Sarkozy visit to Damascus signals thaw in relationsIan ...
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Sun. 19 June. 2011
GLOBAL RESEARCH
➢ Syria and the Broader Middle East War……..………………1
YEDIOTH AHRONOTH
➢ Turkey to Assad: Fire your brother……………………….…6
➢ Report: Hezbollah spies nabbed…………………………..…8
➢ 7 million Syrians living in poverty…………………………..9
TODAY’S ZAMAN
➢ ‘Turkey will not stand by the wrongdoing in Syria’…….…11
➢ Even Assad supporters enjoy reforms in Syria…………….15
➢ Thanks to Syrian refugees ………………………………....18
OBSERVER
➢ Face the facts – Syria is an apartheid state………………....22
INDEPENDENT
➢ Syria: They came at dawn, and killed in cold blood……….25
➢ Lies, damn lies, and reports of battlefield atrocities……….29
NYTIMES
➢ Activists Using Video to Bear Witness in Syria…………...33
WASHINGTON POST
➢ Why Europe no longer matters……………………………..37
SAUDI GAZETTI
➢ Danish crime series with a Syrian twist………………..…..41
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Syria and the Broader Middle East War
The Destabilization of Syria and the Broader Middle East War
Michel Chossudovsky
The Global Research,
18 June 2011,
What is unfolding in Syria is an armed insurrection supported covertly by foreign powers including the US, Turkey and Israel.
Armed insurgents belonging to Islamist organizations have crossed the border from Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan. The US State Department has confirmed that it is supporting the insurgency.
"The United States is to expand contacts with Syrians who are counting on a regime change in the country. This was stated by U.S. State Department official Victoria Nuland. "We started to expand contacts with the Syrians, those who are calling for change, both inside and outside the country," she said.
"Nuland also repeated that Barack Obama had previously called on Syrian President Bashar Assad to initiate reforms or to step down from power." (Voice of Russia, June 17, 2011)
The destabilization of Syria and Lebanon as sovereign countries has been on the drawing board of the US-NATO-Israel military alliance for at least ten years.
Action against Syria is part of a "military roadmap", a sequencing of military operations. According to former NATO Commander General Wesley Clark--the Pentagon had clearly identified Iraq, Libya, Syria and Lebanon as target countries of a US-NATO intervention:
"[The] Five-year campaign plan [included]... a total of seven countries, beginning with Iraq, then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Iran, Somalia and Sudan" (Pentagon official quoted by General Wesley Clark)
In "Winning Modern Wars" (page 130) General Wesley Clark states the following:
"As I went back through the Pentagon in November 2001, one of the senior military staff officers had time for a chat. Yes, we were still on track for going against Iraq, he said. But there was more. This was being discussed as part of a five-year campaign plan, he said, and there were a total of seven countries, beginning with Iraq, then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Iran, Somalia and Sudan.
...He said it with reproach--with disbelief, almost--at the breadth of the vision. I moved the conversation away, for this was not something I wanted to hear. And it was not something I wanted to see moving forward, either. ...I left the Pentagon that afternoon deeply concerned."
The objective is to destabilize the Syrian State and implement "regime change" through the covert support of an armed insurgency, integrated by Islamist militia. The reports on civilian deaths are used to provide a pretext and a justification for humanitarian intervention under the principle "Responsibility to Protect".
Media Disinformation
Tacitly acknowledged , the significance of an armed insurrection is casually dismissed by the Western media. If it were to be recognized and analysed, our understanding of unfolding events would be entirely different.
What is mentioned profusely is that the armed forces and the police are involved in the indiscriminate killing of civilian protesters. Press reports confirm, however, from the outset of the protest movement an exchange of gunfire between armed insurgents and the police, with casualties reported on both sides.
The insurrection started in mid March in the border city of Daraa, which is 10 km from the Jordanian border.
The Daraa "protest movement" on March 18 had all the appearances of a staged event involving, in all likelihood, covert support to Islamic terrorists by Mossad and/or Western intelligence. Government sources point to the role of radical Salafist groups (supported by Israel)
Other reports have pointed to the role of Saudi Arabia in financing the protest movement.
What has unfolded in Daraa in the weeks following the initial violent clashes on 17-18 March, is the confrontation between the police and the armed forces on the one hand and armed units of terrorists and snipers on the other which have infiltrated the protest movement.....
What is clear from these initial reports is that many of the demonstrators were not demonstrators but terrorists involved in premeditated acts of killing and arson. The title of the Israeli news report summarizes what happened: Syria: Seven Police Killed, Buildings Torched in Protests.
(See Michel Chossudovsky, SYRIA: Who is Behind The Protest Movement? Fabricating a Pretext for a US-NATO "Humanitarian Intervention", Global Research, May 3, 2011)
The Role of Turkey
The center of the insurrection has now shifted to the small border town of Jisr al-Shughour, 10 km from the Turkish border.
Jisr al-Shughour has a population of 44,000 inhabitants. Armed insurgents have crossed the border from Turkey.
Members of the Muslim Brotherhood are reported to have taken up arms in northwest Syria.
There are indications that Turkish military and intelligence are supporting these incursions.
There was no mass civilian protest movement in Jisr al-Shughour. The local population was caught in the crossfire. The fighting between armed rebels and government forces has contributed to triggering a refugee crisis, which is the center of media attention.
In contrast, in the nation's capital Damascus, where the mainstay of social movements is located, there have been mass rallies in support rather than in opposition to the government.
President Bashir al Assad is casually compared to presidents Ben Ali of Tunisia and Hosni Mubarak of Egypt. What the mainstream media has failed to mention is that despite the authoritarian nature of the regime, president Al Assad is a popular figure who has widespread support of the Syrian population.
The large rally in Damascus on March 29, "with tens of thousands of supporters" (Reuters) of President Al Assad was barely mentioned. Yet in an unusual twist, the images and video footage of several pro-government events were used by the Western media to convince international public opinion that the President was being confronted by mass anti-government rallies.
On June 15, thousands of people rallied over several kilometers on Damascus' main highway in a march holding up a 2.3 km Syrian flag. The rally was acknowledged by the media and casually dismissed as irrelevant.
While the Syrian regime is by no means democratic, the objective of the US-NATO Israel military alliance is not to promote democracy. Quite the opposite. Washington's intent is to eventually install a puppet regime.
The objective through media disinformation is to demonize president Al Assad and more broadly to destabilize Syria as a secular state. The latter objective is implemented through covert support of various Islamist organizations:
Syria is run by an authoritarian oligarchy which has used brute force in dealing with its citizens. The riots in Syria, however, are complex. They cannot be viewed as a straightforward quest for liberty and democracy. There has been an attempt by the U.S. and the E.U. to use the riots in Syria to pressure and intimidate the Syrian leadership. Saudi Arabia, Israel, Jordan, and the March 14 Alliance have all played a role in supporting an armed insurrection.
The violence in Syria has been supported from the outside with a view of taking advantage of the internal tensions... Aside from the violent reaction of the Syrian Army, media lies have been used and bogus footage has been aired. Money and weapons have also been funnelled to elements of the Syrian opposition by the U.S., the E.U....Funding has also been provided to ominous and unpopular foreign-based Syrian opposition figures, while weapons caches were smuggled from Jordan and Lebanon into Syria. (Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya, America's Next War Theater: Syria and Lebanon? , Global Research, June 10, 2011)
The joint Israel-Turkey military and intelligence agreement
The geopolitics of this process of destabilization are far-reaching. Turkey is involved in supporting the rebels.
The Turkish government has sanctioned Syrian opposition groups in exile which support an armed insurgency. Turkey is also pressuring Damascus to conform to Washington's demands for regime change.
Turkey is a member of NATO with a powerful military force. Moreover, Israel and Turkey have a longstanding joint military-intelligence agreement, which is explicitly directed against Syria.
...A 1993 Memorandum of Understanding led to the creation of (Israeli-Turkish) "joint committees" to handle so-called regional threats. Under the terms of the Memorandum, Turkey and Israel agreed "to cooperate in gathering intelligence on Syria, Iran, and Iraq and to meet regularly to share assessments pertaining to terrorism and these countries' military capabilities."
Turkey agreed to allow IDF and Israeli security forces to gather electronic intelligence on Syria and Iran from Turkey. In exchange, Israel assisted in the equipping and training of Turkish forces in anti-terror warfare along the Syrian, Iraqi, and Iranian borders."
...
Already during the Clinton Administration, a triangular military alliance between the US, Israel and Turkey had unfolded. This "triple alliance", which is dominated by the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, integrates and coordinates military command decisions between the three countries pertaining to the broader Middle East. It is based on the close military ties respectively of Israel and Turkey with the US, coupled with a strong bilateral military relationship between Tel Aviv and Ankara. ....
The triple alliance is also coupled with a 2005 NATO-Israeli military cooperation agreement which includes "many areas of common interest, such as the fight against terrorism and joint military exercises. These military cooperation ties with NATO are viewed by the Israeli military as a means to "enhance Israel's deterrence capability regarding potential enemies threatening it, mainly Iran and Syria." (See Michel Chossudovsky,"Triple Alliance": The US, Turkey, Israel and the War on Lebanon, August 6, 2006)
Covert support to armed insurgents out of Turkey or Jordan would no doubt be coordinated under the joint Israel-Turkey military and intelligence agreement.
Dangerous Crossroads: The Broader Middle East War
Israel and NATO signed a far-reaching military cooperation agreement in 2005. Under this agreement, Israel is considered a de facto member of NATO.
If a military operation were to be launched against Syria, Israel would in all likelihood be involved in military undertakings alongside NATO forces (under the NATO-Israel bilateral agreement). Turkey would also play an active military role.
A military intervention in Syria on fake humanitarian grounds would lead to an escalation of the US-NATO led war over a large area extending from North Africa and the Middle East to Central Asia, from the Eastern Mediterranean to China's Western frontier with Afghanistan and Pakistan.
It would also contribute to a process of political destabilization in Lebanon, Jordan and Palestine. It would also set the stage for a conflict with Iran.
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Turkey to Assad: Fire your brother
Erdogan's government to demand removal of Maher Assad, considered strongman man behind brutal suppression of Syria uprising, al-Arabiya says Saturday; according to report, Turkey willing to take him in
Roee Nahmias
Yedioth Ahronoth,
18 June 2011,
An emissary on behalf of Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is expected to arrive in Syria in the next 24 hours with a "warning message" to President Bashar Assad, al-Arabiya reported Saturday.
According to the report, Ankara is demanding that Assad fire his brother Maher, considered the strongman behind the brutal suppression of the Syrian uprising that claimed an estimated 1,300 lives so far. Ankara is reportedly willing to take Maher in, or help in finding a shelter for him elsewhere in Europe.
Following the brutal violence against protestors in Syria, media outlets worldwide published feature stories about Maher Assad, characterizing him as the "bad cop" of Syria's regime. Observers estimate that President Assad will be increasingly relying on his brother and his forces should the upheaval in the country escalate.
'Arab nations concerned'
According to the al-Arabiya report, Turkey demands that "Maher Assad be removec from all positions of government power" via dismissal from the army. A Turkish source said that Ankara is willing to guarantee that Maher will not be prosecuted should he depart in the framework of a rapid, in-depth process of political reform.
"Even if part of the Syrian people is still willing to accept Bashar as the address for carrying out reforms, the overwhelming majority can no longer accept the presence of his brother, Maher Assad, and the military men under him," the report said.
Meanwhile, outgoing Arab League Secretary General Amr Moussa said that "Arab nations in the region are concerned about the crisis that has befallen Syria." Moussa, who announced that he will not run for president in Egypt, made the statement at a press conference in Cairo.
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Report: Hezbollah spies nabbed
Relative of 'prominent' Hezbollah figure reportedly detained for collaborating with Israel
Roee Nahmias
Yedioth Ahronoth,
18 June 2011,
New spy ring? Several Hezbollah members, including senior group figures, were detained in recent days on suspicion of cooperating with Israel, a Lebanese news website reported Saturday.
According to the reports, one of the detainees is a relative of a "prominent" Hezbollah member while another was in charge of ties between Hezbollah, Iran and Syria.
According to a report in the Now Lebanon and other websites, yet another suspect is a "religious figure."
Hezbollah has not yet addressed the reports officially.
This is not the first report of spy rings being uncovered in Lebanon in the past year. However, in most cases the suspects were not Hezbollah members.
At the end of May, security officials in Beirut announced the detainment of a religious cleric known as a harsh critic of Hezbollah on suspicion of spying for Israel. At the time, Lebanese security officials said that their success in uncovering Israeli spy rings greatly weakened the Jewish state's ability to gather information in the country.
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7 million Syrians living in poverty
Years of neglect, corruption and lack of economic planning prompt popular protest, undeterred by regime's power. As President Assad tries to conceal depth of distress, residents overcome their fear after realizing they have nothing left to lose
Doron Peskin
Yedioth Ahronoth,
18 June 2011,
The current anti-government riots in Syria stem from political, social, factional and economic motives. Years of international isolation, neglect, corruption and lack of economic planning have taken their toll.
The economic distress which only grew worse, especially in light of the global financial crisis and price hikes, broke loose after seeing the sparkle emerging from Tunisia and Egypt.
There is no doubt that the Syrian regime is relying on fear to silence the popular protest, as we have been witnessing since mid March. At the moment it seems that the protestors taking to the streets are mainly those who feel they have nothing left to lose.
Even before the current crisis, the Syrian authorities attempted to conceal the depth of the distress and poverty in the country. Last year, the government buried the findings of a report prepared together with the United Nations Development Program, titled "Indicators of poverty and division of income in Syria".
According to the study, the number of Syrians living under the poverty line reached 34% in 2004-2007 – i.e. one in every three Syrians lives in poverty. In absolute numbers we are talking about close to seven million people. More than 12% of the Syrian population – 2.5 million people – live in "shameful" poverty conditions.
Geographical poverty
The Syrian poverty has faces and names and a geographical division, and the periphery areas are the poorest in the country. Some 50% of Syria's poor are concentrated in these areas, and about 56% of them live in shameful poverty conditions. The Bashar Assad regime has banned the publication of these figures.
According to the findings, the northeastern part of the country is the poorest (the Kurdish areas of Hasaka and Kamishli). It is followed by the southern area, with Daraa at its center, which has become the focus of the current riots. In this area, researchers have found, the per capita spending was lower than the average spending of Syria's poor.
Several months ago, the newspaper of Rami Makhlouf, one of Syria's wealthiest people who is despised by the public, published data on the Syrian labor market. The figures published were biased, but those which were not presented can teach us about the situation.
According to the report, about 20% of the people employed in the country concentrated in the city of Aleppo. Daraa, the epicenter of the riots, is at the bottom of the list with about 4% of employed.
The article refrained from providing unemployment figures, but noted that it was high "among the young". Unofficial estimates put the unemployment rate among young Syrians at around 30%.
The Syrian leadership is familiar with all these data, but hoped that the massacre in the city of Hama about 30 years ago, in which the regime killed tens of thousands of residents, would help repress them. That didn't happen.
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‘Turkey will not stand by the wrongdoing in Syria’
Emine Kart, Ankara,
Today's Zaman,
19 June 2011, Sunday,
For the time being, nobody, including the United States, one of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council (UNSC) and a key NATO ally of Turkey, is able to foresee what the near future will bring in Syria, and there is great ambiguity over the benefits of a UNSC resolution which would condemn Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and his regime for its brutal crackdown on anti-government demonstrators, with reports from fleeing refugees suggesting there is a sectarian nature to the violence.
The issue is far more complicated and prone to further difficulties for Turkey as the next-door neighbor of Syria, which in the last few years has assumed that its bilateral relations with Syria were guided by the principles of Turkey’s policy of seeking “zero problems” with neighbors in its diplomatic efforts in the region. As the international pressure builds against Assad’s regime, Turkey has sharpened its tone toward Syria over the past few days, criticizing President Assad for not living up to his promises to make reforms. PM Recep Tayyip Erdo?an slammed Assad’s younger brother, Maher Assad, the mastermind behind the violent crackdown on protesters, demanding an end to Assad’s 11 years of dictatorial rule.
Syrian President Assad’s special envoy Hasan Turkmani was in Ankara earlier this week and had separate lengthy talks with both Erdo?an and Foreign Minister Ahmet Davuto?lu. At both of the meetings, Turkmani had to face the blunt messages of Turkey as Ankara is increasingly becoming angry over the burgeoning humanitarian crisis. Erdo?an and Davuto?lu told Turkmani that Turkey’s patience has run out with regard to the promise of reforms in the country.
Although Turkmani told the two that “Syria is ready to introduce reforms and take into consideration the demands raised by the anti-government protest movement,” the response he found in the Turkish capital was that Turkey “wants deeds now, but no more words.”
A noteworthy fact within the messages delivered by top Turkish leaders is that Assad’s brother Maher’s actions led to the president being singled out for criticism by Turkey for the offensive on Syrian villages. Apparently, Ankara is taking into consideration the high probability that Assad has had a hard time controlling the military and the security apparatus.
Amidst the intense and rapidly deteriorating conditions on the ground, with more and more refugees flocking to Turkey from its southern neighbor, some commentators and politicians suggest that the crisis in neighboring Syria has called into question Turkey’s policy of seeking “zero problems” with neighbors.
These commentators have missed the point that Turkey’s diplomatic efforts in the region now enable Ankara to hold a unique dialogue with Damascus and to urge them to carry out reforms that could help end an uprising against authoritarian rule.
And yet again, those suggesting that “zero-problems with neighbors” collapsed with the crisis in the next-door neighbor are forgetting the fact that Turkey has constantly stressed that this policy is an ideal, that it is not naïve, and that it is similar to what Mustafa Kemal once said: “Peace in the country, peace in the world.”
“Engagement policy is expected to prevail -- at least for some time. But there will be thresholds,” a senior diplomat told Sunday’s Zaman, indicating that Ankara is very close to running out of patience.
“In the past, we defended the engagement policy because it was the right thing to do at that time,” the same diplomat, speaking under customary condition of anonymity, went on saying. “But we will not stand by the wrongdoing in Syria, that’s for sure,” the diplomat briefly remarked.
Damascus and lack of understanding
As early as February 2011, when Prime Minister Erdo?an and Syrian President Assad met in Aleppo following the landmark ground-breaking ceremony for the Friendship Dam on the Asi River in Hatay, there were very blunt warnings delivered to the Syrian side behind closed doors, Sunday’s Zaman learned from a Turkish government official.
Later, the same kind of blunt messages were personally issued by both Davuto?lu and chief of the National Intelligence Organization (M?T) Hakan Fidan. When the response disappointed Ankara, Turkish leaders -- in unison -- started to deliver their messages and warnings to Damascus publicly.
On Monday Davuto?lu headed a lengthy political review meeting with top bureaucrats involved in the ongoing Syrian crisis. The meeting at the Foreign Ministry came a day after thousands of pro-regime protesters marched toward the Turkish Embassy in Damascus at a time when Turkey said it would keep its gates open for Syrian refugees fleeing a violent crackdown in a town near the Turkish border.
Ambassador Halit Cevik, the deputy undersecretary of the Foreign Ministry for Middle East affairs, Turkey’s Ambassador to Syria ?mer ?nhon and Turkey’s Ambassador to Lebanon ?nan ?zy?ld?z also participated in the three-hour-long meeting, diplomatic sources told Sunday’s Zaman.
A crowd of close to 2,000 pro-regime protesters rallied on Sunday, June 12, near the Turkish Embassy in Damascus, trying to bring down the Turkish flag. The attempt was thwarted by embassy security while Syrian security forces helped disperse the crowd.
Speaking to the Cihan news agency, Ambassador ?nhon said the crowd chanted slogans against Turkey while marching toward the embassy. He said the crowd broke the glass covers of billboards promoting Turkey near the embassy. The angry crowd also planted a Syrian flag at the gate of the diplomatic mission, the ambassador said.
Meanwhile, Syrian Deputy Foreign Minister Faisal al-Mikdad expressed sorrow over the attack in a telephone conversation with ?nhon. Mikdad also pledged to the ambassador that these types of attacks will not be repeated again.
Erdo?an said in a televised interview on June 9 that he spoke with Assad over the phone several days ago but complained that the Syrian government had shrugged off his calls. “I spoke with Mr. Bashar al-Assad four or five days ago. I explained this situation very clearly and openly. Despite this, they take this very lightly. And sadly they tell us different things,” Erdo?an said.
Just two days after Erdo?an’s remarks, a pro-regime Syrian official in Damascus said unceasing unrest in the country is part of a Western conspiracy that aims to put the region under Turkish control.
“The West wants to put the region under Turkish control like in the Ottoman days,” the pro-regime figure in Damascus was quoted as saying in an article published on June 12 in Abu Dhabi-based daily The National. The report said an anti-Turkey backlash is now under way in Syria, with state-controlled media accusing Ankara of trying to resurrect the Ottoman Empire and re-establish control over the Middle East.
“Turkey is a NATO member and embodies a safe kind of Islam for the West, so they have done a deal to give everything to Ankara,” the official said in remarks that were not later denied. Maintaining that Damascus was far from alone and remained a powerful regional political player, the official said: “The plot will not work in the end. Syria still has some cards. It has Iran and Hezbollah.” In line with Ankara’s diplomatic conventions, when approached by Sunday’s Zaman for their reaction to the remarks reported by The National, Turkish diplomatic sources declined to comment on anonymous remarks by the unnamed Syrian official.
Nonetheless, this is what a Turkish governmental official, who requested anonymity due to the sensitive nature of the issue, told Sunday’s Zaman regarding the rally in front of the Turkish Embassy: “If the Syrian administration is behind the protest in front of the Turkish Embassy, they are definitely making a grave mistake. It shows that they haven’t fully comprehended that we haven’t yet abandoned our engagement policy and we are not burning the bridges yet.”
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Even Assad supporters enjoy reforms in Syria
Muhlis Kacar, Hatay,
Today's Zaman,
19 June 2011, Sunday
It appears that the reforms and change in government in Syria, which are the product of the Arab Spring and the uprisings that have been taking place in the country since January, have benefited all segments of society.
Amid escalating tension in Syria, in addition to refugees a number of Syrian tourists have also come to Hatay, a southern Turkish province bordering Syria where tent cities for Syrian refugees have been set up. It can be easily noticed that there is a large number of Syrians who are not affected by what is going on in the country and who are going about their daily lives hoping that the uprising will not last much longer and that the Syrian army gains control of the protest-ridden cities.
Rami Saker, an IT specialist from Damascus, says a large segment of the Syrian population supports Bashar Al-Assad in his fight against the opposition uprising. Saker and his best friend, Agi -- who does not want to give his full name and who has business outside of Syria -- decided to meet in Hatay to see each other.
There is a distinction between being against Assad and being against the Ba’ath regime in Syria, according to our observations from the region. Assad is a popular and well-liked leader in Syria, unlike toppled leaders Hosni Mubarak of Egypt and Zine El Abidine Ben Ali of Tunisia. One Syrian showed me videos on his laptop of Assad and his wife visiting public places, eating in ordinary restaurants and visiting a Christian Church. For them, he is the people’s leader.
After talking to Syrians on the streets of Hatay, one thing stands out from the rest: The initial concerns that the events would turn into a sectarian war have no merit as there is a great mix of different groups in society located on either side of the political spectrum.
“For example I am Alawi and Agi is a Sunni Kurd. Yet we are best friends and we both like Assad. Assad himself is Alawi and his wife is Sunni. On the other hand my aunt who lives in Lebanon is a Sunni, and so are my nephew and niece. My uncle who lives in France is married to a Syrian Christian. There are also people who belong to different sects and are opposed to Assad. Therefore, it is impossible to separate Syrian society and blame a single sect or ethnic group for being behind these events,” Sakher and Agi told Sunday’s Zaman.
Another family of four who came to visit Hatay as tourists from the Syrian city of Latakia told Sunday’s Zaman that they are happy to live in Syria despite the uprisings that have been plaguing the country for the past few months. The wife and the daughter, who is 16, both wear the hijab. The mom says she has German citizenship and that the family lived in Germany for years before deciding to go back to Syria.
They are happy to live in Syria because they say they can lead their lives normally and disagree that it is no longer safe to live in Syria nowadays. The only wish they do have is that the situation in Syria will be resolved and that things will go back to normal as soon as possible. Saker and Agi say the existing regime -- which they call the “system” -- has committed many wrongs in the last 40 years. Yet they also state that these wrongdoings cannot be reversed or resolved overnight. “[Assad] introduces new reforms almost every day. We feel that our lives are already getting better. Right off the bat, he changed the government and he eliminated the state of emergency that had been in effect for years. Recently I had to see a minister because of a job-related issue and was able to see him three hours after I made the request. Before the reforms it would have taken me a hefty amount of bribes and maybe more than a year to be able to see a minister,” Saker says.
According to Saker, the right to demonstrate has now been introduced, and those who want to peacefully demonstrate can apply to the Ministry of Security and police will also accompany any demonstrations to ensure people’s safety.
To support this view Agi says that when Assad came to power he was only 34 years old. Yet, in the last 11 years he has gained enough experience to transform the system according to the people’s demands, he adds. This is why Saker and Agi say they are against the way the foreign media are handling the issue and personally attacking Assad, accusing him of not compromising with opposition demands.
“If there is a leader who is able to do it, it is Bashar,” they note. Agi also recalls that there is no such guarantee that the system will change when the leader is gone, adding that in Egypt and Tunisia the old rules are still in place and therefore he has doubts that things would change with a new leader. “As long as the old rules are in place and the old system still persists, it does not really matter who will be the next leader,” he says.
According to them there are also a few examples where demands for freedom exceed reasonable boundaries. For example, in areas where the height of the buildings is limited due to regulations based on geographic and historical considerations, people all of a sudden have started added more storeys, disregarding the law and taking advantage of the disarray in the country. When police arrive at the scene asking them why they have built extra storeys when it is against the law, they start shouting “Hurriyah, hurriyah!” which means freedom in Arabic.
Internet social networking sites are the Syrian people’s biggest weapon in broadcasting their voices and making sure they are heard. The Syrians on both sides can organize within seconds, reaching thousands in a matter of minutes on the Internet. “Now even the people against Assad would like to see the dust settle as they also want to be able to go about their ordinary lives without disruption,” they reiterate.
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Thanks to Syrian refugees
Ayse Karabat,
Today's Zaman,
19 June 2011,
As a citizen there is no reason to be proud if the officials are doing what they have to do, but the attitude of Turkey regarding the Syrian refugees who crossed into Turkey due to turmoil in their country is promising.
Turkey welcomed the Syrian citizens and indicated it will not encourage them to return as long as their lives remain threatened; this is the right thing to do, and I hope that this incident will prompt Turkey to revise its policy regarding refugees and asylum seekers.
There are around 8,500 Syrian refugees, and they had been welcomed in tent camps in the southern province of Hatay. It is not possible for the press to interview them, but it is not difficult to guess that they are in fear of being sent back before conditions in Syria get better.
Syrian officials are urging their citizens to return home, but they are not outlining a reform calendar that can ease the fear of its citizens. According to Turkish media reports, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s envoy Hasan Turkmani asked for the cooperation of Turkey in convincing its citizens to return home. The same reports are suggesting that the answer of Ankara is very clear: It is our international responsibility to protect them, and we will not encourage them to return as long as the situation remains the same.
This is the right answer to give.
Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davuto?lu underlined several times that further escalation of violence in Syria might force more Syrians to exit their country, but both he and Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdo?an noted that the borders will remain open, and the only way to prevent such an exodus is for the Syrian government to meet their people’s demands for reform.
We don’t have that much information as to what is happing in the camps since the media do not have access to the camps. The reason for this is understandable -- any filming might put the refugees or their relatives in Syria in danger. But on the other hand, it should not be that difficult to make the necessary arrangements to ensure media access to the camps in a way that protects the refugees.
Our knowledge is limited about life in the camps; however, according to a statement by the Hatay Governor’s Office there are enough facilities in the tent cities to answer the needs of refugees including playgrounds for children, places of worship place and a hospital and TV room. The governorate in a statement pointed out that there is hot water 24 hours a day for doing laundry.
According to the same statement, there are art courses for children and sewing courses for women. Officials say they are making preparations for additional arrivals.
These are good signs, although we are not sure if these facilities are sufficient since the media are not able to visit the camps.
Also, there are stories that civil society organizations are about to launch aid campaigns for the Syrian refugees. So far, I haven’t heard any complaints from Turkish citizens about having the Syrians on Turkish soil, just the opposite – I’ve heard expressions of sympathy. Well, anyway, we come from a tradition that was very generous to refugees; the Ottoman Empire opened its arms to those who were under threat of persecution in many cases, although Turkey is far from following the example set by the Ottoman Empire.
However, the developments and the approach of Turkey towards the Syrian refugees give hope that Turkey might revise its general policy about refugees and asylum seekers because this is a very problematic area where a major transformation in mentality is needed.
This should start with a well-defined law on law on asylum and migration. For the time being, there is no law such in Turkey.
There are only some articles in various laws regarding the issue as well as many regulations that make the situation even more complex.
This new law should also remove current geographical restrictions. According to this restriction, Turkey accepts refugees only from the Western part of the world. People who coming the Eastern parts of the world -- even if they are granted the status of refugees by the UN – aren’t accepted as refugees here in Turkey; thus, they have to be sent to a third country. Unfortunately, finding a country that will accept them can take three years on average. Meanwhile, they just kill time while waiting for a new life, and they are obliged to reside in designated cities and are not allowed to integrate into the Turkish society.
However, one good sign a few years ago was when the Ministry of Education decided to allow children of asylum seekers to attend school.
While the refugees wait to go to a third country it is not easy for them to find jobs -- even if they have residence permits as they may be asked to reside in cities where they cannot find jobs. Moreover, laws and regulations are not friendly because an employer must firmly state that it needs this particular employee and submit convincing reasons as to why this particular job cannot be done by a Turkish citizen.
The future of Syrian refugees is not clear, but everybody hopes their country will reform laws and create reasonable and humane conditions for them. They are most welcome to stay, and we should be thankful to them because they remind us of our own humanness and ability to offer shelter to people in distress.
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Face the facts – Syria is an apartheid state
The west is conniving in Bashar Assad's brutal suppression of opposition
Nick Cohen,
The Observer,
19 June 2011,
For a tyrant whose forces took 13-year-old Hamza Ali al-Khateeb, burned him, mutilated him, shattered his knee caps, cut off his penis and sent his corpse to his parents as a warning against participating in opposition politics, Bashar al-Assad receives remarkably forgiving treatment.
Barack Obama, who purports to be the free world's leader, proved last week that he can speak his mind when he is confronted with behaviour he believes to be truly beyond the pale when he ordered Congressman Anthony Weiner to resign for tweeting pictures of his bulging briefs to a distressed American woman.
Despite his uncompromising stance on Weiner's erect penis, Obama still cannot find it in himself to say that Assad must also resign for the slightly more tasteless offence of castrating Syrian boys. The best Obama managed since the Arab Spring reached Syria in March was a speech on 19 May in which he directed his remarks to "President Assad" – granting the dictator an unearned title that no free election has given him a right to claim. "The Syrian people have shown their courage in demanding a transition to democracy," said Obama. "President Assad now has a choice: he can lead that transition or get out of the way."
No observer of the savage rule of the Assad clan over the past 40 years should have doubted for a moment which of the options the regime would choose. There was never going to be a second's hesitation. More tellingly, ever since it ignored Obama's warning and confirmed that, rather than lead a "transition to democracy", it preferred attacking the civilian population of Jisr al-Shughour, gang-raping the wives of its opponents and ordering snipers to pick off demonstrators, the US president, the European Union, Turkey and the Gulf states have failed to turn to the democratic elements in the Syrian opposition instead.
Contrast the neglect of the Syrian opposition with the international community's attitudes to the Tunisian revolution, where Ben Ali's protectors in the Elysée Palace were shamed into abandoning him by the protesters on the streets, or to Mubarak, a brutal western ally, whom Obama nevertheless dropped, or to the need for military intervention against the Gaddafi despotism, which, for all its crimes against the Libyan people, was no longer a hostile foreign power. Syria's Ba'athists have already killed more civilians than the Egyptian and Tunisian forces combined and yet they are tolerated.
The scale of the oppression in Syria helps explain western indifference. The Ba'ath party keeps the media out and what the press does not see the world does not care about. Hozan Ibrahim, a former political prisoner who is a spokesman for the committee co-ordinating revolutionary protest, tells me that we should not only think about the past four months of oppression but the past four decades: "It's not been so easy to get ourselves organised after that."
Yet, almost miraculously, they are organising and to good effect. At a conference in the Turkish seaside resort of Antalya, the various strands of the opposition came together to agree on a programme that was multiracial – Syria's persecuted Kurdish minority was well represented; liberal – they pledged to fight for free elections, a free press and an independent judiciary; and anti-sectarian.
The last is not the smallest of the opposition's achievements. The ranks of the national initiative for change include Islamists from the Muslim Brotherhood, although, thankfully, they are in a minority. Its more secular leaders have so far rejected the temptation to turn the revolution into a communalist war.
The UN will never tell you this, but Syria is an apartheid-style state. Members of Assad's Alawite sect make up only 14% of the population, but they control government, much of business and all the forces of coercion. Even the underworld is segregated on confessional lines. The shabbiha crime gangs that run the prostitution and smuggling rackets, and whose members the Assads are letting loose on the civilian population, are Alawite mafias.
I hope that liberals of my generation who beat their chests as they protested against racial apartheid in southern Africa will soon feel as outraged by religious apartheid in the Middle East. The Syrian opposition has as much right to our support as the African National Congress did because it has not targeted Alawites because of their religion. Indeed, it places its hopes on the Alawite-led army mutinying.
Nor does it want western military intervention. In a discussion of the opposition's needs, the pro-democracy thinktank, the Henry Jackson Society, emphasised the modesty of the dissidents' requests. They need encrypted laptops and satellite phones and sim cards to circumvent the regime's media blackouts and so continue the documentation of atrocities, and support from western intelligence services as they seek to persuade sympathetic Syrian army officers to switch sides.
To date, little beyond token sanctions has been forthcoming. Western governments remain lost in the delusion that Assad is a potential reformer rather than an actual monster, on the sole grounds, as far as I can see, that he was once a student in London and that the drooling toadies of Vogue magazine hailed his glamorous wife as "the freshest and most magnetic of first ladies". They still cannot see him as an enemy.
The Obama administration in particular has fallen for the regime's line that the Ba'athists can wreck the Middle East peace process, and unleash Hezbollah in Lebanon and "insurgents" in Iraq. Like cops who protect crime bosses because "at least they keep order on the streets and only kill their own", the west thinks that the Ba'ath is better than the alternative. Our leaders do not pause to consider that Syria has already partitioned Lebanon and funnelled mass murderers into Iraq. As for the alleged "peace process" – Likud and Hamas are more than capable of killing that on their own.
A Syrian refugee in Britain called Ausama Monajed produces the invaluable daily briefing Syrian Revolution News Round-ups. He concluded one recent post by saying: "We are not fighting against the Assads alone, we're fighting against their main backers as well: not Iran, Hezbollah, Russia or China, but the gods of indifference, cynicism and senility. Heaven help us."
Until world opinion can see the absurdity of firing politicians for posting pictures of their dicks on the internet, but not for committing crimes against humanity, an indifferent heaven is all these people can appeal to.
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Syria: They came at dawn, and killed in cold blood
As Syrians flee, conditions worsen in Turkey's border camps
Kim Sengupta in Idlib province
Independent,
Sunday, 19 June 2011
The houses looked abandoned, windows and doors locked, a broken shutter clattering in the wind. Then, one by one, they began to appear from their hiding places, mainly women and children, a few elderly people. The residents of this village had learned to their cost that being caught unawares in this violent conflict could have lethal consequences.
The raid by the secret police – the Mukhabarat – and the Shabbiha militia had come at dawn. The killings had been cold-blooded and quick, three men shot dead as, barely awake, they tried desperately to get away. A search for others had proved fruitless; they had fled the day before. The damage to homes vented the frustration of the gunmen at missing their quarries.
"They were working from a list. But they made mistakes. One of them was the wrong person. They did not even have the right name of the man they killed," said Qais al-Baidi, gesturing towards the graves on a sloping hillside. "But none of them deserved this. They were not terrorists. They had just taken part in some demonstrations. These Assad people are vicious. They have no pity. They like killing."
The three killings were among the many that had followed the ferocious onslaught launched by Bashar al-Assad against the uprising. Two centres of opposition in the north of the country had been taken after bloody clashes, Jisr al-Shughour early in the week, Maaret al-Numan falling on Friday. This village was among a cluster that had been subjected, according to a regime commander, to a "cleaning-up" operation.
The offensive had led to a terrified exodus of much of the local population, with 12,000 huddled in squalid conditions on the Syrian side of the border. Another 10,000 had made it across to Turkey, only to be herded into holding centres, locked away from the outside world, the government in Ankara making it clear that these people will be sent back at an opportune time.
The locals in the Turkish province of Hatay and the international media have been kept away from the dispossessed families. The Turkish government insists they are "guests", as accepting they are refugees could lead to legal obligations towards them. But Angelina Jolie, Hollywood actress and UN goodwill ambassador, was taken to see one of the centres after expressing a wish to help to alleviate the suffering of Syria. A banner put up by the Turkish authorities at the entrance to the camp read "Goodness Angel of the World, Welcome".
Away from the focus of celebrity attention, there is little help for those stuck at the frontier. The vast majority sleep under trees; a few have managed to drive pick-up trucks cross-country and use the trailer to sleep; others have built makeshift tents out of rags and plastic sheeting. A pond with floating rubbish and the waters of the river were being used for washing and drinking. Some of the injured had failed to survive without adequate medical help, and their funerals were held where they had died.
The only "aid" for a humanitarian crisis worsening by the day had been meagre supplies, bottles of water and loaves of bread smuggled in by groups of young men on foot across steep ridges, along the same path taken by The Independent on Sunday. Relief organisations have not been allowed access by either the Syrians or the Turks. But for those remaining in the village, the camps at the border, despite the desperate straits they are in, are the goals to reach. They offer relative safety from the savagery of a state waging war on its own people.
Hania Um Jaffar, whose 22-year-old nephew, Khalid Abdullah, was one of those killed, was convinced that the journey there was the only choice. "We had hidden in the fields the day before when we saw helicopters flying over us. But they went away and we thought it had passed. But then they came later on foot. They did not come into our home, but went to others, to the one where Khalid was staying. He was shot many times.
"I don't want anyone else in my family to die. Surely that is what will happen if we stay here. My sons have gone to the mountains, and another nephew has done the same. They cannot come back to take us to Turkey. That is too dangerous for them. We have to make our own way there."
The tiny community remaining in the dozen houses were running out of food. Bassem Mohammed Ibrahim, a 68-year-old farmer, spread his hands. "[The regime forces] did not burn the crops here like they have done in other places. But the only men left here now are old ones like me. We cannot work the fields by ourselves. Our farms will be ruined. But if we stay here, I don't think we will survive."
The journey to the border, however, is fraught with risk. The secret police and the Shabbiha, drawn from the community to which President Assad and the Syrian elite belong, had ambushed families, forcing some to turn back. A small group of opposition fighters provide protection along the route. "But we only have a few of these," said Habib Ali Hussein, holding up his Kalashnikov assault rifle. "Assad has tanks, artillery, helicopters."
Until two weeks ago Mr Hussein was part of those forces as a lieutenant in the army. He deserted, he claimed, sickened by the violence meted out to unarmed civilians. "They were shooting people who were refusing to follow orders. That is what happened at Jisr al-Shughour. I am from that area, and my people were being attacked. So I got my family away from our home and then I left. We haven't got the weapons to go forward. All we are doing is defending."
At the border camp, Isha al-Diri, a medical assistant at a clinic in Jisr al-Shugour, had been administering treatment as best he could. "The seriously injured have been taken to Turkey. But some died before that could happen. The problem here is that we haven't got enough medicine."
Rawat Khalifa had come seeking cough medicine for his six-year-old daughter. "It is the damp; a lot of the young ones are ill. We shall have to go to Turkey if they get any worse. We cannot take risks with their lives.
"We have not crossed over so far because we are Syrians. We want to stay in our own country. But we are afraid to go back home. We are afraid that our own leaders will try to kill us."
Yesterday, Syrian troops arrived with tanks at Bdama, only 12 miles from the Turkish border. Dozens were arrested and houses were burned, according to eyewitnesses. The area had been considered a key region for passing food and supplies to people who have fled the violence in their villages but have yet to cross the border into Turkey.
Foreign Office advice: Britons warned to leave Syria
British nationals were urged yesterday to leave Syria immediately, as the situation in the country deteriorated further. Updating its travel advice, the Foreign Office warned Britons to use "commercial means" to leave while they were still available. It reissued an urgent warning against all travel to the country, adding it was "highly unlikely" the embassy in the country's capital, Damascus, would be able to assist if the situation worsened.
A Foreign Office spokesman said: "Because of the current situation, we advise against all travel to Syria. We ask British nationals to heed this advice and leave the country now." He urged Britons to "take responsibility for their own safety and security".
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Lies, damn lies, and reports of battlefield atrocities
World View: Gaddafi is feeding his troops Viagra and ordering them to rape the womenfolk of the rebels ... well, maybe. Or is truth, as usual, the first casualty in this war?
Patrick Cockburn,
Independent,
Sunday, 19 June 2011
In war, accounts of atrocities need to be treated with scepticism. Surveying a battlefield where he had once fought, the great Confederate general Stonewall Jackson turned to an aide and asked: "Did you ever think, sir, what an opportunity a battlefield affords liars?"
He meant that in war people, motivated by fear, self-interest or a simple desire to make sense of a confusing and terrifying situation, make things up. And in the midst of a fast-moving conflict it is more than usually difficult to prove them wrong.
In the first Gulf conflict of 1990-91 two notorious pieces of propaganda and misinformation greatly helped to rally support for the war by seeming to demonstrate the savagery and duplicity of the Iraqi government. The first was the appearance of a 15-year-old Kuwaiti girl before a US congressional committee to testify how, as a volunteer hospital nurse, she had seen Iraqi soldiers tip babies out of incubators and leave them to die on the floor. Her account was greeted with outrage until, some time later, it was revealed that the girl was the well-coached daughter of Kuwait's ambassador in Washington who had never left the US during the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait.
The second story took place a few months later, during the bombing and missile strikes on Baghdad. CNN's Peter Arnett reported that the US had destroyed a baby milk factory on the western outskirts of Baghdad, while the Pentagon furiously maintained the facility was making biological weapons. I visited the ruins of the plant on the same day as Arnett and I remember reading through letters about the baby milk business I found in smashed up desks in the factory office. Many were about abortive efforts to save the factory from bankruptcy, convincing evidence that the Iraqi authorities could scarcely have concocted overnight.
Governments have not become any more truthful in the 20 years between the war in Iraq in 1991 and in Libya in 2011. The story that most compellingly illustrates the evil nature of Muammar Gaddafi today is the allegation that he ordered his troops to rape women who oppose him and his acquisition of Viagra-type medicines to encourage them to do so. This tale had been around for some time, but gained credibility when the International Criminal Court's prosecutor, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, said he had evidence that the Libyan leader had personally ordered mass rape. This week the US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, said she was "deeply concerned" by reports Gaddafi's troops were engaged in widespread rape as a weapon of war.
No doubt individual rapes have occurred. Most famously, Iman al-Obeidi burst into a foreign journalists' hotel in Tripoli on 26 March and gave a credible account of how she had been raped by pro-Gaddafi security men, before she was hustled away. But, despite the ICC allegations, so far Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have not found evidence of such mass government-ordered rape despite extensive investigations. Diana Eltahawy, Amnesty International's Libya expert, told me that Amnesty researchers in Libya had found no evidence of such a policy.
Could women be keeping quiet about what had happened to them for reasons of shame or fear of being killed to preserve "family honour"? Ms Eltahawy says: "We spoke to women, without anybody else there, all across Libya, including Misrata and on the Tunisia-Libya border. None of them knew of anybody who had been raped. We also spoke to many doctors and psychologists with the same result." Liesel Gerntholtz, head of women's rights at Human Rights Watch, which has also been investigating the charges of mass rape, says: "We have not been able to find evidence. We have not been able to verify it." She emphasised that her group's researches were ongoing.
The one substantive piece of evidence for mass rape came last month in the form of a survey by Dr Seham Sergewa, a child psychologist who had been working with children traumatised by the fighting. She distributed 70,000 questionnaires to Libyans in refugee camps and received 59,000 responses. She says: "We found 10,000 people with PTSD [post-traumatic stress disorder], 4,000 children suffering psychological problems and 259 raped women." They said they had been raped by Gaddafi's militiamen, sometimes in front of their families. Dr Sergewa says she interviewed 140 women who had been raped. But, says Ms Eltahawy, when asked if Amnesty International could meet any of them, Dr Sergewa said "she had lost touch with them and she was the only one who said she was directly in touch with victims".
Some captured pro-Gaddafi soldiers, claiming they knew about the rapes as an official policy, have appeared on TV. But Amnesty found that when an Arabic-speaking investigator visited detention facilities without an official minder in the room they did not repeat the allegation.
As in Iraq, journalists have been over-credulous and Western governments self-serving in pumping out atrocity stories about the Libyan government regardless of whether or not there is any evidence for them. Another story from Libya, universally believed by the rebels, is that many of the fighters in the pro-Gaddafi units are mercenaries from central or west Africa. Ms Eltahawy says Amnesty has found no evidence for this. The only massacre by the Gaddafi regime, involving hundreds of victims, which is so far well-attested is the killings at Abu Salim prison in Tripoli in 1996, when up to 1,200 prisoners died, according to a credible witness who survived.
Battlefronts are always awash with rumours of impending massacre or rape which spread rapidly among terrified people who may be the intended victims. Understandably enough, they do not want to wait around to find out how true these stories are. I was in Ajdabiyah, a front-line town an hour and a half's drive south of Benghazi, earlier this year when I saw car loads of panic-stricken refugees fleeing up the road. They had just heard an entirely untrue report via al-Jazeera Arabic that pro-Gaddafi forces had broken through. Likewise al-Jazeera was producing uncorroborated reports of hospitals being attacked, blood banks destroyed, women raped and the injured executed.
The verification of atrocities matters so much because if people are to try to have them stopped they must be sure that what they are told is true and not propaganda. One toxic impact of the anti-German lies told by First World War propagandists was that when, 20 years later, the Nazis did embark on mass slaughter, the evidence of their crimes was at first treated with extreme scepticism.
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Activists Using Video to Bear Witness in Syria
By LIAM STACK
NYTIMES,
18 June 2011,
KHIRBET AL-JOUZ, Syria — Jamil Saeb stared intently into the bluish light of his laptop screen, feverishly editing video as antigovernment chants rose up the hillside from the makeshift refugee camp on the valley floor below.
The air was thick with cigarette smoke inside the concrete shack that he and a group of friends had transformed into a revolutionary media center, one bare room whose floors were covered with thin mattresses strewn with digital cameras, laptops, modems and a tangle of cords.
There have been few outside witnesses to the three-month popular uprising against the Assad family’s 40-year rule of Syria, which has unfolded behind a rolling Internet blackout and efforts to bar foreign journalists from the country. The world has depended largely on online videos of both protests and the government’s violent crackdown, which activists say has left more than 10,000 jailed and over 1,300 dead.
Many of those videos stream through this bare-bones media center in a hillside olive grove near the border with Turkey, where a group of a dozen revolutionaries-turned-refugees work, eat and sleep.
“We try to capture all the crimes committed by the government to show to the global media,” said Mr. Saeb, 34, who fled here last week after security forces attacked his hometown, Jisr al-Shoughour. They also recorded the testimonies of six army officers who had recently defected and fled for the border.
It is a risky mission that requires a modicum of technical skill and a great deal of stealth. Last week, three of their colleagues disappeared while filming a military operation in the village of Al Sarmaniyah.
“We have to hide, because as far as the security forces are concerned we are all terrorists,” Mr. Saeb said. “They think we are like Osama bin Laden.”
Most of the videos they produce are shot in their region, the poor and neglected rural northwest, as well as the busy streets of the Mediterranean port of Latakia. Their work is part of a patchwork of YouTube channels and Facebook groups, with names like SyrianRevolution, that have helped convey their country’s historic unrest to the outside world.
The operation here, which started in March, has grown in importance in the last two weeks, since Syrian forces moved into the region with tanks, artillery and helicopter gunships. By this weekend, the activists had loaded more than 250 videos onto their YouTube channel, Freedom4566, which have been viewed more than 220,000 times.
Hiding behind shuttered windows, down dark alleys or on hilltops high above besieged towns, the activists shoot video of the security forces as they push the violent crackdown across Syria’s rural northwest. The men (none of the activists in the media center are women) upload their videos to social media sites like Facebook and YouTube, which Mr. Saeb praises as “the most realistic.”
“It is like watching the security forces live,” he said.
That was especially true on Saturday, when security forces moved into Badama, a town of 10,000 about five miles from the border, with tanks, armored personnel carriers, busloads of plainclothes forces, and snipers, said a witness reached by phone.
Most residents of Badama fled to Turkey in recent days, but on Saturday, cyberactivists rushed there to take video of the military’s forces as they rolled in.
Their cameras captured armored trucks whizzing through the streets and fires burning the valley’s slender evergreens, which they said were set ablaze by the army. By afternoon the smoke could also be seen from the tent city below the media center.
Life for the activists was not always like this, they said.
For many, their cameras started to roll at the dawn of the protest movement in mid-March. Mr. Saeb used to record protests and uploaded the video using a dial-up modem. That was until he lost Internet service several weeks ago when the government cut it off in Jisr al-Shoughour and the surrounding countryside, he said.
He and the others then moved to the border zone. Here, people are as likely to speak Turkish as Arabic, and cellphones are as likely to pick up a signal from Turkcell as from Syriatel, a telecom giant owned until recently by a cousin of President Bashar al-Assad, which cut off mobile Internet 3G service here weeks ago.
Now that they are refugees they live for their media work. Their thin mattresses serve as both bed and office, and some go for days without leaving the tiny building.
Mr. Saeb fled last weekend’s military operation against Jisr al-Shoughour. Muhammad, 27, who did not want to be fully identified for fear of arrest, has been on the run for several weeks, since fleeing the port city of Latakia and abandoning his job as a cameraman and technician for the state television network. The job left him angry but equipped him with the skills for media activism.
“When I see a scene I know how to approach it,” he said. “I know how to take a nice shot.”
He wants to make amends for the years he spent working for a television channel that he says “threatens people’s lives” by ignoring violence against protesters or blaming them for soldiers’ deaths. He said he believed that media reports of army deaths at the hands of “terrorists” should be attributed to fighting between military intelligence officers and conscripts who disobey orders to open fire.
“Those soldiers are shot in the back of the head by intelligence, and everyone who works in TV knows it,” he said.
Those stories — the true stories of Syria’s uprising, he says — go unreported because the intelligence services, the Mukhabarat, “control the media, the state, everything,” he said.
“The world does not know what is happening here,” he said. “The Mukhabarat are killing people without any media attention.”
Muhammad said he worried constantly about what leaving his job and fleeing to the border would mean for his family back in Latakia, where violence has flared in recent weeks. He is the only member of his family to flee, and each night he calls his parents to make sure they are safe. Worried that the Mukhabarat might be listening in, he speaks to them in code.
“We just say ‘How are you? Fine? O.K., good,’ ” he said. “Never any political language, and I never say the word ‘protest.’ ”
His family knows nothing about his media activism or his current location, he said. It is safer for them that way.
Like the other men fervently typing on their laptops in this gray, concrete room on a verdant hillside, Muhammad is trapped between the violence, whose images flash before his eyes all day, and the foggy uncertainties of life as a refugee. Faced with staggering losses and unclear prospects, he focuses on the task at hand.
“Syrian media lies, lies, lies,” he said. “I had to leave my job to protect the Syrian people, here in the valley and everywhere else.”
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Why Europe no longer matters
Richard N. Haass,
Washington Post,
18 June 2011,
When Defense Secretary Robert Gates devoted his final policy speech this month to berating NATO and our European allies, he was engaging in a time-honored tradition: Americans have worried about Europeans shirking their share of global burdens since the start of the 60-year-old alliance.
Gates sounded a pessimistic note, warning of “the real possibility for a dim if not dismal future for the transatlantic alliance.” Yet, the outgoing Pentagon chief may not have been pessimistic enough. The U.S.-European partnership that proved so central to managing and winning the Cold War will inevitably play a far diminished role in the years to come. To some extent, we’re already there: If NATO didn’t exist today, would anyone feel compelled to create it? The honest, if awkward, answer is no.
In the coming decades, Europe’s influence on affairs beyond its borders will be sharply limited, and it is in other regions, not Europe, that the 21st century will be most clearly forged and defined.
Certainly, one reason for NATO’s increasing marginalization stems from the behavior of its European members. The problem is not the number of European troops (there are 2 million) nor what Europeans collectively spend on defense ($300 billion a year), but rather how those troops are organized and how that money is spent. With NATO, the whole is far less than the sum of its parts. Critical decisions are still made nationally; much of the talk about a common defense policy remains just that — talk. There is little specialization or coordination. Missing as well are many of the logistical and intelligence assets needed to project military force on distant battlefields. The alliance’s effort in Libya — the poorly conceived intervention, the widespread refusal or inability to participate in actual strike missions, the obvious difficulties in sustaining intense operations — is a daily reminder of what the world’s most powerful military organization cannot accomplish.
With the Cold War and the Soviet threat a distant memory, there is little political willingness, on a country-by-country basis, to provide adequate public funds to the military. (Britain and France, which each spend more than 2 percent of their gross domestic products on defense, are two of the exceptions here.) Even where a willingness to intervene with military force exists, such as in Afghanistan, where upward of 35,000 European troops are deployed, there are severe constraints. Some governments, such as Germany, have historically limited their participation in combat operations, while the cultural acceptance of casualties is fading in many European nations.
But it would be wrong, not to mention fruitless, to blame the Europeans and their choices alone. There are larger historical forces contributing to the continent’s increasing irrelevance to world affairs.
Ironically, Europe’s own notable successes are an important reason that transatlantic ties will matter less in the future. The current euro zone financial crisis should not obscure the historic accomplishment that was the building of an integrated Europe over the past half-century. The continent is largely whole and free and stable. Europe, the principal arena of much 20th-century geopolitical competition, will be spared such a role in the new century — and this is a good thing.
The contrast with Asia could hardly be more dramatic. Asia is increasingly the center of gravity of the world economy; the historic question is whether this dynamism can be managed peacefully. The major powers of Europe — Germany, France and Great Britain — have reconciled, and the regional arrangements there are broad and deep. In Asia, however, China, Japan, India, Vietnam, the two Koreas, Indonesia and others eye one another warily. Regional pacts and arrangements, especially in the political and security realms, are thin. Political and economic competition is unavoidable; military conflict cannot be ruled out. Europeans will play a modest role, at best, in influencing these developments.
If Asia, with its dynamism and power struggles, in some ways resembles the Europe of 100 years ago, the Middle East is more reminiscent of the Europe of several centuries before: a patchwork of top-heavy monarchies, internal turbulence, unresolved conflicts, and nationalities that cross and contest boundaries. Europe’s ability to influence the course of this region, too, will be sharply limited.
Political and demographic changes within Europe, as well as the United States, also ensure that the transatlantic alliance will lose prominence. In Europe, the E.U. project still consumes the attention of many, but for others, especially those in southern Europe facing unsustainable fiscal shortfalls, domestic economic turmoil takes precedence. No doubt, Europe’s security challenges are geographically, politically and psychologically less immediate to the population than its economic ones. Mounting financial problems and the imperative to cut deficits are sure to limit what Europeans can do militarily beyond their continent.
Moreover, intimate ties across the Atlantic were forged at a time when American political and economic power was largely in the hands of Northeastern elites, many of whom traced their ancestry to Europe and who were most interested in developments there. Today’s United States — featuring the rise of the South and the West, along with an increasing percentage of Americans who trace their roots to Africa, Latin America or Asia — could hardly be more different. American and European preferences will increasingly diverge as a result.
Finally, the very nature of international relations has also undergone a transformation. Alliances, whether NATO during the Cold War or the U.S.-South Korean partnership now, do best in settings that are highly inflexible and predictable, where foes and friends are easily identified, potential battlefields are obvious, and contingencies can be anticipated.
Almost none of this is true in our current historical moment. Threats are many and diffuse. Relationships seem situational, increasingly dependent on evolving and unpredictable circumstances. Countries can be friends, foes or both, depending on the day of the week — just look at the United States and Pakistan. Alliances tend to require shared assessments and explicit obligations; they are much more difficult to operate when worldviews diverge and commitments are discretionary. But as the conflicts in Iraq, Afghanistan and now Libya all demonstrate, this is precisely the world we inhabit.
For the United States, the conclusions are simple. First, no amount of harping on what European governments are failing to do will push them toward what some in Washington want them to do. They have changed. We have changed. The world has changed.
Second, NATO as a whole will count for much less. Instead, the United States will need to maintain or build bilateral relations with those few countries in Europe willing and able to act in the world, including with military force.
Third, other allies are likely to become more relevant partners in the regions that present the greatest potential challenges. In Asia, this might mean Australia, India, South Korea, Japan and Vietnam, especially if U.S.-China relations were to deteriorate; in the greater Middle East, it could again be India in addition to Turkey, Israel, Saudi Arabia and others.
None of this justifies a call for NATO’s abolition. The alliance still includes members whose forces help police parts of Europe and who could contribute to stability in the Middle East. But it is no less true that the era in which Europe and transatlantic relations dominated U.S. foreign policy is over. The answer for Americans is not to browbeat Europeans for this, but to accept it and adjust to it.
Richard N. Haass is president of the Council on Foreign Relations. The director of policy and planning at the State Department from 2001 to 2003, he is the author of “War of Necessity, War of Choice: A Memoir of Two Iraq Wars.”
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Danish crime series with a Syrian twist
SUSANNAH TARBUSH
Saudi Gazetti,
19 June 2011,
The relationship between a flawed detective and his sidekick is a staple element of crime fiction. The Danish crime writer Jussi Adler-Olsen has an unusual take on this classic pairing, in that Carl Morck – the troubled criminal detective of the four-novel ‘Department Q series’ – has as his sidekick a mysterious Syrian immigrant named Assad.
The English translation (by Lisa Hartford) of the first of the Q novels was published recently in the UK by Penguin Books under the title “Mercy”. Intriguingly, it emerges that Assad’s full name is Hafez Al-Assad – the name of the man who ruled Syria for 30 years from 1970 to 2000, and whose son Bashar is now battling to cling on to power.
Despite Morck’s relentless probing, Assad is reluctant to reveal many details of his life in Syria, and of how he and his wife and two daughters came to be granted political asylum in Denmark. Assad will only say that the Syrian government is not happy with him and that he would be killed if he returned to Syria. He is from a place called Sab Abar more than 200 kilometers from Damascus.
When Carl asks Assad if he has a driving license, the reply is: “I drive a taxi and a car and a truck and a T-55 tank and also a T-62 and armoured cars and the motorcycles with and without sidecars.”
At the outset of the novel, Morck is deeply traumatized after an ambush in which one colleague was shot dead, another was left paralyzed, and Morck himself was wounded in the head. He is due to return to work after a recovery period.
But Morck’s colleagues in the homicide department have for some time been weary of his chaotic ways and abrasive manner and when he returns to work, he is shunted out of homicide and banished to the basement to head up a new department. This Department Q is tasked with investigating unsolved crimes, known as “cold cases”.
Assad comes to work for Morck as an assistant, carrying out mundane tasks such as cleaning, preparing coffee and organizing files. But over time his sleuthing gifts and strong powers of observation and deduction become apparent. He starts to play an essential role in helping Monck with his investigations.
Department Q’s first cold case is that of an attractive young politician, Merete Lynggaard, vice chairperson of the Democrats, who had disappeared while traveling with her brother on a sea ferry five years earlier. Although her brother was initially suspected, no body was ever found.
The Danish title of the novel, “Kvinden i buret”, translates as “The Woman in the Cage”. In the prologue, a woman is imprisoned in a dark room with a steel door. She resolves that her captors will never break her and that someday she will get out of her prison. It soon becomes apparent that the woman is Merete Lynggaard, but we are given no idea who her captors are, nor why they have seized her. The novel’s chapters alternate in time between 2007, in which the main action is set, and different times in the period after Merete’s 2002 kidnapping.
“Mercy” is an ingeniously-plotted compulsively readable book that keeps the reader guessing. One of its enjoyable aspects is Adler-Oslen’s portrayal of the warm relationship that develops between Morck and his Syrian assistant. The English translation conveys Assad’s somewhat ungrammatical use of Danish. Morck is both amused and exasperated by his assistant’s behavior. He is alarmed by his crazy driving and impressed by his intuitive brilliance in detection. The short, dark Syrian has a way of charming even the strictest of secretaries and getting them to do favors for Department Q.
Hospitality is part of Assad’s persona. He brings sweet pastries for work colleagues, and is forever boiling up viscous, burning hot beverages full of sugar. One day Morck arrives at work to find the basement full of spicy cooking smells. “The explanation was to be found in Assad’s pygmy office, where a sea of baked goods and pieces of foil holding chopped garlic, little green bits, and yellow rice adorned the plates on his desk. No wonder it was causing raised eyebrows.”
Assad seemingly has contacts in the underworld. When, as part of his investigations, Morck needs to have a thick line removed to reveal a vital crossed out telephone number without damaging it and rendering it illegible, Assad tells him he “knows a guy from the Middle East” who can do it. The contact (perhaps Assad himself) performs a perfect job and Morck suspects he may be a passport forger.
The publication of “Mercy” has created much interest in the UK. Jussi Adler-Olsen’s publisher will be hoping that he will be the latest of a wave of Scandinavian crime writers to score major success in the UK. Their work is being labeled as “Nordic Noir”.
The importance of Nordic Noir on the UK literary scene is reflected in the fact that World Literature Weekend, organized from June 17-19 by the London Review Bookshop, included a session in the British Museum Saturday addressed by two major Swedish crime writers: Karin Alvtegen and Hakan Nesser.
The two authors will discuss the proposition that “behind crime fiction’s gripping narratives, there often lies a more incisive portrayal of a society than can be found in more obvious commentaries; and it offers a way to confront ideas of good and evil in a shades-of-grey world, where simple moral certainties aren’t so easy to find.”
The roots of the Nordic Noir phenomenon go back to the 1960s when Swedish journalists and partners Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo jointly wrote political thrillers focused on a detective called Martin Beck. Another significant writer in the Nordic Noir gentre is the Norwegian Karin Fossum. Her Inspector Konrad Sejer series, published from the mid-1990s, has won prizes and been translated into many languages. Iceland too is part of the Scandinavian crime fiction wave, through such writers as Arnauldur Indridason. Indridason established something of a following in Britain with his Reykjavik murder mysteries featuring Detective Erlendur.
A phenomenally successful pillar of Nordic Noir is the three-book Millennium series by the late Swedish investigative journalist and writer Stieg Larsson. The series, featuring punk-Goth computer hacker Lisbeth Salander, was published after Larsson’s death at the age of only 50 in 2004.
The small London publisher MacLehose Press, an imprint of Quercus, had the good fortune to get the English publishing rights for the three books: “The Girl With a Dragon Tattoo”, “The Girl Who Played with Fire” and “The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest”. The books have sold exceptionally well, with “The Girl with a Dragon Tattoo” alone selling 15 million copies. The Swedish film versions of the three books were made some time ago. An English-language version of “The Girl with a Dragon Tattoo” is under production in the US and is due to be released in December.
Another giant of Swedish crime fiction is Henning Mankel, creator of Inspector Kurt Wallander. Wallander is popular in Britain, both in book form and in its TV incarnations. Three different productions of “Wallander” have been screened by the BBC. Swedish actors Krister Henriksson and Rolf Lassgard star in the different Swedish TV series of Wallander, while the British version stars Kenneth Branagh.
With the publication of “Mercy” Jussi Adler-Olsen is set to join the big league of Nordic crime writers in English translation. His English-language fans look forward to the publication of the next Department Q novel in translation and to finding out more about Morck’s Syrian assistant Hafez Al-Assad.
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