By reporting on a civil war, a sectarian war, and a proxy war, by focusing on the extremist groups taking advantage of the breakdown of the state and international indifference while ignoring the links between the Assad regime and these groups, by focusing on the concerns of minority communities in the country and the removal of chemical weapons, and by providing continuous coverage of a political process in Geneva that is unlikely to produce serious results, the reality of what is taking place in Syria, namely the genocide that is being perpetrated against the majority Sunni Arab population is being hidden in plain sight: the war is visible, the genocide is not. The very word is seldom used even as stories of concentration camps and starvation campaigns break out.
Tag: Terrorist Groups
Notes on Current Developments in Syria: January 13, 2014
For long activists have contended that the one true concept that captures the essence of what’s really happening in Syria is: Genocide. They referred to regime prisons as concentration camps dedicated to the liquidation of prisoners, most of who civilians, relatives of activists and rebels, and the peaceful pro-democracy activists themselves, the overwhelming majority of whom hail from an Arab Sunni background. Now, this horrific image currently making round on social media sites seem to capture this truth: the numbers on the rotten cadavers, denote the security branch responsible for this massacre. In this case, it’s the infamous Section 215 of the military intelligence apparatus. The emaciated bodies of the dead underscore the living conditions prevailing in the camps. The picture was reportedly smuggled out by a defector, and while its authenticity is yet to be confirmed, it’s consistent with the myriad eyewitness accounts given to Human Rights Watch, among other organizations.
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Notes on Current Developments in Syria: January 11, 2014
The battle between Islamist rebel groups and Al-Qaeda’s affiliate, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) is intensifying, but there is more going on than the increasing number of casualties and bodies of the injured piling up in the hospital.
The way the battle is unfolding indicates that carving up territories is what’s stake at this stage than achieving a straight out victory of one side over the other. This might not have been the intention at the beginning, but this is where things seem to be heading at this stage on account of the logistics involved, the actual military capabilities of each side, and the involvement of the regime in the matter, which, as expected, is working out in favor of ISIS, in the city of Elbab north of Aleppo, for instance, the regime resumed bombardment of the city as soon as ISIS was kicked out, allowing ISIS troops to halt their retreat, regroup and lay siege to the city. This may not be highlighted by the media at this stage, but this is what activists on the ground are reporting.
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Syria Militants Said to Recruit Visiting Americans to Attack U.S.
Syria Militants Said to Recruit Visiting Americans to Attack U.S. – NYTimes.com.
And here we go again: Building up a case for drone strikes, and for going back to doing business with Assad. I am not implying that the reports are false. On the contrary they are as true as those reports of Assad’s complicity in the chemical weapons attack and all the massacres perpetrated by his loyalist militias from the onset of this genocide to this very moment. But issuing an order for a drone attack is much easier for this administration than committing to a policy that can make a real difference on the ground. It creates the impression of doing something, while your main focus is to actually avoid entanglement. I am yet to hear a cogent argument showing how one can actually make a difference on the ground without being “entangled,” at least for a certain period of time, and for all the headaches that come with entanglement. Drone strikes against “certain rebels” while avoiding strikes against the Assad regime, even after they crossed all red lines, the one drawn by Obama and those delineated by international law, will only serve to make matters worse in Syria. Rebels are doing their best to combat extremists with no support from the U.S. But Assad has to go in order to really curtail spread of violence beyond borders of the country and the region.
The Ammar Abdulhamid Archive 