Whether Obama’s Syria team failed to predict what was all
too predictable in Syria, or simply did not give a damn, does not matter. The
result is both a tragedy and a travesty of justice, decency and humanity. Obama
might have killed Bin Ladin, but he also gifted Al-Qaeda a new base for its global
operations and the potential of making a hundred new Bin Ladins. The brunt of
this failure will be borne by Syrians of course, but soon people all over the region
and the world, including Americans, will suffer as well. This is the price of
indifference in our interconnected world.
Monday October
29, 2012
Today’s
Death toll: 115. The Breakdown: Toll includes 7 children and 3
women: 53 in Damascus and suburbs (including 10 in Al-Hajar Al-Aswad and 10 in the
Jaramana explosion), 27 in Aleppo (most in Maghayer neighborhood), 13 in Idlib,
9 in Homs, 6 in Daraa, 4 in Hama and 3 martyrs in Deir Ezzor. Other Developments: 416 violations of the ceasefire
have been documented, including aerial bombardment in 26 locations mostly in Damascus
and suburbs (LCC).
News
Special
Reports
Many families that sought sanctuary in
Syria are back in Baghdad after escaping for their lives a second time.
The failure to push through a truce so
limited in its ambitions — just four days — has been a sobering reflection of
the international community's inability to ease 19 months of bloodshed in
Syria. It also suggests that the stalemated civil war will drag on, threatening
to draw in Syria's neighbors in this highly combustible region such as Turkey,
Lebanon and Jordan.
A jihadist group prospers in Syria
A jihadist group prospers in Syria
For more than a year, the Obama
administration has been assuring the world that the downfall of Syrian dictator
Bashar al-Assad is “a matter of time.” Yes, its own Middle East experts warned,
but how much time matters. The longer the fighting goes on, they said, the more
likely it is that what began as a peaceful mass opposition movement would be
hijacked by extremists, including allies of al-Qaeda. President Obama ignored
that advice, ruling out measures that could have quickly brought down the
regime — such as a no-fly zone — in favor of a year of feckless diplomacy. But
it turned out the experts were right. So now the consequence of Obama’s
passivity has a name, one that will surely haunt the occupant of the White
House in 2013: Jabhat al-Nusra.
Op-Eds
In their desperation, Syrians have
become cynical towards America's true stance on the Assad regime. Still, they
have given the Obama administration the benefit of the doubt, telling
themselves that nothing will change before the US elections. But as the number
of dead steadily increased, the hope of a shift in US foreign policy towards
Syria after the elections has faded. This was clearly expressed on October 19,
the first Friday since the revolution began to have been given an anti-American
name: "America, your silence is complicit in thousands of our
deaths."
Ammar Abdulhamid & Khawla
Yusuf: The
Shredded Tapestry: The State of Syria Today
Like so many are willing to say these days, it was only a matter of
time: the flourishing of Jihadi groups, Arab-Kurdish clashes, and the breakdown
of the state. Each and every of these developments was all too predictable, and
was in fact predicted, including by yours truly on this blog, and by many
others.
Whether Obama’s Syria team failed to see this, failed to predict the
all too predictable, or simply did not give a damn, does not matter. The result
is both a tragedy and a travesty. Obama might have killed Bin Ladin, but he
also gifted
Al-Qaeda a new base and the potential of making a hundred new Bin Ladins.
The brunt of this failure will be borne by Syrians of course, but soon Americans
will suffer as well. Soon, someone in the United States will once again have a
reason to ask “why do they hate us?” And experts will rush in to provide the
same tired answers that conflate ideology with facts. The result will be new and
often flawed policies that reflect too many ideological compromises to allow
them to be effective, and the world will sputter on towards a new tragedy.
You cannot break this cycle without some honest discussion about
America’s real place in this world and without engaging the world in a real
discussion about the nature, structure and decision-making mechanisms of the new
world order. As things stand right now, we are still standing in the shadows of
the Cold War, yet to transition into a new vision of a the world beyond the
issue of polarity.
The
New Front or the Internal Spillover
Developments
in the majority-Kurdish neighborhood of Al-Ashrafiyeh in Aleppo City come as another
warning sign of how much worse things in Syria could still get. If the
situation is not controlled immediately, spillovers will be felt in the Kurdish-majority
towns of Efrin and Kobani in north Aleppo, and Kurdish-majority areas beyond,
including the critical province of Al-Hassakeh. A new front will signal what
might be an irreversible dissolution process for Syria.
Video Highlights
Children are among the victims as usual: Al-Hajar Al-Aswad,
Damascus City http://youtu.be/7L_8-4j65Lc
, http://youtu.be/bswy3HY-O9Y Idlib
http://youtu.be/rW7ezJI1MmM , http://youtu.be/dEIaCSsfkXI Karak,
Daraa Province http://youtu.be/bNbhty96FCw
The pounding of Eastern Ghoutah region in Damascus Province by
MiGs and Sukhoys continues: Kafar Batna http://youtu.be/ZDhWIksDies Saqba
http://youtu.be/4FUE5ATKP7M Hamouriyeh http://youtu.be/H5iBfpqQVm4 Arbeen
http://youtu.be/XiEJt9rxfFI Jobar
http://youtu.be/njKaxax-UdU Al-Tadamon http://youtu.be/JjJgTTlwybg Harasta
http://youtu.be/jqdoUTmZsbY
The city of Deir Ezzor received its share of the pounding as
well http://youtu.be/E-XH6XCGJ8w
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