Syrian Freedom

West Yorkshire Mum of Four Visits #Syria

Anjum Tahirkheli explains why she felt she had to visit the war-torn country

Anjum Tahirkheli from Bingley has recently returned from Syria, a trip that she felt she had to make despite being a mother of four. As the founder of the charity of the Basic Human Rights, she went to witness the ‘unofficial humanitarian corridor’ operating in the country to ensure that aid being sent by her charity was reaching the people it was intended for.

“I needed to go out there and really know what the ground reality is and the only way you can actually achieve that is by going and speaking to the people. I was smuggled through Lebanon into Syria and went to Homs. There was shelling, constant bombing, we were ducking and diving, but there are young children who are trapped here, I had the choice to go in and the choice to come out.

“There must be a lifeline for these people and there are some very brave people working this unofficial humanitarian corridor.”

You can listen to the full interview below. Anjum was speaking to Becky Holmes.

INTERVIEW

Turkey mulls Kosovo-like plan for Syria

ANKARA - Hürriyet Daily News

The UN says over 7,500 were killed in fight between Assad forces and rebels. AP photo

Sevil Küçükkoşumsevil.küçükkosum@tdn.com.tr

Turkey is entertaining the possibility of working with the international community to establish a humanitarian corridor into Syria without a U.N. Security Council directive as it did in Kosovo in 1999.

Establishing corridors needs a United Nations Security Council mandate, but Russia and China, who both have veto power, have said they would not allow the passage of any resolution they see as unbalanced.

If Russia and China keep blocking attempts for U.N. Security Council measures against the Syrian regime, the international community could seek alternative legitimate ways to create a humanitarian corridor into Syria, a Turkish official told Hürriyet Daily News.

The international community may enforce a humanitarian aid corridor into Syria without a U.N. Security Council resolution, as was implemented in Kosovo over a decade ago, if the country’s humanitarian problems reach unbearable dimensions, according to a Turkish official.

In the case of Kosovo, the international community, including the United States and NATO, established humanitarian corridors into the region in 1999 ahead of a U.N. Security Council decision after ethnic conflict erupted in the former Yugoslavia.

According to assessments in Ankara, Moscow may change its position after upcoming elections in Russia and follow a path closer to the majority of the international community on the Syrian crisis.
Arab countries should do more, Çiçek says

Meanwhile, Turkish Parliamentary Speaker Cemil Çiçek has criticized those who have been pushing Turkey to find a solution to the Syrian crisis. “Don’t egg us on this issue,” he said during a visit to Riyadh. “Some ruse circles just follow what is happening [in Syria] as if they were watching a football game and then say, ‘Turkey should handle this.’”

Turkey has pulled its weight on the Syrian crisis, Çiçek said, adding that everyone had a responsibility in disputes in the Middle East and that Turkey was following a realistic policy.

“Those who do not have borders with Syria should not be content with mere remarks. I hope Muslim countries with Arab roots will do more than they have done up until now. They haven’t done enough,” he said.
Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said Turkey would host a meeting on Syria. Addressing his deputies, Erdoğan said Turkey had been part of every step in the Friends of Syria meeting.
‘Cannot remain indifferent’

Elsewhere, the National Security Council (MGK) gathered Feb. 27 and said in a written statement that the international community should not remain indifferent to the violence and “mass massacres” in Syria. The council highlighted the importance of protecting Syrian people and extending humanitarian aid to those people.

Turkey denied claims that it had turned a blind eye to Syria’s usage of Turkish territory as a route to obtain weapons. Britain’s The Times had reported that Syria was usingTurkey as a route to bypass sanctions and obtain materiel and equipment for its weapons industry and that Turkey was turning a blind eye.

The claims are groundless, Foreign Ministry spokesman Selçuk Ünal told Anatolia news agency.

February/29/2012

Red Cross evacuates Bab Amr wounded #Syria

Aid group in talks to reach further casualties after ambulances move 27 women and children from besieged Homs district.

Watch video here.

Syrian Red Cross workers have moved 27 people from a neighbourhood in the besieged city of Homs and are in negotiations with the government to reach all casualties, a spokesman for the group has said.

Ambulances from the Syrian Arab Red Crescent drove into the suburb of Bab Amr, an opposition stronghold which has been under heavy shelling and gunfire, after negotiations earlier on Friday, according to the International Committee of the Red Cross.

The news came as a major conference was held in Tunisia pushing for aid access.

“The convoy did arrive in Bab Amr, earlier this afternoon, so far they have evacuated seven injured persons, and 20 women and children,” Hicham Hassan, a Red Cross spokesman, told Al Jazeera on Friday.

The injured were taken to a privately owned local hospital, the Red Cross said.

No men, however, chose to be allowed to leave, fearing arrest and torture if they left, Al Jazeera’s James Bays reported from Beirut.

“There have previously been allegations that people have been taken from those hospitals and taken to prisons, and that people have even been tortured, we’ve been told, in the hospitals,” Bays said.

The Red Cross is continuing to negotiate for more access to all the wounded in the city, and injured Western journalists trapped inside have refused to leave until they are assured they will not receive preferential treatment over locals.

Hassan said the situation in the area was getting worse by the hour.

“This for us remains the first step, we want to evacuate all persons who are injured, as long as it takes,” said Hassan.

Journalists remain in Homs

Two injured foreign journalists and the bodies of two others who died in a shelling attack on a media centre were not among those taken out of Bab Amr, according to Hassan.

Syria’s foreign ministry accused “armed groups” of refusing to hand them over, but an opposition activist in the area said the journalists had refused to leave, the Associated Press reported.

A friend of French reporter Edith Bouvier who has been in direct contact with the journalist told Al Jazeera that she and British photographer Paul Conroy had refused to leave until they were guaranteed diplomatic or Red Cross escort. They also said they would not go until a humanitarian corridor had been opened for all Syrians in the city.

Bouvier and Conroy suffered leg wounds in the same shelling in which two other journalists, US reporter Marie Colvin and French photographer Remi Ochlik, were killed.

Bouvier needs surgery for a broken leg, though her situation is not yet life-threatening, her friend said. Conroy reportedly has less-severe leg injuries. Two other journalists who were present during the shelling but uninjured have also remained in Homs.

The activist said the surviving journalists were unwilling to release Colvin and Ochlik’s bodies to Syrian authorities.

A spokesperson for the Red Cross told the AFP news agency that negotiations in their case were under way.

“Negotiations continue with the Syrian authorities and the opposition in an attempt to evacuate all persons, without exception, who are in need of urgent help,” said Saleh Dabbakeh.

The evacuation was the first time rescuers had entered Bab Amr in 21 days of siege. If a ceasefire results, the flow of people attempting to flee will likely increase, possibly raising tensions in Lebanon, whose border lies just 30km to the west.

There, politicians are deeply divided over Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime, which has long asserted itself in Lebanese affairs.

“If there is a pause in the fighting … then it’s likely I think that more people will come across the border, and I think there is going to be a problem, it’s not only a humanitarian problem,” Bays said. “The Lebanese government does not even want to call these people refugees.”

The Local Co-ordination Committees (LCC) activist network reported the deaths of rat least 50 of people on Friday as footage of street protests emerged from Homs, Qamishili, Aleppo, Idlib, Deraa and the suburbs of Damascus.

The LCC said most of the deaths occurred in the central city of Hama.

#Syria: Homs via Al Jazeera English

Two injured Western journalists trapped in a besieged neighbourhood of Homs have refused to be evacuated without escort and until it is assured that a humanitarian corridor will allow residents to leave, a source close to one of the journalists has told Al Jazeera.

A friend who has been in direct contact with Edith Bouvier, a freelance journalist on assignment for Le Figaro, said the two had refused to leave until a diplomatic or Red Cross official arrived to escort them and it was guaranteed that any Syrians who wished to leave would be allowed to evacuate.

Bouvier was reportedly injured seriously in the leg when a makeshift media centre in the Bab Amr neighbourhood was struck by shelling on Wednesday, but her friend said the injury was not yet life threatening. Paul Conroy, a photographer for the Sunday Times, was also hurt in the attack, which killed US journalist Marie Colvin and French photographer Remi Ochlik.

Bouvier told her friend that the journalists have been there for three days, while many Syrians have endured injuries for more than a month without outside medical assistance.

#Syria Can you judge a nation by the company it keeps? Syria’s thuggish coalition shows how evil this regime is

By Michael Weiss World Last updated: February 17th, 2012

3 Comments Comment on this article

The Western calls for intervention in Syria are gathering

Now here’s a nice coalition of the willing for you: Belarus, Bolivia, China, Cuba, North Korea, Ecuador, Iran, Nicaragua, Russia, Venezuela, Zimbabwe.

Those are the countries that voted “no” on a UN General Assembly resolution, modeled on the Arab League initiative, which called on Bashar al-Assad to resign and the Syrian army to remove all its tanks and heavy artillery from residential streets.

So at least we’re now clear as to which parties intend to lead the way toward a global re-normalisation of relations with Damascus: three zombified Stalinist regimes, a corporatist mafia state run by a botoxed and whale-harpooning KGB agent, an Islamic dictatorship looking to build a nuclear bomb, a kleptocratic African despot, and a moon-facedcaudillo who blames his prostate cancer on the CIA.

So far, the French have been the ones pushing the issue on Syria. Months ago, Alain Juppe was the first Western statesman to moot the idea of a “humanitarian corridor” into the country to allow food, medicine and supplies to be brought the battered civilian population. When pressed by French reporters what exactly such a corridor would entail and whether or not supply lines would necessitate armed escort – Red Crescent trucks are routinely attacked by the Assad regime in Syria – Juppe admitted that it would in fact amount to military intervention. Nevertheless, such a corridor is on offer again in the form of a proposed French draft of a new UN Security Council resolution on Syria. David Cameron, meanwhile, has offered to provide £2 million in aid to Syria, yet has declined to say which parties will receive this largess and how it will be smuggled into the country. He may soon face a Juppe-style questioning about both.

What we’re seeing emerge, in other words, is intervention-creep. As I’ve argued before, it’s inevitable that foreign firepower will be come to Syria because time can only lead to two outcomes that are inextricably intertwined: further crimes against humanity committed by the Assad regime and that regime’s catastrophic implosion. There is no going back from this point, and those who argue against intervention would do well to admit this basic fact.

Also, all the warnings advanced by anti-interventionists – the rise of sectarianism, regional instability, the proliferation of jihadism – will come to pass in Syria (and are already beginning to) without the benefit of intervention. A failed state that borders Iraq, Turkey, Lebanon, Israel and Jordan is not something even US foreign policy realists can stomach.

As for current US policy, this seems to be winding down all diplomatic engines in a desperate attempt to do something. The other day Hillary Clinton got up alongside Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu and said that in order to dispatch a UN-Arab peacekeeping force to Syria, she’d first need to gain the permission of… Bashar al-Assad: “[T]he peacekeeping request is one that will take agreement and consensus,” Clinton said. “So we don’t know that it is going to be possible to persuade Syria. They’ve already, as of today, rejected that.”

Legally, she’s correct. But to Syrians, this sounds pathetic: the equivalent of seeing a man set on fire and, rather than running to grab a bucket of water, asking the arsonist to sign an affidavit first.

Also, the US strategy is not helped by intense speculation, grounded in no discernible evidence, that that al-Qaeda is not only already in Syria but setting things off. Director of National Intelligence James Clapper told Congress this week that recent bombings in Damascus and Aleppo bore “all the earmarks of an al-Qaeda-like attack.” I think Director Clapper means to say “hallmarks,” but then, I stopped trying to parse his semantics after he claimed a year ago that the Muslim Brotherhood is a “largely secular” movement in Egypt.

Clapper does have a point, however. Homegrown or imported jihadism will almost certainly have the next at-bat against the Syrian people. Why? Because when you’ve already withstood Russian tanks, Iranian and Hezbollah snipers and your own psychopathic princeling’s war machine, you clearly haven’t suffered enough yet.

SNC Calls For the Establishment of a Safe Zone in Syria

The Syrian National Council (SNC) was launched to unify and represent the voices of the Syrian people in their plight against the brutal regime of Bashar Assad. The SNC is entering a critical phase in the Syrian revolution whereby the hope of a continued campaign of passive resistance to an exceptionally brutal and unrestrained regime is becoming more and more akin to a suicide pact. Syrian protesters demanded an establishment of no-fly zones, safe havens and other forms of international interventions. The SNC consulted with military and strategic experts to better express the demands of the Syrian people.

The United States (U.S.) and European Union (E.U.) sanctions on Syria have indeed begun to take a serious economic toll on President Bashar al-Assad regime’s ability to finance the state apparatus of repression. They will, in the long run, seriously impact the regime’s ability to sustain its hold indefinitely over key elements of society. But sanctions have not stopped or slowed the murder, arrest, child-rape and torture of ordinary Syrians. Ten months of peaceful protests have been met with unremitting barbarism the likes of which have not been witnessed elsewhere in the Arab Spring. More than 5,000 people have been killed, over 50,000 declared missing, another 59,000 incarcerated and upwards of 16,000 dispossessed by the Assad regime.

A recent study issued by the Strategic Research and Communication Center entitled “Safe Area for Syria: an Assessment of Legality, Logistics, and Hazards” lays out the different forms of intervention with the risks and logistical elements that need to be considered. The SNC has been working with military experts, academic professionals, public policy experts, and strategic advisors to formulate the most accurate approach for civilian protection. The SNC submitted official requests to the Arab League and the United Nation to exercise the “Responsibility to Protect” and save the innocent lives being killed and tortured in Syria. The UN Security Council failed several times to issue a condemnation due to the veto by Russia and China. However, the UN General Assembly and the Human Rights Commission both issued condemnation resolutions. The Arab League issued historic resolutions and imposed sanctions on the Assad regime.

What should be realized is that global politics and shift in regional and global allignments takes time to persuade and change. The SNC has been working deligently on several courses of action to rally international support for the idea of humanitarian corridors, safe zone, official recognition of SNC as the sole legitimate representative of the Syrian people, humanitarian assistance and political support. To this effect the SNC followed several leads with the UN, International Criminal Court, Arab League, Organization of Islamic Conferences, as well as individual visits to different governments.

On Dec 21, 2011, The Syrian National Council’s (SNC) Executive Office engaged in extensive contacts at the Arab and international levels, following the Syrian regime’s brutal massacres and acts of genocide in Zawyia mountain (Idlib) and Homs. At least 250 civilians, including women and children, have been killed in these latest massacres.

In this regard, the SNC directed letters to representatives of the 15 member nations of the UN Security Council, including the permanent members, urging them to convene in an emergency session to discuss the brutal and systematic killings, the humanitarian situation, and the displacements forced by the regime and its security and military apparatus.

The SNC stressed in the letters that the regime is using children as human shields so that tanks and armored vehicles can storm residential areas. Incidents of gruesome murders have been recorded, including examples such as the killing of four brothers from the Hajj Ali family in Idlib; and the killing of Sheikh Ahmadal-Fateh, the Imam of Shamali mosque in Kafar Awaid village (Idlib), who was beheaded before his head was hung above the entrance to the mosque.

The SNC also pointed to the regime’s use of heavy weapons and artillery in shelling civilian neighborhoods, as was the case in the Baba Amr neighborhood of Homs, as well as in the villages of Kansafra, Kafar Awaid, and Mazrain (Idlib), where a large number of residents were killed. Other residents were forced to flee under heavy gunfire.

The SNC also issued urgent communiqués to the Arab League; the Organization of Islamic Cooperation; the Gulf Cooperation Council; the General Secretariat of the United Nations; the U.S. Department of State; the British Ministry of Foreign Affairs; representatives from the Chinese Foreign Ministry; and the governments of France, Spain, Germany, Canada, Tunisia, Libya, and Sudan.

The SNC urgently requested that these parties support the Syrian people’s and the Syrian Revolution’s demands for international protection, the establishment of safe zones for civilians, and the establishment of humanitarian corridors for delivery of relief, medical, and other humanitarian needs. The SNC also demanded a prompt intervention to stop the massacres, which have reached the level of genocide and which coincide with the signing of the Arab League Protocol to send observers into Syria.

Sweden: No military intervention in #Syria

Today @ 10:49

By EUOBSERVER

Swedish FM Bildt has emphatically ruled out using Western military to shield civilians in Syria. “The military option is off the table,” he said in Brussels Monday as EU ministers met to discuss economic sanctions against Syria and Iran. France earlier proposed using troops to create a “humanitarian corridor.”

#Syria unrest: Arab League adopts sanctions in Cairo

The Arab League has approved sanctions against Syria, including an asset freeze and an embargo on investments.

It comes after months of unrest. The United Nations estimates about 3,500 people have died as Syria has sought to put down anti-government protests.

The Arab League suspended Syria earlier this month, in a move denounced by Damascus as meddling in its affairs.

League foreign ministers adopted the unprecedented sanctions at a meeting in Cairo.

It is the latest move to punish Syria for its continuing crackdown on protesters.

But Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Muallem accused the league of seeking to “internationalise” the conflict.

The Arab League move is being portrayed in Damascus as part of a Western-inspired conspiracy to undermine the country because of its traditional resistance to Israel, the BBC’s Jim Muir in neighbouring Lebanon says.

Syrian state television described the sanctions as “unprecedented measures aimed at the Syrian people”.

Meanwhile, violence continued on Sunday with Syrian activists saying at least eight people were killed across the country.

The flashpoint region of Homs saw at least six people killed in three separate incidents, the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

On Saturday, Syria buried 22 members of the armed forces, including six elite pilots ambushed on a highway near Homs, following a recent upsurge of armed attacks on security forces.

‘Humanitarian corridor’

More than 3,500 people have died since protests against the Syrian government began in March, the UN estimates.

The League threatened Syria with sanctions earlier this month after President Bashar al-Assad repeatedly failed to implement steps to end the violence, including allowing international observers to enter Syria.

The draft document - drawn up by the Arab League’s Social and Economic Committee on Saturday and seen by correspondents - requires the support of two thirds of foreign ministers.

It also includes the freezing of all Syrian assets in Arab countries.

Our correspondent says the sanctions package had already been discussed by the foreign ministers, so approval is pretty much a foregone conclusion.

Damascus depends on its Arab neighbours for half of its exports and a quarter of its imports, so the sanctions - supplemented by Syria’s northern neighbour Turkey - will step up the pressure and increase Syria’s sense of isolation.

But the sanctions won’t be instantly crippling, and there will be loopholes, our correspondent adds.

Iraq, to the east, has said it is impossible for it to impose a blockade, and Lebanon, to the west, is against the measures and is also unlikely to impose them strictly.

On Saturday, Mr Muallem hit out at the group after it asked the UN to contribute to the proposed observer mission, calling it an invitation “for foreign intervention instead of a call to avoid one”.