Outrage
will not spur the international community into action. What we really need is
some in-rage.
Friday July 13, 2012 – The beginning of a week
dedicated to “Toppling Annan – the Servant of Assad and Iran.”
Today’s Death toll: 80.
The Breakdown: 28 in Idlib,14 in Homs, 13 in Damascus City (in the Palestinian
Refugee Camp of Yarmouke), 12 in Aleppo, 5 in Daraa, 3 in Deir Ezzor, 2 in
Damascus Suburbs, 2 in Hama, and 1 in Lattakia.
Syrian witnessed 738 rallies all across the country today: 140 in
Hama, 138 in Aleppo and 170 in Damascus City and Suburbs.
News
In the wake of the reported killings in Treimseh, “the immediate
popular reaction at this stage is anger towards all,” wrote Ammar Abdulhamid,
a Syrian opposition activist based in the U.S. “The impotence of the opposition
and continued dithering by international leaders seem unfathomable to locals
after so many months of bloodshed, and so many massacres. Who can blame them?”
(More Quotes in The
Weekly Standard).
Op-Eds &
Special Reports
Will
Syria’s Conflict Spill Over into War-Weary Iraq? As the
violence in Syria spirals into an increasingly bloody maelstrom, Iraq's Foreign
Minister voices his country's fears that the chaos is spilling across the
border—and that Baghdad won't be able to contain it.
Messages
from the Syrian war zone: what life is really like in Homs Late last
year, on a bus to Homs, the city at the centre of the Syrian uprising, British
journalist James Harkin struck up a friendship with local boy Mohammed. These
are the messages he has sent from his home in the war zone
US
manipulation of news from Syria is a red herring The big
picture is clear. A slaughter is under way in Syria, largely carried out by
government forces and militias
Moving assets or preparing for mass genocide?
There are
two ways for filtering the reports on Assad’s decision to move WMDs from
Damascus to Homs. One, he is preparing for their deployment in his intensifying
ethnic cleansing campaign against the Sunni population in Central Syria (Homs,
Hama and Idlib), and two, he is merely moving his most prized assets from areas
in which he is quickly losing control to the Alawite enclave he is busy
creating. The two options are not mutually exclusive of course. There is
nothing to prevent Assad from doing both.
Comment: Syria will never close
its doors in the face of Palestinians. The revolutionaries understand the
dilemma in which the Palestinians of Syria find themselves, a dilemma that did
not stop so many of them from joining the ranks of the revolution or indirectly
providing aid and support to the protesters. As far as the protesters are
concerned, the Palestinians of Syria are no less Syrian than any National ID
carrying citizen. Once transition to a new democratic order is accomplished,
should the Palestinians of Syria ever want to become full-fledged citizens in
the legal sense as well, I have no doubt
that the majority of Syrians will support this.
Meanwhile,
the Palestinians in the refugee camp of Yarmouke in Damascus City today
showed exactly where their sympathies lie when they demonstrated in support of
the people of Treimseh and were fired on by pro-Assad militias, leaving 13
people dead: http://youtu.be/2412UcMz8ks
, http://youtu.be/8SrBiXdECSw a child
among the martyrs, hit with a bullet to the head http://youtu.be/8HdKgtaOFPU
What Rebels Want!
There are
major problems with this Time article beginning from the title, which
contradicts with everything that resistance leaders on the ground are saying –
Intel will be useful of course, but it will mean absolutely nothing if we did
not have enough arms, – going into the misconception that the Free Syrian Army "hired
Brian Sayers to represent their interests in Washington," which is simply not
true and Mr. Sayers himself will be the first to say so (or at least I hope so),
and ending up with misconstruing Mr. Sayers’ assertion that rebels need
intelligence and not only weapons.
This is
what Mr. Sayers actually said:
“Everyone says, just
give them a bunch of weapons. Well, rocket propelled grenades are fine but
ultimately what they need is intelligence support in order to bring down the
regime,” says Sayers, “because ultimately the regime has more sophisticated
weaponry.
Very true!
We need more than just arming the rebels, we need a more coherent strategy in
which arming the rebels is only one element as we have argued in our own Six
Points Plan, and as I argue here.
Some say that’s not
nearly enough. “If the U.S. is only going to be a facilitator of arms flows
into the country, that’s not enough to be stabilize things, to end the
violence,” says Ammar Abdulhamid, a Syrian dissident who has been in exile in
Washington since 2005. “In fact, it only makes things worse.” Adbulhamid wants
Washington and NATO to impose a no-fly zone as they did over Libya and Iraq.
Intel
sharing, and Mr. Sayers argues the case pretty well, will be not be enough if
the move was not coupled with more serious support, including weapons. After
all, if the purpose is to “level the playing field,” as Mr. Sayers argues,
then, you have to bear in mind that Russia and Iran are not only providing the
regime with Intel, they are also providing it with weapons.
The
allusion in the article that the “FSA is getting plenty of arms and cash from
the Qatari, Saudi Arabian and, to a lesser extent, the Emirati governments” is inaccurate
at best. Weapons supplies to the local resistance remain pretty limited, and no
way near meeting the demands of the local resistance.
This
Reuters report, “Syria
rebels get light arms, heavy weapons elusive,” explains things much
more clearly:
Syrian rebels are
smuggling small arms into Syria through a network of land and sea routes
involving cargo ships and trucks moving through Turkey, Lebanon and Iraq,
maritime intelligence and Free Syrian Army (FSA) officers say. Western and
regional powers deny any suggestion they are involved in gun running. Their
interest in the sensitive border region lies rather in screening to ensure
powerful weapons such as surface to air missiles do not find their way to
Islamist or other militants.
FSA fighters say
munitions supply chains remain tenuous. In one clash last week, rebel fighters
say they ran out of ammunition which forced them to retreat from one of their
strongholds in the northern Idlib province.
The steady trickle of
relatively unsophisticated arms making its way to forces opposing President
Bashar al-Assad is being financed mainly by wealthy individuals in Saudi Arabia
and Qatar, a se c urity source said, as well as from expatriate Syrian
supporters. It complements supplies captured from the Syrian army or brought by
defectors.
But the
main problem with the Time’s article is thinking that Mr. Sayers speak for the
FSA, and that his advice is synonymous with rebel demands. That’s not true. Mr.
Sayers represent a lobby formed recently by Syrian-Americans and tasked with
supporting the FSA, not representing the FSA. Most FSA leaders are not yet aware
of the existence of the group nor of Ms. Sayers.
Mr. Sayers
approach is sound. Indeed, there is nothing wrong with demanding the possible,
while others, like me, push for what seems impossible. But his approach
represents a support strategy and does not represent the official
point of view of the FSA, whose leaders still demand a no-fly zone, as one of
their most prominent representatives, Khalid Abou Salah, argued recently in the Friends of
Syria Conference in Paris.
The reason
why so many of us still call for a more integrated strategy for intervention
that goes beyond sending weapons and sharing Intel but calls for air-strikes
and deployment peacekeepers is simple: we are not just concerned with toppling
the regime, we want to create a stable democratic state that respects the
rights and ensures the security of all Syrians. A policy of arming without
mitigation does not just risk putting weapons in the wrong hands, it forgets
that often the right hands become wrong once you put weapons in them.
Disarmament,
demobilization and reintegration are never easy. Considering the regional,
ethnic and religious diversity in Syria, and bearing in mind the current
violence and fragmentation and growing popular frustration and anger, DDR will indeed be a
nightmare. I think that a strategy in which air strikes are used to target positions of heavy artillery and roving tank columns and to ground Assad’s helicopter gunships and jets will create a situation in which light weapons are more than enough to help local resistance
groups secure their areas. In fact, this is exactly what happened before Assad
deployed his tanks, artillery and air force. In this scenario, which also calls
for rapid deployment of peacekeepers to critical areas, the risks for
empowering the wrong groups and for carrying out revenge killings are
substantially minimized.
Video Highlights
Treimseh,
Hama:
the destruction wrought by shelling http://youtu.be/6EGR9xZDxWw
The funeral procession for yesterday’s martyrs begins at the mosque http://youtu.be/rWwG8fW8Lbk The man has
his throat slit http://youtu.be/_w_k--lM2ao
Another martyr was a local doctor who was killed as he treated the wounded http://youtu.be/Pq3ZWUBXGjY The martyrs http://youtu.be/vHXDI2l62fA , http://youtu.be/NR1ZkKHbw1I The burial
of 40 people http://youtu.be/bkrBQc-FAVA
The tanks that took part in pounding the city on July 12 http://youtu.be/btDPbh5kr2M , http://youtu.be/btDPbh5kr2M
Al-Rami,
Jabal Al-Zawiyeh, Idlib Province: today’s shelling leaves a number of martyrs http://youtu.be/V778oYMufrc , http://youtu.be/Y6yelOJUN6E , http://youtu.be/vQWu7bQHE48 The wounded http://youtu.be/_hZiV1smvNg Meanwhile,
helicopter gunships continue their pounding of the mountainous region http://youtu.be/FqA0PTh-fxI
Hraak,
Daraa:
rescuing the wounded after a local rally came under fire http://youtu.be/fmM3Qmiviec
Taybah,
Daraa:
the town is pounded by helicopter gunship http://youtu.be/cGdzZS43Mfk
So is nearby Jizeh http://youtu.be/RlkYxNTHm34
Children among the wounded http://youtu.be/zKW_GyfAnCg
Houla,
Homs:
the pounding and continues killing adults and children http://youtu.be/88uOzQGYh0I , http://youtu.be/PmgYnRUNlvE The
continuing pounding sets the local crops on fire http://youtu.be/xnjhWpaOk0I And the
pounding never stops http://youtu.be/WA1DLRFKUtc
Rastan,
Homs:
the daily pounding continues http://youtu.be/e4bQWbjd1Rk
Homs City: the pounding of Old Homs
continues: Khaldiyeh http://youtu.be/W9vcakYwpPY
Jouret Al-Shayah http://youtu.be/_J6nA1Y2DU0
, http://youtu.be/KyWfgrneFv4 , http://youtu.be/wJnP5mgveks Qarabis
http://youtu.be/DnUzYgKKU78
Eizaz.
Aleppo Province:
a tank column tries to storm into the city http://youtu.be/Tzy_T0CQoAE
, http://youtu.be/umB6rDY8XLc
This new defection
by an air force pilot was inspired by the defection of the Syrian Ambassador in
Iraq http://youtu.be/1TyyJIqNagY
In order to counter the growing frustration
and recourse to threats of vendettas, activists throughout the country are
hoisting signs with messages like this one from Kafar Sousseh Neighborhood in
Damascus City: “the difference between vengeance and justice is like the
difference the regime and the revolution.”
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