Tuesday 31 October 2017

Syrian opposition: We still believe in the revolution

Image result for Syrian opposition: We still believe in the revolution

 'Representatives of some of Syria's armed opposition groups attending talks in the Kazakh capital, Astana, say they are hopeful of achieving a lasting ceasefire agreement in eight of the country's 14 war-ravaged provinces.

 Ayman al-Asemi, a member of the Free Syrian Army's military council attending the talks, said while the meetings would not produce a final settlement to the war, they could see a final agreement to the set-up of four so-called "de-escalation zones".

 The Astana talks are aimed at finalising a plan for four de-escalation zones, which will include certain areas of Idlib, Latakia, Aleppo, Hama, Homs, Eastern Ghouta, Deraa and al-Quneitra.

 The closed-door meetings are also seeing discussions on the release of detainees held by the government of President Bashar al-Assad and food and aid deliveries to besieged areas.

 "This war is far from over," al-Asemi told Al Jazeera.

 He said while the situation on the ground did not bode well for Syrians, regional and international powers were to blame having exposed themselves as spectators to the massacres being perpetrated.

 "We will not compromise our freedom and our ultimate goal of removing Assad and his regime from power," al-Asemi said.

 He added that the opposition had submitted several "secret files" to the UN delegation with "solid evidence" of crimes committed by the regime.

 According to al-Asemi, the crimes include the use of chemical weapons, the torture of detainees inside Homs central prison, forced expulsion of residents based on their ethnic and religious affiliations and war crimes committed by Iranian revolution guards against civilians.

 Colonel Fateh Hassoun who heads the opposition military delegation to the talks said that he still had faith in the "Syrian revolution."

 "The aim of the Syrian opposition is still to reach a political solution to the war and lead to a transition period without the regime of Assad." '

Raqqa may have fallen, but Syrian humanitarian group still fears instability

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 'After liberating Raqqa from the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), the future of Syria remains unclear. The Trump administration heralded the battlefield success of the U.S.-backed forces, and repeated its pledge to suffocate ISIS' expansionist efforts -- yet the head of the Syrian Civil Defense, a Syrian humanitarian group also known as the White Helmets, isn't quite ready to celebrate.

 "Not really," Raed Saleh responded in an interview with CBS News, when asked if the Raqqa victory means anything to him. "I'm sure you are surprised," he added.

 Saleh has aided victims of the country's incessant violence and fought the human rights abuses of the Assad regime since the civil war began in 2011. He is of the opinion that winning one battle -- even a victory that resulted in the fall of ISIS' self-declared capital -- doesn't guarantee peace and stability.

 "When your city is occupied by one terrorist organization and it's liberated or taken over by another organization, and the picture of another terrorist is held up in the city, this doesn't give us any happiness," Saleh said, referring to a photo of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) leader Abdullah Ocalan brandished in Raqqa after it was liberated. Though the PKK is not said to be in control of the city at this time, Saleh warns that instability may come again.

 "At least some among the people who entered Raqqa are undisciplined and will cause trouble in the future," Saleh predected when he was in Washington, D.C. last week for a conference on American policy in Syria.

 Defeating ISIS is at the center of the Trump administration's foreign policy in Syria. The liberation of Raqqa was the most significant accomplishment for the U.S.-based forces in the country in the last year.

 "The defeat of ISIS in Raqqa represents a critical breakthrough in our worldwide campaign to defeat ISIS and its wicked ideology," Trump said in a statement released by the White House. "With the liberation of ISIS's capital and the vast majority of its territory, the end of the ISIS caliphate is in sight."

 The Trump administration says it has "dramatically accelerated" the fight against ISIS in Syria, mostly through changes in authority that allow the military to act without the impediment of layers of bureaucracy. Nearly 30 percent of the gains in total territory against ISIS by August occurred under the Trump administration, according to a briefing earlier this year by Brett McGurk, the State Department's special envoy for the anti-ISIS coalition.

 And the flow of ISIS militants coming out of Syria has been reduced to a trickle. Administration officials point out that ISIS propaganda has stopped encouraging followers to come to Syria to take up the fight. Taking Raqqa away from ISIS has also significantly impacted the messaging from the militant group, given that most of their directives originated from the city, the group's declared capital. MgGurk points out the uphill battle the group now faces in disseminating its messaging from small villages.

 ISIS now holds less that 10 percent of the territory it once held, according to the administration, and it is still carrying out attacks. It carried out an attack that cost the lives of four American soldiers in October. Afterward, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Joseph Dunford told reporters that ISIS would be defeated when the group is no longer able to operate across multiple regions, and when its offshoots in individual countries can be "dealt with by local forces."

 But reaching that point, that is, weakening ISIS to the point at which local forces have the ability to curtail ISIS and other terrorist groups in Syria, remains a battle because there are no government forces that can be relied upon for this. Another factor is the U.S. determination that Assad cannot remain in power, a point recently repeated by Secretary of State Rex Tillerson.

 "The United States wants a whole and unified Syria with no role for Bashar Assad in the government," Tillerson told reporters last week after a meeting in Geneva about Syria. "The reign of the Assad family is coming to an end, and the only issue is how that should be brought about."

 The U.S. maintains support for the Geneva process in Syria, but getting to a place where there is enough peace on the ground to start that process will be a struggle, Saleh said. He doubts the political transition is as close as some in the U.S. government think it may be. Saleh intends to continue his efforts to help Syrians, and hopes that the accumulated efforts might over time result in peace for his country. While he still sees the Assad regime dropping barrel bombs and killing thousands in the country -- and yet, he does not wholly trust the U.S. either.

"We observe human rights violations from all parties and we talk about this when we meet with American and UN officials, but we do end up focusing on the regime's violations," says Saleh. "Not me, no other Syrians nowadays has great hopes on anyone delivering on these big promises, big red lines that we keep hearing (about). The barrel bombs keep dropping,  and there is no clear hope." '

Image result for Raqqa may have fallen, but Syrian humanitarian group still fears instability

Monday 30 October 2017

Syrian children flee after kindergarten is bombed in besieged Ghouta



 Kareem Shaheen:

 'Dozens of Syrian children were forced to flee a kindergarten on Sunday after it was allegedly bombed by government forces, highlighting the suffering of civilians in areas besieged by forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad and the rampant abuses in the six-year civil war.

 Video footage shows crying and panicked children fleeing the site of the attack on Sunday, as adults usher them on to go and hide as the adults made their way towards the scene of the attack.

 The video was authenticated by the Associated Press and was released by activists of the Ghouta Media Centre, an organisation covering the war in Ghouta region near Damascus. The footage was shot in the town of Kfar Batna.

 Activists said several civilians were injured in the attack, but there were no immediate reports of fatalities. Residents said schools had been closed on Monday to protect the children against further attacks.

 Ghouta, once the breadbasket of the Syrian capital, has been under siege for years by the Assad regime, and is under rebel control. East Ghouta was supposed to be part of a “de-escalation zone” under a deal brokered by Russia, Turkey and Iran to reduce violence in the country.

 Instead, the siege has tightened in the aftermath of a government offensive this year. The suffering of civilians in Ghouta was brought into sharp focus last week with images of a starving one-month-old baby, Sahar Dofdaa, who later died of malnutrition.

 Doctors are warning that shortages of food and baby milk, which has been caused by the government’s siege as well as predatory pricing by local merchants, have led to a rise in cases of malnutrition, particularly among children.

 The UN estimates that 350,000 besieged civilians are living in east Ghouta. Last week, Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein, the UN high commissioner for human rights, described the crisis as a humanitarian emergency and an outrage.

 Supplies for 40,000 people were allowed into the towns of Kfar Batna and Saqba on Monday for the first time in weeks.

 The latest video highlighted the continuing plight of Syria’s children, who have suffered greatly in the course of the war. They have been killed by bombs, starved by sieges and deprived of an education.

 Unicef estimates that 5.8 million children in Syria are in need, with more than 2 million under siege or in hard to reach areas. Attacks on hospitals and schools have been commonplace, and aid organisations are unable to reach all children who need to be vaccinated against polio.'

The Syrian Regime’s Funding of the Islamic State



 Kyle Orton:

  'Reuters reported on 11 October that Hussam al-Katerji, a member of Bashar al-Asad’s Syrian regime, has been engaged in trading wheat with the Islamic State (IS), helping supply the terrorists with resources to run their statelet and threaten the security of Syria’s neighbours and the wider world. This pattern of behaviour from the Asad regime—holding itself out as a counterterrorism partner, while it bolsters terrorist organizations—is well-established, and has its origins in the regime’s survival strategy: to destroy all acceptable opposition forces and make the Syrian war a binary contest between the dictatorship and terrorists.

 Reuters spoke to five local farmers and two administrators from the “Syrian Democratic Forces” (SDF), the political outfit through which the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) operates in Syria, which is displacing IS in northeastern Syria with the assistance of the U.S.-led Coalition. In addition, the manager of al-Katerji’s own office, Mohammed Kassab, confirmed that the Katerji Group had moved wheat from the IS-held areas to regime-held areas. Kassab insisted that this trade had involved no collusion with IS, though, beyond saying it was “not easy”, offered no explanation as to how that could possibly be true. Asad’s Internal Trade and Consumer Protection Minister, Abdullah al-Gharbi, claims that the regime imports its wheat from the Russians.

 From Reuters’ report:

 Five farmers in Raqqa described how they sold wheat to Katerji’s traders during Islamic State rule in interviews at the building housing the [SDF/PKK] Raqqa Civil Council, formed to take over once the city is retaken.

 “The operation was organized,” said Mahmoud al-Hadi, who owns agricultural land near Raqqa and who, like the other farmers, had come to the council’s cement offices to seek help.

 “I would sell to small traders who sent the wheat to big traders who sent it on to Katerji and the regime through two or three traders,” he said.

 He and the other farmers said they all had to pay Islamic State a 10 percent tax, or zakat, and sold all of their season’s supplies to Katerji’s traders under the multi-layered scheme.

 Local officials said Katerji’s traders bought up wheat from Raqqa and Deir Ezzor and gave Islamic State 20 percent.

 [An official from the SDF/PKK leadership council in Tabqa, Awas] Ali said he learned of the details of the arrangement with Katerji by speaking with Islamic State prisoners and others who worked in the group’s tax collection and road tolling systems. …

 The truck drivers were even allowed to smoke cigarettes as they passed through the checkpoints, something Islamic State enforcers punished with whippings elsewhere, Ali and several other sources said.

 “I would sell an entire season’s supplies to Katerji’s traders,” said farmer Ali Shanaan.

 “They are known traders. The checkpoints stopped the trucks and Daesh would take a cut and let them pass,” he said …

 The wheat was transported via the “New bridge” over the Euphrates River to a road leading out of Raqqa, the farmers and local officials said.

 As IS falls back, the control of the bridge, and these resources more generally, has been lost, but it lasted through most of the May to August trading season this year. In addition to Asad transferring tranches of cash to the IS jihadists in exchange for the wheat, the regime trucks brought supplies like food and medicine that helped the caliphate maintain its grip.

 The trade between Asad and IS will sometimes be explained in “war economy” terms, and in this case that is superficially plausible. The Asad regime needs 1.5 million tonnes of wheat to create staple products that allow it to exert control of the population in western Syria, and Hasaka, Raqqa, and Deir Ezzor contain seventy-percent of the wheat-producing areas. What this neglects is the role the regime had in shaping who controls those zones. Asad imprisoned and massacred unarmed demonstrators and blitzed any zone that fell into rebel hands—while turning loose jihadist prisoners and holding fire for an entire year as IS constructed its caliphate. The regime chose who it would need to pay for access to these resources.

 While Hussam al-Katerji is not a household name in the West, in the Arab world and especially in Syria he is very well-known as Assad’s middle-man for trade with the terrorist groups the regime has enabled to seize areas of the country, namely IS and the PKK. For instance, local reporters at Deir Ezzor 24 and Watan FM exposed the essentials of the above Reuters story in March. Al-Katerji is far from the sole intermediary between Asad and IS—another notable case is Suhayl al-Hassan—but al-Katerji’s role has been especially salient since George Haswani was sidelined.

 In late 2015, Haswani was sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury, as was his HESCO Engineering and Construction Company, for acting as “a middleman for oil purchases” between Asad and IS. Haswani had already been sanctioned by the European Union in March 2015 for the same reason. In Haswani’s telling, his running of Syria’s energy sector as a joint enterprise with IS was a patriotic endeavor to provide “electricity to all the spectrum of Syrian people”. It was broad-minded indeed to include jihadists in that spectrum. A different view was expressed by British Foreign Secretary Phillip Hammond. “This listing”, said Hammond, “gives yet another indication that Asad’s ‘war’ on ISIL is a sham and that he supports them financially”. Among the interesting things about Haswani was that he was a Christian by religion, and a dual national of Syria and Russia. Haswani had significant business interests linked to the Russian government, and it was Moscow that provided much of the connective tissue for a long while between the Asad and IS statelets. There was therefore a great deal of projection in the accusation by the pro-Asad coalition that Turkey was funding IS via oil and other trade.

 By January 2017, after a disastrous start to the U.S.-led campaign with IS’s takeover of Ramadi and Palmyra, the Coalition and its “partner forces” were pushing IS back and had taken something approaching half of its territory. The cities of Tikrit, Tel Abyad, Hasaka, al-Hawl, Ramadi, Shadadi, Falluja, Minbij, Qayyara, and Shirqat had fallen out of IS’s hands, and the offensive against Mosul was underway. At this moment, the Asad regime was the largest individual source of funds for IS. European counterterrorism officials assessed that Asad was using power in Damascus generated in IS-held plants around Palmyra like Al-Akram natural-gas facility. In turn the Asad regime was providing cash to IS. The increased trade between Asad and IS was apparently driven in part by a temporary reduction in the provision of cheap energy to Asad by Iran and Russia in late 2016, though it went on for at least a few more months.

 The money from the Asad regime helped IS counter the concerted U.S. campaign against the jihadists’ finance networks, a program that began no later than the May 2015 U.S. Special Operations Forces raid into Deir Ezzor that killed the head of the “Antiquities Division”, Fathi al-Tunisi (Abu Sayyaf al-Iraqi), and forced the reassignment of the provincial emir, Ali al-Jiburi (Abu Ayman al-Iraqi).

 Local outlets named al-Katerji as the facilitator for these arrangements between the Asad regime and IS. It appears that at least one route for the oil took it from IS hands in eastern Homs to Qamishli, where the Asad regime is permitted to run key security infrastructure in the area otherwise run by the SDF/PKK, and then into Aleppo. Syrian rebels intercepted some of these shipments between the regime and jihadi terror groups.

 In the spring of 2017, the Asad regime, sensing it had defeated the mainstream opposition, began—with Coalition supporta consistent campaign into IS-held areas. Before that, the pro-Asad forces would use political incidents like the Palmyra offensive and their various clashes with IS as evidence that they have fought the holy warriors all along. But the reality is that it was exactly at these points of closest collaboration that some of the most violent episodes between Asad and IS occurred during the long years in which they observed a de facto non-aggression pact. The 8 January 2017 blowing up of a regime gas plant by IS, for example, was a message to the regime because it had fallen behind on payments. As a Syrian oil official once explained, “You kill and fight to influence the deal, but the deal doesn’t end.”

 With IS driven from overt control of its twin capitals and the Asad regime secured for the foreseeable future by Iran and Russia, there has been a sense that Syria’s war is winding down. There is talk of “reconstruction” funds being sent into Syria, particularly by the European Union. Sometimes presented as a means to exert political leverage to force Asad out, this fantasy must be dispensed with: the regime survived this war by destroying the country and half-a-million of its people; it will not now surrender in exchange for several million dollars. The reality is that the E.U. wants to turn off the refugee flow, which has destabilized politics on the Continent and gave IS an opportunity to smuggle terrorists into Europe, and some E.U. states are prepared to pay Asad to do it. It should be obvious that neither Asad nor his allies can do this. Most Syrian refugees fled Asad and cannot return while he is in power. Beyond that, the focus on IS misses the point. The regime’s survival, propped up by Iran, provides a reservoir of political legitimacy to IS and other radical actors, ensuring instability in Syria and well outside. There is nothing to be gained by paying the pro-Asad coalition to defend us from a terrorist menace it is substantially responsible for, and there is something obscene in retrospectively subsidizing mass-murder on this scale.'

Sunday 29 October 2017

What I witnessed in northern Syria: Idlib, Hama, Aleppo



 Mousa al-Omar:

  "I greet you from the northern part of Syria. Before the sun sets, let me say a few words in two short minutes. For those who spread rumours, that northern Syria has turned black and is completely controlled by extremists, talk about al-Qaeda/al-Nusra and extremists is in the past and no one talks about it any more.

 I drove my car here for over 150km, without any bodyguard. I haven't been threatened, or encountered any armed groups. Even checkpoints were almost nonexistent, due to the recent mergers of rebel factions here. Also, most fighters are preoccupied with defending front lines in various directions.

 Here in the so-called Green Zone of northern Syria, which at 10,000 square kilometres is as large as Lebanon, people love life and want to do good. They love their freedom, want to rebuild their country, and above all love their revolution. They are determined that the million martyrs who died defending them did not die in vain, and their sacrifice will not be forgotten.

 I personally have not witnessed any extremism or ISIS or al-Qaeda at all. I invite you to come here and visit the fields, valleys and mountains to see that for yourselves. The hearts of people here are as green as the fields, and as pure and fruitful. This is my message to you all."

موسى العمر

Monday 23 October 2017

Did the West 'give up' on the Syrian rebels?



Michael Neumann:

 'In “How Assad’s Enemies Gave Up on the Syrian Opposition”, Aron Lund follows many other analysts in his account of how the West 'gave up' on Syria’s rebels.  The implication is that the West tried to back them against Assad, but at long last found this well-meaning effort both futile and ill-advised. The project produced a big mess!

 That's at least highly misleading.  The following argues that West never seriously supported the rebels, so it can hardly be said that support should never have been extended in the first place.

 1.  Lund has a New York Times report stating that there were "flights shipping military equipment to Syria".  Here he misspoke:  without any sinister intent, he asserted what he knows is false.  Not one single flight went to Syria.  All flights went, as the article states, to Turkey or Jordan.

 2.  This is of the highest significance, because it means that only a still-unknown proportion of the 3500 tons shipped actually ended up in rebel hands. 

 3.  What we do know is that there were many complaints that only a trickle of those arms made it across the border: the deliveries were constantly and severely restricted to bend rebel groups to the wishes of Turkey, and - especially - Jordan and the US.  For example:  “We need between 500-600 tons of ammunition a week. We get between 30-40 tons. So you do the calculations.”

 4.  The overwhelming majority of the arms used are of Soviet design.  Even ammunition tracked to outside sources is not linked to identifiable US-backed shipments.  Some of this material certainly did come from the CIA operation, but there are no videos nor any first-hand testimony of large deliveries crossing the Syrian border.  In short there is no evidence that, contrary to repeated rebel claims, they received large amounts of CIA-supplied weaponry, as opposed to black-market purchases from numerous sources.

 5.  There is also no evidence, indeed no claim, that CIA training made a substantial difference.  The later Pentagon train-and-equip program leaked small quantities of arms; the trained units were consistently steered away from fighting Assad.

 6.   Even if large shipments actually ended up in rebel hands, these shipments did not afford the rebels air cover: there were no useful MANPADS or other anti-aircraft weapons.  And of course in contrast to the Western-backed Kurdish forces, no one gave the rebels air cover or close air support.  This, predictably, proved decisive.

 7.  Without such support, the claim that Western supplies ever played a pivotal role in the course of the war is implausible.  The rebels, in better days, obtained massive quantities of arms from the black market and captured régime depots.  These seem quite sufficient to account for the rebels' periods of success.

 8.   In short the whole idea that the US and the West made any serious effort to overthrow Assad is a non-starter.  Western backers may indeed have planned to overthrow him.  But between the plans and the implementation lay an almost impenetrable barrier of reluctance to support the rebels who might have brought him down.  This barrier proved much more consequential than the plans or even the arms delivery flights that supposedly exacerbated the conflict.

 9.  Where did this reluctance come from?  Lund rightly says:  "Though the Syrian president was now widely reviled as a war criminal and held responsible for tens of thousands of civilian deaths, the likely alternatives seemed to be either stateless, jihadi-infested chaos or some sort of Talibanesque theocracy. International enthusiasm for the opposition plummeted."

 Lund might have pointed out that, on all evidence, "the likely alternatives" would have been far better than Assad, particularly since the West had more than enough capacity to restrain any post-Assad 'chaos'. But this is the failure of every respectable, sober, well-informed Syria analyst. Should it have had any significant effect on Western policy, it is a lot to answer for.'

Sunday 22 October 2017

The Russians are chaining Syria and drowning it in debt

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 'Russia has drawn up a map of military bases in Syria that is re-establishing its presence as a central force in the Middle East. However, there is an economic agenda that Moscow is hiding behind its military and political presence, the most important of which is obtaining long-term economic advantages through signing agreements with the Syrian regime, as a way to return its favour in contributing to keeping the Syrian regime and its president, Bashar al-Assad.

 The economic relations between Damascus and Moscow are not the result of military intervention, but they date back to the Soviet Union and the rule of former President Hafez al-Assad in the 1990s. In addition, the son Bashar al-Assad has worked on strengthening more trade and economic relations between the two countries. In 2005, he signed about 43 agreements, in the fields of industry, trade, defence, healthcare, energy, and irrigation.
According to analysts, the regime’s concessions and signing agreements with Moscow is not new. Russia has cancelled 73% of its debts from Syria ($ 9.8 billion of the total debt of $ 13.4 billion), during Assad’s visit to Moscow in 2005, in exchange for turning the Tartus Port into a permanent military base for Russian ships.

 However, the concessions have increased after the outbreak of the revolution, after Assad resorted to Putin to maintain his regime. By that time, Russia has started taking advantage of its position by signing the 2013 “Amrit contract which is an unprecedented huge agreement with a Russian company, for oil and gas exploration in the Syrian territorial waters.

 It is a 25-year contract which includes the exploration of 2190 square kilometres at a cost of $ 100 million, funded by Russia. If oil or gas is discovered in commercial quantities, Moscow will recover the costs from the production revenues, according to what the Director-General of the General Petroleum Corporation of the regime’s government, Ali Abbas, claimed to AFP.

 After the Russian military intervention, the two sides have signed agreements in various fields, including two agreements worth 600 and 250 million Euros, in 2016, in order to repair the infrastructure that has been destroyed by the “battle”, as well as the construction of power stations and grain silos. Thus “the Syrian market has become open to Russian companies which can be present, join, and play an important role in the reconstruction and investment in Syria,” according to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, in an interview with Sputnik Russian news agency in April.

 On June 29, the Russian Fontanka Electronic Network published a memorandum of cooperation which Europolis Russian Company signed with the Syrian Ministry of Oil and Mineral Recourses earlier this year. The memorandum states that the company is committed to “liberate and protect areas that contain oil wells and facilities,” in return of getting one quarter of oil production.

 Since early June, a Russian company, owned by billionaire Gennady Timchenko, has been carrying out maintenance work for the largest phosphate mines in Syria, located in Khunayfis region near the city of Palmyra, according to a report published by Russia Today website on June 27.

 Russia Today article confirmed that al-Assad signed the agreement on April 23. The agreement was between the General Organization for Geology and Mineral Resources of Syria and STNG Logestic, a subsidiary of Story Trans Gas, which owns 31% of the company. This agreement was aimed at implementing the maintenance needed and providing protection, production, and transport services to Selaata port in Lebanon.
Moreover, Russia intervened in the field of Syrian food and became the country with the most exports of wheat, which is considered as a strategic product. Internal Trade and Consumer Protection Minister, Abdullah al-Gharbi, announced an agreement to buy three million tons of wheat from Russia in September.

 Moreover, Russian company, SovEcon, will build four grain mills in Homs at a cost of 70 million Euros. The Syrian government will be the one covering the construction costs, according to what Ziad Balla, Director General of General Mills Company, said in April 2016. Ziad also talked about a cooperative work with the Iranian side is done in order to build and prepare five mills in many provinces.

 Economist Munaff Kuman asserted that the contracts and agreements between Russia and Syria will have devastating effects on the Syrian economy on the long run, as it will tie up the economy and the future Syrian government and will prevent it from taking any developmental steps that may lead to the autonomy of national decision and the ability to invest Syria’s natural resources.

 Kuman also asserted that “any development process will collide with Russia and Iran, which will prevent the whole process”. (Tehran also signed several agreements with the regime)

 The researcher stressed the seriousness of contracts relating to the exploitation of oil ports and the right to prospect for oil and gas and phosphate and extract it, because it will be stolen for the benefit of Russia and Iran. The two countries will work on “sucking the wealth” without taking into account any national interests of the Syrians. Russian companies may also sell oil, gas, and phosphate extracted from Syrian territory at high prices, and this will have negative effects on the government and the citizen in terms of costs and prices in the local market.'

The change in the field control map in Syria between 2016 and 2017 (Enab Baladi)

The Tragic Legacy of Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently



 'Nearly two years ago, I met a group of young Syrian journalists at a dive bar around Times Square. We spoke for hours, and their stories of human cruelty were detailed and beyond appalling. These were all refugees from the city of Raqqa and, in concert with other young men and women who were still living in Syria, they formed the core of Raqqa Is Being Slaughtered Silently, a kind of underground reporting squadron, citizen journalists who, at tremendous risk to their lives, used every possible tool to smuggle out to the world words and images describing life under Isis rule. Foreign journalists found that their reports were as reliable as they were sickening. On their Web site, the R.B.S.S. journalists posted reports of mass shootings, crucifixions, beheadings, sexual abuse, and other crimes. These brave reporters, who have been honored by the Committee to Protect Journalists and portrayed in Matthew Heineman’s excellent documentary, “City of Ghosts,” worked under constant threat of death; ten of their colleagues, friends and family members, both inside Raqqa and in Turkey, were hunted down by Isis forces and executed for the crime of committing journalism.

 When news came this week that Isis had been flushed out of Raqqa by coalition air strikes, I called Abdalaziz Alhamza, perhaps the most eloquent of the young men and women I met that night in Times Square. He and I came to know each other at other events, and it was immediately clear to me that he was feeling no sense of relief, gratitude, or liberation.

 “How are you?”

 “Pretty terrible,” he said. “This is a liberation in the media. Not in Raqqa.” Alhamza felt no immediate sense of relief or happiness. His city was in ruins. He and everyone he knew had lost friends and family. After speaking on the phone, we decided to have a conversation by e-mail and what follows are his responses to my questions, edited for clarity and space, about his life and about Raqqa, its tragedy, and its future.

 Life in Raqqa before the war was as normal as any city in the world. We had schools, universities, parks, bars, and cafés, though, of course, Raqqa was not a big city like Aleppo or Damascus. Raqqa was a somewhat forgotten city even though it has oil and gas and an agricultural base. The Euphrates and the dams there provide the country with much of its electricity.

 “I was born in Raqqa and I came from a middle-class family. I didn’t really want for anything in my life at all. As a child and as a teen-ager, I had a good life. Before the revolution started, in 2011, I was a college student. I hung out with my friends, stole a little money from my dad. Basically, I wasn’t doing anything all that useful. But when the revolution began, my friends started telling me about politics in Syria, about the first demonstrations in the country. They talked about how the government denied us freedom of expression and civil rights, about how people who spoke out were killed or ‘disappeared.’ The Assad family had already been in power for more than forty years. They said we could be a great country, but we aren’t.

 “And so I joined early the many Syrians who began asking for basic freedoms. But the regime reacted to the demonstrations by killing civilians. We saw that the regime had to end. The international community reacted to all of this with little more than speeches. The Assad regime prevented most of media organizations from entering Syria and covering what was going on. Local television just showed banal programs, like documentaries about animals and things like that.

 “So I decided to go to the next demonstration and take video footage and upload it all on social media. That film was picked up by various media organizations. That’s really how I turned into an activist and a citizen journalist. My friends and I decided to get together and establish a Facebook page to report the news and provide what we call ‘local co-ordination.’ We organized and called on people to come to demonstrations, day after day.

 “Because of these activities, I was arrested three times and tortured. The methods of torture that I went through, and so many others went through, included electric shock; whippings; solitary confinement for five, six days at a time in a tiny, windowless toilet stall.

 “In March, 2013, troops from al-Nusra [an Al Qaeda-allied jihadist group] and the Free Syrian Army pushed out the Syrian-government loyalists. For the next half year or more, we enjoyed a period when we could work freely and walk in the streets carrying revolutionary flags. Raqqa had more than forty civil-society organizations. I was helping to run an organization that was involved in education, and, along with my friends and comrades, we were able to re-open universities and the schools.

 “Isis began to take control of the city in January, 2014. They closed Christian churches and Shia mosques. They committed countless human-rights violations, the first being a public execution that I witnessed with many others. The reaction of people in Raqqa at first was to demonstrate against Isis. Because I took part in that, I came under investigation. I was interrogated by Isis five times.

 “When Isis took over complete control of the city, in mid-January, 2014, they came to my house to arrest me because I was covering the clashes between them and the rebels. I was just incredibly lucky that I wasn’t home when they came. I realized that I could no longer stay in Raqqa. At first, I thought I could stay in the city and live underground, but I was facing the threat of execution and I fled across the border to Turkey.

“When I arrived in Turkey, I kept hearing how Isis’s human-rights violations were increasing by the day. And so, in April, 2014, my colleagues, inside of Raqqa and outside, decided to start R.B.S.S. in order to report on the realities of what was going on. We also supported awareness campaigns in the most dangerous Isis strongholds: we used graffiti campaigns, we distributed posters. Eventually, we turned out to be the main source of news that was coming from Isis-controlled areas.

“We lost our first colleague in Raqqa because we were communicating through Facebook. We decided to be far more careful and got training on the use of encryption methods. Nevertheless, we lost still more friends, colleagues, and family members. They were arrested, tortured, executed, sometimes beheaded, both in Syria and Turkey. Still, our only weapon to fight Isis was through information and the Internet.

“In July, 2014, I left for Germany. Turkey no longer felt safe. But life in Europe is not so easy, either, not when there are neo-Nazis accusing me and other Syrian refugees of being terrorists!

“We had all hoped to defeat Assad by now and have a free, democratic, and unified Syria. Now I only dream about returning home and rebuilding the country. This generation of Syrians has lost everything. We can only put our hopes in the next generation. We have the resources to be a great country, but it will take a long time.

“In the meantime, R.B.S.S. will keep working, reporting the news, organizing awareness campaigns and workshops, and trying to help rebuild Raqqa. So many children were killed in the fighting. One of the things that Isis did was to target them. They opened tents for children and gave them games and dollars and candy and phones––things that their parents could no longer provide. This is how they recruited children. Even now we have to be aware that Isis will remain a timebomb. They were able to spread their ideology to so many young people in Syria, the region, and throughout the world. It’s so important to fight against this ideology and prevent the new generation being radicalized. R.B.S.S. is out of money and if you go to our Web site and donate something, you will be helping.

“You have to realize this: I am not happy. How could I be? It is true that Isis is defeated now in Raqqa. But ninety per cent of the city is destroyed, there is rubble everywhere. Thousands have been killed. Hundreds of thousands are living in miserable conditions. People are sleeping outdoors in the desert heat. They are lucky if they have a tent.

“When I tell people that the media are celebrating the ‘liberation of Raqqa,’ they are upset. Some of them say, ‘Fuck the media. Fuck isis. And fuck everyone else.’ You have to understand, there is no one from Raqqa who didn’t lose a family member, a friend, a neighbor, a beloved person. I lost my uncle. Everywhere I’ve ever lived there is gone.

“Understand: my people have been living under the worst conditions in the world and under the most brutal group, Isis. We faced constant human-rights violations for years. We faced air strikes, shelling. Human beings deserve a better life.

“According to my sources in Raqqa, most Isis fighters left the city before the final battle started. Isis used civilians as human shields. People reported that as they were fleeing the city during the air strikes, they could hear children, women, and men shouting from under the rubble, but they couldn’t do anything to help them. People cannot quite believe that they are alive. And those that did get out left behind family members, friends, who were killed.

“People told me that when the international coalition started bombing Raqqa, in 2015, the air strikes were targeted at Isis fighters, at their headquarters and their vehicles. They knew that being home was not a problem, they would be safe. They did fear Russian air strikes and Assad’s forces. But then the strategy of the coalition seemed to change; the strikes seemed more random, less accurate. They felt that the main goal was only to get rid of Isis without caring enough about thousands of civilians who are living there.

“It’s been three and a half years since I have been back home. I hope I have a future in Syria. But the city is now facing new problems, more human-rights violations. And R.B.S.S. has to go on exposing these violations and help prevent the explosion of an ideological timebomb. We don’t know who will control the city in the end. Raqqa will be liberated only when its people will be able to go back to their houses and live their lives as free men and free women.” '

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