The Secret History of Hezbollah

The Secret History of Hezbollah | The Weekly Standard.

Indeed, Tony Badran. Iran’s policies and strategies have little to do with Israel and America and more to do with the usual competition/struggle involving Arabs, Persians and Kurds, or Sunnis and Shia, and the usual power politics inside each country and region. In other words, it’s an extension of our indigenous historical processes that have been going for centuries, if not millennia. Israel’s presence and US policies (not mention Europe’s, Russia’s and China’s, etc.) in the region are complicating factors at best, but the dynamics themselves are fueled by internal needs and interests. It’s about time we reexamined the modern history of our region from this perspective, and countered the ideological interpretations prevalent all around us, because they distort facts and detract our attention from focusing on the real nature of our problems, and suggesting more practical policies for handling them.

Syria’s civil war leaves its cities, economy and cultural heritage in shambles

Quote in The Washington Post.

“In terms of infrastructure, major parts of Syria have effectively been bombed back to Ottoman times,” said Ammar Abdul-Hamid, a Syrian activist and a Washington-based fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies…

“We have a long way ahead before we put the country back together again,” Abdul-Hamid said. “But once we do, and we will, it will be our achievement.”

White House Dismisses Reports of Aid to Syrian Rebels

A quote in VOA:

Syrian human rights activist Ammar Abdulhamid, with the Washington-based Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, says his contacts in Syria tell him there is no evidence of a surge in aid to the rebels.

“I do not really see any intensification of these efforts. I see a lot of leaks, it seems to me, that were sort of primed to show that something is being done. But the reality is, so far on the ground, we have not detected any real involvement by the U.S. in the ongoing military operations in the country,” Abdulhamid said. Continue reading “White House Dismisses Reports of Aid to Syrian Rebels” →

After Assad: What’s Next for the Future of Syria?

Quoted in the Time:

If Syria is allowed to fracture, each ethnic group hunkering down, says Ammar Abdulhamid, an exiled Syria opposition leader in Washington, “it won’t be easy to put humpty dumpty back together again. It would take decades of instability and violence to sort itself out. And that is what we’re most worried about.”