Woman's work. Syria’s Third Grueling Summer: What Should One Write About? For the past several weeks in Beirut, I have been inundated with emails and comments from colleagues and observers about developments in Syria. The same goes for Jadaliyya’s coverage. Why, the question goes, is coverage thin on Syria? I am also asked by the kinder variety if I am afraid of something, or if I am avoiding something. These questions come from the left and center-right, from proponents of the opposition(s) and their detractors. Often, they assume that writing on Syria today really matters, irrespective of whether there is something significant to say; and irrespective of the locale of those of us not too close to the scene, which makes much of our writing polemical, grand-standing, and positional in nature, rather than meaningful. After incessant nudges and badgering, a few words are in order, if only because the agony and human tragedy that is Syria is increasingly astounding.
What should one write about—again? What should one write about? “As Syria Free-Falls . . .
Arab Nationalism, Islamism and the Arab Uprising | Professor Sadek Al-Azm spoke at LSE last week and reflected on the Arab uprisings, the current situation in Syria and what he called ‘good-for-business’ Islam. The following is a snippet from his lecture which is available as a full transcript here. In addition to his talk at LSE, Al-Azm also recently wrote a piece which appeared in the online journal, Reason Papers.
By Professor Sadek Al-Azm If, in fact, we Arabs are on the verge of a new era of politics, I find it then necessary to draw the serious attention of the newly emerging forces of the Arab Spring to two highly related, deeply ingrained and highly regressive tendencies in Arab political life in general. The first tendency, as past experience has shown, is for Arab political changes and shifts to proceed in spite of inflated rhetoric and hyperbolic discourses, to proceed on the basis of the famous French maxim which says: ‘plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose’.
One last reflection concerning these kinds of comparisons.
Sectarianism and the uprising... The Free Syrian Army. Syria eyewitness: Damascus divided on Assad regime. 18 June 2011Last updated at 07:19 Damascus has seen mass demonstrations in support of the regime A journalist in Damascus - who cannot be named for security reasons - reports on the growing differences of opinion within the Syrian capital on how the crisis should end. After three months of anti-government protests and a bloody crackdown by the regime of President Bashar al-Assad, Syria is becoming a country divided.
While anti-regime protests continue across the country, the streets of the capital Damascus have played host to mass demonstrations in support of the president. Thousands of people gathered in a western district of the capital to unveil a giant Syrian flag, hold aloft portraits of the president and chant pro-regime slogans. "God, Syria, Bashar - that's enough! " they shouted, in scenes more like a carnival than a demonstration. Processions of cars have been parading through the city, with youths hanging out of windows, waving Syrian flags and beeping their horns. “Start Quote. Q&A: Nir Rosen on Syria's protest movement - Features. Journalist Nir Rosen recently spent two months in Syria.
As well as meeting members of various communities across the country - supporters of the country's rulers and of the opposition alike - he spent time with armed resistance groups in Homs, Idlib, Deraa, and Damascus suburbs. He also travelled extensively around the country last year, documenting his experiences for Al Jazeera. This is the second in a series of interviews he gave to Al Jazeera since his return. Read the first part here. Al Jazeera: What is the social background of the protesters? Nir Rosen: In much of the country, entire communities are involved in the uprising. It is difficult to generalise about their socio-economic backgrounds. In many opposition strongholds people are socially conservative. AJ: What are the demographics of protesters and opposition leaders? NR: Most protesters are in their late teens to mid 20s, but in many areas one can see middle-aged and even elderly men taking part.
Syria's torture machine | World news. Between bursts of machine-gun fire and the crump of explosions – unmuffled in crisp mountain air – the starry sky above the Syrian frontier offers ethereal distraction. It's 3am and the town of Tal Kalakh, less than two miles to the north – just inside the Syrian Arab Republic – is under sustained attack, its residents reportedly refusing to hand over a small band of defectors who have holed up there, trying to bolt for Lebanon to join the insurgents.
All around are mountains among which ancient armies have battled for millennia. And below, in besieged Tal Kalakh, a western outpost in the restive governorate of Homs, the Syrian army is once again hard at work, killing its own people. Tal Kalakh has felt the full force of violent repression many times since the Syrian revolt erupted back in March. One day, Tal Kalakh will doubtless appear on the revolutionary roll of honour. For now, this town of 80,000 people doesn't even merit a mention in my guidebook.
Syria's Opposition: What if We Offered Assad Immunity? It's going to be a decisive week for Syria. The Syrian National Council (SNC), the de facto umbrella organization representing the country's political opposition, is meeting in Tunis to try and get its house in order and formulate a plan to bring down the house of Assad. At the same time, the Arab League has given President Bashar al-Assad until Wednesday to stop dithering on its six-week-old proposal to end the violence and allow monitors into the country or — in a pronounced escalation — perhaps kick the matter up to the United Nations. Even Russia, which has protected Damascus from censure at the U.N.
Security Council, put forward its own draft resolution last week calling on all parties to end the violence, "including disproportionate use of force by the Syrian authorities. " Although Syrian rights groups bristled at Moscow's language, which some activists said equated the killer and the victim, Western capitals saw an opportunity to make a deal with Russia. The Kurds in Syria During the Crisis: Influences from Turkey | By Robert Lowe Turkey is clearly hugely influential in the outcome of the crisis in Syria. It has become perhaps the most significant single external actor and its influence is apparent across the Syrian political landscape: as Syria’s most important neighbour; as a confident state playing a greater role in the affairs of the Middle East; and in providing comparative models of government.
And now that bilateral relations have collapsed, Turkey is the leading foreign power providing support and encouragement to the Syrian opposition. For the Kurdish population in Syria, Turkey is even more significant because of the critical trans-state Kurdish factor. This means that developments within Turkey and between Turkey and Syria are hugely important to politics, identity and decision-making among Kurds in Syria. The Turkey-Syria border is an artificial construction still under a century old. Kurds in Syria did not have, until quite recently, a distinctly ‘Syrian Kurdish’ struggle. The Dynamics of the Uprising in Syria. Most people interested in Syrian affairs used to believe that the country was extremely stable. The regime’s media fed this belief, constantly reiterating the assertion that Syria was the most secure and stable country in the world. In fact, however, this stability was merely a veneer.
In reality, cracks and rifts appeared that damaged the Syrian society, undermined its cohesion, and created numerous social problems, generating frustration and anger that grew to unbearable proportions among broad sections of the population. The 19 February 2011 incident, which took place in the commercial market in Damascus, was the first symptom of this underlying frustration. A few days after this incident, a number of young men working in the culture field gathered in front of the Libyan embassy to protest in solidarity with Libya’s martyrs.
The situation was ready to explode throughout the country, awaiting the spark that would get the people out onto the streets. Map of the Conflict 1. 2. A. B. C. A Tour Inside Syria's Insurgency - Paul Wood - International. Smuggled by anti-regime fighters across the Lebanon border and into the heart of the uprising, I found fearless protesters, calls for intervention, and the growing threat of civil war Still image taken from video shows purported members of "Free Syrian Army" firing at a convoy of government security buses in the village of Dael / Reuters Qutaiba, a 22-year-old engineering student, had never been arrested before Syrian security forces detained him at a checkpoint in a suburb of Damascus and dragged him to a military base. At the time, he didn't know if he would survive: activists like him were disappearing, sometimes turning up later as mutilated corpses.
But he did survive, and what he went through would later lead him to me. When Qutaiba arrived at the military base, at first he was left to stand outside, hooded, hands cuffed behind his back. The colonel, looking the prisoner up and down, asked, "Who hit this guy? " "It was Abdullah," one of the guards answered. The Syrian Revolution and the Question of Militarization. [Translated from the Arabic by Jeff Regger] Syrian activists and intellectuals have recently been defending the non-violent character of the revolution in the face of calls for armed struggle against the Assad regime. Nine months after the first protests and sit-ins erupted in Syria, more than 5,000 have been killed, tens of thousands injured, tortured and forced into exile, while at least 15,000 souls languish in prisons under horrifying conditions. The following lines are a contribution to the defense of the non-violent nature of the Syrian revolution from two angles: one political, the other practical.
The Revolution as a Constitutive Act Much can be said about the causes of the revolution, its characteristics, extent, ability to mobilize, and the rhetoric adopted by some of the groups participating in or representing it politically. But this is not our purpose here. —The destruction of the barrier of fear in an act of collective liquidation of the control of authoritarianism.
Live updates on Syria’s uprising. The Last Tourist in Syria - By Emma Sky. DAMASCUS — Is this your first visit to Syria, the passport control man asks me. No, I tell him, I came here once before over a decade ago. He stamps my passport. I had been very lucky to get a Syrian visa this time. The travel advice was not to visit.
I jump in a taxi. Across the city, the Syrian flag is flying strong and photos of the president are omnipresent. When I had visited previously, the city had been filled with huge pictures of Hafez al-Assad; and Bashar had been studying ophthalmology in London. In the evening, I stroll down the street to a restaurant. I walk through souq al-hamdiyya in the old city of Damascus. I go to the ticket office, pay the entrance fee for foreigners and collect a hooded grey cloak to cover myself. I pass three women sitting on the ground in their black abayas.
Another group is being addressed in Farsi by a man in a turban. I walk down Straight Street, which is mentioned in the Biblical story of Paul's conversion to Christianity. I walk by the U.S. Home / Headlines / Syrian women, backbone of the revolution - Media Monitors Network (MMN) "Syrian women have also been essential components of the now famous flash mobs that have so angered the regime with their speed and their efficient messages.
Often, women will join the group and start chanting while wearing a headscarf, then separate at the first sign of the infamous "shabbiha" and yank their hijabs off their heads as they melt into the crowd. " On January 10, while President Bashar Assad addressed his supporters in Damascus, Syrian authorities handed the tiny tortured body of a four-month old baby girl to her uncle in Homs. Arrested with her parents a few days earlier, one can only assume, knowing the Syrian regime's documented brutality, that baby Afaf had been thrown into a cell with her mother and submitted to horrific treatment, terrorizing her and her mother and leading to her untimely death. In its violent repression of the uprising, the Syrian regime has made no distinction between men and women or between adults and children.
BBC Interview with Bassam Haddad on the Question of "Sectarianism" in Syria. Syrians Under Siege by L. A. | NYRBlog. Over Easter weekend, the government of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad launched a brutal crackdown on the peaceful protests that have been gathering force across the country in the last five weeks.
Around 120 protesters were killed in several different cities by security forces (bringing the total to some 400 since the protests began); and thousands more were arrested. On April 25, tanks moved to Daraa, the southern city where the protests first began in mid-March, triggered by the arrest and torture of teenagers who had scrawled anti-government graffiti on the city’s walls. Near Damascus, the towns of Douma and Moadamiyeh have been similarly sealed off, as have Baniyas, Homs, Jableh, and Hama, and people I am in contact with tell me that there are soldiers on every street corner in the northwestern port city of Latakia.
In areas where protests have occurred, hospitals were ordered not to treat activists—and some doctors who disobeyed have been arrested. 55 Dead in Syria's Weekend of Rage. Syrian security forces opened fire again on Saturday, killing 11 protesters in the central city of Homs. The protest began as a funeral procession for demonstrators killed on Friday, when 10 died in Homs and some 44 died at government hands throughout the country. In Homs on Saturday, an AFP reporter and eyewitness said that tens of thousands were in the streets. Despite a heavy government crackdown in past weeks and hundreds of deaths, the protests in Syria appear to be spreading. On Friday, they broke out in the Kurdish city of Qamishli, in Banias and Latakia to the west, in Deir al-Zor (a small petroleum-producing area) and in Damascus suburbs. Aljazeera English reports on Saturday’s protests and killings in Homs: Aljazeera English reported on Friday’s widespread protests: For more on Friday’s events, see Joshua Landis.
Lebanese Banks Tighten Control on Syrian Account Holders. Lebanese banks have adopted strict measures to ensure compliance with international sanctions against neighboring Syria and are scrutinizing transfers of existing Syrian clients, banking officials said on Thursday. "Banks are taking extremely strong precautions to avoid bad surprises regarding people or institutions under sanctions," said one official who works at one of Lebanon's top banks.
"No one wants to expose himself to pressure or problems. "Banks are running away from anything that has to do with Syria like it's a disease because the U.S. is closely watching. " He requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue and banking secrecy laws. He told Agence France Presse that the precautions taken apply to transactions by long-standing Syrian clients as well as new account applicants, many of whom are being turned down. "No transfers from accounts held by Syrian clients are being made in dollars and other transactions need special approval," she added. الحكومة السورية تقرر خفض عملتها مقابل الدولار 7% بشكل مفاجئ. Twisting Assad's Arm - By Andrew J. Tabler.