As world leaders continue to obsess over guarantees that no
one is in a position to provide, Assad and his militias continue their
slaughter, and the country continues to fall apart. We have passed the point of
no return. The old is dead, and the new is stillborn. Syria is no more. This is
the dawn of the age of warring fiefdoms. Who will rake in the spoils of their wars,
I wonder? Who will benefit from our suffering? It will be a pity if it went to
waste.
Monday April
22, 2013
Death
Toll: 566 martyrs, including tens of women
and children: 483 martyrs were reported in Damascus and its Suburbs most were
killed in Jdeidet Al-Fadl Massacre; 23 in Aleppo; 21 in Idlib, including 14 in
Maghara village; 15 in Homs; 12 in Daraa; 7 in Deir Ezzor; and 5 in Hama (LCC).
News
Slaughter
Reported Near Damascus Shamel al-Jolani, an activist who lives nearby,
said area residents were able to document the names of 80 people who had been
killed. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a British-based group that
tracks the conflict through a network of contacts in Syria, said the victims
included 71 men, 3 children and 6 women. It said 19 of the men were rebel
fighters. Residents said the death toll was much higher — and the Observatory
said the total could reach 250 — but that it was difficult to identify and
count the victims because the fighting was continuing and because many of the
bodies had been disfigured. “They’re just scattered limbs and charred bodies
that are completely unrecognizable,” Mr. Jolani said in an interview conducted
over Skype.
Syrian
activist group: Record number of dead found The bodies of at least 566
people who were killed over a six-day period across Syria were found Sunday,
according to Local Coordination Committees in Syria, an opposition group based
in the country. That is the highest number of victims discovered in a single
day since the war began in March 2011, according to LCC spokeswoman Rafif
Jouejati. At least 450 bodies were found in the Damascus suburb of Jadidat
al-Fadel, LCC activist Abu Aasy said. Over the past six days, some 3,000
members of the security forces stormed the area, and the dead include at least
300 civilians and 150 members of the Free Syrian Army, he said.
Syria
aid package falls short of opposition demands for arms The U.S. is
doubling its non-lethal aid to opposition forces in Syria to $250 million, U.S.
Secretary of State John Kerry announced Sunday, falling short of opposition
demands for military aid. At the Friends of Syria meeting in Istanbul late
Saturday, the Syrian National Coalition called on international backers to
carry out "surgical strikes" on positions used by President Bashar
Assad's regime to fire missiles on civilians. While this latest U.S. aid
package will not include arms, Kerry said Sunday that the rebels' foreign
backers were committed to continuing support to them and "there would have
to be further announcements about the kind of support that that might be in the
days ahead" if Syrian government forces failed to pursue a peaceful
solution to the crisis. Kerry also said that foreign backers have agreed to
channel all future assistance through the rebels' Supreme Military Council.
New Aid To
Syria Comes With Fear Of Funding The Wrong Opposition Western governments
are still investigating claims of chemical weapons use, but the Syrian
opposition arrived at the meeting seeking interventions to neutralize Syria's
chemical weapons and ballistic missile capabilities. They also want a no-fly
zone, and a lot more weapons. But many among the opposition's backers are wary
of shipping arms to the fractious Syrian rebels, for fear that they'll end up
in the hands of Islamist units like the al-Nusra front, that recently announced
an alliance with al-Qaida.
Syria
fighting flares both sides of Lebanese border Syrian troops and
Lebanese Shi'ite militias attacked rebel-held areas on the two countries'
border on Sunday, in the heaviest clashes of Syria's civil war in the strategic
region, Lebanese and Syrian sources said. At least two towns held by Sunni
Islamist rebels in the al-Qusair region near the Orontes River were overrun
after sectarian clashes escalated early last week, threatening to bring in
Iranian-backed Hezbollah openly into the battle, the sources said. On Saturday,
in the first attack well inside Lebanese territory, rockets hit the town of
Hermel, a Hezbollah stronghold in the Bekaa Valley, causing damage but no
casualties. A Hezbollah fighter was killed in the Shi'ite border town of Zita,
inside Syria, residents said. Six rebels were killed in clashes in the Syrian
city of Qusair on Sunday and one woman was killed in Syrian air strikes in the
region, opposition campaigners said.
Germany
will ‘respect’ Syria embargo changes Speaking in Istanbul after a
“Friends of Syria” meeting Saturday, Westerwelle said the embargo would be
discussed when EU foreign ministers meet in Luxembourg Monday. “If there are
one or two countries in the European Union who think there is no risk that arms
will fall into the wrong hands,” then Germany “will have to respect that,”
Westerwelle said.
Syrians
held over violence in Jordanian refugee camp Eight Syrians have been
arrested on suspicion of inciting violence at a refugee camp in Jordan,
officials say. The arrests come after an incident on Friday in which some 100
camp residents threw stones at police who would not allow them to leave the
camp. Ten police officers were injured - one so badly he had to undergo
surgery, said a government spokesman. UN officials have warned the flood of
refugees fleeing Syria threatens to overwhelm those providing assistance.
'Jordan
opens skies for IAF drones flying to Syria' 'Le Figaro' quotes Western
military source as saying armed Israeli drones conducting surveillance in Syria
by way of Jordan.
Investigative
Reports
In
Syria, kidnappings on the rise as lawlessness spreads “People are taken
just for the money to release them,” said the director of the Britain-based
watchdog Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, who uses the alias Rami
Abdulrahman. Kidnapping was relatively unknown in Syria before the uprising
began. The first reported abductions in the conflict occurred in summer 2011
and involved Sunnis, many of whom support the opposition, and Alawites, who
mostly support the government. In many cases, there were tit-for-tat
kidnappings in which one group took a set of hostages to negotiate the release
of others, activists and monitoring groups say.
THE
RIVER MARTYRS: Day by day, a city at war with the regime collects its dead.
In recent months, the jetsam has included bodies. At the end of January, a
hundred and ten murdered men and boys were fished out and laid on a concrete
bank, their hands bound behind their backs, their skulls broken by bullets. The
killings became known as the River Massacre. Those whom no one recognized, or
who were unrecognizable, were taken to Cobblers’ Garden. Since then, the
graveyard has steadily grown. Recently, while I was there, a small pickup
arrived with the two-hundred-and-thirty-fourth victim from the river, the
ninety-fourth delivered to the park.
Kurdish
women warriors battle in Syria “Women can shoot machine guns,
Kalashnikovs and even tanks – just as well as men,” said Engizek, 28, wearing
trousers and a sleeveless jacket, her dark hair bound tightly behind her head. “Women
are an integral part of our rebellion,” she told AFP in a deserted alleyway
squashed between bullet-riddled and blasted buildings amid the sporadic crackle
of sniper fire. Fighters like Engizek – whose Committees for the Protection of
the Kurdish People (YPG) brigade is 20 percent women – are the hidden face of
Syria’s armed rebellion against the regime of Bashar Assad.
Syrian
activist communities, the battle inside The third kind of activist is
still true to the peaceful aims of the original protest and still active.
Although they are the fewest, they are the most vulnerable to brutal arrests,
executions and torture, given that they are considered the most dangerous by
the regime.
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.”
Video Highlights
Some of the dead in the latest and largest massacre so far: the massacre
at Jdeidet Al-Fadl, Damascus. The clips that have emerged so far are few
http://youtu.be/14PntvwGnYM , http://youtu.be/fWrcK3twHQg , http://youtu.be/WHh0gmvn5lU This leaked
video was reportedly made by a member of the pro-Assad militias who perpetrated
the massacre. We can hear someone in the background addressing the bodies of
the dead rebels saying “You’re going to see the Houris (maidens promised to martyrs
in Paradise), you sons of bitches?” http://youtu.be/FSHjsbLeYxg
An aerial raid hits a school in Al-Magharah, Idlib province
killing many children http://youtu.be/Qf5js-YA8B8
, http://youtu.be/vLmCEz5mKLQ , http://youtu.be/9Xk6ph0DPZA , http://youtu.be/hgVoh4SD59M and wounding
many http://youtu.be/4kQON3-ZdBE The
funeral http://youtu.be/VFINuTjXZeA ,
http://youtu.be/wXIJcDl22Ig , http://youtu.be/75F7Sd21Tl4
An aerial raid on the suburb of Moadamiyah, Damascus. We can clearly
see the bombs as they hit their targets in the first clip http://youtu.be/uGfwxn5z6lI , http://youtu.be/l-ZCajq3lOM , http://youtu.be/bhTYh8yKh94 , http://youtu.be/eS8xhlZr-DA Nearby Daraya
continues to be pounded as well http://youtu.be/Nfj8yG-3wG0
, http://youtu.be/OKpRUpe0PNo
The vicious pounding of rebel strongholds in the eastern parts of
Damascus City and Suburbs continue: Zamalka http://youtu.be/B7f9Cwbof-g , http://youtu.be/H_XTAwccNXs Jobar
http://youtu.be/R0JhQuzDd78
Leaked video from the town of Maarabah, near Damascus shows
pro-Assad militias torturing two captives to death, including setting the head
of one of them on fire while he is still alive, then outing out the fire, and continuing
the torture http://youtu.be/gYkv1MriNPw
Rebels in the neighborhood of Sheikh Maqsoud, Aleppo City,
renovate a church that was hit during the regime bombing campaign http://youtu.be/t5ImWSRamyU
In Khaldiyeh, Aleppo, rebels use the few tanks under their
command to pound loyalist positions http://youtu.be/ZEAhGQ5KUSo
, http://youtu.be/JNIZO2aqPyY Some of
the shells used http://youtu.be/uCQKkziPYfY
Preparing the automatic machineguns http://youtu.be/iviGDG4edQc
Rebels use homemade rockets in pounding Kuweiris Military
Airport, Aleppo http://youtu.be/5PxLirjLR0M
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