‘From Syria With Love’

 "Syrians send their love to all of those who remember us in these traumatic times. We send our love to the Free Syrian Army who have done their best to protect us and our dreams."
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bYydp4d337Q]

The atrocities committed by Assad's forces must not be forgotten

 'Around 200 to 250 people were gathered in the public square when it was bombed by a fighter jet. Ambulances were immediately directed to the area to evacuate the wounded. The first batch of wounded arrived few minutes later: 20 bodies and 15 wounded. The triage started right away and priority was given to people with life-threatening wounds...'

The Assad regime’s Daraa campaign is a desperate defensive maneuver

 'Across an area of more than 50 kilometers, southern Syria is witnessing fierce battles: the Free Syrian Army (FSA) is pitted against fighters from Hezbollah and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps’ (IRCG) Qods Force, supported by Iraqi and Afghan fighters.

 When asked about Syrian troops fighting in the battle, Abu al-Majd al-Zoabi, executive director of the Southern Front’s press office, says that their presence is marginal; that they are being used as bait for the FSA; and that foreign fighters are shooting and killing them if they are hit so as to prevent their capture.

 “We have actually come close to the gates of the west Damascus countryside, and that is what’s keeping the regime up at night. We are fighting to defend our land, our homes and our people, and [the regime] is fighting to defend an occupation project.” '

Douma exterminated

 Campaign member Firas al-Abdallah:

 "Activists in the city know very well that, once again, the world is turning a blind eye, which they know from their four years of similar experiences, but they are hoping to send a message that inspires those with an ounce of humanity in them to call on their government to do something.

 Since the beginning the month, they have documented 103 civilian deaths. This number could rise at any moment because the continued digging through rubble to uncover dead bodies and the hundreds of injured people, who the swamped medical posts can no longer take in."

Assad holds on in war without end

 Jeremy Bowen is full of bollocks. We start with him talking to FSA fighters in his only trip to the rebel side. They probably told him they wanted a democratic state that respected minorities (as you can see from the reference to Turkey), but all he hears is Islamist flavour and all he sees are beards.

 'I managed to cross from government-controlled Damascus to meet them last summer. Their commanders were bearded, pious Muslims who said they condemned the brutality of the jihadists. They said they were prepared to die to destroy President Bashar al-Assad and his regime, and wanted to build a state modelled on 21st Century Turkey, under a government with a distinct Islamist flavour.'

 He then interprets the teachers words as blaming all sides equally, after throwing in the she is a 'devout Muslim'.

 'It's President Assad's duty to leave the children out of this war. He needs to stop shelling the schools - but both sides need to stop attacking the children. They have nothing to do with this war. Adults started the fighting - and they can carry on - but they can't use their children to further their aims.'

 There is nothing that can be done is the cry of the liberal who wants to excuse injustice.

 'Is there a way to end the war in Syria? Not at the moment, or in the foreseeable future.'

 People are afraid to say how much they hate him because they know they may be arrested and tortured.

 'President Assad was never as unpopular as the leaders who were deposed in 2011.'

 He has support, most noticeably among the Alawis who have dominated his state, much as whites did in South Africa, to them the anti-apartheid movement must have been a cruel joke.

 'President Assad has survived, and that would have been impossible without a degree of popular support. For his supporters, and others who just wanted a quiet life, the so-called "Arab Spring" has been a cruel joke.'

 Civilians in areas besieged my Assad have had no food and face barrel bombings. The civilians in Adra were kept out of the fighting for three weeks. The BBC has generally gone with mentioning Nusra involvement in any attack to the exclusion of the FSA (see the Golan Heights border crossing). There was a disinformation campaign by RT claiming that the rebels had killed many civilians.*

 'Adra was damaged badly in the battle to eject a coalition of armed rebels, dominated by the Nusra Front, an al-Qaeda affiliate. Mohammad Raja Mahawish, a 40-year-old surveyor, was held in the cellar of his block of flats with his wife, children and 60 others for 22 days after the rebels seized the town almost a year ago.'

 It is only the foreign support that has kept Assad in power. He does not have widespread support among Sunni Muslims. Much of the business elite continues to support him, but it is fear that keeps others from expressing their opposition. And even the Alawis are beginning to demonstrate, such as against the governor of Homs for bombing schoolchildren in an attempt to blame rebels. The idea that the armed forces are intact is a joke. They've shrunk from 320,000 to 80,000 with the mass defections, and those remaining don't really want to fight, which is why he needs the Iranians so badly.

 'It has had military, diplomatic and financial support from Iran, Russia and the Lebanese Hezbollah movement. But just as importantly, it has kept the support of most of Syria's minorities and enough of the majority Sunni Muslims to survive. That has helped deliver the loyalty of most of the armed forces, another crucial factor. Wholesale defections were often predicted in the first few years of fighting, but never happened.'

 Truth isn't important when reporting on Syria. What needs to be done is to interview régime supporters, put a weak version of the truth to them, and let their denial be the story, which is how you achieve balance.

 'What is important is not the truth or otherwise of his views.'

 Because they weren't armed they didn't cohere. They were right to blame the West. They had plenty of appeal, but power grows out of the barrel of a gun and only Assad was allowed to have them.

 'An effective and influential alliance of secular, moderate Islamist rebels never emerged. They blamed the West for failing to support them properly. But they were never able to come up with a coherent way to appeal to millions of Syrians locked in their own personal struggles to survive the war.'

 No, the US dismissed them as jihadists too, because the demands for removal were just rhetoric, and the US made no attempt to remove him.

 'The president's version of events was rejected and ridiculed by countries who demanded his removal, including the US, Britain, France and Saudi Arabia.'

 The truth, but discredited by Bowen as just one of the competing narratives, and one that he knows as a Western journalist doesn't fit things as well as his own insights, and the reality of Assad still being in power.

 'Opponents of the regime say that he worked from the beginning to create the stark choice between the regime and the jihadists, the reality he claimed existed from the start of the fighting.

His method, they say, was to target more moderate rebels and keep the pressure off the jihadists, first from al-Qaeda and now from the group that calls itself Islamic State.'

*[http://claysbeach.blogspot.co.uk/2013/12/fake-adra-massacre-photos-expose-bloody.html]

Damascus under fire

 'Mohamed Al-Wazir of the NCSROF said that the Army of Islam’s rockets targeted solely military positions and that the regime reacted by shelling other parts of the city to incriminate the revolutionaries. People who examined the trajectory of the shelling support this view, saying that the capital came under fire from the Qasyun Mountains, known to be in regime hands.

 Alloush, who ordered the shelling of Damascus, is a controversial figure. Some members of the opposition describe him as a “fifth column,” noting that he was one of the first men to be released from prison by the regime after the outbreak of the revolution, having promised to cooperate with the authorities.

 Alloush later broke this promise, formed his own brigades, obtained funding from Arab sources and managed to increase the size of his forces until it numbered in the thousands. He has refrained from major engagements with regime forces, even when much smaller groups were regularly harassing them.

 Many opposition members note that Damascus, a city of five million people, is not necessarily pro-government, but is rather being held hostage by the regime.

 Damascus residents do not see the regime as a benefactor, but instead testify to the years of negligence and corruption that have defaced the city, and to the regime’s pro-Iranian policies that have virtually turned the city’s famous Umayyad Mosque into something akin to a Shiite shrine.'

The Streets Run Red

 Douma, ten miles north-east of central Damascus, where Assad appears to be trying to exterminate the local population with barrel bombs, to the extent that the streets run red with blood.

US warning as Hezbollah fighters launch assault on Syrian rebels

 Not warning about Hezbollah, but about any foreign fighters not on Assad's side. Why do they hate us so much? Not because the US are bombing Syria, but because they are ignoring the real threat to Syrians. The story reports the SOHR's repetition of Syrian state media claims about their advances, without giving the reports that the advance has been repulsed.

Isis forces Raqqa citizens to give blood

 'Mr Mohammed, 26, graduated from the Faculty of Law in Damascus before travelling to Raqqa when civil war broke out to become an activist. He said: “I went to Raqqa in 2011 to join the revolution against [Syrian President] Bashar-al-Assad. Me and my friends later founded the Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently campaign.” '

Hezbollah leads fight to retake Syria’s south

 'The south is one of the last remaining areas where mainstream, non-jihadi rebels fighting President Bashar Assad have a foothold.'

That's why Assad gets Hezbollah to fight them, not Jabhat al-Nusra in the North or ISIS in the East. They are murderous scum. The quote does underestimate how much the mainstream rebels are in almost all parts of Syria, and have support greater than their numbers. And the south is quite a foothold. And the Syrian government and its partners lie constantly about how succesful their military operations are, and who the targets are, so we'll have to wait and see if they can reduce any more of Syria to rubble which seems the only success they ever achieve.

Assad is overplaying a weak hand

 Assad is the only force that can take on ISIS, but he needs the Americans to save him from the moderate rebels, who don't exist, but Assad has made a mistake by not conciliating with them. Assad tells lies, but everyone but Patrick Cockburn will be taken in by them. When will he collapse under the weight of his own contradictions? And his mate Cockburn too.

The lies of a tyrant

 Not just part of the problem, but the fount of them.

 'Sticking one’s head in the sand and hoping the war on Isis will bring peace to Syria is a delusional approach. Syrian civilians are not helped when the west has no credible strategy to offer beyond air strikes on Isis and letting military data be communicated to the Assad regime. Nor are the Sunni constituencies that the coalition is supposed to rally against Isis ever going to be convinced of the efficiency of the strategy if Mr Assad, supported by Iran and Russia, is allowed to portray himself as part of a common fight. He is, as ever, part of the problem, not the solution.

 There were no words of empathy for a population that his troops have massacred, leaving whole cities, including Homs and Aleppo, in a state of ruin reminiscent of such 20th-century horrors as Guernica or Dresden. Thousands, possibly tens of thousands, of Syrians have been detained and tortured, some to death, in Mr Assad’s dungeons. Behind the slick images of an interview in a presidential palace, a whole country is being methodically and ruthlessly sacrificed to the interests of the Assad dynasty.'

Assad Is Still Pounding Damascus Residential Districts

 "Everything Daesh is doing now, the (Syrian) regime has done before and is still doing," said Syrian activist Ahmed al-Ahmad, referring to the Islamic State group by its Arabic acronym. "But the world protects Assad and only cares about Daesh crimes."

What's a barrel bomb?

'Footage shows them being used in Syria, but President Assad denies civilians have been harmed.'

 And the BBC gives greater prominence to his lie than the truth. And Jeremy Bowen's response it to suggest inadequacy,

 "either callousness, an awkward attempt at humour, or a sign that Mr Assad has become so disconnected from what is happening that he feels overwhelmed,"

 while Jonathan Tepperman of the Washington Post was less forgiving, "Either Syria’s president is an extremely competent fabulist — in which case he’s merely a sociopath — or he actually believes his lies, in which case he’s something much more dangerous (like a delusional psychopath)."*

 Here** is 37 minutes of footage of Assad's forces dropping barrel bombs from last year.

*[https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/i-interviewed-bashar-al-assad-about-syrias-civil-war-hes-still-too-delusional-to-end-it/2015/01/30/571671b4-a77f-11e4-a2b2-776095f393b2_story.html]
**[https://web.archive.org/web/20140601214354/https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4R4UK3r5_Ow]

We need Arab boots on the ground to defeat ISIS

 I am doubtful that any of the other Arab countries' interventions would be fully in support of Syrian self-determination, but it is less the problem than the current Iranian intervention with American support.

 'Our region simply does not have the luxury of Obama’s indolence. For this reason, a full-scale but balanced Arab military mobilization is needed right now. This will include sending in a coalition of ground troops made up of Arab countries as well as funding and arming the Free Syrian Army (FSA), putting them in Jordan and unleashing them from there once ISIS is being elbowed out of the areas it currently controls in Syria and Iraq. Crucially, Assad must not be allowed to benefit from ISIS’s becoming weakened as a result of this offensive. After all, it was Assad who allowed, and directly helped, ISIS grow and become stronger until he could use the group as a crutch with which to hold the world ransom with two stark choices: me, or the deluge. In reality, ISIS and Assad are two sides of the same coin.

 A military offensive of this kind would be the most appropriate response to the horrifying murder of Kasasbeh by ISIS. It would also help break this group once and for all and at the same time block, through the support of the FSA, any gains made by a resurgent Assad or ally Iran as a result. Most importantly, though, it would help lay the ground for serious political changes in the region, especially in Syria, and set the stage for a climate free of Obama’s “strategic cowardice.” '

Red Lines

 'The Syrian Army is shelling a city of cold starving civilians.'



 'When asked about the resurgent interest in the region after ISIS’ consolidation, Moustafa was ambivalent. There was bitterness at having been ignored about the growing islamist threat and the recognition that routing al-Qaeda from Syria is now more difficult than it would have been in 2012, as well as appreciation that Syria continues to be in Americans’ minds.

 Moustafa dubbed the war, “Obama’s Rwanda,” underlining the failure of the Obama administration to act while Kalin made a much stronger comparison. Kalin says that any doubts she had about the necessity of this film were taken away when a Syrian woman asked her, “Have they forgotten us? Are we human?”, words she says echo that of her grandfather who had been imprisoned in Auschwitz.'
[https://web.archive.org/web/20150214032357/http://blog.georgetownvoice.com/2015/02/10/award-winning-documentary-red-lines-depicts-democratization-attempts-in-syria/]

Samira, Razan,Wael, Nazem

 Yassin al Haj Saleh:

 'We have no millions to bribe to the kidnappers as the French, Italian and Spanish states did to Da’esh in order to secure the release of their respective citizens. We are also not affiliated with an influential sect, ‘minority’, or armed group. Second, there is no judicial system that we may resort to – locally, internationally, or any place in between. The United Nations does not care for the fate of individuals (or peoples, for that matter) and the International Criminal Court deals only with states.As activists and families of the kidnapped we find ourselves in an unfortunate position. On the one hand, we do not want to isolate the cause of these two women and two men from the general Syrian cause, which is a bitter struggle against a criminal Assadi-Iranian-Russian alliance. But on the other hand, it is impossible for us not to show special regard for our loved ones who are in the hands of a Da’esh-like organization that still denies its responsibility for the crime - a denial that only intensifies our concern now that more than 400 days have passed. What is more, we have not received help from the official opposition bodies, which did not even express solidarity.'

What is left unsaid about the siege on Ghouta

 'And for those who do not know – or know- what happened in eastern Ghouta:

 The Syrian people rebelled against the regime of Bashar al-Assad. The latter had inherited power from his father after more than 40 years of rule by the Assad family. The revolution was modeled on the revolutions of Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Yemen and Bahrain which sought democracy and some of which went as far as to achieve it. The revolution was peaceful in its first months. During that time, thousands of martyrs fell; Hamza al-Khateeb, Ghyath Matar, Meshal al-Tammo, Maan Awdat and countless peaceful revolutionaries…With the failure of the international community to take a serious and effective stand to end this tyrannical rule, the people were left with no other choice but to resort to the right of self-defense.

 So many revolutionaries armed themselves and were able to liberate a lot of areas. And as the regime continued to wage its war on the people, some powerful and regional countries with interests in Syria managed to become key players in the course of the Syrian revolution. Many revolutionaries became beholden to the decisions of those countries when the latter started funding their military operations which were no longer possible without the support of those countries. In addition, other countries were backing the Assad regime, which had besieged many liberated areas, by sending logistical support and militias. And as the war went on and the Syrian people found themselves exposed to crimes against humanity on a daily basis, the most virulent and fundamentalist discourses gained in popularity among the people who had embraced the revolution when they saw themselves standing alone and alienated from everything they hear on the news regarding human rights, freedom and dignity.

 Some liberated areas were already being subjected to bombardment and daily death when, after the siege on Ghouta and other areas, they found themselves also dealing with a scarcity, and sometimes complete lack, of necessary basic supplies. None of the necessities of life were readily available anymore- neither water, nor food, nor medicine, nor fuel, nor electricity and not even air which the Assad regime had repeatedly filled with chemical gases.

 Who among those besieged would have believed that he would live through all those horrors? Thousands of martyrs, thousands of wounded, hundreds of thousands of starved people and thousands of deprived children…Life was crushing and no one heard their moans.

 Consider for a moment that one mother had to leave her two sons by a garbage container to be seen by passersby, another mother accidentally caused the death of her infant son when she ate soya bread because she could not find any alternatives and a crying mother was heard chanting “our soul and our blood, we sacrifice for you Bashar,” when she found herself unable to buy flour, which some charities sell at half the market price.'

Is it the beginning of the end for ISIS?

 Oh they stretch from Baghdad to Aleppo. Let's all shit our pants like Patrick Cockburn and demand an alliance with Assad.

 'A military source from the Free Syrian Army (FSA) in the IS-held city of Manbij said (under the condition of anonymity) that the number of IS militants has decreased in the city.

 “The IS group is even afraid of sending their gunmen on missions and patrols outside Manbij. Those militants, who are supposed to perform military missions and come back to their bases, mostly do not return, as in the recent cases in IS-held Amarna and Jazira checkpoints on the road to Jarablus.” '

Raqqa City between FSA control and ISIS occupation

 'The FSA took full control the city of Raqqa in early 2013 announcing the first liberation of a city center since the beginning of the Syrian revolution.

 Raqqa city lived a period of revolutionary prosperity and provided a wonderful model of revolutionary cultural manifestations which reflects the image of the future of Syria, the people of Raqqa lived this dream until the bats of ISIS came to rob their dreams and their future, kidnapping and killing, prosecuting and death threats against the media activists, and bombing the places of youth gatherings and fight FSA was not everything done by the organization, but ISIS also fought all the existing revolutionary factions until they dominated the whole city in early 2014, all activists and a lot of people began escaping and leaving the city, and ISIS has closed all youth gatherings in Raqqa which were ignored by the whole world.

 Today, the people of Raqqa became strangers in their city, and they are standing on the thresholds of their occupied city in waiting for something in a someday, hoping that the situation will change and they will live the dream again.'

I can see why some men would become radicalised

 When the situation in Syria seems complex, it is because the media has made no attempt to explain it, as in Ireland, where Muslims going to show their solidarity with the fight against Assad are lumped in with foreign fighters going to fight for ISIS.

 "My journey to Syria was on a mission. It wasn’t to a religious war of any sorts. But the mission in general was to topple the dictatorship. And our mission in particular was to help the Syrians themselves: train them how to protect themselves, how to maintain their weapons to topple the regime."

Britain has no idea who's in charge

 More obfuscation from Patrick Cockburn. The Americans are ignoring the Free Syrian Army in Northern Syria which has done most of the fighting against ISIS on the ground, while tolerating Assad who has done more than anyone to foster ISIS.

 'Speaking before the US Senate Armed Services Committee in January, retired US General James Mattis said that in the war against Isis, the US has a “strategy-free” stance. At one and the same time it is seeking to weaken and eliminate Isis, but is also trying to overthrow President Bashar al-Assad whose army is the main military opponent of Isis. The US’s supposed aim is to install moderate rebels instead of Isis and Assad, but these barely exist outside a few pockets.

 At senior levels, US leaders probably do perceive their dilemma in combating Isis while heading an alliance that excludes most of those fighting it on the ground but includes those who helped to foster the self-declared caliphate.'

American held by ISIS moved by suffering of Syrian people

 ' "Syrians are dying by the thousands and they're fighting just to talk about the rights we have," the humanitarian worker told The Daily Courier, her hometown paper in Prescott, Arizona, in 2013. "For as long as I live, I will not let this suffering be normal."

 She described helping reunite a man with a 6-year-old relative after their refugee camp was bombed.

 "This story is not rare in Syria," the newspaper quoted her as saying. "This is the reality for Syrians two and a half years on. When Syrians hear I'm an American, they ask, 'Where is the world?' All I can do is cry with them, because I don't know." '