Category Archives: Syria

Refugees are becoming Russia’s weapon of choice in Syria

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Simon Tisdall writes: Excerpts from a report by Turkey’s security services, published on Tuesday in Hurriyet newspaper, highlighted Turkish suspicions that Russia was purposefully attempting to “weaponise” the refugee crisis.

The report warned: “Regime forces and allies are trying to create a new refugee wave by moving towards Azaz [in northern Syria] … There are 10 refugee camps between this town and Turkey’s town of Kilis, approximately along an eight-kilometre line. The residents of these camps will likely flee and seek shelter in Turkey while these camps would be taken by the PYD or Assad forces.”

Security officials told the paper that Russia was employing tactics previously used in the first Chechen war in the north Caucasus in the 1990s, known as the “Grozny model”. This involved forcibly emptying urban residential areas through a campaign of attrition against the local population. Once this was achieved, heavy weapons were deployed to eradicate opposing forces, entailing widespread destruction of homes and infrastructure.

Given Assad’s previous documented use of barrel bombs, chemical weapons, airstrikes and heavy artillery against civilian areas, Russia’s alleged tactics hardly seem new. What appears to be different is the deliberate creation of tactical refugee emergencies to influence outside actors who must deal with the fallout.

Speaking at the weekend, US senator John McCain, a fierce critic of the Obama administration’s policy of non-intervention and a noted hawk, said Russia’s strategy was “to exacerbate the refugee crisis and use it as a weapon to divide the transatlantic alliance and undermine the European project”.

European politicians attending the weekend Munich security conference, prior to Monday’s attacks, echoed McCain’s concerns saying shops, schools and hospitals were being targeted in an attempt to force the local population to capitulate and increase the flow of refugees towards Turkey and Europe. [Continue reading…]

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The Russian quagmire in Syria and other Washington fairy tales

Michael Kofman writes: Assad is not necessarily winning in Syria. The Russian-led coalition, together with Iran, Hezbollah, and what’s left of the Syrian army, is winning. That is a distinction with an important political difference for Assad to play out at the end of this conflict. While Saudi Arabia and Iran have intractable positions on Assad’s fate, Russia seems much more open-minded on alternative futures, though it will not condone regime change by discussing his removal publicly. It is difficult to see how Russian leaders could count on Syria being stable in the long term under his leadership. They’ve made a much larger political and military stake in the country, and Assad does not look like the man to keep it secure in the long term. Some are certain that Russia will never give up Assad, but who has a good track record in predicting events in the Middle East?

The Geneva negotiations are not just a ploy; Russia needs that settlement eventually in any scenario. It is simple battlefield reality. The more territory the Russian-led coalition regains, the more a political settlement is a necessity. If Assad’s forces could not hold the rapidly dwindling piece of Syria they had left in 2015 how can they defend much larger real estate, together with major cities? The answer is they can’t. We can see how the Assad regime might retake Aleppo, but what’s the plan for holding it along with other cities for the next decade or so? Gaining terrain is one thing, keeping it is another. Assad said he plans to retake the whole country — a dictator can dream. Russia started the negotiations precisely to avoid retracing America’s steps in Iraq and Afghanistan, where military victory is day one of the quagmire to come. Certainly Russian leaders remember the Soviet Union’s own fruitless struggle in Afghanistan. Political settlement is the only way for Russia to lock in any gains in Syria.

If this is so, then why have the Geneva talks been suspended through February, while Russia keeps bombing? The short answer is that the Russian-led coalition is not done capturing the territory they feel must be regained, especially the city of Aleppo, and as a result have no intention of giving rebel groups a respite. Russia’s intervention forced them to the table, but they are not weak enough and some of them Moscow does not want to see in Geneva at all. Aleppo is a hulking ruin, but its fall would be a colossal symbolic defeat. It could split the rebel groups Saudi Arabia worked hard to unite in Riyadh. Russia is pressing its advantage, hoping to secure the major cities for the Syria regime, while leaving the ISIL-held eastern part of the country as an “American problem.” [Continue reading…]

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The cost Sweden has paid for its unshared idealism in welcoming refugees

James Traub writes: The Swedish Migration Agency in Malmo, the southern port city on the border with Denmark, occupies a square brick building at the far edge of town. On the day that I was there, Nov. 19, 2015, hundreds of refugees, who had been bused in from the train station, queued up outside in the chill to be registered, or sat inside waiting to be assigned a place for the night. Two rows of white tents had been set up in the parking lot to house those for whom no other shelter could be found. Hundreds of refugees had been put in hotels a short walk down the highway, and still more in an auditorium near the station.

When the refugee crisis began last summer, about 1,500 people were coming to Sweden every week seeking asylum. By August, the number had doubled. In September, it doubled again. In October, it hit 10,000 a week, and stayed there even as the weather grew colder. A nation of 9.5 million, Sweden expected to take as many as 190,000 refugees, or 2 percent of the population — double the per capita figure projected by Germany, which has taken the lead in absorbing the vast tide of people fleeing the wars in Syria, Iraq, and elsewhere.

That afternoon, in the cafeteria in the back of the Migration Agency building, I met with Karima Abou-Gabal, an agency official responsible for the orderly flow of people into and out of Malmo. I asked where the new refugees would go. “As of now,” she said wearily, “we have no accommodation. We have nothing.” The private placement agencies with whom the migration agency contracts all over the country could not offer so much as a bed. In Malmo itself, the tents were full. So, too, the auditorium and hotels. Sweden had, at that very moment, reached the limits of its absorptive capacity. That evening, Mikael Ribbenvik, a senior migration official, said to me, “Today we had to regretfully inform 40 people that we could [not] find space for them in Sweden.” They could stay, but only if they found space on their own.

Nothing about this grim denouement was unforeseeable — or, for that matter, unforeseen. Vast numbers of asylum-seekers had been pouring into Sweden both because officials put no obstacles in their way and because the Swedes were far more generous to newcomers than were other European countries. A few weeks earlier, Sweden’s foreign minister, Margot Wallstrom, had declared that if the rest of Europe continued to turn its back on the migrants, “in the long run our system will collapse.” The collapse came faster than she had imagined.

The vast migration of desperate souls from Syria, Iraq, and elsewhere has posed a moral test the likes of which Europe has not faced since the Nazis forced millions from their homes in search of refuge. Europe has failed that test. Germany, acutely aware that it was the author of that last great refugee crisis, has taken in the overwhelming fraction of the 1 million asylum-seekers who have reached Europe over the past 18 months. Yet the New Year’s Eve 2016 orgy of rape and theft in Cologne, in which migrants have been heavily implicated, may force Chancellor Angela Merkel to reconsider the open door. Her policy of generosity is now being openly attacked by her own ministers.

Most of Europe, and much of the world, has, as Wallstrom feared, turned its back. The ethnically homogeneous nations of Eastern Europe have refused to take any refugees at all; Hungary, their standard-bearer on this issue, has built fences along its borders to keep refugees from even passing through. Balkan countries, by contrast, helped migrants pass through their territories to the West — until mid-November, when they collectively began blocking asylum-seekers who did not hail from Iraq, Syria, or Afghanistan. England has agreed to take only those refugees arriving directly on its shores from the Middle East. Denmark has taken out ads in Arabic-language newspapers warning refugees that they will not be welcome, and has passed legislation authorizing officials to seize migrants’ assets to pay for their care. In the United States, where politicians eager to exploit fear of terrorism have found a receptive audience, Congress has sought to block President Barack Obama’s offer to accept a meager 10,000 Syrians.

And then there is Sweden, a country that prides itself on generosity to strangers. During World War II, Sweden took in the Jews of Denmark, saving much of the population. In recent years the Swedes have taken in Iranians fleeing from the Shah, Chileans fleeing from Gen. Augusto Pinochet, and Eritreans fleeing forced conscription. Accepting refugees is part of what it means to be Swedish. Yet what Margot Wallstrom meant, and what turned out to be true, was that Germany, Sweden, Austria, and a few others could not absorb the massive flow on their own. The refugee crisis could, with immense effort and courage, have been a collective triumph for Europe. Instead, it has become a collective failure. This is the story of the exorbitant, and ultimately intolerable, cost that Sweden has paid for its unshared idealism. [Continue reading…]

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European states deeply divided on refugee crisis before key summit

The Guardian reports: Europe’s deep divide over immigration is to be laid bare at an EU summit in Brussels on Thursday, with German chancellor Angela Merkel struggling to salvage her open-door policy while a growing number of countries move to seal borders to newcomers along the Balkan routes.

A debate on the migration crisis over dinner on Thursday evening will do little to resolve the differences, senior EU officials predict. Donald Tusk, the president of the European council, has avoided putting any new decisions on the agenda in an attempt to avoid fresh arguments.

The leaders of four anti-immigration eastern European countries met in Prague on Monday and demanded alternative EU policies by next month. Their plan amounts to exporting Hungary’s zero-immigration razor-wire model to the Balkans, sealing Macedonia’s border with northern Greece, and bottling up the vast numbers of refugees in Greece unless they are deported back to Turkey. [Continue reading…]

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Trump campaign manager: Assad ‘keeping things in check’ in Syria

BuzzFeed reports: Donald Trump’s campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, said in an interview on Tuesday that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is “keeping things in check” in the war-torn country.

The conflict in Syria, which has been ongoing for four-and-a-half years, has resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Syrians, and created a refugee crisis in the region. Trump has said he wants to work with Russia on Syria to defeat ISIS and opposes overthrowing Assad.

Appearing on the John Fredericks Show, Lewandowski, defending Trump’s position, said, “He is very, very bad individual, but he is an individual who, in his country, is keeping things in check because he is such a bad guy they’re afraid of him.” [Continue reading…]

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The war of Western failures: Hopes for Syria fall with Aleppo

Der Spiegel reports: Aleppo has been a horrific place for some time now and few thought that it could get much worse. But things can always get worse — that’s the lesson currently being learned by those who have stayed behind in an effort to outlast this brutal conflict. People who have become used to dead bodies in the streets, hunger and living a life that can end at any moment.

“For the last two weeks, we’ve been living a nightmare that is worse than everything that has come before,” says Hamza, a young doctor in an Aleppo hospital. At the beginning, in 2011, he was treating light wounds, stemming from tear gas or beatings from police batons. When the regime began dropping barrel bombs in 2012, the injuries got worse. But now, with the beginning of the Russian airstrikes, the doctors are facing an emergency. Every two or three hours, warplanes attack the city, aiming at everything that hasn’t yet been destroyed, including apartment buildings, schools and clinics. Often, they use cluster bombs, which have been banned internationally.

They used to get around 10 serious injuries per day, but that number has now risen to 50, says Hamza, adding that most of their time is spent sorting body parts so they can turn them over to family members for burial. Russian missiles, he says, tear everyone apart who is within 35 meters of the impact.

“On one day, we had 22 dead civilians. The day before that, it was 20 injured children. A seven-year-old died and an eight-year-old lost his left leg.” The Russians attacked in the morning, he says, as the children were on their way to school. “We are going to need years of therapy in order to be able to cope with all this.”

There are seven doctors still working in the hospital. “Since the Russians began bombing the city, even more doctors have fled,” Hamza says. There are only about 30 medical professionals left in all of Aleppo, he adds. His hospital too is under fire and Hamza’s voice can be heard trembling over the phone. The regime, he says, has targeted the hospital five times in the past several years, but always missed. “The Russian bombardment, though, is very accurate.” One recent bomb, he says, just barely missed them. [Continue reading…]

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A Syria policy that dare not speak its name

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Michael Ignatieff writes: Once President Barack Obama had let Bashar al-Assad cross his “red line” and use chemical weapons in 2013, America was left with a policy in Syria that dare not speak its name.

The policy is not what the US wants but, in light of the ceasefire plan agreed last week in Munich between Moscow and Washington, it appears to have become what it reluctantly accepts: to allow Mr Assad and Russian president Vladimir Putin to win by focusing attacks on anti-regime rebels in strongholds such as Aleppo — and then, after a decent interval, to join with them to crush the militants of Isis.

The consequences of this policy are becoming clearer by the day: free Aleppo is dying under continuing Russian bombardment and a civilian uprising that began in 2011 is collapsing for want of help. Mr Assad is re-establishing his tyranny and is certain to take vengeance on surviving insurgents.

This is where risk avoidance has led a conscientious, prudent American president — to a diabolical transaction in which he and his allies regretfully sacrifice the lives of innocent civilians in the name of the mistaken belief that the west’s only overriding strategic interest in Syria is the defeat of Isis.

If this is the actual policy of the US the consequences should be spelt out. Russia and Iran will consolidate control of a rump state in the Middle East but the millions of Syrians who have fled the fighting will never return home and the region will never know peace. [Continue reading…]

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How to lose sight of war crime immorality

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After the U.S. dropped bombs on a hospital run by Doctors Without Borders (Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) in the Afghan city of Kunduz on October 3, Glenn Greenwald wrote:

Doctors who travel to dangerous war zones to treat injured human beings are regarded as noble and trustworthy. They’re difficult to marginalize and demonize. They give compelling, articulate interviews in English to U.S. media outlets. They are heard, and listened to.

MSF has used this platform, unapologetically and aggressively. Its staff are clearly infuriated by the attack on their hospital and the deaths of their colleagues and patients. From the start, they have signaled an unwillingness to be shunted away with the usual “collateral damage” banalities and, more important, have refused to let the U.S. military and its allies get away with spouting obvious falsehoods.

Greenwald shared MSF’s disgust in response to statements which amounted to justifications for war crimes.

Following the latest airstrikes on MSF hospitals in Syria, Greenwald’s reaction has so far been much more muted. It has yet to go beyond a couple of tweets which rather than being directed at the likely culprit of these war crimes, Russia, focus instead on the hypocrisy of the U.S. government.


Indeed, the U.S. can’t credibly denounce Russia for bombing MSF hospitals in Syria when it has done the same in Afghanistan.

By the same token, however, how can Greenwald credibly denounce American war crimes if he’s going to refrain from denouncing Russia’s?

He can’t be accused of being a hypocritical U.S. official. He doesn’t represent the American government.

Maybe at the moment he’s suspending judgment about who was responsible for the latest airstrikes in Syria — even though MSF says the attack was “deliberate” and says “either the [Syrian] government or Russia” was “clearly” responsible:


That’s a pointless question in this case since as far as Russia is concerned, there is nothing to investigate.

As TASS reports:

Asked for a comment regarding reports a hospital in Syria’s Idlib province had been bombed, as well as claims the Russian air group was responsible, [Russian presidential spokesman Dmitry] Peskov invited everybody to rely “on the root source first and foremost.” “In this particular case the representatives of Syrian authorities are the root source,” he said.

Peskov recalled that Syria’s ambassador to Russia, Riyadh Haddad, said on Tuesday the hospital in Idlib province was destroyed by the Americans, and not the Russian air group.

If Greenwald actually believed Haddad’s claim, I would expect him to be now denouncing U.S. airstrikes on MSF hospitals in Syria, but he isn’t — most likely because he realizes the Syrian ambassador was spouting obvious falsehoods.

Instead, Greenwald’s primary interest is in using these war crimes as an opportunity to take shots at the U.S. government — even though as Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) and others have documented, attacks on medical facilities are neither accidental nor incidental to the conflict: they are an integral feature of the war strategy used by Assad and his allies.

Writing in the New England Journal of Medicine in December, doctors with PHR said:

Since the conflict began in 2011, PHR has documented the killings of 679 medical personnel, 95% of them perpetrated by government forces. Some personnel were killed in bombings of their hospitals or clinics; some were shot dead; at least 157 were executed or tortured to death.

The issue here is that anyone who wants to resolutely challenge American double standards needs, for the sake of credibility, to avoid having their own double standards on war crimes.

As for the notion that Greenwald, as an American, has a duty to challenge his own government rather than Russia’s, he might pause to consider that his tweets and articles probably attract more attention in the Kremlin than they do in the White House.

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Syria’s UN envoy claims MSF hospital was front for French intelligence and got bombed by the U.S.

AFP reports: Syria’s U.N. envoy on Tuesday accused the medical aid charity MSF of being a front for French intelligence in Syria and dismissed allegations that Russian air strikes had destroyed one of its hospitals.

“The so-called hospital was installed without any prior consultation with the Syrian government by the so-called French network called MSF which is a branch of the French intelligence operating in Syria,” said Ambassador Bashar Jaafari.

Doctors Without Borders (MSF) said at least 11 people were killed after the hospital in Idlib province was destroyed on Monday morning, but it did not assign blame for the attack.

“They assume the full consequences of the act because they did not consult with the Syrian government,” Jaafari told reporters.

“They did not operate with the Syrian government permission.”

He repeated Syrian claims that the U.S.-led coalition had carried out the air strikes that hit the MSF-backed hospital. [Continue reading…]

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Spring could bring a fresh surge of refugees — but Europe isn’t ready for them

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The Washington Post reports: After an unparalleled tide of asylum seekers washed onto European shores last summer and fall, the continent’s leaders vowed to use the relative calm of winter to bring order to a process marked by chaos.

But with only weeks to go before more favorable spring currents are expected to trigger a fresh surge of arrivals, the continent is no better prepared. And in critical respects, the situation is even worse.

Ideas that were touted as answers to the crisis last year have failed or remain stuck in limbo. Continental unity lies in tatters, with countries striking out to forge their own solutions — often involving a razor-wire fence. And even the nations that have been the most welcoming toward refugees say they are desperately close to their breaking point or already well past it.

The result, analysts say, is a continent fundamentally unequipped to handle the predictable resurgence of a crisis that is greater than any Europe has faced in its post-Cold War history. [Continue reading…]

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Assad preparing to handover Syria’s energy sector to Russia

The New Arab reports: The regime of Bashar al-Assad is reportedly seeking to rehabilitate and operate oil fields and power plants in areas controlled currently by the rebels and the Islamic State group respectively — areas that the regime forces began recapturing in northern and Western Syria backed by Russian airstrikes.

Measures are already in place by the Syrian regime to hand over the Syrian energy sector to Russian companies, led by a law on partnership between the private sector and foreign companies issued in early 2016.

Last month as well, Russian press reports said Bashar al-Assad, during a recent visit to Moscow, signed an agreement consisting of ten clauses purportedly giving Russia the right to freely operate in Syria, which cannot be revoked except by written agreement.

In the same vein, a recent report published by Russia’s RIA agency said Syria’s ambassador to Moscow, Riad Haddad, had met with the chairman of Russian gas company Gazprom Alexei Miller, and discussed giving Russian energy firms oil and gas concessions in Syria and other forms of cooperation. [Continue reading…]

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The world’s failure to stop the massacre in Syria is based on a string of lies

Amir Tibon writes: In my conversations with the refugees [at a camp in Serbia] last month, I asked them about some of these lies as if they were well-established truths. Not because I believe them — but rather, because so many people, all over the world, hear and read these lies every day that it’s impossible to ignore them.

It felt dumb, for instance, to ask a family — father, mother, three children aged 12 to 3 — who had just escaped from the burning city of Aleppo, what they thought about “Russia’s bombing campaign against ISIS.” Of course, there is no such thing. Russia isn’t focusing its effort on bombing ISIS, but rather on trying to kill the people I was talking to, who are Syrian civilians. Yet conducting the interview without treating this big lie as if it is simply an alternate explanation of events would be considered “biased reporting.” So, I ask the question and get looks of disbelief, and worse.

Nadia, the mother of this family, told me that “the Russians are the worst thing that happened to us. We survived everything before them, but when they came in to help Bashar, we said — enough. They bomb schools, hospitals, refugee camps, buses carrying people to the border.” What specifically did their involvement mean, I asked her. Her reply: “I would ask myself every morning — how are the Russians going to try to kill my children today?”

Her husband, Yasser, a merchant who owned two stores in the city, disagrees with this analysis — he thinks Shiite militias supported by Iran are an even greater danger than Putin’s air force. “We ran away from the city because we know that after the Russians will finish it, the Iranians will come in. The Iranians are sending people to kill us for Assad.”

These militias, which are entering Syria from neighboring Iraq, have quite a reputation when it comes to killing. “They are just like ISIS, only difference is they are Shi’a and they talk Farsi,” says Yasser. “Tell me — why isn’t anyone bombing them? Why is the entire world only talking about ISIS? The Iranians in Syria burn people alive, burn children and women. Where is the world?” The couple then apologized, explaining they had much more to say, but their youngest daughter started crying, and anyway, they had to leave for the bus. They have six more days on the road ahead of them before reaching Germany.

The biggest lie of them all is that Bashar al-Assad, even more than Vladimir Putin, wants to defeat ISIS. The civil war in Syria, we are told more and more as of late, is actually a choice between Assad and ISIS. Framing the conflict in such terms makes it legitimate and acceptable to cooperate with Assad, a man who is responsible for the deaths of over a quarter of a million people. I tried to ask each and every Syrian I talked to one simple and “neutral” question that has to do with this falsehood. The question was — “Who are you running away from?” The vast majority of people didn’t choose Assad or ISIS — they said they are running away from both.

“The world needs to understand that Assad and ISIS are not enemies — they are partners in destroying our lives,” explained Muhammad, 24, from Aleppo, who stayed in the bombarded city for the last five years because he wanted to complete his university studies before getting out. “It’s like a coin that has two bad sides to it. Doesn’t matter which way you flip it, you’ll end up dead. As long as there is Assad, there will be ISIS. His violence against the Sunni people in Syria is what created ISIS in the first place.”

One man in his 50s, who presented himself in perfect English as a university professor from Aleppo, added: “I’m running away from Da’esh (the Arabic name for ISIS), but there are many different kinds of Da’esh operating in Syria today. There is Da’esh-Da’esh, the people who cut off heads and burn prisoners in cages. There is also Da’esh-Assad, which is actually much worse, and Da’esh-Iran, the Iranian militias who rape and murder women in front of their children’s eyes. They have much more money and capabilities, and they don’t film themselves while doing their atrocities. They are smart enough to hide it from the world. In addition to all these, there is also Da’esh-Putin. I’m coming from Aleppo; I’ve seen the results of his bombings. It’s a massacre. People are killed like cockroaches under a shoe. And then there is Da’esh-the West, which I think is the worst! I mean the civilized world, doing nothing to stop all of this.” [Continue reading…]

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Will Merkel pay for doing the right thing?

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Roger Cohen writes: A former German chancellor, Gerhard Schröder, recently called Angela Merkel’s decision to open the door to an unlimited number of refugees a “mistake” and offered this verdict: Merkel had a “heart, but no plan.”

This view of the German leader, who is beloved but now begrudged, is gaining ground as refugees from a ravaged Syria and elsewhere pour in. Local authorities are strained to the limit. Billions of euros have been spent with no end in sight. Many people came in whose identities are unknown; they have to register if they want handouts, but some have not and there are security concerns. Cologne has become a byword for concern over how a large influx of Muslim men will affect the place and security of women in German society.

Three important state elections loom next month. It seems inevitable the far-right Alternative for Germany Party will surge. Merkel will be blamed. Her support has already tumbled. One poll this month showed 46 percent of Germans support her, compared with 75 percent in April last year — and that’s with a strong economy. She could be vulnerable if her Christian Democratic Party turns on her. Europe without Merkel will sink.

So why did this customarily prudent chancellor do it? Because she is a German, and to be German is to carry a special responsibility for those terrorized in their homeland and forced into flight. Because she once lived in a country, East Germany, that shot people who tried to cross its border. Because a united Europe ushered Germany from its darkest hour to prosperity, and she is not about to let the European Union pitch into mayhem on her watch — as it would with more than a million ragged refugees adrift. And, yes, because she has a heart.

Merkel did the right thing. The question now is how she handles the consequences. [Continue reading…]

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To be a refugee is much harder for a woman than for a man

Renate van der Zee reports from the transit camp of Vinojug on the Macedonian-Greek border: In the camp’s supposedly “child-friendly” space, 25-year-old Nameen, from Homs, is nursing her tiny baby daughter. She went into labour as she was travelling through Turkey. “Fortunately they could get me to the hospital in time. The delivery went well,” she says with a faint trace of a smile.

Nameen stayed in the hospital for two days, rested for another 10 days in Turkey, and then crossed the Mediterranean in a dinghy with her baby in her arms.

“All I could think of was my girl, I was so scared she would drown or get ill. It was so cold. I am still worried for her safety, day and night.”

The other women in Vinojug agree: to be a refugee is much harder for a woman than for a man.

Amnesty International and the UN refugee agency, UNHCR, recently presented reports on the vulnerable position of women refugees and the dangers they face.

Europe is failing to provide basic protection for them, the Amnesty report stated.

This problem is now all the more critical because the percentage of women among the refugees who travel through Europe has risen dramatically. Exact data is not available, but according to UNHCR, last summer, a quarter of the refugees were women and children – now it is 55 percent. [Continue reading…]

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Russian airstrikes targeted hospitals: ‘The planes returned several times,’ says eyewitness

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Syria Direct reports: Reported Russian airstrikes knocked three hospitals in northern Syria out of service on Monday, depriving more than 5,000 patients a month of care ahead of the deadline for a “cessation of hostilities” deal worked out between major powers at last week’s annual Munich Security.

The ceasefire, notably, excludes the Islamic State in addition to Jabhat a-Nusra, one of the lead factions in the Victory Army that controls nearly all of Idlib province.

Two hospitals, one belonging to Doctors Without Borders (MSF), were bombed in Idlib province on Monday. A third, a women and children’s hospital in the city of Azaz near the Turkish border, was also hit.

The National Hospital, also in Maarat al-Nuaman, was bombed shortly after the strikes on the MSF facility, Amjed al-Idlibi, a first responder with the Civil Defense who worked to extract the dead and wounded, told Syria Direct Tuesday.

“Both hospitals were hit directly…the planes returned several times to conduct air raids, with roughly 10 minutes between each raid,” said al-Idlibi. He said that the planes were Russian. [Continue reading…]

Meanwhile, Russia’s TASS reports: The Kremlin has dismissed as unacceptable the allegations the Russian air group in Syria has destroyed a hospital in Syria.

“We are strongly against such claims, the more so, since each time those who come up with such charges prove unable to somehow confirm their groundless accusations,” Russian presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov has said.

Asked for a comment regarding reports a hospital in Syria’s Idlib province had been bombed, as well as claims the Russian air group was responsible, Peskov invited everybody to rely “on the root source first and foremost.” “In this particular case the representatives of Syrian authorities are the root source,” he said.

Peskov recalled that Syria’s ambassador to Russia, Riyadh Haddad, said on Tuesday the hospital in Idlib province was destroyed by the Americans, and not the Russian air group. [Continue reading…]

Note the reasoning of the propagandists: The allegations that the airstrikes on hospitals were carried out by Russia are firstly dismissed as “groundless accusations” and secondly dismissed by repeating a groundless accusation made by Syria’s ambassador to Russia — that these were U.S. airstrikes.

Unfortunately, there exists an uncritical audience all too willing to swallow this kind of shameless lying and tortured reasoning.

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‘Unprecedented increase in the number of attacks on healthcare’ in Syria, say aid groups

BuzzFeed reports: Monday marked an “unprecedented” surge in attacks on health facilities in Syria, according to an internal report by affiliates of the World Health Organization that was rushed out to take the toll of the damage.

The report, compiled by the consortium of medical facilities the WHO oversees in the country and provided exclusively to BuzzFeed News, documents a series of what appeared to be targeted bombings of hospitals and other health facilities in Syria. The attacks — which local doctors and international observers alike blamed on Syrian and Russian missiles — killed patients and medical staff at seven different medical sites, the report said, adding that Monday marked “an unprecedented increase in the number of attacks on healthcare in one single day.” [Continue reading…]

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Kurds carve out new reality in northern Syria

The Guardian reports: Amid the chaos in northern Syria in recent months, several themes have emerged.

The first is that Islamic State has been spared from intensified Russian airstrikes and advances by pro-regime forces. The second, and potentially more important development, is that one of the war’s least visible players – the Kurds – have done more than anyone else to carve out a new reality.

As Lebanese Hezbollah, militias from Iraq, and Syrian troops – all led by Iran – have inched their way around the top of Aleppo, the Kurdish YPG, supported by Russian air cover, has been making strident moves towards areas they have avoided throughout the conflict.

Over the weekend, the YPG moved towards two Syrian towns between the Turkish border and the almost besieged Aleppo, after earlier seizing an airbase that had been held by the opposition. Throughout the war, the YPG had been viewed warily by the opposition, and given a wide berth by the regime.

Now, though, its moves have sharply expanded a footprint in the north, alarming rebels who have been distracted by other foes, and Turkey, which had vowed never to let the Kurds dominate its border with Syria.

The Kurds are ascendant, and the Turks are enraged. Ankara sees YPG militants, who are affiliated with the Kurdistan Workers’ party (PKK), as vying to own areas they have never before controlled, to establish a foothold from Irfin in Syria’s north-west to the Iraqi border, a frontier dominated for decades by Arabs.

Helping the YPG do that are the same Russian jets that are steadily destroying Turkish-supported rebel groups, whose three-year push to oust Bashar al-Assad increasingly looks lost. [Continue reading…]

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Russia uses world war threat to dictate Syria policy, says Turkish PM

Hurriyet Daily News reports: Russia is deliberately using the threat of a possible world war in order to dictate its policy in Syria, according to Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu.

“Russia is consciously engaging in a perception operation to suggest ‘there could be a world war.’ By keeping this on the agenda, Russia continues to bother the world and dictate its policy,” Davutoğlu said Feb. 15 en route to Kyiv for a one-day visit.

“We should not be tricked with this perception operation,” he added.

Davutoğlu was referring to Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev’s words in Germany’s Handelsblatt newspaper on Feb. 11 that “world war” was possible if international powers failed to negotiate an end to the conflict in Syria. [Continue reading…]

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