

 I don't think the US is so concerned to stop Israeli attacks in Syria. The US is playing a double game anyway, providing minimal support to the opposition, while assuring Iran that it won't challenge its influence in the region, reflecting incompatible objectives (as well as splits within the US administration) of involving the US as little as possible, letting Russia and Iran suffer their own Vietnam and stopping the humanitarian disaster in Syria. When they won't stop the Israelis bombing Gaza, I don't think they are going to expend too much capital here.

Chronicles of Disintegration

 'Over the past months, the civilian and military Syrian officials have skimped in no way to force their young compatriots to join the ranks of the army or a paramilitary organizations created to assist the regular forces. Unfortunately for them, the young Syrians refuse to hear, and also unwilling to participate in the murder of their fellow citizens, or to know the fate of hundreds of soldiers left on their own and killed in abominable conditions by ISIS, they are more than reluctant to answer calls in uniform.

 Having lost the confidence of a number of his followers, up to and including in the ranks of the Alawite community, it uses methods more expeditious. Waking up in the collective memory of painful memories, the abduction of young Syrians and sending them to the front without sufficient preparation, confirm the opinion of many that Bashar al-Assad, like his father and his regime are no different from forces that once occupied and enslaved their country.

 The methods currently used by the government to coerce young Syrians to join the ranks of the army are compared by them to Safar Barlik, a recruitment method used in the early 20th century by the Ottoman Empire when threatened with collapse. In a desperate attempt to push back the enemy, the Sublime Porte had sent gendarmes in the countries in which still exercised authority, to remove the young men she needed. But this way of doing had proved disastrous, young and enlisted with neither the will to fight or military training that would have enabled them to withstand the enemy troops.

 Numerous Syrians now hope that the same causes will cause the same effects ...'

 There's also some more stuff on the same site, a five-parter on the effect of the war on women, a suggestion of régime responsibility for the theft and destruction of the country's archaeological heritage, and currently headed by a questioning of the reliability of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, all in French.

Syrian Children Forage Through Trash to Survive

 “My father was a taxi driver, and his car was our source of living, and he was once beaten by the police before us because they accused him of joining the Free Army, and they then found out that he was innocent of this charge. My father became too afraid to leave home, he feared that if he did, he might be accused again or get taken at army checkpoints. I must work so we can eat.”

 You used to get reports like this from Central America in the 80s. Left-wingers would explain that this is what drives the people to revolution. But the American ambassador would announce that things were perfectly safe and clean in the centre of town where he lived, and all the problems were down to the Russian-backed terrorists in the countryside. The names change, but the song remains the same.

 The longer Assad is able to cling to power, the crazier a country Syria will become.

‘The Syrian opposition must end perpetual rivalries’

 'Bashar Al Assad is finished. He survives only as an instrument of pressure used by the Iranians and Russians in their confrontations/negotiations with Western powers. He has no future and will not be able to build on anything. Anyone who destroys his country and is responsible for the death of hundreds of thousands of his citizens simply to stay in power a few more years cannot but continue along the same lines. Until such time when he is dragged in front of the International Criminal Court, where he will be tried for crimes against humanity.'

 Interesting comments on the Free Syrian Army and the Gulf Co-operation Council, and more on Iran and Hezbollah, too.

Syrian refugee children find their voice through theatre in Jordan

 ' "We have been arrested, destroyed and our childhood has been destroyed."

 Some scenes in the play depicted what happens at Syrian government checkpoints and other scenes showed Syrian girls who have become responsible for their families after the death of both parents.

 Ten-year-old Salam Hussein said, "I am here to raise my voice to the world and tell them what has happened to us in Syria and the suffering we are living." '

A Dictator’s Best Friend

 It doesn't help that the truth about Assad is mixed up with a lot of garbage about Cuba, but it is true nonetheless.

 'In the late summer of 2013 Bashar Assad was caught using chemical weapons against his own people. The president and his secretary of state decried this violation of international norms and pledged, in televised addresses, to punish the Syrian tyrant for wanton slaughter and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. The application of deadly force against Assad’s air force and military installations would cripple the regime and hasten the end of a civil war that has taken the lives of some 200,000 Syrians. But suddenly Obama reversed course. He signed on to a Russian proposal to prevent a military strike in exchange for Assad’s “giving up” his barbaric tools.

 Today Bashar Assad remains in power, his opposition is divided, he has entered into an alliance of convenience with the medieval Islamic State that governs from Raqaa to Mosul. The weapons? Earlier this month the U.S. government—Barack Obama’s government—accused Syria of ongoing “systematic use” of chemical arms. I repeat: ongoing.

 Not only has Obama failed to achieve his stated aims of removing Assad and ending the WMD threat. The situation is more dangerous than it was a year ago because the Islamic State’s menagerie of Saddam loyalists and itinerant holy warriors is securing ground from which to launch attacks on targets throughout the world. Baathist dictators, chemical agents, refugees, Islamic armies are the consequence of this president’s curious mixture of false promises and aggrieved passivity.

 Barack Obama threw the Castros a lifeline, rescued Assad.'

Should We Oppose the Intervention Against ISIS?

 Rime Allaf:

 'Let’s be very clear that for the longest time, the Syrian opposition was not asking for a “boots on the ground”-style intervention, or even for a bombing campaign led by the U.S. What was being requested early on was the establishment of humanitarian corridors with the help of a “no-fly-zone” and/or weapons for the FSA to defend liberated areas from the relentless barrel bombing campaign of the regime. Since none of this happened, it was to be expected that these Islamist groups have been able to gain so much ground and find themselves with a weakened opponent in the FSA. Now the Assad regime doesn’t even need to worry about ISIS because it’s got the U.S. fighting [ISIS].'

Syria: where modern and medieval warfare combines

 'It must be made clear to those who target or indiscriminately attack civilians and civilian infrastructure that such crimes cannot be committed with impunity. The recent rise in attacks on schools – once places of learning, safety and fraternity – is illustrative of the depths to which Syria’s belligerents will sink if left unchecked, and a stark reminder that an entire generation of Syrian children is being lost to this conflict.'

 The FSA doesn't target schools, none of the Syrian rebel groups do. The overwhelming majority of attacks on civilians have been by Assad's forces, with ISIS a distant second, and the Syrian rebel groups nowhere. Jabhat al-Nusra has occasionally shelled government controlled areas without caring too much about civilian casualties. And that's about it. One bloke last year chopped out the liver of a rapist and murderer, and there was no other image of horror from Syria for months.

 People like Miliband know that the Assad government is virtually the sole perpetrator here. But his business is working with the realpolitik of international diplomacy, so tries to put things in an even-handed way, in the hope that if nobody feels threatened, some good can be done. It isn't going to work, as Assad's survival strategy is based on delivering unimaginable horror on his people. As for the UN representative de Mistura's plan to freeze the struggle of Syrians against Assad while everyone fights ISIS which the writers praise, as Robin Yassin-Kassab puts it, it's like a plan to cool the ovens at Auschwitz.

 But we can expect a lot more of this even-handed blaming of both sides by world powers and their media, while Syrians are tortured and killed by Assad's forces every day.

Rights Group: 215,000 Detained in Syria Since Uprising

 ' “I heard the sound of children and women screaming and men being tortured all the time.”

 Much of the report is focused on a secret detention center at Der Shmiel, which the authors say is run by up to 1,500 shabiha drawn from surrounding villages. The camp is located in the countryside 20 kilometers from the town of Misyaf. A former prisoner's testimony suggests the camp has two functions - to inflict torture on dissidents and their families and anyone suspected of disloyalty held at the camp, and to trade prisoners for cash.

 According to the former prisoner, who was held for three months at Der Shmiel, about 2,500 detainees are at the camp - 250 children and 400 women among them. Local residents told SNHR researchers they had seen bodies dumped from the camp bearing signs of beatings and torture. The detainee said he was regularly lashed with one of his hands tied to the ceiling, and without his feet being able to touch the ground."

Map for situation in North Aleppo

 Assad and ISIS forces both attacking Syrian rebels, not attacking each other.

Assad Is Running Out Of Soldiers

 'U.S. airstrikes, concentrated in areas with a heavy Islamic State presence, have allowed Assad to reallocate some resources, but his army is facing a huge problem: It's running out of soldiers. Ground forces have shrunk from 315,000 to roughly 150,000 troops since the beginning of the civil war in 2011.

 To fill the gaps, Assad has to lean on “irregular forces,” made up of the National Defense Force (NDF) militias, regime-armed local militias and a largely Sunni reservist group, experts said. Regime forces also include Lebanese Hezbollah and Iranian forces.

 “You don’t see very many pure Syrian army formations anymore,” according to Jeff White, a defense fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. “This is what basically kept the regime in the war.”

 U.S. president Obama announced Tuesday that he was set to sign legislation that would impose sanctions on Russian companies involved in supporting Syria. This would further cripple Russia’s already steeply devalued ruble, and decrease its ability to support the Syrian regime.'

FSA North’s New Vids Show US TOWs Still Arriving

 It might be added that if Jabhat al-Nusra used the TOW's they seized to drive Assad's forces out of most of Idlib province, that's a bit of a win too.

 '1. Don’t jump the gun. The CIA-run TOWs program is nominally a covert operation. They don’t do daily press briefings about it at the Pentagon or at Central Command. Operational decisions — who to arm, who not to arm, why and why not — are not discussed publicly, so we’re stuck with sorting through almost purely circumstantial evidence if we want to figure out what is really going on. And sometimes it takes time for circumstantial evidence to emerge — days, or weeks even.

 2. It should be no surprise to anyone if the FSA doesn’t get paid on time every time or if weapons shipments are delayed. The U.S. isn’t paying people via direct deposit and getting weapons from Turkey (or Jordan) to the front lines in Syria is a perilous process given how many factions there are, their shifting/unclear alignments and allegiances, and just the general the fog of war.

 3. FSA’s SRF in northern Syria is pretty much dead after getting its clock cleaned by Jabhat al-Nusra and its Islamist allies earlier this year. What is going on with the non-SRF FSA is less clear and southern SRF is still alive and kicking judging by the mutual defense pact they co-signed.

 4. The CIA’s TOWs program has been a success. Even if it is true that 6 TOWs fell into the hands of Al-Qaeda affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra, something like 300 TOWs were shipped by the U.S. to FSA groups through 2014 which means roughly 98% of the weapons given to moderate rebels were used by moderate rebels.'

Life after Guantanamo

 Moazzem Begg:

 'It's really important we note this, when the West-led airstrikes were carried out against ISIS, they didn't just strike ISIS. They struck at Jabhat al-Nusra, the al-Nusra Front, they struck Ahrar al-Sham, which is part of the Islamic Front, the largest Islamic front which is fighting Assad as well as ISIS, and they struck all of these groups.

 The only conclusion you can reach is one of two: either they are extremely uninformed, which I doubt; or it was done on purpose, and if that's the case, it was to drive those who were fighting ISIS into ISIS' lap. Now, that sort of ridiculous and unthoughtful campaign has turned the entire Syrian population, the population of the Syrian opposition, against any American intervention. In fact they say, we've been killed in the numbers of 200,000, we've been killed by chemical weapons, we went to war with Iraq because there might have been chemical weapons, yet when they were used, nothing was done, the red lines that President Obama said if they were crossed, the West would do something about it; nothing was done, and in fact now, Britain, America, are on the same side as the Iraqi government, the Iranian government, as Hezbollah, and the PKK, the last two banned terrorist organisations.'

The Russians will not let go of Assad and neither will we

 'Moscow is behind the extension of the Syrian humanitarian tragedy, a tragedy which the region has not hitherto seen the likes of. They are with Assad as long as he’s alive and in the presidential palace in Damascus. The opposition’s option is to organize its ranks and place its bets on the ground military option. It is the only way the Russians and the Americans will listen. The Russian and American governments, caught between besieged Assad and brutal terrorism, have no other choice but to deal with the opposition.'

Two Years of Siege in Yarmouk

 'At least 135 Palestinians have died directly from the siege. It was the cruelty of starvation that initially haunted the camp. However, the protruding misery in Yarmouk today is a result of a drought manufactured by the Syrian regime since June 2014. It has aggravated the already extensive suffering of the 18,000 or so Palestinians that remain trapped inside the camp. Yarmouk has been without water for over 90 days.

 The siege on Yarmouk, the issue of who is at fault, boils down to one essential point: the practice of collective punishment. Either one opposes this cruel practice, whether in Gaza or Yarmouk, or they don't. Neither the complexities of Yarmouk nor the crimes of the opposition, of which there have been many, alter that basic point.'

Massacre in Kafranbel

 Raed Fares:

 "Idlib: Massacre in Kafranbel : 13 civlians were killed after the Assad regime bombed the Orient hospital in Kafranbel today. Death toll rising."

 The BBC announced earlier, "we have an update on the death toll," but that wasn't about Syria, because whenever the news is about Syria, it's never about Assad.

 Raed Fares is that nice man who comes up with the revolutionary slogans, like "We Stand In Solidarity With The Oppressed Who Cannot Breathe ‪#‎blacklivesmatter‬". I don't think it is too much to ask for him to expect some solidarity in return.

An Empty, Token Gesture

 'Syrians will continue to resist whether they are trained or not, or armed or not, because war is not a matter of choice today and it cannot be put on hold while Syrians wait for a political solution or until the military training program is completed. There are nine million displaced Syrians inside and outside Syria, and they cannot accept the simple provision of blankets and bread and continue to sleep in the open every winter. This is why the war will continue. Many Syrians are fighting dressed in rags and using simple weapons. Even those who are tired of this cannot go home except through force. This is their only hope. The next two years may pass with the regime staying in Damascus while still depending on the support of its Iranian ally. However, the war will not stop without seeing the end of the regime, whether by war or through a political solution.

 We all know that if the moderate opposition possessed advanced weapons, the regime wouldn’t have survived, and the losses of the regime’s allies would’ve exceeded their capability to continue in this bloodbath until today. There is no shortage in the number of volunteers willing to fight the Assad regime. Their number in the south alone is over 30,000, although they are poorly equipped and their arms are limited to simple weapons. It’s neither the US nor the European countries that back the FSA who are training the opposition fighting on the ground. Most of them received limited training from Turkey and the Arab countries who are supporting and helping them.'

ISIS Abhorent To Islam Followers

 'The Assad government is using the fear of ISIS to stay in power, Awad said. The current policy of attacking ISIS will fail unless it also comes to include bringing down Assad, he said.

 "The Assad regime is kept alive by ISIS," Awad said. "If you ask the Syrian people, they will tell you ISIS and the regime are the threat." '

U.S. Says Europeans Tortured by Assad's Death Machine

 That's how Pinochet was nearly brought to justice; torture and kill enough people and eventually they'll be some Europeans among them. Of course Dr Abbas Khan is one of them, but the British government doesn't seem that interested in Syria if it can avoid it.

From BBC Arabic's first film and documentary festival

 Robin Yassin-Kassab:

 'In Syria, there is so much going on culturally. Again, this is a story which isn't being told, so as well as the films we're going to see this afternoon, we've got free newspapers, free radio stations; these are being set up even in places that are being starved and bombed every day. So, despite the horror of the Assad régime, and the horror of ISIS and the extremist jihadist groups and so on, in the middle of that, there are still people doing their best in awful circumstances to express themselves, to develop culture, to develop ideas, and that's one hopeful thing in this big mess.'

 The rest of his answers:

 'I think it's really significant because we hear all kinds of political discourses about the Arab world, the Middle East, we hear about the wars, and the Islamism, and the sectarianism, and the international intervention, and the proxy wars and so on;but we hear very little actual human stories, what's actually happening to people on the ground, and I think therefore we in the West don't have the material to understand what's happening on a human level, why people have been revolting against their régimes, why in some countries it has all collapsed in a horrible way, what's the background to this, what's going on in people's heads, so we need a lot more of this kind of stuff.

 I fear that this kind of thing is drowned out by the stereotypical images of peple with guns and beards, and so on, by the big news events.But we hope, and we keep going, there is as well as all the chaos and nastiness in the Arab world at the moment, there is also a bottom-up cultural revolution, and I think that will inevitably become more and more visible as time goes on. I think the Arabs themselves will demand to be heard, they are demanding to be heard, and I think eventually they will be heard much more than they are now.So thanks to the BBC for doing this, it's a great thing, and I hope it gets some notice.



 I think there should be a huge London audience for this kind of thing. Firstly because we have lots of communities in London from all over the world, we've got lots of Arab communities, we've got lots of people who maybe for religious, or political reasons, or just because of their personal interest, people want to know what's going on in the world. So, someone may have a purely English background, but they want to understand this turmoil not far away, in the Southern and eastern Mediterranean. So, I think there is an audience, I think we've got quite a sophisticated cultural audience in London, and I hope it gets bigger and bigger, for this kind of thing in particular.

 Some people suggested about some Iranian films, some aspects of Iranian cinema, that after Iranian cinema got a lot of international recognition, some people suggested that there were directors making films primarily with the Cannes Film Festival in mind, the foreign audience in mind, rather than people in Iran. I don't know enough about it to comment whether that is true or not, but I don't think that is going to happen with the Arab cinema, because there are so many urgent social issues, and I think that Arab directors, or Middle Eastern directors of all kinds of backgrounds, at the moment, want to address their people. They want to take part in very real debates which are happening in those countries. So I think inevitably the cinema from the Middle East will develop, and change, and diversify. I don't think that process is going to be governed by the reception of these films abroad, I think it's going to be governed by realities inside those countries.

 I think it would be great if people could understand that the Middle East is made up of human beings, complicated human beings, self-contradictory human beings, all kinds of ideas are bubbling up, all kinds of strange events are happening. it's impossible to reduce or simplify this without losing the reality of the story. That's what the media does in general, it reduces and simplifies, perhaps necessarily, and in some ways not at all necessarily. I think that cultural artifacts like this can convey the human reality, and that's what everyone should be engaging with. I think we could all forget our grand narratives of what's happening in the world, and just engage with human beings and cultural products from this part of the world, and learn a lot more lessons.'

Forty-four Months and Forty-four Years

 Yassin al-Haj Saleh:

 'While the Assad state cuts off those lesser Syrians internally, the approach adopted by the Western and international media sources is based generally on the isolation and infantilizing of the Syrians, and is not concerned with knowing anything behind the wall. On the contrary, they repay the regime for its isolation of its citizens by ignoring them. The Western ‘experts’ on Syria very rarely know anything of value about it, but give prominence to the ‘upper’ discourse of world capitals, great conflicts, and the names of rulers. They know little, and sense even less.

 That one of us should strongly oppose Bashar’s regime, as well as Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, without being a ‘local informer’ dreaming of nothing but life in the West, seems impossible.

 Yet it is by no means impossible. We do exist, and we are visible to whoever wants to see. We are many, both women and men, joined in a fight on multiple fronts, on behalf of justice and freedom in our country and in the world. We confront hegemony on the global level without reactionary gestures rooted in identity, and we confront the isolating positions of identity without abandoning our positions in the struggle, here and now, on behalf of freedom, justice, and dignity.'

Southern Syria a different story from the media narrative

 'The leadership of the Southern Front believes the regime of Bashar al-Assad will collapse at some point. There are various reasons for this.

 The first is the duration of this terrible war which has sapped a lot of energy out of the Syrian military in terms of manpower. Both sides of this conflict are tired after four years of fighting, but the areas loyal to the Assad regime are becoming uncomfortable at how many of their men are being lost in this war while Assad sits comfortably in his palace in Damascus.

 The second reason is economic and is closely linked to the price of oil. War is hugely expensive and the Assad regime is dependent on both Iran and Russia. Iran for funding and Russia for weapons. As the price of oil has collapsed over the last few months it becomes increasingly difficult for Iran to fund Bashar al-Assad so he can buy weapons from Russia. Russia cannot afford to simply give weapons away, as it has its own financial problems also due to the price of oil and the effect of sanctions. If oil prices stay low well into 2015 then it will become extremely difficult for the Syrian regime to hold on to power.

 The Southern Front senses this and is preparing for Bashar al-Assad to lose his grip on power. The biggest challenge when this happens will be to stop Damascus descending into chaos and allowing the extremists an opportunity to try and fill the vacuum.'

Raw reporting from the Syrian civil war

 Magalie Laguerre-Wilkinson: Tell me about the evolution of Basset. We see him starting out as a pretty secular person, well-known. But he's evolved into a relatively militant character. He wasn't interested in an Islamic state, which is what ISIS is interested in. He wanted to get rid of Assad. Now he's angry at the West because he hasn't gotten the help that he's asked for.

 Bob Simon: He's been angry at the West for some time. It's not only at the governments that he's angry at, he's angry at all of us. The media gave him a lot of play in the early days, but now he's in Syria. We were at the Turkish/Syrian border. And while we had all the apparatus, phones and Skype and all that, to make contact with him, he didn't wanna have anything to do with us.

 Magalie Laguerre-Wilkinson: The West had let him down.

 Bob Simon: The West had let him down entirely.

Moazzam Begg, in his own words

 "They came [to Syria] for a benign reason, which was to fight against the Assad regime. But our government can't see the difference. It says everyone is the same. And thus, it feeds into the ISIS argument.

 Whether it's James Foley, whether it’s Alan Henning, whether it's Steven Sotloff, whoever it was, I'm convinced that every single one of these people was assisting Syrians in the way that few others could. If you take James Foley for example, he was serving in Libya, getting out pictures of crimes committed by the Gaddafi regime. He was doing the same thing in Syria and he was a vital lifeline for the people in terms of what was happening there. Alan Henning, goodness. He'd been to Syria several times. A simple man, but one who cared so much that he was prepared to place himself in danger to help people. Peter Kessig, he became a Muslim.

 People on the ground are more disgusted than the West is because they have seen their own compatriots killed by these people. They have more reason to be disgusted by the West, but not at the expense of their revolution."

The Southern Front - Human Rights Are Our Goal

 With English subtitles.

 "Human rights are the main aim of the Southern Front. No one shall be subject to torture, or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment."

Humanitarian aid won’t stop the war

 'I couldn’t care less what the US establishment or its opponents think about Syria. The uprising is not about them. It’s about people who are being starved, murdered and besieged simply for wanting to be free from a cowardly and murderous tyrant. And at the end of the day, I’d rather show solidarity with them than fake "anti-imperialists" sitting in the West.'

Support the women saving Syria from the bombs

 'To make matter worse, air attacks from the regime have significantly increased in some areas since the US-led strikes began.'

Obama says no change in Syria policy, Assad still not priority

 This is actually the policy that people like Noam Chomsky say they want him to follow, and the policy that has made the disaster in Syria go from bad to worse.

 “The people of Syria and the various players involved, as well as the regional players -- Turkey, Iran, Assad's patrons like Russia -- are going to have to engage in a political conversation.”

UN still struggling to move aid into Syria

 'Millions of families have been torn apart, pushed out of ancestral homes and forced to flee unspeakable horrors in search of safety and dignity.

 The Assad regime has waged a cruel and unrelenting campaign of bloodshed and starvation against its own people for almost four years.'

An alliance of convenience against Assad

 'In Syria those who win victories, gain legitimacy. The FSA has made military gains in the latest battles. Although Nusra took part in these battles, the victories are not restricted to Nusra and therefore the FSA has regained its popularity.'

‪#‎BlackLivesMatter‬ says Kafranbel!

Islamic State adopts Assad's methods of torture

 I think it's 55,000 photos showing 11,000 deaths, but those are only the ones Caesar witnessed personally.

 'The astonishing cruelty of Syrian prisons has been recorded again and again over the years, long before the revolution, along with the diversity and imagination of the tortures available. "They have made an art form out of torture," said Samir.

 In the "flying carpet", the victim is strapped down to a hinged board, with the ends brought towards each other, bending the spine. With the relatively mundane "falaqa", the victim is beaten on the soles of the feet.

 Obviously, there are also the usual add-ons – male rape, sometimes with kebab skewers, and starvation. The defector known as "Caesar", a police photographer, earlier this year revealed graphic evidence of the deaths of 55,000 people in regime cells since the start of the uprising.'

Noam Chomsky on America: ‘This is a very racist society’

 Noam Chomsky talks complete shit on Syria. A sad day. The major force fighting ISIS has been the Free Syrian Army, which Patrick Cockburn has spent several years pretending does not exist. Turkey has not been attacking the PKK's allies in Syria. Iran's sectarian gangs which have massacred Sunni Muslims in both Iraq and Syria have driven people into the arms of ISIS. Co-operation with Iran has not been ruled out, the US has been doing its best to get de facto co-operation in Iraq, while leaving the Iranians to do their own thing in Syria.

 Chomsky goes on to say that people are angry about the American bombing, ignoring the major reason that they are angry is that Syrian rebel groups rather than Assad are being bombed. And what to do about Assad is not complex, give the Syrian people the means to get rid of him, and the attraction of ISIS as an alternative will fade like the stars at dawn. But the Syrians fighting Assad appear only as a proxy for American intervention to Chomsky, so when he cites a report from the New York Times showing that American interventions don't work, it doesn't occur that because those were terrorist interventions against popular movements, they have no bearing on whether support for a popular movement against state terrorism would be effective.

 'The correspondent who's followed this most closely, and has been right all along, Patrick Cockburn, simply describes it as an Alice in Wonderland strategy. The major ground forces who are fighting ISIS, are apparently the PKK, and its allies in Syria, a similar group, they're barred because we call them a terrorist group. So they're under attack, our ally Turkey attacks them, and we bar them support. They're apparently the ones who saved the Yazidi, and blocked the ISIS attack on Iraqi Kurdistan. So they're out. The major regional force, state, that could confront ISIS, is Iran. In fact, they could probably wipe them out, and they are influential in Iraq, in fact they were the victors of the Iraq war. They're out, for ideological reasons. A more complex case, that Dr. Cockburn's talked about, is what to do about Assad, and that has all sorts of complexities, anyway, they're out.'

The Salafist and the human rights activist

 'Wherever the regime has been driven out, the people breathe freedom. Curriculums are rewritten, town councillors are elected, newspapers are published and cultural centres are set up – all developments that the West favours, but does not support, even though the huge bombing raids on residential areas of Homs in February 2012 leave no one in any doubt that Assad will use any weapons at his disposal to stay in power.

 The argument that in 2012, it was not clear who was fighting whom in Syria is just a lame excuse. At this time, Syrian Islamists like Alloush were just starting to get organised, and there were only very isolated pockets of foreign jihadists in the country. Instead of giving the many different local rebel groups the money, training and weapons they needed to create an alternative Syrian army, they were left to fight amongst themselves over supplies.'

A weapon of social destruction

 'Since the beginning of the uprising, the Syrian government has gradually engaged in campaigns of arbitrary detention of women, particularly peaceful protestors, activists, dissidents, journalists and aid workers. Although many were released shortly after, some were kept longer to exert pressure on their families or to deter their relatives from joining anti-government protests. State media publicly denounced these women as "terrorists", "saboteurs" and even "sex slaves" for "terrorist groups".

 As the war intensified, security forces began conducting widespread systematic raids on opposition strongholds and used checkpoints to randomly arrest women, detaining them for lengthy periods before releasing them; usually following the payment of a bribe or as part of prisoner swap with opposition groups."

Canada considers prioritizing religious minorities in Syria refugee resettlement

 "We will prioritize persecuted ethnic and religious minorities."

 The truth is that the main victims of Assad have been from the Sunni Muslim majority. But the media that has portrayed the Syrian revolution against genocide as a civil war with victims on all sides, and the racists who have painted it all as an Islamic jihad, have helped to create the ignorance that makes such racist policy on refugees seem a reasonable option.