Al-Qaeda Leader Publicly Sides with Syrian Opposition

Quoted by Patrick Martin, The Globe and Mail – Canada

“Al-Qaeda has no sympathizers among the protesters,” said Ammar Abdulhamid, a Syrian activist and fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies in Washington. “The protesters’ goal remains the establishment of a democratic civil state,” he said, and “they all understand that al-Qaeda involvement would ultimately undermine this goal.” … “Al-Qaeda and the Assads are two faces of the same coin of sectarian hatred,” said Mr. Abdulhamid, the Syrian activist. “Both seek to stoke fires that we want to extinguish.”

As Syria Violence Continues, World Leaders Do Little

The Washington Post

The United States has closed its embassy in Damascus amid the Syrian ruling junta’s increasingly violent crackdown. As China defends its veto this weekend of a U.N. resolution that might have amounted to nothing more than strong condemnation, the Assad regime, buoyed by continuing Russian and Iranian political and logistical support, including arms shipments, is escalating its murderous rampage. Its goal is to crush the rebellion by brute force; meanwhile, international confusion regarding what can or needs to be done precludes any international effort to protect the protesters. Continue reading “As Syria Violence Continues, World Leaders Do Little” →

U.N. may be last chance for peace in Syria

By Ammar Abdulhamid and Ken Ballen, Special to CNN

Editor’s note: Ammar Abdulhamid is a Syrian activist, author of the daily blog Syrian Revolution Digest and a fellow at Foundation for Defense of Democracies. Ken Ballen, author of the book “Terrorists in Love” (Free Press, 2011), is president of Terror Free Tomorrow, a nonprofit institute that researches attitudes toward extremism, including in Syria.

(CNN) — The U.N Security Council is considering the most important resolution yet on the brutal rule of terror that Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad has unleashed on his people. The resolution, proposed by Morocco and supporting the Arab League’s plan, calls for al-Assad to leave power as the first step of a transition toward democracy. Continue reading “U.N. may be last chance for peace in Syria” →

Defectors besieged near Syria capital

By Zeina Karam, Associated Press

“The current battles taking place in and around Damascus may not yet lead to the unraveling of the regime, but the illusion of normalcy that the Assads have sought hard to maintain in the capital since the beginning of the revolution has surely unraveled,” said Ammar Abdulhamid, a U.S.-based Syrian dissident.

“Once illusions unravel, reality soon follows,” he wrote in his blog Sunday.