Christopher Helman writes: The idea that Saudi Arabia could become an oil importer by 2030 is laughable. But that’s the scenario outlined in a report this week by Citigroup analyst Heidy Rehman. Looking at the Kingdom’s growth in power demand (much of which is generated by burning oil), Saudi Arabia’s domestic demand is on track to suck up ever more of its oil production to the point that there’s nothing left for export.
That sounds hard to believe given that the Kingdom produced 9.9 million bpd last month, the most in the world, and more than 10% of global demand. But developing countries usually grow electricity demand faster than population growth, and in Saudi Arabia air conditioning is not an option. Compounding the problem, writes Rehman is that Saudi power generators only pay $5 to $15 per barrel for the oil they burn.
To assuage civic unrest in the wake of the Arab Spring, Saudi King Abdullah has granted his 30 million subjects a host of new social handouts. He’s not about to yank subsidized electricity or gasoline now — but eventually it will probably have to happen.
It’s unlikely that by the time the Saudis need to import oil that there would be enough available on global markets to meet their needs. What’s more, considering that the $600 billion Saudi economy is based almost entirely on energy exports, if the Kingdom were to be able to afford to buy oil from the rest of the world it would have to sufficiently diversify to the point that it made enough other products for export that it could offset its oil import bill. This is highly unlikely for a country with no tradition of entrepreneurship, few rights for women and a reliance on indentured laborers brought in from the likes of Sri Lanka and Malaysia to do any kind of manual labor.
Rather if the Saudis are going to be able to make their energy ends meet in the decades to come they will have to rely on gleaning a different kind of energy out of the desert: solar power. [Continue reading…]
Marsha B Cohen writes: “It is unfortunate that the entire Democratic Party has embraced President Obama’s shameful refusal to acknowledge that Jerusalem is Israel’s capital,” declared Mitt Romney on September 4.
The deletion of a single sentence about Jerusalem in the Democratic platform, which reportedly had been vetted by officials from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), generated hysterical headlines that went viral and ricocheted throughout cyberspace, arousing panic among Democrats and glee among Republicans. (The Democrats reinserted the language on September 5 after President Obama “intervened directly.“)
Ironically, affirming Jerusalem’s status as the capital of Israel and the importance of relocating the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem has been a largely Democratic strategy for nearly four decades, particularly when there has been an incumbent Republican president in the White House. Republicans latch on to it whenever a Democratic president is running for re-election.
We recognize and support the established status of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, with free access to all its holy places provided to all faiths. As a symbol of this stand, the U.S. Embassy should be moved from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.
This stance was reiterated in the 1980 and 1984 platforms. In 1983, Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan called for relocating of the US Embassy to Jerusalem, in a bill co-sponsored by fifty senators. When State Department officials in the Reagan administration objected that moving the Embassy would strain diplomatic ties with Arab countries, Moynihan did not press for a vote. No mention of Jerusalem whatsoever was made in the Democratic platform in 1988, in the wake of Secretary of State George Shultz’s sharp criticism of Democratic candidate Michael Dukakis for suggesting that, if elected President, he would consider transferring the Embassy to Jerusalem. “It’s shocking that anybody would make such a proposal,” the Reagan administration’s chief spokesman on foreign policy told NBC’s Today show. Since Jerusalem, the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and the Golan Heights “are regarded as occupied territory” and are “subject to negotiations” according to Shultz, who deemed any notion of moving the Embassy a “mistake.” [Continue reading…]
And so it proved to be, as America entered the war and led the world to victory over fascism, then created a new world order that promoted the rule of law and parliamentary institutions as the basis of global governance. Americans altered the human condition with a dazzling array of new technologies, fostered global opening and reform, contained and outlasted communism, and saw the apparent triumph of democratic ideals over their alternatives. But that era came to an end in 1989, with the fall of the Berlin Wall, the end of the Cold War, and the establishment of the United States as the only global power.
Americans then indulged in a dozen intercalary years of narcissistic confusion. We celebrated our unrivaled military power and proclaimed ourselves “the indispensable nation,” but failed to define a coherent vision of a post-Cold War order or an inspiring role for our country within it. These essential tasks were deferred to the 21st Century, which finally began eleven years ago, with the shock and awe of 9/11. In the panic and rage of that moment, we made the choices about our world role we had earlier declined to make.
Since 9/11, Americans have chosen to stake our domestic tranquility on our ability – under our commander-in-chief – to rule the world by force of arms rather than to lead, as we had in the past, by the force of our example or our arguments. And we appear to have decided in the process that it is necessary to destroy our civil liberties in order to save them and that abandoning the checks and balances of our Constitution will make us more secure. Meanwhile, our military-industrial complex and its flourishing antiterrorist sidekick have been working hard to invent a credible existential challenge to match that of the Cold War. This has produced constantly escalating spending on military and antiterrorist projects, but it has not overcome the reality that Americans now face no threat from abroad comparable to Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan, or the USSR. The only real menace to our freedoms is our own willingness to supplant the rule of law with ever more elements of a garrison state.
The so-called “global war on terror” or “militant Islam,” as so many now openly describe it, has become an endless run in a military squirrel cage that is generating no light but a lot of future anti-American terrorism. It turns out that all that is required to be hated is to do hateful things. Ironically, as we “search abroad for monsters to destroy,” we are creating them – transforming our foreign detractors into terrorists, multiplying their numbers, intensifying their militancy, and fortifying their hatred of us. The sons and brothers of those we have slain know where we are. They do not forget. No quarter is given in wars of religion. We are generating the very menace that entered our imaginations on 9/11. [Continue reading…]
Human Rights Watch: The United States government during the Bush administration tortured opponents of Muammar Gaddafi, then transferred them to mistreatment in Libya, according to accounts by former detainees and recently uncovered CIA and UK Secret Service documents, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today. One former detainee alleged he was waterboarded and another described a similar form of water torture, contradicting claims by Bush administration officials that only three men in US custody had been waterboarded.
The 154-page report, “Delivered into Enemy Hands: US-Led Abuse and Rendition of Opponents to Gaddafi’s Libya,” is based on interviews conducted in Libya with 14 former detainees, most of whom belonged to an armed Islamist group that had worked to overthrow Gaddafi for 20 years. Many members of the group, the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), joined the NATO-backed anti-Gaddafi rebels in the 2011 conflict. Some of those who were rendered and allegedly tortured in US custody now hold key leadership and political positions in the country.
“Not only did the US deliver Gaddafi his enemies on a silver platter but it seems the CIA tortured many of them first,” said Laura Pitter, counterterrorism advisor at Human Rights Watch and author of the report. “The scope of Bush administration abuse appears far broader than previously acknowledged and underscores the importance of opening up a full-scale inquiry into what happened.”
The report is also based on documents – some of which are being made public for the first time – that Human Rights Watch found abandoned, on September 3, 2011, in the offices of former Libyan intelligence chief Musa Kusa after Tripoli fell to rebel forces.
The interviews and documents establish that, following the September 11, 2001 attacks, the US, with aid from the United Kingdom (UK) and countries in the Middle East, Africa, and Asia, arrested and held without charge a number of LIFG members living outside Libya, and eventually rendered them to the Libyan government.
The report also describes serious abuses that five of the former LIFG members said they experienced at two US-run detention facilities in Afghanistan, most likely operated by the CIA. They include new allegations of waterboarding and other water torture. The details are consistent with the few other first-hand accounts about the same US-run facilities.
Other abuses reported by these former detainees include being chained to walls naked –sometimes while diapered – in pitch black, windowless cells, for weeks or months; restrained in painful stress positions for long periods, forced into cramped spaces; beaten and slammed into walls; kept indoors for nearly five months without the ability to bathe; and denied sleep by continuous, very loud Western music.
“I spent three months getting interrogated heavily during the first period and they gave me a different type of torture every day. Sometimes they used water, sometimes not.… Sometimes they stripped me naked and sometimes they left me clothed,” said Khalid al-Sharif, who asserted he was held for two years in two different US-run detention centers believed to be operated by the CIA in Afghanistan. Al-Sharif is now head of the Libyan National Guard. One of his responsibilities is providing security for facilities holding Libya’s high-value detainees.
The Libyan detainee accounts in the Human Rights Watch report had previously gone largely undocumented because most of those returned to Libya were locked up in Libyan prisons until last year, when Libya’s civil unrest led to their release. And the US government has been unwilling to make public the details about its secret CIA detention facilities. The accounts of former detainees, the CIA documents found in Libya, and some declassified US government memos have shed new light on US detention practices under the Bush administration but also highlighted the vast amount of information that still remains secret.
Despite overwhelming evidence of numerous and systematic abuses of detainees in US custody since the September 11 attacks, the US has yet to hold a single senior official accountable. Only a few low-ranking enlisted military personnel have been punished.
On August 30, 2012, US Attorney General Eric Holder announced that the only criminal investigation the Department of Justice had undertaken into alleged abuses in CIA custody, headed by special prosecutor John Durham, would be closed without anyone being criminally charged. Holder had already narrowed the scope of Durham’s investigation on June 30, 2011, limiting it from the original investigation into the 101 people believed to have been in CIA custody to the cases of only two individuals.
In both cases, the detainees had died, one in Afghanistan and another in Iraq. The inquiry was also limited in that it looked only into abuses that went beyond what the Bush administration had authorized. It could not cover acts of torture, such as waterboarding, and other ill-treatment that Bush administration lawyers had approved, even if the acts violated domestic and international law.
“The stories of the Libyans held by the US and then sent to Libya make clear that detainee abuse, including mistreatment not necessarily specifically authorized by Bush administration officials, was far-reaching,” Pitter said. “The closure of the Durham investigation, without any charges, sends a message that abuse like that suffered by the Libyan detainees will continue to be tolerated.”
The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI) has spent three years researching the CIA’s detention and interrogation program and reportedly has completed a report. Human Rights Watch called on the SSCI to promptly release its report with as few redactions as possible, and to recommend that an independent, non-partisan commission investigate all aspects of US policy relating to detainee treatment.
“The US government continues to demand, and rightly so, that countries from Libya to Syria to Bahrain hold accountable officials responsible for serious human rights abuses, including torture,” Pitter said. “Those calls would carry a lot more weight if it wasn’t simultaneously shielding former US officials who authorized torture from any form of accountability.”
Since the fall of the Gaddafi government, US diplomats and members of Congress have met with some of the former CIA prisoners now in Libya, and the US has supported efforts by the Libyan government and civil society to overcome the legacy of their country’s authoritarian past. Human Rights Watch urged the US government to acknowledge its own past role in abuses and in helping Gaddafi round up his exiled opponents, to provide redress to the victims, and to prosecute those responsible for their alleged torture in US custody.
One previously reported case for which Human Rights Watch uncovered some new information is that of Ibn al-Sheikh al-Libi. The Bush administration had helped to justify the 2003 Iraq invasion by relying on statements that al-Libi made during his abuse and mistreatment in CIA custody. The CIA has acknowledged that these statements were unreliable. Years later, the US rendered al-Libi to Libya, where he died in prison in May 2009. Accounts from al-Libi’s fellow detainees in Afghanistan and Libya, information from his family, and photos seen by Human Rights Watch apparently taken of him the day he died, provide insight into his treatment and death, which Libyan authorities claim was a suicide.
Scores of the documents that Human Rights Watch uncovered in Libya also show a high level of cooperation between the Gaddafi government in Libya and US and the UK in the renditions discussed in the report.
The US played the most extensive role in the renditions back to Libya. But other countries, notably the UK, were also involved, even though these governments knew and recognized that torture was common during Gaddafi’s rule. Countries linked to the accounts about renditions include: Afghanistan, Chad, China and Hong Kong, Malaysia, Mali, Mauritania, Morocco, the Netherlands, Pakistan, Sudan, Thailand, and the UK. Interviewees alleged that personnel in some of these countries also abused them prior to transferring them back to Libya.
International law binding on the US and other countries prohibits torture and other ill-treatment in all circumstances, and forbids transferring people to countries in which they face a serious risk of torture or persecution.
“The involvement of many countries in the abuse of Gaddafi’s enemies suggests that the tentacles of the US detention and interrogation program reached far beyond what was previously known,” Pitter said. “The US and other governments that assisted in detainee abuse should offer a full accounting of their role.”
Tony Karon writes: After a summer of stoking media speculation that Israel would bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities before Americans go to the polls in November, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak appear to be dialing things down. Netanyahu on Monday repeated his new message that war can be avoided, at least for now, if the U.S. is willing to publicly declare a clear “red line” that, if crossed by Iran, would trigger a U.S. military response. Since President Barack Obama last spring clearly stated that he would order military action if Iran moved to build a nuclear weapon, there would be nothing new in reiterating such a position — except, perhaps, that it could be spun, together with a series of largely symbolic gestures reportedly being weighed by the Obama Administration to placate the Israelis, as a enough of a concession to allow Netanyahu and Barak to clamber down from the limb on which their war talk has left them. It has been nothing short of astonishing, in fact, how isolated on the Iran issue Israel’s saber-rattlers-in-chief have become over the summer, not least among Israel’s own defense and security establishment. [Update: Netanyahu’s troubles in sustaining his case for war appeared to deepen, Wednesday, with reports that he’d abruptly canceled a meeting of his security cabinet after some of the contents of its briefings by Israeli intelligence agencies were leaked to the Israeli media, which reported that Israeli intelligence saw no cause for alarm beyond ongoing concern over the findings of last week’s IAEA report on Iran’s nuclear work — a conclusion that undermined the Prime Minister’s more alarmist assessments of Iranian progress.]
Netanyahu and Barak’s bellicosity has ignited a remarkable degree of opposition among Israel’s defense and security chiefs, who are reportedly unanimous in opposing an attack on Iran at this stage. Not only that, the public outpouring of opposition to a military strike among recently retired senior Israeli military men and security chiefs has included an unprecedented barrage of attacks on the strategic competence and even the mental stability of Netanyahu and Barak. Describing a recent public interview given by Gen. Uri Sagi, a respected senior IDF officer who served under Barak, analyst Shai Feldman notes:
“Sagi questioned, for the first time publicly, whether Israel can rely on the judgment and mental stability of its current leaders to guide it in time of war. Listing a number of past strategic errors made by Barak and hinting at Netanyahu’s ascribed tendency to traverse rapidly between euphoria and panic, Sagi expressed grave doubts whether Israel’s current leaders can take the pressures and stress entailed in managing a major military confrontation.”
Former Shin Bet chief Yuval Diskin, in April, accused Netanyahu and Barak of harboring “messianic feelings,” and questioned their competence to lead Israel into a confrontation. Even opposition leader Shaul Mofaz, the former military chief of staff who served in a unity government as Netanyahu’s deputy from May to July and who opposes attacking Iran, told Army Radio that he found Netanyahu “confused, stressed out and unfocused” when the two men met last week. [Continue reading…]
VOA reports: The United Nations is calling for urgent action to reduce the growing health and environmental hazards from exposure to chemical substances. A new study – “Global Chemicals Outlook” – by the U.N. Environment Program [UNEP] finds sound management of chemicals could save millions of lives and provide an economic bonanza to nations worldwide.
The report presents a stark view of a world that is overwhelmed by increased volumes of chemicals. The most frightening aspect of this scenario is that very little is known about the estimated 143,000 chemicals being produced.
The U.N. Environment Program says only a fraction of these chemicals have been evaluated to determine their effects on human health and the environment. Chemicals are pervasive in every aspect of life. The report says they are used in agriculture, electronics and mining. They are found in products such as paints, adhesives, textiles and toys for children.
The report says death and disability rates from the unsafe use of chemical products are high. For example, it notes that poisonings from industrial and agricultural chemicals are among the top five leading causes of death worldwide, contributing to more than 1 million deaths annually.
The GCO report states: Despite ubiquitous exposure to chemicals in both developed and developing nations, little is known about the total disease burden attributable to chemicals. In 2011, the World Health Organization (WHO) reported that globally, 4.9 million deaths (8.3% of total) and 86 million Disability-Adjusted Life Years (DALYs) (5.7% of total) were attributable to environmental exposure and management of selected chemicals in 2004 for which data were available. This figure includes indoor smoke from solid fuel use, outdoor air pollution and second-hand smoke, with 2.0, 1.2 and 0.6 million deaths/year. These are followed by occupational particulates, chemicals involved in acute poisonings, and pesticides involved in self-poisonings, with 375,000, 240,000 and 186,000 deaths/year respectively.
Estimates for selected chemicals (including pesticides) involved in unintentional acute and occupational poisonings, a limited number of occupational carcinogens and particulates and lead, correspond to a total of 964,000 deaths and 20,986,153 DALYs, corresponding to 1.6% of the total deaths and 1.4% of the total burden of disease worldwide. To compare, among the global top ten leading causes of death in 2004, HIV/AIDS caused 2 million deaths, tuberculosis caused 1.5 million deaths, road traffic accidents caused 1.27 million deaths, and malaria caused 0.9 million deaths (WHO, 2008).
This global estimate is an underestimate of the real burden attributable to chemicals. Only a small number of chemicals were included in the WHO analysis due to limitations in data availability. Critical chemicals not incorporated in the analysis due to data gaps include mercury, dioxins, organic chlorinated solvents, PCBs, and chronic pesticide exposures as well as health impacts from exposure to local toxic waste sites.
Glenn Greenwald describes how CNN International appears to have engaged in self-censorship in order to protect Bahrain’s repressive regime.
CNN’s total cost for the documentary, ultimately titled “iRevolution: Online Warriors of the Arab Spring”, was in excess of $100,000, an unusually high amount for a one-hour program of this type. The portion Lyon and her team produced on Bahrain ended up as a 13-minute segment in the documentary. That segment, which as of now is available on YouTube, is a hard-hitting and unflinching piece of reporting that depicts the regime in a very negative light.
Amber Lyon, former CNN report Amber Lyon on CNN, commenting on the March 2011 repression in Bahrain
In the segment, Lyon interviewed activists as they explicitly described their torture at the hands of government forces, while family members recounted their relatives’ abrupt disappearances. She spoke with government officials justifying the imprisonment of activists. And the segment featured harrowing video footage of regime forces shooting unarmed demonstrators, along with the mass arrests of peaceful protesters. In sum, the early 2011 CNN segment on Bahrain presented one of the starkest reports to date of the brutal repression embraced by the US-backed regime.
On 19 June 2011 at 8pm, CNN’s domestic outlet in the US aired “iRevolution” for the first and only time. The program received prestigious journalism awards, including a 2012 Gold Medal from New York Festival’s Best TV and Films. Lyon, along with her segment producer Taryn Fixel, were named as finalists for the 2011 Livingston Awards for Young Journalists. A Facebook page created by Bahraini activists, entitled “Thank you Amber Lyon, CNN reporter | From people of Bahrain”, received more than 8,000 “likes”.
Despite these accolades, and despite the dangers their own journalists and their sources endured to produce it, CNN International (CNNi) never broadcast the documentary. Even in the face of numerous inquiries and complaints from their own employees inside CNN, it continued to refuse to broadcast the program or even provide any explanation for the decision. To date, this documentary has never aired on CNNi.
Glenn Greenwald writes: For several decades, protection of whistleblowers has been a core political value for Democrats, at least for progressives. Daniel Ellsberg has long been viewed by liberals as an American hero for his disclosure of the top secret Pentagon Papers. In 2008, candidate Obama hailed whistleblowing as “acts of courage and patriotism”, which “should be encouraged rather than stifled as they have been during the Bush administration”.
President Obama, however, has waged the most aggressive and vindictive assault on whistleblowers of any president in American history, as even political magazines generally supportive of him have recognized and condemned. One might think that, as the party’s faithful gather to celebrate the greatness of this leader, this fact would be a minor problem, a source of some tension between Obama and his hardest-core supporters, perhaps even some embarrassment. One would be wrong.
Far from shying away from this record of persecuting whistleblowers, the Obama campaign is proudly boasting of it. A so-called “Truth Team” of the Obama/Biden 2012 campaign issued a document responding to allegations that the Obama White House has leaked classified information in order to glorify the president: [Continue reading…]
The Los Angeles Times reports: Democrats sought to tamp down a pair of controversies as they gaveled open the second night of their convention Wednesday, inserting the word “God” into their platform and restating support for Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.
Both had been omitted from the original draft and Republicans had seized on the absence to question both the Democrats’ faith and their commitment to Israel.
The language was adopted as amendments to the party platform as the first order of Wednesday’s business, but not without controversy. It took three attempts to pass the language regarding Jerusalem and a subjective decision by the convention chairman, Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, to decide the change had the required support of two-thirds of the delegates. To many listeners, the voice vote seemed at least evenly divided.
That wasn’t a subjective decision. It was a shameless lie after three failures in getting the desired result.
Hassan Hassan writes: What is Syrian President Bashar al-Assad thinking? Over the past several weeks, his regime has escalated military operations throughout the country — shelling neighborhoods in previously loyal cities, using airplanes to drop what rebel fighters call “TNT barrels” containing hundreds of kilograms worth of explosives, and unleashing its militias to commit gruesome massacres such as the one in the city of Daraya, where more than 400 people were slaughtered on Aug. 27. Approximately 5,000 Syrians were killed in August — making it the deadliest month of the 17-month conflict.
At the same time, the Syrian regime has embarked on a PR offensive. Damascus invited the Independent‘s Robert Fisk into the country — allowing him to interview Foreign Minister Walid Muallem, embed with Syrian forces battling insurgents in Aleppo, and interview imprisoned foreign fighters and Syria jihadists. Most prominently, Assad himself granted an interview to the pro-regime Addounia TV on Aug. 29 where he insisted “Syria will return to the Syria before the crisis.”
Western and Arab media dismissed the interview as detached from reality: Assad’s comments appeared to be directed at an outside audience, and he did not offer any concessions to the opposition. But the interview merits a closer look, as it can offer insights into a recent shift in the regime’s thinking and tactics.
In the interview, Assad explained that a recent “public understanding” has allowed the regime to escalate its offensive, unlike during the early stages of the uprising. “Some wanted us to handle that stage as we handle the stage today,” he said. “This is illogical. The stage was different, their [rebels’] modus operandi was different, even the public understanding of what’s happening was different.”
There is of course no public consent as such, but some of Syria’s internal dynamics have shifted in favor of the regime. Many in Syria have made up their minds about standing with the regime until the end. Though some do not support the violence, they believe that blood is a price that has to be paid to prevent the country from lapsing into chaos. Others want a decisive end to the conflict, regardless of who delivers, and currently see the opposition as unable to tip the balance. [Continue reading…]
Time magazine reports: Abboud Barri jiggles the dog tags as if they belonged to animals being raised in a puppy mill. “I have a lot of these,” Barri says. “Any buyers?” He is joking. The tags belong to human beings, soldiers of the Assad regime who are now held captive or were killed by Barri, a local commander of one of the franchise groups of the rebel Free Syrian Army (FSA). Unlike some other militia leaders, Barri says he isn’t interested in demanding ransom from his captives’ families. He says he keeps the ID tags so those families know “to look for them in hell.”
He keeps the eight military-issued dog tags in the right pocket of his sand-colored cargo pants; they are war booty from his unit’s recent assault on a loyalist checkpoint in Idlib province.
Barri, along with 20 or so other men from several different FSA units in Idlib, is reclining on deep red cushions spread out on plastic straw mats under a sprawling almond tree in the Jabal al-Zawya region in northern Syria. Some of the men laugh as they recount some of Barri’s wilder antics, like the time he set out on an extremely perilous but heroic journey to the besieged town of Rastan, halfway between Homs and Hama, to deliver much needed bags required for blood transfusions. Others recall how Abu Rabieh, a respected revolutionary figure in Idlib province, refused to give Barri a gun, fearing what the former agricultural worker might do with it. Rabieh was shot dead late last year in an ambush. A few months later, Barri formed a military unit, which he now says includes some 58 men. “He was always a risk taker,” one of the men later says about Barri. “In the beginning of the revolution, before there was so much destruction, we didn’t want hot-blooded risk takers who didn’t carefully study their actions. Now it doesn’t matter.”
As Barri speaks, one of his phones beeps. Like a few others in his possession, the device belongs to one of his prisoners. It has received a text message from the captive’s father, wishing him a happy ‘Id al-Fitr, the Muslim holiday that marks the end of the holy month of Ramadan. After several minutes, the phone rings. It is the father. “Read him the fatiha,” Barri says dismissively to the parent, referring to a Muslim prayer often recited for the dead. “May God have mercy on his soul.” Some of the other men, who admire Barri’s bravado, are taken aback by his coldness. “I was very uncomfortable when I heard him say that,” one of the men says. “I was sad for the father.”
War is dehumanizing, and civil wars in particular can brutalize a society in ways that fundamentally alter its very nature. Neighbors become enemies; differences — social, economic, religious — become magnified as a means to confirm the otherness of the enemy. Local accents and surnames can reveal sectarian identities and, by extension, presumed political views. There is little room for nuance or civility in a civil war.
The U.N. and other international organizations have said that both sides in the bitter 18-month Syrian conflict are guilty of committing human-rights abuses, although President Bashar Assad’s forces are responsible for the vast majority of the transgressions. In more than a year of clandestine travel in Syria, TIME has seen little direct evidence of rebel attacks on civilians, although suspected shabiha (regime thugs) and loyalist troops are often treated mercilessly.
However, an FSA fighter told TIME of a rebel attack on Alawite civilians in a village in Sahel al-Ghab, a vast expanse of plains between Idlib and Hama. He said the small group of rebels were in the village to apprehend a suspected shabih, but things didn’t go as planned. He said a woman opened fire on the group, prompting some of the fighters to shoot her dead and then kill two other women and several children in the house. “We had a serious fight. We, the rebels, clashed over the killing of the women and children,” he said. “We told the others it was wrong, forbidden, but some of them didn’t care.”
The fighter was extremely troubled as he recalled the incident. “See this blood?” he said, pointing to a patch on the knees of his jeans. “It’s Alawite blood.” He held his head in his hands, asking for forgiveness. “What are we becoming?” he said. There was no way to verify his account. He said he and the other men buried the bodies and hurriedly left town before the army arrived. There has been no report of the alleged incident in state media. [Continue reading…]
The Associated Press reports: Syria came under scathing international criticism Wednesday, with Turkey calling the country a terrorist state and Egypt’s leader calling on President Bashar Assad to “learn from recent history” and step down.
Alluding to the fate of the authoritarian regimes in Tunisia, Libya, Egypt and Yemen, which were overthrown by Arab Spring uprisings, Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi warned his Syrian counterpart that “it’s too late to talk about reform, this is the time for change.”
Morsi’s strong comments to Arab foreign ministers in Cairo followed an address last month during a summit meeting of the so-called nonaligned movement in the Iranian capital, Tehran, where the Egyptian leader gave a hearty call for world support of Syria’s rebels. Iran is Assad’s strongest foreign backer.
Also Wednesday, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan slammed Assad’s government.
“The regime has become one of state terrorism,” he said. “Syria is going through a huge humanitarian saga. Unfortunately, as usual, the international community is merely watching the slaughter, massacre and the elimination of Muslims.”
The New York Times reports: Like all the small children in the desert refugee camp here, Ibtisam, 11, is eager to go home to the toys, bicycles, books, cartoons and classmates she left behind in Syria.
But not if that means living with Alawites, members of the same minority offshoot of Shiite Islam as Syria’s president, Bashar al-Assad. “I hate the Alawites and the Shiites,” Ibtisam said as a crowd of children and adults nodded in agreement. “We are going to kill them with our knives, just like they killed us.”
If the fighters seeking to oust Mr. Assad sometimes portray their battle as a struggle for democracy, the Sunni Muslim children of the Zaatari camp tell a much uglier story of sectarian revenge. Asked for their own views of the grown-up battle that drove them from their homes, child after child brought up their hatred of the Alawites and a thirst for revenge. Children as young as 10 or 11 vowed never to play with Syrian Alawite children or even pledged to kill them.
Parroting older relatives — some of whom openly egged them on — the youngsters offered a disturbing premonition of the road ahead for Syria.
Their unvarnished hatred helps explain why so many Alawites, who make up more than 10 percent of the Syrian population, have stood by Mr. Assad even as the world has written him off. They see him as their best protection against sectarian annihilation. [Continue reading…]
