This is what good guys look like

 "The FSA slept on the street in Jarabulus."

 Rather than occupy the houses of the displaced residents.

Daraya is lost

 Abdurahman Hark:

 "The besieged city fought off regime elite forces of 4th Division for 4 years. 1000s of Assadis were killed at its walls."

  Sami:

 "Daraya civilians (who regime said never existed) will be evacuated to Sahnaya & Ma'araba tomorrow, rebels will follow the day after to Idlib. Daraya will always be the symbol of our revolution. Don't ask why they surrendered, but ask how they resisted & survived all these years."
[https://twitter.com/Paradoxy13/status/768848178795913217]
[https://twitter.com/Paradoxy13/status/768847307106377728]

What One Father Lost to Syria's Civil War

 'Ali Abuljud's children ran through the archways of Aleppo, toy guns in hand.

 They took pretend shots at each other across the courtyards. One child poked at his brother's back with a plastic rifle.

 "Come on and walk with us," he said, leading his brother away to a fake jail.
It's a version of the cruel scene they had grown accustomed to seeing in the war-torn Syrian city.

 "We are the children of the Syrian Revolution," one of the kids said. "We're recreating everything happening in the city, and the things people are doing."

 Chants of "Allahu Akbar" — or "God is great" — followed.



 But only a few days later, there would be no more games.

 A barrel bomb struck around 3 a.m. on Saturday, killing the four siblings: Aysha, 12, Mohammad 11, Obeida, 9, and Afraa, 7.

 Abuljud implored his friends not to focus on his children's death.

 "Don't look at this generation like this," he said. "This generation looks up in the sky and sees these Russian airplanes [backing Syrian President Bashar al-Assad], just looking up in the sky as they drop bombs. This generation is going to be titans! I swear they will never be afraid of anything, thank God!"

 As Abuljud walked back to what was left of his home, he said he did not want the world to feel sorry for him.

 "I want our voices — not just my voice — but for all of our voices to reach the entire world," Abuljud said.'

Yes, do compare atrocities!

 Michael Neumann:

 'Why then is there such surprise that, despite all reports of régime atrocities in Syria, no people of no nation seem able to work up enduring outrage? Report what you like, and soon you will get the reaction inculcated in us for decades: well yes, but doesn't the other side commit terrible crimes? Won't atrocities always be with us until we learn to respect international law? Isn't it suspiciously hysterical to scream about this one offender?

 Policy analysts refashion this into a mantra replete with adolescent wisdom: there are no good guys in Syria. This slides easily into: let's just back whoever we like, however much we like, for our own interests. "Our own interests" means, for US governments, what won't upset the voters. That in turn means no serious commitment in Syria, because that would entail either American deaths and great expense, or arming 'Arabs'. So already the moralizing has important effects on policy.

 There is another, equally damaging effect: the almost universally accepted convention that when it comes to atrocity, we don't need to know the details. It's all criminal, isn't it? Why wallow in sadism and cruelty? This is why, for instance, the Caesar archive of photos, widely distributed, has had no impact - and why so many see no reason to view them. They are supposed to force people to confront Syria's realities but the fact is, they don't. They are supposed to present details but the fact is, they do no such thing. We see emaciated corpses, some with injuries. That doesn't tell us how these people died, and zero tolerance tells us: "well, aren't people dying all over in this terrible conflict? Don't people die terrible deaths worldwide? Why then should these pictures tell us anything about what should happen in Syria.? After all, isn't it just a question of backing one bad guy rather than another? After all, why should Americans die to clean up a mess created by a bunch of bad guys running around killing each other? Can we really change the sort of society that generates these crimes? Is it really our job to do so?"

 Imagine that people did actually examine and compare the record of the various parties to the Syrian conflict. They might find reasons why it is not only morally permissible but morally obligatory, at times, to give full military support to people who commit war crimes and violate human rights. That realization can occur only when people stop saying it's all the same and really look at the details of atrocities.

 The worst atrocities are almost never reported. Incredibly, the latest Amnesty International account of torture in Syrian jails specifies the details of only of cases which are mild by Assad's standards. Perhaps here again, to report worse is thought merely prurient by an agency known for its 'even-handedness', that is, its refusal to compare.

 For Assad, barrel bombs are a mere convenience. Before the barrel bombs, his forces didn't kill children from the sky. They took knives and slit the throats of babies and toddlers. There are photographs and well-confirmed reports of this for anyone who takes the trouble to find them.

 The refusal to compare and its consequent avoidance of details conceals uncomfortable facts. ISIS' beheadings that so shock the world take moments; they are humane compared to the slow deaths Assad's torturers have inflicted on victims as young as 11. Bombing hospitals is indeed terrible: before the bombings, régime troops invaded the hospitals on foot and tortured people in their hospital beds. And the tortures of Abu Ghraib are love pats compared to what Assad inflicts on human flesh.

 To these qualitative comparisons must be added quantitative ones. Assad murders and tortures many times more people than any other participant in the conflict. To first preach about the awfulness of atrocities, and then assign no weight to how many human beings suffer them, is nothing short of bizarre.

 It's hardly a surprise that honest comparisons are avoided: the conclusions they compel are so unwelcome. But they loom large because they point to a crossroads of morality and political realism. The fact - it is a fact - is that ISIS, which conducts massacres, beheads people, blows up civilians, executes by burning alive and throws homosexuals off buildings - is, according to all reports on the scale and nature of the atrocities, much less brutal than the Syrian government. That is not a world it is in anyone's interest to legitimate and therefore to perpetuate. Before Assad we already lived with fine declarations masking pathetically low real standards governing how we treat one another. To let Assad remain in power - or his entire régime minus the man himself - is to lower standards even more. The fact that many prefer ISIS' horrible rule to his own is clear evidence what dangers lie in the refusal to compare.'

Assad is terrified of the children

 'Colleague Ali Abu Al-Joud, after documenting the martyrdom of his four children and his wife, sends a message to the Arab peoples from Aleppo:

 "I'm not going to even bother calling on the UN, or Arab or western leaders. My message is to the people, your turn will come. To all the people of the world if you don't protest, the same thing that happened to us will happen to you. My children have gone to paradise, and our revolution will succeed regardless if the powers that be said yes or no. Assad is terrified of the children because he knows this generation will fight & defeat him." '

Syrian Genocide Memorial Day

 Tomorrow, the civilised people of the world will mark Syrian Genocide Memorial Day. I hope that you will be among them. In the future, I expect many people will be guilt-tripped into marking this day. Schoolchildren will be forced to remember the facts, to look at the pictures, to wonder how we can have been so callous to watch a people massacred before our eyes.

 It is three years since Bashar al-Assad fired rockets full of sarin gas into two rebel-held neighbourhoods of Damascus. 1500 people died, many of them children, because they were sleeping on the ground floor of their homes for fear they would not survive a bomb attack by Assad on the upper floors. It is the worst single massacre of this century.

 Someone asked on TV the other day, as Assad continues day-by-day to attack defenceless people with chlorine gas, why we are more concerned about death by chemical weapons than other sorts of murder. In a better world we wouldn't be. But it is one of the worst excesses of criminal war fighting, an identifiable weapon that cannot be used discriminately, and something any just world must have prohibitions against.

 This was also why it was President Obama's alibi for doing nothing to protect the Syrian people. In 2012 he declared it was a red line if Assad used a whole bunch of chemical weapons, presumably thinking that Assad would use all other methods to kill people, and he would be off the hook. But Assad's rule is never going to be stable again, and every time his grip on power is threatened, he needs to up the ante, to make people scared that this would turn into a confrontation between him and the United States. So he used a whole bunch of chemical weapons, and President Obama did nothing.

 And the use of chemical weapons were the occasion for the greatest lie of the century, that it wasn't Assad, but the rebels who used chemical weapons. There has grown up a media industry, some for the political benefit of Russia and Iran, some seemingly for the smug contrariness, that went into overdrive to cast doubt upon the victims of these chemical attacks. The same sort of invention as Holocaust denial, the creation of spurious doubt, the invention of alternative scenarios, the deliberate ignorance of what the victims had to say, but rather being the province of just a few fascist cranks, widespread among those who think themselves in some way progressive. Along with a constant stream of other lies about the Syrian revolution, that it is a NATO invasion, that it is all for Israel's benefit, that the rebels are the same as ISIS and are just as bad, and so on. These lies will come back to haunt us.

 There is a article in the Daily Mail three days ago, with an appropriately hysterical headline, "Former prisoners held in Assad's Syrian jails reveal how guards made the men rape one another to avoid execution… and regularly tortured or beat them to death".* Only it isn't hysteria, it's the truth. And when nobody has an interest in covering for Assad's crimes, when no-one has an interest in pretending the real crime would be to try and stop it, they will look for everyone on the left who said we should be Pharisees rather than Good Samaritans. And every word uttered by those left wing politicians who said the real problem was the rebels and our funding of them, will be used as evidence that the left are in love with genocidal dictatorship, and even those of us who have stood in solidarity will not escape the backlash.

 Please mark Syrian Genocide Memorial Day tomorrow. Please do not share articles by genocide deniers like Sam Kriss, Tariq Ali and Ray McGovern, just to mention a few I have seen recently. Please support those who would propose action that would stop Assad committing genocide, and oppose those who do not. And then you can tell kids in the future that you stood against Assad's genocide when it counted, while it was still going on, and while there were people who could be saved.

*[https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3744052/Former-prisoners-held-Assad-s-Syrian-jails-reveal-guards-men-rape-one-avoid-execution-regularly-tortured-beat-death.html]

What parents in Aleppo tell their children about war

 'I try very hard to explain to my kids, especially those who were born after the war began, what is going on around them, but it's not easy. So I spin tales about battles in the neighborhood between right and wrong and tell them about our revolution and our demands for freedom.

 I told them about the demonstrations that swept the streets demanding (Syrian President Bashar al-) Assad go, and how he and his army came with tanks and warplanes so more than half of the people fled.

 After five years of war, children are not surprised by the sound of the planes. Some of them scream in fear and some of them cry and some of them laugh. They bombard me with a stream of questions. Who is bombing? And why? And how long they will continue? Where do the planes come from and who pilots them?



 My daughter, who is five years old, was born in this war and does not know anything about normal life. She is used to seeing the streets in ruins, full of debris; houses without walls or ceilings; and trees broken or burned. She has never once asked to go to a park or a playground or the theater, because all of that ended in Aleppo before her birth. All she knows is that people are dying because of the bombing. She cannot even understand a natural death. When one of the neighbors passed away she asked if he died because of the shelling. I said no. Then barrel bombs? I said no. Then shrapnel? I said no. So she sat, puzzled, and asked, "Then how did he die?" It was difficult to explain to her how people normally die.

 My oldest son, Ibrahim, who is 10 years old, was injured in the legs and abdomen and it almost cost him his life. To this day he fears every strange sound or loud noise, whether it's a plane or a motorcycle or a speeding car. Every sound for him appears to be caused by the bombing he was exposed to. He once jumped from the motorcycle I was driving when he heard a loud sound and thought he was being bombed again.

 A single hour does not pass without me communicating with my family so I may be reassured of their safety. Existence in Aleppo means that you are always in danger. When my son nearly lost his life and his legs, he had only gone to a shop on our street. The shop was hit by an airstrike while Ibrahim was there. I learned that the raid targeted our neighborhood. I hurried home and learned that Ibrahim did not return from the store. I continued to search for more than an hour, under the rubble of collapsed walls but was unable to find him. Then we started to search the local hospitals where we found him in the emergency department.

 I could not believe I found him alive. He was lying covered with dust mixed with blood that filled the wounds on his body and wounds on his legs and abdomen. A few hours after he entered the operating room, he was out of critical condition and began waking up from the anesthesia. He was crying and repeating unintelligible sentences. We tried to console him, to tell him it's OK and tell him he's a hero to overcome this ordeal. When he woke up totally he did not ask me who bombed him -- he knows quite well that it was the Assad regime. He did not know why and did not care. He had seen many children before in his same situation.

 He was only concerned with the fate of his leg because he could not feel it. He didn't dare ask the question because he was scared we would answer, "Yes, they amputated your leg." We tried to convince him this was not true, that he would not lose his leg, that it was fine. He wouldn't accept it. The only solution was to take a picture of his leg on my mobile and show it to him so that he could be sure it was OK.'

Amid deafening silence, growing screams for no-fly zone

 ' “Words will not stop Assad and Russia’s bombs from killing us,” Hamood Jneid, a local from Kafranbel, Syria tells Al Arabiya English, adding that the Syrians blame “anyone” who has the authority to stop the killing and doesn’t. According to Jneid, most people in his village, Kafranbel, point fingers at America, which has done “absolutely nothing” and used only “meaningless words” despite the atrocities being committed by Assad and Russia. Jneid and the residents of the village are not the only ones bitter about the international community not creating safe buffer zones in Syria.

 “Why us? Why is it our children that are dying? Why do children anywhere else in the word have the right to live, and our children are being killed? All this, because we demanded our freedom?” he lamented.

 Khaled Salame, an aid worker from northwestern Syria, said that he can’t understand how an army can kill its own people. Salame explained how he watched Russian jets fly over the village of Saraqeb, Idlib, on Monday and drop “several” bombs. He said he can’t get “the screams of children and women out of his head”.

 “I felt hysterical. The hardest thing is to see an old man running around and crying like a child… I’m used to seeing children cry, not old grown men,” he said.

 Mostafa Saroot, a photographer with Aleppo’s Media Center, and the man behind the shocking footage, expresses his puzzlement towards the popularity of this single shot, since pictures like this are coming out every day.

“There are dozens of Omrans every day in Aleppo, I wish they would implement a no fly zone so children can keep safe.”

 The dazed, dusted, and bloodied face of Omran is only a minuscule window into the horror, atrocities, and nightmare of Allepo. With 400,000+ death and millions more displaced, Syrian conflict has stretched on for years.

 “Our children are becoming mentally disturbed,” Saroot continues. “Omran’s silence spoke for the all the Syrians suffering.” Shrouded head to toe in a blanket of dust and caked on ruble and debris, Omran was captured in a dead end, numb daze, his reaction to his own bloodied face chillingly indifferent and anesthetized.

 “I hope this picture reaches the UN and the international community and they understand that our children have developed psychological problems due to the heavy bombardment on Aleppo,” he said.

 US President Barrack Obama ruled out a no-fly zone over Syria for several factors, calling it “counterproductive” since ISIS does not have planes and carries out attacks on the ground. US Deputy National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes said even if there were areas in Syria where planes could not fly over it, the killing would not stop, because ISIS would still be able to carry out massacres. He also mentioned that a no-fly zone would require an “enormous” amount of US resources, when America’s main focus is to wipe out ISIS.

 “A no fly zone might create some additional ability to manage some of the refugee flows and brush back some of the Syrian regime’s air attacks on civilians, but frankly that violence could just manifest itself in different ways on the ground or migrate to different areas,” Rhodes said in a podcast on “The Axe Files”.

 Mohammed Alaa Ghanem, senior political adviser, government relations director, and strategist for the Syrian American Council in Washington DC, said that not only would a no-fly zone in Syria “stem the flow of refugees by protecting civilians” but also “increase” the possibility of a political solution by proving to the Syrian regime that Assad “cannot” win militarily. He said he believes the only backlash is the risk of “increased US-Russia tensions”.

 According to Ghanem, top ex-US generals have told him that such a solution would be feasible, in spite of Russia’s heavy involvement, and that Obama’s decision to abstain is “political”.

 “Most likely, at the start of his administration, President Obama was motivated mainly by the desire to avoid another Iraq. But once Iran got seriously involved on the regime side, Obama likely felt the need to avoid targeting Assad in order to preserve the nuclear deal,” he explained.

 Mohammed said he believes a “no-fly zone would tilt the scales in favor of moderation and stability in opposition-controlled areas while providing Syrians with a chance to build up a real alternative to Assad's dictatorship.”

 Ghanem says that the constant air raids on obvious civilian targets are “designed” to create havoc in opposition areas, preventing a real alternative to Assad and to create conditions “so desperate that extremism is a natural reaction for many”.

 Shiyam Galyon, a Syrian-American writer and researcher has been advocating a no-fly zone for a long time.

 “So many people around the world want to stand in solidarity with Syria. And that’s great: The Syrian revolution is based on principles that no doubt will elicit solidarity from anyone who values human and civil rights. However, when people are being brutalized, I no longer want to stand in solidarity with them. For those people, I will shout loudly for intervention,” Galyon said. She says that is why it is vital for anyone who believes in freedom and dignity to “shout for a no-fly zone”.

 Earlier this month, children in besieged Aleppo were hailed “little heroes” all over the media after they burnt tires to create “no-fly zones” by raising smoke to confuse the planes bombing them, hospitals, and markets.

 “When Aleppo’s children burned tires to blacken the sky, they proved that there is a clear Syrian will for a no-fly zone. That children in a war zone did more to avert planes coming to bomb them than the international community ever did is a sign that they are dysfunctional,” Galyon said.'

Let us be clear

 Loubna Mrie:

 'I have long shunned away from the immensely frustrating practice of sharing videos of atrocities from Syria, particularly ones produced by western news outlets. ًThese videos have not only grown more abundant and grotesque over the years, but also, with the vast majority of them showing the aftermath of airstrikes against civilian structures in the opposition-held areas, they present an indisputable evidence for who is responsible for the killing: The regime and its allies.

 The other side does not have an air force.

 Yet, commentary in the videos and underneath them never fails to divert attention from this very obvious fact. Generic talk of "war is bad", with endless variants, runs amok, almost always neglecting to name the actual criminal involved. Worse yet, many use this very same footage--sincerely or maliciously, it hardly matters--to advance their own misplaced agendas.

 So, just in case this is not obvious, let us be clear:

 The vast majority of suffering in Syria is NOT a direct or indirect byproduct of the 2003 intervention in Iraq, as much as you hate and hated that war.

 It is NOT a case of "America needs to stop bombing Muslims," as true as this could be elsewhere.

 It is NOT because the Saudi state exports Wahhabism, as terrible said state and ideology are.

 It is NOT because Turkish AKP has turned its back as Jihadists trickled through the border in 2013, as appalling and narrow-sighted you might think that was.

 It is NOT because global warming led to a drought in pre-war Syria, catalyzing an economic and political crisis, as sexy and convenient this theory seems.

 It is NOT because of ISIS, who is responsible for but a small fraction of the death and destruction that has befallen Syria, and for an even much smaller fraction of the country's recent history, as much as you might be horrified by their actions and tempted to blame it all on that magnet of resentment.

 And, most certainly, it is NOT because of any one state, not the least the US, having the wrong refugee policy. The US has admitted less than 10,000 refugees as of date, which is less than 0.1% of all people displaced in Syria, and, with the wildest improvement imaginable, would not hit 1%, as much as democrats and progressives think it easy to score points against Trump et al on this issue and feel better about their stance on Syria.

 Important as any one issue of the above may be, to blame Syria on any or all of them is wrong and intellectually lazy, if not offensive.

 Rather, what is happening in Syria is first and foremost the doing of a brutal, totalitarian government, simply put--and simply it should be. The Syrian air force has been operational for the last 4 years, on a daily basis. It has targeted hospitals, vegetable markets, bakery lines, gas stations, and schools, on purpose, and repeatedly. It is directly overseen and micromanaged by the Commander of the Armed Forces, who also happens to be the sitting president of Syria. He also has the "rights" to dissolve the Syrian parliament and control the highest judiciary body in the country, based on a constitution first put in place by his dear father. He, like his father, was "elected" by 99% of the vote for the longest presidential term on earth. Over the past half-decade, he has overseen the collective punishment and destruction of one of the most beautiful countries on earth, primarily because he has not been able to reign it into submission. In the process, he has instigated a war that killed half a million humans and displaced more people than in WWI. His name is Bashar al Assad, and he wants you to talk about everything and everyone but what HE did.

 Please do not help him.'



 Note 1/6/25, link currently unavailable.

How the BBC silences Free Syrians

 By changing sentences from active to passive, so perpetrators and victims are replaced by an unfortunate conflict.

 Mohammed: "Because of the rockets that Bashar al-Assad, and the Russians, and their allies, are throwing over our Free City of Aleppo."
BBC subtitles: "There are barrel bombs and rockets."

 Wissam: "The régime/Russia are targetting every hospital, and all neighbourhoods."
BBC subtitles: "Hospitals are being targetted."



 Note 1/6/25, video no longer available.

Former detainees recount torture and organ harvesting

 'Omar al-Shogre was 17 when they came for him. Omar would spend the rest of his adolescence in a total of 11 Syrian prisons, facing torture from a multitude of men belonging to the government’s elaborate, sinister security apparatus. "I could drink their blood."

 In Tartus he was tortured with electrocution – to his neck, arms, legs, and genitals. On another occasion, prisoners were force-fed salt before being offered water as a relief from the thirst. But their penises were then tied up, preventing them from urinating and causing intense kidney pain.

 Omar began to know the meaning of hunger: the prisoners often went without food for days; when it came it was a few potatoes and eggs, often covered in blood or mould. “It continued for months,” Omar said. “People were crying from hunger.” There was always extra torture on celebratory days, such as the Muslim festivals of Eid al-Fitr and Eid al-Adha, and Mother’s Day. Torture parties, Omar called them.



 Prisoners came from many backgrounds and nationalities. They shared skills, professions and languages. They taught themselves how to divide their tiny food rations with threads from the military uniforms they were forced to wear, and how to kill the lice that crawled over their bodies. Omar recalled two fellow inmates with particular warmth: Bara’a Manieh from rural Damascus, was a natural leader, and “always happy”. Radwan al-Eisa from Hama became a close friend.

 But over time both were taken away by officers and had their toes burnt off with acid and their eyes pulled out. Neither one was seen alive again.

 Omar’s final prison was the notorious Sednaya jail, north of Damascus. One of his many "duties" was helping to dispose of the corpses of dead inmates. He once saw a room full of bodies, with none of the usual signs of torture. Instead, there were large wounds where their hearts, livers and kidneys once were.

 Organ harvesting appeared to be taking place on a large scale.

 Yehia Rashid al-Salim from Palmyra can still feel the pain of the beatings. Yehia was subjected to the “al-Shabah” torture method: a prisoner’s hands are shackled and he is suspended from the ceiling of his cell, feet centimetres from the floor. Then he is beaten.

 He was then transferred to the military police branch in the city of Homs, and then to the notorious “Palestine Branch” prison in Damascus, where he was tortured three or four times a day. Life inside the cell was “revolting”. People were forced to remain naked and infectious diseases spread quickly. Tuberculosis, lice and scabies caused infections and death on an almost daily basis.

 “The jailer would enter and ask how many dead there were that day,” Yehia said. “We put the bodies by the door of the cell, where they were taken to an unknown location.”

 The lucky prisoners died, Yehia says, because death was a blessed escape. “I wish death upon the detainees at every turn. It is an escape from torment and pain, from the hunger and oppression and humiliation and torment and humiliation, from everything inside.”

 Yehia ended up in Idomeni camp, the makeshift city home to 10,000 refugees on the Greece-Macedonia border that was closed down in May.

 “There are scars and marks on my back to the present day. I wish to show the violations of this criminal regime. Until now I have not had the opportunity. I want the world to see what is happening: the Assad regime's violations against detainees.”

 More than 12,500 people have died under torture in prisons in the past five years, according to the Syrian Network for Human Rights. The government of Bashar al-Assad is responsible for 99 per cent of those victims, according to a special report that the monitoring group released in June. The group accuses the Syrian government of denying torture and blaming arrests made on al-Qaeda and other militant groups.

 The group's chairman, Fadel Abdul Ghani, said: “We are still waiting for the free world to take the next stop in order to protect humanity in Syria, now that this mechanism is exposed.” '

Nobody in this country is advocating American military intervention

 Nicholas Burns:

 "Back in 2012, we know now that she [Hillary Clinton] was part of a group, including Leon Panetta and David Petraeus, advocating not that the US intervene militarily in Syria, but that we arm those Sunni rebels that could oppose the Assad régime; and the Assad régime has killed most of the civilians in Syria. In 2013, if you do draw a line in the sand as President Obama did, and then if Assad crossed it and you do nothing, that is a symbol of weakness. So I think actually she's in the mainstream of what most Democrats, and most Republicans, here in our country, and I think in many European capitals, think would have been the right way to go on Syria.

 I think it made sense in 2012, and still makes sense in 2016, that if there are Syrians in the Sunni majority Arab community in Syria, who want to defend themselves, who are not part of the Islamic State or Jabhat al-Nusra...In this civil war, that has produced twelve million homeless, the destruction of the entire country, the greatest humanitarian crisis of our time, we shouldn't stand by.

 Nobody in this country, my country, is advocating an American military intervention. But what we are advocating is two things. Help those moderate Sunni rebels who want to defend their homes, and their villages, and their towns, against this rapacious government in Damascus, and its Russian, Iranian, and Hezbollah allies. Number two, you've got to help the refugees, and that means we've got to get humanitarian aid corridors by the United Nations and NGOs into Aleppo, which is being besieged right now, pressure the Russians and the Chinese to stop vetoing those aid columns at the United Nations. This is not an intervention of the type, and it was wrong I think in retrospect, of the type of Iraq in 2003, it is simply trying to deal responsibly with the greatest crisis in the Middle East and Syria and Iraq. It also means we have to fight the Islamic State, and that's what Europe and the Arab world and the US are trying to do."

Chasing bananas, dodging bombs

 Zaina Erhaim:

 ' “Within couple of days, they will take the last road connecting Aleppo city to its suburb, Castello,” he said. “I must leave now to make it in.”

 In 2012, Mahmoud Rashwani, a 30-year-old activist, had left his home and family in Aleppo after he was arrested and tortured for participating in peaceful demonstrations. On 12 July, he left another family – me and our six-month-old baby – to go back to what is left of Eastern Aleppo. Vegetables and fruits were already running out in the city, so he carried some tomatoes to share with friends, and walked through the middle of the night with two doctors, who infiltrated through the government siege along with him. I couldn’t help feeling abandoned. I was left with the great burden of taking care of a baby on my own. Still at least, I am not being left for another woman, but rather for a siege and a cause.

 “I saw a banana today! But I couldn’t catch it. It was running fast in the first-aid car that entered the city,” Mahmoud wrote on 10 August. Among the estimated 300,000 to 400,000 people living on Aleppo’s eastside, Mahmoud hadn’t had any vegetables or fruit for the past month. Aside from lack of fresh food, civilians in Aleppo were suffering shortages of fuel, canned food, eggs, sugar, flour and baby milk. Bakeries have stopped selling bread. Instead, local councils are distributing it to achieve a balance so people will not hoard the precious commodity.

 “The shelves of shops were all empty by the fourth week of the siege,” Salah, a media activist living in Aleppo, told me. “The big generators providing electricity to our houses stopped working because they couldn’t find fuel.”

 The reasons Salah was drawn back into Aleppo were no different from those that took Mahmoud from us. “Being here will help the besieged civilians - either by documenting what’s happening to them with my camera or providing moral support to them,” he told me.
Although the encircling of Aleppo could be seen coming for months, it still shocked people.

 “We were surprised when it happened, in spite of speaking about it for so long,” said Samar, director of counselling and social support in the Space Of Hope organisation, a local development group working inside the city. When the siege began, they ramped up a household farming project run by activists who volunteered to find and distribute seeds of basic vegetables to families so they could work towards food self-sufficiency.

 Like other organisations in Aleppo, Space of Hope didn’t stop providing services and running child educational centres during the siege. “To give the people a sense that life hasn’t stopped, we are carrying on, and so are our projects,” Samar told me.

 The main challenge the organisation has faced is the lack of fuel and the sudden halt of transportation. Even amid blazing heat and skies bristling with prowling jets, walking is the only available option. Public coordination has shown its worst face over the past month. Some traders hid food to sell it later at even higher prices. But others kept prices the same, telling buyers, “We live and die together”. Some activists turned their cars into free public taxis to help those struggling to move around the city.

 Samar hasn’t seen her 19- and 12-year-old daughters for four months, and when she finally managed to get permission to cross the Turkish border to see them, the road to Aleppo was cut.

 “I was so desperate and sad that I couldn’t hold my tears and stopped speaking to them, fearing that I might collapse,” she said.

 Her shaky voice faded as we talked, then she continued: “When the rebels opened the road, I felt the ultimate happiness, more than when I held Momena (one of her daughters) in my arms for the first time. I really can't describe it to you.”

 Amid the siege and before the rebel counter-offensive, public spirits hit a low. People resigned themselves to a destiny like that of Madaya, a city that has suffered for years from siege and hunger.

 As the siege was broken, Salah said, “the public mood lifted dramatically, people went down to the streets offering any kind of help, they all started burning tyres creating a black cloud to block the [Russian and Syrian] air force, applying a homemade no-fly-zone."

 It didn’t offer much protection though. Bombing during the siege and even now is extensive, mostly targeting the road through which people can flee the besieged city.

 “This is how humanitarian the corridors suggested by the regime are,” Berbers Meshaal, a group leader of the While Helmets (civil defence force), told me.

 Berbers lives with his wife in the city, and is awaiting the arrival of more supplies, while Salah, Samar and Mahmoud eye the road, a couple of metres of asphalt that separates them from their families, some for years in a recurrent scenario for Syrians as the UN stands by worrying, only worrying.'

Saraqib Being Annihilated By Russian Airforce

 'Russian air force continues to bomb the town of Saraqib in rural Idlib relentlessly, targeting mainly residential neighborhoods, civilian homes, and vital civilian facilities. The brutal Russian airstrikes did not even spare the blood bank building, ambulances, mills and the only water station in the town. The main public market was reduced to rubble by intense, deliberate airstrikes. At least 80 airstrikes targeted the town in the past week, with cluster and thermobaric bombs used in many of those raids.

 Nearly 35,000 civilians fled Saraqib after their homes have been destroyed in the continued Russian bombardment.

 As Russia’s war crimes and blatant violations in Syria continue unabated, the Syrian Coalition calls upon the international community to take urgent action in order to deter Russia’s aggression on Syria and stop its barbaric crimes against Syrian civilians.

 Recovering the bodies of the Russian crewmembers whose helicopter crashed on the outskirts of Saraqib can only be achieved through negotiations. The Russian invaders must realize that taking revenge on civilians and threatening to annihilate the town of Saraqib will only serve to further complicate the situation.

 Crimes carried out by Russia and the Assad regime against the Syrian people provide further proof that their strategy to bring the Syrian people to their knees by military force will not work. Military escalation will not break the will of the Syrian people who will eventually emerge victorious and decide their own future. Invaders and tyrants will not have a role in or place in Syria’s future.

 May our wounded recover, our detainees be free, and our fallen heroes rest in peace.
Long live Syria and its people, free and with honor.'

Opposition on the verge of most 'surprising' victory

 'A nearly month long government siege of Syria's largest city is on the verge of collapse after a week of heavy fighting in northern and eastern Aleppo led to the defeat of pro-regime forces by a coalition of Syrian opposition groups.

 The Free Syrian Army — aided by a military alliance of several rebel brigades known as Jaysh al Fateh, or the Army of Conquest — successfully regained control over a significant portion of Aleppo, including a government supply line leading into the city from the south and a major regime artillery academy.

 "There was initially significant resistance from the pro-regime forces, but after parts of the frontline were re-captured by the rebels, the regime-allied forces deteriorated very quickly," said Syrian journalist Hadi Alabdallah.

 "It was very surprising, and much faster than anyone had expected. Officers from those [pro-regime] militias fled that their soldiers out on the field, so they started to flee as well. That's why the artillery academy was so easy to overrun — it was captured within two hours."

 Alabdallah's account lines up with what one alleged Hezbollah fighter said in a tape recorded during last week's heavy fighting, which was later leaked on social media.

 "They [fellow pro-regime fighters] all left us, the Iranian, Afghans and Syrians … all of them left us. We are like dummies, we don't know anything, we are fighting alone. I went to the academy in the afternoon … and only the Lebanese were still there."

 He cautioned against characterizing the battle as an offensive launched and won by Jabhat Fatah al-Sham, an Islamist rebel brigade formerly known as Jabhat al-Nusra, Al Qaeda's affiliate in Syria, until late last month.

 "There have been many different players, all playing a critical role," Alabdallah said of the opposition. "The forces fighting the regime from inside Aleppo have been almost exclusively FSA [Free Syrian Army]. When it comes to operations in southwest Aleppo, Ahrar al-Sham probably played a bigger role than Jabhat Fatah al-Sham."

 Still, Alabdallah said, it remains difficult to say whether any of the rebel groups played an outsize role in the fight to break the siege.

 "Jaysh al Fateh used to fight in a way where each group would take a different front, so that they were essentially divided on battlefield," Alabdallah said. "They would attack together but their resources would be divided. The policy now — in this battle at least — is that all the groups are intermixed in battle. It's a much more cohesive operation."

 Alabdallah stressed that the cohesiveness of the operation does not necessarily indicate that the former Al Qaeda affiliate is winning over hearts and minds. The group still "differs too much ideologically" with the more mainstream groups, he said. Rather, Jabhat Fatah al-Sham is just one component of a much broader military alliance of groups that each bring their own strengths to table.

 "Some smaller groups might explore merging in with Jabhat Fatah al-Sham," Alabdallah said. "But I don't expect the dynamics to change that much — the ideological differences are still there."

 Photos of an aid convoy carrying food into the rebel-held east from Idlib prompted civilians to take to the streets in celebration — even as the threat of intensified airstrikes loomed over them.

 "The civilians are so happy," Alabdallah said. "They will continue to be bombed, and they will continue taking whatever precautions they need to to avoid being killed in the airstrikes. But at least now they won’t be starving." '

Syrian refugees settling in US at a faster clip

 'When Ajwad Al Zoubi, a tall, stocky man who for years drove trucks across the Middle East, saw the emailed photo of his beloved home with the bountiful orange trees burned to the ground, he turned into a pool of tears. They come suddenly, even now, when he talks about it.

 Before the war he couldn't have fathomed leaving his hometown in Syria. It was here where he built up two stores and designed his dream house for his mother, wife and nine children. Then government forces came searching for him in a wider strategy to detain all adult men. Dara'a, the forefront of Syria's protest against President Bashar al-Assad, was becoming a graveyard.



 For Al Zoubi, the nation's opposition to Syrian refugees doesn't fit with people like him who have lost everything.

 "We came here from Syria to escape (such extremism,)" he said of safety concerns regarding refugees. "That's not us. We ran away from what they are describing."

 The 42-year-old still remembers the March 2011 protests that sparked the war clearly, catapulting Dara'a into the "cradle of the revolution." Following the success of protests in Tunisia, 15 teenage boys in Dara'a spray painted anti-government graffiti on a school wall. They were arrested and tortured, suffering beatings, electric shocks and having their fingernails ripped off.

 The city of about 150,000 people roughly 8 miles north of the Jordanian border erupted in widespread protest. Al Zoubi attended some of them. Security forces cracked down, killing hundreds of people over the next month, including the nephew of Al Zoubi's wife.

 Life in Dara'a turned increasingly complicated. To punish the city's residents, the government cut electricity and blocked telephone and Internet service. Water and bread became luxury items.

 "The government started destroying the city," Al Zoubi said.

 For a time, the family tried to stick out the violence, huddling together at home. But with roads into the city blocked, Al Zoubi could no longer buy the items he sold in his stores and he resumed driving trucks.

 During one such trip away, security forces raided his house, threatening his 63-year-old mother and violently pushing the diabetic to the floor with the butt of a rifle. They were searching for Al Zoubi. According to Human Rights Watch, which investigated the attacks in the city, security forces detained hundreds of adults and children in such random sweeps.

 Fearing that he would be taken into custody too, Al Zoubi went to Jordan, where he thought he could work while the conflict tided over. But it only worsened. His children saw bombs erupt as they played outside and he said security forces drove through their neighborhood, shooting at random.

 On May 28, 2012, his family piled into a taxi with just enough clothes to convince border guards that they were only visiting Al Zoubi in Jordan for the weekend. They never came back. After a friend later emailed him a picture of the charred remains of his house, it sunk in- finally - that he could never go home again.

 His wife, Taghred Ahmad, has scouted all of Houston's Arabic markets, discovering to her delight that she can find most of the traditional delicacies they were accustomed to at home. One of the kids, 17-year-old Mohammad, used to wake up terrified in the middle of the night, shaking from nightmares of the shelling of bombs. Now he is slowly learning to sleep through peacefully.'

The flag of freedom

 "As long as this flag is flying, we can tell the whole world that we are fighters for freedom. Revolution until victory."

Whoever enters a mosque or a church is safe

 'Following in the footstep of the prophet, the first leader, we assure the people of Aleppo that whoever enters his home is safe, whoever enters a mosque or a church is safe and whoever lies down his weapon is safe too.

 Our heroic revolutionaries are seekers of freedom not bloodthirsty killers. They are also advocates for mercy not tyrants.'

Connecting Relief Work and Civil Activism

 'Dr. Jalal Nofal, born 1963 in Damascus to a working class family from as-Sweida’, is a prominent psychiatrist and activist who has been involved in politics and relief efforts throughout his lifetime.

 In 1978 Nofal joined the Communist Action Party (CAP), after rejecting the Syrian Communist Party’s pro-regime stances, particularly during the Muslim Brotherhood uprising (1976-82) and the ensuing government crackdown. “With regards to the Hama massacre (1982), for me as a leftist, the Communist Action Party took the most balanced and satisfactory stances,” explained the doctor.

 Nofal, a medical student at Damascus University at the time, remained an active party member until his arrest in 1983, when the regime launched a nationwide crackdown against leftists. He was released in 1991 after more than eight years in prison. Like many of his contemporaries, Nofal decided to resume his studies, graduating from medical school and specializing in psychiatry.



 Before the start of the revolution in March 2011, Nofal was working on a campaign to improve public transport under the slogan “Public Transport that Respects Citizens”. After the revolution began, however, he transitioned from reformist calls to participating in the revolutionary activism sweeping the country. Nofal was convinced that “all democratic movements and individuals must take part in revolutionary activism, regardless of ideology or religion.”

 Nofal worked with the Damascus Neighborhoods Coordinating Committee to organize a protest in the capital’s Arnus Square on May 2, 2011, demanding democracy, an end to the regime’s violence and sectarianism, and the lifting of the siege on the southern city of Darʿa. He was arrested at the protest and spent ten days in ʿAdra prison before being released in an amnesty. He then returned to work with the committee, though it was soon dissolved after its founders were arrested.

 After that, he joined the Damascus Doctors Coordinating Committee, which was set up to cure patients, especially protesters, who were routinely arrested, abused, and tortured at hospitals in the presence of Dr. Nofal and his colleagues. This campaign was effectively halted, as were most others, by widespread arrest campaigns.

 Nofal also worked with the Syrian Arab Red Crescent (SARC), which in his words was “one of the few organizations where revolutionary humanitarian workers were allowed to operate.” Nofal’s relief work focused on psychological and social support for internally displaced persons (IDPs) living in Damascus and victims and witnesses of conflict and siege throughout Rif Dimashq. “Working in Damascus with IDPs was far more dangerous as we were accused of supporting terrorism, while we had more liberties in Rif Dimashq due to the looser grip of the regime,” clarified Nofal.

 The government continued to clamp down on relief efforts, accusing any aid agency of supporting terrorism and arresting and exiling many field workers. In April 2012, Nofal himself was arrested while on SARC duty in Rif Dimashq and subjected to torture while in prison.
Towards the second half of 2012, the armed struggle began to take an increasingly prominent role, but Nofal persisted in his peaceful initiatives. In 2013, he was a founding member of the National Call Movement, which had over 200 members in Damascus and “called for the establishment of a democratic civil state that rejects sectarianism, Islamization and civil war,” as Nofal put it.

 The National Call Movement members aimed to revive the peaceful movement and along with the Syrian Revolutionary Youth they installed speakers chanting anti-regime songs across Damascus. By early 2014, the network was exposed and disbanded; its members, including Nofal, were arrested and forced to confess under torture at the capital’s Military Intelligence Branch 215.

 After his release in early July, Nofal continued his relief and civil society work, only to be arrested less than two weeks later. He was accused of funding terrorism by the Counter-Terrorism Court for having provided relief with his wife in Yarmuk, and spent six months in prison. When Nofal was let out in January 2015, he was smuggled out of the country and fled to Germany to join his wife, poet and activist Khawla Dunia, who had fled the country earlier.
Nevertheless, this reunion did not last long. “What I could offer in Germany was far less than that which I could in Turkey,” explained the doctor. Nofal currently resides in the Turkish southern border town of Gaziantep, where he is a regular guest on programs such as those of Alwan FM, Radio Hara, and Radio Rozana. He is also part of a team of psychiatrists and social workers who work in schools and orphanages, while training therapists and supporting similar activities inside Syria.

 Jalal Nofal is an example of how many Syrian revolutionaries have never drawn a line between two inextricably intertwined realms: relief work and civil society activism. In their opinion, it is in fact impossible to ignore the political dimension that has led to the current suffering.'

Closer than close

 Marcus Henry Weber:

 "Battle for Aleppo: Regime (red) supply route into W. Aleppo has been cut. Rebels(green) are close to fully breaking the siege and opening route into rebel-held Aleppo neighborhoods."



Note 30/5/25, link currently unavailable.

Saraqeb 'attacked with chlorine gas'

 'Barrels suspected to contain chlorine gas have been dropped on a town in Syria, a doctor and rescuers have said. It is not clear who was responsible.'

 It is clear who was responsible. It is only Assad who has been dropping barrels of chlorine from aircraft to kill children. Shame on the BBC.

 They've also only just stopped saying the Russian military helicopter which was shot down nearby, packed to the gills with weaponry, was on a humanitarian mission. Sky News was better, reporting the Syrian National Council's reaction:

 'After shelling, besieging and killing civilians and perpetrating war crimes on them, the Assad regime has resorted once again, and in breach of UN resolutions 2118 and 2235, to using chemical substances and toxic gasses. The daily reality confirms that all the international agreements and previous security council decisions, be they about chemical weapons or otherwise, are meaningless for the Assad regime.'
[https://web.archive.org/web/20160803224353/http://www.skynews.com.au/news/world/mideast/2016/08/03/claims-of-chemical-warfare-in-syria.html]

Captive Syria

Banner reads: "No negotiations before: the cessation of the shelling, the lifting of the siege and the release of the prisoners."

 'No sunlight enters the dingy, oxygen-less cell. Six by ten meters in length, each identical to the other two dozen, occupied by thirty men who sleep on the cold ground. Thaer bides his time, nursing a broken foot and abscessed ear—poorly healed marks from a previous torture session—by drawing caricatures on the walls, caked with a slovenly, muck-like amalgam of sweat, blood, and the thick black smoke from the burning trash which provides the only heat during the cold desert nights in Syria’s heartland. It’s an idle retreat that allows him to briefly escape his reality.

 “Life inside the prison is utterly static. The only physical action is you and your cellmates being drained psychologically and somatically. Your sense of time and place and your surroundings disappears, like shadows you can see but cannot grasp,” Thaer told Newsweek Middle East. We spoke to him through a cellphone he managed to smuggle into the prison. His name is being concealed to protect his safety, but Newsweek Middle East has confirmed his identity and case number through a family member, as well as a lawyer in Damascus.
When revolution broke out in Syria in 2011, Thaer, then an out-of-work theatre director, quickly began organizing theatrical performances promoting freedom, dignity and citizen participation. 

 For a time, art was a relatively safe way to express dissent in Syria. He took part in peaceful demonstrations, and urged fellow activists to remain committed to non-violence when the revolution started arming itself. Then, one summer morning in 2013, the “ghosts” came for him. Named for their shadow business as government hitmen, they carry out the Syrian regime’s dirty work before disappearing without a trace. It was 6:30AM when three cars pulled up to Thaer’s home in Hama. Ten men poured out carrying Kalashnikovs. Without a word, they broke down the door, cracked him in the head with the butt of their rifles, tied his hands and feet and threw him in the trunk of the car. Three years later, he sits in Hama Central Prison, with about 850 others in the “disorder wing”—reserved for political prisoners.

 Thaer is one of the lucky ones. He is alive. His family knows where he is. The same cannot be said for the over 200,000 Syrians estimated to have simply disappeared—swallowed up by a shadowy system of secret prisons without any record in the courts. Agonized, their families have gone years not knowing where they are, if they’ve been charged or sentenced, or if they are alive or dead. In most cases, all that’s known is that they were taken away by the secret police, and never seen again. A few weeks ago, tensions reached a breaking point. The prisoners staged a revolt, blockading themselves inside the disorder wing. In a desperate battle for their lives, they found themselves in control of half of the prison—staring down their jailers, it was either victory or death.

 The most comprehensive effort to date documenting human rights violations committed over the course of the Syrian conflict was completed in April 2016 in a report by the Violations Documentation Center of Syria (VDC). After years of painstaking research collecting documentation through gut-wrenching interviews with the family members of detainees, it estimates some 200,000 have disappeared inside the prison system, and confirmed 23,000 of their names. After testifying with his research at a U.N. commission of inquiry, Bassam Al Ahmad, one of VDC’s founders, collected his files and left Syria. “It’s too much. We’re talking about not just a catastrophe on the level of Syrian society, the future of the economy, of families… People will need psycho-social support for generations.”

 In early 2014, officers of the secret police came to Khalid’s office to arrest him. “Will you cooperate? Or will you be a problem?” the captain asked him. He went quietly, and was taken to a branch of one of the intelligence divisions, where officers accused him of helping to organize demonstrations. Khalid answered that he had never taken part in any. The captain, named Maher, replied, “So you’re going to be a problem now.” Guards seized him, and began to beat him with metal pipes, making him count to eighty. “While they’re beating you, it’s like a dream. You become unconscious, but you are still aware of what is happening. Your mind just hopes that your body can survive the beating,” Khalid recalled. After some time, the officers threw a bucket of cold water on him. His skin shrank, having been stretched out by the beating. Maher asked if he was ready to confess. Khalid swore to God that he had nothing to confess. He says he’ll never forget what the captain uttered next: “Bring me the mother of storms.”

 A guard brought Captain Maher a silicone bat with a metal tip charged with electrical shocks, searing Khalid’s drenched body. “Each hit felt like it made a hole in my head. I didn’t know if I was alive or dead.” But the worst was still to come. Guards fixed thin plastic cuffs to Khalid’s wrists and hoisted him up, suspended from the ceiling. The plastic cut into his skin as he hung with his full weight. He doesn’t know how long he hung for, but eventually he couldn’t take it anymore. When he was brought down, he said he could see bone protruding from his wrist. Khalid then signed a document written up for him, using his mouth to hold the pen.

 “If I didn’t have this experience, I would never believe it. After I’ve been inside, I’ve seen things that will make you crazy for the rest of your life,” Khalid said. After eight months in a civil prison in Adra, Khalid was brought to the Terrorism Court in Damascus. Chained together in a line with twenty other men, officers led them into the building through an underground entrance at the east of the building, then up a long flight of stairs, where a row of soldiers kicked and beat them with clubs as they walked toward the courtroom. As Khalid waited, he listened to the sentences handed down to detainees before him. Execution by hanging. Seven years’ prison. Ten years’ prison with labor. When it was Khalid’s turn, the judge recognized him and asked, “You’re a lawyer, aren’t you?” Khalid nodded his head. “So you confessed under torture.” He was released without charges, and walked out the door. A week later, he left Syria.

 Given asylum in Germany, Khalid now assists with a clandestine network of lawyers advocating on behalf of prisoners who have no voice. Some, taking exceptional risk, operate underground from inside Syria while others in exile are more free to communicate and liaise with the families of those detained, providing one of the only lifelines of information over safely encrypted channels. Lawyers participating in the network, say they have connections inside ten prisons throughout Syria—including to police and intelligence officials who, they claim, are willing to talk.'

The stories we will tell

 Rami Jarrah:

 "Imagine the stories we will tell years from now;
 

 Once upon a time children stood up to a notorious army because the world lied to them and told them they were by their side.

 The sketch is self explanatory: children of Aleppo burn tires to fill the skies with smoke to protect their homes from the planes in the sky."

Regime / Russia Destroy 3 Medical Facilities In 6 Hours

 Dr. Anas Al Kassem:

 '3 more medical facilities have been destroyed by a wave of targeted airstrikes by the Regime / Russian air force in the past 6 hours (2200 hr Damascus time)



 1) Jassem Hospital in Daraa (Southern Syria): Hospital ambulance entrance hit by an airstrike resulting in 10 casualties including: 2 children, 4 women, 1 pharmacist and a nurse. The hospital has 60 staff and serves roughly 2350 patient a month and attends to a population of 40,000. UOSSM supports the hospital with medicine/medical supplies. The hospital is also supported by other large international NGO’s.

 2) Hoor Clinic in (Western Aleppo Countryside)
Destroyed by an airstrike. Casualty/ injury numbers unconfirmed. Clinic managed by the NGO “Iskan”

 3) Forensic Lab in Aleppo:
Hit by airstrikes for the 3rd time in 4 days and completely destroyed. 2 staff are killed including a 25 year old technician and more injured.

 Hospital hit by Airstrike in Northern Aleppo at approximately 11pm Damascus time on July 30, 2016. The hospital was the last operating in Western Rural Aleppo. UOSSM supports the Anadan Hospital with medicine and supplies.

 Anadan had 4 ICU's and a maternity ward, serves 5000 patients monthly, performs 100 surgeries, 35 cesarean section surgeries. This was the last operating hospital in Northern Aleppo leaving a population of 100,000 without medical access.
July 29, 2016‘

 Save The Children’ maternity hospital was bombed in Idleb leaving two people killed, six injured, and a six months pregnant woman who lost both her legs.
In the past 7 days, 4 other hospitals have been bombed in Aleppo crippling the medical system at a time when trauma injuries are skyrocketing from the government siege. Patients are avoiding critical treatments fearing injury/death from frequent hospital attacks.'



 Julian Röpcke:

 "UOSSM Canada-supported staff fled from Anadan to Hawar after the air strike last night. Today they got hit there again."
[https://twitter.com/JulianRoepcke/status/759862111694573568]

Local councils and civil institutions fill a gap

 'Where rebel groups have taken over areas previously held by Bashar al-Assad’s government, local residents have begun to organize councils to provide basic functions for their communities, who now enjoy freedoms that were prohibited by Assad. For the first time since the Ba’ath party gained control of Syria in 1963, democratic elections for appointments to local and provincial councils have taken place.

 Robin Yassin-Kassab and Leila Al-Shami, authors of “Burning Country: Syrians in Revolution and War,” met with Syrians who fled to Lebanon, Turkey and Jordan to learn more about the details of the local councils and their structure.

 Al-Shami: "The local councils are in liberated areas where the regime has completely withdrawn or has been pushed out. Now basic administrative units are functioning there, so they’re responsible for the provision of all social services, and they’re responsible for water supplies, electricity supplies. They often work with external donors to distribute humanitarian aid, or aid which they’ve collected from the local community. They’re providing support to the makeshift hospitals, makeshift education facilities. In some areas they’ve also been responsible for growing and distributing food, specifically in communities which have been under siege, such as Darayya. And in Darayya they’ve set up a fantastic local library, and they also have legal services. They also sometimes operate security services or community police forces. It depends on their size and capacity."

 Yassin-Kassab: "They are, of course, in survival mode, and that’s that sad thing. They’re dealing with the day-to-day, trying to keep life going under bombardment, under siege."

 Al-Shami: "The level of survival sustenance they have is in relation to how much of a target that community is for the regime and for its ally Russia. Some of the communities which have been most under attack by the regime are communities which have had very successful local councils and have had very successful experience in building these grassroot structures, such as Darayya. It seems that these democratic structures are precisely what has been under attack by the regime in a lot of places."

 Al-Shami: "Governments have provided money through the provincial councils, and lots of international aid agencies are sending things through the local councils. Lots of Syrian aid agencies."

 Yassin-Kassab: "In many places, there’s nothing really getting through, and people are trying to grow food on their rooftops, and so on. The real, fundamental point about sustainability is that if you got access to Aleppo, you could take them water purifiers, tons of food, and you build hospitals. And then the next day, these things would be bombed by the regime and Russia. So these things are ultimately not sustainable, of course, and won’t be sustainable if the world continues to sit back and watch."

 Yassin-Kassab: "They’re in the liberated areas [rebel-held areas]. There’s a lot of them in the south, in Daraa, where the regime has been pulled out of that southern province, reaching down to the border with Jordan. In the suburbs in Damascus, which are liberated from the regime, and usually besieged, so places like Darayya, places like Douma, Harasta. Idlib province, part of Hama province. A little bit of Homs province. A bit of the north of Latakia province, and large areas of Aleppo province and Aleppo city."

 Al-Shami: "In areas that are under regime control, there are councils which are still operating in secret."

 Al-Shami: "I think the council structures themselves have not been inclusive to women at all. There’s very few women that are sitting on local councils. What they try to do is include people who are selected to the council for their technical, professional expertise. They’ve tried to include people from prominent families and tribes. They’ve always included, in mixed communities, minority groups, so people from different religions or sects.

 There’s been lots of campaigning by activists to call for greater women’s greater representation."

 Yassin-Kassab: "There are members who are liberals and democrats, and then the more moderate sort of Islamist as well has been involved, and then nationalists and ex-Baathists and so on. But in a way it’s not been so important. In general, they’re non-ideological bodies, particularly at the local level, which, in a way, looks like a way forward. It doesn’t matter if one guy is a leftist and the guy next to him is an Islamist. They’re there because one of them knows something about how to get the water system working, and another one knows something about education, and they’re working about practical things for the sake of the community."

 Al-Shami: "I think it’s been very different, the experience of cooperation between these civilians and administrative structures and armed groups. And I think some of the difference often comes down to whether armed groups are the local community itself. Because in many areas, the armed groups that are operating there, they’re the sons and brothers and fathers from that neighborhood. The men have picked up arms to defend their community. So then they’re also part of the same families or the same networks as the local councils. In those kind of areas, cooperation’s been very broad. Some councils, and Darayya is one example, they’ve specifically set up structures to improve cooperation. So for example, the military brigade in that area attends some of the meetings of the local council, and they ensure cooperation so that the militia is essentially working as a security force which is subject to popular and local control and to civil control. So that’s obviously an ideal model. That’s not the case everywhere."

 Yassin-Kassab: "It’s difficult to remember that in 2011, 2012 — it was this brief window — it looked like there could be a completely different future in Syria and the wider Middle East. Change was happening at a tremendous rate, and people were really interested in democratic ideas. These weren’t seen as something imposed from the West or imported from the West. They were seen as immediate necessities. And people were discussing what that meant: how could people run their own lives, how could they live without dictatorship.

 The democratically elected local councils are a glimmer of that hope surviving in the midst of all of this chaos." '

Syrians are left saving themselves

Anna Nolan:

 "These burning tyres are saving lives than billions of dollars spent on the 'war in syria' refuse to.

 300,000 people are under siege in ‪Aleppo‬. Cut out from food and medicine and penned in on all sides Russian and Regime jets are dropping barrels bombs and missiles on trapped civilians.

 For years Syrian heroes like the White Helmets and medics have asked for a no-fly zone to stop these brutal attacks from the air. Their calls have been ignored.
As a last resort they are now burning tyres to create smoke so the fighter jets cannot see the hospitals, schools and homes they like to target.

 Yet again Syrians are left saving themselves."



Rami Jarrah:

 "Resistance groups in Aleppo have began a mass operation that has already gained significant territory from Assad's forces. Rebel groups claim that 1km of advance is left to break the siege of Aleppo. Blue area are those that resistance groups in besieged Aleppo (green) have taken from Assad's forces (red)."
[https://twitter.com/RamiJarrah/status/759808541536419840]



 Note 30/5/25, first link broken.

Hillary Clinton will reset Syria policy

 'Hillary Clinton will order a "full review" of the United States' strategy on Syria as a "first key task" of her presidency, resetting the policy to emphasise the "murderous" nature of the Assad regime, foreign policy adviser with her campaign has said.

 Jeremy Bash, who served as chief of staff for the Pentagon and the Central Intelligence Agency, said Mrs Clinton would both escalate the fight against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, and work to get Bashar al-Assad, the Syrian president, "out of there".

 "A Clinton administration will not shrink from making clear to the world exactly what the Assad regime is," he said in an exclusive interview with The Telegraph. "It is a murderous regime that violates human rights; that has violated international law; used chemical weapons against his own people; has killed hundreds of thousands of people, including tens of thousands of children."

 Mr Obama has been roundly criticised by top experts and members of his own administration for instating an approach to the Syrian war - which has seen estimates of more than 400,000 people killed - that is riven with contradictions.

 The White House remains notionally committed to removing Mr Assad, whilst at the same time, working in alliance with Russia, Damascus' top champion. As America switches its focus to destroying Isil and creating alliances with Moscow, the White House has quietly dropped its rhetoric against the Assad regime. Critics warn that this approach will only foster anti-American sentiment among Syrians, who feel abandoned by the United States following its failure to take decisive action against Damascus.

 A source with access to White House officials said the administration sees the dangers that partnering with Russia could have in terms of worsening the dynamics on the ground, but that the president is trying to cover his bases until he steps down in November. The source said the White House feels it cannot not be seen to be doing nothing against an Al-Qaeda affiliate at a time of heightened national security in America. Were there to be an attack in the US that was claimed by Al-Qaeda the president's legacy would be destroyed, they fear.'

Making the Anti-Assad Case in Washington

 'Few political movements have a harder case to make to the world, or to the American public and its leaders, than Syria’s secular opposition. And few movements have more reason to feel discouraged or abandoned right now. An organization like the Syrian American Council, for example, faces a morass in both Syria and Washington, D.C., pleading the ever-imperiled case for supporting democracy in Syria even as the conflict worsens and attention to situation flags in the U.S.

 A collection of non-jihadist rebel groups was recently encircled by the Syrian army in their former stronghold in Aleppo, and are coping with a number of steep geopolitical hurdles outside the country: the perception of Assad as a partner in fighting terrorism, the widespread conflation of the Syrian opposition with Sunni jihadism, a U.S. administration wary of antagonizing the pro-Assad Iranian regime and seemingly set on brokering the opposition’s surrender, and a U.S. and western public allergic to anything that even smacks of expanded involvement in the Middle East.

 But the people making the anti-Assad case in Washington are not exactly discouraged or demoralized. On July 20, while most of the country fixated on the chaos unfolding at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, I met with Chad Brand and Shlomo Bolts of the Washington, D.C.-based Syrian American Council (SAC), a group whose mission is to “organize and advocate for a free, democratic, and pluralistic Syria through American support.”

 SAC backs things like no-fly zones, the establishment of humanitarian safe-areas in Syria, and U.S. weapons and training assistance for the Syrian opposition. They’ve gotten a cold hearing from the White House, and have largely given up on lobbying Obama’s inner circle. At the same time, they push an attainable legislative agenda and have had some successes in Congress. House Foreign Affairs Committee chairman Ed Royce, once a problematic member of Congress from the Syrian opposition’s perspective, is now a full-fledged ally; earlier this month he helped introduce a bill authored by Democrat Eliot Engel that would expand U.S. sanctions against the Assad regime.

 As Brand, one of SAC’s government relations officers, explained, Congress is “nipping at” Boeing’s controversial sale of aircraft to the Iran government, with some members of Congress insisting on measures that would ensure the planes aren’t used to ferry weapons and personnel to Syria. SAC has successfully advocated for including funding for the Syrian “train and equip” program in defense authorization bills.

 And they often get a sympathetic hearing from members of Congress and their staff when they recount the abuses of the Assad regime and the dangers the Syrian government poses to global order. Congressmen and their staff sometimes learn of specific regime atrocities for the first time from SAC: “To a person they say, ‘We didn’t know about that and we wish we knew.’ The problem is that the administration doesn’t brief us on these things, Brand said. He emphasized that SAC is a nonpartisan organization, “even if and when we get stymied by the administration.”

 Not even the potentially dubious choices of their own government, or the recent global wave of attacks by supporters of ISIS, whose “capital” is in the Syrian city of Raqqa; or the reality of ceaseless death and destruction in a strategically vital part of the world, have been enough to really make Americans care about Syria, even during a fractious election year. If anything, one of the two major U.S. political parties is tacking in a sharply isolationist direction, with Donald Trump alleging that Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton had supported regime change in Syria during his July 21 acceptance speech for the Republican presidential nomination.

 The fact that Americans have largely tuned out the moral and humanitarian dimensions of the conflict doesn’t mean SAC’s goals are hopeless. Bolts believes there a pragmatism to the American public and its leaders that won’t allow a situation like Syria’s to endure forever. “My own personal view is that something happens in the American political cycle when the public sees a lot of people dying repeatedly,” said Bolts. “There’s awareness for the first few massacres, and then after awhile people wonder, ‘What’s next?’ And if large numbers of people are killed, it deadens sensitivities. The main hope for us is to get people to understand the costs of their inactions….it’s not practical to ignore when tens of thousands of people are being killed.”

 “Long-term, long-game, there’s reason for optimism,” he added. “It could just be a much longer time frame than a lot of us were hoping for.” '