How you failed Syria, let me count the ways: you abandoned her
when her movement for democratic change was nonviolent. You let Assad violate
her and kill her children. You turned your back on her children when they
rushed to her rescue, and pretended you were unaware. You uttered words of
sympathy and encouragement, and sent few blankets and tents to people who were at
the mercy of mortars and MiGs, not only the elements. You tied her fortunes to complicated
geopolitical agendas that are beyond her control or interest. You let her legitimate
aspirations and her all too human and humanitarian needs be the last entry on a
long list of objectives. What do you expect of her now? Would tell her she is
wrong to hate you? Would you blame her should she implode? Do you really think she
would care anymore?
Tuesday February
5, 2013
Today’s
Death Toll: 113 martyrs
(including 6 women and 11 children): 41 in Aleppo, 41 in Damascus and Suburbs,
9 in Daraa, 4 in Homs, 4 in Idlib, 4 in Raqqa, 3 in Hama, 2 in Deir Ezzor and 1
in Lattakia (LCCs).
Points
of Random Shelling: 281 points, 17
points were shelled by warplanes, 1 point by Phosphorus Bombs, 1 point by
Thermobaric Bombs and Cluster Bombs and 1 points by barrel bombs. Artillery
Shelling was reported in 138 points, mortar shelling in 96 points and missile
shelling in 47 points across Syria (LCCs).
Clashes: 131. Successful rebel operations included an aerial raid
mounted by a defect pilot against loyalist militias in the village of Safsafiya
in Hama. In Aleppo, FSA rebels forced down a helicopter and liberated the Mulhab
Barracks in the neighborhood of Khaldiyeh. In Daraa, rebels gained control of a
loyalist checkpoint in Daraa Al-Balad (LCCs).
News
Ahtisaari:
Major powers failing Syria Nobel Peace Prize Winner Martti
Ahtisaari blames the lack of progress in Syria on the divided UN Security
Council. He tells DW that he sees elections - not an interim government - as
the best option.
UN
warns of deepening humanitarian crisis in Syria “If the violence
continues unabated, we could, in the short term, see considerably more than the
current four million in need of urgent assistance and more than two million
internally displaced in Syria,” the spokesperson for the UN Office for the
Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), Jens Laerke, told a news
conference in Geneva. “Organizations are struggling to reach more people, in
more places, with more aid, but lack of access is still a major obstacle,” he
added.
Disease
spreads as Syria casualties and drug shortages grow: WHO "The
biggest concern for us is the breakdown of the water and sanitation system and
the increasing numbers of water-borne diseases," WHO representative
Elisabeth Hoff told a news briefing about the deteriorating health situation on
the ground. Hepatitis A, a viral liver disease that can cause explosive
epidemics, has been reported in Aleppo, Idlib - where there has been intense
fighting - and some crowded shelters for the homeless in the capital, she said
by telephone from Damascus. Aid groups have had to start using alternatives to
purify water because the import of chlorine gas has been banned over fears it
could be misused as a chemical weapon.
Pressure
mounts on Assad over Syria opposition’s offer Assad himself has
yet to comment on the offer from Ahmed Moaz al-Khatib, leader of Syria’s
opposition National Coalition, but pro-regime Al-Watan newspaper described it
as a political “manoeuvre” that comes two years too late.
Syria
opposition ponders course as leader offers talks Sheikh Moaz Alkhatib,
the moderate Islamic cleric who leads the 70-member assembly, said he would be
ready to meet Assad's ceremonial deputy, Farouq al-Shara, if Assad fulfils
conditions including the release of tens of thousands of political prisoners. "The
Coalition needs to convene to chart an urgent strategy after the reverberations
of the initiative and seize on the momentum it has created, regardless of the
reservations of some members," one Coalition official said. While some
opposition figures have criticized Alkhatib's offer to talk to Assad's
representatives, others say it could expose Assad's proposals for dialogue as
hollow.
Islamic
summit to urge Syria transition: draft The declaration, due to
be issued after a two-day summit of 56-member Organisation of Islamic
Cooperation in Cairo starting on Wednesday, does not mention President Bashar
al-Assad and pins most of the blame on his government for continued violence…
"We strongly condemn the ongoing bloodshed in Syria and underline the
Syrian government's primary responsibility for the continued violence and
destruction of property," the draft communique said. "We express
grave concern over the deteriorating situation the increasing frequency of
killing which claims the lives of thousands of unarmed civilians and the
perpetration of massacres in towns and villages by the Syrian
authorities." It was not clear whether Syria's ally Iran, which is
attending the OIC summit, would back the tough wording.
Syria
rebels tighten noose around key Idlib city Insurgents have
tightened their noose around the city of Jisr al-Shughur, held by forces loyal
to President Bashar al-Assad, but refrain for now from staging further attacks,
and an eerie calm prevails in surrounding villages.
Palestinian
Officials to Try to Secure Syria Camps Ahmed Majdalani said
Tuesday that representatives will meet Syrian officials to try to protect
Palestinian areas from fighting that has engulfed parts of the capital
Damascus. Generations of Palestinian refugees have lived in the crowded
Damascus area of Yarmouk since their forefathers fled, or were forced to flee,
their homes during the 1948 Mideast war surrounding Israel's founding.
Majdalani said they also will try to convince Palestinian factions to stay out
of the fighting. The some 500,000 Palestinians in Syria are divided between
supporters of rebels and government forces.
Third Iron Dome
station in North amid Syria tensions An army spokeswoman said
that the anti-rocket systems were continuously in the process of being moved,
and did not draw a link to the deployment with any current events… The Army
Radio report said that the deployment "does not signal pinpoint
information on an expected missile attack on Israel, but in light of the
reports of an Israeli attack in Syria [last week], and the threats being heard
in Lebanon and Iran, the IDF is not taking any chances."
Syria
scales back threats against Israel over airstrike, suggests it won't retaliate
Syria's defense minister signaled Monday that his country won't hit back at
Israel over an airstrike inside Syria, claiming the Israeli raid was actually
in retaliation for his regime's offensive against rebels he called
"tools" of the Jewish state. "The Israeli enemy retaliated. When
the Israeli enemy saw that its tools are being chased and did not achieve any
(of their) goals, they interfered," he responded. "It was a response
to our military acts against the armed gangs," al-Freij added. "The
heroic Syrian Arab Army, which proved to the world that it is a strong army and
a trained army, will not be defeated." In surprisingly candid remarks,
al-Freij said that rebels have made Syrian air defenses across the country a
focus of their attacks over the past months, attacking some with mortars while
attempting to seize others in order to incapacitate them. In response, he said
the Syrian leadership decided to station them all in one safe place, leading to
"gaps in radar coverage in some areas." "These gaps became known
to the armed gangs and the Israelis who undoubtedly coordinated together to target
the research center," he said. He suggested the army was overstretched and
finding difficulty retaining control over several positions across the country,
adding they had to abandon some areas to minimize casualties.
Special
Reports
'The
Kiss' In Syria: Artist Tammam Azzam Goes Viral With His Take On Gustav Klimt's
Artwork (PHOTOS)
Syrian artist Tammam Azzam took the twittersphere
by storm last week when he posted an image of Gustav Klimt's "The
Kiss" superimposed on the facade of a bullet-ridden building in Damascus.
The photoshopped image -- which some mistook for an actual street-side mural --
brought the eye of the art world to the artist's war-torn home country.
Former regime strongholds are now
being picked clean – and some are underwhelmed by what lies behind the
perimeter walls
The Women Under Siege project is
live-tracking how sexualized violence is being used in Syria. What's new is the
data: information collected through crowdsourcing – reports on Facebook,
Twitter and YouTube from inside the country — which is then analyzed by public
health researchers at Columbia University. The project's crowdmap keeps an
up-to-date tally in visual form: incidents of sexual violence are represented
by dots on a map — the larger the dot, the more reports of rape.
In a remarkably short time, the PYD
has succeeded in setting up a well-armed military of about 10,00 fighters,
known as the Popular Protection Units (or Yekineyen Parastina Gel, or YPG), as
well as local, self-organized civilian structures under the label of the
“Movement for a Democratic Society” (Tevgera Civaka Demokratik, or TEV-DEM). In
theory, the PYD shares power with some 15 other Kurdish parties (who form the
Kurdish National Council, or KNC) in the framework of the Kurdish Supreme
Council, which was established in July 2012 through the mediation efforts of
Massoud Barazani, president of Iraqi Kurdistan and leader of Iraq’s Kurdistan
Democratic Party (KDP). Yet on the ground, the PYD is dismissing its council
partners as nothing more than proxies for Barazani himself, whose close
relationship with Turkey the PYD deeply mistrusts. Additionally, the PYD has
prevented any armed Kurdish presence besides its own loyalist Populist
Protection Units; most recently, armed altercations were reported with the
Kurdish Union Party in Syria (Yekiti) in the towns of al-Darbasiyah and
Qamishli.
For weeks now, the river has brought
new bodies almost every night. The corpses arrive without any identification
and the hands are generally tied together with plastic strings. The men have
all been shot. The week before last, the river carried three bodies on some
days, and seven on others. Last Monday there were five, but on Tuesday there
were almost 80. There had been heavy rain in the night, the river level had
risen, and now corpses were lining the muddy river bank… The dead were students
enrolled at the University of Aleppo who had come from other cities to stand
exams.
News of the women’s unit, a part-time
and volunteer fighting force known as the “Lionesses for National Defence,”
made headlines mid-January. A video from the Russia Today Arabic TV shows the
soldiers in uniform as they train and chant pro-Assad slogans. They have
already been deployed in Homs and carry out security operations and guard
checkpoints. The rationale for the women’s unit has been explained by Assad’s
need for new recruits and perhaps as a morale-boosting tactic aimed to draw his
supporters into a closer community.
Benign neglect, however, hasn’t been
so benign. Syria’s humanitarian crisis has reached epic proportions, with more
than 60,000 people killed and 2.5 million people displaced. The sense of
abandonment and desperation felt by many Syrians has served to strengthen the
most radical elements of the rebel forces, some of whom are thought to be
aligned with al-Qaeda. Syria’s hemorrhaging will continue to fuel radicalism
until there is a change of political leadership in Damascus. In order to
expedite this process, the U.S. administration must inhibit Iran’s ability to
arm and finance Assad… A greater U.S. role won’t render Syria an
American-allied democracy. That possibility, if it ever existed, has long been
lost. But continued U.S. inaction risks leaving Syria at the mercy of Iran and
Sunni extremists whose intolerance, and hatred of the U.S., dwarfs any concerns
they may have for the well- being of Syria and its people. Such an outcome
would haunt Syria, the Middle East and the U.S. for years to come.
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.”
Responses
My friend, Daniel Serwer, from SAIS, refers to my earlier
posting on Alkhatib’s and Assad’s “finitiatives,” and expresses certain doubts
as to whether Alkhatib’s move will serve to “weaken or strengthen his position,”
as opposition leader, noting that “the uncertainty is itself debilitating.” He
is right. Alkhatib made quite a gamble, but that’s what real leaders need to do
in times of crisis in order to break the stalemate. There are no guarantees of
success. But a political move was clearly needed, and I think what Alkhatib
started is the right move at this particular time on the political front, even
if it failed.
Meanwhile, the Guardian found
my endorsement of Alkhatib’s “finitiative” to be surprising, considering my
hawkish background and my affiliation with a neocon think tank:
Khatib's call for
conditional dialogue with the Syrian government has been backed by unlikely the
source - Ammar Abdulhamid a usually hawkish Syrian dissident and blogger. Abdulhamid,
fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, which is regarded as a
NeoCon thinktank, said an armed struggle should continue alongside Khatib's
call for talks.
But I am not motivated by ideology. I stared preaching a jasmine
revolution long before it became fashionable to do so, but, when people opted
for armed struggle, people like me were not in a position to contradict them
and dissuade them from doing so: I did not have the standing or the leverage to
do this. So, my best option at that stage was to make sure that the rebels had
the material and political support they need to win. If you cannot prevent a
certain development, you can at least try to guide it or influence it to the
best of your ability. The objective is still democratic change in the region,
and not only Syria, breaking the Assad regime is simply the beginning of a long
process, a generational process.
Video Highlights
Rebels from the Syrian Islamic Front attack a loyalist convoy near the
town of Zabadani, Damascus (February 4) using a roadside bomb http://youtu.be/Xz4a6MQwXpk
Rebels in Eastern Ghoutah, Damascus, attack the Tamico
Checkpoint using RPGs http://youtu.be/-yAQ8y7EKng
Even cows are not safe from random shelling by the regime, as this clip from a
farm in the village of Hujairah in Eastern Ghoutah shows http://youtu.be/gd1X4XLLn7I A plane
overfly the village in preparation for another raid http://youtu.be/JS1Ue-mNzxA Houses catch
fire in Sbeineh http://youtu.be/U2U5Rv4lYNA
Not too far, in Damascus City, a MiG carry out an aerial raid against Al-Qadam
neighborhood http://youtu.be/k5MSL-q-93I
, http://youtu.be/QoDuEQH2EOQ
Back to the west, and in the town of Daraya, rebels destroy a
marauding regime tank http://youtu.be/IT6N8URM9YY
But other tanks keep wreaking havoc http://youtu.be/hXP8Byq8uvs
And the clashes continue http://youtu.be/zZeoIbJpsMc
The bodies of loyalist soldiers from the Republic Guard are strewn in a
side street in Deir Ezzor City http://youtu.be/Fk-tYoFrok8
On the outskirts of the city, rebels target loyalist positions with their own heavy
artillery http://youtu.be/nUFYa_QK19k
Rebels from Al-Tawhid Brigade in Daraa City storm a loyalist
checkpoint http://youtu.be/yXSG0_a2M1o
In Aleppo, rebels clash with loyalist troops in Massakin Al-Sabeel
http://youtu.be/KIGlt2FBdms , http://youtu.be/k6nM5iWVJ6w , http://youtu.be/MtkvvaLWhj4
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