For all the talk about prevention, the actions of world
leaders towards the tragic developments in Syria reflect more a deep-seated belief
in the inevitable than the preventable. Thirty thousand innocent people have
been killed and millions made homeless because no one had the courage to challenge
an assumption, and a callous prophecy was thus allowed to fulfill itself.
Tuesday September
4, 2012
Today’s
Death toll: 155. The Breakdown: 80 in Damascus and suburbs
(including 18 in Douma, 10 in Moadamia, and 10 in Daraya), 17 in Hama, 15 in
Aleppo, 12 in Daraa, 10 in Idlib, 9 in Homs 6 in Deir Ezzor, and 4 in Lattakia.
* Reports
from local activists speak of an ongoing battle between rebels and loyalists over
control of the northernmost coastal strip separating Syria and Turkey. In the
course of the battle and for the first time since the beginning of the revolution,
Alawite villages were targeted by rebels using mortars confiscated from loyalists
in previous clashes. For the first time since the beginning of the revolution, loyalists
were forced to flee their villages. Rebels seem adamant on having their own
access to the sea.
News
Op-Eds
& Special Reports
Czech diplomats are working on
behalf of the United States to find the whereabouts of an American journalist
and former U.S. Marine who went missing in Syria more than three weeks ago.
When I set out last week to find
some of a reported wave of Syrian refugees waiting to enter Turkey, I wasn’t
sure what to expect. Would they be pressed against a fence? Camped out on a
border line? My Syrian translator said something about them being stuck in a
“no man’s land” between the two countries.
If the fighters seeking to oust Mr.
Assad sometimes portray their battle as a struggle for democracy, the Sunni
Muslim children of the Zaatari camp tell a much uglier story of sectarian
revenge.
The outgunned Free Syrian Army is
scrounging for weapons to arm the large number of volunteers coming forward to
fight for the opposition.
The Syrian leader believes that a campaign
of mass murder will be his path to victory. Is he right?
Yassin Al-Haj Saleh, who spent 16
years as a political prisoner in Syria, says that the imprisonment conditions
in Syria are very different to those portrayed by British journalist Fisk in a
recent newspaper article
Assad's war has claimed four times
as many victims in 20 months as have been killed in the Israel-Palestine
conflict in the last 20 years.
The fact that the Obama White House
is today unmoved by the same sort of strafing and bombing of Syrian civilians [as
happened in Libya] suggests that in the end the administration has no red lines
at all. And the Republican candidate and his surrogates, who decry the
bloodshed and the massacres, have so far refrained from calling for notably
stronger action. Will Assad have greater reason to fear a Romney administration
than he does an Obama one?
Today’s article
in the New York Times purports to offer a glimpse of Syria’s future, it may
very well be right. The problem it fails to mention how Assad worked
hard to get us to this point, and how he was aided in his endeavor by
international dithering. Since the beginning, many Syrian activists and
dissidents have read through Assad’s obvious strategy and have called for early
international intervention to help prevent this devolution. No one listened. Now
the nightmare is unfolding. Assad can rejoice, so can all those who bet on the fragmentation
of Syria.
Video Highlights
In the village of Al-Bouaydah Al-Sharqiyah, Homs,
doctors operated on a dying pregnant woman hit by a nipper in an attempt to
save her fetus, but he was born dead to join his mother http://youtu.be/zP_p7ErNmuM
Brig. Gen. Mustafa Al-Shaikh, leader of the High
Military Council, inspects the living conditions of refugees along the
Syrian-Turkish borders. Turkey decided to close its borders to stop the influx
of refugees leaving people stranded in no man’s land and subject to shelling by
regime forces http://youtu.be/bDLdhWTxRP4
Rebels down a MIG in Jabal Al-Zawiyeh, killing the pilot. Leader
of the Syria Martyrs Brigades in Jabal Al-Zawiyeh, Jamal Maarouf introduces us to
the scene: http://youtu.be/DMJSpCaA4Po
The first few moments http://youtu.be/7kquGass0l0
Damascus: the summary executions continue: Tadamon http://youtu.be/jeyqB11NdOo Douma
finding badly decomposed bodies http://youtu.be/AwwMfec3Hjo,
http://youtu.be/zsmO2OztXxo , http://youtu.be/hQn4CA3l9vY Moadamiyeh
http://youtu.be/6M7BTBGGIt8 , http://youtu.be/T6OVX0RrBks , http://youtu.be/dbc3OGP0UMg
In Hama, a new massacre takes place in Al-Fan Al-Shimali http://youtu.be/UuY5Qq2C2Ks , http://youtu.be/DMBsjQNurWI
In Aleppo City, locals pick up the dead from the streets of Hanano
Neighborhood http://youtu.be/W4k3whPQWGw
Elsewhere, in Daher Awwad, buildings catch fire on account of pounding
by MIGs http://youtu.be/XxrQn-cHts4
In Idlib, the pounding of restive towns continues: Kafrenbel http://youtu.be/E6yqkZ-BD0o
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