President Obama just regained his voice on things Syrian. Now
we wait for him to acquire some willpower to act. True, contemplating intervention
is never easy, and the U.S. is not meant to be the keepers of world order, but
with great power comes great responsibility, there is no avoiding that, and
what is unfolding in Syria today is a great humanitarian disaster that needs to
be mitigated. The U.S. cannot turn its back on that indefinitely. At one point,
it will be called upon to act. Its failure to do so earlier only served to make
the task more complex, dangerous and thankless. The fact that a nonviolent protest
movement was allowed to turn into an armed insurrection paving the way for civil
war only increases the culpability of international leaders, including President
Obama, and turns intervention, as complex and hazardous as it is bound to be, into
an even greater moral must. I can only hope President Obama sees the light
soon.
Sunday January
27, 2013
Today’s
Death Toll: 106 martyrs including 5 women, 11 children, and 3 who were
tortured to death: 41 fell in Damascus and suburbs, 18 in Homs, 16 in Aleppo,
10 in Daraa, 9 in Idlib, 7 in Hama, 2 in Hasakeh, 2 in Deir Ezzor and 1 in
Latakia (LCCs).
Points
of Random Shelling: 337 points were
shelled by regime forces, including 21 points that were shelled using
warplanes, 4 points using phosphorous bombs, 3 points using vacuum bombs, 2
points using cluster bombs, 116 points using artillery shelling, 94 points
using mortal shelling, and 85 points using missiles (LCCs).
Clashes: The Free Syrian Army clashed with regime forces in 141
points. Operations included freeing of dozens of detainees from the Military
Security branch in the areas of ‘Assas in Damascus Suburbs and targeting the
Security branch in Harasta with mortars. Also, the Air Force Headquarters in
Sahnaya were struck and a number of tanks were destroyed in the heart of
Damascus. FSA rebels also targeted shabiha militias stationed on the outskirts
of the city in Deir Ezzor. In Homs, FSA rebels stormed the Political Security
intelligence branch in Deir Baalbeh District. In Daraa, rebels repelled a loyalist
attack on the town of Basr Al-Harir (LCCs).
News
Obama
says struggling over whether to intervene in Syria "In
a situation like Syria, I have to ask: can we make a difference in that
situation?" Obama said in an interview with The New Republic published on
the magazine's website… "And how do I weigh tens of thousands who've been
killed in Syria versus the tens of thousands who are currently being killed in
the Congo?" he said…. "We do nobody a service when we leap before we
look, where we ... take on things without having thought through all the
consequences of it," Obama told CBS. "We are not going to be able to
control every aspect of every transition and transformation" in conflicts
around the world, he said. "Sometimes they're going to go sideways."
Israel
Girds For Attacks As Syria Falls Apart At least one Iron Dome missile
defense battery was deployed Sunday in northern Israel amid reports of intense
security consultations with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu regarding Syria
and the possibility of chemical weapons falling into the hands of Islamist
rebels or being transferred to the militant group Hezbollah.
Palestinians
fleeing Syria are double refugees Syria provided tens of thousands of
Palestinians with a livable sanctuary after what they refer to as the Nakba or
catastrophe of 1948. Over the decades they built a city from the original tents
in Damascus’s Yarmouk camp, which until recently housed about 150,000 people. When
anti-regime protests broke out in 2011, even those sympathetic to the
opposition in Yarmouk were wary, conscious of their guest status. Late last
year however, the war came to them. “It’s the Nakba of Yarmouk,” says Um Mazen.
Mined
area in Syria border promises oil “This region has considerable natural
and cultural heritage as well as areas to be used for energy. There are
resources for oil and natural gas production. A method for exploiting the
cleared terrain regarding all finds will be elaborated on and announced to the
public,” Karahocagil said, adding that mine clearance falls under the
jurisdiction of the National Defense Ministry.
Special
Reports
Ammar Abdulhamid: Syria's civil
war is now strongly characterised by militias identifying along sectarian
lines. The growing divide between Sunnis and Alawites has profound implications
for Syria, and the Middle East.
Hundreds of women took to the streets
of Banias early on in the uprising, demanding the release of thousands of men
who had been rounded up by security forces loyal to the regime. Activist Nadja
Mansour told NOW that women back then led many of the peaceful movements. But
as the violence increased, peaceful activities decreased, and the role of women
also diminished.
Daily life in the suburbs of Damascus
is getting harder, writes Bill Neely, as the bitter and bloody battle for
control of the Syrian capital grinds on.
There is also a sectarian reason why
the Assad regime backs the PKK, according to Othman. Most of the PKK’s
leadership hails from a rarified minority: Alawite Kurds. Abdullah Ocalan, the
PKK’s founder who is now in Turkish prison, is an Alawite from Maabatli, a town
from which most of Syria’s Alawite Kurds, perhaps 200,000, hail. Kurds make up
more than 10% of Syria’s 23 million citizens, and the vast majority of them
adhere to a moderate version of Sunni Islam.
… regime officers are afraid that
their platoons of conscripts could desert at the first opportunity, while the
rebels are too low on weapons and ammunition to forge ahead. The result is a
stalemate which has made life impossible for the Kurdish civilians who used to
live in the 60 villages in the area, in the northern reaches of Latakia
province. Almost all have left, moving farther north toward the Turkish border
where they feel safer. For now, they are crammed into small houses left vacant
by better-off Syrians near the border and who are now waiting out the war in
Turkey. But more arrive each day, putting a strain on both lodgings and
charity.
The Meltdown
The Islamist-Kurdish Divide
New fronts in Syria’s civil war are now emerging. The first pits Islamist
rebels against Syria’s Kurdish population. The current flashpoint is the
Kurdish-majority town of Ras Al-Ain/Sere Kanye, currently under attack by over
1,500 Islamist fighters belonging to 16 different groups. Rebels are using
tanks and RPGs in their assault and are showing the same kind of disregard to
civilian populations that pro-Assad militias tend to show.
Meanwhile, the town is being defended by an assortment of Kurdish fighting
units led by the YPG (Kurdish local defense committees which are ideologically
lined to PKK). But other Kurdish groups are now involved, with Kurds fearing
that the current attack comes as part of an Islamist/Arab strategy to take over
and/or isolate all Kurdish-majority towns in the northeast. The fighting is
fierce, Arab tribal are involved, and certain tribal members of the Syrian
National Council seem involved in directing the fight against the Kurds,
including ranking member Ahmad Hamad Al-Assad Al-Milhem. The fighting has been
ongoing for ten days now, with over 150 dead on both sides. Turkish involvement
is not clear, but protection afforded to the wounded from Islamist rebel groups
when treated in Turkish hospitals indicate sympathies with Islamists. Many
Islamists rebels bury one of their own, as sounds of clashes can be
heard in the background http://youtu.be/ZMErs-wQCCo
The Secular-Islamist Divide
A second front that is also developing slowly is one that pits
Islamists fighters, including members of Jabhat Al-Nusra, against secular
activists. Recent developments in the
town of Saraqib, Idlib Province, give an accurate ideas as to what is involved
at this stage.
Jihadists
and Secular Activists Clash in Syria: “The dispute in Saraqib began
when a group of masked men raided two organizations run by local activists, a
new cultural club and a social work office, the activists said. At the second
office, where Danish journalists and two visiting female Syrian activists were
staying, the men seized fliers advocating nonviolence and ordered the group to
leave town by sunrise, according to activists and one of the journalists, a
filmmaker. The masked men were angry, the witnesses said, in part because the
visiting Syrian activists were not covering their hair in accordance with the
practice of many pious Muslims. The men also declared that they preferred
foreign journalists entering the country to be men.”
On Friday, secular activists marked their rejection of the tactics of
Jabhat Al-Nusra in their city, chanting “the Syrian people are one,” “God,
Syria, Freedom and nothing more,” and hosting banners asserting the “civic”
nature of the city irrespective of the number of guns now in it, and rejecting
the presence of “masked men” in their midst http://youtu.be/CSiPub7Bgec
Salamiyeh
Meanwhile, criticism of Jabhat Al-Nusra’s tactics continues to mark a
widening divide between secular and Islamist groups. Jabhat Al-Nusra has just
adopted a suicide attack against a pro-Assad militia headquarters that took
place in Salamiyeh, Hama, on January 21. The attack was controversial
because it generated many civilian casualties as well, and on account of the highly
mixed character of the City, where Christians, Alawites, Ismailites and Sunnis
live. The announcement by Jabhat Al-Nusra was received with much naysaying on
part of secular activists writing on their Facebook posts and on their blogs,
and is bound to increasing tension between secular pro-democracy activists and
Islamists rebels on the ground in many flashpoints across the country, but
especially in so-called liberated areas.
Predictions
Bearing all these divides in mind, and the one I just pointed out in my
recent article in openDemocracy, the one that goes to the heart of the current
situation, the dire
predictions of Christian Caryl that the international community’s
failure to act so far has set the scene for more killing to come in the near
future seem quite logical…
“Because the
fateful wheel of atrocity and reprisal, so familiar from past civil wars, is
gathering momentum. It could hardly be any different, considering the scale of
the killing so far. The Assad regime bears full responsibility for launching
the carnage. But it does not bear sole responsibility for all the crimes that
have been committed, and it will not bear sole responsibility for the crimes
that are yet to come.”
We have lost Syria
-- we've lost the good faith of its people and lost the opportunity to stem its
decline. Everyone, everywhere we've reached has said the same thing: Stop the
bleeding. This message speaks to wounds we cannot see and stories we can hardly
fathom. But they will shape the Middle East for generations to come.
Video Highlights
The battle for control over Idlib City’s Central Prison as seen
from the point of view of a rebel unit affiliated with Suqur Al-Sham http://youtu.be/5RcNRPcFCkI
Rebels in Deir Ezzor City use a confiscated tank in an attack on
a loyalist checkpoint http://youtu.be/Qt1FlvxYrW4
, http://youtu.be/UDYEstII6sE
A rebel attack against a loyalist headquarters in Mseifrah,
Daraa http://youtu.be/c9NfAi_vNMM , http://youtu.be/QO4Nk41Ol90
The pounding of rebel suburbs in Homs City continues: Jobar http://youtu.be/5BX_WRWAGAs
Aerial bombardment of rebel suburbs in Damascus continues: Arbeen
http://youtu.be/fcu76jeMCLY Al-Qadam
http://youtu.be/4n5P3yG7IpM , http://youtu.be/sFBjX8DNJIQ Saqba
http://youtu.be/gut9Fry2kJM
Rebels in Sheikh Saad Suburb in Aleppo City capture a number of
key locations http://youtu.be/3AokMi6qr04
, http://youtu.be/CoNqC0pGnH0 , http://youtu.be/o3wRy-JLrJ8 , http://youtu.be/IUSjph9GnLQ
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