Tag Archives: Syria

FNS – TWI – Syria – Assad’s Military Position in Qusayr –

31 Friday May 2013

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The battle is also important politically and psychologically. For the regime, al-Qusayr offers a chance to display its strength to allies and enemies alike. A victory would boost its resilience and affirm the commitment of its supporters.

White, Jeffrey.  “The Qusayr Rules: The Syrian Regime’s Changing Way of War.”  The Washington Institute, May 31, 2013.

Given the brutal dictatorship on one side and Islamofascist zeal on the other, I can’t assign Jeffrey White’s fine military analysis any emotional valence.  With more than 92,000 dead in Syria and 3.5 million homeless, one may only hope the civil war resolves; however, I suspect even if Assad defeats rebel forces at al-Qusayr, that won’t happen.

Less involved Syrians — noncombatants, innocents, old men, women, and children, etc. — will never forgive the Assads for bombing the living daylights out of their business and residential digs and for heightening their suffering in ways far beyond and far different from what may have been required to suppress a revolution.

Not that I’m cheering rebels who may have indulged in some share of atrocity, battlefield obscenity — that’s about where I would put cutting out a man’s heart and biting it — and massacre.  Add: firing line execution to that shame.  At least with that, the troops who have taken no prisoners may not expect to be merely captured themselves should the fortunes of war turn against them.

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Iran in Syria – Testimony Addresses Human Rights Violations

31 Friday May 2013

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Iran has also helped the Assad regime crack down on social media. In February 2011, Syria allowed access to social media websites such as Facebook and YouTube for the first time since 2007. At the time, some viewed this as a positive attempt at reform in order to allow freedom of expression. By May there was a 105 percent increase in the number of Facebook users in Syria, but it also became clear that the regime was using social media to track dissidents.16 US officials reported that in
addition to providing weapons, riot gear, and training, Iran was also supplying sophisticated surveillance equipment to the Syrian government. The Syrian regime used it to track down leaders of the protest movements and arrest them.

Levitt, Matthew.  “Iranian Support for Terrorism and Violations of Human Rights.”  Testimony before the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development, International Human Rights Subcommittee, House of Commons, Parliament of Canada.  PDF.  The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, May 30, 2013.

What one may see on the web of Syria’s civil war may belie what either the Assad regime or the collection of rebel forces, group by group, have kept hidden even though the standards for propriety as regards online publishing could not be lower.

While Matthew Levitt’s report reaches back to the 2003 arrest in Iran and subsequent torture of journalist Zahra Kazem to provide its most graphic description of the kind of pain meted out by way of the regime’s paranoid fantasia, it may leave to YouTube and the future to describe what horrors behind the curtains became the lot of captured Syrian dissidents in recent times.

Of perhaps equal interest in the report may be a part of the primary source material cited in the footnotes, for example, “Executive Order 13572 of April 29, 2011: Blocking Property of Certain Persons with Respect to Human Rights Abuses in Syria“:

“I, BARACK OBAMA, President of the United States of America, hereby expand the scope of the national emergency declared in Executive Order 13338 of May 11, 2004, and relied upon for additional steps taken in Executive Order 13399 of April 25, 2006, and in Executive Order 13460 of February 13, 2008, finding that the Government of Syria’s human rights abuses, including those related to the repression of the people of Syria, manifested most recently by the use of violence and torture against, and arbitrary arrests and detentions of, peaceful protesters by police, security forces, and other entities that have engaged in human rights abuses, constitute an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security, foreign policy, and economy of the United States, and I hereby order . . . .”

The “Government of Syria” described in executive orders between 2004 and 2011 is the same as that supported by Russia’s President Vladimir Putin.

It would appear the ghosts of the Cold War continue to haunt the politics in the Middle East.

Additional Reference

International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran.  “As Elections Approach, Iran Remains Silent on Arrests of Journalists.”  May 30, 2013.

Levitt, Matthew.  “Congressional Testimony: Iranian Support for Terrorism and Violations of Human Rights.”  PDF download page.  The Washington Institute, May 30, 2013.

Rights & Democracy for Iran.  “Iranian Journalist’s Own Experiences and His Interviews with 19 Political Prisoners.”  June 3, 2011.

Wikipedia.  “Chain Murders of Iran”.

Wikipedia.  “Evin Prison”.

Wikipedia.  “White torture”.

Wikipedia.  “Zahra Kazemi”.

Syria – Qatar – Absurdity

30 Thursday May 2013

Posted by in Islamic Small Wars, Middle East, Politics, Qatar, Regions, Syria

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“At the moment, several conflicts are being fought simultaneously in Syria. The civil war began more than two years ago as a power struggle between the government and opposition forces. But it didn’t take long for other states to get into the mix, turning the internal fight into a regional and international struggle for influence.”

http://www.dw.de/middle-east-countries-fighting-proxy-war-in-syria/a-16848708

I’ve compared violent Sunni vs. Shiite rivalry to watching two wasps fight inside a bell jar, an absurd condition driven by “content of mind” (self-concept, social grammar, etc.) and vanity, or an aspect of it I refer to as “Facsimile Bipolar Political Sociopathy”.

Russia may be the bad boy backing a brutal dictatorship, but what is NATO doing trying to sanitize the opposition?

“In response, the FSA has been acting more like a force opposed to the citizens of Syria than a force intended to secure their freedom. For example, it has in the recent past stolen wheat reserves intended for the residents of Aleppo and sold it to private Turkish grain traders, expropriated stocks of pharmaceuticals and forcibly resold them back to its owners, and ransacked schools. These are hardly the actions of a ‘liberation force.'”

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/daniel-wagner/dark-side-free-syrian_b_2380399.html

Daniel Wagner reported that “news” back in December.

“The following video, circulated by the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, shows jihadists lining up and executing supporters of President Bashar al-Assad. A man in a mask reads a statement behind the line of blindfolded men, reading off the reason for their punishment, before walking down the line and shooting each one in the back of the head.”

http://www.policymic.com/articles/42503/syrian-execution-youtube-video-graphic-footage-shows-rebel-atrocities

Qatar itself, rolling in money, stands clean and progressive in the background, and yet, should you click on the above link and witness the Al-Nusra execution of Assad’s forces, kneeling and bound, you know the money for that has got to be coming from somewhere.

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Syria – Hezbollah at Qusayr

29 Wednesday May 2013

Posted by in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Israel, Lebanon, Middle East, Regions, Syria

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Additions

Item: Britain’s The Guardian appears to maintain a daily and continuously updated brief rolled out as a blog: “Rebel leader accuses Hezbollah of invading Syria — as it happened.”  Syria, Middle East Live, The Guardian, May 29, 2013 to midnight BST.

Item:

The talks have been marred by disagreement within the coalition over expanding its membership and appointing a new leadership. Lack of unity has threatened to rob the Islamist-dominated alliance of international support.

Oweis, Khaled Yacoub.  “Syrian opposition says peace talks must mean Assad exit.”  Reuters, May 29, 2013 at 1931H EDT.

Main

Gen Selim Idriss said that more than 7,000 fighters of the Lebanese Shia movement were taking part in attacks on the rebel-held town of Qusair.

The French foreign minister has estimated the number at 3,000-4,000.

BBC.  “Hezbollah fighters ‘invading’ Syria – rebel chief.”  May 29, 2013.

Have you ever felt like you were watching choreographed news after other news has swept the page?

WASHINGTON – The US State Department called on Lebanon’s Hezbollah militia on Wednesday to withdraw its fighters from Syria immediately, saying their involvement on the side of Syrian President Bashar Assad signaled a dangerous broadening of the war.

Like, Dude, man, where’s the news?

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“Qusayr, Syria” will join the list of head-nodding names coming out of Syria’s civil war: “In addition to being capital of the al-Qusayr District, it is also the administrative center of the al-Qusayr nahiyah (“subdistrict”) which consisted of 60 localities with a collective population of 107,470 in 2004,” says Wikipedia.

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This split between war reporting and journaling and the clumsy efforts of governments to management perception has gotten a bit nutty.

Dude — I am so having  a Jeff Bridges kind of day . . . let’s call it The Big Lebowski meets Arlington Road  . . . plus maybe a little bit of Gonzo and ol’ Hunter — but we KNOW Hezbollah has joined the fray in Syria, that Israel, probably, has intercepted arms shipments (rockets, actually), and put out a hospital in the Golan:

The denunciation of health conditions on the Golan is particularly surreal: Syrians in Syria, where medical care of any kind is often simply unavailable, would be thrilled to get the same state-of-the-art care as their brethren on the Golan–where, as in East Jerusalem, Israeli law applies, entitling residents to the same services as all other Israelis.

But thanks to Israel, some of those Syrians actually are getting such care–which is doubtless Syrian President Bashar Assad’s real gripe. Israel has quietly set up a field hospital on the Golan where dozens of Syrians wounded in the civil war have been treated; others, who need more intensive care, have been transferred to regular Israeli hospitals.

Gordeon, Evelyn.  “Israel Treats Palestinians and Syrians–Over PA and Syria’s Objections.  Commentary, May 24, 2013.

That is just all so five days ago!

It’s nice, I suppose, for Washington to tell Hezbollah to get lost, but it’s like a bad movie with a British war ship announcing and firing a warning shot: you know it’s just for show and the ships will close, the canon will fire, and somebody’s going to be boarded.

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This hit the news two hours ago:

The Syrian army said it had seized the disused Dabaa military airfield north of Qusayr, giving pro-Assad forces control of all roads out of the town in a major setback for the besieged rebels.

A military source told AFP the battle for the airfield was fierce and lasted several hours. “The operation led to the liberation of the airport and the deaths of several men who were inside.

AFP.  “Hezbollah-led attack cuts off rebels in Syria’s Qusayr.”  Google, May 29, 2013.

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Syria – The Habit of War

29 Wednesday May 2013

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I myself may have the “habit of war” as as I come to this blog every morning for a dose of my own “narcissistic supply” plus an update on “the latest” somewhere.

As the week’s mornings seem to be turning out more focused on Syria than elsewhere, online witness has been turning out a grim experience.

For war porn, the BBC has covered massacres and produced footage, which, if you search videos separately — string: “Baniyas massacre” — has been all over the web since it occurred in the first days of May (there’s even a Wikipedia page: “Bayda and Baniyas massacres“).

For dismal reading, I may not too highly recommend the BBC’s “Guide to the Syrian opposition.”

A long time somewhere else, I asked this question about Somalia: “If you were a fighter anywhere in Somalia and tired of fighting, to whom would you surrender?”

? ? ?

Call that condition anarchy.

In fact, civil war has brought anarchy to Syria, not only displacing more than 20 percent of the constituents whose lives were to have been secured by President Assad, but giving rise to internally riven opposition organizations: National Coalition for Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces; the Syrian National Council (SNC); National Co-ordination Committee (NCC); and the Free Syrian Army (FSA), of which the BBC notes, “The FSA leadership told the UN Human Rights Council in February that commanders in the field did not receive orders from it and currently made their own rules of engagement.”

Time to get it together?

Opposed by deeply divided and incoherent forces, the Assad regime may have cause and hope for holding out; faced by the same, Senator McCain’s cheerleader appearance notwithstanding, the west has plenty of cause for doubting the wisdom of arming an increasingly Islamist revolution.

A look around the quarter — start with Egypt, move on to Libya, revisit Iraq — tells what comes into the vacuum left by a removed dictator.

It may not be all bad, but conditions in Syria as described by the mixed and adverse motivations involved in energizing the revolution and their expression through unstable organizations and poisonous personalities — this to judge by the mosaic of anti-western, anti-Israel, anti-Semitic spew boasted on some pages — e.g., “Today, the 15th of May, marks 65 years since Palestine was partitioned and Palestinians were expelled from their land in order to create a Jewish Nationalist State, thus executing the infamous Balfour Declaration. Britain must be held primarily responsible for these continuing crimes against humanity . . . .” (Syrian National Coordinating Body “Statement on the 65th anniversary of the Palestinian Nakba“) — bode ill for western do-good policy makers.

It may be one thing to give people the rope they need to hang themselves, quite another to hand some the rope they need to hang us.

While Obama and Putin move as Sumo wrestlers around it, the Assad Family’s Syria has failed, and although the family and its army may well survive with a state of some kind, it will be a long time before the scope of the tragedy as well as the  breathtaking intellectual, political, social, and spiritual disarray and misguidance throughout the battle space becomes clear — and then it will take more time to get down into the true basis for that so endlessly desperate, fracturing, heartbreaking, and reckless  condition.

Reference

Al Jazeera.  “Both sides in Syria use low-tech trackers.”  May 25, 2013.

Al Jazeera.  “Syria and Hezbollah bolster forces in Qusayr.”  May 29, 2013.

Al Jazeera.  “Syrian rebels divided in fight against Assad.”  May 28, 2013.

BBC.  “Guide to the Syrian opposition.”  May 29, 2013.

BBC.  “Syrian activists document al-Bayda and Baniyas ‘massacre’.  May 28, 2013.

BBC.  “Syria crisis: Rebels condemn opposition coalition.”  May 29, 2013.

Syria – The Damage Done Uncovers New Themes

28 Tuesday May 2013

Posted by in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Israel, Middle East, Politics, Psychology, Regions, Syria

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The Soviet Union had strategic interests in Syria ever since the mid-1960s. So does modern Russia. It is the largest advance base that Russia still has in the Middle East, and someone like Russian President Vladimir Putin would never give it up, certainly not for “humanitarian reasons,” and even more certainly when the Russians see a certain symmetry there, and believe that Israel is the most important US advance base in the region.

Eldar, Shlomi.  Al-Monitor, May 19, 2013.

Any still wearing rose-colored glasses will have taken them off after reading Shlomi Eldar‘s piece in Al-Monitor, which approaches the conflict in Syria with grim insight and fortitude.

The Christian Science Monitor heads its latest, “Why US must stop Russian missiles for Syria” with the after-the-colon remark, “Putin’s decision to send S-300 missiles to Syria shows an amoral strategic move by Russia.  It also shows up a lack of Western moral concern for the slaughter in Syria” (May 28, 2013).

I don’t agree with that last note — it’s not the lack of “Western moral concern” underscored by Putin’s decision to strengthen Assad’s defensive array, but rather the first conclusion spelled by the Monitor’s editorial board, the authors of the piece: “amoral strategic move by Russia.”

Even with that I’m going to niggle, for with Putin, “amoral” may mean also for Putin “asocial” — neither for nor against others but without feeling.  Further along that axis one bumps into another Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) classification — “Antisocial Personality Disorder“, not that I wish to go there on this.

Call them autocrats, dictators, “kleptocrats”, presidents-for-life, appeals to true or genuine ethical and moral concern fall flat, for the sufferers and their suffering may be for the Mugabe types emotionally invisible: the dead, displaced, and injured may have presence, but that presence registers would seem overlooked in policy, the overt aim of which may be to sustain control — the “upper hand” as it were — in a political or social situation while defending the combined emotional and social region in which the personality lives and the supply it obtains from it.

Among the great templates in literature laying out for adults and children the character of the power weilded by a narcissistic personality, I would perhaps place “The Emperor’s New Clothes” first and foremost.  While impressions easily focus on the power of the emperor to inspire pandering and elicit outright lies (about this “clothes” sewn with invisible threads), one might note also the emperor’s need for that level of adulation, attention, and control.

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Wikiversity.  “Dissocial personality disorder”.

Note: the deeper the swimming, the more complex and sophisticated the science, but perhaps also the less applicable to casual discussion in political science.  I’ll take conjecture on this theme a littler further: psychology focuses on mind in the individual experience and life.  That’s enough for scope — and it’s certainly territory rich enough for tens of thousands of lifetimes spent in research and clinical service.

Psychology proper may leave outside its domain the cultural, political, and ramifications of the expression of individual character, condition, and personality.

Here on the World Wide Web, it may be enough to note that being a broadly empowered witness to the destruction of 92,000 lives and the substantial disruption of 3.5 million lives (those internally displaced or made refugee by way of Syria’s conflict) has elicited a very different global response not only from Russia and NATO, which constituent cultures have a great deal in common today, but also a sharp difference in global expectations about each: while Russia attends to the defense of a brutal dictatorship and NATO drags its heels on intervention on behalf of an Islamic culture laced with Al Qaeda types, the world seems to put the onus for Syria’s tragedy on NATO, and that may be because it knows that the NATO states and leadership in general care deeply for the humanity involved, and it does so with less regard for its own interests — so children whine to the parent who might do them some good.

Hidden behind the conflict in Syria is not a Cold War conflict with remnant Soviet totalitarian ideology or even with Russian culture and its zeitgeist except in this one dimension repeated in history, from czars to commisars: the ascendance of permanent authorities with sweeping powers and a minimum of concern for the despairing and subjugated within their constituencies.

Are either callousness or caring within persons and communities “motivated” by biology and evolution, or are they emphasized in culture and through language behavior within families passed from one generation to the next?

Stay tuned.

We’re going to find out because with the Internet full up and a war on, Russians are here too and may be counted on to weigh in with their ethical outlooks, perceptions, and wishes in regard to the unfolding Syrian Civil War.

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Additional Reference

Carbonnel, Alissa de.  “Disputes over arms for Syria cloud Russian peace drive.”  Reuters, May 28, 2013.

Erlanger, Steven.  “Europeans Say Lifting Syria Arms Embargo Puts Pressure on Russia.”  The New York Times, May 28, 2013.

Hausmann, Joanna.  “Israel to Strike Russian Weapon Shipments to Syria: 5 Fast Facts You Need to Know.”  Heavy, May 28, 2013.

The Voice of Russia.  “Moscow says message exchange between Putin, Obama gave impetus to missile shield consultations.”  May 28, 2013.

UN High Commissioner for Refugees.  “UNHCR Turkey Syrian Refugee Daily Sitrep 20 May 2013.”  Reliefweb, May 20, 2013.

Syria – The Worst Ambitions in the Worst Place in the Worst Ways

28 Tuesday May 2013

Posted by in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Middle East, Politics, Regions, Syria

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Israel quickly issued a thinly veiled warning that it would bomb the Russian S-300 missiles if they were sent to Syria, as such a move would bring the advanced guided missiles within range of civilian and military planes over Israel.

Borger, Julian.  “Isrel warns Russia against arming Syrian government.”  The Guardian, May 28, 2013.

Apparently, Obama is not able, or willing, to acknowledge that the views of the White House and Russia on Syria are different not because the vestigial enmity of the Cold War has driven a stake through the heart of international concord, but simply because the national interests of the two countries are different. But that’s assuming they really are different.

Smith, Lee.  “Obama: Putin Unhelpful with Syria Because of Cold War.”  Blog.  The Weekly Standard, May 13, 2013.

On such politics, cynics must suckle!

Exterior framing: a brutal dictatorship vs. an Islamic revolution of some kind.

Exterior wall: NATO vs. Russia bonded in place by the habits of the Cold War even though to the two share most essential values involved in Syria.

Interior furnishings: affinity between the souls of autocrats and dictators, perhaps; perhaps, the Saudi’s guy in the White House — horrible clashing right there.

Also playing in the yard:  Hezbollah.

Neighbor up the block: Iran.

Favorite toys: rockets.

What they want to be when they grow up: nuclear.

Background Reference on the Persecution of Syria’s Christian Community

27 Monday May 2013

Posted by in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Islamic Small Wars, Middle East, Regions, Syria

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In the previous post, I reblogged a message from an anti-Jihad blog without looking twice, which is dangerous for a cyberjournalist: at the very least, I should have glossed the topic, however compelling and dramatic the news out of Syria may be.

Last year, the Middle East Forum reprinted from Ha’aretz a piece on just this subject: “Syrian disinformation about Christian persecution” (Aymenn Jawad Al-Tamimi, Oskar Svadkovsky, and Phillip Smyth, April 6, 2012):

The claim of 90 percent ethnic cleansing can actually be traced to a report put out on March 13 by an online Arabic outlet known as Al-Haqiqa (Arabic for “the truth”).

A quick Google search reveals that the original memo sent to Fides by the church leaders had been copy-pasted almost down to the last word from the SyriaTruth site, which is notorious for its pro-regime propaganda. Officials of the Syrian Church did not confirm the story with anybody in Homs before sending out the memo. They must have presumed that the SyriaTruth writers did.

I’ve seen this same technique — one questionable press release reprinted through dozens of outlets — with stories about olive groves burning on the West Bank.  At the end of such web excursions, the reader-blogger cries for the direct reporting from a trustworthy witness.

Apart from innuendo, first page Google look-up for the string “Syria Christian Persecution” seem to bring to light only unsubstantiated allegations, e.g., “When government forces aren’t present, Muslims have been known to rob churches and kidnap, rape, or even kill Christian women” — from Christian Freedom International: “Persecution in Syria: ‘How Do You Want to Die . . .'”.

Please, specifically: who?  What? When? Where? How? And why?

Add: corroboration?

Put a byline on it — or attribute to a “desk” with contact information.

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The Inquisitr asks, “Do you think the two bishops kidnapped by Syrian rebels indicate widespread Christian persecution or just an isolated incident?”

At least with that story, there are names: Bishop Boulos Yazigi and Archbishop Yahanna Ibrahim.  (“Syrian bishops kidnapped in Aleppo still missing one month on.”  The Guardian, May 21, 2013).

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