Monday 31 August 2015

Why Americans must change the conversation about Syria

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'Syrians know that the US is not at war with Syria just by looking up at the sky, which is filled with a criss-cross of Assad régime aircraft and US-led coalition aircraft that never skirmish. They see US support of the opposition forces as consistently inadequate, and indicative of a "bleeding out" policy. When Americans position the US as a primary aggressor in the Syrian conflict, and frame the coversation exclusively within the logic of US imperialism and the War on Terror, they're proliferating a narrative that doesn't apply to the Syrian civilian. This framing is dangerous, erasing the Syrian context by homogenizing its conflict with the illegal US invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan and drone strikes in Yemen and Pakistan. This leaves little room to consider the anti-dictatorship movement that gave rise to the conflict.  To understand the structures of violence operating in Syria today, the conversation should place the Syrian civil society activist at its center and map out culpable parties based on their responsibility to safeguard the inherent dignity of the civilian. This “civilian-centered approach” immediately places the Syrian regime as the primary actor culpable in creating and perpetuating violence within the state. All other actors, therefore, commit violence in Syria in relation to the Syrian regime. The goal of the Syrian régime wasn't to wholeheartedly brainwash citizens, but rather to coerce them into behaving as if they believed in the régime, making them aware of their submission through regurgitated illusions. No international state has directly challenged the Syrian régime militarily. This is because the original conflict is between the Syrian régime and Syrian civilians, and all other state and non-state actors commit violence within the country in relation to the Syrian régime. Iran is directly complicit with the actions of the Syrian régime, providing financial and military support that is responsible for propping up Assad. The Obama régime has been consistent in publicly condemning the régime, and avoiding any action to check their power. The repercussions of failing to center our conversation around civilians can already be seen in the mainstream conversations about Syria: the "Hands Off Syria" movement, refugees fleeing to Europe are simply labelled as migrants, and daily casualties from régime bombing have yet to stoke mass public outrage.'

The Dissolution of Past and Present

Baal-Shamin,Palmyra

Robin Yassin-Kassab


 "When Daesh destroys Baal’s temple, when the regime destroys the Zabadani mosque (or Aleppo’s Umawi mosque, or Deraa’s Omari mosque), it’s as if fascist forces have destroyed Stonehenge, Westminster Abbey or the Tower of London, as if the British Library and British Museum have burnt. It declares a total rupture with the past.
 All borders are acts of the imagination, and the Sykes-Picot borders are more artificial than most. They were drawn by foreign imperialists – either clumsily or maliciously, according to your reading – and manifested an order in which minorities wielded power over majorities.
 The dissolution of these false borders would of course be welcome if it implied a dissolution of repressive state structures (and foreign interference), and a corresponding empowerment of individuals and communities. It would be welcome if it ended the political exploitation of sect. But both Assad and Daesh offer the opposite, and neither of their projects can provide stability. At once a perverse reincarnation of Baathist tyranny and a homeland for international fantasists, the Daesh state is a temporary phenomenon, a parasite feeding on Assad’s war. And Assad’s shrinking state is an Iranian puppet; running low on Syrian manpower, it implements a foreign agenda.
 This has never been clearer than today. When negotiations were held over Zabadani, the Islamist militia Ahrar al-Sham spoke on behalf of the rebels. Its interlocutor was not the Syrian regime, but the Islamic Republic of Iran. Ahrar hoped to win a mutual ceasefire from the negotiations – that Hizbullah stop attacking Zabadani, and the rebels in return stop attacking Fu’ah and Kafraya, pro-regime Shia towns in Idlib province. But Ahrar broke off talks when the Iranians demanded instead a population exchange – that Sunni residents leave Zabadani, and Shia residents leave Fu’ah and Kafraya.
 Having failed to hold most of Syria, Assad and the Iranians aim now to retrench in an area stretching from the coast through Homs along the Lebanese border to Damascus. This is their version of what the French occupiers called ‘la Syrie utile’. The sectarian cleansing of strategic zones in this area began in 2013 (especially around Homs), and continues with the current assault on Zabadani and the increased aerial bombardment of the Ghouta suburbs of Damascus, already subjected to sarin gas, artillery barrages and two years of starvation siege. On August 16th, for example, barrel bombs murdered over a hundred people in a Douma marketplace.
 It goes on day by day – Syria’s present, past and future dissolve, and the world participates in the tragedy. Britain reopens its embassy in Tehran. The UN sups with Assad. The US, long retreated from its anti-regime threats, bombs moderate Islamist opposition groups like Jaish al-Sunna as well as Daesh. Worse, it seems the Americans are using their involvement in the multinational operations centre in Jordan to hold back the Free Army’s Southern Front from victory in Deraa."

Sunday 30 August 2015

The Syrians defying napalm bombs and sniper fire to build a library



 "Syrians in the rebel-held town of Darayya have faced sniper fire, napalm bombing and indiscriminate killing at the hands of the Assad regime.
 But among the destruction, one group of young men managed to create a place of sanctuary - a library.
 After residents of the besieged town fled, the students rescued books from their abandoned private libraries. In some cases, the buildings were still burning.
 Darayya, on the outskirts of Damascus, was a rallying point for protestors calling for an end to the Assad regime in 2011.
 When the conflict turned violent, Syrian rebels made the town a stronghold. But in 2012, the Syrian army entered the town and massacred hundreds of residents.
 After rebels regained the town, the Assad regime responded by besieging the residents using weapons banned by the UN."
It was after the 2012 massacre that Robert Fisk rode in with Assad's army, and claimed it was the FSA that had done it.
[https://www.opendemocracy.net/yassin-al-haj-saleh-rime-allaf/syria-dispatches-robert-fisks-independence]

David Cameron lacked 'balls' to head off the rise of Isis, says former defence chief

David Cameron

 'Lord Richards reportedly told author Sir Anthony Seldon that the prime minister had in 2012 rejected a “coherent military strategy” to take on the regime of Syria’s president, Bashar al-Assad, which would in his view have seen the Islamic extremists “squeezed out of existence”.'
 He's certainly had the cojones to claim he's doing what he can to get Assad to go. Idiots claim he tried to drag us into a war in Syria in 2013.

Iran seeking to expel 200,000 Sunnis from Damascus — report

Syrian President Bashar Assad (center), shakes hands with a member of Iran's parliamentary committee on national interest and foreign policy, in Damascus, Syria, April 22, 2013. (photo credit: AP/SANA)

 "Iran is working with the Syrian regime to clear hundreds of thousands of Sunni Muslim residents from Damascus in an effort to alter the demographic makeup of the city, according to the London-based Al-Quds Al-Arabi newspaper.
 According to the report, the overwhelmingly Shiite Iran is helping the regime to raze homes in the relatively plush Mezzeh neighborhood of Damascus, pushing out the Sunni residents in an effort to cement local support for the regime.
 Hundreds of families living in the area were given just a few hours to evacuate their homes, the report said.
The report said that Iran and the Assad regime are seeking population transfers in order to strengthen the government’s control over key areas linking the Syrian capital with the Mediterranean coast, the heartland of the Alawite community, the Shiite sect to which President Bashar Assad belongs."

As tragedies shock Europe, a bigger refugee crisis looms in the Middle East



 ' “It is a tragedy without parallel in the recent past.”
 The crisis has gone on so long that some children have forgotten where they are from. Rashid Hamadi, 9, remembers his house, with bedrooms for himself and his siblings and a garden where roses grew. He remembers tanks and bullets and running in fear from bombs. But he hesitated when asked the name of his home town. “I don’t remember,” he said.
 
In Turkey, the only country in the region that has made a point of welcoming the refugees, some Syrians are allowed to work, attend school and receive medical care. The Turkish government has already warned Turks to prepare for the eventuality that the presence of 1.9 million Syrians in their country of 75 million may be permanent.
 The Lebanese government has refused to allow the construction of camps for the Syrians, so the refugees are left to fend for themselves. “It’s like being in prison,” said Nour Msaitef, 25, who fled Idlib province three years ago and dares not leave his camp, on the outskirts of the Bekaa Valley town of Zahle, even in daylight for fear of being detained by Lebanese authorities or beaten up by local residents.
Some fled the excesses of the Islamic State, others government ­forces. Many now find their home towns on the wrong side of front lines that are unlikely to budge.
Fitnah al-Ali’s nephew returned last year to the family’s home in Homs, an epicenter of the anti-government revolt in 2011 that led to the civil war. The city is now under government control. He was detained and has not been heard from. “Just because you fled, they will say you were with the revolution,” said her son, Abdullah, who dares not go back.
Watfa Assad Saleh and her family have added a wooden roof, walls and little shelves decorated with china dogs to the shack they inhabit just across the border from Syria, within earshot of the daily airstrikes pounding their home town of Zabadani, another early focus of the revolt. Their house there has been leveled, neighbors have told them, and she questions whether they will ever go back.
“We say, ‘God willing,’ ” she sighed. “But I don’t believe we will ever return.” '

War for Decades to Come? One Year After Islamic State Advance, US Could Send Hundreds More Troops to Iraq

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Amy Goodman asks Patrick Cockburn about Idrees Ahmad's criticism and receives waffle:
AMY GOODMAN: Patrick, last month The Daily Beast featured an article criticizing your Syria reporting. The author, Muhammad Idrees Ahmad alleges you discount any Syrian nationalist opposition to the al-Assad regime and that your position is, "Bashar al-Assad is at war with jihadi terrorism; the West has erred in supporting his opponents; and to support the opposition is to support ISIS." Ahmad goes on to say, "For Cockburn, the situation in Syria is stark: you are with the regime or you are with the terrorists. He is an enthusiast for the war on terror—Bashar al-Assad’s war on terror. He criticizes the U.S. for excluding from its anti-ISIS coalition 'almost all those actually fighting ISIS, including Iran, the Syrian army, the Syrian Kurds and the Shia militias in Iraq.'" Ahmad later accuses you of "turning a blind eye to the regime’s ongoing slaughter of civilians." He says, "He is helped in this by the obtrusive barbarism of ISIS, which uses spectacle in the place of scale to force media attention. ISIS has been a godsend for the regime. It has helped divert attention from its crimes — and regime-friendly journalists have obliged in the deflection." Patrick Cockburn, your response?
PATRICK COCKBURN: Oh, I get a lot of this. Anybody who’s gonna report the Syrian civil war, or the Iraqi civil war is going to be accused by one side or the other of being partisan. And what happens in the Middle East has always happened, but is happening worse now, is when you analyze something and you say this is the situation, that I don’t think Assad is going to go down, both sides are incredibly brutal in this Civil War, then people think you’re justifying it. They mistake analysis for justification. I have had that, really, since 2011. I remember a rather nice Syrian I knew in Lebanon. I had just been in Syria and I had reported that Assad, for various reasons, was not going to collapse as a lot of media was saying. And as I came back into Syria, I switched on my telephone and there was the same guy shouting at me, shouting, shame on The Independent, shame on you. It was just that I had reported the situation as I saw it. Objectively. But he sort of wished that reality was different, and that’s why he was shouting at me. And this is the same sort of stuff. I can understand the passions involved, that both sides commit appalling atrocities using maximum violence, whatever they have against civilians. This is true of the Assad government dropping barrel bombs on civilians. It’s true of the Islamic State; 500, 600 members of another tribe in Syria were massacred. So I can understand how people feel like that. It’s part of the war, so I get attacked like that. I’m sure I will be attacked again. And there’s nothing much I can really do about that.

The cleansing of Zabadani

"To those who analyze the revolution theoretically, head to the battle sites and turn your words into actions." Al-Zabadani, Damascus 06/18/2013 Source: The Creative Memory of the Syrian Revolution

 ' “The displacement of the people of Zabadani to Madaya means that they will be confined to a narrow and very densely populated geographic area already populated by a large number of displaced civilians and will be again besieged in an area which is being continuously targeted with barrel bombs by Assad’s warplanes and with heavy artillery bombardment by regime ground forces. The area is also surrounded by regime checkpoints where regime troops are already hunting civilians (men, women and children) from Zabadani, as well as warning them to prepare for a massacre and long-term siege. These threats against the people of Zabadani are the start of the regime’s and its accomplices’ planned ‘demographic change’ which we have warned repeatedly of. This threat to the people is not limited to Sunni Muslims but also includes the town’s Christian and other population, with all the town’s people being driven out in order to ‘cleanse’ the area and prepare for it to be resettled by foreign occupiers.”
 B
eyond immediate military value, forced population transfers give rise to the fear that there’s a plan to divide Syria on sectarian lines, to redraw the borders with Alawites and Shia, Sunnis and Kurds all taking their own sections of the country. Far from being a prelude to peace, such a plan would precipitate an ethnic cleansing on a scale not yet seen in the country. Syria’s diverse ethnic and religious groups do not fit neatly into geographical areas and are spread across all regions. Even in the coastal region, the regime’s Alawite stronghold and presumably a key part of any future Assadist state, the two main cities – Lattakia and Tartous- contain major Sunni populations.
 Zabadani’s people once took to the streets chanting the anti-sectarian revolutionary slogan “The Syrian People are One”.  Now they are being expelled from their homes for the sake of what looks like an Iranian-sectarian partition.'

Saturday 29 August 2015

A Syrian Photographer Survives to Show His Country's Destruction



'Aleppo has "completely changed," he says. "The city's neighborhoods are devastated because of daily shelling and the use of barrel bombs by the Assad regime." Amid the horror of the war, Basha also focused on the White Helmets, a group of volunteer rescuers who tunnel into bombed-out buildings to save the people trapped inside. He also turned his lens to children, who "have lost all kinds of fun and happiness in childhood" but still have "big dreams after the end of the war." '

Editorial: Refugee crisis grows



'Here’s one factoid from that most recent horror in Austria to contemplate: Some of the dead carried Syrian travel documents. They were fleeing the violence and the turmoil, which our own nation and the international community have done nothing to curtail — not after President Obama’s “red line,” not after the proof of sarin gas attacks, not after pleas by rebels for something more lethal than meals-ready-to-eat.
 
European governments are arresting the human traffickers who prey off the fear and the misery of these refugees. But they cannot stop this tide. Only regime change in Syria can do that — but our own nation and the world seem to have given up on that.'

Wednesday 26 August 2015

Dream On


From a Syrian on Facebook today:
"What we need now is only 20-30 anti-aircraft missiles, and I can assure you that we can force a no-fly zone over all Syria."

Syria Feature: Facing Military Difficulties, Assad Puts Blame on Israel in TV Interview

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Two things we might want to note about this. Firstly, the Assad régime and its friends in Russia and Iran are the main source of the conspiracy theories that Israel is behind the Syrian rebels. When you see the same being propagated by conspiracy theorists or self-styled leftists, it's not some counter-narrative to imperialism, but a concoction of the imperialism that is destroying Syria. Secondly, when Assad says things will go back to the way they were, he isn't going to accept any partition of the country, but will kill every Syrian if he gets the chance in the vain attempt to hold onto the whole country.
 "Today, the main Israeli tool that is more important than that aggression are the terrorists in Syria, meaning that what they do is much more dangerous than what Israel does from time to time to support them. They are the basis of the problem.
So, if we want to confront Israel, first we have to face its tools within Syria. You cannot confront an external enemy when you have an internal enemy. This matter must be resolved within Syria, and then things will be back to the way they were, and no-one would dare act against Syria; not Israel nor anyone else."

Monday 24 August 2015

Syrians in Turkey keep revolution alive

Leila and Mustafa in Antakya

 'The decisive event for the FSA brigade's relationship with IS came in June 2013, when the Islamist group shot their commander, Kamal Hamami, also known as Abu Basir, the man who had so readily welcomed Leila into the brigade.
 
"It was a turning point in the history of the revolution. Before that we couldn't see that IS was a serious threat to the Syrian revolution. After this we took a decision to fight them."
 
Aboud, Mustafa and Leila reminisce together about the early days of the revolution - the hope and euphoria. That doesn't mean the future Syria they envision the same. Mustafa is a committed Salafist, while Aboud is clear that he wants a secular state. But there is much they all share.
"Mustafa and I have had very different points of view," Leila says. "But in the end we don't want all of Syria to think the same way. This is the point of the revolution. I can have my opinion and he can have his. If you're a socialist, a liberalist, an Islamist, it's okay so long as you're not hurting anybody. That's my hope since the beginning and still is now. For everyone to have the right to express their views."
 "If you want to get back on track to fight for what we initially fight for, you have to take away IS," Leila says. "It's as simple as that. We haven't forgotten what we are fighting for. We cannot forget. But let's be honest. We cannot fight Assad only." '
 Maybe Robert Fisk should talk to these people, instead of writing bullshit like, "We can – we must – spend far more time investigating the links between Isis and their Islamist and rebel friends (Nusrah, Jaish al-Islam, even the near-non-existent Free Syria Army) and the Saudis and Qataris and Turks, and indeed the degree to which US weapons have been sent across the border of Syria almost directly into Isis hands."
[
http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/isis-blinds-journalists-with-its-barbarity-but-we-must-continue-to-report-10468294.html]

Faction Guide of the Syrian war – Part 2 – Syrian Opposition

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 "Many Syrian soldiers deserted to join the FSA. By June 2013, the estimated number of soldiers who had defected to the FSA was about 40,000, but the manpower increased to 80,000 because many civilians also decided to pick up arms and join the FSA. Later in late 2013 many fighters defected FSA to join other opposition armed groups and Jihadist groups for ideological and military reasons which decreased the manpower of the FSA to 45,000 fighters.
 FSA operates throughout Syria, both in urban areas and in the suburbs, they are present in the northwest (Idlib, Aleppo), the central region (Hama, and Rastan), in the coast (around Latakia suburbs) and in the south (Daraa and Houran). They get external support from MOC [Military Operation Co-operation] it’s a military operation room that’s was created in 2013 by “Friends of Syria” countries like USA, UK, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Jordan. The objective of this military operation room is to train the Syrian opposition fighters and to support them constantly in their fronts. This operation room is headquartered in Amman, Jordan."
Three things might be added. Many of those who defected at the end of 2013 did so because, the world, specifically President Obama, promised to do something if Assad used chemical weapons, and did nothing when he did exactly that. It's a lie, when those like Patrick Cockburn tell us the FSA doesn't exist. The"Friends of Syria" give a minimal amount of support to the FSA (though not in the deluded imagination of many leftists, al-Qaida or ISIS), in order to be able to restrict its advances:
  
"A local translator of US-rebel talks is claiming that the Americans have put restrictions on the rebel offensive to take Daraa city, near the Jordanian border in southern Syria.
The translator, who has been reliable in the past, says three conditions have been set on the Southern Front rebel coalition: 1) it cannot move in the al-Mahata area of Daraa; 2) it cannot advance north to the key town of Sasa; 3) rebels cannot link up to units in the West Ghouta area near Damascus.
Daraa, where the uprising against the Assad regime began in March 2011, has been split between the rebels and Syrian military for years.
The translator did not give a reason for the restrictions, but other EA sources have said that the Americans fear a sudden collapse of Assad forces — and a “vacuum” in power — if the rebels advance through Daraa city and province."

[
http://eaworldview.com/2015/08/syria-daily-regime-carries-out-another-mass-killing-in-douma/]

Sectarian Re-Engineering of Syria’s Demography Followed by Cease-Fire

Middle East Briefing



 I think this is overly pessimistic. What remains of the Assadist ideology besides the death cult and fear of torture if you step out of line, is the idea that is a unifying factor that pulls all Syrians together. Once areas of Syria are accepted as permanently lost, the mask covering its reduction to an instrument to keep Assad in place and Iranian interests protected falls away even further (thus I also have my doubts about the Iranian ability to dump the Assads, but I might be proved wrong on that). Assad and Iran have lost ground when they had the legitimacy of sovereignty and the opposition did not, that isn't likely to get better for them if they lower their ambitions to holding what they have, in fact is likely to convince those trapped under the régime that its future is limited.
 So rather than the opposition having no strategy, its commitment to resist partition has become easier to keep to with recent advances. There was distrust around the negotiations over Zabadani, but it quickly became obvious that Ahrar al-Sham weren't backing the Iranian proposal. Confusion at first may have led other groups to thinking they were selling out Zabadani, which may have been what led to the early renewal of hostilities. There may be a problem with warlordism among opposition groups, but I don't see evidence for it being the problem here.
 But I don't have any doubt that the rate of Iranian/Assadist massacres will increase, for the reasons set out. This is what happens when a people are abandoned in the face of a desperate tyranny, and told that no amount of bombing is a more serious threat than the chimera that the Americans are trying to overthrow Assad.

 "The recent intensity of attacks by Assad forces and their backers in Iran’s Revolutionary Guards and Hezbollah in Syria reveals what could be expected to follow soon. We will witness two consecutive phases in the next few months:

1- Ruthless military attacks by IRGC, Syrian army and Hezbollah to cleanse selected areas – deemed strategic and unnegotiable – of the opposition or the Sunnis or both. This will be done under a barrage of soft talks about diplomacy and political solutions, but no serious moves other than the funny Russian initative. All the while, Moscow will keep the diplomatic road opened and oiled with its right hand, and continue giving Assad military hardware with its left hand.

2 – At one point, and after controlling all the strategic areas required, Iran will say that is ready to go as far as convincing Assad to leave Damascus. International calls for “immediate” cease fire will become louder, pressures on relevant parties will intensify and the trilateral alliance will suddenly assume the role of the dove. This will be introduced by this alliance to the world as a genuine love for peace and sincere feelings for the suffering of Syria’s civilians. But in return, the trio will want to institutionalize the status quo, that is to make its areas recognized by the new regime constitutionally the same way the situation in the South of Lebanon is institutionalized as the land of Hezbollah. Tehran is already building the Syrian Hezbollah under the command of the former prisoner in Israel Samir Al Qentar.

 The whole Syrian war would have ended with the expansion of Hezbollah and Iran on a larger stretch of territory than what they control already in the south of Lebanon and in addition to keeping the coastal west of Syria. Not bad. Not bad at all. What is the counter-plan of the opposition? None. it is not obvious that the Syrian opposition has a unified parallel plan, either to abort the trilateral partitioning intentions or to wage a meaningful counter-attack.
 For example, during the Istanbul talks between the Iranians and Ahrar Al Sham, and while the cease fire around Kafraya and Foua’a was enacted, some opposition groups around the two Shia villages deliberately broke the cease fire to embarrass Ahrar Al Sham.
It is a structural problem in the Syrian opposition that we find warlordism mixed with legitimate political opposition groups. While it is possible to overcome political differences between legitimate opposition groups by reaching a joint political platform, warlordism is not political to start with."

Sunday 23 August 2015

How Barack Obama betrayed the Syrian people

How Barack Obama betrayed the Syrian people



 "In late July, the Syrian president gave his first public speech in a year and acknowledged that his regime was depleted and had ceded territory to "the terrorists" - referring to anyone who has joined the insurgency.  Assad's public concessions came at a time when both United States President Barack Obama and Russian President Vladimir Putin were worrying about the Assad regime's possible collapse.
 Since the beginning of the Syrian uprising in 2011, the Obama administration has publicly called for Assad to step aside, while doing everything in private to foreclose that possibility, and in effect, tacitly endorsing the Assad regime.
 Obama said that the opposition was "disorganised, ill-equipped, ill-trained". He stated that the moderate opposition was made up of "farmers or dentists", among others, who all lacked fighting experience, and that it was "magical thinking" to believe that an earlier US involvement could have led to a peaceful transition. All of these points contain partial truths, but they also contain self-serving myths. The Syrian opposition was disorganised and ill-equipped because it was not externally supported the way al-Qaeda was. Much of the moderate opposition consisted of civilians firing guns for the first time, but it also included thousands of Syrian army defectors and civilians who had once been conscripted.
 Obama's refusal to confront Assad and support the opposition allowed the Syrian president to set in place a motion of events that gave rise to ISIL.  Assad released Islamist militants from prison to flood the opposition with battle-hardened religious fanatics.  His sectarian militia, the shabihaopenly cleansed Sunnis from their villages, driving them into the arms of jihadist groups for protection. Assad reportedly bought oil from ISIL, ignored them on the battlefield, and was even accused by the US state department of being ISIL's air force. The conditions that gave rise to ISIL's terrorist state were, therefore, supplied by Assad's military strategy and Obama's lack of one.
 History will not be kind to those whose actions and inaction led to the Syrian people's ruin. And while this generation may be lost to the squalor of the refugee camp and terror of daily bombardment, a future generation will remember what was done as their fathers and mothers met the most undignified of ends."

Saturday 22 August 2015

'You are all responsible for our death', declare besieged Syrians

Men help an injured civilian after what activists said were air strikes by forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad on a busy marketplace in the Douma neighbourhood of Damascus on August 12.

"There is a deep sense of grievance amongst many Syrians that the West seems to have abandoned them by focusing so singularly on fighting the Islamic State even as the regime continues its brutality".

Syria, Etc.



 "Now, the everyday violence and death Syrians witness is no longer recorded in full force unless events surpass the daily “acceptable” quota of death—like it did on August 16 in Douma, after more than 100 people were killed by a regime aerial attack on a crowded marketplace. These kinds of mass tragedies, like the chemical weapons attack in 2013 and the Daraya massacre in 2012, capture the world’s attention—headlines, outrage, condemnation—for a few moments before Syria’s suffering once again fades to white noise. When the country has been reduced to smoldering ashes and its people have been forced into a mass exodus to new countries and new homes, our capacity to document—to speak or write and chant—dwindles. History collapses into a simple etcetera.
 At the beginning of the revolution, documentation existed in the present tense, serving to expose what was happening in real time, and breaking Syria’s history of oppression by finally speaking and showing truth. But now, the urgency to be noble and fearless witnesses has faded. There is no humane “world” that exists to plea to for help. Syrians once believed that uploading hundreds of videos of barrel bombs dropping from regime helicopters on civilian areas would be enough to declare a “no-fly zone”—because what world would watch a government indiscriminately bomb its people and stay silent? People believed that documenting repeated chemical weapons attacks would eventually end them. Instead, Obama’s “red line” became a green light for the Assad regime to continue using chemical weapons, including chlorine-laden bombs, even after a United Nations Security Council resolution to ban them. People believed that more than 55,000 smuggled images of tortured, skeleton-like corpses in Assad’s prisons would create an international outrage that would finally send Assad and his regime where they belonged—a trial at The Hague. Instead, Syrians were left alone to battle Assad, Al-Qaida and ISIS."

Friday 21 August 2015

Why Al Jazeera will not say Mediterranean 'migrants'



 "It is not hundreds of people who drown when a boat goes down in the Mediterranean, nor even hundreds of refugees. It is hundreds of migrants. It is not a person – like you, filled with thoughts and history and hopes – who is on the tracks delaying a train. It is a migrant. A nuisance."

 Yes, they are refugees, not migrants. They didn't just fly south for the winter. This isn't some natural catastrophe, but a lot of people fleeing from the Assad government. And people fleeing the battle between the American occupation of Afghanistan, and the Taliban, and many escaping the paranoid police state that Eritrea has begun during the course of its battles against the former occupier Ethiopia. But those are conflicts the world largely ignores now, while on Syria it deliberately turns away from the cause of the problem, and the language from those politicians trying to stop refugees arriving, to those of the Left who can't bring themselves to support any struggle against Assad that might bring this crisis to an end, is that of migration, of an inevitable flow. The world could stop this now, if we allowed the Syrians to defend themselves, and stopped making it easy for Assad to wage war on them.

Noam Chomsky, Rogue States and Nuclear Dangers



 "Whatever one thinks of Hezbollah, Hamas, or other beneficiaries of Iranian support, Iran hardly ranks high in support of terror worldwide."

 Try telling that shit to the people of Zabadani. Chomsky once again, shows he hasn't got a clue what Iran and Hezbollah are doing to Syria.

Reading into the Douma market massacre

Syrian President, Bashar Al-Assad

"The Douma market massacre is the inevitable result of the failure of the international community to support the freedom of the Syrian people and is a natural product of talking about the inevitability of a “consensual” political solution that grants the head of the Syrian regime immunity against any legal prosecution.
When the Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, who is a supporter of President Bashar Al-Assad, makes a statement hours after the Douma massacre shamelessly saying: “We support the legitimate president of the Syrian Republic,” the result is more massacres awaiting Syrian cities.
We can say that the Douma market massacre and Al-Zoubi’s statement in Tehran are messages to the international community and the local community that Assad’s regime will not step down regardless of the cost. It is also a message that pressuring the regime, rejecting its proposals, or presenting proposals that include the elimination of the regime will inevitably result in more incidents like the Douma market massacre.
How can anyone imagine that the people of Douma, or the people of any other city or town in Syria, will co-exist with the person who killed them, displaced them and did to them what no other invader in history had done?
The shameful and ironic part of this is that the commander of Jaysh Al-Islam is exploiting this massacre by using it to prove that Zahran Alloush’s approach is the right approach. This approach includes refusing to engage in any battle with the regime in the heart of Damascus, which other opposition forces consider to be Alloush’s failure to provide support to the other nearby fronts in eastern Qalamoun.
Today, everyone is asking one question: Does Douma need an uprising similar to that of Idlib against Jamal Maarouf, leader of the Syria Revolutionaries Front. This uprising opened the door to strategic victories and has become an example of revolutionary achievements.
In this I am not referring to Alloush personally, but in his capacity as commander of Jaysh Al-Islam and their military strength. Their only concern has become pleasing America, even if that means giving up their own banner and raising the flag of the Syrian revolution, and marketing itself as the most moderate and organised Islamic faction and the most capable of replacing Al-Assad in the event that his regime falls."

Thursday 20 August 2015

A Day in the Life


 Come to a march from Trafalgar Square at 2pm to Downing Street on Saturday to remember those massacred in Syria two years ago tomorrow with chemical weapons by the Assad régime. Bring some flowers. Fuck's sake.

 Primo Levi, who survived the concentration camp at Auschwitz, says at the start of one his books that when they told the guards that they would pay one day for their crimes, they were jeered at and told nobody would ever believe them. That's what has happened to Assad's victims, lied about the world over, told they might just as well be perpetrating these attacks on themselves to gain the world's sympathy. It's the greatest lie of recent years, that those Assad is bombing and torturing, shelling and sniping, torturing and starving, are no better than he is.
 And other lies go to support it. If people call for outside help, as the people of Kafranbel or the refugees of Zaatari, the largest refugee camp in the world, did, you are a stooge of America, and want them to invade Syria the way they did Iraq. Any argument that the Syrian people should be allowed to defend themselves against this illegal war, is lost in the charge that you are pro-imperialism.
 It is an illegal war. It's a crime to target civilians, it's a crime to use weapons of mass destruction. If America really were trying to intervene to overthrow Assad, survivors like Qusai Zakarya would have been all over the news non-stop. But instead you have to search yourself, to bother to search yourself, to get any knowledge of what's going on. As someone remarked the other day, one attack on a market in Sarajevo provoked international intervention, Assad does that every day, and nobody lifts a finger.
 In fact for the Americans it is a win-win if the conflict goes on. Iran and Hezbollah get weaker, and any time they want an excuse to intervene, they can point to the inaction of the Security Council over Syria, most notably Russian and Chinese vetoes, as the reason they should be allowed to proceed with whatever future actions with a humanitarian cover they propose.
 Conversely, if there were any truth to the genocide-deniers story, someone would have been found to point the finger at the rebels.
 So come along Saturday, and say, never again. Because it's the right thing you do. Because if you don't, Syrians, and anyone who cares about mass murder, will think it is only American interventionists who care about life at all.
[https://www.facebook.com/events/1452769868362630/]

Rebels kill another Lebanese occupier in al Qusair as Iranian efforts to occupy the province continue

القصير001

19-08-2015: A number of the Lebanese Shiites resettled in and around al Qusair in Homs province after Hezbollah ethnically cleansed most of the Syrian population there are now growing olives on the farms stolen from Syrian residents in the area who were slaughtered or driven out by Hezbollah, with another of the illegitimate settlers reportedly killed on Tuesday.
The Lebanese militia has established heavily manned ‘safe corridors’ for hundreds of Shiite families from south Lebanon who are being resettled in Al Qusair and the surrounding area, along with the families of Assad’s Tehran-backed ‘National Defence Force’ Shiite militias, in a move to connect the area with the Hezbollah-controlled Shiite Bekaa valley region in Lebanon and regime-controlled coastal areas in Syria.
Shiite sources report that the man killed on Tuesday, named as Ashraf Hassan Ayad (pictured), was eulogised by the Hezbollah leadership who claimed that he represented a model for the ‘pioneer’ families in Al Qusair. He was reportedly killed by gunfire from Free Syrian Army forces in the area while cultivating olive trees on the farm there illegitimately occupied by the Lebanese settlers.
Hezbollah now has a massive presence in the south of Syria extending from the Lebanese border all the way to Homs city after it seized control of Al Qusair (located around 15 miles from the border) and the surrounding area with the help of Assad’s forces and other Tehran-backed foreign militias, massacring, terrorising and expelling most of the majority-Sunni population.
Hezbollah also played a leading role in helping the regime in 2012 to destroy the registry office in Homs which contained all the ownership records and documents for homes and land in the province in order to deny any legal or other rights to the rightful owners of the confiscated properties. Unfortunately the records had not yet been computerised. This was a prelude to seizing the land and properties and transferring ownership to Lebanese Shiites and some Assad regime loyalists chosen by Hezbollah.
Speaking to ‘All4Syria’, a Shiite dissident familiar with events said that the Assad regime had pursued a very deliberate policy of ethno-sectarian forced displacement against residents of Homs city and province as part of Iran’s occupation project in Syria. The Lebanese Shiite families being moved to the ‘cleansed’ areas are provided with funding and financial incentives by the Iranian regime to encourage them to stay in these areas and thus expand Iranian influence over the Syrian-Lebanese border areas. As well as being offered money by Iran, the foreign occupiers are given (stolen) homes and land and further incentives to live there.
This in turn has allowed Bashar al-Assad to move many of the remaining regime loyalists to Homs city and province since they will be supportive of Iranian occupation rather than supporting the return of the indigenous peoples to their homes. Speaking to All4Syria, Wael Abu Rayan of the City of Rastan’s media office said that more details of this project have been emerging since a truce between regime forces and the FSA in the area led to the mass exodus of rebels and residents from Homs city to the northern countryside of Homs province following a brutal months-long siege which saw the regime cut off all supplies of food, water and humanitarian aid.

Wednesday 19 August 2015

From a doctor in Douma



 "When I arrived at the Intensive Care Unit, minutes after the air raid, a man stopped me and said “don’t go in there because there’s no space left in the ICU except for the wounded” then another man interrupted him “let him in, he’s a doctor.”
 I wish I had not been in that hospital yesterday and that I did not see what I saw -- a sea of blood and the wounded, doctors and medics were swimming in it.
 As I come to the realization that we have all reached breaking point in that wretched hospital room, a voice came down to us as if from above. We all listen attentively to this voice hoping it will say something to calm us down, the voice starts... “Guys, empty the Intensive Care Unit.. the warplane has launched a second strike, and a third, and... and a tenth.”
 And I begin to see the injuries multiplying, the number of deaths multiplying. And I realize there is no more blood for transfusions, no more sanitized medical equipment and no more serum bags but we continue working as if it’s the end of the world.
 A few hours have elapsed since the air raid and I now look across the Intensive Care Unit. At least the ground has been emptied of its injured although the beds are still all occupied. I begin to feel that the situation is a bit more manageable now. This is when the rescue operations end and the real catastrophe begins. The Syria Civil Defense teams have documented more than 100 deaths.
 I move through the operation rooms and see exhausted doctors who have performed more than 70 surgeries during the past few hours. They have seen guts spilled out, amputated legs, dislodged eyes, slashed necks --- their green scrubs are dark from the blood.
 As for those who have made it through the chaotic ICU and surgery, they are looking at days or weeks at the hospital while they recover.
 For me I want the world to act to stop the killing. I don’t know how else to say it."