Category Archives: Lands

A mysterious fire transformed North America’s greatest city in 1170

Cahokia

Annalee Newitz writes: One thousand years ago, in the place where St. Louis, Missouri now stands, there was once a great civilization whose city center was ringed with enormous earthen pyramids, vast farmlands, and wealthy suburbs. For hundreds of years it was the biggest city in North America. Then a mysterious fire changed everything.

The city that once existed in St. Louis’ current footprint is known today as Cahokia, and its creators are commonly called the Mound Builders because of the 120 or so enormous mounds they left behind. Shaped much like the stone pyramids of the Maya civilization to the south, these mounds rose up hundreds of feet, and were often built on top of tombs. At their summits were ceremonial buildings made from wood and thatch. Unfortunately, many of these magnificent creations were destroyed in the nineteenth century when St. Louis was built. Below, you can see one of the only remaining pyramids, known as Monk’s Mound.

The first evidence of a settlement in the Cahokia area is from the year 600 CE, at a time when the Maya civilization would have been at its peak. But it wasn’t until after the largest cities of the Maya began to fall in the 1000s that Cahokia came into its own. It’s estimated that the city center held as many as 15,000 people (making it comparable in size to European cities of the same era), and reached the height of its productivity between roughly 1000-1300 CE. [Continue reading…]

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Chemical weapons ‘saved’ the Assad regime

Reuters reports: Bashar al-Assad, who only a month ago faced the likelihood of U.S. missile strikes that could have tipped the balance of Syria’s war against him, has won a reprieve.

His supporters, political sources in Damascus say, are jubilant, convinced the threat of regime change has lifted and that the Assads can face down opponents they consider weak – U.S. President Barack Obama and France’s President Francois Hollande among them – just as they saw off their predecessors.

“I think they feel that they can live this out and wait for leaders like Hollande and Obama to leave office, just as they did with Jacques Chirac and George W. Bush,” said one well-placed source in Damascus, speaking on condition of anonymity.

“I think Assad feels that the chemical weapons actually saved his regime, rather than brought it down.”

The mood shift is a consequence of the world’s confused response to a sarin gas attack on rebel suburbs of Damascus last month, the sources say. Russian President Vladimir Putin, Assad’s ally in the 30 months-old conflict, conjured up a diplomatic process to confront the atrocity. [Continue reading…]

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Syria: Victims of chemical weapons attacks running out of food

Fred Abrahams writes: One month after an attack with Sarin gas killed hundreds of people on the outskirts of Damascus, people in the affected areas are facing a humanitarian crisis, Syrian activists are warning.

The Syrian government, whose forces in all likelihood launched the chemical attack of August 21, is blocking the delivery of food and medical supplies.

As world leaders debate how to secure chemical weapons in Syria, they should demand that aid reaches the victims of chemical attacks, and others in need.

In the Western Ghouta town of Moadamiya, one of two areas where chemical weapons struck, an aid worker said the government has blocked food, milk and medicine for three months.

“We are prisoners in our city and homes,” the aid worker told Human Rights Watch by phone. He said residents were boiling tree leaves for soup with salt and olives. Starvation had claimed four children and two adults.

A report by the Syrian Violations Documentation Center (VDC) says conditions in Moadamiya have reached “catastrophic levels.”

An aid worker in Eastern Ghouta, also hit with chemical weapons, told Human Rights Watch the area is besieged and, “witnessing a shortage of every kind of food you can think of.” The painkiller paracetamol has jumped ten times in price, he said.

“The biggest fear we are all facing now is winter season,” the aid worker said. “I don’t know how we will survive the winter.” [Continue reading…]

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U.N. investigates more alleged chemical attacks in Syria

The New York Times reports: As the pace of efforts to scrutinize Syria’s chemical weapons stockpiles quickens, United Nations inspectors said on Friday that they were investigating reports that the weapons were used seven times in Syria, including three after an attack on Aug. 21 on the outskirts of Damascus, the Syrian capital, that set off an international crisis.

The disclosure, which came in a statement from the United Nations in Damascus that was quoted in news reports, came as the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, the group in The Hague that oversees the international treaty banning them, planned a meeting late Friday to approve a separate schedule for inspections of chemical weapons storage and production sites. Syria applied to join the treaty this month.

A joint proposal by the United States and Russia to be put before the organization’s executive council on Friday calls for the completion of inspections and the destruction of “production and mixing/filling equipment” by November, according to a text on the organization’s Web site.

An official at the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons said that, if the meeting of the 41-nation Executive Council approves the plan to deploy inspectors in Syria at its meeting later on Friday, a first team of experts could leave for Syria on Monday and plan to arrive there on Tuesday.

The official, who declined to discuss the composition of the team, spoke on the condition of anonymity because the plan had not yet been approved.

In a breakthrough accord on Thursday, the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, which include the United States and Russia, the Syrian government’s most powerful ally, agreed on a resolution that would require Syria to give up its chemical weapons, although there would be no automatic penalties if the Syrians failed to comply. More than 100,000 people have died in Syria’s civil war, now in its third year. [Continue reading…]

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In Syria, NGOs make up for lack of investigative journalism

The New York Times reports: What to believe? That’s a key question in the diplomatic duel over Syria, as Russia continues to dispute evidence in a United Nations inspectors’ report that points to the Syrian government’s complicity in the Aug. 21 chemical attack on the Damascus suburb of Ghouta.

The Russians, who insist the attack was a “provocation” by Syrian rebels, dismiss the findings of the U.N. experts as “biased.” Instead they cite the report of a Lebanese-born nun who, from a hotel room in Geneva, did her own analysis of videos of the scene at Ghouta and declared them fake.

So goes another chapter in a continuing information war that has made reporting on the bloody, multisided conflict in Syria such a nightmare for journalists, and such a difficult story for their readers.

Not only has Syria become ever more dangerous for reporters — 16 foreign and 60 Syrian journalists are currently detained, kidnapped or missing in Syria, according to Reporters Without Borders — but fewer newspapers around the world have the budgets to send correspondents abroad, let alone to war zones.

Finding out the truth, and figuring out whom to believe, has become even more treacherous in a world awash in YouTube videos, tweets and rumors spread by the Internet. Sorting out the facts from the fake adds new burdens and risks to the business of gathering news.

Into this breach have stepped various human rights and other nongovernmental organizations now filling the gaps left by the these shifts and twists of the media world.

Six days before the publication of the U.N. report, Human Rights Watch released its own investigation of the Aug. 21 attack that also found evidence “strongly” suggesting that the government of President Bashar al-Assad was responsible.

Not for the first time, this kind of independent report made front-page news in the world’s newspapers, which, for the most part, were unable to confirm the facts on the ground with their own reporting.

“The NGOs are doing more and more of the investigative work that journalists don’t do — either because the media they work for is understaffed, underfunded or uninterested,” said Alfred de Montesquiou, a prize-winning war reporter for the French weekly magazine Paris Match. Reached on assignment in the Central African Republic, he cited both Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International for their work in Syria, breaking or confirming major stories, and identifying key players.

It’s a role that these organizations are ready to assume, even as they defend their main purpose, which is to be advocates for victims not only of war but of injustice, abuse or discrimination around the world.

“We do feel that as journalism has ebbed, we have a responsibility to flow,” said Carroll Bogert, deputy executive director for external relations at Human Rights Watch headquarters in New York.

Human Rights Watch works in 90 countries with a staff of about 400 people based in 60 locations, many of them, not surprisingly, ex-journalists. Its budget, all privately raised, has shot up to a current $70 million from about $13 million in 1998 — when Ms. Bogert, a former foreign correspondent for Newsweek, joined.

With these resources, Human Rights Watch continues to turn out the kind of in-depth reports, each one exhaustively vetted by lawyers, editors and experts, that are increasingly hard to find in newspapers.

But there’s a difference.

“We don’t just stop at the water’s edge of journalism,” Ms. Bogert said. “We investigate, we expose and we push for change. We are advocates.”

That last role sets human rights researchers apart from journalists but not, Ms. Bogert insisted, at the expense of their credibility.

“We don’t go into the field with a narrative,” she said. “We go with open notebooks, and open minds.”

Some nongovernmental agencies have already evolved into journalistic-type multimedia, multiplatform operations, with videos, Twitter accounts, maps, graphs, satellite imagery and staff experts in areas from health to weapons. The New York Times credited forensic work by Human Rights Watch analysts in a pivotal story that traced the trajectory of rockets used in the Aug. 21 attack.

In Syria, where it has a long history chronicling complaints of human rights abuses by the government of Mr. Assad, Human Rights Watch has the same security concerns as journalists. That means it does much its work from afar, sifting through testimony, checking back with trusted sources and authenticating videos, many of which end up being discarded.

“The reason we have impact is that we have a trusted brand,” Ms. Bogert said. “What we publish has to meet rigorous standards.”

The news release used to be the classic way for NGOs to get out their message, but that, too, is changing. Human Rights Watch, for instance, has opened space on its Web site for “dispatches” written by its researchers, offering brief and quick reactions to news events. For instance, a critical response to the Op-Ed article in The New York Times this month by President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia was posted on the Web site within nine hours, getting 40,000 hits. This past week, a detailed rebuttal of Russia’s position on the Ghouta attack, written by Ms. Bogert, ran in the Moscow newspaper Vedomosti.

“Is it journalism?” Ms. Bogert asked. “I don’t know, but it is information that people need, and that people are using.”

Ms. Bogert insisted that Human Rights Watch had no intention of taking the place of foreign correspondents who remain their essential partners. “We are not dancing on the grave of journalism,” she said, “but it is a fact that there are fewer traditional journalists working for established papers. That’s not good for us, that’s not good for them, but we are among those information providers who are filling the gap.”

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Saudi Arabia and the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood

Raphaël Lefèvre writes: The openly difficult relationship between Saudi Arabia and Muslim Brotherhood chapters across the region has become a salient feature of Middle East politics since the advent of the “Arab Spring.” This mutual mistrust has increased in the wake of the Kingdom’s recent support for the military takeover in Cairo and the generals’ subsequent repression of the Brotherhood there. But how is the Islamist organization affected by this dynamic in Syria, where the Muslim Brothers and the Saudis both battle against Bashar al-Assad?

The question has become ever more relevant since Saudi Arabia’s takeover of the “Syrian file” from the hands of the Qataris last May.[1] Yet the answer is steeped in ambiguities. On the one hand, the relationship between Riyadh and the Syrian Brotherhood suffers from political contradictions and a lack of genuine trust. On the other hand, the two actors know each other well and have a common short and medium-term interest: to see the Iran and Hezbollah-backed Syrian regime replaced by a new political system dominated by Sunnis. But the moving sands of Egypt might soon reach Syria too, and the consequences for the local Brotherhood branch there may one day be significant.

To understand the relationship between the Syrian Brotherhood and Saudi Arabia, often described by Syrian Brothers themselves as “complex,”[2] one first needs to look a few decades back. For it was after the Syrian Brotherhood’s rebellion in the late 1970s that both actors really started to know each other. Fleeing harsh repression in the early 1980s, tens of thousands of Muslim Brothers escaped Syria and took refuge in Jordan, Iraq, and, to a lesser extent, Turkey and Saudi Arabia. It is estimated that the number of Brothers residing in the Kingdom today is in the low thousands.

This relatively sizeable presence initially posed challenges to Saudi rulers, who considered the Brotherhood’s goal of politicizing Islam a threat to the apolitical nature of their deeply conservative Wahhabi society. “The Saudi government believes that the implementation of the Brotherhood’s political project—calling for elections and the formation of parties—would mean the end of its own model, which depends on the control of a ruler who has all powers,” argued a leader of the Syrian Brotherhood who has family in the Gulf. The Kingdom therefore regulated the Syrian Brothers’ presence in Saudi Arabia by allowing them to carry out political activities in private but forbidding any politicization of Saudi society, with the promise of an uncompromising and harsh response as a deterrent. “We would be very cautious not to cross these lines,” recounted another Brother who was raised in Saudi Arabia. “There would be Syrian Brotherhood gatherings in houses or mosques but, to be discreet, we would only go and leave by a group of two or three individuals. We wouldn’t mix with members of other Brotherhood chapters, and we would almost never disclose our political affiliation in the presence of Saudi citizens.”

Thus, despite a sometimes heavy intelligence surveillance, the Kingdom nonetheless allowed the Syrian Brotherhood to operate underground. Saudi Arabia even became the place of residence for two leaders of the organization: Hassan al-Houeidi from Deir Ezzor, who lived in Medina, and Abdel Fatah Abu Ghuddah, a distinguished Islamic scholar from Aleppo who was based in Riyadh. This 30-year presence of an important share of the Syrian Brotherhood in the Kingdom helps explain why, short-term mutual interests aside, the Saudi rulers have for a long time tolerated the group more than its Egyptian counterpart. [Continue reading…]

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The influence of Syria’s foreign fighters gets overstated

Der Spiegel reports: Once just a small group, now there are several thousand foreign jihadist fighters present in Syria today. Though some rebel leaders say their presence does pose a danger, the impact of these groups is often exaggerated by the Western media.

The role of foreign jihadists linked to al-Qaida in Syria has been the subject of intense discussion in the Western media, among think tanks and inside governments. Yet despite the attention paid to the issue, the research behind the reports published is often thin.

There’s a good reason for this, too: Very few foreign journalists are still traveling within the areas of Syria that are no longer controlled by the regime of dictator Bashar Assad. Of course, other factors also influence the reporting. Right from the start, the regime described the insurgency in its propaganda as the action of “foreign terrorists,” and it has often used the Russian media in particular as a platform for spreading false accounts of events.

In early September, for example, the regime attributed an attack by diverse rebel groups on two checkpoints held by Christian militiamen in the western Syrian city of Malloula to al-Qaida. It claimed that the group had attacked and damaged churches and that it drove Christians into the streets and forced them to convert to Islam, with the threat of decapitation if they didn’t. This horrific version of the story made its way into reporting by American and British news agencies. Indeed, few reported that the nuns at Maaloula’s Tekla monastery had denied that such attacks had even taken place. [Continue reading…]

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Syria: ‘Not Anymore: A Story of Revolution’

In an interview with Vice magazine, filmmaker Matthew VanDyke was asked:

What do you have to say to those in the journalist community who are angered about you switching between being a journalist and being a freedom fighter when it suits you? You know, the Committee to Protect Journalists lobbying for your release [while he was held prisoner for six months by Gaddafi’s forces in Libya] under the asumption you were a freelance journalist, then you returning to fight as soon as your release had been secured.

Please don’t call me a journalist. People still do that, even though I’m not. And the journalist community isn’t irritated. There were, like, ten people who were irritated to bicker and bitch and a lot of them have their own reasons for doing it. The fact is that I’ve been balefully accused for two years now and it causes me such immense emotional distress. These people try to destroy me.

The reason they still call me a journalist is that they are looking for a one-worder that fits in a headline. My family argued with journalists not to call me a journalist when I was missing, and they still did it. When I escaped prison and found out that I was a journalist, it was news to me. I’m not unbiased, not impartial like journalists should be. I don’t report news. When I was in Syria, partly because of my actions in Libya, I had access to things that I would see in the news weeks later, but I did not report on them.

Why did you actively choose not to be a journalist?

Because I don’t cross lines—don’t mix things. I don’t think journalists should be pro-revolution; journalists should show up, report the news and not take a side. I’m so determined not to cross lines that I take financial hardship for it, I risk my life for it. I was wearing a uniform while I was making that film—sometimes with a Free Syrian Army flag on my arm—to make it clear that I’m not a journalist. The consequence of that could have been that, if I’d have been captured, I would have been tortured to death.

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In Syria, FSA is a failed brand while militias increasingly gain civilian leadership

Syria Deeply reports, “In January 2012, Syria Conflict Monitor (SCM)’s five-person team began cataloguing the thousands of Free Syrian Army (FSA) videos used for recruitment purposes that were being downloaded to the Internet.”

These are the three key things revealed in SCM’s latest data:

Since the beginning of 2013, nearly one in three videos Syria-wide has invoked Islamic rhetoric as justification for the fight against the regime.

“The nationwide declines in FSA affiliation among armed groups coincides with noticeable increases in the appearance of Islamist and religious rhetoric across Syria,” SCM said.

“In addition to the aforementioned failures of any alternative galvanizing force or concept, the consistent tactical, financial and symbolic success of religiously motivated armed groups is undeniably driving a growing number of armed groups to adopt similar rhetoric and shifting the tone of the conflict. It must be reiterated that these categories are not monolithic. Groups employing Islamist rhetoric or religious symbols may differ greatly from one another. Additionally, there may be a sizable number of groups that subscribe to political-religious ideologies that do not introduce such rhetoric or symbols into their formation videos for a variety of reasons.”

Since 2012, slightly less than one-fifth of groups publishing information videos on YouTube declare affiliation with the U.S.-backed Free Syrian Army.

“Affiliating with or invoking the FSA brand in unit formation videos has significantly declined since 2012. The FSA label, with few exceptions, does not reflect real command and control or unit integration into a larger fighting group known as the FSA,” SCM said.

“Instead, the FSA label was traditionally invoked as a symbol of national solidarity with other fighting units. Based on the significant decline in FSA branding among formation videos, it is reasonable to conclude that the FSA label is no longer a symbol of unity between armed opposition groups. The FSA label in the context of formation is now likely a reminder of repeated failed attempts by figures outside of Syria to unite the armed opposition nationwide under the banner of the FSA.”

Within armed groups, there is a significant trend from military to civilian leadership.

For the first time beginning in the period of January to April 2013, a majority of videos in which declarations of leadership were made on camera were led by civilians.

“As the total number of fighting groups has increased, so too has the trend towards civilian control,” the group said. “This may reflect the insufficient number of available defected military officers to command opposition units and/or the growing aptitude of civilians to command units after two years of fighting.”

It said that civilian command of armed opposition units “carries important implications for armed group behavior … civilian command may blur the distinction between civilian and military structures on the ground, with many individuals assuming roles in local civilian governance structures in addition to armed units.”

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Qatar’s World Cup ‘slaves’

The Guardian reports: Dozens of Nepalese migrant labourers have died in Qatar in recent weeks and thousands more are enduring appalling labour abuses, a Guardian investigation has found, raising serious questions about Qatar’s preparations to host the 2022 World Cup.

This summer, Nepalese workers died at a rate of almost one a day in Qatar, many of them young men who had sudden heart attacks. The investigation found evidence to suggest that thousands of Nepalese, who make up the single largest group of labourers in Qatar, face exploitation and abuses that amount to modern-day slavery, as defined by the International Labour Organisation, during a building binge paving the way for 2022.

According to documents obtained from the Nepalese embassy in Doha, at least 44 workers died between 4 June and 8 August. More than half died of heart attacks, heart failure or workplace accidents.

The investigation also reveals:

• Evidence of forced labour on a huge World Cup infrastructure project.

• Some Nepalese men have alleged that they have not been paid for months and have had their salaries retained to stop them running away.

• Some workers on other sites say employers routinely confiscate passports and refuse to issue ID cards, in effect reducing them to the status of illegal aliens.

• Some labourers say they have been denied access to free drinking water in the desert heat.

• About 30 Nepalese sought refuge at their embassy in Doha to escape the brutal conditions of their employment.

The allegations suggest a chain of exploitation leading from poor Nepalese villages to Qatari leaders. The overall picture is of one of the richest nations exploiting one of the poorest to get ready for the world’s most popular sporting tournament. [Continue reading…]

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U.S., Russia agree on Syria U.N. chemical arms measure

Reuters reports: Ending weeks of diplomatic deadlock, the United States and Russia agreed on Thursday on a U.N. Security Council draft resolution that would demand Syria give up its chemical arms, but does not threaten military force if it fails to comply.

Samantha Power, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, said a deal was struck with Russia “legally obligating” Syria to give up its chemical stockpile and the measure went to the full Security Council in a closed-door meeting on Thursday night.

U.S., Russian, French and British diplomats told reporters the vote could come as early as Friday evening, provided the Executive Council of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons in The Hague approves a plan for the destruction of Syria’s poison gas arsenal beforehand. [Continue reading…]

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Most of Syria’s toxins can be destroyed more easily than officials initially thought

The Washington Post reports: U.S. and Russian officials now believe that the vast majority of Syria’s nerve agent stockpile consists of “unweaponized” liquid precursors that could be neutralized relatively quickly, lowering the risk that the toxins could be hidden away by the regime or stolen by terrorists.

A confidential assessment by the United States and Russia also concludes that Syria’s entire arsenal could be destroyed in about nine months, assuming that Syrian officials honor promises to cede control of the chemical assets to international inspectors, according to two people briefed on the analysis.

The assessment, thought to be the most authoritative to date, reflects the consensus view of Russian and U.S. analysts who compared their governments’ intelligence on Syria during meetings in Geneva this month. The Obama administration has since briefed independent experts on the key findings.

The insights into Syria’s arsenal have been bolstered further by the Damascus government’s own accounting, which lists the types of chemical agents and delivery systems it possesses, and was presented Saturday to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons in The Hague. U.S. officials have reviewed the Syrian inventory, which has not been publicly released, and “found it quite good,” a senior State Department official told reporters. [Continue reading…]

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Assad: chemical weapons arsenal is a ‘burden’ — Syria has much more powerful weapons to defend itself against Israel

The Times of Israel reports: Syria has deterrent weapons, more advanced than anything in its chemical arsenal, that could blindside Israel in mere moments, Syrian President Bashar Assad claimed Thursday.

“Originally, we produced chemical weapons in the 1980s as a deterrent to Israel’s nuclear capabilities,” Assad said in an interview with the Hezbollah-affiliated, Lebanon-based Al-Akhbar newspaper, adding that “today, we have weapons that are far more important and sophisticated and that can blindside Israel in the blink of an eye.”

The Syrian president also charged that the West was not really concerned with stripping Syria of its weapons stockpile in order to safeguard the country’s civilians but, rather, that its goal was to tip the balance of power in the Middle East in Israel’s favor.

“They wanted to change the balance of power to protect Israel, but we turned the table on them and now the ball is in their court,” said Assad.

Referring to his regime’s chemical weapons arsenal, which, under a US-Russian agreement reached earlier this month, is due to be destroyed by mid-2014, Assad said that his stockpile, of about 1,000 tons, is a burden and will be costly and time-consuming to dispose of.

The Syrian president went on to mock President Barack Obama as “hesitant” and “weak.” He called the US administration’s handling of the threat to attack Syria — in response to the regime’s alleged chemical attack in Damascus on August 21 that killed over 1,400 people according to US officials — an “embarrassment.”

“The steps we’ve taken embarrassed the US government in the eyes of the American and European publics. Obama lost in his own home [turf]. where [he] lost the ability to maneuver internally,” Assad added. [Continue reading…]

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A chemical weapons expert responds to the Al Akhbar article ‘Questions plague UN report on Syria’

Brown Moses Blog: Earlier this week an article was published by Al Akhbar, Questions Plague UN Report on Syria, making a number of claims about the UN report, including “There is not a single environmental sample in Moadamiyah that tested positive for Sarin.” and “It is scientifically improbable that survivors would test that highly for exposure to Sarin without a single trace of environmental evidence testing positive for the chemical agent.“. This is then used to claim that the 140mm artillery rockets fired at Moadamiyah were not carrying Sarin, as widely reported, and that the trajectory of these rockets, as per the UN report, which crosses over with the trajectory of other rockets fired at Eastern Ghouta over the Syrian army’s Republican Guard 104th Brigade base, is indicative of nothing, as the munitions did not contain Sarin.

One of the chemical weapon experts quoted in the article is Dan Kaszeta, who has responded to the article with a FAQ he’ll be publishing online shortly.

Q: The article claims “not a single environmental sample in Moadamiyah that tested positive for Sarin.” – What is your reaction to this?

I consider this statement to be a misleading half-truth that “cherry picks” from the UN report. It is true in respect to the fact that no actual Sarin was found in the 13 environmental samples taken from Moadamiyah. But the samples show DIMP, IMPA, and MPA, all of which are strong indicators of Sarin. The environmental samples are clear indicators that Sarin was used because of the clear presence of chemicals that are clearly decomposition products (IMPA, MPA) and impurities (DIMP), all of which persist longer in the environment than Sarin itself. [Continue reading…]

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A war in which both people and ideas have become casualties

Gabriele Del Grande writes: This is my third visit to Aleppo in the last year, but the first time that I saw fear in the eyes of my Syrian activist friends accompanying me. They are not afraid of Bashar al-Assad’s regime or of bombs or of the Free Syrian Army (FSA). Rather, what scares them are the checkpoints manned by fighters from the Islamic State in Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS — also known as the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria), the main al-Qaeda force in Syria. Kidnappings and executions have been steadily increasing.

Hazim al-Azizi, a photographer at the media center in Azaz, was the latest Syrian activist to be killed by al-Qaeda. An ISIS sniper shot him on Sept. 18, when the town of Azaz, 3 kilometers (1.8 miles) from the border with Turkey, became the scene of two days of heavy fighting between the ISIS and FSA. On the same day, ISIS gunmen kidnapped Mohammed Nur Amuri, director of the Azaz media center, along with nine other activists in his office. One man, Abu Mohammad, managed to save himself.

Abu Mohammad was supposed to go to Azaz to install an aerial for a free radio network, Radio Nevroz, which was to begin broadcasting in Kurdish and Arabic to the opposition-controlled areas of northern Syria. When he heard that the ISIS was involved in fighting there, he canceled everything. In his opinion, the presence of al-Qaeda in Syria poses a serious threat to the entire civilian activist movement.

In an interview in Kilis, a Turkish town on the border with Syria, Abu Mohammad told Al-Monitor, “For us, it is extremely dangerous even just to move around. We are civilians, without any military escort when we travel. The areas in the countryside of Aleppo and Idlib have become a no-man’s-land, and the slightest suspicion is enough to get you killed by the men of ISIS.”

According to Wassim, however, the real problem is not al-Qaeda, but the ever-widening rift with the FSA. An activist living in Aleppo, Wassim explained, “When the revolution started, we used to sing ‘One, one, one. The Syrian people are one.’ Nowadays, the most popular song goes like this: ‘Alawites wait for us! We are coming to slaughter you! We will cut your throats.’ The activists abroad will tell you that it is not true, that we are a moderate people and sectarianism will not prevail. But this is true only of us civilians, not for those who fight. [Continue reading…]

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Syrian rebel groups reject exiled National Coalition

islamic-alliance

The formation of a coalition of rebel groups under an “Islamic framework” that rejects the authority and legitimacy of the Western-backed and Istanbul-based National Coalition, is going to be widely seen as further evidence of the “Islamisation” of the Syrian opposition. On that basis, it will also generally be viewed as reflecting a trend towards greater extremism, but that judgement might be premature.

The group which has not officially been named yet but is being referred to by some of its members as the “Islamic Alliance” appears to have coalesced around some core principles that seem to be more strategic than ideological, namely, that it rejects the authority and legitimacy of an exiled group that has assumed the role of a kind of government-in-waiting but whose members are safely removed from the fighting; that those who are fighting “own” the revolution; and that their success will depend on solidarity.

An indication that this new coalition might not signal further radicalization of the opposition is the fact that it does not include the most radical group in Syria: the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) which is most closely affiliated with al Qaeda. Al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahri recently called on Syria’s Islamist fighters to shun secularists, but this new coalition might have more to do with shunning outsiders.

By raising expectations that a U.S. intervention might decisively tip the balance of power in the rebels’ favor, only to then see President Obama sign on to a chemical weapons disarmament plan whose most likely effect will be to ensure the continuation of Bashar al-Assad’s rule, the lesson that gets repeatedly driven home to Syrians is that there is no one they can rely upon but themselves.

Aron Lund writes for Syria Comment: Abdelaziz Salame, the highest political leader of the Tawhid Brigade in Aleppo, has issued a statement online where he claims to speak for 13 different rebel factions. You can see the video or read it in Arabic here. The statement is titled “communiqué number one” – making it slightly ominous right off the bat – and what it purports to do is to gut Western strategy on Syria and put an end to the exiled opposition.

The statements has four points, some of them a little rambling. My summary:

  • All military and civilian forces should unify their ranks in an “Islamic framwork” which is based on “the rule of sharia and making it the sole source of legislation”.
  • The undersigned feel that they can only be represented by those who lived and sacrificed for the revolution.
  • Therefore, they say, they are not represented by the exile groups. They go on to specify that this applies to the National Coalition and the planned exile government of Ahmed Touma, stressing that these groups “do not represent them” and they “do not recognize them”.
  • In closing, the undersigned call on everyone to unite and avoid conflict, and so on, and so on.

The following groups are listed as signatories to the statement.

  1. Jabhat al-Nosra
  2. Islamic Ahrar al-Sham Movement
  3. Tawhid Brigade
  4. Islam Brigade
  5. Suqour al-Sham Brigades
  6. Islamic Dawn Movement
  7. Islamic Light Movement
  8. Noureddin al-Zengi Battalions
  9. Haqq Brigade – Homs
  10. Furqan Brigade – Quneitra
  11. Fa-staqim Kama Ummirat Gathering – Aleppo
  12. 19th Division
  13. Ansar Brigade

Who are these people?

The alleged signatories make up a major part of the northern rebel force, plus big chunks also of the Homs and Damascus rebel scene, as well as a bit of it elsewhere. Some of them are among the biggest armed groups in the country, and I’m thinking now mostly of numbers one through five. All together, they control at least a few tens of thousand fighters, and if you trust their own estimates (don’t) it must be way above 50,000 fighters.

Most of the major insurgent alliances are included. Liwa al-Tawhid, Liwa al-Islam and Suqour al-Sham are in both the Western- and Gulf-backed Supreme Military Council (SMC a.k.a. FSA) and the SILF, sort-of-moderate Islamists. Ahrar al-Sham and Haqq are in the SIF, very hardline Islamists. Jabhat al-Nosra, of course, is an al-Qaida faction. Noureddin al-Zengi are in the Asala wa-Tanmiya alliance (which is led by quietist salafis, more or less) as well as in the SMC. And so on. More groups may join, but already at this stage, it looks – on paper, at least – like the most powerful insurgent alliance in Syria.

What does this mean?

Is this a big deal? Yes, if the statement proves to accurately represent the groups mentioned and they do not immediately fall apart again, it is a very big deal. It represents the rebellion of a large part of the “mainstream FSA” against its purported political leadership, and openly aligns these factions with more hardline Islamist forces.

That means that all of these groups now formally state that they do not recognize the opposition leadership that has been molded and promoted by the USA, Turkey, France, Great Britain, other EU countries, Qatar, and – especially, as of late – Saudi Arabia.

That they also formally commit themselves to sharia as the “sole source of legislation” is not as a big a deal as it may seem. Most of these factions already were on record as saying that, and for most of the others, it’s more like a slight tweak of language. Bottom line, they were all Islamist anyway. And, of course, they can still mean different things when they talk about sharia.

Why now? According to a Tawhid Brigade spokesperson, it is because of the “conspiracies and compromises that are being forced on the Syrian people by way of the [National] Coalition”. So there.

Mohammed Alloush of the Islam Brigade (led by his relative, Mohammed Zahran Alloush), who is also a leading figure in the SILF alliance, was up late tweeting tonight. He had a laundry list of complaints against the National Coalition, including the fact that its members are all, he says, “appointed”, i.e. by foreign powers. He also opposed its planned negotiations with the regime. This may have been in reference to a (widely misinterpreted) recent statement by the Coalition president Ahmed Jerba. Alloush also referred to the recent deal between the National Coalition and the Kurdish National Council, and was upset that this will (he thinks) splinter Syria and change its name from the Syrian Arab Republic to the Syrian Republic.

Is this a one-off thing?

The fellow from the Tawhid Brigade informed me that more statements are in the making. According to him, this is not just an ad hoc formation set up to make a single point about the National Coalition. He hinted that it’s the beginning of a more structured group, but when I asked, he said it has no name yet. On the other hand, Abdulqader Saleh – Tawhid’s powerful military chief – referred to it on Twitter as al-Tahaluf al-Islami or the Islamic Alliance, but that may have been just descriptive, rather than a formal name.

Mohammed Alloush also wrote on Twitter, somewhat ambiguously, that the member groups have their own offices and political bureaus, and there’s a political program different from the National Coalition. He, too, hinted that there’s more coming: “wait for the announcement of the new army”.

Who’s missing?

These are of course not all the rebels; far from it. Dozens or hundreds of small and local groups are missing from this alliance, just like they’ve been missing from every other alliance before it. Some really big groups are also not in there, like the Farouq Battalions or the Ahfad al-Rasoul Brigades, both of them quite closely aligned with the SMC and the National Coalition.

Most notably, the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham – Syria’s most querulous al-Qaida faction – is absent from the list. Given the recent surge in tension between the Islamic State and other factions, that seems significant. [Continue reading…]

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The crisis of Syrian refugees in Lebanon

Omar S. Dahi writes: One of the many plot lines lost in the summertime discussions of a US strike on Syria is the pace of refugee movement out of the country. As it stands, the refugee crisis is overwhelming and likely to stay that way. Another external military intervention would further accelerate the mass flight and exacerbate what is already a humanitarian emergency.

The Syrian refugee crisis became too large too quickly for any real planning of ameliorative measures to take place. At the end of September 2012, one year ago, there were less than 240,000 registered refugees in total. Today, according to UN High Commissioner for Refugees data, the number is 2 million. And that is not to speak of the millions more internally displaced persons, or IDPs, who have fled their homes but remained inside Syrian borders. Most refugees express a desire to go home, but the statistics are not on the side of return. The UNHCR defines “protracted refugee situations” as those in which refugees have lived in exile for five years or more with no serious prospect of finding a “durable solution,” meaning repatriation, integration into the host country or resettlement in a third country. By this definition, two thirds of all globally registered refugees — over 7 million people — are in “protracted” limbo. Many Syrians are likely to join them.

A number of factors make the evolving Syrian refugee crisis particularly daunting. First, the displacement comes as part of a brutal civil conflict that shows no sign of abating. Repatriation is therefore unrealistic, as is waiting until the “end of the conflict” to discuss the long-term problems of refugees. The throngs of refugees and IDPs need extensive humanitarian assistance now to meet basic needs. Second, there is now a sizable refugee population in at least five countries — Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Iraq and Turkey — implying the necessity of a large-scale, internationally coordinated effort at durable solutions. None of these host countries are eager to grant Syrians permanent residency; several have repeatedly vowed not to. [Continue reading…]

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Journalists in Syria freelance at their own risk

The New York Observer reports: This summer, Francesca Borri, an Italian journalist, wrote an article for The Columbia Journalism Review about the perils that she faces as a freelancer in Syria. Many were stunned that Ms. Borri gets paid $70 per article, which barely covered the $50-per-night mattress on the ground in a rebel base (where Ms. Borri wrote that she got typhoid), let alone insurance.

“The editors are well aware that $70 per piece pushes you to save on everything. They know, too, that if you happen to be seriously wounded, there is a temptation to hope not to survive, because you cannot afford to be wounded,” Ms. Borri wrote. “But they buy your article anyway, even if they would never buy the Nike soccer ball handmade by a Pakistani child.”

Although $70 is on the low end, it’s not that far from major outlet rates. According to journalists we spoke to, most print publications pay in the low hundreds. TV pays more, but not by much.

It’s almost impossible to come out ahead while covering a war zone, with myriad costs including drivers, lodging, plane tickets, safety gear, insurance and so-called fixers, locals who act as translators and guides and charge upwards of $100 per day.

“You have no guarantee of selling of your story to cover the significant expenses you incurred reporting it,” said Ayman Oghana, a freelance photojournalist and reporter based in Istanbul. “Out in the field, that can drive you to stay longer or take greater risks to get something you think may sell. It also means you don’t have an editor to coordinate with on decisions or telling you, for your own safety, enough is enough, pull out and take care of yourself.”

And it isn’t just the cost of covering the war. The new model of relying on freelancers doesn’t take into account the unprecedented dangers in Syria, where journalists are very often targeted from the moment they cross the border. Veteran journalist Marie Colvin died last year during a rocket attack on Homs, after Syrian forces reportedly pledged to kill “any journalist who set foot on Syrian soil.”

According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, at least 13 local and international journalists are currently missing in Syria, a number that doesn’t include aid workers, fixers and the cases that are unreported due to the belief that, in some cases, publicizing a kidnaping makes it more difficult to negotiate release. [Continue reading…]

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