GENEVA, Nov. 13 — The United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) on Tuesday said the delivery of basic supplies to displaced families in Syria has become extremely difficult because of insecurity on the ground.

Humanitarian operations were disrupted on at least two days in Damascus last week, said UNHCR spokesperson Melissa Fleming.

The emergency packages contain non-food humanitarian supplies ranging from blankets and clothing to cooking kits and jerry cans.

Similar difficulties were also experienced by staff working in Aleppo, and the agency is temporarily withdrawing staff from north-eastern Hassakeh governorate, she said.

Insecurity over the past few weeks has resulted in loss of aid supplies, including some 13,000 blankets that burned in a Syrian Arab Red Crescent warehouse in Aleppo that was apparently hit by a shell.

In spite of this, UNHCR continues its efforts and successfully delivered nearly 5,000 mattresses and 500 hygiene kits to Aleppo, Hassakeh and Adra.

The agency’s statistics showed that the total number of internally-displaced Syrians stands at 2.5 million and those registered in surrounding countries exceeds 400,000.

17/08/2012

Shi’ite masked gunmen from the Meqdad clan, gather at the Meqdad family’s association headquarters in the southern suburbs in Beirut, August 15, 2012. (REUTERS/Khalil Hassan)

BEIRUT: Despite repeated Arab and international warnings over a fallout of the 17-month uprising in Syria spreading to Lebanon, the Syrian turmoil has spilled over into the politically divided country, threatening to plunge it into total chaos, analysts and political sources said Thursday.

“The spillover of the Syrian uprising has reached Lebanon,” Hilal Khashan, professor of political sciences at the American University of Beirut, told The Daily Star. “Lebanon is poised for heightened insecurity that falls short of a civil war, mainly as a result of the spillover of the Syrian unrest, into the country.”

Wednesday’s mass kidnappings of over two dozen Syrians, a Turkish national and a Saudi citizen by a local Lebanese clan in retaliation for the abduction of one of its kinsmen by Syrian rebels as well as the blocking of Beirut airport road and the Beirut-Damascus highway at the Masnaa border crossing with burning tires by rival protesters have revived memories of the chaos and anarchy that reigned during the 1975-90 Civil War when rival militias held sway at the expense of state authority.

During the Civil War years, lawlessness and insecurity prevailed, especially in the capital Beirut, where foreign citizens of various nationalities were kidnapped by militant groups.

In response to security threats, five Gulf states, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Kuwait and Bahrain, have urged their citizens to leave Lebanon immediately after the Meqdad Shiite clan kidnapped more than 20 Syrians in Beirut and initially threatened to seize more Arab nationals in retaliation for the abduction of Hassan Meqdad by Syrian rebels.

The mass kidnappings of Syrians, directly linked to the turmoil in Syria, cast further doubts over Lebanon’s ability to weather the storm in its eastern neighbor Syria.

“What happened today is a clear indication that we are [on] the brink of major chaos in Lebanon,” a senior political source told The Daily Star Thursday.

“The storm in Syria has reached Lebanon now and there is no going back,” the source said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

However, Khashan said he did not believe that Lebanon was drifting into total chaos following the wave of kidnappings and the appearance of masked gunmen on TV.

“The kidnappings were a tension relief exercise. Hezbollah controlled the Shiites. There is no logical reason for them [Hezbollah] to allow the situation to go out of the control,” Khashan said. “Level headedness will prevail.”

“What happened yesterday was an expression of anger and frustration. The sight on TV of the Free Syrian Army displaying Hassan Meqdad, whom the FSA accused of being a Hezbollah member, with bruises on his face, angered many Hezbollah supporters. The kidnappings were [designed] to vent their spleen,” he added.

However, Future MP Ahmad Fatfat had a different opinion. “What happened was a total collapse of the state and a flagrant inability of the Army and security forces to do their job in repulsing any attack, even an internal attack, on Lebanese sovereignty,” Fatfat told the Voice of Lebanon radio station.

“The attack and kidnappings that took place in Beirut and a number of areas meant that the state was absent. This takes us to a civil war,” he added.

Khashan said that there was no regional or international decision to rekindle civil war in Lebanon. “Iran and Arab Gulf states do not want a civil war in Lebanon,” he said.

A similar view was echoed by political analyst Talal Atrissi.

“I don’t think Lebanon is facing the threat of a civil war following the wave of kidnappings,” Atrissi, an expert on Iran and Middle East affairs, told The Daily Star. “There is no internal, regional or international decision for the security situation to spin out of control. Priority is now for Syria. Therefore, no civil war in Lebanon,” he said. “Regional and international powers are still supporting Lebanon’s stability and security.”

Atrissi said the root cause of the current tension in Lebanon was the kidnapping by Syrian rebels of 11 Lebanese pilgrims in May and Meqdad last week.

“Before the spate of kidnappings, tension with Syria was confined to border incidents,” he said.

Politicians and analysts have long held the view that Lebanon’s security and stability are intertwined with Syria’s security and stability.

Violence in Syria has often spilled over into Lebanon, jolting the country’s already fragile security situation, with cross-border shootings, shelling by the Syrian army, tit-for-tat kidnappings and sectarian clashes. Several Lebanese have been killed and wounded by Syrian gunfire in a series of deadly incidents on the Lebanese-Syrian border in recent months.

But the latest spate of kidnappings has fueled fears that the unrest in Syria could further destabilize Lebanon, which has struggled for decades with wars, sectarian strife and a weak political system.

The split between the Hezbollah-led March 8 alliance and the opposition March 14 coalition over the Syrian crisis has raised fears of the turmoil in Syria spilling over to Lebanon.

The U.S. has also expressed consternation. “Our concern in Lebanon, first and foremost, has been the spillover from the Syrian conflict and the fact that the sectarian tensions in Syria are potentially being replicated in Lebanon,” State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland told reporters in Washington.

The government of Prime Minister Najib Mikati has adopted a policy to dissociate Lebanon from the repercussions of the unrest in Syria.

Mikati condemned the kidnappings, but his government seemed largely powerless to act. “This brings us back to the days of the painful war, a page that Lebanese citizens have been trying to turn,” he said of the 1975-90 Civil War when Western hostages were seized by armed groups.

Implicitly admitting his government’s inability to act, Mikati called for the formation of an extraordinary government to cope with what he termed the “difficult and extraordinary” situation through which the country was passing.

“This is a battle for Lebanon’s survival. We have to protect Lebanon with all the strength we have.” Mikati told reporters before a Cabinet session at Beiteddine Palace. “We are living in the storm. Therefore, we have to close ranks to face problems and crises.”

Atrissi blamed the Mikati government for weakening state authority and preventing the Army from imposing law and order. “Political and sectarian interests inside the government are preventing the Army from imposing security and state authority,” he said.

Khashan, the AUB professor, said Lebanon is “a soft state.”

“Security has long been based on consensus. The state cannot impose security on the people. Security is achieved through negotiations and compromise,” he said. “The Lebanese state is not authoritative. Rather, it is a soft state.”

Khashan said that instability in Lebanon served the cause of both the Syrian regime and the rebel Free Syrian Army for different reasons and motives.

“The Syrian regime wants to destabilize Lebanon in order to export its problems to the region. Lebanon is the weakest link in the region,” Khashan said. “Likewise, the Free Syrian Army believes that instability in Lebanon will invite Western intervention in both Syria and Lebanon,” he added.

The Meqdad clan, which hails from east Lebanon’s Bekaa region, said Wednesday it kidnapped over 30 men it said were members or supporters of the FSA in retaliation for the abduction of one of its kinsmen.

Maher Meqdad, who said his family fields an armed wing, told The Daily Star Wednesday that his clan had taken matters into its own hands as the Lebanese government had taken no steps to free Hassan Meqdad.

“We will do it ourselves, and we have what you can call a regulated army to do the job,” he said. He added that his family was acting according to the “eye for an eye” principle, and no longer needs the government’s intervention.

TAFTANAZ, Syria (AP) — The main street of this once-bustling Syrian farm town now stands eerily quiet, its shops charred black from arson, its shoppers replaced by cats roaming the rubble of homes destroyed by tank fire.

At dawn on April 3, Syrian forces shelled the town in the first volley of what residents say was a massive assault after a string of large protests calling for the end of the regime of President Bashar Assad. Soldiers then stormed in, torching homes and businesses and gunning down residents in the streets. By the time they left on the third day, at least 62 people were dead.

Two months later, the destruction remains, but most residents are gone. Locals estimate that about two-thirds of the town’s 15,000 people have left. Most don’t expect them to return.

“There is nothing for people to come back to, and they worry that if they rebuild, the army will destroy it again,” said resident Bassam Ghazzal, who lost more than 20 members of his extended family in the attack. “People don’t want to become refugees twice.”

The destruction in Taftanaz, seen by an Associated Press reporter, provides an on-the-ground example of the huge price paid by Syrian communities that have chosen to defy one of the Middle East’s most brutal autocracies.

Since the start of the anti-Assad uprising in March 2011, the regime has responded to unrest with brute force, dispatching snipers, troops and tanks to quash dissent. Activists say more than 14,000 people have been killed since, many of them civilians.

In general, the violence has not stopped the uprising, emboldening protesters, galvanizing international condemnation and leading many in the opposition to take up arms.

Taftanaz tells a different story. It is a place where overwhelming force appears to have not only crushed a burgeoning protest movement but struck a blow against a community that may never recover.

In many ways, Taftanaz, a jumble of simple concrete homes surrounded by golden wheat fields some 15 kilometers (9 miles) from the northern city of Idlib, tells the story of Syria’s uprising, writ small.

Residents had long complained of state neglect and corruption that left many living in poverty, Ghazzal said. So when protesters inspired by the successful uprisings against autocrats in Tunisia and Egypt took to the streets in Syria, they followed along, first demonstrating for change in April 2011.

Local security officers quickly ended the protest, but the town organized more, sparking further crackdowns and arrest campaigns by regime authorities, Ghazzal said.

The Syrian army raided the village three times in the next four months, Ghazzal said. During a June raid, Ghazzal’s cousin was shot dead at a regime checkpoint while trying to flee, making him the first of the town’s “martyrs.”

Others followed. Some in the town took up arms, and an October clash between the army and local rebels killed five residents. Other residents buried them and held another protest the same day, Ghazzal said.

hen all was quiet until April 3, when tanks shelled the town from four sides before armored cars brought in dozens of soldiers who dragged civilians from their homes and gunned them down in the streets, witnesses said. The soldiers also looted, destroyed and torched hundreds of homes, bringing some down on their owners’ heads.

Videos shot at the time show tanks posted near the town’s entrance and huge columns of smoke rising throughout the area. Photos of the dead show bodies torn apart by shrapnel, charred by fire, crushed under rubble or with bullet holes in their chests, foreheads and temples.

Local activist Abdullah Ghazzal, a university student in English, says 62 people were killed during the attack, four of them burned beyond recognition. Two others have never been found.

Residents are unsure what sparked the assault. The town had only a small rebel presence, though fighters from the area had killed soldiers at nearby checkpoints or destroyed regime tanks, said local fighter Sahir Schaib. Rebels also blew up nine regime tanks as they left the town, mostly with homemade bombs planted along the roads.

He suspects the regime sought to stop the town from emerging as a protest center, especially since it is near a military base.

“There were lots of villages around that had just started protesting and they wanted to say, ‘This is what we can do to you,’” Schaib said. “They committed the massacre to teach the whole region a lesson.”

The Syrian government rarely comments on its military actions and blames the uprising on armed terrorists acting out a foreign conspiracy. It bars most reporters from working in the country, and the AP was able to visit Taftanaz only after entering from a neighboring country.

The price of Taftanaz’s defiance is obvious around town. Homes have been reduced to rubble. Most shops along the town’s main street are shuttered, their thick metal doors scarred by shrapnel and gunfire. Black soot lines the windows of others. Yet others lie collapsed in piles of bricks and mortar.

“They took what they took and burned what they burned,” said Abu Eissa Ghazzal, 75, another member of the extended Ghazzal family. Standing near his torched grocery store on the ground floor of a three-story building, he despaired for the future.

“They didn’t leave me a single nail,” he said.

His younger brother had built the building after working for two decades in Saudi Arabia and lived with his family in the top two floors, Ghazzal said. Now all had been torched, and his brother and family had fled to a refugee camp in Turkey.

His older brother lived across the alley and refused to leave his home when the army came. When the attack was over, rescue teams found the 81-year-old man’s body still in his home, burned to a crisp.

“Now there is nobody left,” he said. “Who is going to rebuild all of this, now that all of those with children have left?”

The army has not returned since the April raid. Local activists still organize protests, though many fewer people attend, and rumors of impending military incursions often terrify residents.

Most of the dead rest in a long mass grave on the village’s east side, their names scrawled in marker on cinder block headstones. Preceding most names is the honorific “hero martyr.” One inscription for the unidentified bodies reads simply “four people.”

“Most of them were my friends,” said Abdullah Ghazzal, the English student, walking among the graves. He pointed out the grave of his 44-year-old brother, shot dead that day.

“They also burned down his house,” he said.

Ben Hubbard spent two weeks inside Syria with a team of AP journalists. Taftanaz was among the hardest-hit areas the team visited, but many other cities and towns also have suffered heavy damage.

Last fall, “Kardokh,” a 25-year-old dissident and computer expert in the Syrian capital of Damascus, met with British journalist and filmmaker Sean McAllister. (Kardokh is his online pseudonym, used at his request.) McAllister, who’s made award-winning films in conflict zones like Yemen and Iraq, explained that he was shooting a documentary for Britain’s Channel 4 about underground activists in Syria, and asked if Kardokh would help him.

At the time, the situation in Syria was deteriorating rapidly, as protests against President Bashar al-Assad’s repressive regime turned violent following a vicious crackdown by security forces. The Syrian government had drastically curtailed visits by foreign journalists, but McAllister had managed to get in undercover. Kardokh was grateful for a chance to tell his story. “Any journalist who was making the effort to show the world what was happening, that was a very important thing for us,” he told me in February.

At the time, Kardokh was providing computer expertise and secure communications to the resistance. He agreed to be interviewed about his work on camera by McAllister, who filmed his face, telling Kardokh that he would blur it out before publishing the footage. McAllister also asked Kardokh to put him in touch with other activists.

But some of McAllister’s practices made him uneasy, Kardokh said. He worried that the filmmaker didn’t realize how aggressive and pervasive the regime’s surveillance was. Kardokh and his fellow activists took elaborate measures with their digital security, encrypting their communications and using special software to hide their identities online. “I started to feel that Sean was careless,” Kardokh told me. He said he had urged McAllister to take more precautions in his communications and to encrypt his footage. “He was using his mobile and SMS, without any protections.”

Then, in October, McAllister was arrested by Syrian security agents. He wasn’t harmed, but was held for five days and said that he could hear the cries of prisoners being tortured in nearby rooms. Eventually, he was released and returned to the UK. “I didn’t realize exactly what they were risking until I went into that experience,” McAllister said in an interview on Channel 4 after his release.

The Syrians had interrogated McAllister about his activities, and seized his laptop, mobile phone, camera, and footage. All of McAllister’s research was now at the disposal of Syrian intelligence. When Kardokh heard that McAllister had been arrested, he didn’t hesitate—he turned off his mobile phone, packed his bag, and fled Damascus, staying with relatives in a nearby town before escaping to Lebanon. He said that other activists who had been in touch with McAllister fled the country as well, and several of those who didn’t were arrested. “I was happy that I hadn’t put him in contact with more people,” Kardokh said.

Rami Jarah, a Syrian activist based in Cairo, said that he tried to help another activist, known as Omar al-Baroudi, get out of the country after McAllister’s arrest. “He was terrified,” Jarrah said. “His face was in those videos. He said that his number was on Sean’s phone.” The next day, Baroudi disappeared, and Jarah said that he has not been heard from since.

Officials at Channel 4 say they took action to help McAllister’s sources after his arrest. “We have been in contact with everyone who felt at risk because they spoke to Sean,” said Amy Lawson, the channel’s head of communications. “He is an experienced filmmaker and took steps to protect his material. Syria is an extremely difficult environment to work in, so we continue to look for ways to minimize that risk whilst ensuring we tell this important story.”

It’s easy to argue that McAllister should have taken stronger precautions, but what, exactly? How many reporters are familiar enough with the technical aspects of digital security that they could protect their computers and phones from the Syrian intelligence service? The fact that McAllister, an experienced and committed journalist, jeopardized his sources with inadequate digital precautions is indicative of a broader problem in journalism today: We haven’t kept pace with technological advancements that have revolutionized both information-gathering and surveillance.

After researching the subject of digital security, I realized that there have been occasions in my own work as a freelancer covering the conflicts in Libya and Afghanistan when I’ve exposed myself and my sources by carrying unencrypted data or e-mailing sensitive information over insecure channels. It’s unclear what, if anything, major news organizations are doing about it. When CJR’s Alysia Santo recently tried asking outlets likeThe New York Times, she got a firm “no comment.” Curious, I e-mailed an informal survey to journalist friends and colleagues, and several who’ve worked as senior correspondents in Afghanistan for major US news outlets said they’d had little-to-no formal training or assistance from their organizations in digital security.

“I think that the journalism community in the US, and to some degree elsewhere, is just beginning to grasp the fact that they need to protect their information and, by extension, their sources,” said Frank Smyth, who is the senior adviser for journalist security at the Committee to Protect Journalists and also runs a private company, Global Journalist Security. “It’s just too easy to get in and lift their information or monitor their communications without them ever knowing they were compromised.”

For correspondents who report from conflict zones or on underground activism in repressive regimes, the risks are extremely high. Recently, two excellent investigative series—by The Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg News—and the release of a large trove of surveillance industry documents by Wikileaks dubbed “The Spy files,” provided a glimpse of just how sophisticated off-the-shelf monitoring technologies have become. Western companies have sold mass Web and e-mail surveillance technology to Libya and Syria, for instance, and in Egypt, activists found specialized software that allowed the government to listen in to Skype conversations. In Bahrain, meanwhile, technology sold by Nokia Siemens allowed the government to monitor cell-phone conversations and text messages.

Journalists are tempting targets for spies armed with these technologies. During a reporting trip to Libya after the revolution, I spoke with former members of Qaddafi’s regime who told me that there had been an extensive program of surveillance targeting journalists both online and at the Rixos Hotel, where foreign correspondents visiting Tripoli were required to stay.

One of the sources, Marwan Arebi, was in charge of information technology at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and had access to Libyan intelligence correspondence. He says hackers working for the regime had been able to access the accounts of foreign journalists using simple techniques, such as embedding a so-called Trojan-horse virus in a video ostensibly about human-rights violations in Tripoli, and then sending it to reporters. When the reporters opened the video file, spyware would be installed, allowing Qaddafi’s spies to access their computers remotely. Arebi said he was given access to the e-mail accounts of journalists working at CNN and other media organizations. “The problem wasn’t the sophistication of the tools, but rather the lack of knowledge of the reporters,” he said. “I think many sources who were speaking to these correspondents have been captured or killed.”

Arebi, no fan of Qaddafi, was secretly in contact with the Libyan opposition. In an attempt to warn the people named in the e-mails, he contacted Ahmed Ali, a Libyan activist in the US at the time, and passed him a list of the journalists who’d been hacked, as well as a spreadsheet which showed the names, phone numbers, and e-mail addresses of underground sources in Tripoli that he said he’d obtained from a CNN account. As proof, he provided the journalist’s username and password to Ali, and Ali was able to log into the journalist’s CNN account with Outlook. Ali then passed along the information to CNN. A CNN spokeswoman told me the network had been informed of “a possible breach,” and had taken steps to remedy it. She declined to go into further detail.

Ali later showed me the spreadsheet, which included detailed information about sources in Tripoli who were in contact with the regime. One entry, titled “Hasan,” included a phone number and read: “Eyewitness who did not want to be named even with first name. Has a land line to prove he is in Tripoli but does not want to talk on it.” The spreadsheet’s authors also seemed to recognize the sensitivity of the information: “Please keep these contacts internal for just the int’l desk—and our team in Cairo. Do not pass these around to shows, etc.” Chillingly, Ahmed Ali recognized his fiancee’s phone number, though her name was not mentioned—she was still in Tripoli at the time. “I told her she needed to ditch that SIM card,” he said.

Despite the fact that the technology is complex and always changing, there are some basic practices that reporters can learn about online—such as how to encrypt your hard drive—that will only take an evening or two to implement. These precautions should extend to your smartphone as well. Look for a model that offers hardware encryption, and lock it with a longer password that includes random numbers and letters. It’s not rocket science (though it would have helped the NASA engineers who, it was reported in March, lost an unencrypted laptop with codes for the International Space Station).

If you’re reporting from a country with sophisticated electronic surveillance capabilities, like China or Iran, or trying to shield sources from Western intelligence agencies, then the techniques involved are more complicated and might require expert assistance. News organizations need to have in-house resources for their reporters, and they should offer assistance to the freelancers with whom they work.

Smyth, who helps train journalists in security practices, believes that part of the problem is one of mindset, as veteran reporters and editors find it frustrating and unnecessary to change longstanding practices. “You’re asking someone who’s already established and proven themselves to learn a new language,” he said.

Too many journalists I spoke to still regard digital security as an esoteric province of the technically inclined, and expressed fatalism that if “they” want to get it from you, they’ll get it. But as our research methods and communications are increasingly digitized, we need to accept that digital security is a fundamental aspect of the trade, as basic as maintaining accurate notes or paying attention to libel law.

The stakes can be incredibly high. Kardokh is still hiding. He’s now working on the Cyber Arabs Project, sponsored by the Institute for War and Peace Reporting, which aims to build an out-of-the-box laptop and mobile kit for activists that supports secure and anonymous communication.

Kardokh said that he is still grateful that McAllister helped draw attention to the situation in Syria, and noted that Channel 4 had been very active in providing assistance to their sources after the arrest. “For me, this was enough to say that Sean is still a friend,” he told me. He wished, though, that journalists would better inform themselves about the risks before visiting. “I think Western journalists can’t imagine the power of the regime here.”

AFP - 20/03/2012

DAMASCUS — Security was tightened in Damascus Tuesday in the wake of deadly clashes, activists said, as the UN Security Council aimed to back up peace envoy Kofi Annan’s mission to end the bloodshed in Syria.

Fresh clashes broke out in the capital and security forces killed at least 30 people, all but two of them civilians, in violence elsewhere across the country, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

Abu Omar, an activist in Damascus, said security forces were deployed in force in most districts of the capital, especially around Abbasid Square, and reported raids on several outlying towns including Douma and Dmeir.

Traffic around the square — on Baghdad, Qusayr and Tijara streets — was clogged because of checkpoints and sandbags blocking access to roads leading to government and security buildings.

The Observatory said gunfire rang out in the Qaboon and Barzeh districts, while the Local Coordination Committees, which organises protests, reported shooting around Arnus Square as well.

Abu Omar said the army backed by armoured cars had violently dispersed a sit-in by hundreds of Douma residents demanding the return of bodies of people killed several weeks ago.

The capital’s security clampdown follows deadly twin suicide car bombings targeting security buildings in Damascus on Saturday.

It also followed what activists said was a hit-and-run attack in the heavily guarded Mazzeh neighbourhood on Monday that killed at least three rebels and a member of the security forces.

The foreign ministry said the same “deadly hand” was behind the wave of attacks in Iraq on Tuesday that killed at least 45 people and the weekend car bombings in Damascus.

Elsewhere, four civilians were killed on Tuesday when a rocket hit their home in Homs and three others — a man, woman and their little girl — were killed in Rastan, both cities in central Syria, the Observatory said.

A total of 18 civilians were killed as security forces bombed the Khaldiyeh district of Homs, it said.

The Britain-based monitoring group said the army also raided a makeshift clinic, killing two civilians who were being treated for injuries in the city of Idlib, northwest Syria.

On the diplomatic front, Russia on Tuesday made it clear its support of any UN Security Council statement on the crisis in Syria would be conditional.

“We are ready to back the mission of UN and Arab League representative Kofi Annan and the proposals to the government and opposition to Syria,” Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told reporters in Moscow.

However, the council “should approve them not as an ultimatum.”

Lavrov’s comments came ahead of a Security Council meeting to discuss a draft statement urging President Bashar al-Assad and the armed opposition to “implement fully and immediately” Annan’s peace plan.

The Western-drafted statement, which France submitted on Monday, says the Security Council will “consider further measures” if nothing is done within seven days of any adoption.

Ahead of the meeting in New York, UN chief Ban Ki-moon warned: “We have no time to waste, no time to lose, because one minute, one hour of delay will mean more and more people dead.”

Monitors say a crackdown by the regime on dissent since last March has cost more than 9,100 lives.

Former UN chief Annan’s plan includes a halt to the year-long violence, humanitarian access, the release of detainees and withdrawal of security forces from protest cities.

Russia and China have since October twice used their powers as permanent members of the 15-nation council to veto resolutions on Syria. They said the resolutions were aimed at regime change and that they opposed any sanctions.

Before Lavrow’s latest statement on the UN draft, the United States had welcomed what State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland termed “an evolution in the Russian public position” on the crisis in Syria.

Her comments followed a meeting between Lavrov and international Red Cross chief Jakob Kellenberger in Moscow on Monday at which they called for a daily humanitarian truce in Syria.

Amid growing concern at the plight of civilians caught up in an increasingly armed conflict, a technical mission sent by Annan arrived in Damascus at the weekend for talks on a monitoring operation.

Separately, technical experts from the UN and Organisation of Islamic Cooperation are taking part in a Syrian government-led mission to assess the impact of the crackdown on protest hubs battered by security forces.

Human Rights Watch warned on Tuesday that the armed opposition was carrying out serious human rights abuses, including kidnapping, torture and execution of security force members and government supporters.

“The Syrian government’s brutal tactics cannot justify abuses by armed opposition groups,” it said.

By JONATHAN MILLER

 A hospital worker has provided horrific video evidence that medical staff in the besieged  Syrian city of Homs are doing the unthinkable: torturing patients in their care. 

Chilling images covertly filmed by the man, who risked his life to bring the plight of what he claims are  civilian patients to world attention, are to be broadcast on Channel 4 News tonight.  

The grainy footage from the Homs military hospital depicts wards full of wounded men, blindfolded and shackled to their beds. Some bear marks of extreme beating. The apparent instruments of torture – a rubber whip and electrical cable – lie openly on a table in one of the wards. 

Suffering: An injured man lies in the Homs military hospital. Wounds are clearly visible on his chest

On the orders of the Syrian government, all of those shot or injured during protests in Homs must be brought to the military hospital where staff are in league with the secret police.  

The whistleblower, ‘Abu Hamzeh’, claims many are whipped and beaten in their beds – and worse. 

The grim evidence of serious abuse raises the question of where the hundreds of injured civilians from the district of Baba Amr in Homs will be taken once the Red Cross finally negotiates their evacuation.  

Abu Hamzeh, not his real name, says he attempted several times to stop what he called ‘the shameful things’ which were happening in the hospital but that after being condemned as a ‘traitor’, he walked out in disgust and never went back. 

‘I have seen detainees being tortured by electrocution, whipping, beating with batons, and by breaking their legs,’ he told ‘Mani’, a French photojournalist who risked his own life smuggling the footage out of Syria. 

‘They twist the feet until the leg breaks. They perform operations without anaesthetics. I saw them slamming detainees’ heads against walls. They shackle the patients to beds. They deny them water.’

Shackled: A patient¿s arm is chained to his bed exposing the torture the Assad regime is inflicting

Abu Hamzeh says he witnessed abuse by civilian and military surgeons at the hospital and by other medical staff, including male nurses. He has provided the names of all those he claims worked hand-in-glove with Syrian soldiers and the feared mukhabarat secret police.

Sometimes, he says, he heard patients screaming while being kicked or beaten. The abuse took place, he claims, in the hospital’s ambulance section, its prison wards, the X-ray department and even in the intensive care unit. 

‘Sometimes they have to amputate limbs and they go gangrenous because they don’t prescribe antibiotics,’ he said. 

The footage, filmed within the last three months, confirms what victims of such treatment have long claimed, but the Syrian regime has forcefully denied.  

This weekend the United Nations Secretary General, Ban Ki-Moon, said he was receiving ‘grisly reports of summary executions, arbitrary detentions and torture’ from Homs.  

The UN human rights commissioner has already recommended to the Security Council that the Syrian regime be referred to the International Criminal Court, based on evidence which constitutes crimes against humanity – including acts of torture. 

Inhuman: A rubber whip and cable on the ward with some reports of patients being electrocuted, whipped and beaten

Cilina Nasser, author of an Amnesty International report on mistreatment and torture in Syrian military and state-run hospitals – including the military hospital in Homs – was amazed that anyone would risk his life to film in the torture wards.

‘This is the first time we have video evidence to corroborate these claims,’ she said. ‘The new evidence is horrific. Hospitals should be safe places for anyone who needs medical attention and treatment, but it seems that wounded people in Syria have no safe place to go.’

Photojournalist Mani, who spent most of January and February in Homs, said: ‘Ordinary Syrians now consider it too dangerous to go to state-run hospitals if they’re injured. Most opt for hopelessly under-equipped makeshift backstreet clinics. 

‘I met a 15-year-old boy who had been shot in the leg by a sniper. His father told me he was too afraid to bring his son to hospital. Even though he was in danger of losing his leg, the boy was treated in his own home by a nurse.’ Mani said Abu Hamzeh was distraught at what he had witnessed.

‘He wept as he talked to me about the torture and the fact that he was powerless to prevent it.’

Abu Hamzeh insisted there were some ‘decent doctors’ who refused to participate in the abuse of patients, but, he said, they were under constant and close surveillance. He claimed that while some of the victims in the military hospital are soldiers who refused to follow orders, most are civilians.
Some, he said, had nothing to do with anti-regime demonstrations; others were wounded when  their neighbourhoods were attacked. 

Many of those injured, he said, were kept alive so they could be interrogated.

Others were admitted to the hospital simply to revive them between torture sessions. ‘Some of the detainees used to be taken from the hospital to the prison. They’d bring them back either dead or with a brain haemorrhage.

‘The youngest I saw was 14 or 15 years old. Many detainees’ names were removed from emergency admissions lists so that no one would know where they were. There were no names. Just numbers.’

Jonathan Miller is Foreign Affairs Correspondent for Channel 4 News. His full report will be shown at 7pm tonight.

The Syrian regime and its opponents both court the small but still influential Druze community. Phil Sands, Foreign Correspondent reports

DAMASCUS // As an increasingly bloody revolt spreads in Syria, the Druze heartland is eerily calm.

In other provinces, scores of protests take place every week and deadly confrontations between the security forces and an increasingly armed opposition are commonplace.

Yet in Sweida, 100 kilometres south of Damascus, demonstrations are rare and, when they do happen, are usually small.

About 500,000 in number and concentrated in the rocky mountainscape of the Jabal Al Arab, the Druze are among the smallest of Syria’s minority groups, fewer than the Alawites, Kurds or Christians.

But their reputation for rebellion against central authority and for wielding an influence in Syrian political life disproportionate to their numbers means their support is avidly sought by bothBashar Al Assad and the president’s opponents.

Druze activists and political figures are playing a prominent role in the uprising as members of the two major opposition political blocs, the Syrian National Council and the National Coordination Committees. Druze dissidents have also been instrumental in leading anti-regime demonstrations.

However, in the struggle for Druze support, it is the regime that for the moment remains on top, according to both critics and supporters of the government in the Druze community. Sweida is still seen as a bastion of at least tacit support for Mr Al Assad’s regime, 11 months into an uprising against his rule.

“When it comes to organising big protests, we’ve failed,” said one Druze activist from Sweida. “The uprising here is limited to the intellectuals. We’ve not been successful in getting it out into the wider community.”

Sweida’s silence, according to activists, analysts and Syrian Druze on both sides of the political divide, is the result of a variety of factors, from mundane practical problems to the long-harboured fears of a minority terrified by the prospect of rule by Syria’s Sunni Muslim majority.

For opposition Druze trying to organise street marches in Sweida City, the provincial capital, gathering people in one place has been a constant logistical challenge. There are none of the mosques that have provided a rallying point elsewhere.

“There’s nowhere we can legitimately meet in large numbers,” said a protester from the city. “The security forces can usually break up any group before it gets big enough to have real strength, they can stop us in ones and twos on the way to a protest, which is much easier for them than stopping hundreds or thousands already in a protest.

Widespread emigration by young Druze, desperate to escape the unemployment and lack of opportunity that bedevil the Jebal Al Arab, also means that men aged 16 to 35, the nucleus of the uprising elsewhere, are relatively few in number.

Those who stay instead of moving elsewhere in Syria or going abroad have, activists say, been drafted into pro-regime militia, known as shabbiheh, with salaries and promises of comfortable government sinecures.

Pro-regime residents are also quick to inform the authorities if they see anything resembling the start of a protest, dissidents say.

“The regime created a weakened and divided society. It made a very hostile environment in Sweida where each family informs on the others and even within families there is physical fighting between regime supporters and dissidents,” said a veteran Druze political activist.

Two major fears cloud the political horizon for the Druze: Islamist extremism and the violence that would accompany any rebellion.

“Lots of people are very unhappy with the regime. They’re angry with the security services, the neglect, poverty and corruption, and they’d like to see a change,” said a protest organiser from Sweida.

Yet those frustrations are not enough to get residents on to the streets.

“If we try to encourage them to take a stand, they’ll either say ‘You’ll bring the tanks here and disaster on to our heads’ or ‘the Muslims will take over and force our women to cover their heads’.”

Widely circulated comments attributed to a Sunni cleric in the neighbouring province of Deraa, where the revolt began, fuelled the sense of alarm. The remarks suggested that Sunni men should feel free to rape Druze women.

Opposition groups insist this was part of a dirty tricks campaign by the regime. By portraying the the uprising as a revolt by Sunni extremists, authorities hoped to foment sectarianism and keep minority groups on side.

A supporter of Mr Al Assad, in his twenties and from a relatively wealthy Druze family, confirmed that fears of religious persecution run deep.

“It started as a political crisis but now this is a sectarian crisis,” he said of the uprising. “Muslims have an intolerant mentality. They do not want us, or the Christians or the Alawites, to live freely. Our freedom is protected by the president.”

The president and his wife, Asma, paid a low-key visit to poor villages in rural Sweida last March, days before the uprising erupted in Deraa. He was already on record as saying that the Arab Spring would not spill over into Syria. Nevertheless, analysts and Syrian Druze say that trip was designed to shore up support in a key area.

Druze are quick to mention Adib Al Shishakli when explaining their support for Mr Al Assad. Shishakli, a Sunni from the central city of Hama, ruled Syria in the early 1950s and sent the military to bombard the Jebel Al Arab and assert central control over the newly independent country.

Druze religious leaders have refused to back protesters. They side with Mr Al Assad and, like him, give warning of a “foreign conspiracy”. Early in the uprising, activists in Sweida held meetings with Druze sheikhs including the three most powerful, Hamoud Al Hinnawi, Hussein Jabour and Ahmed Hajari, to solicit their support.

“They were all with the regime, we couldn’t get them even to be impartial,” said an influential opposition figure involved in the talks. “One of them told us that he would not send shabbiheh [thugs] against us but was unsatisfied with our protests. That was the most positive response we got.

“The other meetings were very bad. One sheikh said, ‘there are 100 dogs [protesters] in Sweida and if they were killed the city would be a better place’.”

In private, according to a number of Druze in Sweida, low-ranking religious figures have been threatened by their superiors with an Islamic version of excommunication for supporting protesters or allowing followers or family members to demonstrate.

Under Druze custom, anyone censured this way is considered beyond God’s reach when they die, a powerful disincentive for the devout.

Security forces have not killed any demonstrators in Sweida. Activists say is part of a deliberate effort to avoid any action that might spark a revolt. Detained protesters say that in comparison with Sunni prisoners, they were given preferential treatment in jail and during interrogations.

Growing use of violence by the opposition is also working against efforts to get more Druze to support the revolt.

“For as long as the uprising remains peaceful we have a chance of convincing the Druze to join the protests. But they are put off when they see armed opposition in other places,” said a Druze opposition figure from Sweida.

Nonetheless, some activists say the regime’s grip on the Druze is weakening and that a tipping point may not be far off, as heavy-handed tactics fuel support for the protests and the government’s failure to bring an end to the uprising erodes confidence in the leadership.

A series of recent arrests in Sweida province, including of Ziaa Al Abdullah, a leading Druze activist only recently freed after months in jail, has added to a sense the authorities are struggling to prevent a wider rebellion on the Jabal Al Arab.

“There are 4,000 people now in Sweida who will openly admit to being opposition, which is much more than six months ago,” said a leading opposition figure in the province. “And there are many people who are privately with us, or who give large amounts of money and medicine to the cause – Druze have been giving secret support to the protesting villages in Deraa since the start.”

When a series of high-profile Druze prisoners were freed last month, families from Sweida, outlying villages and Druze neighbourhoods in Damascus came to pay their respects, in what locals said was a deliberate sign of defiance of the authorities.

In another incident recounted by Sweida residents, a former senior army officer and a Druze, mistakenly jailed for standing near a protest, refused to leave prison when pardoned unless all of the political detainees picked up with him were also freed. The demand was met.

“Families here are very proud and hot blooded so when one group joins the protests, the others will not want to be left out or be called cowards, so momentum could build quickly,” an activist said. “Already we see the mood is beginning to change. People are talking more openly. They are losing their patience with with the shabbiheh.

Walid Jumblatt, the mercurial, high-profile Lebanese Druze political leader, has once again turned against Mr Al Assad after voicing support for him before the uprising started. Last month, he urged Syria’s Druze not to join security units that are attacking and killing protesters.

Of the 2,000 security personnel the authorities say have been killed since March, 100 have been Druze, a disproportionate number that suggests Druze security officers are playing a prominent role in confronting the uprising.

On February 7, an elderly man died in a town 20 kilometres north of the city of Sweida during a confrontation between security forces and protesters who had raised aloft the green, black and white independence flag that has become an opposition standard.

According to activists’ accounts of the incident in Shahba, which could not be independently confirmed, shabbiheh attacked the group of 300 demonstrators, who then sought refuge in a house where it became plain that one of them required medical treatment after being shocked with a cattle prod. While trying to negotiate the injured activist’s passage to a hospital, a village notable and go-between suffered a fatal heart attack.

The incident, if independently corroborated, seems unlikely to ignite a greater rebellion. Yet were persecution like it to become a common occurrence, the Druze would be pushed past a threshold, according to community activists.

“One day the shabbiheh or security will kill someone here and then the place will explode in their faces,” said one local opposition figure. “The pressure is building all the time, they cannot keep Sweida or the Druze out of the uprising for ever.

Karam Al Zeitoun, Homs, #Syria: Activist Omar Tellawi, Homs interviewing the head of Omar Ibn Abdulaziz battalion which was formed today and is affiliated to the civilian protection commission.

Brief summary:

The head of the battalion talks about his battalion which includes defectors from the intelligence, army, security and also civilians, all of whom are dedicated to the protection of peaceful civilians who have been systematically targeted by Assad forces throughout the revolution.

They have pledged to fight until the regime falls, which he believes is certain. He advises Assad to leave sooner rather than later. He asks the Arab and Muslim world to support them, even by just praying for them. “We ask for nothing else”, he says, “God is on our side and we shall prevail. Our revolution has been an abandoned orphan from the start and we have no one but God. Every time we expect support from anybody, they fail us. All we ask for now is prayer and we shall prevail because God is on our side.”

The Israeli Position Toward the Events in Syria

13/02/12 Great first hand account of a protest not to be …

translated. Via@telecomix

8:10 pm

I get out of the bus. The demonstration will take
place after about 300 meters.My friend and I
are walking and scanning the area, we passed half
of the way and we didn't see anything suspicious.
After that, I started to notice Shabbiha in the area
in addtion of security forces, everything went terribly.

We walked into a bystreet, we were like birds in a trap,
I've seen them in my eyes.
It was canceled, that is obvious, the problem is:
Can we stop the others from erupting
the demonstratin? We went into a mini-shop,
bought two pieces of cake (to camouflage).
While we were walking, two Shabbiha were face-to-face
with us, and they left us. They wanted to catch
the biggest number they can.
A Mercides police car stoped near me.
We entered another shop, it takes place in opposite
the place of demonstrating, I thought it was imposible
that someone will cheer to start it, well, I was wrong.
Three seconds after we entered the shop,
it was started. At first, no one joined him,
the trap was obvious for those who scanned the area.
However, those who came from the western area
didn't notice it. Few joined, then the number was about 30.
I get out of the shop to see, and to try to warn,
but it was too late.  When I saw them I couldn't
stay at my place, I crossed the street and 
standed between them.

Few seconds after, we have heard
an electric stick sound. Then they attacked us.
The piece of cake was still in my hand,
crossed the street again. The shop's door was closed.
Suddenly, a security agent standed in front of me
and pointed his Klachikov to me
while they were arresting other people.
He looked at me carefully, I raised my hands up
(the cake still with me). He was nervous,that's obvious.
I was afraid. However I was calm, so calm.
He saw legs moving, so he asked me
angrily and nervously to open the  shop.
It was a kid's legs. Four kids, an old-man
and my friend were into the shop. Was he schocked?
I don't know.

Then he looked at me, and told me to enter
the shop and to close it. My hands were benumbed,
and guess what? While we were hearing gun-fire,
the old-man (seller) asked us to leave!
In the god sake! We started to buy some stuff
so he shut-up. Then, a man opened the shop
and the gunfire was stopped.
We left the shop, took a Taxi and left the area.

Michael Weiss 09/02/12

This is a contribution to ‘What Should the United States Do About Syria?: A TNR Symposium.’

In the past several weeks, the Free Syrian Army (FSA) and other independent rebel brigades have made great strides: They have “liberated” key cities such as Zabadani, 20 miles outside of Damascus; set up checkpoints in restive areas throughout the country; and even begun to seize a few tanks and armored vehicles. For a network of ragtag militias, armed mainly with AK-47s and RPGs that defecting soldiers have given or sold them, the rebels have impressively taken the fight right up to Bashar al-Assad’s doorstep. But the rebels can only go so far. “If no one helps us, we can hit the regime painfully but we can’t topple it, not [when it has] jets and tanks,” Alaa al-Sheikh, the spokesman for the Khaled Bin Waleed Brigade in Rastan, told me.

This is a fair precis of the current situation in the nearly year-long Syrian uprising, in which the Assad regime has killed 7,000 people and dispossessed and imprisoned tens of thousands more. The rebels are waging a guerrilla war of attrition designed to exhaust Assad’s army and security forces rather than defeat them: They hope that if and when external help comes, they can make quick work of whatever regime elements remain. In that way, it would be a mistake to describe the crisis in Syria simply as a humanitarian catastrophe. It is also a military stalemate—one that the West can decisively break in favor of anti-Assad forces by offering them military assistance.

Going to war is a dangerous and risky business, and critics of Western intervention in Syria have understandably focused on three main hazards: the proliferation of jihadist groups, regional destabilization, and the rise of sectarianism (particularly between the Sunni majority and the Christian and Alawite minorities). But the worst fears of what might happen following an intervention have already come to pass and only threaten to grow worse with continued inaction.

For example, the regional destabilization has already begun: There are currently around 10,000 Syrian refugees living in tents, in the dead of winter, on the Turkish side of the Syrian-Turkish border—the victims of a regime massacre perpetrated last June in Jisr al-Shughour, a rustic city in the northwest province of Idleb. Rumors of abuse and mistreatment in these refugee camps at the hands of Turkish authorities are rampant. Meanwhile, thousands more have fled to Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt and Libya to escape subsequent Assadist atrocities, while Internally Displaced Persons within Syria now likely number in the hundreds of thousands.

The sectarianism that people fear also already exists, thanks to a deliberate strategy of divide and rule which has been pursued by the regime since the start of the uprising. The Syrian security forces and their shabbiha (“ghosts”) mercenaries, which are overwhelmingly manned by Alawites, have been waging a brutal campaign of mass murder in the country, conducting the kind of homicidal house-to-house raids that Muammar Gaddafi only threatened to do in Libya. In some areas, Sunnis have been targeted not as demonstrators but as Sunnis. In the coastal city of Latakia, where Assad’s father is buried and where the regime’s loyalist hardcore may relocate if Damascus falls, protestors have been herded into detention facilities and sports stadiums, or stuffed into shipping containers for transfer via the Mediterranean to other prison sites. In August, the Syrian Navy bombarded the coastal port city of Latakia, displacing countless civilians as well as 5,000 Palestinians who went “missing” from a refugee camp—an event which sent UNRWA into a temporary panic.

Furthermore, activists say that the regime has been arming predominantly Alawite villages for a future sectarian confrontation that might well rival the carnage of Rwanda. Amer al-Sadeq, a member of the Syrian Revolution General Union, told me last night that what transpired in Jisr al-Shughour amounted to a policy of ethnic cleansing: “After the massacre took place, we know that many Alawites from the neighboring village of Shtabraq came to occupy the homes of the Sunnis who had fled.” Amer says he fears that rebels’ response, which has so far been limited to attacking the Syrian Army and security forces, will eventually include reprisal incursions into pro-Assad Alawite villages. “If there is external intervention that allows the army defectors to have the upper hand very quickly, I believe this will be the safest scenario to protect the lives of all Syrian people from any unjustified killings.”

Refraining from picking a side in the Syrian conflict is neither a morally, nor a strategically, palatable option. It’s past time that we consider how we implement an intervention on the side of the opposition, which also needs Western help in coalescing around a united strategy for toppling the Assad regime. In December, I published a blueprint to that effect: It included both a no-fly zone and the creation of a safe area in Jisr al-Shughour.

Strategically, this is the most advantageous location on which to focus a military intervention. Sandwiched between two mountain ranges, and currently in rebel hands, the city is hard to get to by land and it’s close enough to Turkey that a corridor of aid, backed by an accompaniment of ground troops, would therefore be easy enough to establish. Moreover, anti-Assad sentiment is very high in this area for reasons explained above.

A no-fly zone would be necessary to even the military odds. Contrary to the conventional wisdom, the regime has in fact used its aircraft against both protestors and armed rebels. In Idleb province, for instance, it deployed helicopter gunships, according to eyewitnesses cited in the UN Human Rights Council’s September report on Syria. Grassroots activists and rebels I’ve spoken to more recently also say the regime is flying military planes at low-altitudes, mostly at night, to perform reconnaissance, transport personnel, and attack insurgent strongholds; these claims are substantiated by numerous videos from Homs and elsewhere that have been posted to YouTube. NATO, or a coalition of U.S., British and French forces, should take the lead in knocking out the regime’s air defense systems and preventing the Syrian Air Force from continuing to conduct its own aerial campaign. Turkey currently houses a NATO air base at Incirlik and an air station at Izmir. Moreover, the U.S. Sixth Fleet stationed in Naples maintains 175 of its own additional aircraft.

This type of plan could decisively tip the scales in Syria. A fortified safe zone would both offer refuge to the besieged civilian population as well as provide a much-needed base of operations and communications hub for the Syrian opposition—in effect, carve out a Levantine Benghazi. As it stands, the opposition consists of various grassroots coordination committees, independent rebel brigades staffed mainly by armed civilians (“farmers and workers,” as CBS’ Clarissa Ward described one unit she encountered), and the more media-touted Free Syrian Army of military defectors, whose senior commanders are currently headquartered in Antakya, Turkey, making them incapable of planning or ordering operations on the ground in Syria. (Rebels use the FSA designation very loosely, though there is no top-down chain of command, as such; regional commanders make their own decisions vis-a-vis tactics and strategy.) Meanwhile, the Syrian National Council (SNC), which draws from both exiles and domestic activists, seeks international recognition as a government-in-exile, but it is currently based in Istanbul, with regional offices in Paris. Out of step with the Syrian “street,” plagued by controversy, and dominated by a disproportionately high number of Islamists in its senior echelons (thanks to Turkish government oversight), the SNC has so far failed to persuade Syria’s indispensable minority population—particularly the Kurds—that a post-Assad state will be an inclusive and fairly representative democracy. Part of the problem has been conducting negotiations overseas at various conferences and foreign ministries. But after 11 months of division and factionalism, can the opposition really afford to go without an in-country headquarters from which to close ranks and develop a coherent strategy?

The psychological effect of intervention would also be immensely helpful. Rebels who maintain constant contact with members of the regular army insist there would be more defections from Assad’s rank-and-file but for the regime’s vows to punish soldiers’ families. Damascus doesn’t trust its own troops to let them witness the protest movement first-hand, which is why 75 percent of the army is confined to barracks. An estimated two-thirds of army reservists have failed to report for call-up duty, leaving a military of 550,000 with a fighting capability of just 300,000. Many army battalions, the rebels say, are waiting for an intervention to defect en masse.

If we don’t act, we are leaving Syria’s fate to a more lethal coalition of the willing that is already intervening in Syria’s internal affairs: Iran and Hezbollah. According to one of Syria’s highest-level political defectors—Mahmoud Haj Hamad, the former head financial auditor at the Syrian Defense Ministry—the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps and Hezbollah have dispatched thousands of “military consultants” into Syria to enlist as snipers with the regime’s military intelligence units. Hamad told the Times of London that a slush fund has been created to finance these imported mercenaries, and is regularly replenished by Iran. Rebels say they’ve caught and killed Hezbollah agents trying to remove weapons from storehouses in Zabadani. Hezbollah has also been attacking Syrian rebels in retaliation for the capture of seven Iranian nationals late last month. Tehran insists that these men are all “engineers” who were “kidnapped” on their way to work at a power plant; the FSA insists that five of them are in fact IRGC agents. There have also been reports of Iran smuggling weapons into Syria via civilian airplanes.

Assad may be the dimmest of his father’s children but he knows how to wreck a country in spectacular fashion. Reprisal killings and social fragmentation will increase the longer he clings to power, and there’s an excellent chance that the current humanitarian crisis will escalate into a full-blown catastrophe. “Learn to predict a fire with unerring precision,” wrote Czeslaw Milosz. “Then burn the house down to fulfill the prediction.” Analysts who warn of the perils of intervention now risk inviting one in the future, and at much greater expense than they realize.

10/02/12 Security forces storming Qaboun, Damascus. #Syria

10/02/12 Elements of security attack  demonstrators near Zine El Abidine, Midan, Damascus. #Syria

It is 9 a.m. in the morning in Harasta, one of the suburbs of Damascus, and there is loud banging at the door. It is only a few seconds until the door opens up and I face the dreaded Syrian security forces, whose atrocities I have been listening to, documenting and reporting on while I have been in Syria.

Harasta is only a 15-minute drive from Damascus’ city center and was in the hands of the Free Syrian Army militias in previous days. During the night of Jan. 25, heavy clashes between the Syrian regime and the free army lasted the whole night until the dawn when the sound of the muezzin’s voice calling the faithful for morning prayers blended with the continuing sound of Kalashnikovs shooting. Only when we saw the regime soldiers at the doorstep did we realize who had won the fight. 

Mohammad Abood, 23, whom I met over the Internet and asked to stay at his house for a couple of days for reasons that have nothing to do with my undercover journalism, is now at the door, getting a heavy beating from the soldiers who trade turns insulting him. One shabiha, who appears to be the leader of the four-to-five squad of soldiers, is directing them to search the house, while giving other orders and questioning me at the same time. 

The two-bedroom apartment is turned upside down by the soldiers, but for the time being, they seem undecided what to do with me, though they dutifully confiscated all my personal belongings, including my computer, camera, phone and whatever they deemed necessary into plastic bags. The belongings were never returned. 

Now we are in the narrow streets of Harasta but not alone. Every corner has a few soldiers guarding the city as if they are an occupying army in a foreign land. A few other groups of arrested Harasta residents coming from the muddy, steep streets appear to share the same faith as we do. After a couple-minute walk to a larger road, I see a few other arrested groups joining us to be taken to one of the security complexes in the city, knowing that the worst yet to come.

In only 14 days, in a half-dozen suburbs of Damascus, I have seen the viciousness of the security forces every single day in different forms and shapes. I have witnessed unarmed protesters being attacked twice, one of which was a funeral crowd who were joyfully praising their “martyr” on Jan. 21 in the city of Douma. After I arrived in this city on Jan. 19 to leave the next night, my plans had to change because the Syrian Army would be laying siege in eastern Ghouta for the next four days.

In central Damascus, I saw individuals getting arrested in broad daylight for no apparent reason.
And finally I was arrested, along with over a thousand people in a single morning in Harasta, in which I witnessed scores of old and young locals receiving their first heavy whippings in the front yard of the Harasta Police Hospital. Surely what awaited them in the coming days and weeks will be the most horrifying. 

 I talked with a much respected local doctor who had been jailed twice and tortured since the Syrian revolution began just because he insisted on treating wounded protestors who came to his hospital. 
Doctors are prohibited from carrying any kind of first-aid kit under this evil regime, and if found, even mere pain killers in their cars constitute a crime warranting arrest because it shows their intention of helping injured people in some other place.

The horror stories I have heard from scores of local people were beyond any imagination. 

When Col. Moammar Gadhafi said he would do house-to-house raids to hunt down the rebels like rats, the international community moved immediately to stop the pending slaughter, invoking the much-discussed “right to protect” civilians in Libya.

The Syrian regime’s regular and irregular forces search houses every single day for months, one of which I was also victim of. The regime sends dozens of its tanks into the streets, hits the cities with mortar shells and terrifies its people day in, day out. 

This regime deserves to be demolished.

AP 08/02/12

Younes al-Yousef rarely goes outside in Cairo, fearful that even here someone will recognize him and word will get back to Damascus. He stays in a simple, rented apartment with his wife and children, smoking cigarettes, drinking coffee and watching TV for the latest from the homeland he fled, Syria.

Al-Yousef is waiting for the fall of a regime that he once believed in. He served as a cog in its machine, as a cameraman for a pro-government television station that showed Syrians “the reality” of the uprising.

“I was a supporter and I benefited from the regime, I can’t deny it,” the 35-year-old told The Associated Press in an interview in his apartment. “I tell you the truth, I was with the regime heart and soul.”

But he said that as he watched security forces blast towns where protesters took to the streets to demand the ouster of President Bashar Assad, he could no longer believe the line he was helping bring to the public, that “terrorists” were tearing apart the country.

He expressed his doubts to a colleague. Then, fearing retaliation, he packed up his family and fled the country.

Al-Yousef’s account of his experiences could not be independently confirmed, given the chaos in Syria and the limitations put on journalists by the government.

But his story gives a glimpse into how the regime has used one of its most powerful tools on the home front, the media, to keep the broader public on its side as it faces the greatest internal challenge in 40 years of rule by the Assad family.

Since protests began in March, the government has insisted they were not a popular uprising like those that toppled dictators in Tunisia and Egypt but the work of terrorists and armed groups in a foreign-backed plot to tear Syria apart. For Syrians watching the influential pro-regime media, this has been the cause of the daily bloodshed.

The message resonates among Syrians who have been taught for years that the Assads’ secular, nationalist rule is what keeps the country together. There is particularly fear among minorities - the Alawites, a Shiite Muslim offshoot, and Christians - that Sunni Muslim fundamentalists will take over and retaliate against them. Even among the Sunni majority, which has been the backbone of the uprising, some fear the country will be torn apart if Assad goes.

Al-Yousef says he never had any reason to doubt the government’s version.

Before the uprising, he had a store selling camera equipment in Kfar Takharim, a town amid hills of olive groves in the northwestern province of Idlib, near the Turkish border. He did video work, filming weddings. He had good relationships with local officers in the security apparatus, a necessity for anyone trying to get ahead.

He occasionally did video work for the Dunya satellite TV station, which is majority owned by Rami Makhlouf, a cousin of Assad and one of Syria’s wealthiest men. His work for the station alongside its local Idlib correspondent picked up when the uprising began.

He said he would see demonstrations in the area but wouldn’t film them because he knew the channel didn’t want that. The protests were put down by security forces with tear gas and clubs.

It wasn’t until May that he encountered shootings. There was a giant demonstration in the city of Idlib, the provincial capital, and al-Yousef said he heard gunfire and saw ambulances wailing by. Later, locals told him security forces had killed a dozen people.

“It was understood that those people are saboteurs, terrorists,” he said. “That was our idea about them, and the journalist or correspondent was like a security officer in his relationship with the security services and the army.”

As time went on, the protests grew larger and more frequent. Al-Yousef said that when he and the Dunya correspondent would hear about a planned demonstration, they would show up early to film it when only a few dozen people had arrived and use that footage even if it grew larger later on.

Then came the siege of Jisr el-Shughour, a town just over the hills from the Turkish border that in June rose up and virtually drove out regime police. 

Several dozen soldiers and police joined protesters in the town, the first significant instance of armed defectors siding with the uprising. Regime forces responded with a heavy siege.

The days of heavy fighting that lasted until the regime retook the town gave the small-town wedding videographer his first real look at such violence. It rattled him.

“People got killed and I saw dead bodies. I wasn’t used to that. So I started wondering how that happened,” he said.

At one point, he entered the town to get some of his relatives out. He found it nearly empty of people, but intact. A few days later, the security services brought him in to film. He found destruction everywhere.

“The city was a wasteland, stores had been burnt and smashed,” he said. He asked a security officer what happened. The officer said gunmen and terrorists had attacked the town. “We believed what he said.”

But his suspicions grew. Each time he was taken into town, he would film pro-regime “residents” - mostly brought in from outside town. When the security forces took him to film mass graves they said were full of people killed by the terrorists, al-Yousef was convinced that they were faked - saying he recognized bodies that were dug twice out of different locations.

“This is when I started thinking about a conspiracy. I hadn’t seen any gunmen or terrorists and I was hearing army officers tell me that we came here because of gunmen and terrorists,” he said. “So where is the conspiracy that you kept telling us about, the big conspiracy against Syria?”

In August, he decided that he couldn’t go on with the job. He told the Dunya correspondent; they argued and parted ways. He soon heard that the correspondent told the authorities he was helping the terrorists.

On Sept. 2, he took his wife, Fatima, and two kids, aged 2 and 3, across the border to Turkey. They left so fast they barely carried more than the clothes they were wearing.

While in Turkey, a security official he knew back home contacted him and tried to coax him back, saying nothing would happen to him. He didn’t believe him. Twice, Syrians he didn’t know in Turkey tried to meet him. He shunned them, fearing they would kidnap him.

He moved on to Cairo in late October, and he says the efforts to get him back to Syria have continued. He said he frequently receives phone calls from Syrians who want to meet him. One recently said he had brought him money from his brother, but his brother had never heard of the man, al-Yousef said.

“If the want to get me, they’ll get me. It’s an issue of revenge now,” he said.
With his savings running out, he struggles to pay rent with support his family sends him.

He thinks about Syria all the time, he said. He’s convinced Assad will eventually fall.

“Before, we had no one in Syria who dared to call for freedom,” he said. “The people will not go back. It’s impossible for them to go back.”