Updates

 Robin Yassin-Kassab:

 'An alliance of the British Labour Party, Tory back benchers, UKIP, the BNP, the US Congress and the Tea Party helped Obama step away, and to hand the Syria file to Putin’s Russia – the same power arming the criminal. So the genocide continued, and continues, to the mood-music accompaniment (in the liberal-left press) of absurd conspiracy theories, racist slanders, and willed deafness to the voices of those suffering.'

A year ago tonight

 Rime Allaf:

 'Hundreds of victims, no blood. Assad has used chemical weapons of some sort. Save Syria.
Eastern Ghouta this morning, Damascus.'

Syrian rebels reinforce northern strategic town

 'Abu Maryam had hardly finished his interview when a warplane roared overhead. A military commander started shouting and ordered the soldiers to deploy. The warplane flew over the city several times before firing a missile, wounding four civilians and destroying houses.'

 That's one of Assad's warplanes, acting in concert with the Islamic State assault on the rebels.

 ' "This tumor needs to be removed immediately. They've harmed the image of Islam a lot. We had never been defeated by the regime until they showed up," said an opposition fighter who was stationed with his colleagues in the agricultural fields in Marea.'

Hope fades for Syrians one year after chemical attack

 'People hoped that the West was finally coming to save them," says Majed. "But instead, they gave Assad a green light to kill more, using other types of weapons.

 It is to the world's shame that it witnessed such a massacre and remained unmoved. We don't seem to matter to anyone. This issue about human rights and democracy is only a lie that the West and UN use when it suites their interests.

 The world has failed the Syrian people. After the chemical attack I saw many men around me turn to extremism. The disappointment caused by the West's inaction created a fertile recruiting ground for extremist groups, who told those who had lost their loved ones that they were their only hope. People want a way out of the violence Assad is inflicting on them.'

With James Foley in Maaret Al Nouman

 "A few of my good friends with James Foley in Maaret Al Nouman, Idleb Nov 2012 shortly after town was liberation."

 Here's one of James Foley's tweets about the brutality of the Assad régime:

 "Saw what looks like white phosphorus or other incendiary dropped on old citadel of ‪#‎MaaratalNuman‬ In a city w/ almost no civs left Why?"
[https://twitter.com/jfoleyjourno/statuses/271281076956168195]

Journalists live in peril to keep hope of freedom alive

 ' “We want to show we are having a real revolution,” Mansour said. “We are not all Islamists. We are not all ISIS or Dash.”

 Serriah was imprisoned in 2006 for five years for taking part in some of the early protests against the Bashar al-Assad regime and was released just after the uprising of 2011 began. He joined up with the opposition, smuggling medical supplies and wounded soldiers from the Free Syrian Army around Damascus to secret clinics. He was arrested again, and spent three more months in prison.

 “Seeing or hearing the tortured people is more difficult than torture itself,” he told me, with Mansour translating. “Because you only hear them screaming and you see them and you can do nothing, just watching. And also, at the same time, you are waiting for your turn to be tortured.” '

West must work with Iran to defeat Isil

 Malcolm Rifkind:

 'Think of the Second World War when Churchill and Roosevelt allied themselves with Stalin in order to defeat Hitler.'

 I think of after the Second World War, when the superpowers carved up Europe, and did no more than protest ineffectually when the other put down revolts in its own sphere of influence.

One Big Question Surrounds The Murder Of James Foley

 ' "Until recently, James Foley was thought to be in hands of pro-Assad forces. If Assad is handing over Westerners to ISIS to be killed, it indicates Assad feels cornered, looking for leverage," BBC's Kim Ghattas tweeted, adding that the assessment jibes with what her sources in Damascus have told her recently.

 Ghattas added that Assad providing Foley to ISIS "would confirm Assad tacitly working [with] ISIS and silence any suggestions Assad is the better alternative." '

Intervention? More like Ceaseless Escalation

 Two untruths to point out here. We can't stand by does not mean any action is better than none, arming the FSA would forestall any need for a military intervention, not encourage it. And the link to 'covert action' (only linking to 'overt action') tells us nothing about 2013, it is a link to Susan Rice in June 2014 hinting at lethal aid to Syrian rebels. That's all the writer has to say about Syria, their struggle against dictatorship is made invisible in favour of talking about other conflicts.

 'In 2013, another popular front of interventionists clamored for action, this time in Syria—and all while repeated their favorite mantra: “We can’t just stand by and let this happen, can we?”

 It is on this point that we need to correct our language. For it was common knowledge that in 2013, like in 2011 and 2012, “we” were not just “standing by and letting things happen” in Libya or Iran. And with regard to Syria, “we,” like the Saudis and Qataris, had already been intervening—with covert action and diplomatic support—to overthrow the Asad regime.'
*[http://english.alarabiya.net/…/Obama-aide-hints-at-lethal-a…]

Iran compromises in Iraq, but won’t in Syria

 Saudi Arabia and Qatar are claimed to fund ISIS or "other extremist groups", when in fact they've been supporting, intermittently, the revolutionary forces fighting Assad. The fits in with the lie that the military struggle against Assad is a choice made by regional powers which has nothing to do with the original aims of the revolution, when it is the defence of that revolution against Assad's assaults that has created the Free Syrian Army, and the lack of support for the FSA that has seen power leech away to other groups.

 Now we see this come full circle, with the sectarian killers in Syria turning into the West's allies in the War on Terror. The Iranian forces in Syria are still attacking the Free Syrian Army and other anti-Assad brigades, they haven't had one engagement with ISIS. This is a recipé for a bad settlement in Iraq, and a continuation of the genocide in Syria.

 'By contrast, far from making concessions in Syria, Khashoggi told NOW he believed the Iranians would in fact seek to exploit the ongoing jihadist atrocities in northern Iraq to reinforce their and Assad’s claims to have been battling a “terrorist” insurgency in Syria during the last three years, thereby gaining support from an international community increasingly alarmed by the rapid rise of Sunni jihadist groups such as the al-Qaeda offshoot, the Islamic State (IS).
“The Iranians and [Lebanese Hezbollah leader Hassan] Nasrallah and others will probably be talking now about how they have been right all along, how Islamic extremists are the problem, not Bashar,” said Khashoggi.

 “And I’m sure some will be asking the question: is it time for the Saudis and Iranians and Americans to cooperate together?”

 Sure enough, in an op-ed Sunday, British Prime Minister David Cameron argued the “international community” should partner “even with Iran” in its political and military action against the “shared threat” posed by the IS.'

Don't forget Syria's chemical attacks victims

 'Sadly, to this day, there hasn't been any attempt to help those who fell victims. For more than two years the survivors are living under the siege that is laid by the Assad-Regime and pro Iranian militias on these neighborhoods.

 Bashar Al Assad and his regime have survived without any punishment.
Not only is the regime still using chemical weapons, it also has cut any connection of the people in the besieged areas from the rest of the world.

 We want to shed a light on these crimes, and put pressure on the international community to strip the Syrian regime from these means of mass killing and put Assad and his subordinates before the International Criminal Court, and most important help the chemical attacks victims that have been forgotten by the international community.'

Assad regime uses CWs against civilians again, world ignores it again

Ruth Numpty:

 'Atmane, ‪#‎Daraa‬ province, 19-08-2014: Assad's warplanes again fired missiles containing chemical substances, believed to be chlorine gas, against civilian areas in the early hours of this morning, this time in Atmane in Daraa province, with heroic paramedics seen in this video footage treating some of the victims in the town, already devastated by daily regime aerial and heavy artillery bombardment.

 The Assad regime continues to routinely deploy chlorine gas and other internationally outlawed chemical weapons against civilians with impunity since these are, conveniently, omitted from the UN's list of CWs proscribed for its use.
The world media, as always, ignored the regime's latest use of chemical weapons, which is now routine, preferring, as always, to recount the Assad regime's narrative.

 This Thursday, August 21st, is the first anniversary of the Assad regime's largest chemical weapons attack to date, on the Ghouta region of Damascus province, in which over 1,450 people were killed, mostly women and children; as with all of Assad's other victims, these have been effectively dismissed as 'collateral damage' by Obama and the rest of the 'international community,' as much as by Assad and his more overt allies.'



 Note 1/4/25, comments from Ruth Numpty may have been on a Facebook post rather than the Youtube video itself.

Understanding the Unthinkable War

 Sadik J. Al-Azm:

 'There was nothing sudden about the transformation of the peaceful protests into armed “civil conflict.” It was the result of the abandonment of the protestors by the international community in spite of the escalating violence perpetrated by the Assad regime, the solidarity of Syrian soldiers with ordinary people, and the predictable influx of armed extremists to a desperate situation.

 The armed counterparts of the coordinating committees, dispersed all over Syria, forced the regime’s storm troops to spread themselves thin, scattering and exhausting them as they shuttled suddenly from Dar’a in the south to the Turkish border in the north and then back south again. This is why we heard that troops invaded, occupied, and then retreated from Dar’a at least twenty times during less than fifteen months.



 “Why do you bother to criticize, oppose, and protest, when you know we are invincible, with a will of steel that crushes anything and anyone that stands in its way? Find something better to do than dabbling in hopeless politics and opposition.”

 The revolution has destroyed this omnipotent image both within the regime and outside of it. That is why Assad had to call on Hezbollah militias from Lebanon and paramilitary Shi’a organizations from Iraq and Iran to bolster his hold on the country. That is also why his storm troops, Hezbollah, and the other militias struggled so long to take a small, rural town such as Kusair, in spite of their far superior numbers and firepower.

 In Syria the regime, state, army, and party on one side, and the popular uprising on the other, are the primary combatants. There are no indications of sectarian contest. Syria’s Druzes are not about to attack their Sunni neighbors in Hauran, nor are the Sunni preparing to invade en masse Ismaeli or Christian territories, nor are the Ismaelis readying themselves to violently settle old scores with the Alawi community and so on. Neither did any Syrian community, sect, or ethnicity mobilize itself collectively to fight on the side of the regime or to defend it.



 Syria is not in a condition of generalized civil war. If a historical precedent or analogy is needed, recall Hungary’s armed revolution against the Stalinist regime there in 1956—a revolt crushed by Russian tanks much as Syrian tanks aim to crush today’s. As Hungary’s revolution unfolded, no one said that the country was in the throes of a civil war because Hungarian was killing Hungarian.

 So what is trampled underfoot in Syria right now is the majority and its rights, about which no one seems to speak outside of Syria. Underlying this silence is the assumption that the Sunni majority is just waiting for the right moment to assault the minorities of the country, to persecute and oppress them. But, right now, all Syria, needs rights, protection, concern, and attention.

 This international discourse about protection of Syria’s minorities takes me back to the Europe of the nineteenth century, with its famous gunboat diplomacy. Every European power worth its salt was searching for a minority in our part of the world to adopt and protect: France, the local Roman Catholics and Alawis. Russia, the Greek Orthodox. Britain, the few Anglicans and Protestants along with the Druze minority, and so on.'

Special Report on Use of Chemical Weapons in Damascus Suburbs

 Dr. Majed Abu Ali:

 "The hard thing was not the death, itself; It was the panic in people's eyes. Usually in such cases we ask for evacuation; however, there were hundreds of thousands of civilians in a besieged area; no evacuation was possible.

 What was harder than that is watching a three-month baby girl dying and not being able to help her. In Douma alone, 22 martyrs could've been saved, were the required medical supplies available one month ago."

Fear brings the enemies of Isis together at last

 Patrick Cockburn continues his slanders against the Syrian opposition to Assad. They aren't supposedly going to fight Assad and ISIS, they have been and are right now. Meanwhile Cockburn's option Assad, seems to have finally launched an attack Raqqa, where ISIS are based, hitting the city's water supply. While there are any Syrians left that won't bow to dictators, Assad and ISIS will find it easier to attack them than each other.

 'This coming together of old rivals and enemies in opposition to Isis is happening in Iraq, but not yet in Syria where the US, Europeans, Turks, Saudis and Qataris continue with their old bankrupt policy. This is to get rid of or least weaken President Bashar al-Assad by backing a moderate military opposition that is supposedly going to fight both Mr Assad and Isis. Unfortunately, this group scarcely exists except as a propaganda slogan and a consumer of subsidies from the Gulf. Isis dominates the Syrian opposition and that domination grew greater last week as it captured the towns of Turkmen Bareh and Akhtarin, 30 miles from Aleppo.'

 And how lonely is Assad?

 'The present US policy of leaving Mr Assad (backed by Hezbollah, Iran and Russia) to battle Isis alone poses high risks.'

No Red Lines

 President Obama: "Some communities had to be protected, in case there was a chemical attack, and they didn't have hazmat suits."

 The US after 9/11, not Syria. He didn't mention Syria at all, just talked about "working with our key partners in the region and beyond."

 "We're willing to engage with regional partners, so that we can craft an anti-terrorism strategy." Could be talking about Iran. "Iraq will have a variety of partners."

A Real Syria Policy Starts with Saving Aleppo

 'A strong showing of strategically significant Western support to our Syrian resistance would not only create battlefield gains, it would reinvigorate free Syrians everywhere and spark an expansion in our recruitment of fighters to defeat ISIS and Assad. We do not want to be ruled by brutal Islamists any more than we want to be ruled by a ruthless dictator. Provided with military support, we can succeed in our ongoing fight against both. For us, it is victory or death.'

Why fight ISIS in Iraq, not in Syria?

 'The Syrian opposition has been calling for many months the Friends of Syria Group to arm its brigade to bring down the Assad regime and stop the daily butchering and ethnic cleansing of Syrian civilians in various parts of the country. Fears that sophisticated weapons have reached the hands of extremists have prevented action, while Syrian regime aircraft kept pounding cities and villages outside the control of the regime with all kind of ammunition, and the list is long.'

The Syrian Revolution Is Running Out Of Room

 Western-backed and Western-armed appear to be two entirely different concepts.

 'Despite supporting the rebels, Western powers have refused to arm them in case the weapons fell into jihadist hands. Syrian rebels and regime opponents have not hidden their bitterness at seeing the United States strike IS in Iraq.

 "There is a feeling of anger because for three years Syria has been massacring its people and committing crimes against humanity," Oqaidi said. "The world stood there with arms folded." '

Oliver's Army

 Should President Obama send the National Guard to Ferguson, Missouri, to prevent the racist police force oppressing the black community?

 I bumped into a friend who used to be in the Socialist Workers Party yesterday morning, and we got to talking about Syria. It didn't start well. I asked him if he knew that Saudi Arabia and Qatar didn't fund the Islamic State. He didn't. The late Tony Cliff used to start speeches by saying, "Here is the balance of class forces in the situation." How can you presume to pass judgment on any political event, but especially the most significant conflict of our time, when you have no knowledge of what is going on there at all? I don't know that much. I remember seeing Yalla Souriya comment on Twitter once, in a comment aimed at Joshua Landis, that if you hadn't been to Syria in the last six months, you could only see 5 or 10% of the picture.But compared to people like that I'm the font of wisdom.
And how they do presume is to talk about another conflict, and assume that the forces are all the same. In this case Kosovo, "The Albanians appealed to the Americans to help, they started bombing, the Serbs were forced out."



 Now there are a number of things to say here. Firstly, I don't know a lot about Kosovo. If somebody puts a convincing argument about the balance of forces, casualties, and so on, I'm open to change my mind, and form more of an opinion than I do at the moment.But I know that there are still a lot of Serbs in Kosovo, particularly in Mitrovice, that they are not being daily killed by the Albanians, that they are unwilling to integrate with the new state - generally, there are always some exceptions who reach between communities - rather than being in fear of fascist terror from their new overlords. It can be hard to expect Serbs to learn an alien language like Albanian so that they might live in bilingual harmony, but that was what was always expected in reverse in the old Yugoslavia.

 For independence-minded Kosovans the result has been a huge success. They are free, grateful to war criminals like Tony Blair for bringing it about, but not irretrievably beholden to the West because of some Faustian pact to give them the illusion of independence, while Halliburton was given the economic power in perpetuity. I remember one resident of Belgrade writing at the time that the bombing wasn't a joke, but the casualties were very limited, and might be a price worth paying for Kosovo's freedom. When airstrikes were proposed last year, none of the opponents would tell what the size of the death toll would be, just that you don't know what would happen once the bullets start flying.You can see the contradiction here with knowing how things are going to turn out because all imperialist interventions are the same. I would bet that fewer people were killed in Belgrade in 1999 than have been killed by Assad, by a long, long, way. Mentioning such things become moralism when it is about those revolting outside the Western sphere of influence, it would be a righteous condemnation of injustice, if it were Israel, or South Africa, or Ferguson, Missouri.

 Chomsky's distinction between worthy and unworthy victims, "A propaganda system will consistently portray people abused in enemy states as worthy victims, whereas those treated with equal or greater severity by its own government or clients will be unworthy," is turned on its head, and doesn't look any prettier when it repeats the stories of the Russian and Iranian states, who Syrians know as their enemy, as they are helping Assad to commit genocide against Syrians. To presume to tell Syrians that they need to be protected from the Americans. That would be like telling the people of Ferguson that they need to be protected from the National Guard. It would be objectively on the side of the racists. Never mind that supporters of the Iraq war used to tell the Left that we were pro-fascist for not going along with Bush and Blair, because that was a very different conflict that was a war of choice for Iraq's oil.



 Should Obama send the National Guard to Ferguson? It should be at least two questions. Is it a good thing, and should it be opposed? I think as a capitalist and imperialist institution, the federal US government is a pretty poor instrument of liberation. So, no, it would generally be an option I'd propose, though I would not being telling people that it was a problem on the same order of magnitude as the local cops, because that would be nonsense.

 Should it be opposed? If there is the possibility that black people can control their own streets, as I heard suggestion on the BBC earlier, then go for it. If there isn't then you can welcome the breathing space the National Guard provide, without thinking that they are there to do anything but create the conditions for the cops to be in control again.

 It would be nice if people looked at Syria with a relevant and nuanced approach. Syria isn't a country run by the Americans. It used to be a Russian client state, it has become so dominated by Iran since the revolution started that it is hard to say whether Assad or the Iranians are in control now. That's one reason the Americans were never going to invade, that there wasn't going to by some magical power by which mission creep converts any intervention into the Iraq war; they don't go fucking with other Great Powers vital interests all the time. They want to make money, and that doesn't happen so much if you have a Cuban Missile Crisis every five minutes. So every time Assad's violence has reached a new level, the Russians have claimed they will get upset by any American response, and the Americans have backed off. Along with all the other pressures, such as that not to get involved in Middle East wars, it forces any "intervention" to a minimum.

 And "intervention" is a conflation that needs constant unpacking. Just as I'd rather see the residents of Ferguson in control of their streets, I'd rather see the Free Syrian Army armed than any American bombing. Doing the first in 2012 would have obviated any need for the latter, and it doesn't help when Westerners proudly proclaim, "I'm against Western intervention," that buries the argument that the Syrian people have a right to the arms they need under a mountain of shit about the evils of America. That arming the FSA was a feasible solution is now becoming a major argument in mainstream American political discourse. Partly because it's a useful partisan tool against or to distinguish from Obama, partly because it is the truth. Phyllis Bennis was telling al-Jazeera (TV station funded by the fairly reactionary monarchy Qatar. They aren't funding ISIS, you doofus. Nor is Saudi Arabia, the corrupt reactionary monarchy that was Osama Bin Laden's enemy. Have you got this straight yet?) that the US government never did anything good, that it wouldn't do any good to send more guns to the region. It is true that there have been fewer genuine resistance movements outside its sphere of influence to support, the way the Soviet Union sent arms to liberation movements in Africa and Central America - without anyone on the left saying we need to stop those imperialist interventions.But here is one, and anti-aircraft weapons would have put an end to the constant bombing of civilians.A war the rebels have been close to winning, where now even sections of the Alawite community are turning against Assad, as a corrupt régime becomes ever more unequal and unstable as the war goes on. There is a rare intersection between the actual need to stop genocide, the US ideology of freedom, and a people already trying to take control of its destiny.



 Phyllis Bennis also claimed that we had no way of stopping weapons going to Jabhat al-Nusra or ISIS. That's the reverse of the truth. A proper supply of weapons would give the FSA proper command and control, a stability that would attract those who have wanted a revolution of dignity from the beginning. People claim, as Phyllis Bennis did, that they favoured the early revolution, but it is all different people involved now. That's largely not true, often those claiming to have been in favour in 2011 were just as bemused then as they are now. And it is the same people, just that those fighting against the Assad régime - and you can't eat and drink and reproduce your existence if you can't make it through the day without being tortured or killed - have become more Islamist because there were no secular alternatives, and have parasites like ISIS appear who leech off the revolution without fighting Assad, because there is not the support to actual rebels to resist this. They have been resisting ISIS and Assad the best they can, but it doesn't help when ignorant Westerners pretend they don't even exist.

 When social workers or burglary victims worry about involving the police a similar argument occurs. You don't want to do it, but sometimes there is no choice. One example of this came in 1969 in Northern Ireland. The security forces, at the behest of the sectarian Protestant state, had killed Catholics and provoked rioting. The British government sent troops in , with the excuse of protecting Catholics. Eamonn McCann wrote an editorial for Socialist Worker saying, "The British troops have been presented in the press as restoring “law and order” and welcomed by the Catholic population. Certainly the mass of Catholics, after three days of bitter fighting were relieved to see the RUC and the Specials withdraw, and to this extent were glad to see the British troops. But it should not be thought that the presence of British troops can begin to solve their problems." I think that would be a good way to look at Syria. Now that Syria has been allowed to fester, there is the basis for a backlash of support for the worst kind of imperialist intervention, because the policy of Hands Off Syria has clearly been seen to fail.

 The only way to take this to a better place is to propose a better alternative. Some of those arguing that this could have worked in 2012 say it won't work now, which may be a sign of their opportunism, they just want to blame rather than propose action. Certainly Syria is in a mess inconceivable two years ago. But there is an irreducible minimum of support for more secular outcomes. And the sharpening of divisions with the rise of ISIS has inspired the rebels to greater unity in fighting them and Assad. It is hard now, it may be very hard now without the Americans getting involved in some way. But having been through the myth that they were going to destroy the Middle East and start a war with Russia last year, I'm now more willing to look at what is actually proposed on a case-by-case basis to see whether actions would be good for the Syrian people or not. Better that Syrians have control, but away with the suggestion that the Americans are the force Syrians need to resist in the here and now.

Sunday Morning Live

 'Should we arm the Kurds?'

 Lindsey German on the TV now. "I have sympathy for the Kurds and I'm against ISIS, but this is down to Bush and Blair's invasion. It's about the arming of ISIS that's been going on by Saudi Arabia and Qatar, opening the border."

 George Hargreaves points out he doesn't want bombing, but arming of the Kurds. Makes no difference to Lindsey, every time is the same to her. And, "we have to remember where ISIS come from, from Western intervention in Syria."Somebody (Ayan Rahman?) has the sense to say, "we've got to stop talking about events of ten years ago. People are dying because of ISIS in Iraq today."

What is a revolution?

 Tariq Ali prefers Assad.

 'The notion that the Syrian National Coalition (SNC) is the carrier of a Syrian revolution is as risible as the idea that the Brotherhood was doing the same in Egypt. A brutal civil war with atrocities by both sides is currently being fought. Did the regime use gas or other chemical weapons? We do not know with certainty. The strikes envisaged by the United States are designed to prevent Assad’s military advances from defeating the opposition and re-taking the country. That is what is at stake in Syria.'

 Liar. Max Blumenthal reports* the universal opinion of the 75,000 refugees from Assad in the largest refugee camp in the world.

 'Most Syrian refugees in Lebanon and Jordan are only too well aware that US strikes will not make their country better.'

 *'Indeed, there was not one person I spoke to in Zaatari who did not demand US military intervention at the earliest possible moment.' [https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/we-just-wish-hit-put-end-massacres/]

Today In Syria

 Details of fighting in Syria. You'll find several instances of Islamic State fighting rebels, rebels having to withdraw forces around Aleppo from fronts against the government to fight Islamic State. I didn't see any of Assad's forces and Islamic State fighting.

Syria orders Lebanese village to evacuate

 Assad spreads the war again. Incidentally, Hezbollah carried out a massacre of refugees in Arsal, but it is so little reported that the link* I can find describes the dead as terrorists. And at least 8 Palestinians tortured to death in the last week.** You might have thought that anyone who cares about the Palestinians, or humanity generally, would be on the demonstrations next weekend commemorating the anniversary of Assad's chemical attacks, and supporting those fighting to bring his barbarism to an end, not writing it off as an ill-judged militarisation that could result in anything happening.

*[http://www.islamicvoiceofturkey.com/flash-death-blow-by-hezbollah-to-1000-nusra-terrorists-trying-to-infiltrate-to-lebanons-arsal-160-killed-245-wounded-over-300-captured/]
**[https://web.archive.org/web/20140915061025/http://beyondcompromise.com/2014/08/15/at-least-8-palestinians-tortured-to-death-in-the-last-week/]

How One Woman's Luxury Damascus Villa Became a Refugee Camp

 'But after Syrians started protesting against Bashar al-Assad’s crooked regime in 2011, only to be brutally repressed, her house became a refuge in the ensuing civil war. Dozens of people now live it in: the extended family of Darke’s various Syrian friends, including an Old City shopkeeper, Marwan, and Bait Baroudi’s caretaker, Abu Ashraf, whose home in the Ghouta suburbs outside Damascus was one of the sites of the regime’s chemical attacks last August.'

Arming people and bombing them at the same time

 'In May of this year McCain went to Syria to pose for photographs with Syrian rebels who he insisted we supply with weapons. But the rebels he befriended are now part of Isis.'

 Mark Steel, ignorant fucker. Syrians who know that the rebels are the only thing that has protected them against both Assad and ISIS are never going to respect patronising gits who think they are protecting them against their real enemy, the USA. It is like telling Chileans in 1973 that their real enemy is the Soviet Union, utterly detached from reality.

The Rise of ISIS: US Invasion of Iraq, Foreign Backing of Syrian Rebels Helped Fuel Jihadis’ Advance

 Patrick Cockburn:

 'True. Yeah, I mean, I was—I’m pretty contemptuous of it, to be honest, because it’s opportunism by Hillary Clinton. And it’s nonsense. You know, the idea, which is very widespread, that there was a moment that, with a few more guns and ammunition, that a moderate Syrian opposition could have taken over in Syria in 2011 or '12 or ’13, is just unreal. There are 14 provincial capitals of Syria. Assad held all of them until last year, when he lost one of them, Raqqa, to ISIS, not to any of these moderates. These moderates are an endangered species on the battlefields of Syria. The opposition is now dominated—military opposition is dominated by ISIS. They hold a third of the country. But the other military opposition are people like Jabhat al-Nusra, which is the official representative of al-Qaeda, of bin Laden's al-Qaeda, and some other jihadi organizations. So this is sort of fantasy that there was a moderate Syrian military opposition which, with a bit more support from Obama, could have taken power in Damascus. It was never going to happen. It’s just sheer opportunism.'

They held Homs until Assad razed it to the ground. They hold large parts of the country despite Assad's massive military materiel advantage, and even then he needs thousands of foreign troops to prop him up. This is not an analysis, it is a prejudgment. ISIS is not part of the opposition, to see its victories as theirs is nonsensical, and insulting to their victims. Labelling the actual opposition indiscriminately as jihadis would be rejected as racist if applied to other groups of Muslims by the same people who consider Cockburn wise, as long as they are fighting the US or its allies. A bit more support is a distortion when there was never any real support at all. Hillary Clinton may well be an opportunist.

Who’s running Syria?

 'Iran is said to have trained thousands of Syrian troops and paramilitary recruits, but there is always a sectarian overtone to its efforts. The Iranians recruit pro-regime militia from Syria’s Shiite community, telling them it is a part of their duty to defend Shiite sacred sites.

 But Iran’s biggest contribution to the war has perhaps been in enlisting Lebanon’s Hezbollah in the defence of the regime. Following orders from Iran, Hezbollah has dispatched thousands of battle-hardened fighters to confront and punish the regime’s opponents. Both Hezbollah and Iran have said that without this move the Damascus regime would have fallen.

 The Iranian mindset is bonded to the Al-Assad regime not with doctrinal ties, but with deep-seated interests. The deeper the alliance between the Iranian and Syrian regimes, the more polarised the region becomes between Sunnis and Shiites.'

ISIS kills dozens of Syrian rebels after seizing two towns near Aleppo

 'ISIS, which has massacred the Yazidi community in Iraq, has killed members of other opposition groups in Syria, who were mainly members of the moderate Free Syrian Army.'

 AliTahmizian: "You know it's bad in the region when mass executions by ISIS in Deir Ezzor don't even make the news."

Omar Offendum #SYRIA

Notes from the Dark

 'With bombs exploding and under sniper fire, we trace the lives of ordinary people in war-torn Syria.'

 The Islamic State is advancing towards Aleppo, where the revolution is still dominant, not Damascus, where Assad still rules. It is taking opposition towns and villages along the way, because the Syrian people lack the means to defend themselves. When anyone says that a military struggle against Assad was a bad idea, you have to remember that it was the choice of Assad, not of the people he's killed. And the same for ISIS.

Shameless Cooke knifes Syrian people’s resistance to Assad/ISIS fascism

 Michael Karadjis:

 'Despite occasional rhetoric, the US and western powers have “completely ignored” the genocide that the Assad regime has been imposing on Syria the last 3 years, has “allowed” it all to happen, as a regime levelled every city in the country, turned the country into a giant moonscape, killed upwards of 100,000 people, turned 9 million people into refugees, gassed hundreds of sleeping children with chemical weapons, barrel-bombed Aleppo into oblivion, turned Homs into Hiroshima, tortured tens of thousands to death. None of this was worth a single air strike, evidence that Obama and his ruling class have completely ignored this situation and allowed it to happen.

 Anyone who actually knows anything about Syria knows that the Free Syrian Army, a variety of moderate Islamist militias, the Islamic Front and even Jabhat al-Nusra, the Syrian al-Qaida, have been at war with ISIS for at least a year. No supporters of the Syrian revolution view ISIS as having anything to do with their uprising against Assad’s tyranny; all of them regard ISIS as the other enemy alongside the regime.

 The Assad regime begins slaughtering peaceful protestors en-masse in March 2011, for months and months until they finally take up arms, then by late 2011-early 2012 Assad is already destroying Homs with massive quantities of sophisticated weaponry and by mid-2012 the regime is basically using its air force, long-range missiles, barrel-bombs etc on a daily basis, and after 3.5 years Obama hasn’t launched a sausage at the regime.

 The US never sent any arms to the secular FSA, or the moderate Islamists, or Islamic Front, or Jabhat al-Nusra, or ISIS. The only way we can say the US encouraged ISIS was precisely by not arming the FSA, because ISIS could get plenty of money and arms across the Iraq border anyway, so in comparison with the FSA, which mainly relied on weapons captured or made in back-yards, ISIS was much better armed.

 The US, like Cooke and many other leftists, are quite happy to watch the regime of Bashar Assad slaughter Syrians for years.'

Why arming Syria's rebels wouldn't have stopped ISIS

 'An insightful essay by George Washington University's Marc Lynch explains why.'

 You follow this down the rabbit hole, and you get to the claim that even John McCain thinks arming the rebels wouldn't work.

 'There’s no way to know for sure what would have happened had the United States offered more support to Syrian rebels in the summer of 2012, of course. But there are pretty strong reasons for doubting that it would have been decisive. Even Sen. John McCain was pretty clear about this at the time, arguing that arming the rebels “alone will not be decisive” and that providing weapons in the absence of safe areas protected by U.S. airpower “may even just prolong [the conflict].” '

 And then you read what John McCain says, and he thinks arming the rebels will do tremendous amount of good, it might not beat Assad completely, but still it's all good. And the implication that American machinations are more important than the actual war Assad is fighting does not really qualify as insight either.

 'First, the fact that the opposition in Syria is doing better militarily thanks to external support seems to validate what many of us have been arguing for months – that opposition forces have enough organization to be supportable, and that our support can help them to further improve their organization and command and control. This is an argument for doing more, not less, to aid rebel fighters in Syria.

 Second, while it is good that some foreign military assistance now seems to be reaching the opposition in Syria, this alone will not be decisive. It will not be sufficient to end the conflict faster. It may even just prolong it. Nearly every Syrian I speak with tells me the same thing: The longer this conflict drags on, the more radicalized it becomes, and the more it turns into a sectarian civil war with an escalating spiral of violence that Syrians alone cannot stop.

 Finally, the Syrian opposition needs to know that the United States stands with them, and that we are willing to take risks to support them when they need it most. Our current inaction only denies us the opportunity to have influence with the forces in Syria who will one day inherit the country. And we are ceding that influence to foreign states that may not always share our interests and our values – or worse, to extremist groups that are hostile to us. Our lack of involvement in Syria is not preventing the militarization of the conflict, or lessening the risk of sectarian violence, or countering the appeal of extremist groups. All of these events are just happening without us – and without our ability to influence them.'
[https://web.archive.org/web/20140815022535/http://www.mccain.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/speeches?ID=0090a3b8-a9d9-5ca5-382b-bd77b044b049]

Critical take on ISIS from within Syrian revolution

 Mohammed Mohsen: 

 'This is important, and touches upon what it means to isolate Syrians fighting both against Assadists and ISIS in these critical times.'

On the Road With the Refugees Walking to Europe

 'Murat fled from Syria with his parents, wife and daughter in August 2012, when Bashar al-Assad’s army started dropping barrel bombs around their home in the southern suburbs of Damascus. Murat knew that even if they survived, he would be forced to join the army and might never see his family again.'

The Rebels Are Gaining Ground in Syria

 Kenan Rahmani:

 'Having just returned from a visit to Idlib and northern Hama, I can 100% confirm what Amb. Ford is saying here. The moderate rebels are far from being "finished."

 The rebels in Idlib are gaining strength and becoming more organized. They have practically exterminated ISIS in Idlib, although sleeper cells still exist. And they are even sending fighters to Aleppo to help on that front. Meanwhile they are making steady gains against Assad and Hezbollah forces.'

On Rob Prince's hostility towards intervention in Syria

 'It would be helpful if you could direct me to a well researched piece similar to what I have written in Man behind the Curtain for al-Qaeda in Syria is Assad that lays out the evidence of SA and Qatar support for ISIS or al Nusra. No doubt there are a few rich jihad supporters in their populist that contribute to al Qaeda but I do doubt that such support comes through official channels given al Qaeda's avowed purpose of bringing down the Kingdom. Support for the revolution is necessary for them to maintain bourgeois leadership in the Arab nation and it is understood that they have contributed significantly to brigades in the FSA and IF and have shown considerable independence from the US in doing this.'

 I probably shouldn't waste any more time with people who tell us that "serious newspapers" say that Qatar backs ISIS. Reminds me of the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark where Dr. Jones is told that top people are working on the Ark. I tried googling the proposition, there's a report in the Mirror and elsewhere that ISIS have said they'll blow up the 2022 world cup if it's in Qatar, some stories saying that private donors in Gulf states back ISIS, and the full allegation from Lyndon Larouche and Press TV.

Guy in “ISIS photo” can’t stand ISIS

 Mouaz Moustafa:

 'It's so upsetting to keep seeing this photo among other photos calling me and the guys in the picture ISIS.

1-ISIS killed some of those in the picture.

2-I wear a kuffyiah because I'm Palestinian and take it with me everywhere.

3-ISIS killed two of my staff a 24 yr old and a 29 yr old because they work with me and my organization they were both Sunni Arabs one spoke 5 languages, ISIS called them as they consider me apostates. Those in the picture are Free Syria Army from a battalion called northern storm extreme enemies of ISIS.

4- please be informed before sharing complete BS.'

New fault lines in the Middle East

 You suspect that someone is going to talk a load of shit when their first paragraph quotes Patrick Cockburn. And then they confirm it.

 Andy Cunningham:

 'Not only did the Civil War give ISIS an opportunity to develop new military tactics, its involvement in fighting Assad has given it a steady stream of recruits from around the world.'

 And then you have an OMG does this fool really not comprehend how offensive these lies are to Syrians at the blunt end of genocide? I haven't read any further yet, and may not bother. Anindya Bhattacharyya, is this supposed to be rs21 showing support for the Syrian revolution? Because it makes me puke.

 'These developments were also encouraged by countries like Saudi Arabia and Qatar that were arming and supplying ISIS until very recently.'

 Adding in Qatar shows quite how much this is not just objective apologetics for Assad, but the full pro-Damascus scumbaggery.

Obama is an unreliable ally

 Via "Obama Told Lawmakers Criticism of His Syria Policy is 'Horseshit' "*. I'm still glad that he was elected. It was astonishing that America elected a black man as president in my lifetime. I've got used to American presidents being capitalist bastards who are going to disappoint you more than you expect. I'm glad each time the debate on Syria turns to the real problem that he has not only not armed the Free Syrian Army but vetoed their attempts to obtain the weapons that can protect civilians from genocide; rather than the conspiracy theories which state that America must be behind every bad thing in the Middle East, with no basis in fact other than America being Israel's biggest supporter. Who haven't tried to get rid of Assad, and are probably grateful that Hezbollah have been distracted by their murderous campaign in Syria to bother them while they deal with Hamas.

 'Last year, when we learned that Assad had used chemical weapons on his own people and in defiance of Obama’s own red line, the president asked Congress for the authorization to use military force against Syria. I worked with my colleagues to move that authorization out of the Foreign Relations Committee to the floor of the Senate. But when faced with the difficult challenge of persuading the rest of Congress to support his policy, Obama reversed course and said he no longer wanted the authority. Instead, the president jumped in the lap of Russian President Vladimir Putin, who offered a way for Assad to survive, even thrive, while turning over Syria’s declared stockpile of chemical weapons to the United Nations.

 Today, after three years of bold rhetoric divorced from reality, 170,000 Syrians are dead, and we are not innocent bystanders. The president encouraged the opposition to swallow deadly risks, then left them mostly hanging. Extremist groups from Syria have surged into Iraq, seizing key territory and resources, and are threatening to completely undo the progress of years of U.S. sacrifice.'

*[http://www.thedailybeast.com/…/exclusive-obama-told-lawmake…]

The US, IS and the conspiracy theory sweeping Lebanon

 'Instead, what Hillary Clinton has said is that the failure to help Syrian rebels led to the rise of IS.'

 One may argue about the extent to which to which she is discovering principles when it is convenient, but the people who put ISIS is a creation of the West/look at ISIS with John McCain/ISIS is a Saudi front pictures and comics on my Newsfeed are complete idiots.

Why the West is Wrong on Syria

 Razan Zaitouneh:

 'The West is using Al-Qaeda and the extremists as a pretext, yet it contributed to their ascendance and popularity by delaying its support to the Free Syrian Army, one of the opposition’s national projects that adheres to an ideology far from extremism and non-national agendas.

 The West, from the very beginning, has rejected everything the Free Army asked for, starting by refusing to deliver effective weapons or to create a no-fly zone and safe areas for civilians. Then it blamed the FSA for being divided and weak, and for the spread of the extremists.'

Note 31/3/25, original published 14th October 2013.

Barrel Bombs in Syria and Iraq

 Cesar Chelala:

 'What is happening now in Iraq definitely started in Syria. If I were al-Maliki, and seeing Assad next door using the same tactics without a slap on the wrist and gaining ground as a result, it stands to reason he would say, “Why the hell not?” '

West’s ‘mandate’ limited by national borders

 Fisk loves Assad.

 'If the road to Irbil is closed, then they’ll take the road to Aleppo or Damascus which the Americans and British will be less willing to bomb or defend – because that would mean helping the regime of Bashar al-Assad of Syria, whom we must hate almost as much as we hate the Islamic State.'

Islamic State Remains Unchallenged From Its Sanctuary in Syria

 ' "They know that the U.S. won't attack them in Syria," a European diplomat based in the Middle East said in June.'

 True for the past and the present. This next bit is not true, but might be part of the weird rationalisation in Washington for trying to ignore Syria.

 'But in Syria, U.S. strikes against the Islamic State would inadvertently help the regime of President Bashar al-Assad militarily and politically legitimize Damascus at the expense of the opposition there.'

Problem

 On this morning's Wright Stuff.

 John Barnes: "Because of the support the West has given to people fighting Assad, that's created this problem."

 Matthew Wright was better, "Russia and China stopped anything being done about Assad, and that's made the problem worse," though it is a sign of what is wrong with the discourse that it isn't the lack of support given to those fighting Assad that's seen as the problem.

Salim'll tell you what it means to be a Syrian-Palestinian refugee

 'The regime operated an organized process to get rid of activists like Salim, by arresting, torturing or constantly threatening them. “It was a slow death of the civil resistance and peaceful social movement, I was at risk as everybody was!” Beside demonstrating, campaigning, and being part of political gatherings, Salim’s special crime was blogging and telling jokes about the Syrian army. In his poem “A day in Damascus”, he writes, “passing by the checkpoint, I spit on it to return some of my dignity”. He was accused by the Syrian authorities of undermining the “prestige of the state”.'

Where are the “anti-imperialists” now that Obama is bombing ISIS?

 Michael Karadjis:

 'Perhaps we should only oppose US interventions when they are just a figment of our imaginations, as opposed to ones that are actually happening in our face.

 Perhaps we should only oppose imaginary US interventions when the US shows that it is impossible to intervene without going around in a whole lot of circles like countless committee meetings, taking a war proposal to Congress for the first time in half a century etc, whereas when the US shows that you can order air strikes without all that pretense, then it is OK.

 Perhaps it should depend on the degree of imaginary “anti-imperialism” of the reactionary tyrants under real or imaginary US attack. So apparently, since the Syrian Baath regime has collaborated with US imperialism for decades, right up to the rendition and torture program of “terror” suspects on behalf of the US in very recent times, and slaughtered Palestinians and their camps and organisations and militants with a passion rivaling the Zionist regime, we should defend such a well-intentioned regime, whereas a regime like ISIS which is totally, fundamentally anti-imperialist to the core (I don’t use that as a compliment, rather it is a neutral statement), then we should not oppose a US attack.'

Air strikes can't beat ISIS but Free Syrians can!

 'Air strikes alone can't defeat ISIS. That job will require boots on the ground and those ground forces can only be supplied by the freedom fighters in the neighborhood.'

 It might be added that one reason ISIS has made advances in Eastern Syria is because Assad's forces are not bothering to oppose them, instead being redeployed to fight the rebels getting closer to the heart of the régime.

McCain Says Limited U.S. Strikes on Militants in Iraq Are Not Enough

 “The stated purpose — stated by the president — is to save American lives, not to stop ISIS, not to change the battlefield, not to stop ISIS from moving equipment farther into Syria to destroy the Free Syrian Army. ISIS has erased the boundary between Iraq and Syria,” Mr. McCain said. Yet the president, he said, “has failed so far to even mention Syria.”

 A lot of people are failing to mention Syria when waffling on about ISIS. But if the Free Syrian Army had received the arms it needed to defend itself against the Assad régime last year, as McCain was one of the few to argue at the time, there would be no ISIS now.

*GRAPHIC* A Typical Assad Airstrike(s)

 'People wonder why Syrians have become ‘radicalized’ or ‘extreme’ over the last 3 years of Assad’s hellish war against the people? What if you and your family faced this every single day? What would you do to protect them? To ensure their survival?

 Then a few minutes later, the same MiG fighter jet comes back to kill the rescuers.'

” I would never side with Russia against genuine popular movements in Syria or anywhere else”

 For two years the term intervention has been used to scare people with the ghost of Iraq, to stop the Syrian revolutionaries getting the aid they need. Brian Slocock independently reached the same conclusion.

 Brian Slocock:

 'I don’t like the term “intervention” – it is a classic “floating signifier” which obscures rather than clarifies rational discourse. Supplying humanitarian aid is “intervention”. I am firmly in favour of “intervention” in the form of providing arms to the Syrian opposition – especially those like effective antiaircraft weapons, that are needed to defend civilian populations. Beyond that we enter an area of difficult calculation.'