06/04/12 #Syria Collected footage after the battle of Atareb
UN chief discusses #Syria, terrorism with Saudi king
UN leader Ban Ki-moon met with Saudi King Abdullah bin Abdel Aziz on Monday in Jeddah for talks on the crisis in Syria as well as means of combatting terrorism, state news agency SPA said.
Ban discussed with the king “regional and international developments and efforts to achieve peace and end bloodshed in Syria and other hot spots in the region,” SPA reported.
Saudi Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal bin Abdel Aziz on Sunday accused Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad of “maneuvering” to gain time at a joint news conference with Ban, who described the situation in Syria as “deeply troubling.”
“I once again call on the government of Syria to uphold its responsibilities and abide by the Annan plan,” the UN secretary general said at the time, referring to UN-Arab envoy Kofi Annan.
“I urge all members of the international community to use their considerable influence for a peaceful solution.”
Arab leaders on Saturday called on the United Nations to act to stop bloodshed that has persisted for nearly 15 months despite the UN-backed Annan plan that includes the deployment of nearly 300 observers.
Annan on Saturday singled out Assad and his regime as the key to resolving the conflict as he warned of the specter of all-out sectarian warfare.
More than 13,500 people have been killed in an almost 15-month uprising against Assad’s regime, including as many as 2,400 since Annan’s so-called ceasefire took effect on April 12, a rights watchdog says.
The UN chief also discussed with King Abdullah “international efforts to combat terrorism under the umbrella of the United Nations,” said SPA.
“Among the most important challenges we are currently facing is terror, a phenomenon which the whole international community is responsible for fighting and not one country alone,” the king had said at the opening of the second advisory meeting of the United Nations Counter-terrorism Centre Sunday.
The center was established in late 2011 to support the implementation of the UN’s counter-terrorism strategies. Saudi Arabia has pledged $10 million over three years to support it.
Saudi Arabia was the target of a wave of deadly attacks by Al-Qaeda between 2003 and 2006, prompting authorities to launch a crackdown on the local branch of the jihadist network.
Al-Qaeda remains active in Yemen, where its Saudi and Yemeni franchises have joined forces under the banner of Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, classified by the US as the most active branch of the global terror network.
Abdullah al-Khalidi, Saudi Arabia’s deputy consul in Yemen’s main southern city of Aden, was abducted by AQAP on March 28 in a bid to secure the release of prisoners and collect a ransom. His fate remains unknown.
-AFP/NOW Lebanon
06/02/12 #Syria Very Distressing: Brutal treatment and torture of detainee in Atareb, by Assad’s security forces
Clinton presses Russia to back political change in #Syria
STOCKHOLM — US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton urged Russia Sunday to get behind a political transition in Syria, saying President Bashar al-Assad’s departure was not a precondition but should be “an outcome”.
Clinton spoke to Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov by telephone at the weekend to say that Washington and Moscow needed to work together on a plan that would halt the violence and bring about political change in the country.
“In my conversation with him, I made it very clear there would be no point to any meeting unless it included all elements of Kofi Annan’s (peace) plan, and that certainly means we have to focus on a path forward for a political transition,” Clinton told reporters Sunday during a visit to Stockholm.
“Assad’s departure does not have to be a precondition but it should be an outcome, so the people of Syria have a chance to express themselves,” she said.
No meeting between Clinton and Lavrov has been scheduled, but a senior US State Department official said Clinton had said the two sides should begin working on ideas.
Warnings of an all-out civil war in Syria, and spill-over sectarian violence in Lebanon, have grown since the massacre last week of more than 100 civilians, many of them women and children, in the city of Houla.
The United States and other countries have blamed the attacks on militias backed by the regime, but Assad said Sunday in a speech it was part of a foreign plot to destroy the country.
Russia has resisted UN Security Council efforts to sanction the Assad regime, a longtime ally of Moscow, questioning the effectiveness of sanctions and warning that outside meddling could lead to civil war.
Clinton has sharply criticised Moscow for “propping up” the Assad regime with continued arms shipments, prompting President Vladimir Putin to defend Russia’s stance in meetings with the leaders of Germany and France.
The US chief diplomat, meanwhile, has been lining up support for a tougher response during a tour of the Scandinavian countries.
Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt joined her at a news conference here in condemning “the terrible violence by the Assad regime against its own people,” and calling for international pressure for those responsible to be held to account.
Clinton said she also would be meeting with leaders from countries in the region in Istanbul Wednesday, where she was to attend an international conference on counter-terrorism.
She said her message to Lavrov was: “We all have to intensify our efforts to achieve a political transition, and Russia has to be at the table helping that occur. The Syrian people want and deserve change.”
Syrian Future: No Role For the Corrupt Dictatorship #Syria
by Ghassan Karam
Dictatorship is illegitimate by definition since it represents taking power by force and it maintains it through oppression, fear and brutality. That is one reason that most dictatorships, Arab ones in particular have felt the need to pretend that they are legitimate by setting up sham elections. As if anyone really believed that 99.9% support abuse and cruelty.
The Arab Spring has not given the Arab world a single dynamic democracy yet but it has given voice to the Arab masses who have decided to stand up and demand their right to be heard. Governance in the Arab world will never be the same again. Finally a movement has been born to tell dictators that the long journey to democracy and personal freedom, the journey to human dignity will not be stopped.
Bashar Assad of Syria exemplifies the tyranny of Arab dictatorships. His father rose to power through a coup and ruled the country under emergency law for 30 years. When Hafez Assad died his son Bashar, an ophthalmologist, inherited a country and continued the exploitation and the one man rule of governance.
Many Syrians were encouraged by the relative success of the Arab masses in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Yemen and so initiated small roving peaceful demonstrations. Dictators do not seek the approval of those that they govern; instead they maintain control by the use of brutal secret service supporters/gangs that inflict random violence. The response of the Bashar Assad regime was initially subdued because he had feared that a sharp escalation would bring about a response from the world community similar to that in Libya. As time passed the Syrian forces became more forceful but stopped shy of leveling civilian quarters in major cities with tanks and artillery. The West had warned that such attacks will not be tolerated but will be met with a stern response.
This is when Russia decided to step in and protect its only client in the Arab world. Russia sent armaments and assured the Syrian regime that Russia and China will veto any attempt by the Security Council to pass any measures similar to what had happened in Libya. The regime then tested the will of the international community by waging a strong military attack on a neighbourhood in Hama. No meaningful Western response was forthcoming. Russia and China delivered on their promise to keep the UN Security Council in check. This emboldened the Syrian regime to try its strong military tactics again in Homs. Again the West failed to act. Since then the Syrian government, shielded by Russia and China and helped by Iran has been acting with impunity.
One Arab League initiative, which was passed through the UN Security Council, appointed Kofi Annan to find a peaceful solution to the Syrian crisis. This was not opposed by either Russia or China and so Mr. Annan is trying to apply the same rules to the victims as well as the victimizers. It appears that this effort will be abandoned since so far the level of violence by the Syrian forces has not diminished, actually it has led to the most grotesque massacre in this conflict so far; Al Houla Massacre.
So where we and what are next in this conflict? The current government is illegitimate, it is a dictatorship that has failed to evolve and reform for over forty years, it has sought and obtained Iranian help in putting down the insurrection, it has used Russian and Chinese political protection to increase the frequency and ferocity of its military attacks against its own civilian population. It has taken advantage of the well meaning efforts by Mr. Annan in order to increase the level of violence and it has called on its Lebanese minions to expand the Syrian conflict into Lebanon so as to make the Syrian government’s warning that without Bashar regional instability will ensue a reality.
This is a regime that has never had any legitimacy, a regime that does not value personal freedom, a regime that survives by oppression and brutality a regime that is best described as a regime of human depravity. This regime must be held accountable for all its human right abuses over the past 14 months of this uprising as well as all its previous excesses against Hama, Kurds and all its political opponents. To argue that this regime must be negotiated with only because it has large guns is an insult to reason and rationality. Furthermore the efforts to justify a continuation of this regime on the ground that its level of brutality is not as grotesque as it is in some other dictatorships are ludicrous and actually contemptuous. And last but not least, as the world evolves and as cosmopolitanism spreads the circle of ethics widens from the self to the family then the tribe the state and eventually the world. That would then call for a universal right to protect against slavery, exploitation and flagrant violation of the most basic principles of human rights. The Syrian people are entitled to freedom of expression and self determination in an open and free election without having to fear the ghosts of the Assad secret services and their egregious acts.
‘My forces had nothing to do with massacre of children’: #Syria president Assad denies slaughter as eight are killed in related clashes in Lebanon
Embattled Syrian president Bashar Assad today denied government involvement in the massacre of more than 100 people, nearly half of them children.
He claimed his forces had nothing to do with the slaughter in Syria’s central Houla region and claimed not even ‘monsters’ would carry out such an ugly crime.
The shootings, many at close range, triggered international outrage and the expulsion of Syrian diplomats from world capitals.
Speaking to parliament in a televised address in Damascus, he warned the country was facing a ‘real war’ and once again blamed terrorists for the crisis.
The president said Syria was passing through its most critical stage since the end of colonialism. His message came after clashes broke out between pro and anti-Syrian groups in northern Lebanon.
At least eight people were killed between Friday night and Saturday morning, Lebanese security officials said.
The fighting in Lebanon pits Sunni Muslims who support Syrian rebels trying to oust Assad against members of the Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shiite Islam of which Assad is a member.
Smoke billowed from several apartments near the city’s Syria street, the dividing line between the mainly Sunni Bab Tabbaneh neighborhood and the adjacent, Alawite-majority Jabal Mohsen.
Audience: Syrians watch Assad deliver his speech to Parliament as he denies government involvement in the massacre
Protest: An image released by opposition leaders of a demonstration against Assad in the northeastern city of Deir al-Zor
The area around Syria street was mostly empty except for gunmen roaming the streets.
‘We are being targeted because we support the Syrian people,’ one Sunni gunman said. ‘We are with you (Syrian people) and will not abandon you.’
The opposition and the government have exchanged accusations over the massacre with U.N. investigators claiming there were strong suspicions that pro-regime gunmen were responsible for at least some of the killings.
It was a rare public appearance by Assad since his crackdown on the 15-month uprising which is estimated by the U.N. to have costs the lives of 13,000 people.
Victim: A grieving Syrian woman touches the face of a relative who was allegedly killed by Syrian forces in Daraa
With the country spiralling to civil war, a six-point ceasefire plan brokered by international envoy Kofi Annan is violated by both sides every day despite 300-strong U.N. observers on the ground in Syria.
Meanwhile, Washington has reached out to Syria’s most important ally and protector, urging Russia to join a coordinated effort to resolve the deadly conflict.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton discussed the situation with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in a telephone call yesterday, a senior State Department official said.
‘They both agreed that we have to work together,’ said an official. ‘Her message to him was that we have to start working together to help Syrians with a serious political transition strategy.’
- France says it will only participate in military action in Syria under a U.N. mandate. French Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian told an Asian security summit that the international community should increase sanctions and pressure in an effort to oust Assad.
Leading article: It is time for Turkey to take the lead on #Syria
Outrage over the Houla massacre remains high, but there is also a growing sense of despair that nothing effective is being done to prevent its repetition. Almost every day, evidence is produced of fresh killings by Syrian government-backed death squads that bring the country closer to all-out sectarian civil war.
The expulsion of Syrian diplomats this week was a purely symbolic gesture, and the economic sanctions in place are more likely to hurt ordinary Syrians than their leaders. And although Russia shows signs of becoming weary of paying an ever-increasing political price for its support for Syria, the stalemate in the UN Security Council is also unlikely to change for the moment.
But perhaps the most surprising aspect of the impasse is Turkey’s failure to act effectively during the crisis. It is a country which shares a long land border with Syria and had previously been on exceptionally good terms with President Bashar al-Assad, helped by its exporters’ domination of the Syrian market before 2011 and the Turkish goods that fill shops throughout the country.
Here was Ankara’s first serious test as a regional power: it is a test that it has so far failed. But any future resolution of the crisis must involve Turkey, as the only one of Syria’s immediate neighbours capable of exerting influence.
At the start of the popular uprising 15 months ago, the Turkish government appeared well-positioned to act as a conduit between the Syrian government and the opposition. Sadly, Prime Minister Tayyip Recep Erdogan set too much store by the laudatory press clippings about the rise of “the new Ottomans” and exaggerated his government’s influence in Damascus.
When Ankara discovered that Mr Assad was stringing them along, without any intention of implementing their proposals for reform, warm relations between the two countries turned ice-cold over night.
But for all the talk of establishing a “safe haven” for refugees on the Syrian side of the Turkish border, it never happened, most likely thanks to the combination of threats from Iran and a desire to avoid the risk of war with Syria. Ankara would also be conscious that, until 2000, Syria was the main supporter and base for the Turkish Kurd guerrillas – the PKK – and Damascus could unleash these once again.
It would have been preferable if Turkey had not broken so wholly with the Syrian regime. As a result of Mr Erdogan’s mis-playing of his cards, it is not the Turks but the Russians who have ended up as the one country with pivotal influence in Damascus. But there is still time to take back the initiative. And if there is to be regional action, it would be better led by Turkey than Saudi Arabia and Qatar – not least to avoid the absurd hypocrisy of pretending that two of the last absolute monarchies on earth are trying to overthrow Mr Assad because of their concern for the democratic and civil rights of the Syrian people.
It will be difficult at this stage to ease the Syrian regime out of power, and the prospect facing the world is rather of a prolonged guerrilla war, with alarming regional implications, that still may not produce a conclusive winner. International military involvement, or even just arming the rebels, have little to recommend them, even in the unlikely event that Russia could be brought on board. But there is much else that the international community can do, including the establishment of humanitarian corridors to ease the appalling suffering of Syria’s civilian population. It is up to Ankara to take a lead.
Syrian activist assassinated in clinic, says rights watchdog #Syria
Syrian activist Adnan Wehbeh, known for his anti-regime stance since last year’s uprising, was assassinated in his clinic near Damascus Sunday by a security man dressed as a civilian, a watchdog said.
Blaming security forces for Wehbeh’s killing in Douma suburb, Rami Abdel Rahman, head of Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said: “A security man dressed in civilian clothes got out a military vehicle and entered Wehbeh’s clinic and fired at his head and several parts of his body.”
A videotape distributed by the Observatory showed the body of Wehbeh, a doctor, shot in the head and chest.
The Britain-based watchdog condemned the assassination strongly, saying that what happened to Wehbeh is “a sign of weakness of the Syrian regime, which cannot even tolerate words.”
It also called for the “trial of the killers and those who issued the order for the assassination” of Wehbeh, who has been an anti-regime activist since the start of the uprising against President Bashar al-Assad in March 2011.
Syrian security forces, meanwhile, arrested activist Khansa Mohamed Namora, a mother of two children, on Thursday at October University in the port city of Latakia, the Observatory reported, noting that her whereabouts were unknown.
The watchdog condemned the arrest, saying it “could threaten coexistence in the city of Banias,” the activist’s hometown, and urged authorities “to immediately release her and all prisoners of conscience in Syrian detention centers.”
-AFP/NOW Lebanon
