28/10/12

Hizbollah has been one of the staunchest supporters of the regime of President Bashar al-Assad, but now there are bitter arguments within its ranks about whether it is time to change course.

The giant banner with a portrait of Bashar al-Assad, strung across a busy street in South Beirut, proclaimed loyalty to the Syrian president — and cursed his enemies.

“Those who hate the Lion of Syria are sons of bitches,” it read, in Arabic slang with a play on the meaning of the Assad name.

Elsewhere in the Arab world he may be hated as a bloody tyrant, but in Hizbollah’s South Beirut stronghold Mr Assad is still a hero.

A couple of streets away, the British hostage Terry Waite was held captive for four years until his release in 1991, and nearby is the site of the notorious massacre of Sabra and Shatila where perhaps as many as 3500 people were murdered by pro-Israeli militias in 1982.

Hizbollah’s reclusive leader Hassan Nasrallah, the undisputed head of Lebanon’s Shia Muslims, lives nearby in a heavily guarded apartment complex. Hizbollah’s own police force, in khaki fatigues, patrol the streets, which are noticeably more crowded and scruffier than in the centre of Beirut with its nightclubs and fashionable shops.

Hizbollah - “the party of God” - needed help from neighbouring Syria to become the most powerful force in Lebanese politics, and it could always depend on the ruling family in Damascus during its wars with Israel.

Now in Mr Assad’s time of need Lebanon’s Shias have mostly been loyal in return - providing logistical and moral support and even sending fighters into Syria’s civil war to kill his enemies.

But in Lebanon there are as many Christians and Sunni Muslims as there are Shia. Now, as doubts grow that Mr Assad will survive and Syria’s civil war begins to spread into Lebanon, The Sunday Telegraph has been told of secret arguments raging inside Hizbollah’s ranks about whether the time has come to stop backing Mr Assad.

To many in South Beirut, where Hizbollah runs hospitals, schools, and rubbish collections, and pays pensions to the families of slain fighters, that would be unthinkable.

“Bashar is a major backer of our resistance, and so we are for him,” said Ahmad Suleiman, 43, a burly Hizbollah loyalist.

Mr Suleiman’s house was blasted into rubble in an air strike during the bloody 2006 war with Israel that Hizbollah claims to have won; in 1996 his brother was killed by an Israeli tank shell, making him “a martyr” he says proudly. He can remember “arrogant” Israeli soldiers patrolling his streets during the invasion of Lebanon, when he was a boy — streets that are still scarred with bullets from that time.

“The resistance”, as Hizbollah is called by its supporters, relied on Syrian and Iranian weapons and training to fight the Israelis. A bond was thus forged between Damascus, Tehran and South Beirut that until now has always looked unbreakable.

Many Hizbollah supporters insist it is Assad who is the victim, not the opposition, and that he is worthy of their support.

“In Syria there are terrorist attacks, torture, killing and beheading, all done by the enemies of the regime,” Mr Suleiman said. “This is not a revolution like the one in Egypt. Ninety per cent of the Syrians support Bashar. He is a good man and he will survive.

“If it looks as if he is in real danger, we will send thousands of our men into Syria. And if America or Nato is stupid enough to intervene, we will be there defending Arab lands.”

There were reports of fresh fighting in Syria on Saturday, with opposition activists claiming Syrian artillery bombarded cities, in breach of a truce meant to mark the Muslim Eid al-Adha holiday. Both the government and rebels agreed a truce. Mohammed Doumany, an activist from the Damascus suburb of Douma, said he had counted 15 explosions in an hour and said at least two civilians had been killed. There were also reports of heavy fighting along the Syria-Turkey border.

Hizbollah has a private army, regarded as a terrorist organisation by the United States, which is much stronger than Lebanon’s national army - yet it is also inside Lebanon’s government as part of an uneasy arrangement of rival political parties.

Since it was founded in the 1980s it has built a reputation as a formidably disciplined organisation, tolerating no public dissent. But a year ago the rival Palestinian militant organisation Hamas, which controls Gaza, abandoned its support for Mr Assad. Now, insiders say, Hizbollah is engaged in a fierce debate behind closed doors over whether to follow suit.

“There are different points of view, with some saying that we should push for a settlement within Syria and not bank on Assad staying,” said one Lebanese with connections to senior Hizbollah circles.

Some Hizbollah members, including clerics, fear that their support for Mr Assad is dragging them into a dangerous fight with Sunni Arabs - the other side of Islam’s main sectarian divide - in Syria and Lebanon, he said.

They say it is now urgent to end their support for Mr Assad, so that a new relationship can be formed with whoever comes to power in Syria next.

“There is an awareness inside Iran and Hizbollah that they are going to have confrontation with the Sunnis, or are going to have to bridge the gap between them,” the source said. “The hardest topic is Syria. The future of Hizbollah and the Shia is directly related to the future of Syria. If Bashar is to be sacrificed, let’s sacrifice him and not Syria.”

The most dramatic sign of dissent within Hizbollah is the cancellation of a forthcoming party convention that is usually held every three years - the first time anybody can remember it being dropped. The official explanation is that it would be a security risk.

But a Shia politician from an important political family said: “They are not able to hold their convention because they are afraid they cannot agree on Syria.”

Disagreement is said to be strongest between civilian Hizbollah members, who are more likely to favour cutting links with Damascus, and its powerful military wing, trained and indoctrinated by Iran and still fiercely loyal to the Syrian regime.

“I have heard that the division is deep between the Lebanese branch of Hizbollah and the military. Hassan Nasrallah decided to cancel the convention,” said the source. “He was worried he would not be able to come up with a final resolution.”

Mr Nasrallah pledged his loyalty to the Damascus regime in public several times at the beginning of the crisis, but has shown much less enthusiasm about doing so recently.

“Nasrallah is anxious,” said one observer of the South Beirut political scene. “At every crossroads he watches closely what is happening.”

Car bombings and clashes between militias, alarming signs that Syria’s violent struggle is spreading to Lebanon, have forced many of his followers to wonder where their involvement with Mr Assad is leading them.

Dozens of Lebanese have died in fighting between pro- and anti-Assad factions in Lebanon’s cities this year, and the car bomb assassination nine days ago of the country’s spy chief, who was one of Syria’s biggest enemies in Beirut, brought back frightening memories of Lebanon’s own 15-year-long civil war.

Beyond Lebanon, Hizbollah’s prestige, once sky-high, now looks tarnished. Instead of being praised among Arabs for standing up to Israel, it is seen by many as the lackey of a bloodstained dictator.

When Hamas abandoned its support for Syria, under pressure from Palestinians appalled by the regime’s slaughter, Ismail Haniya, its leader in Gaza, dramatically announced it during Friday prayers in Cairo. “I salute the Syrian people who seek freedom, democracy and reform,” he said. There were calls of “No Hizbollah and no Iran” from the crowd.

For sticking with the Damascus regime, Hizbollah has been criticised by Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and the Gulf States.

Its support for the Assad regime was “an obvious strategic mistake”, said Abdel-Halim Qandil, the co-founder of the new left-of-centre Egyptian political party Kefaya (Enough). “It would have been better to be neutral or to keep silent,” he said.

There is growing unease even among Hizbollah’s grass-roots supporters in its political heartlands of South Beirut, and speculation that it will lose out politically as well.

“My mother has always voted for Hizbollah, but she has seen the television pictures of dead children in Syria and she is horrified,” said one Hizbollah supporter. “Of course she is behind the resistance. But for the first time in her life I think she may not vote for them in the next election

17/10/12

In this Tuesday, Oct. 2, 2012 photo, Bassel Hojeiri, 37, principal of the local middle school, with his wife, Hanan, and their son Muhammed, speak at his house during an interview with The Associated Press, in Arsal, a Sunni Muslim town eastern Lebanon near the Syrian border. This Lebanese border town has become a safe haven for war-weary Syrian rebels, a way station for wounded fighters and home to hundreds of frightened Syrian refugee families. Residents of Arsal, a Sunni Muslim town of 40,000, have strong motives to help those trying to topple Syria’s brutal regime: they themselves were harassed and abused by it during three decades of de facto Syrian control of Lebanon. (AP Photo/Bilal Hussein)

KARIN LAUB

ARSAL, Lebanon (AP) - This Lebanese border town has become a safe haven for war-weary Syrian rebels, a way station for wounded fighters and home to hundreds of frightened Syrian refugee families.

Residents of Arsal, a Sunni Muslim town of 40,000, say they have strong motives to help those trying to topple Syria’s regime: they themselves were harassed and abused by it during three decades of de facto Syrian control of Lebanon.

But in siding with the rebels, many of them fellow Sunnis, Arsal is also deepening rifts with its Shiite Muslim neighbors in the Bekaa Valley that runs along Lebanon’s eastern border with Syria. Large areas of the scenic valley are controlled by Hezbollah, the powerful Shiite militia that is supporting and - according to the U.S. and the Syrian opposition - also fighting alongside Syrian President Bashar Assad’s forces.

For now, Lebanon’s rival political and religious groups have largely tried to keep a lid on domestic tensions stoked by the conflict next door, with collective memories here still scarred by Lebanon’s own 15-year civil war that ended in 1990. But any major escalation in Syria or miscalculation by the combatants’ Lebanese supporters could ignite Lebanon’s explosive sectarian mix.

Unlike some parts of Lebanon, the Bekaa has not been hit so far by sectarian violence linked to the bloodshed in Syria, although a drive along the valley’s bustling main thoroughfare and the string of towns that line it, shows where the region’s Shiite and Sunni loyalties lie.

In predominantly Shiite Baalbek, one of the Bekaa’s larger towns, a downtown billboard shows Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah next to Assad, who is decked out in a military uniform and aviator glasses. “They will not weaken our resolve,” reads a defiant caption.

The presence of Iran, the region’s Shiite power and a patron of both Hezbollah and Assad, is also visible: A poster of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, with the slogan, “We can,” hangs from roadside poles along a four-lane highway that signs boast was partially funded by Tehran.

A turn off the highway and down a winding uphill road, leads east toward the Syrian border and Arsal.

Homes here are bare-bones, made of raw gray cinderblock, without stone facades. A spray-painted Syrian rebel flag - with green, white and black horizontal stripes and three red stars on the white - decorates one of the walls in the center of town.

Bassel Hojeiri, principal of the local middle school, said people in Arsal back the rebels as fellow Sunnis fighting a regime controlled by Alawites, an offshoot of Shiite Islam, but also because of deep-seated hatred of Syria’s rulers.

As a border town, Arsal suffered under a particularly oppressive Syrian military presence when Damascus held sway in Lebanon from 1976 to 2005. Syrian troops at checkpoints near Arsal would sometimes beat area residents, arrest them without reason, demand cash or even seize cars, said Hojeiri, 37, a former mayor of Arsal.

“People hated them,” Hojeiri said of the Syrian occupiers. “Now hopefully their time is ending.”

The town has stood by the rebels from the start, and now is deeply involved in the conflict. Last month, Syrian warplanes in pursuit of rebels fired missiles that struck near Arsal. Lebanese media have also suggested weapons smuggled from Lebanon to the rebels go through Arsal; residents acknowledge there’s a rich tradition of smuggling in Arsal, but say they don’t know anything about arms smuggling.

Volunteers from Islamic charities have sneaked scores of wounded rebels into Lebanon, driving them from there to hospitals in Tripoli, a Sunni stronghold in northern Lebanon, and bypassing clinics in Hezbollah-run areas in the valley, said Mohammed Hojeiri, a local activist.

Arsal has also taken in hundreds of Syrian refugee families, most from villages in Homs province, about 25 kilometers (15 miles) to the northeast. Some of the refugees rent apartments, while others live with Arsal families or in a small camp on the outskirts of town, where tents are being replaced by cinderblock shacks to prepare for the harsh mountain winter.

Rebel fighters have also used Arsal as a temporary haven to rest from the fighting across the border.

Peach farmer-turned-fighter Mohammed Yousef left his village of Zara in Homs province late last month after airstrikes destroyed his home and many others in the village. He reached Arsal after a seven-hour cross-border trek across mountainous terrain, he said, adding that several dozen of his fellow rebels do the same from time to time.

“Arsal is the … mother of the revolution,” the 25-year-old said affectionately of his Lebanese hosts who have sheltered his extended family of 10 in an empty building.

Yousef dismissed Syrian troops as largely ineffective, saying most can be bribed, but swore to exact revenge from Hezbollah, which he blamed for the destruction in his village. “We want to slaughter Hassan Nasrallah, the dog,” Yousef said of the Hezbollah leader. “He shelled us, he destroyed our houses, and killed our children.”

Hezbollah denies that it is fighting alongside regime forces, and a spokesman declined further comment Monday.

Lebanese security officials have said a number of Hezbollah activists recently buried in the Bekaa Valley had been killed in fighting in Syria, while Susan Rice, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, told the U.N. Security Council on Monday that “Nasrallah’s fighters are now part of Assad’s killing machine.”

Hojeiri, the school principal, said tensions between Shiites and Sunnis in the valley have been rising since the start of the Syrian revolt. Each side is aware of the other’s loyalties, and people are careful not to talk about politics when someone from the other sect is present, he said.

“People here don’t want another (sectarian) war,” he said.

In the past, ties between the communities were civil and even warm, he said, noting that some 200 men in Arsal are married to Shiite women from nearby villages.

For years, religious differences seemed unimportant, he said. Even during Lebanon’s civil war, with its frequently shifting alliances, Shiites and Sunnis were partners more often than they were foes.

Timor Goksel, a former official in the U.N. peacekeeping force in south Lebanon, said he believes the two sides have too much to lose by bringing the Syrian conflict home.

“Sunnis are very much involved in stone quarrying and the Shiite families are mostly involved in the hashish business,” he said. “Both sides respect each other’s turfs and have their own livelihoods, hashish and stone.”

Perhaps that’s why the valley has not seen sectarian clashes - unlike the majority-Sunni Tripoli, where sporadic fighting between pro- and anti-Syrian groups has killed more than two dozen people since May.

However, Sarkis Naoum, a columnist for Lebanon’s An Nahar daily said the sectarian tensions bubbling under the surface could erupt at any time.

“If anything major happens, what is happening in Syria could expand into Lebanon,” he said.

13/09/12

By Arshad Mohammed

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Treasury sanctioned the leader of the Lebanese militant group and political movement Hezbollah on Thursday for helping Syria crush anti-government protests, as well as two other members for the group’s “terrorist activities” in general.

Sanctions experts described the move against Hezbollah Secretary-General Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah as largely symbolic because the penalties - freezing any assets he holds in U.S. banks - had been imposed under earlier U.S. sanctions.

The Treasury said it had “designated” Nasrallah under U.S. Executive Order 13582, signed by President Barack Obama in August 2011 in part to crack down on those helping Syria repress the uprising against President Bashar al-Assad’s rule.

More than 27,000 people are believed to have died in the 17-month-old conflict.

The Treasury also said it sanctioned two other Hezbollah members: Mustafa Amine Badreddine, who has been accused by a U.N. tribunal in the 2005 killing of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri, and a man it identified as Talal Hamiya, the head of Hezbollah’s external security organization.

Those two were targeted under Executive Order 13224 “for providing support to Hezbollah’s terrorist activities in the Middle East and around the world,” the Treasury Department said in a written statement.

That executive order also freezes the targets’ assets that fall under U.S. jurisdiction.

“By aiding Assad’s violent campaign against the Syrian people and working to support a regime that will inevitably fall, Hezbollah’s ongoing activity undermines regional stability and poses a direct threat to Lebanon’s security,” Undersecretary of the Treasury David Cohen said in the statement.

“Hezbollah’s actions … clearly reveal its true nature as a terrorist and criminal organization,” he added.

Saying Hezbollah had long been supported by the Assad government, the Treasury Department said the militant group “is now returning the favor by providing training, advice and extensive logistical support …. as the Assad regime continues to wreak havoc on the Syrian people through the use of terror and violence - Hezbollah’s area of expertise.”

Asked about the effect of the Treasury’s action against Nasrallah, sanctions lawyer Douglas Jacobson said: “In reality, it’s symbolic. It’s simply piling on to include an additional designation for his alleged role with respect to Syria.”

While acknowledging the latest sanctions impose penalties similar to those already on Nasrallah since 1995 and 2001, a Treasury official said the government took the step “to bring to the attention of the international community his egregious involvement, and that of Hizbollah, in the Syrian conflict.”

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the two other men designated on Thursday had not been previously targeted under U.S. executive orders or laws.

23/08/12

#Syria, English translation below!

We are the battalion of the martyr Khodr al masri in BEB EL TEBENE (tripoli -lebanon) we will not  put our arms down until hizbullah put its arms down, we
are holding our arms till death.. we will not stop firing until they do…and hazzan nasrallah saying he wants  negotiations holding arms.  He is a big liar and may  God curse him and curse Assad Ass  **

#Syria - COMING SOON.  (via TheNewSyria)

May 22, 2012 09:50 PMThe Daily Star

Hanin Ghaddar 19/03/12

A map of Syria with the words “Every land is Karbala” written over it. Hezbollah’s support of the Syrian regime is politically disastrous for the party. (Courtesy of Hayya Bina)

BAALBECK, Lebanon (USA TODAY) — The dark shadows of Mount Lebanon run along the asphalt road as the car heads to the ancient city of Baalbeck, where the exquisitely carved ruins of Roman temples still stand.

The car slows in a traffic jam at one of the main intersections, not far from Roman columns that were once the entrance to the temple of Jupiter. Men from the drug squad, armed with machine guns and faces hidden by masks, search every car for caches of the marijuana, hashish and opium that has been grown in this fertile valley for centuries.

Baalbeck is a city known for lawlessness. It is also known as a stronghold of Hezbollah, the Lebanese Shiite Muslim militant organization supported by Syria and Iran that has carried out terror attacks against U.S. targets and wars with Israel.

Portrayed by its leaders as the protector of ordinary Muslims, that image is contradicted by its standing by mutely as its patron Syria kills fellow Muslims to preserve a dictatorship, say critics.

“Hezbollah has taken sides in the conflict,” says Sheikh Sobhi Toufayli, who headed Hezbollah in the 1990s.

When the Arab pro-democracy protests erupted last February in Egypt, Hezbollah applauded them. Hezbollah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah said his organization Hezbollah was in “solidarity with the Egyptian and Tunisian people and youth.”

“This revolution is the product of the people’s will and determination,” he said. “We are witnessing a complete revolution of the poor, the free, the students.”

Nasrallah also praised the Arab Spring democracy movements in Bahrain, Yemen and Libya. But he has no apparent enthusiasm for the uprising in Syria, where tens of thousands of Muslims are demanding democratic reforms and the ouster of dictator Bashar al-Assad. Nasrallah has even overseen measures to help Assad crush the demonstrators.

“Hezbollah is in a difficult situation,” says Talal Atrissi, professor of sociology at Lebanese University. “The party supported other Arab revolutions because they shared their resistance ideology that inadvertently put an end to regimes known for their pro-American and Israeli sympathies. In Syria, however, the situation is different.”

Syria for years has allowed weapons from Iran bound for Hezbollah in south Lebanon, on the border with Israel, to transit through its country. Thousands of missiles have made it to Hezbollah this way.

Hezbollah had taken advantage of the upheaval in Syria to obtain advanced weapons systems, such as long-range rockets and Russian-made air-defense systems, according to reports in The Jerusalem Post, quoting Western intelligence assessments.

Hezbollah’s support for the Assad regime has not gone unnoticed by Syrian protesters. Recent images from demonstrations in the country show people burning the yellow Hezbollah flag. The Syrian Revolution Coordination Committee has accused Hezbollah of firing Katyusha rockets from Lebanon into the al-Zabadani region of Syria where anti-Assad protests are taking place.

Hezbollah calls the accusations “false rumors,” and Brahim Moussawi, editor of Hezbollah’s magazine al-Intikad, declined to comment. But Shiites here appear to be divided over the matter.

Sitting in his vegetable store close to the opulent Beirut Central District, Mohamad Zaheridine reads a copy of the Koran while watching al-Manar TV, the Hezbollah run station.

“People in Syria and Tunisia are just the same, fighting against tyrants. Syria’s anti-Israeli policies do not make its crackdown on protesters legitimate,” he says.

Electrician Abu Mazen agrees.

“The [Assad] regime does not have the right to quell the protest movement in blood,” he says.

However, Ismail Zeaiter, a member of a powerful Bekaa clan, says his people “will sacrifice our blood and our souls for Bashar.”

“Unrest in Syria is the result of a plot waged against the country and its ally Hezbollah [to put an end] to their fight against Israel,” he says, his forearms covered in intricate tattoos.

If the Syrian regime falls, it will be replaced by a Zionist ally, “and it will be the end for us all,” Zeaiter says.

Layal Zein, a saleswoman in a clothing store nearby, sees the uprisings as the work of the United States and Israel, a claim made often on al-Manar TV.

“Americans and Israelis want to repeat the Iraqi experience to sow regional discord,” she says.

Others in the Shiite community are simply pessimistic about the outcome of the Syrian uprising.

“We have no faith that the protests [in Syria] will produce any real change. One dictator will take the place of the other,” says Ahmad Dakroub, a Hezbollah supporter in Watwat, a Beirut neighborhood.

Dakroub doubts that the downfall of Assad in Syria will make a difference because of what happened in Lebanon when Hezbollah took charge of the government in June.

“Now that we [Hezbollah] are in power, nothing has changed. We still work day and night for a mere pittance. No matter who is in power, politics stays the same,” he says.

Sheikh Toufayli, however, warns that Hezbollah must avoid stirring up divisions between the Sunni Muslims leading the uprising in Syria, who are the majority, and the Shiite Muslim sect known as Alewite that dominates the government. Violence between Sunnis and Shiites has been tearing apart many Arab nations — Iraq and Bahrain among them.

Lebanon itself went through a brutal civil war from the 1970s to the 1990s in which hundreds of thousands of Lebanese were killed or driven into exile. Toufayli says Hezbollah is drawing Lebanon into a conflict that could prompt a return of civil war here.

“I call on Hezbollah to reconsider its approach and unite Sunnis and Shiites. The solution resides in building a true democracy in Syria. Any other approach will only serve enemy interests,” he says.

Nothing new came of the Arab League Ministerial Committee’s meeting in Doha to discuss the Syrian issue except that a new Arab deadline was granted to Bashar al-Assad’s regime for it to sign the Arab protocol for sending observers to Syria. A new deadline, despite the fact that the killing machine has not stopped for even one day since the Arabs first mobilized!

Despite all the historic decisions taken by the Arabs against the al-Assad regime, which cannot be underestimated, the problem lies in the fact that the killing machine has not stopped, and continues to intimidate the Syrians, which in turn necessitates the following question: Do the Arabs still expect the al-Assad regime to carry out any of its pledges, or even respect the Arab initiative and sign the observers protocol? The Arabs do not need to send observers to Syria in order to verify that the al-Assad regime’s killing machine and armed fronts have not stopped suppressing the Syrians; the Arabs can watch satellite television broadcasts on Syria, or observe what is posted on “YouTube” from within the country [to confirm this]. The Arabs also do not need to ascertain the precise magnitude of the al-Assad regime’s crimes, particularly as the United Nations [UN] has said that what the regime is doing against the Syrians has reached the level of crimes against humanity. It is interesting that we Arabs were among those to vote in favor of the UN resolution on human rights, so what is preventing the Arabs from transferring the Syrian file to the UN Security Council, and engaging in a long overdue battle with Russia and others, instead of wasting time with pointless meetings? Particularly as the Arabs are aware that even if the al-Assad regime does sign the protocol to send Arab observers to Syria, it will fail to abide by this and drag its feet, and this is a certainty.

The problem is that the Arabs do not seem to care that the killing machine has not stopped. Every day more innocent Syrians die, while the Arabs are preoccupied with the explanations being put forward by the al-Assad regime, and this is sad and depressing. True, some will say that politics does not deal in the language of emotions, but stopping the bloodshed is in fact a religious, moral and finally political duty, otherwise we are simply consenting to the law of the jungle. The reality on the ground in Syria shows that the al-Assad regime is now solely speaking in the language of murder and torture, whilst the sheer volume of demonstrations against Bashar al-Assad confirms that we are past the point of no return. On Friday alone, there were nearly 240 incidents of protest against al-Assad, including the burning of pictures of [Hezbollah chief] Hassan Nasrallah in the heart of the capital, Damascus. This is in addition to the growing divisions within the Syrian army. Indeed, the Syrian demonstrators have outstripped the Arab League’s deliberations on Syria, with Syrian demonstrations last Friday calling for the imposition of a buffer zone.

All of this represents a clear message to the Arabs that their waiting [for the Syrian regime to respond] is unjustified, as is the new deadline granted to the al-Assad regime. The Arabs must take the battle to the UN Security Council in order to protect the Syrian people from the killing machine that has not stopped for one moment over a period of approximately 8 months of the Syrian revolution.

SNN | #Syria | Idlib | Jabal Al-Zawiya: A humanitarian Appeal from the People | Syria

The Syrian Revolution _ Jabal Al Zawiyah Jabal Al Zawiyah is a mountain range that includes around 40 villages between the valleys and mountains. In the name of Allah, the most merciful, the most gracious: We the people of Jabal Al Zawiyah, Idlib province, appeal to every person with a conscience. It is hard for us to bare the pain and suffering that we are going through since 7 months ago, through the army forces, gangs of thugs, and militias and mercenaries of Nasrallah and Iran and more recently the Iraqi brigade of Bader and Al Sadder Troops. Now we are in winter and with the geographical nature of Jabal Al Zawiyah the seriousness of the injustice, oppression, and the invasion of our houses and properties has became harsher. Even cows and sheep were a victim to this tyrant. Along with these situations, cold is an added factor to our suffering. Now desiel fuel is out of reach completely although each military tank contains 3000 liters of diesel oil, which is the equivalent of the consumption of diesel oil from 6 families in the whole winter season. And if we look around the massacres in the country we can surely estimate how much the fuel oil is being monopolized for the sake of killing. We can’t also disregard the fact that food supply is almost cut-off and also monopolized by the regime’s thugs and supporting merchants. We have been suffering for months and in the most powerful and extreme conditions from violation, arrests, killing, and the disruption of communications and electicity in all forms. The people who are left in the villages either packed their things and left or wandered between the mountains. People who haven’t been killed and murdered yet are detained by the intellegence system, and when the prison buildings get overloaded, the detainees are taken to the branches of security forces in Aleppo and Damascus, specifically to the branch 271 that is being run by the criminal Ali Mamlouk, where the branch in Kafarnabel and surrounding towns were filled in extreme situations of torture and the inhuman conduct. The hospitals are not equipped - instead they are being used as military barracks. There is no treatment for the citizens and no one dares to go because maybe they wont come back. As it is, dozens of crimes took place in hospitals where wounded people were arrested and their bodies weren’t handed to their parents unless they sign on a paper that their children died because of terrorist attacks. And this situation is known to people around the world and if a wounded person miraculously is taken into a hospita,l then he’s kicked out immediately ignoring their excruciating pain and suffering. While we live under these circumstances, we call on all parties concerned with human rights to consider the region of Jabal Al Zawiyah as a disaster area including the villages that are spread around the harsh terrain. Under the flight of air forces and under heavy gunshots, even if it’s somehow calm during the day,the firing starts at sunset until early morning with all kinds of weapons. We mean the heavy weapons that this regime uses, even animals, and birds aren’t excluded from the shooting. The Syrian army troops, thugs, and mercenaries from Iran and Nasrallah, are destroying our villages and our property in an immoral and inhuman way. If some of the honorable soldiers defected because of the horrible crimes the regime is demanding them to commit, then they will be chased by air forces and by all means even by firing missiles randomly on every moving object they see in front of them - without differentiating between women, young men, elderly, and children. For how long are people going to cry out for help to every conscience and relief committee? For how long we are going to bleed and everyone in the world is watching? For how long we are going to sleep with open wounds? We are speaking to the whole world and we know that the Arab conscience isn’t going to respond, not even their feelings will respond to our pain. We are speaking to everyone, every race, every religion. We are speaking to humanity with its human conscience. If the human conscience is dead, then the whole world is going to die with every person in it. We speak to the human being who is HUMAN and doesn’t belong to this race or that religion. We SCREAM in the face of tyrants and we will continue to. This is our choice, the choice of freedom, free people, free will and dignity. God willing we are going to stay the course, whatever the situations are, this is the road chosen by the great Syian people and will never lose our direction, no matter how harsh the situation. We are a people who said rightfully what they want. Oh free world, we are talking to you, listen to our human cry. Stand with the righteous. We the people of Jabal AL Zawiyah in Idlib province, and Idlib Countryside, announce that our country is afflicted and in distress. We have one question; can your conscience tolerate the killing? 22nd November 2011