Russian leader Vladimir Putin says that discussing Syria with
French President Francois Hollande over a bottle of vodka could lead to a
softening of his stand on the matter. President Hollande suggested Port instead.
Now let me suggest Mojito as a nice compromise solution, if I may? Then let me
also ever so politely suggest that both leaders go stuff themselves. As our
country and our people bleed, having two foreign leaders engage in such meaningless
banter is nothing less than scandalous.
Thursday February
28, 2013
Today’s
Death Toll: 98 martyrs,
including 4 women and 5 children, and 18 martyrs under torture: 35 martyrs were
reported in Damascus and suburbs, 33 in Aleppo, 9 in Hama, 8 in Daraa, 6 in Idlib,
4 in Deir Ezzor and 1 martyr in each of Qunaitra, Homs and Latakia (LCCs).
Points
of Random Shelling: 268 points,
including 7 points were shelled using warplanes, 2 points using Scud missiles,
artillery shelling was reported in 107 points, mortar shelling in 83 points,
and rocket shelling in 71 points all around Syria (LCCs).
Clashes: 94. Successful FSA operations
include targeting loyalist bases on top of Mount Qasayoun, Damascus and shelling
of a loyalist camp in Nayraib, Idlib. In Aleppo, FSA rebels inched towards
Sabaa Bahrat Square after intense clashes with pro-regime forces (LCCs).
News
£1bn
pledged in aid to Syria fails to materialise Gulf countries and other
states including the UK pledged the money at a donor conference in Kuwait last
month.
Syria
Rebels Seek Premier-in-Waiting as U.S. Steps Up Support It’s not clear
when the meeting, originally scheduled for March 2, will take place. The
coalition said on its Facebook page yesterday that it has been delayed for
“logistical reasons.”
Putin
Signals Russia Can Be More Flexible on Syria "We should listen to
the opinion of our partners on some of the aspects of that difficult
problem," Putin told reporters. "It seems to me that we would need to
sit over a bottle of vodka — a bottle of good wine wouldn't be enough — to sort
things out. We would need to sit down and think it over." Hollande
responded jokingly that he would prefer port.
Syria
refugees threaten Lebanon's stability: interior minister The minister,
Marwan Charbel, has said Syrian rebels have set up training camps in Lebanon. In
addition, members of the rebel Free Syrian Army have used Lebanon's mountainous
terrain to regroup before staging attacks on the Syrian army across the poorly
demarcated border. "What is concerning me is the security situation,"
Charbel said at a joint news conference with the United Nations Development
Programme. "Who is exploiting (the Syrian refugees)? Who is arming them?
We are not controlling them."
Croatia
Withdrawing Soldiers from U.N. Force on Israel-Syria Frontier Croatia
has nearly 100 soldiers serving with the United Nations Disengagement Observer
Force, which is responsible for maintaining the fragile calm between Israeli
and Syrian troops at the demilitarized zone along Syria’s Golan frontier that
was established after a cease-fire ended the 1973 war. The decision to withdraw
the soldiers from the area came after The New York Times reported on Monday
that Saudi Arabia had underwritten a large purchase of infantry arms in
Croatia. Croatia has denied selling weapons to either Saudi Arabia or the
Syrian rebels. But Mr. Milanovic said t reports of the sales had put Croatian
soldiers at risk and that he was compelled to withdraw them because their
safety could no longer be assured.
Syria
protests Israel's approval for oil drilling In letters sent to the U.N.
Security Council and the U.N. secretary general Thursday, the Syrian Foreign
Ministry called the decision a "blatant violation" of U.N.
resolutions and Syria's sovereignty… On Feb. 21, Israel said it had issued a
permit for the American-Israeli company Genie Energy to drill for oil on the
plateau. Syria alleges that Israel is trying to consecrate its occupation of
Syrian territory and steal its resources.
Syria
retains senior post at U.N. committee responsible for ‘decolonizing’ American
Samoa Yes, the same Syrian government that has killed thousands of
civilians in a brutal civil war was just reappointed to a senior position at a
United Nations committee in charge of “decolonizing,” among other places, the
U.S. Virgin Islands, Guam and American Samoa.
Special
Reports
The government of President Assad of
Syria is under threat. So too is the secretive Shia sect known as the Alawis -
or Alawites - to which he and many of the governing party and security
officials belong.
Hostility towards the minority Alawi
population is such that one leading commentator predicts they are likely to be
the victims of the world's next genocide. Presenter Owen Bennett Jones
investigates the Alawis' origins, history and culture and asks how these once
marginalised people came to power in a Sunni majority state. He discovers that
for many their fortunes changed fifty years ago when the Baath party seized
power in a coup d'etat. Alawis were dominant among the army officers who took
control. They set about modernising the country and rolling out a secular
agenda. Now, as Syria's revolution has morphed into a civil war, many Alawis
believe their only choice is to kill or be killed. Are the majority of Alawis
right to be convinced that the Assad regime is all that stands between them and
a return to second-class status, or worse? If the opposition wins in Syria, are
warnings about pogroms against the Alawis alarmist, or inevitable?
This is increasing tensions in
fractious Lebanon. Its population is bitterly divided over the war in Syria,
causing Hizbullah’s popularity to plummet. Having experienced their own 15-year
civil war, most Lebanese fear being dragged into Syria’s conflict.
Salih Muslim, the leader of the
biggest Syrian Kurdish Party, the Democratic Union Party (PYD), has opened up
the possibility that people of Rojava might join the struggle of their fellow
Syrians and work toward a more unified transfer of power in post-Assad Syria. Muslim
met with leaders of the Syrian National Coalition on Wednesday in Cairo to
discuss joining the umbrella organization of opposition groups.
As we watch and they die, as we did 20
years ago with Bosnia, I am reminded that conscience, at the collective level
demanded for state action, usually kicks in when it is much too late — not just
to spare individual tragedies on a grand scale, but also to preserve the
territorial integrity of disintegrating multi-ethnic states. Looking at the
Middle East, there is not much in terms of borders that makes sense — they
neither reflect national divisions, nor religious ones. They are lines in the
sand — the legacy of a rapacious colonial era kept together after the colonial
powers left by even more rapacious dictators.
As the violence deepened into a civil
war, Qadi worked as a medic but later took up arms when his brother was killed,
becoming a field commander. Qadi was leading fighters into battle against the
government forces when I met him on two occasions last year, a 25-year-old who
was swept up in events he didn’t quite understand and didn’t expect to survive.
The US decision to give direct aid to
Syria's rebels (but still no weapons) is too little, too late – unlikely either
to speed President Assad’s departure or to boost US influence over the
conflict, say many experts.
The US has promised to do a lot more
to help Syria's rebellion against the government of Bashar al-Assad, but is
stopping well short of the kind of aid that might prove decisive.
The widespread perception among
Syrians that the US has abandoned them is untrue, but US aid is rarely branded
as such and it is still far short of what is needed.
So Syria, you see, is probably the
Arab Left's last chance at having a revolution free from religion. This is most
likely the reason for their opposition to the revolution from the very outset
because they knew for sure that it would carry a strong religious flavour.
Well, sorry to disappoint them. I crossed the length and breadth of Syria
shortly before the revolution and saw most communities, Christian and Muslim
alike, holding tight to their faith. Whatever shape their revolution will take,
the future will be dominated by believers.
My
new paper, prepared for a briefing in Washington, D.C. that took place on
January 15, 2013, is now out and is titled “Syria
2013: Rise of the Warlords.” It should be read in conjunction with my
previous briefing “The
Shredded Tapestry,” and my recent essay “The
Creation of an Unbridgeable Divide.”
NOT everyone agreed
with our Syria cover last week. It illustrated the gradual destruction of the
country that is the result of the war between President Bashar Assad and the rebels
trying to oust him. One aspect of the country that has not been destroyed is
the creativity. On February 25th Wissam al-Jazairy, a young Syrian graphic
designer took the cover to task. His extended design showing the reconstruction
of the country when the war ends went viral. "The cover carried a very
bleak idea of the situation in Syria," said Mr Jazairy. "True, there
is fighting between people but this is war and death is the blood tax in order
to reach a better future." But he remains optimistic, mostly because of
what he describes as the peacefulness of the Syrian people. "We started
our revolution for a life and freedom and justice and equality," he said.
"As Abu al-Kacem Chebbi [a Tunisian poet] said: 'If, one day, a people
want to live, then fate must respond to them'."
Video Highlights
Rebels in the town of Talbisseh, Homs Province, claim that they
are being targeted by pro-regime militias using these missiles, which, they claim,
are made in the U.S. http://youtu.be/swjafC7wHlQ
The pounding of the town of Rastan, Homs Province, continues http://youtu.be/rPDMISYE8JM
The pounding of rebel strongholds in Homs City continues http://youtu.be/-0QXZbgeb1w
In Aleppo City, another activist inadvertently captures his
final moments http://youtu.be/5cLGeZroFOE
Rebels in Damascus target a loyalist checkpoint on top of Mount
Qasayoun http://youtu.be/n2JjyEXg66c
Rebels in Dmeir, Damascus Suburbs, find these bloated bodies belonging
to victims who were obviously summarily executed http://youtu.be/s5-mdDzgQig
Pro-Assad militias pound rebel strongholds in Jobar Neighborhood,
Damascus City http://youtu.be/HdOdn_tOU4A
Rebels in Idlib, secure the defection of hundreds of soldiers from
Damascus http://youtu.be/Sf0CE61rzUU
Evidence of the use of incendiary cluster bombs in the pounding of Saraqib,
Idlib http://youtu.be/JVaTsNSx0ro
In the Druze-majority province of Suwaida, more and more young activists
are taking the streets showing their solidarity with their fellow
revolutionaries across Syria in a manner reminiscent of the old nonviolent days
of the protest movement http://youtu.be/dCLJ4SQ17QE
, http://youtu.be/kJNUROXtS2U Of
course, the regime has made a choice so far to refrain from using excessive violence
to quell these rallies, just as it did in Kurdish-majority areas to keep the situation
localized. For their part, the Druzes are unlikely to willingly turn violent in
order to preserve their own one and only town in the country.
No comments:
Post a Comment