13 Monday May 2013
Posted in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Regions, Syria, Turkey
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Casualties associated with Syria’s civil war: 82,000.
The numbers come by way of the nonpartisan Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/syriaohr / web page: http://syriahr.com/en/
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13 Monday May 2013
Syria’s conflict is dragging down its neighbours, none more perilously than Lebanon. Beirut’s official policy of “dissociation” – seeking, by refraining from taking sides, to keep the war at arm’s length – is right in theory but increasingly dubious in practice. Porous boundaries, weapons smuggling, deepening involvement by anti-Syrian-regime Sunni Islamists on one side and the pro-regime Hizbollah on the other, and cross-border skirmishes, all atop a massive refugee inflow, implicate Lebanon ever more deeply in the conflict next door.
Also in the news this morning:
DAMASCUS — The Syrian information minister, Omran al-Zoubi, said Sunday that President Bashar Assad’s troops have the right to enter the Israeli-occupied Golan whenever they wish, a veiled threat toward Israel to stay out of Syria’s conflict.
‘‘The Golan is Syrian Arab territory and will remain so, even if the Israeli army is stationed there,’’ Zoubi said at a news conference. “We have the right to go in and out of it whenever we want and however we please,’’ he said.
Fightin’ words!
Assad has lost Syria, for these overtures signal a madness that knows it cannot do good — cannot take care of the country, the countryside, the economy, or the people — but it might feel better if it could destroy something even as it destroys itself.
With that last sentence, I have not been merely rhetorical.
On the world map, Syria remains a country. On the ground, it has devolved into a battlefield warred over by sectarian fiefdoms, guerrilla outfits, extremist militias, criminal gangs and a regime clinging grimly to its dwindling sources of power and legitimacy.
If you click on the above URL, you will see what war looks like on the face of the earth when viewed from outer space. Included in the remote sensing comparisons: Damascus, Homs, Daryya, Aleppo.
I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desart. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed:
And on the pedestal these words appear:
“My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
Source: Wikipedia. “Ozmandias”.
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13 Monday May 2013
Tags
Israel, middle east, political, refugees, regional, strategic analysis, strategy, Tzachi Hanegbi
http://livestre.am/4s6rh (90 minutes)
Introduction: “Tzachi Hanegbi, member of the Knesset, Likud, and former Israeli minister of intelligence, addresses The Washington Institute’s 2013 Soref Symposium. Thursday, May 9, 2013.”
The concept of “integrity” constitutes a global western theme in relation to the Islamic Small Wars.
In essence, the west anchors itself in empiricism, talks policy in the open, and the broader and more inclusive the conversation in participation, comprehension, and reach, the better for mankind.
The cited video, accessible worldwide with exception existing only in states too autocratic or too fragile and tender (or all three) provides a good example of the intellectual process. It has breadth and depth and may be viewed as easily in Riyadh or Islamabad as it is accessible in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv.
In this video, the Jewish question, oh my, actually comes up in the final minutes.
I may remind readers, Chomsky’s disingenuous rhetoric notwithstanding, that all of the world’s states contain a something-majority, whether Buddhist, Christian, Hindu, Muslim or something else: count on the world’s one Jewish-majority state surviving as such, and that specifically as the center of a global ethnic and religious commune with its heart ever in Jerusalem and its body in the spirit of the Land of Israel.
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13 Monday May 2013
The unspoken truth is that the Palestinians, the country’s largest ethnic group, have developed a profound hatred of the regime and view the Hashemites as occupiers of eastern Palestine—intruders rather than legitimate rulers. This, in turn, makes a regime change in Jordan more likely than ever. Such a change, however, would not only be confined to the toppling of yet another Arab despot but would also open the door to the only viable peace solution—and one that has effectively existed for quite some time: a Palestinian state in Jordan.
Zahran, Mudar. “Jordan is Palestinian.” Pages 3-12, Middle East Quarterly, Wiinter 2012.
Posted to YouTube December 7, 2012, here’s a clip titled “Angelina Jolie Visits Syria, Jordan Border:
I’ll make it two clips with Ms. Jolie:
http://unhcr.org/v-505053a86 (also from winter 2012).
(Source page for the above: http://www.unhcr.org/pages/49e486566.html).
Current UNHCR page tallies “Total Persons of Concern” in Jordan as 431,799.
The displaced, whether from the 1948 war launched against Israel or from the latest horrors taking place today in Syria, carry with them their attitudes and beliefs about themselves (“self-concept”) and attitudes toward the greater world around them. That’s something to think about as the Syria fled has been irrevocably altered by the methods of war chosen by the Assad regime — e.g., flying air strikes against whole communities; killing noncombatants (in one parlance) / innocents (in another) without distinction from armed or known challengers; and displacing millions without accommodation.
Whether the Assads stay or go, eventually, and in part or as a whole, the Syria that existed as the enthusiasms of the “Arab Spring” approached is gone: whatever may be there, it’s missing 3.4 million of its citizens, either internally displaced or refugee.
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12 Sunday May 2013
Who, what, where, when, how, and most important, why?
In one instance, toward the end of this post, I’ve noted footage posted over the weekend but actually at least two month’s old.
The YouTube search strings were “Syria, combat, today” and “Syria, refugee crisis, today” and similar. Those yield the most recent uploads on the system, but, as suggested, not necessarily the most recent footage.
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I don’t know the posters of the above data — and it would be nice if they provided more information, not to give away their positions, but to fill in other puzzle pieces.
Whatever they — whoever — are doing Out There, the consequences of the military tit-for-tat may be other than these more notable, definite, predictable, and dispicable ends.
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Note the sectarian aspect in Lebanon as Hezbollah appears to be mobilizing and keeping Sunni and Shiite Muslims become a part of neutral humanitarian security concerns.
As noted in the previous post, some 3.4 million Syrians have been displaced by the civil.
It’s impossible, I think, to look at a MIG bombing run against a town or a rebel hit on a tank and feel any kind of hooray for one side or the other (although Maher al-Assad has probably made the best case for rebellion and revolution ever).
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Nick Paton Walsh’s piece showed up earlier on YouTube on March 6, 2013 . . . .
I haven’t the (uncompensated) energy to track each of these pieces back to their first appearance, and with the combat footage, only God knows who’s collecting and posting those recordings. Still, the principle holds: whatever the fighting may be doing for the Assad regime and for the rebels, whatever either imagine they are fighting for, what the civil war has produced is a civilian catastrophe beyond comprehension.
The numbers — those 3.4 million displaced — provide the barest frame to a story that for each displaced person has only begun.
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12 Sunday May 2013
Tags
civil war, homeless, impact, middle east, refugees, statistics, Syria
Estimated Syrian refugees: 1.4 million
Estimated Syrian Internally Displaced Persons: 2 million.
Total combined Syrian IDP and refugee estimate: 3.4 million.
[1,7]
If you think those numbers don’t or won’t alter the politics of a region, have your head examined.
Think too about what it might take to make you leave your home.
Multiply how you feel about that by the numbers provided.
Basically, Syria’s civil war has ballooned into a big old stink, one ugly enough and strong enough to send practically 3.5 million persons fleeing for their lives.
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Blogging associate Avi Melamed noted in the post cited that Israel has “provided medical treatment for Syrians injured during clashes between Syrian rebels and Assad’s military in the Golan Heights.”
Apparently, on occasion, up close and personal, the humans on the edge of Syria’s slaughterhouse know to respond with humanity to their own small part of the disaster.
Not that any good beneficial-to-neutral policy need go unpunished: Reuters, via The Jerusalem Post reports that the “Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command (PFLP-GC) said it was preparing for new operations after nearly 40 years of quiet on the Israel-Syria border.” [2]
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Oh, it’s the Jews, so it doesn’t matter, right?
Oh, Muslim (Turk), a reminder as if you need it: The Reuter’s lede reads, “Turkey believes fighters loyal to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad were behind two car bombings that killed 46 people in a Turkish border town where thousands of Syrian refugees live, officials said on Sunday.” [3]
And from Turkey to Syria, one man’s view, with love:
“None of this would have happened if they were not here. We gave them shelter and protection, this should not be the price,” he said, echoing the prevailing sense of shock in the town of 60,000 now swollen by at least 25,000 Syrian refugees.” [4]
According to the article from which that quote was taken, Turkey today hosts more than 400,000 Syrian refugees.
Why are they there?
Another reminder.
“On November 25, 2012, Salwah was returning home with a neighbor. One of the streets leading to her house was closed, so they took another route. As they set off across a square, a sniper shot Salwah in the back.” [5]
That’s why.
Brave sniper, shooting an unarmed woman in the back . . . .
I’ll bet detaining nine bombers (reported an hour ago in The Christian Science Monitor [6]) turns out a lot easier than resettling and reestablishing 3.4 million homeless.
1. Melamed, Avi. “Israel Opening Its Doors to Syrian Refugees?” Blog. May 11, 2013.
2. Reuters. “Palestinians, Syrians form units to fight for Golan.” The Jerusalem Post, May 11, 2013.
3. Burch, Jonathon. “Turkey Says Syrian forces behind border town bombings.” Reuters, May 12, 2013.
4. AFP. “Turkey vows to protect Syrian refugees amid bombings backlash.” Times of Oman, May 12, 2013.
5. Medecins Sans Frontieres. “Syria: “I Feel Better, But I Can’t Walk.” May 6, 2013.
7. UNHCR. “Syria Regional Refugee Response.” n.d., but recent within about a month.
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