Syria’s moderate opposition fighting on two fronts

 Asaad Hanna:

 'There has been talk of a number of “moderate” fighters who are open to co-operation. David Cameron has talked about the existence of 70,000 fighters opposing Daesh, and there is reason to believe the number is yet higher. I want to unpack this a little.

 Last October the UN special envoy for Syria, Steffan de Mistura, invited Syrian military factions to engage in dialogue with the regime through the so-called Four Committees Initiative. The initiative was rejected by the factions out of mistrust, but it did reveal the elevated number of opposition fighters that were active in Syria: 74 military factions signed the rejection statement, the smallest of which numbered 1,000, while others totalled more than 10,000.

 Crucially, none of these 74 are internationally classified as extremists. The moderate opposition is not a myth. Syrians do not need foreign fighters to help them fight Isis; they have indigenous fighters, better acquainted with the land and able to confront any aggressor, particularly where there is firm international will to support them to do so.

 The Syrian armed opposition is fighting a war on two fronts: against Assad and against Daesh. Assad’s barbarity has driven Syrians from their homes and resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Syrians over the past five years.

 On the other side, we are facing Daesh, a terrorist group whose creation Assad must take some of the responsibility for. Daesh is helping the Assad regime by fighting us, the armed moderate opposition. The relationship between the two should not be in doubt.

 Whenever we have made advances and secured victories, Daesh has defended the Assad regime. For example, we have seen Daesh launch offensives in order to draw Free Syrian Army forces away from battle, to ease pressure on the regime. During a battle near Qardaha – the birthplace of Bashar al-Assad – the armed opposition was achieving great victories until Daesh suddenly launched an attack on a key military position in the nearby city of Aleppo, killing a number of Free Syrian Army commanders. Just three days later they withdrew, at which point they handed the area over to regime forces.

 The moderate opposition remains firm in its struggle to combat the Syrian regime, as well as the growing threat from terrorism in Syria. The Free Syrian Army welcomes any hand extended to help bring the Syrian people closer to gaining their freedom, without being deflected from its goals or the fundamental principles of the revolution.

 “I will tell God everything I saw” was the last sentence uttered by a Syrian child before he died of injuries caused by one of the Assad regime’s barrel bombs. Almost half a million Syrians have paid with their blood, and the bloodshed needs to stop. The opposition wants to ensure that barbarism doesn’t triumph in Syria, neither Assad’s nor Daesh’s, and that the country is returned to the Syrian people.'

Reaction To U.N. Envoy's Video

 Staffan de Mistura: "We've heard what you've been telling us ... enough bombing of my city where I am, and I don't know who is bombing me. I just see bombs coming down. Rockets, anything."

 Shakeeb Al-Jabri: "Dear Mr. de Mistura, We'd like to remind you that "peace" was the first cry of the Syrian Revolution. We'd also like you to know that we know exactly who is bombing us. And so do you. If you want to trust you, at least name them."

Children in Aleppo protest against Iranian intervention

 'As the Iranian President continues his landmark visit to Europe, Syrian children have been photographed with posters calling on leaders to oppose his alleged intervention in the country’s civil war.

 Pro-rebel activists in Aleppo, where civilians have been indiscriminately bombed during continuing battles between the Syrian regime, anti-government rebels and Islamists, claimed to have photographed the children in the rubble of their former homes.

 They were seen holding posters accusing Hassan Rouhani of being “responsible for crimes committed by the Iranian regime in Syria” and addressed Francois Hollande, asking the French President to force his counterpart to withdraw troops.'

 As if there were any doubt about the Iranian invasion of Syria, or the bombing of these children's homes. Even when the Syrians being killed by Assad have their story reported at all, every effort is taken to cast doubt on their veracity.

Healthcare workers are being 'systematically' targeted

 'As he looks back over photos of his last visit to Aleppo, Syria, he pauses for a moment over a picture of two young doctors, smiling at the camera in their blue scrubs.

 “He was an anaesthetist I knew. He was killed two weeks ago last year. An air-to-ground missile,” Dr Nott says, sad but matter-of-fact, pointing to one of the pair. “And he was killed not long before,” he says, indicating the other. “Doctors are targeted.”

 In the grim logic that has taken hold among the forces of President Bashar al-Assad and his allies, “healthcare is seen as a weapon”, he says. “You take out one doctor, you take out 10,000 people he or she can no longer care for.”

 “Nearly nobody is reporting this, the direct attacks on healthcare and healthcare workers,” he told The Independent last month, citing figures from the NGO Physicians for Human Rights, which recorded 23 attacks on medical facilities in Syria in October and November last year – all but one by Syrian government or Russian forces.

 The United Nations Office for Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs also reported that 20 health facilities were struck or damaged by aerial bombs dropped by the Assad regime or its allies in October and November, and that many aid organisations have had to scale back or suspend their operations as a result of increasing attacks. In December, Amnesty International said Russian air strikes had killed hundreds of civilians – and hit medical facilities.

 Aid workers believe the increasing frequency of such attacks suggest a strategy. Nott has long been convinced that both Syrian – and now Russian – forces are intentionally hitting hospitals: a view that is shared by the Foreign Secretary, Philip Hammond, who accused the Russians of deliberately targeting civilians, hospitals and ambulances after speaking to Syrian civil defence workers in Southern Turkey earlier this month.

 “The nature of the bombing has changed so completely in the past few months. It has to be the Russians,” Dr Nott says. “Russian jets fly very high up. Syrian jets fly lower, firing rockets and missiles. The Russian planes tend to be 10,000ft up and you don’t see it, you just see the weapon hitting the hospital,” he says.

 “The British are fighting Isis – fair enough – but this is happening daily and has been forgotten about.”

 In 2013, he called for humanitarian corridors to be set up to support populations trapped in conflict zones. Now, he says, a no-bombing zone is urgently needed over Aleppo and Idlib provinces, which the international community should set up, even if it meets with Russian opposition.

 “It has to be achieved. Somebody has to stand up and say, ‘The humanitarian situation is so bad that this has to be achieved’. It is a systematic destruction of the healthcare system: a weapon of war which Syria and Russia are using at the moment. That has to stop.

 Make it an area refugees could come back to, protected by a peacekeeping force – I’m sure Assad and Russia would not start attacking any Americans that were there.” '

Syria's real life stories

 Robin Yassin-Kassab:

 'Living conditions are absolutely unbearable, in some places people are actually starving to death. There's constant barrel bombing, etc., etc., chemical weapons, and so on. Having said that, the inspiring thing, and the thing the media really hasn't covered very well, is that there are over 400 democratically elected local councils in Syria.

 Now this is something that is quite amazing, and I can't understand why we're not talking about it much more, because in the previous decade the West was invading the Middle East, to bring them democracy supposedly, on the back of tanks, and that didn't really work out. Now, out of necessity, in places where the state has collapsed, or has been driven back; people have got together, they've organised elections, and they've got local councils that are trying to keep life going in the most difficult of situations. These people should be part of the solution.

 They've done it in different ways in different places, but in some ways they are elections as we would recognise here. So, for example, in the south, where the dominant militia is the Southern Front, a group of Free Army militias, they have refused to enter into alliances with Jabhat al-Nusra, the al-Qaida group, they have had no problem at all with people organising elections in the south. The leaders of militias were not allowed to stand, so we've got civilian councils.

 And the reason why those people must be part of the solution, is not only because they are democrats, but because they would allow for a decentralisation of power in the future. Now for example, currently in Syria, because of this war, we have explosive polarisations, ethnic and sectarian. In the future, it may be, in a liberal, coastal city like Tartous, which has many Christians and Alawis living in it; the local council may decide - when they get their own local council, it's under régime control, so they don't have their own, at least not in public, at the moment - if they have their own local council, they may decide that alcohol should be freely available in Tartous, whereas a conservative Sunni city like Hama or Deir Ezzor, they may decide, the local council in the area may decide that alcohol should be illegal. In that way, with decentralisation, you could allow for people with very different ideas and traditions in the same country in the future.

 Most people are not able to leave the country. You need at least one or two thousand* dollars to get someone to smuggle you over the border. There are however some people who have decided to stay, either because they've seen some neighbours who've gone off to live in Beirut for a year, and their money run out, and they came home and the army had taken their house, or another family was living in their house, or their furniture had been stolen, and they wished they'd never left. There's that. And there is also the issue that some people are so committed to the situation, that if they are going to die, they want to die on their own soil, and they want to stay doing the best they can for their community.

 We've seen the absolute depravity of the human being in Syria over the last five years. We've seen absolute horrors, people torturing children to death, a mass rape campaign; at the same time, we've seen really inspiring human stories of people being self-sacrificing, and creative, and intelligent, in the most difficult of circumstances.

 We saw Mr. Fallon, the British minister, the other day pointing out that 80% of Russia's bombs are not dropping on ISIS. They're dropping on the opposition to both Assad and ISIS, the people that we need for a solution. Now a peace process under the aegis of the power that's backing Assad and murdering the Syrian people is not going to work, it's not going to be acceptable, it's not going to begin to work. And it's rather irresponsible to be pretending we've got a peace process going on, when this enormous catastrophe on the Eastern Mediterranean, with huge implications for everybody's security, is still escalating and intensifying, the Russian intervention has made it much, much longer, it will go on for years more I would expect. It's getting much worse, it's a huge problem, it's growing exponentially, and we're pretending there's a peace process, when there isn't.

I remember the story of my friend Aziz Assad from Salamiyeh. He was in prison for two years before the revolution started, when he was 19, for writing an article for a French magazine. As soon as he came out of prison, the revolution started, and he was involved in the local coordination committee in Salamiyeh. He then became a media activist working with the Free Army. And then he ended up leaving the country, because he was being threatened by ISIS and Nusra and people like this, as well as being in danger from the Assad régime. This kind of encapsulates the tragedy of the whole thing.

 I remember Raed Fares, the director of the media centre in Kafranbel, he's a great character; I remember him being being asked, 'If you'd known what was going to happen, would you have come out in the spring of and demonstrated?" And he said, no, absolutely not, if had any idea that this would happen, that so many people would die, the country would be burned, no, I would have stayed at home. But here we are now, this is the situation we find ourselves in, there's no going back, and all we can do is keep going. Of course many of them are now out of the country, or dead, or disappeared; but there are still hundreds of local councils, for example, in Syria, which not many people talk about. Everybody's heard of ISIS, nobody's heard of the Syrians who have organised democratically selected local councils, which are keeping life going in the most difficult of circumstances, in the war zone. So those people still exist, and a lot of the ones outside have said to us that they want to go back; as soon as they feel safe they will go back and continue agitating for freedom and democracy.

 I'm not against bombing ISIS, if the people doing the bombing, as I think the British are at the moment, are very careful to try and not hit civilians, which will help the ISIS narrative. I think that ISIS is being pushed back, certainly from the Kurdish areas. I think the West should be working far more with Arab opposition militias, people who've already driven ISIS out of their areas, to continue driving ISIS further back. Having said that, none of that is going to change the big problem, because even if ISIS itself is defeated, something will come and replace it. Jabhat al-Nusra, for example, the al-Qaida franchise, which is less extreme than ISIS, it's also much more intelligent at embedding itself in Syrian society, and a lot of people who don't like al-Qaida's politics in Syria, are willing to work on the battlefield with al-Qaida, with al-Nusra, because they see the greater enemy as the régime which is barrel bombing them.

 At the moment, the Syrian people are being attacked by Iran, by transnational Shia militias, by Russia - 80% of Russia's airstrikes are not hitting ISIS, they are hitting the opposition to ISIS and Assad - and there are British and French planes mixed up in there too, and there are American planes. The Syrian people on the ground, all they can see is, everyone is bombing us, the western Christians, the Eastern Christians, the Shia are attacking us, maybe it's because we're Sunni Muslims. The only thing they're not attacking is Bashar al-Assad, the man who is responsible for 95% of the civilian casualties, and the vast majority of the displacement.

 So the narrative, or the vacuum, which allows these transnational jihadis to step in and take advantage, that's the real problem that has to be dealt with, and so long as Assad and his allies are bombing people from the sky, this radicalisation will continue and grow.'

*Corrected from "hundred".

Dignity - Dani Qappani from Moadamiyeh

السالب والموجب من قلب المعضمية ... داني قباني .. رسالة صادقة مخلصة تاريخية . أرجو من كل سوري في المغتربات إرسالها إلى أصدقائه الأجانب .
Posted by ‎توفيق الحلاق‎ on Thursday, 21 January 2016

UN Allowing Assad Regime To Censor Syria Aid Plan

 'The United Nations altered a key humanitarian aid plan for Syria after consultation with the Assad regime, including deleting references to “besieged” areas such as Madaya where thousands of people are starving. The edits include:

 The removal of all instances of the words “besieged” and “siege” in reference to areas where nearly half a million people in Syria are thought to be trapped.

 The redaction of any mention of a programme to remove landmines, unexploded bombs, and missiles.

 The removal of references to violations of international humanitarian law, such as aerial attacks on medical facilities and the targeting of civilian areas.

 “These so-called colleagues of ours that are famed to have everyone’s best interests at heart took it upon themselves to make changes because of what the Syrian government had very obviously directed them to do. There were three or four personalities on the Damascus [UN] end that went to work on it right away. There was a lot of toning down of some of the language, they rewrote entire sections… it was a full filtering system basically and this is what caused the bilateral uproar.”

 “The document turned from a humanitarian aid document to a political document after the Syrian government changes, rather than centring on what the civilians really need,” said a coordinator from another NGO, who wished to remain anonymous to protect his relationship with the UN. “I totally understand that the UN should not take sides, but at least they should be on the side of the civilians.” '

Secret Syria Network Saves Lives with Air Raid Warnings

 'In Syria's coastal Latakia province, Abu Mohammad sends a warning from his phone to a secret network of colleagues: "Caution: A Russian plane just took off in your direction." Moments later, activists in a rebel-held area in northwestern Syria sound warning sirens that prompt civilians to take cover before incoming air raids. The message, sent via the mobile application WhatsApp, is part of an effort by a network of civilian and rebel coordinators across Syria who call themselves "the monitors".

 From positions near government-held military airports, they use messaging services or walkie-talkies -- depending on Internet coverage -- to warn activists, medics, and rebels about incoming aerial attacks. "I know when the plane takes off, and as soon as it does, I tell people that a plane is coming towards them. As soon as the news reaches people, they either hide in their bomb shelters, or some people hide in underground tunnels."

 Even before the Russian campaign began, activists had begun trying to find ways to minimize casualties in air strikes. "When the regime began using warplanes and helicopters on cities, people started thinking of ways to warn civilians," activist Hassaan Abu Nuh told AFP via the Internet. "After a lot of attempts at other things, they decided in the end to hook walkie-talkies up to the loudspeakers in the minarets of mosques."

 Russia's role in the Syrian conflict has added a new challenge for the monitors, who say they have been able to decode intercepted messages in Russian. "After a while, the guys on the ground were able to break the Russians' communication code -- as well as monitor the planes by sound and sight," Abu Nuh says. "These warnings have saved the souls of many civilians... this is life or death for people in these areas." '

We will build a democratic, multi-confessional country

 'My name is Hissam Saad and I am 60 years old. I am a surgeon who before the revolution ran a medical practice for over 20 years. I am a husband and father of three children; my eldest son, Sarmad, served in the army before the revolution.

 When the Arab Spring broke, I, as a surgeon, could not stay away from it, becoming intensively involved in all areas of the revolutionary movement and participating in all rallies. Bashar Assad is a dictator; you probably know that he started shooting at people who gathered for rallies. Though I am a Christian, I went to the mosque where we all gathered before the rallies. All Syrian rallies come out of mosques: a mosque is not only a place of worship but also a meeting venue, a place where people of various religions can get together at a certain time and day; not only it is a place for Muslims or Christians but for all those who want to get together to stand up against a dictator.

 Soon after the revolution started, the Free Syrian Army was formed. At first, its fight against the despotic regime was met with support; over time, however, all of its supporters turned away from the FSA and now the Army gets no support at all.

 ISIL was created by command of the Syrian and Iraqi regimes to shift the agenda from social and economic issues and onto religious matters.

 Sarmad saw the regime’s troops do terrible things to protesters, shooting and killing them. Two of his army comrades who refused to shoot at protesters were executed at once. Sarmad had always been a free man loathing anger and aggression. When they killed his friends, he and 23 other soldiers left the regime’s army, moving from the southern part of Aleppo to its western part where the Free Syrian Army was stationed.

After Sarmad left the army, the regime’s security service men came to my clinic to break everything there and threaten me. It happened 5 months after my son’s defection. But even after that I continued to work at the clinic, participating, as a free Syrian, in rallies, shooting and posting videos in social networks to let people know what was going on.

 On November 23, 2012, I was arrested at the clinic and taken to one of the security service departments, department 255, where they kept me for 7 months. Then they transferred me to department 285.

 They beat me. They beat me with a strap, kicked me with their boots, they beat me with everything they could. They broke my fingers. I am a surgeon and they broke all my fingers. They would lift me by my shoulder and leave me hanging like this for 3 hours. But the worst of all the torture I endured was cold (it was wintertime and I had no clothes on) and hunger: we were starving; they would not let us eat. They tortured me mentally threatening to rape my mother and daughter; they humiliated me as a human being and as a doctor. When they questioned me, I was standing before them stark naked, blindfolded, with my hands tied. It all lasted for 7 months.

 All this will end if the whole world continues its pressure and starts using all available means to stop the dictator, the murderer.

 Even if the regime succeeds in making Syria fall apart into several states, this will mean nothing: we will continue to fight no matter what. We’ll fight for a hundred years if we have to. Syria must be one country. After Assad goes, we will start building a new, free Syria: a democratic, multi-ethnic, and multi-confessional country.'

Syria is a unique symbol of injustice, apathy and amnesia

 Yassin al-Haj Saleh:

 'I am impressed by many people from many European countries, mostly individual volunteers. Their generosity, courage and humanity dignify the human race. I was touched by a message from a Norwegian woman who was in Lesbos helping refugees. As for governments, while it is not fair to include all of them in one category – Germany is not like Hungary, Sweden is not Denmark – I think they are unified in building higher walls in the face of the influx of refugees, specifically the poorest and most vulnerable ones.

 The global powers have so far been putting the cart before the horse by targeting Da’esh only, ignoring the root cause of the militarisation, radicalisation, and sectarianisation that has occurred over the past five years, namely the Assad regime. This is a short-sighted and failing policy, not to mention unethical. It is a prescription for an endless war.

 By the way, I think this enchantment with Da’esh that began in the summer of 2013 has deep connections with the sordid chemical deal between the US and Russia, which practically informed the Assad regime that it was okay to kill people with other tools, not with the one we had forbidden. The mainstream media was obedient in highlighting whatever Da’esh did and sidelining the crimes of the regime in order to legitimise that despicable deal between the two big global keepers of the peace (read: war). Da’eshmania is a way of suppressing the shame of that deal. Media and power elites want the masses to remain mesmerised, with their minds fixated on those exotic decapitators, who are absolutely different from us and our dear masses.

 I want to add one additional thing concerning this fascination with Da’esh. I suspect that the mad extent of killing and control that Da’esh is practising in the regions it occupies is the level the power elites in the “civilized world” aspire to imitate. That violence has an essential virtue: it pushes past the limits of what can be done to the population at home, giving the power elites everywhere a sense of mastery and freedom. If this can be done there, it will be possible here someday. Da’esh is the laboratory test the elites like to peep at and hope to imitate someday. It is their utopia and our dystopia. That is why the population in the West should be anxious of what has been happening in Syria for the past five years. Do not defend us, defend yourselves!

 Turkey’s record is mixed: it welcomed around 2.5 million refugees. Our situation here is acceptable and, so far, Tukey has had a consistent position towards the Shabeeha regime in Syria, but it caused a lot of trouble because of it is irrational and unjust concerns about the Kurds on both sides of the border. France’s position was mostly a consistent one, too. Both countries were clear all the time that the culprit is the regime and it should be overthrown and they tried to act accordingly, but were kept back by the United States. Washington has been the worst enemy of the Syrian revolution, worse even than Russia, which was a clear enemy from the first moment, along with Iran and the latter’s satellites in Lebanon and Iraq. I am not an essentialist anti-imperialist who thinks that imperialism is an essence hidden somewhere in the US, maybe at the White House, the Pentagon, or the CIA, but I tried hard to locate any positive elements in the Syrian policy of Obama’s administration in Syria. The world at large has become a worse place, especially after the chemical deal which was a big gift to Da’esh and al-Nusra Front (and, of course, to Assad), than it was before.

 As for internal players: I think one can identify obscurantism as the position of saying that there are no “good guys” in the Syrian conflict; they are all bad. I see this as an essentialist, Da’esh-like way of approaching our cause. I do not imply that there are no bad guys, there are many; neither do I want to say that there are many good guys, which is of course true, unless one is Robert Fisk, Patrick Cockburn, or Vladimir Putin. Rather, I want to make a paradigm shift from that reactionary distribution of labels of good and bad, to the actual dynamics of the struggle. I alluded before to the chemical massacre in which 1,466 Syrians were killed at the hand of the Assad regime, and to the chemical deal between the Americans, Russians and the regime. What was that deal? There were four actors, not three, at the time: the regime, the Americans, the Russians and millions of Syrians who had been resisting the thuggish regime for more than two years and four months, peacefully at the beginning then with arms. The regime gained not only its survival from that sordid deal but also impunity; the Russians managed to save a client regime and won a greater recognised role in the region and the world, while America (and from behind the scenes, Israel) succeeded in disarming the regime of the dangerous weapons that were thought of being deterrent to Israel. The party that was completely sacrificed is the one who had just lost 1,466 people in one hour: the rebellious Syrians. That is why that deal was despicable and its “heroes”, especially the one named Barak Obama, were extremely villainous.

 Due the regime’s brutality and the baseness of the big egos of the globe, a dynamic of radicalisation, Islamisation and militarisation, was triggered and changed everybody in the country, myself included. In September 2015, I was in Oslo for a few days, where I appeared on a TV programme. Before this show, the presenter asked me, if I was “moderate”. No, I am not, I replied. She was alarmed, but she wanted to be sure: “But you are secular, aren’t you?” For the discursive habits in the West, ‘moderate’ implies that siding with us (“We are the centre of the world.”) and “good” are synonyms. You are “extremist” and “bad” whenever you side with your own people.

 Of course, I am bad.'

As Syrian men go missing, women take leadership roles

 'They survive shelling and barrel bombs from the Syrian government and, more recently, airstrikes from Russia. Some have been living under siege with little food and hardly any medicine or electricity for almost four years. With so many men killed or missing, it’s up to the women to run their community, and they’re making a difference in people’s lives, including their own.

 Like 25-year-old Zein, who refuses to leave Aleppo despite the daily shelling. She recalls the time when the peaceful uprising started to turn violent, and a shortage of trained medical staff compelled her and fellow activists to volunteer at their local field hospital.

 A few months ago, the Syrian government carried out an airstrike on the field hospital, and several of Zein’s activist friends were killed. Now she spends most of her time doing humanitarian relief work, and she leads an all-male team of aid workers as they distribute food and medicine to families in the area.

 “I’m usually the one who goes up to the front line despite the snipers and fire fighting in order to deliver a basket of goods to some family stranded there. The guys are too jittery to do it, and they’re amazed when I do,” she said, referring to the team she leads.

 “Before the war, women mainly stayed at home, cooking and caring for the family. But now, men work in a field hospital? Well so do I. Men have started to carry arms? Well, we have here in Aleppo an all-women’s brigade, and they fight on the front line. I’m not necessarily for the idea of carrying arms, but this has really changed perceptions. That a woman can do anything a man can do.”

 Maimona is a 30-year-old activist. She heads a child welfare organization called Herras, Arabic for guardianship, and oversees schools that are struggling to stay open. She describes women in their thirties, forties, even older, enrolling in adult education to earn their high school diploma.

 Many of these women have gone on to work in field hospitals or schools — Maimona estimates that 80 percent of the people working in those places now are women.

 “Perhaps this is a silver lining. When we started the Syrian revolution, it was also a revolution for women. And when the war is over, women’s accomplishments will remain.” '

Why Is It So Difficult for Syrians to Get Into the U.S.?

 'The al-Haj Ali family comes from Khirbet Ghazaleh, a town of 16,000. It is 15 miles from Daraa, where the revolution against Assad began, in 2011, after his security forces arrested and tortured a group of students for writing antigovernment slogans.

 The al-Haj Ali twins were only 13 at the time. They had nothing to do with the protests. Nor did anyone else in the immediate family. Although they listened to news reports of the Assad government’s ferocious attacks on civilians, they saw little indication, at first, of the violence around them. There was the odd black helicopter in the sky. And once, when Waseem was taking Azizeh to driving school, they watched a group of protesters carrying olive branches stream out of Daraa. Only later did they realize these were people fleeing a massacre by Assad’s forces.

 Then the airstrikes began. Government security forces raided the family’s home dozens of times. Their cousins, who lived next door, were imprisoned and tortured. Still, the al-Haj Alis hung on; they adapted to living in a war zone, spending evenings in the dark. Then, one morning in August 2012, they learned from a television news report that Azizeh’s brother, a high-ranking official in Assad’s military, had defected overnight to Jordan. His family would most likely be punished, with death, in his stead. He hadn’t warned them. He couldn’t: His phone was bugged, and sending a message would only have further endangered them. The al-Haj Alis never slept at home again. Within days, they left Syria for Jordan by car. Azizeh feared they’d be unable to make it across the border and was even more terrified that the names of her family members would be on a blacklist and that they would be arrested. Mahmoud handed their keys to a neighbor whose house had been flattened by airstrikes. ‘‘If we’re not back by sunset,’’ he told her, ‘‘you can have our house.’’

 If Ahmad and Mohamed had stayed in Syria, they might be dead by now — either killed by the Assad government’s barrel bombs or fallen among the young men who have joined up with the Free Syrian Army. When one of their friends or cousins fighting with the F.S.A. is killed, the boys study the photographs of his death, often posted on Facebook in tribute, with a mixture of envy and guilt.'

Women Are Active Behind the Lines in Syria's Civil War

 'Women in the city of Deir Ezzor have supported the Syrian revolution in various ways since its beginning. During the early stages of the revolution, women held active roles, including those that were viewed as exclusively male-dominated, such as carrying weapons in the armed opposition.

 In March 2011, the first demonstrations calling for the Syrian regime’s ouster took place in Deir Ezzor. Women started to join the protests alongside men early on. By the summer, women had a significant presence in the protests.

 “When the armed revolution started in Deir Ezzor and the opposition brigades took over the city’s central neighborhoods, the regime tried to retake the city but failed,” she said. “Without warning, it started brutally bombarding those neighborhoods. The attacks forced the residents to leave their homes and migrate to other cities.

 “Work then became limited to carrying weapons to fight the regime or working in field hospitals,” she continued. “Because of that, women’s presence was limited. However, some women carried weapons briefly during the Republican Guards’ campaign to stop the protests. One well-known woman was a nurse known as Um al-Thuwar [Mother of the Protesters], because the youth of the Free Syrian Army (FSA) considered her their mother.’’

 In January 2013, after the regime siege had lasted several months, the armed opposition freed the al-Huweqa neighborhood’s eastern entrance and used it to transfer supplies in and out of the city. This marked the end of the siege and the beginning of what the city’s residents call the “period of freedom.”

 During this period, women had the freedom to work in other fields as well. For example, the rights organization al-Mar’a wa al-Tifl Hayat was established in June 2013 in Deir Ezzor’s al-Ummal neighborhood.

In an interview in Urfa, Turkey, Baida’a al-Hassan, the organization’s director, explained, “Our activities focused on raising awareness of women’s rights. We held seminars in our center and visited women in their homes. The organization also started two training centers. At the first we taught sewing and at the second, called Ahla Talla, we taught hairstyling.

 “The purpose behind these centers was to teach uneducated women professions so that they would be able to support themselves,” al-Hassan continued. “Additionally, the organization established the Shaady Rabbah School in al-Hamediya area and the al-Amal Kindergarten in al-Ummal. Through these two schools, we managed to secure jobs for many unmarried women.”

 “On July 14, 2014, ISIS seized a neighborhood in Deir Ezzor city and shut down all the civil society organizations, including ours, and confiscated our organization’s equipment. We stopped operating for two months,” Heba said.

 “However, the extremist group and its horrible treatment of civilians would not stop us from working,” she continued. “We decided to go back to our activities, but with a new approach. We used to hold public seminars, but today we hold them secretly inside homes with a limited number of attendees. We cannot assemble large groups of women because the whole operation might get discovered.”

 Heba emphasized that one of most important issues discussed during these seminars is how women can change their behavior to protect themselves from ISIS. Another topic is how to turn away an ISIS “suitor” if he proposes to a woman. That matter has been, and still is, a danger to women of Deir Ezzor.'

Russia Is Bombing Syria’s Children

 'Abdel Rahman was standing outside his family home in the tiny Syrian village of Marayan on a November afternoon when the Russian rocket hit, knocking him to the ground. He felt fine when he came to moments later, he said, and tried to get up. That’s when he realized both his legs had been blown off. “I looked up and my brother was screaming, but I lost consciousness,” he recalled.

 About a month later, Thaer was gathering firewood when another Russian missile hit. He struggled to get up, but couldn’t. His father, Abdel Jalil al-Zein, first took his son to a local doctor, who stuck needles in his toe. There was no response. He loaded him into his car and drove him to the field hospital along the Turkish border, and when medical personnel there couldn’t help his son either, he obtained the permissions to cross into Turkey. Doctors eventually found a piece of shrapnel lodged in his spine. It has paralyzed him from the waist down, probably for life.

 The two teenagers still hang out, but now they are permanently disfigured. They lie in the sitting room of a rented apartment in the Turkish town of Reyhanli, where they now live. Al-Zein lies on the bed with a catheter running from him, and Rahmoun lies on a mat a few feet away — one a double amputee, the other a paraplegic.

 “I know that God will eventually give us our rights,” said al-Zein.

 Two hours before Ahmed Zaki Assi, a spokesperson for the Islamist rebel group Ahrar al-Sham, spoke to BuzzFeed News, Russian forces strafed his group’s positions in Maraat Numan, near where he was speaking from in Idlib province. The war has gotten tougher, he acknowledged, but it remains better than the situation in 2011, when Assad’s forces could open fire on peaceful protesters without consequence, or in 2013 when Iran and Hezbollah first entered the war in support of Assad.

 “We’ve had harder conditions before,” he said, speaking via Skype. “The revolution is weakened because of this, but it’s not going to be ended by the Russian raids or others. On the ground, the revolutionaries advance. But the weapon that we can’t respond to is airpower. We cannot address airpower with our rockets.”

 Mohammed Katoub was teaching the doctors and nurses about sexual violence against women when the Russian airstrikes began. A missile landed 400 meters away from the clinic, one of more than 100 care points and medical centers operated by the organization inside Syria. “I was explaining the difference between rape and sexual assault,” he remembers. “We ran into the streets because it is much safer than inside a facility.”

 Zakaria Ibrahim, 26, an anesthetist at a gynecology clinic in Azaz, was working when a Russian missile struck within 10 meters of the facility, setting parts of it on fire. “Now the hospital is closed,” he said, as he waits for a lift home near the Turkish border after finishing a rotation.

 “The idea is to weaken the civilians to make those living under the opposition areas feel life is hell,” he said. “By targeting bakeries, schools, and hospitals, you make people lose all hope.” '

FSA adviser: IS cannot be eliminated without us

 'The FSA is deployed from Syria’s south to its north. It is mostly present in Daraa and Quneitra, represented by the Southern Front, and in the capital, Damascus, the FSA is positioned in the Jobar neighborhood, one of the most contested areas. Al-Rahman Corps and the Shuhada al-Islam Brigade [Martyrs of Islam Brigade], which are also part of the FSA, are stationed in western and eastern Ghouta. In northern Syria, the FSA is significantly present in Aleppo, represented by Thuwar al-Sham, al-Sham Front and Sultan Murad Brigade. [The FSA-affiliated] Jaish al-Nasr [Victory Army], the Glory Army and the Central Division are stationed in Hama’s countryside, while the largest number of FSA fighters deployed on the coast is represented by the 1st and 2nd Coastal Squads and the 10th Brigade.

 The one hindering the establishment of this safe zone is none other than the US. This is not just an allegation. Rather, repeated statements were issued in this respect, [including] by Pentagon spokesman John Kirby, who said on July 1, 2015, that at that moment, the US did not see a need for the establishment of a safe zone in Syria.

 Meanwhile, the regime’s air force dropped dozens of barrel bombs on Aleppo and Darayya, and the killing of civilians led to daily waves of displacement. Indeed, if a safe zone were established, more than 70% of the people heading to Europe by sea would change their minds. Syrians are not thrilled about the suicide journey to Europe, but they are in search of a safe haven. If such a zone is established, many Syrians will return to this region. We are people who love their country, and we have our culture and our own professions.

 The only reason Syrians are migrating is that for four years now, we have been killed by the deadly weapons of Assad’s regime, and we have lost hope of being saved by the international community.

 The FSA has been fighting IS since before 2014, even before anyone in the world ever thought of fighting this organization. Our fight against IS in the northern countryside of Aleppo and in other areas is independent of any international plan. IS cannot be eliminated without the FSA. We have a history of struggle against all of those who killed Syrians. Therefore, no one can question the FSA’s objectives when it fights IS, because its project is purely Syrian, and it aims to protect Syrians rather than serve other agendas.

 The US is gradually moving from a neutral position toward being a partner in crime as it allows Assad and his allies to kill Syrians. Scary massacres are being committed against Syrians, who have been left to starve to death under siege in the city of Madaya and [killed] by chemical weapons. Syrians are paying a high price as a result of the US policy failure in Iraq and its weakness in the Middle East in general. It is not required that the US send fighters on the ground. This is not what we want. What we want is for Assad to be prevented from targeting civilians and for the [supporters] of the Syrian revolution [i.e. Turkey, Qatar and Saudi Arabia] to be allowed to provide rebels with qualitative weapons. The US supports the Syrian Democratic Forces, which include al-Sanadid Army, one of the regime's militias. We, however, do not trust these forces, and they not surprisingly getting weapons that are hundreds of times more numerous than the weapons received by the FSA.

 Russia’s declaration that it supports the FSA is ridiculous as all facts prove the contrary. Russian airstrikes are ongoing around the clock, targeting our sites and locations. Our position is clear: We will not coordinate or cooperate with Russia.'

A Syrian Response to Obama's Final State of the Union

 'Most people, including most Syrians, are quite willing to believe President Obama’s boast that the “United States of America is the most powerful nation on Earth. Period.” And they likely nodded in agreement when he said that “when it comes to every important international issue, people of the world do not look to Beijing or Moscow to lead—they call us.”



 The trouble from a Syrian perspective is that calling on the U.S.—and President Obama—for help is exactly what the Syrian people have been doing for years, ever since the early months of their revolution back in 2011, when pro-democracy protesters were marching peacefully, demanding respect for their basic rights, and giving the world a reason to hope. As President Obama himself noted at a time: “we see it in the courage of those who brave bullets while chanting, 'peaceful,' 'peaceful.'” Syria’s peaceful pro-democracy activists could never understand why President Obama chose to turn his back on them, allowing the regime to get away with mass murder, and for radical forces to emerge and hijack their revolution. In the meantime, when their oppressor called on his friends, Iran and Russia, for help, they came rushing in.

 Trump wants us to fear the others in our midst, and all around us, Obama merely wants us to be indifferent to their suffering. The first calls us names, the other merely treats us as nobodies, as a people who cannot be motivated by a simple desire for freedom, but only by a desire to settle some centuries old vendettas.

 This brings me to Obama’s willingness to refer to the current situation in the Middle East as “a transformation … rooted in conflicts that date back millennia.” This used to be how the right wing referred to the Middle East. It used to be a vocabulary that liberals like Obama spent their time decrying.

 The conflicts in the Middle East have nothing to do with what happened a thousand years ago, a fact a person with President’s Obama’s academic background should know well. Some Middle Eastern leaders might use such rhetoric to inflame sentiments, but the reality is far simpler: on the one hand we have a greedy, corrupt, and authoritarian ruling elite fleecing its people, and using them as fodder for wars meant to expand their influence and enrich their coffers.

 By showing indifference to mass slaughter and dismissing the idea of humanitarian intervention as tantamount to creating another Vietnam or Iraq, President Obama in his own way has helped diminish America in the eyes of the world, just as he allowed Syria to diminish and be torn apart.

 Yet now we have to listen to the President waxing poetic about the meaning of leadership, saying that “Leadership means a wise application of military power, and rallying the world behind causes that are right.”

 Understand how this translates to a Syrian: I never thought your cause was right, which is why I never rallied anyone behind it.

 President Obama spoke of conflicts in the Middle East lasting a generation, but here is what he did not tell us: what kind of a region, what kind of a world, does he expect to see in a generation, as he leaves extremists, terrorists, mass murders and Russian and Iranian imperialists to shape unmolested our realities, and as he leaves pro-democracy forces with no one to help them?'

Syrian activists accuse U.N. of ‘complicity’ in blockades

 'In an open letter addressed to Stephen O’Brien, the U.N. undersecretary for humanitarian affairs, 112 Syrian civil society activists accused the world body of “complicity” in government-imposed blockades that violate the laws of war.

 “By allowing the [Assad] regime to veto aid to civilians in areas outside its control, you have allowed the U.N. to become a political tool of the war,” says the letter, adding that international humanitarian aid readily flows to government-held territory.



 The letter — compiled and distributed with the help of the Syria Campaign, an activist group critical of Assad — says that U.N. staff members in Damascus, the capital, “are either too close to the regime or too scared of having their visas revoked by the same powers that are besieging us.”

 On Wednesday, a number of influential rebel groups refused to participate in this month’s peace talks in Geneva unless the Assad government allowed humanitarian aid into areas that its forces are besieging.

 Majed Abo Ali, a spokesman for the Unified Medical Office of Eastern Ghouta, a Syrian non-governmental organization, said Thursday’s letter to the United Nations signals mounting frustration in areas cut off by government forces. In particular, he noted, recent U.N. efforts to help broker cease-fire deals in government-besieged areas, such as in the city of Homs, have fostered suspicion among residents. Those cease-fires are commonly known in rebel areas as “surrender or starve” agreements: If rebels do not surrender to government forces or flee the area, they and their families generally must resist while being cut off from food.

 “The U.N. has tools to pressure the government, but it’s not using them, and people are starving as a result,” said Abo Ali, whose organization signed the letter.'

A Syrian Village Seeks to Survive amid Carnage

 'The St. Lucie cherry trees were in bloom when the calamity began. It was not unexpected. Indeed, the men of Korin and surrounding villages had done their part to bring it about. Since winter, after two years of an almost static front line, they quickly overran several of the Syrian army's last outposts in the Idlib Province. And soon after regime troops fled the eponymously named provincial capital at the end of March, the bombs arrived. It is a pattern that has often been seen in Syria: Soon after rebels take an army base, an airport or a city, the air force arrives to pound them from above.

 For weeks, regime helicopters circled at an altitude beyond the range of rebel weapons and repeatedly dropped half-ton barrel bombs on Korin. On at least one occasion, a cylinder full of chlorine gas outfitted with detonators was dropped on the village, which is located some 40 kilometers (25 miles) south of the Turkish border. Sukhoi jets appeared between the clouds and fired rockets at those buildings that were still intact.

 It is almost as though someone had devised a wicked experiment to see what happens when everything that serves public order is suddenly removed. When police, courts and indeed the entire state simply disappears without a new one replacing it. And when the old state reappears periodically to spread death and destruction. It is a situation reminiscent of End Times science fiction tales in which marauding hordes find themselves in a constant battle for fuel, water and women. But what is it really like?

 Instead of simply crumbling, public order has merely contracted. "Korin has become a state," says Ajini, "just like all the towns here." A collection of rump states formed in self-defense. For years now, the media has portrayed Syria as being entirely consumed by horror and destruction, by explosions and black-clad barbarians who behead their victims on camera. But there are countless places that -- like islands in a storm -- are doing all they can to survive the fighting.

 The calm is astounding given the fact that it is simple for people to arm themselves. It is easier than ever to kill someone should one so desire, and it has become virtually impossible to hold criminals accountable without risking a blood feud. There are no police, and even if there were, it is no longer possible to call them. Not that a trustworthy judicial system existed under Assad, but there was a state. Today, there is merely a fragile balance that can be disturbed at any time. Everything must be negotiated. The authorities have been replaced by personal relationships and village solidarity.

 The Western view of the war in Syria tends not to look beyond the Assad regime and the brutally murderous and propagandistically adept Islamic State. The group has taken over huge swaths of land in the sparsely populated desert steppes of eastern Syria, but hasn't made much headway in the more densely populated strongholds of the insurgency -- in Idlib and Aleppo in the north, in Hama in central Syria and in Daraa in the south. For the people living there, however, IS is no less fearsome than it is to Westerners. Indeed, the radical group is often seen as being more threatening in that it is often just a few dozen kilometers away.

 Even as people from Washington to Moscow are warning of radicalization, a fundamental dilemma facing the opposition is largely being ignored. Village republics such as Korin embody both the promise and the limits of the revolution. On the one hand, the inventiveness and tenacity of these mini-states is astounding. Despite the adversity they face, they work on a local level. But only on a local level. What is happening in Syria is a revolution of localists. They vehemently deplore -- and usually rightly so -- the incompetence of the opposition in exile. But they cannot supplant it. They are aware of conflicting interests even among their supporters -- such as Saudi Arabia in opposition to Qatar, and both against the US -- but they don't join together. They want Assad to fall and they want a halfway fair, functioning state. But nobody knows who should achieve those goals.

 The Russian airstrikes hit northern Syria just as hard in September as the spring bombardments struck the village. Russian warplanes and helicopters flew up to 100 sorties a day, heading for those areas that were to be taken over by Assad's troops or their Shiite allies. But it remained largely quiet around Korin. It is a bit of geographical good luck amid the country's general disintegration. The Russian intervention notwithstanding, the Iranian military leadership in Syria negotiated a locally restricted, yet far-reaching cease-fire directly with one of the largest Islamist rebel brigades, Ahrar al-Sham. According to the deal, two isolated Shiite villages not far from Korin are not to be touched. In return, no airstrikes are to be flown in the entire region.

 It is a bit of calm in the middle of the storm. Some residents have given up anyway and are trying to flee from Korin to Europe. Around 30 people from the village have already made it to Germany, including the son of English-teacher Ajini. He now lives at a farmhouse in eastern Germany.

 Only Abdulhakim, one of the teachers in the village, can tell stories of the journey in person. He spent all of his savings to flee to Europe and made it all the way to Berlin. But a few months later, he returned to Korin. "I was in safety, but I couldn't do anything for my wife and my children as the bombs were falling here," Abdulhakim says. "I couldn't take it any longer." '

Important info about the starvation in Moadamiyah

 Translation by Amaney Neihoum.

 'Since morning hours the city has witnessed barrel bomb attacks targeting the city's southern frontline and similarly attacks from Shilka trucks targeting residential areas which led to Assad's forces, fortified by heavy artillery and tanks, numerous attempts to advance and take over the frontline but all attempts were in vain due to the heroic defence by the free army which led to causing losses whilst the Shilka vehicles continued to target residential areas until the late hours of this evening.



 Humanitarian disaster is about to befall 45000 civilians including children women the elderly for the 19th consecutive day.

 The Assad forces continue to flex their control by closing the only crossing to the city and denying entry or exit and by denying the entry any relief or humanitarian aid, worsening the humanitarian situation faced by residents. Most of those remaining in the city have not enough to feed their children.

 Whilst the humanitarian situation is worsening there are hundreds of cases of children and the elderly with chronic diseases due to malnutrition and its effects. Also the loss of urgently required medicines.

 Every day the siege continues the situation deteriorates further and today marked the death of Saeed Carbouge (15) a special needs child due to the reduced availability of required medicine and malnutrition and the Assad forces preventing his family from taking him elsewhere , raising the tally of martyrs of the siege up to today at 4: 3 children and a 25 yr old woman . All had deteriorated and the families were not allowed to take them outside the city to receive treatment.

 And due to the loss of the city's water and electricity and heating in these cold temperatures, the families have no means of protecting themselves nor their children from the bitter cold which has mercy for no one.

 The medical staff in the city have announced a dire and catastrophic situation due to their loss of medically important and urgent medical supplies and equipment in the face of increasing numbers of elderly and pediatric patients and injuries from the attacks. Their medical situation is worsened by malnutrition and the cut off of specialized medical supplies for their recovery.

 Everyday dozens of cases visit the centre but with no chance of receiving treatment and so the siege is about to claim hundreds of children and elderly people by preventing them from leaving the city to get treatment due to the compounding of the hardship.'

Rebels demand anti-aircraft missiles

 'A group of civilians, mostly schoolchildren, were killed on Monday morning as missiles rained down upon the village of Ain Jara in Aleppo province.

 "A Russian plane fired guided missiles at a residential neighbourhood in Ain Jara, killing 15 civilians including eight children," activist Alaa al-Halabi told The New Arab.

 Russian air strikes had killed more than 2,300 people since they began on September 30, among them 792 civilians.

 Moscow has slammed as "absurd" allegations that its strikes had killed civilians.

 Meanwhile, a major Syrian rebel group has said the best way to push Damascus to a political settlement of the country's civil war was to give insurgents anti-aircraft missiles - and has pledged to control the weaponry if provided. The Army of Islam, echoing opposition concerns over a UN-led drive to launch peace talks in Geneva on January 25, also said it was unacceptable to talk about a political solution to the war while people died of hunger under deadly artillery fire.

 The opposition to President Bashar al-Assad wants goodwill measures - including a cease-fire, a detainee release and the end of blockades on besieged areas - before starting negotiations.'

BBC gets stories from Madaya as Hezbollah wants

 ' "The Local Council in Madaya expresses fury and anger over the BBC Arabic’s practices which follow Hezbollah’s al-Manar way in blackmailing and abusing languished Syrian civilians to give statements in which they expressed that they were abused by opposition fighters in Madaya while the interviewees were in Hezbollah-controlled areas.

 Locals in Madaya know the geography of the area and they are certain that the interviewees are not from city.

 Also the local council disowned Naser Fares and his sister Zahraa Fares who appeared on BBC. Locals in Madaya certainly know that Naser and Zahraa had never lived in Madaya."

 BBC has turned the shield to the Syrian people and stood beside the victimizer, Assad, against the victimized Syrian people. Its policy has become shoring up Assad and reviving him and turning a blind eye to the tens of thousands of women and children who are slaughtered en masse by Assad barrel bombs and Russian bombardment, Syrians added.'

 See also, "BBC parroting Hezbollah: People of Madaya are besieging themselves!"*

*[http://www.orient-news.net/en/news_show/99174/0/BBC-parroting-Hezbollah-People-of-Madaya-are-besieging-themselves]



 Note 19/5/25, both links unfindable.

Life after torture for Jordan’s refugee population

 'Ibrahim owned a shop located near several security and intelligence offices in the Syrian town of Deraa. He was arrested there on three separate occasions simply because of his shop’s location. While in prison, he was beaten with the barrel of a rifle and still has broken teeth. He was blindfolded and suspended from a ceiling for hours at a time. Guards threatened to hurt his wife. For Ibrahim, the psychological torture was worse than the physical. He describes feeling deep paranoia and having chest pains when hearing the sounds of sirens.

 Now, Ibrahim lives in Jordan. His ordeal is one of 64 harrowing narratives from Syrian and Iraqi refugees now residing in Jordan collected over two years by the Centre for Victims of Torture (CVT), which provides trauma rehabilitation services. The centre’s new report, Reclaiming Hope, Dignity and Respect: Syrian and Iraqi Torture Survivors in Jordan, takes a close look at the psychological scars left behind. Jordan has seen a massive influx of refugees — nearly 630,000 registered Syrian refugees and increasing numbers of Iraqis — as a result of the ongoing Syrian war and the advance of Daesh.

 In the case of Syria, according to the report, the overwhelming majority of those interviewed who were tortured claim to have had no role in any opposition movement. With no reported involvement in demonstrations, revolution or armed groups, many interviewees were swept up arbitrarily in the violence and government crackdowns. They happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, often their own homes or at checkpoints. The torture was not used to extract information, simply to cause pain and create fear.

 For those who had either participated in demonstrations or attempted to document such events, the treatment was especially brutal. Kareem, an independent photographer who took photos of demonstrations, told CVT how he was forced to watch the gang rape of his wife and killing of his son before enduring brutal physical torture himself. Fatima, whose husband was a member of the Free Syrian Army, had her 12 year old daughter taken by Syrian troops, who used her as a lever to force her father to surrender in order to save her life. He did, and was killed.'

'Textbooks never prepared us for the injuries we see'

 'The most difficult situation that we encounter is massacres, when many injured people and martyrs come to us at once, especially a large number of children. Unfortunately, in any massacre, over half of the martyrs and injured are children. The injuries are mostly critical injuries. You might find a child whose body has been severed in half, decapitated, one who has lost limbs or lost an ear or an eye, or maybe he is crippled because of critical injuries. Truly, these are the most difficult times for us. Not because of exhaustion, but because of emotional stress--we sympathize so deeply with wounded children. When confronted with an injured child, I often feel helpless.

 In the beginning, we saw new injuries that we did not know how to treat. Fortunately, at the beginning of the revolution and when we began working in field hospitals, there was more freedom of movement. In 2012 and 2013, there was no such thing as “barrel bombs” and there was no violent shelling from airplanes, so many visiting foreign doctors came. Qualified experts from the Arab world and other countries taught us techniques that we did not know and personally trained us in treating fairly complicated injuries. But even so, they told us that they were seeing injuries that they had never seen before in books or textbooks or in the hospitals where they worked in their home countries. Unfortunately, reality forces you to learn.

 In general, the regime targets medical facilities everywhere because it knows that they are the key to survival. Without them, life stops. The second reason [for the targeting of the medical infrastructure] is part of the strategy that the regime follows. It appears that it focuses on Aleppo, more than other locations, for many reasons. Firstly, the city has a large population. Secondly, it is near the Syrian-Turkish border. There are some Shiite-majority villages around Aleppo, and for that reason Iran has more influence [in Aleppo] and thus a greater desire than the regime to retake control of Aleppo. Medical facilities in Aleppo are therefore targeted more so than in other areas.'

I Want to Be Where I Want To Be: Here or There

 Mariam Haid:

 'One of my indelible memories is the date of my arrest: January 10 2014. It was a Friday morning. I went in through the door of the Criminal Security Branch. I just walked along, listening to the sounds they were all making. I stood in the corridor for quarter of an hour, then I went into a room where there were two people. They both started to hit me. I didn’t know why they were beating me, and I started to think about them: ‘This must be their way of welcoming us to make sure we’re scared from the very beginning – but I wonder what’s gonna happen next?’ They used an electric cattle prod on me, punched and kicked me, and when they’d finished with me they took me out of the room and had me stand again.

 I was subjected to torture three times a day, each of them exactly the same: an extremely cold shower. The interrogator would say to me ‘Good morning . . . I’ve got a cold shower here, so be my guest, have a shower and have a think.’ He would turn the shower on, put me under it, and leave. It occurred to me that I might turn into someone with a fear of showering, after I got out of detention. I began to be scared from the onset of physical torture.

 Someone from the Syrian Electronic Army was brought in, who didn’t even know how to open my account. This person was examining my Facebook account and saw a chat message to me from a user called ‘Aleppo Liberation Front’. All it contained was a single phrase, the standard greeting ‘Peace be with you’ which I hadn’t ever answered. The investigator said to me, ‘You are involved with fronts in Aleppo, and you are acting as a pair of eyes for your brother who is wanted by the Political Security Branch and who left you in Syria so you could be a spy and tell him everything.’

 After an interval of the usual torture, they decided to bully me up in the air. They tied my hands together, hung me up by them and then introduced me to ‘Lakhdar Brahimi,’ who I had heard so much about and had hoped never to meet. I didn’t feel humiliated by the torture methods I was subjected to; what hurt me were the words they used – I wasn’t used to hearing them or to saying them. I felt that I was a thing these people owned, that they were trying to abuse my body so that the pain would seep right inside me, into wherever they couldn’t gain physical entry.

 After a month and a week had passed they put me on the ‘flying carpet’, the most painful torture method of all. After they had finished they forced me to walk on my feet, and put Epsom salts on them so they wouldn’t swell, or perhaps so that they could torture me again in the same way, but I feigned being entirely unable to walk for a whole week so as not to have a second experience of that method.

 One of the stories that I remember well was of a woman from Hama who lived with her husband and her two children in Lebanon. She decided to visit her family with her children, and she told me that she was seized at the border because of a deliberately deceitful statement made by one of her relatives. She knew nothing of what had happened to her two children; she used to cry a lot, and stop when she got hold of a cigarette. Another woman used to live in Jaramana, and was accused of stealing cars – even though she couldn’t drive. She used to lend me her clothes after every cold shower I was subjected to.

 On March 15 2015 we made a video about media fabrication to be shown on the television programme ‘The Watchful Eye’, so that our torture would stop and we could wait to get moved to Adra prison. I had a sense of great loss that day. I wanted to say, ‘Leave me be, I don’t want to talk and I don’t want to get out.’ But I did want to get out of there, and I paid the price.

 What do I want to say about the amount of darkness I saw in there? What about the faces that cried for help over and over with no response, and the echo of the voices pleading their innocence – ‘Leave me alone . . . I didn’t do anything to deserve this punishment! Why are you hitting me? Why are you humiliating me? For God’s sake, stop it, please! I kiss your hands, I kiss your legs, I’m begging you! I’ve got children and a family, they’ve only got me to take care of them! For God’s sake stop it stop it, I can’t take any more!’ – what do I want to say about them? What do I want to say about all the cruelty, oppression and inhumanity?

 I want to say this: I was and I am still with revolution, but the feelings inside me have become more intense. It is impossible for us to accept a regime like this and a bloodthirsty serial killer of a president who violates human rights. I want Syria to be liberated, and for there to be an end to the suffering brought by barrel bombing and depraved Russian planes. I want the people of Syria to be freed from the fear and anxiety that every bomb brings, and for their children to dream ordinary dreams with no rockets in them, no machine guns, and no blood – dreams as tranquil as their peaceful sleep.

 I know that everything has its price. We will get our freedom, even if it takes a while.'

UN chief concerned by Russian raid on Aleppo school

 'At least 17 people, including eight children, were killed Monday after a Russian jet bombed a school in the town of Ain Jara in Aleppo, local activists said.

 Monday's massacre followed a series of air raids Saturday on the opposition-held Maarat al-Numan district in northwestern Idlib province. The attacks, blamed on Russian warplanes, left dozens of civilians dead, according to activists.

 More than 570 civilians have been killed since Sept. 30 when Russia began airstrikes to prop up the regime of President Bashar al-Assad, according to a December report by the Syrian Network for Human Rights.

 "The international community must act quickly against Russia’s flagrant crimes against the Syrian people including children, women and the elderly," said the Syrian National Coalition, Syria's main opposition group.

 "Russia’s actions in Syria, while representing a continuation of Assad’s terror since the start of Syrian revolution, are designed to break the will of the Syrian people and undermine the political solution." '

Qaeda in Syria abducts prominent media activists

 ' "Al-Nusra Front kidnapped at 0655 (0455 GMT) activists Hadi al-Abdallah and Raed Fares in the offices of Fresh FM where they work and live in Kafranbel," said Soner Taleb, head of media at the Syrian National Coalition.

 According to a statement published by Fresh FM, Al-Nusra fighters stormed the radio station and confiscated its broadcasting and technical equipment as well as its electricity generators. "The Al-Nusra members then gathered all of the revolution flags and burned them in front of everyone," the statement said. The flag featuring three red stars over a green, white and black tricolour, in use before President Bashar al-Assad's father and predecessor came to power, is the symbol of Syria's uprising.

 "Raed is the founder of Fresh FM, and he's an amazing person," said activist Ibrahim al-Idlibi, "He did not take up arms at all, not even for personal use... he always came up with new ideas, always strived to be better."

 According to Fresh FM employee Ahmad Buyush, Fares, 41, was a medical student when popular anti-regime protests began across Syria in March 2011. "Raed is the revolution, in all meanings of the word."

 Abdallah shot to prominence in 2011 when anti-regime protests erupted across Syria, before the country's descent into civil war. Last year he was one of four journalists who interviewed Al-Nusra's head, Abu Mohammad al-Jolani.

 Al-Nusra did not specify why they arrested Fares and Abdallah, but Buyush suspects it could be a show of force in Kafranbel, which has been in rebel hands since 2012. "I see that the reason is to sabotage and terrorise. They've begun to take control and impose their word, and they began with us," Buyush said.'

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 Translation of Hadi Abdullah's testimony of the events of today:

 "I don't know where to start...

 This morning officers from Jabhat al Nusra raided our Media Office in the city of Kafranbel, along with the Radio Fresh headquarters and the headquarters of the Union of Revolutionary Bureaus offices near ours.

 The accusations:

 *A Facebook post¹ by Raed Fares, the director of the Union of Revolutionary Bureaus in Idlib, that contained something prohibited by Shariah..

 *Airing songs with music on the radio

 They pulled out all the closed doors.

 They raided the headquarters, walked all over our things, and confiscated all our electronics: the radio transmitters, laptops, cell phones, satellite internet, all our cameras, including the beloved martyr Trad AlZahrawi's camera.

 I told them that these tools and electronics are mine, they answered me
"Then, we will give them back to you."

 I asked them to just give me back Trad's camera, but they refused and went on with the raid.
They took all the electronics as well as some furniture!

 They kept pulling the doors out of their frames in the Union of Revolutionary Bureaus, that belong to us!!

 They confiscated all the computers, files, and some books..

 One of the revolution flags we had raised in a protest yesterday was near a door inside, they threw it on the floor of the headquarters near the front door, so that anyone walking in or out would have to walk on it, they stepped on it with their feet several times!!

 A small revolution flag that was on my desk, they stepped on it too..

 After that they wrote on the Radio Fresh building, the media offices, and two small rooms on the roof of the office (that I had built when I first got to the north), they wrote: "Confiscated by Jabhat al Nusra, Do Not Approach"

 For an hour and a half we were detained inside the office, not allowing any of us to leave.
They then took media activist Raed Fares to an unknown location because of the accusations mentioned above..

 After long discussions with the leaders and legislators of Al Nusra all day,
we conceded to the "mistake by Shariah" that Raed had written and provided guarantees that it would not happen again!

 Jabhat al Nusra acknowledged its mistake in raiding, and said it would take care to resolve the issue, promising that it would return all confiscated materials, and provided guarantees that it would not happen again, and released Raed.

 I thank with all my heart those who asked about me and were worried, with you our revolution continues brothers and sisters.

 There is more to talk about, but right now I'm very very very tired!

 I hope you wake up to good news, victory, and freedom."

¹يا أمة إقرأ

طالما أن الدكتوراه التي نحوزها تنحصر في “الحيض والنكاح” وأن جل اهتمامنا ينصب حين نتمكن على مابين شفتي الرجل”السكارة” وبين فخذي المرأة وطالما أننا نهتم بما تلبس المرأة أكثر من ما يجب أن تتعلم ونسوق الناس إلى الصلاة سوق القطيع , ونتخم المدارس بالكتب الشرعية.. فأبشروا بألف سنة أخرى.. نقتل في بورما وشرق الصين وفي مضايا وسوريا وسائر المشرق.. ودأبنا سيبقى معايرة معايير الأمم الأخرى وإنسانيتها
الحق بقوته, والقوة بالعلم, والعلم حق


 "As long as the doctorates held by few are limited to 'menstruation and sex,' as long as most of our attention is fixated on what is between the lips of a man (cigarettes) or between the thighs of women, and as long as we care about what women wear more than education, and as long as we herd people to prayers like sheep, and as long as we are forcing Sharia books upon schools... Then I am happy to inform you that we have ahead of us 1000 more years of war... from Burma and East China to Madaya and Syria and all the East. We have and always will judge the morals and humanity of other nations.

 Truth has power, and education is power, & education is a right."
[https://www.facebook.com/raed.fares.5/posts/932858020131747?pnref=story]



 Note 19/5/25, last link to Raed Fares' Facebook page broken.