Jordan'sTank Reef

A tank sunk by the Jordanian government into the Gulf of Aqaba in the Red Sea as an artificial reef for sea life and a tourist attraction for snorkelers and scuba divers (Dan Lundberg/CC BY-SA via In Focus - Original)

Shark Meat in Benghazi

People stand next to caricatures of Moammar Khadafy in Benghazi May 8. (Mohammed Salem/Reuters via Big Picture)

Video Report: UNIFIL Convoy Attack in South Lebanon

Hizballah Still on the Wrong Side of Arab Spring

Video allegedly shows Syrian protesters in the city of Homs burning the Hizballah flag on May 22 2011.

Michael Young with an excellent view of Hizballah's headaches when it comes to the Arab Spring - and the Syrian Revolution in particular:

...

First, as hard as Nasrallah tries, he just cannot seem to convince Arabs anymore that “resistance” must be given priority over most other aspects of their lives. In Egypt, Tunisia and Syria, people have talked about emancipation, democracy and liberty, with the targets of their opprobrium almost exclusively domestic. Protestors may dislike America and Israel, but for now their aim is to rewrite failed social contracts, impose states that reflect their needs, and be rid of leaders and their families who have suffocated and robbed them for decades.

...

There was something terribly off-key in Nasrallah’s comments, showing how alienated he seems to be from the spirit of this Arab moment. The language of rockets, guns and combat is jarring against a backdrop of societies demanding freedom. In armed resistance there is an implicit call for regimentation, for compulsory unity and the banishment of dissent in the greater cause of defeating the enemy. Yet everything about the Arab uprisings has been directed at undermining regimentation and authorizing dissent. Those in the region know all too well that their despots have spent decades using the conflict with Israel as justification for building up vast military and security apparatuses to facilitate open-ended internal repression.

Nasrallah’s second cause of fear is that he’s on the wrong side of the revolt in Syria. Hezbollah, which has always claimed to be the champion of the downtrodden, is defending a leadership crushing its own people. Nasrallah is covering for the soldiers, security officers and gang members who have fired live ammunition at unarmed civilians, killing an estimated 1,100 people in the last two months. He is covering for the unit in Daraa that placed a prisoner under a tank tread before running him over twice, tearing him to shreds.

... The reaction on social media outlets was acerbic from many in Syria. They saw that in defense of his party’s and Iran’s interests, Nasrallah would abandon justice and applaud their tormentors. If Syrian protestors prevail, they will not soon forgive him his double-standards.

A third headache for Nasrallah is that he now finds himself at the epicenter of a sectarian confrontation in the Middle East. For a long time Hezbollah managed to transcend Sunni-Shia differences thanks to its accomplishments on an issue that most Arabs sympathize with, namely the battle against Israel. But much has changed since then. To a great extent Iran’s Arab enemies have made headway in portraying the Islamic Republic and Hezbollah as pursuing a project of Shia hegemony, regardless of the merits of such an accusation.

And in Syria Hezbollah’s ally, the Assad regime, also appears to be implementing a sectarian strategy. Many Arabs will have read or heard lately that Alawites are expelling Sunnis from places such as Tal Kalakh. Even diplomats in Beirut worry that this may be a step in establishing an ethnically cleansed Alawite mini-state. It would be disastrous for Nasrallah if a majority of Arabs were to begin lumping his Shia community together with the Alawites in an alleged partnership against Sunnis. He knows that for Hezbollah to be depicted as a sectarian group would undermine it as the vanguard in a model of regional resistance. And yet this has already started.

Hassan Nasrallah is behind the curve on what is going on around us in the Middle East. The Hezbollah leader is employing both rhetoric and imagery that are anachronistic in these transformative times. The future, we hope, will bring a promise of free societies, the reflexes of compromise and greater pluralism. If that fails, as it may, Nasrallah will have saved himself; but at the expense of many innocents.

U.S. Weighs in on Lebanon-Syria Relationship

The alternative title for this post was, "Feltman: Syria is the North Korea of the ME" ... catchy! The LA Times reports:

The United States is upping pressure on Lebanon to reduce its ties to neighboring Syria in an effort to further isolate President Bashar Assad as his security forces violently suppress a pro-democracy movement, according to diplomats and officials.

Visiting Beirut last week, the State Department's Middle East envoy, Jeffrey D. Feltman, bluntly warned Lebanese officials that the tide had turned against the autocratic four-decade-old Damascus regime and urged them to distance themselves from a nation that has long been a major player in Lebanese political life, a Western diplomat and Lebanese officials said.

"There is no return back to the bad old days. Syria is going to change," a source with knowledge of the talks said, characterizing the U.S. message to Lebanon.

... Feltman warned that Lebanese leaders "risk being as isolated as Syria," which he characterized as "potentially the North Korea of the Middle East," said the source, who requested anonymity because of the private nature of the talks.

...

At the same time, the U.S. effort in Lebanon, a Western diplomat said, was one prong in a larger campaign to push the Arab world to stand against Syria's crackdown on protesters. Other steps have included outreach to such nations as the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, which have sent emissaries and messages and support to Damascus in recent weeks. On Wednesday, a draft resolution by several European nations was submitted to the U.N. Security Council demanding that Syria stop the violence against protesters and cooperate with the U.N. investigation of alleged rights abuses.

...

Feltman, who arrived in Beirut late Thursday and left early Saturday, delivered his message to Mikati, Druze leader Walid Jumblatt, Hariri aide Mohammad Chatah and President Michel Suleiman ...

...

American officials are concerned that Lebanese ambivalence on the Syrian uprising has resulted in refugees and defecting Syrian soldiers being sent back home. "In Syria, deserting soldiers are executed," said the Western diplomat.

Some 4,000 families have fled Syria to Lebanon, most of them to the north via illegal border crossings, which Lebanese and Syrian armed forces vowed to close off Wednesday. Human Rights Watch last week warned Lebanon that it could be legally responsible for any harm suffered by refugees it sent back to Syria.

"We want to ensure that the people who are refugees are afforded all their rights," said the Western diplomat. "We had great concerns over the humanitarian implication of all this."

Syria and its allies have been increasingly flexing their muscles in Lebanon. Damascus' allies have sometimes violently disrupted peaceful demonstrations by Lebanese activists. A hotel in Beirut canceled a conference of intellectuals and journalists to demonstrate solidarity with the Syrian government.

Syria's surrogates have managed to create a climate of fear in Lebanon. Even traditionally anti-Syrian bastions have toned down their criticism of the Assad regime. Reporters and producers at Hariri's Future TV acknowledged that they've been ordered to ease criticism.

"There's been a little bending over backwards in order not to be perceived as meddling in what's happening in Syria," said Chatah, Hariri's aide. "The Syrians have been pointing fingers. Historically, Lebanon has been the scapegoat. In an effort not to be involved, most people have gone a little bit in the other direction of not saying much."

But some Lebanese are saying a lot about the unrest in Syria — mostly in support of the regime. Syria's allies in Lebanon often appear on pan-Arab television stations speaking out on behalf of Assad. "It seems like I only see Lebanese people on television defending the regime," said Rami Nakhle, a Syrian democracy activist in Lebanon.

Related Posts:

• Dorothy Parvez Discusses Detention in Syria
• Michael Moore: People of Syria, History is on Your Side
• Erdogan Has Doubts About Assad
• Video Reports from Lebanon's Border with Syria
• The Syrian Regime Thinks You're Smart! II
• US Senator Cardin on Syria Human Rights Resolution
• Syrian Regime Using Torture as Primary Weapon
• Syrian Regime Allies Push Sectarian Argument for its Preservation
• Rami Makhlouf Speaks ... Confirms Detestability 
• Syria Action Map 
• Video: US Senator Joe Liberman: Assad Must Go
• Video: Rima Maktabi with an Excellent Report on Syria
• The Syrian Regime Insiders
• Syrian Refugees Fleeing into Lebanon
• The Syrian Regime Thinks You're Smart!
• The Assad Inner Circle
• Turkey Going to "Plan B" on Syria
• Syrian Baath Party Resignations Amid Massacres
• Turkey and U.S. Discussed Welfare of Assad Family
• Easter Weekend Massacre in Syria: Enforced Disappearances
• Easter Weekend Massacre in Syria
• Video: Face the Nation - U.S. Perspectives on Syria
• Al Jazeera English Video Interview: The Syrian Police State
• HRW: Syrian Protesters Being Tortured
• Video: Al Jazeera English on Syria
• The Bloody Damascus Spring
• Syrian Secret Police (Intelligence) Memo 
• Syria Update
• HRW Documents Atrocities by Syrian Regime
• The Dismal State of Analysis on the Syrian Regime
• Released Syrian Activist Speaks Out
• HRW Condemns Syrian Regime for Killing Civilians
• American Student Describes 15 Days in Syrian Prison 
• Don't Expect Change from Bashar al Assad
• Video: Woman Attacks Bashar al Assad's Car After Speecha

Video: Israeli Police Commander Slaps Female Lawyer

Kobi Bachar, deputy commander of the Galilee District Police, slaps an Arab lawyer after she asks him why he's arresting protesters.

Meanwhile on the Turkey-Armenia Border

A crane brings down one of the two heads of the 35-meter (115-foot) stone sculpture which features a divided human figure, near the Turkey-Armenia border as workers are dismantling the giant sculpture meant to promote reconciliation between the two nations, in Kars, Turkey, Tuesday, April 26, 2011. Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan called it a "freak," prompting moves by local officials to have it removed. Artists campaigned unsuccessfully to save the monument and a prominent Turkish painter was stabbed and hospitalized last week after a speech in which he condemned plans to tear it down (AP Photo via Daylife)

Ghaddafi "Yeah Buddy!"

Libya's leader Muammar Gaddafi arrives to give television interviews at a hotel in Tripoli in this March 8, 2011 file photo. The International Criminal Court prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo said on May 16, 2011 he had requested arrest warrants for Gaddafi, his son Saif al-Islam and the country's spy chief Abdullah al-Senussi on charges of crimes against humanity (Reuters Pictures via Daylife).

U.S. Court Filing: Iran helped Al Qaeda Plan 9/11 Attacks

The New York Times reports:

Two defectors from Iran’s intelligence service have testified that Iranian officials had “foreknowledge of the 9/11 attacks,” according to a court filing Thursday in a federal lawsuit in Manhattan that seeks damages for Iran’s “direct support for, and sponsorship of, the most deadly act of terrorism in American history.”

Imad Mugniyah, the Hezbollah leader killed in 2008, also was accused of a role in 9/11.

One of the defectors also claimed that Iran was involved in planning the attacks, the filing said. The defectors’ identities and testimony were not revealed in the filing but were being submitted to a judge under seal, said lawyers who brought the original suit against Iran on behalf of families of dozens of 9/11 victims.
...
The suit contends that Iran and Hezbollah, the Lebanese militant organization with close ties to Tehran, helped Al Qaeda in planning the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, and in facilitating the hijackers’ training and travel. After the attacks, the suit contends, Iran and Hezbollah helped Qaeda operatives escape, providing some with a safe haven in Iran.
...
In their court papers, the lawyers assert that Imad Mugniyah, as the military chief of Hezbollah, was a terrorist agent for Iran, and that he traveled to Saudi Arabia in 2000 to help with preparations for the 9/11 attacks.
...
The 9/11 commission report said there was “strong evidence that Iran facilitated the transit of Al Qaeda members into and out of Afghanistan before 9/11, and that some of these were future 9/11 hijackers.” The report also said there was circumstantial evidence that senior Hezbollah operatives were closely tracking the travel of some of the hijackers into Iran in November 2000.

But the commission said that it had “found no evidence that Iran or Hezbollah was aware of the planning for what later became the 9/11 attack,” and that the “topic requires further investigation by the U.S. government.”

Thomas E. Mellon Jr., a lawyer for the families, said the suit, first brought in Washington in 2002 and later moved to Manhattan, sought to do that investigation.
...
The lawyers’ filing included reports of 10 specialists on Iran and terrorism, including former 9/11 commission staff members and ex-C.I.A. officers. “These experts make it clear that 9/11 depended upon Iranian assistance to Al Qaeda in acquiring clean passports and visas to enter the United States,” Mr. Mellon said.

But the expert reports do not in most cases seem to go as far as the defectors in contending Iran had foreknowledge of the attacks.

The filing says the defectors worked in Iran’s Ministry of Information and Security “in positions that gave them access to sensitive information regarding Iran’s state sponsorship of terrorism.” It says they have reason to fear for the safety of themselves and their families “should their identities and the content of their testimony be revealed publicly.”

Leb Web Digest 20.05.11

• Tony Badran: An End to the Syrian Pipe Dream
  
• Michael Young: Lebanon Fasten Your Seatbelts
• Blogging Beirut: Telecoms Ministry Meeting 1
• Angie Nassar: Assad's Mafia-Style Intimidation in Lebanon
• Beirut Spring: My Impression of Obama's Speech
• Hussain Abdul Hussain: The Syrian Doomsday Scenario
• Al Ahram: Counter-revolution and Sectarian Strife
• Qifa Nabki: Nakba Day Controversies
• NY Times: Secret Desert Force Setup by Blackwater Founder

Dorothy Parvaz Discusses Detention in Syria

 

After returning to Doha, Al Jazeera journalist Dorothy Parvaz has described her experiences while being detained in Syria for three days and then in Iran for 16 more.

Parvaz was first held and interrogated in Damascus, Syria's capital, upon her arrival there on April 29 to cover anti-government demonstrations.

She was then deported to Iran. She was finally freed on Wednesday morning.

Michael Moore: People of Syria, History is on Your Side

 

... via Angie Nassar at NOWLebanon Blog ...

Erdogan has doubts about Assad

Protesters chant slogans as they hold Syrian flags during a demonstration after Friday prayers on April 29, 2011 in Istanbul against the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and the deadly crackdown on opposition protests. About 1,000 people demonstrated in Istanbul Friday to denounce a bloody crackdown on protests in Syria, calling for President Bashar al-Assad's departure. Following Friday prayers at an ancient mosque, the crowd, including Syrians based in Turkey's largest city, staged a march, chanting slogans against Assad and burning his portraits ... (Getty Images via Daylife)

Some light analysis,via Reuters, on Turkey's inability to get the Assad regime to reform (duh!):

...

Having embraced Assad as a new found friend in recent years, Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan has been reduced to hand-wringing over the killing of unarmed civilian protesters after the Syrian leader turned tanks against their own cities.

...

Erdogan, whose foreign policy over the past decade has been to eliminate all Turkey's old problems with neighbours, increase trade and become a regional power, says that when the first Arab popular uprising broke out in Tunisia, he urged Assad to reform.

Late last month Erdogan sent his intelligence chief to Damascus to try to persuade Assad to take the reform path, but there was no sign of success. "Could Turkey have done anything more -- I don't think so," said Soli Ozel, a professor of international relations at Istanbul's Bilgi University.

"The real problem concerns Turkey's claims of influence, its abilities and capacities," he said. "It could not induce Bashar al-Assad or the Baathist regime to implement reforms in time."

...

"Syrian issues are almost an issue of domestic policy for us," Erdogan said on Monday in an interview with Channel 7, a Turkish television station regarded as close to his party.

Erdogan said more than 1,000 people had been killed in Syria and that he did not want to see a repeat of the 1982 bloodshed in Hama, where Assad's father crushed an Islamist uprising, or the 1988 gassing of Kurds in the Iraqi town of Halabja during the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein, who headed Iraq's Baathists.

Paul Salem, from the Carnegie Endowment think tank in Washington, said Turkey would have done better in the eyes of many Arabs by speaking out more strongly against the actions of Assad and Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi's security forces.

"The Arab uprisings are effectively calling for the Arab world to be more like Turkey, democratic, with a vibrant civil society and political pluralism, secularism alongside Islam, and a productive and fairly balanced economy," Salem wrote in the Los Angeles Times this week. "This could have been Turkey's moment in the Middle East: the moment was lost."

...

"So far, the Iranians have more influence on the Syrian government than the Turkish government," Walid Saffour, the London-based president of the Syrian Human Rights Committee, told Reuters during a meeting of Syrian opposition and rights groups in Istanbul in late April.

"But I think if the Syrian government is sane enough to listen to the language of logic, it will listen to the advice of the Turkish government."

Hardliners in the Syrian government could be antagonised if Erdogan pushed harder for urgent reforms and more restraint.

"Because Turkey couldn't unequivocally support the Syrian regime the way Iran has, the Syrians are rather cross with Turkey," said Ozel. "Relations are going to be frostier."

Turkey and Syria, which share an 850-km (530-mile) border, have come along way since 1998 when they almost went to war over Kurdish militants operating from Syrian territory.

Erdogan and Assad have had a visible rapport. In the past couple of years visa requirements were dropped for travel between the two countries, and Turkish and Syrian ministers have held regular strategic cooperation meetings.

Just a couple of weeks earlier, Erdogan revealed growing uncertainty over Assad's intentions regarding reforms.

"Honestly I am having doubts," Erdogan told the ATV news channel, adding he was unsure if Assad was being blocked, or he feared that reforms would not work, or he was being indecisive.

...

Critics say that Erdogan's reluctance to choose sides stems from concern over Turkey's sizable business interests in Libya and Syria. Though in the case of Libya, Erdogan's first priority was evacuating more than 20,000 Turks working there.

... It is a familiar position for Erdogan to be in. Two years ago he congratulated Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for his victory in an election the opposition said was fixed.

Last year, Erdogan opposed the imposition of more U.N. sanctions on Iran over its refusal to curb its nuclear energy programme and dispel concerns that it may be aimed at developing atom bombs, rather than generate electricity as Tehran says.

...

... Despite having good relations with repressive governments, they [the Turks] say they want democracy to triumph in the region. They had no qualms about the toppling of autocrats in Egypt and Tunisia in January and February.

...

For Turkey, Lebanon and Iraq, nowhere poses more risk than Syria, with its mix of Sunni Arabs, Alawites, Kurds and Druze.

"This will hit us in the end," Erdogan told ATV two days after the first refugees crossed into Turkey in late April.

Tunisia Update

France's President Nicolas Sarkozy (R) speaks with Tunisia's Prime Minister Beji Caid Essebsi (L) as he leaves the Elysee Palace in Paris May 18, 2011. Center is France's Foreign Affairs Minister Alain Juppe (Reuters Pictures via Daylife)

The Economist brings us this update on the situation in Tunisia ... but before getting to the abridged article below I just have to ask why some refuse to recognize Lebanon's Cedar Revolution as the region's first against autocratic rule and why, given two consecutively peaceful and widely legitimized parliamentary elections, Lebanon's isn't considered "a solid multiparty Arab democracy".  Maybe it has something to do with the presence of a domineering paramilitary organization that dictates the course of the country's politics ... you know, like deciding if we're going to have a war or not, or whether some general stays in his post at the airport or not, or if government agencies can enter one part of the country or another ... things like that.

When they tossed out Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali on January 14th after 23 years of his kleptocratic presidency, Tunisians launched not only their own revolution but a wave of change across the region. ...

... Though shaky, Tunisia still feels well ahead of its rival in the Arab democratisation league, Egypt. Preparations are under way for a general election, scheduled for July 24th, to choose a 260-person body to draw up a new constitution. After weeks of wrangling, the government has agreed to a proportional party-list voting system in which half the candidates must be women. It has also named a 16-member independent commission to oversee the polls. Some 10,000 senior members of the former ruling party, which dominated Tunisian politics for five decades, have been banned from running for office.

... Earlier this month, a video clip on Facebook showed Farhat Rajhi, a popular reformist who served briefly as interior minister in the early days of the caretaker government, casting grave doubts on his former colleagues’ commitment to democracy. In comments captured by a reporter’s hidden camera, he said he was sacked as interior minister because he had objected to the appointment of officials, including provincial governors, tainted by links to the old guard. Most explosively, he suggested that Tunisia’s army was prepared to intervene should the election be won by Nahda, an Islamist party that was banned under the former regime but has since bounced strongly back.

Mr Rajhi’s musings tallied with widely held suspicions that the caretaker government, headed by the 84-year-old Beji Caid Sebsi, has been dragging its feet over reforms, so prompting the angry protests. ...

Public opinion appears divided. Many voices in Tunisia’s vibrant blogosphere suggest that the unguarded comments were meant to embarrass the government and perhaps to further Mr Rajhi’s own political career. Such views also reflect growing weariness with what has been a long season of protests and strikes. A lot of Tunisians are eager to move on.

... With its tourism floundering and problems such as high youth unemployment and poverty festering, Tunisia is in a fragile state. ... But although the pace of reform may seem ponderous to the impatient young, the country is still heading steadily if bumpily in the right direction—and is on course to emerge as the first solid multiparty Arab democracy.

Syrian Refugees in Lebanon Tell of Horrifying Crackdown

Syrians carrying their belongings cross the border as they flee violence in Syria, in the Wadi Khaled area, about one kilometer (0.6 miles) from the Lebanon-Syria border, north Lebanon, on Saturday May 14, 2011. Hundreds of Syrians, including four wounded people, crossed into Lebanon on Saturday fleeing violence in their country as an uprising against President Bashar Assad's regime entered its eighth week, Lebanese security officials said (AP Photo via Daylife).

Writing in Foreign Policy, NOWLebanon's managing editor, Hanin Ghaddar, provides a breathtakingly vivid account of developments in Syria as related to her by refugees fleeing into Lebanon. The picture they paint is grim, including mass graves and wounded protesters left to bleed to death on the streets, but it is a story that must be told. The full article below:

The northern Lebanese village of Wadi Khaled is so close to Syria that its residents can hear gunfire from across the border as the regime of President Bashar al-Assad attempts to put down a persistent revolt from his long-oppressed citizens. And as violence in nearby Syrian cities of Tal Kalakh and Homs has worsened, it has also been a refuge for fleeing Syrians.

According to Sheikh Abdullah, a prominent religious figure in the village, Wadi Khaled has received more than 1,350 refugees from Syria in the past 10 days, most of them women and children. More are expected to arrive in the coming days. Protesters took to the streets by the thousands again on Friday, reportedly flooding the streets of Damascus, Hama, and Homs in defiance of Assad's crackdown. Human rights organizations have reported that up to 850 people have been killed so far during the uprising, while more than 10,000 have been arrested.

With a media blackout in place across Syria, Wadi Khaled, a predominantly Sunni village of around 30,000 people, is also one of the best locations to learn what's occurring across the border. The news is grim: The Syrian refugees there tell a story of state-sponsored violence and oppression that suggest Assad will stop at nothing to keep his grip on power.

Munther, a 35-year-old chain-smoker, answered our questions without taking his eyes off the BBC Arabic report on Syria playing on a television overhead. He escaped with his family from the Bab Amr neighborhood of Homs on Saturday. He had been participating in the protests every Friday for two months since the uprising took hold in mid-March. "They were shooting at us to disperse the protests, but it was still manageable because you can hide as soon as they start shooting," he said. However, he decided to flee when Assad sent in tanks on May 7. "I have children and I have to protect them."

Munther, like many other Syrian refugees, came to Wadi Khaled because he has relatives there. It is only a 15-minute car ride from Homs, and the Lebanese-Syrian border has done little to hinder ties between the villages on either side of the international line. Most Wadi Khaled residents are originally Bedouins with tribal links to those in Homs and Tal Kalakh, and the last of them was given Lebanese nationality in 1994. Inter-marriages between the two communities are also common.

There is no official crossing between Wadi Khaled and the Homs Governate on the Syrian side of the border. A concrete bridge over the Southern Kabir River links the two regions, but Lebanese or Syrian checkpoints are nowhere to be found; refugees simply cross the border on foot. Lebanese residents buy cheap bread and vegetables from neighboring villages in Syira and cross back into Wadi Khaled unmolested. Gasoline smuggling is rampant.

That has left village notables with the task of caring for the needs of their newly arrived quests. Sheikh Abdullah is taking care of the refugees' logistics and safety. "Many families coming from Syria have relatives here and they are staying at their houses, but at one point, if they keep coming, there might be a humanitarian crisis," he said.

Refugees describe a government crackdown so severe that it makes normal life impossible. "The first thing the security forces do when they besiege the city -- and this happened in Daraa, Jasem, Enkhel, Tel Kalakh, and Homs -- is to cut the electricity, the phones, and the Internet. Then they shoot at water tanks situated on the rooftops to cut the water," said Abed, a 30-year-old man from Tel Kalakh.

It took Abed 20 minutes to start discussing the crackdown. He first sent the women and children to the other part of the small apartment where we met, and expressed clear apprehension at discussing developments in Syria. While he first denied participating in the protests, he later admitted that he never skipped a Friday demonstration. It wasn't hard to understand his fear. "Sometimes, they do door-to-door arrests when they are looking for certain activists," he said. "And when they enter the houses, they steal everything they see."

The main objective, according to many of these refugees, is to create a mood of panic among the residents. "They want us to realize that security, which the regime can and has always provided, is more important than freedom, which they cannot and will not provide," Abed said.

Mustafa, a young single man who came to Wadi Khaled with his sisters, said that he had seen injured civilians in the streets and the protesters were not allowed to rescue them. "Only in Syria people are dying from an injury in the foot. They are left in the streets to bleed to death," he said. YouTube provides ample proof of this grim reality -- gruesome videos show corpses lying untended in the street and Syrians braving gunfire to rescue their wounded and dying comrades.

But for Mustafa, the most horrific incident occurred last week when the protesters tried to establish a camp, modeled after Cairo's Tahrir Square, in the main square of Homs. He said that security forces arrived around 1 a.m. and killed more than a hundred protesters, put the bodies in garbage trucks, and took them to Tadmur desert, where they were buried in a mass grave.

With media largely stifled in Syria, Mustafa fears that the Assad regime is getting away with murder. "[A]s much as we try to spread the news to the world through our limited experience with technology and Facebook, many of these crimes are still unknown," he said. "The media is the only weapon the people have."

Activists are also using towns like Wadi Khaled to coordinate their activities and get their message out to the world. Hussam, a former political prisoner from Homs, was in Wadi Khaled for one day to meet with European delegations and some journalists. Hussam, who has been involved in organizing the protests for six weeks, said that his main task is to spread the anti-Assad movement's message through Facebook groups and face-to-face meetings with human rights and legal organizations.

Hussam insists that the protest movement will remain peaceful in order to thwart the regime's strategy of instigating sectarian tensions between Syria's Sunni and Alawite communities. "We all believe, including the Muslim Brotherhood members who are still inside Syria, that dictatorship and oppression only lead to violence," he said."Our main goal is freedom and the people are paying with their blood to achieve this goal."

If recent events are any indication, Assad is hoping a display of overwhelming military force will be enough to quell the uprising. His first cousin Rami Makhlouf, a prominent player in Syria's economy and a key regime insider, told the New York Times on Wednesday: "We will sit here. We call it a fight until the end."

But the killings could also be Assad's undoing. "Each family in Daraa, Banyas, Enkhel, Homs, and Jassem lost a member," said Hussam. "We will never go back to silence."

Related Posts:

• Video Reports from Lebanon's Border with Syria
• The Syrian Regime Thinks You're Smart! II
• US Senator Cardin on Syria Human Rights Resolution
• Syrian Regime Using Torture as Primary Weapon
• Syrian Regime Allies Push Sectarian Argument for its Preservation
• Rami Makhlouf Speaks ... Confirms Detestability 
• Syria Action Map 
• Video: US Senator Joe Liberman: Assad Must Go
• Video: Rima Maktabi with an Excellent Report on Syria
• The Syrian Regime Insiders
• Syrian Refugees Fleeing into Lebanon
• The Syrian Regime Thinks You're Smart!
• The Assad Inner Circle
• Turkey Going to "Plan B" on Syria
• Syrian Baath Party Resignations Amid Massacres
• Turkey and U.S. Discussed Welfare of Assad Family
• Easter Weekend Massacre in Syria: Enforced Disappearances
• Easter Weekend Massacre in Syria
• Video: Face the Nation - U.S. Perspectives on Syria
• Al Jazeera English Video Interview: The Syrian Police State
• HRW: Syrian Protesters Being Tortured
• Video: Al Jazeera English on Syria
• The Bloody Damascus Spring
• Syrian Secret Police (Intelligence) Memo 
• Syria Update
• HRW Documents Atrocities by Syrian Regime
• The Dismal State of Analysis on the Syrian Regime
• Released Syrian Activist Speaks Out
• HRW Condemns Syrian Regime for Killing Civilians
• American Student Describes 15 Days in Syrian Prison 
• Don't Expect Change from Bashar al Assad
• Video: Woman Attacks Bashar al Assad's Car After Speecha

Video Reports from Lebanon's Border with Syria

English - May 14 2011: Residents flee border town as army enters following protest.

English - May 15 2011: Thousands flee Telkelakh in western Syria as troops carry out a crackdown on protest there. Soldiers are going from home to home and killing many, say eyewitnesses.

Hundreds of Syrians, including many injured by gunfire, have entered Lebanon through the porous border just 5km from the town - despite Lebanese troops reinforcing the frontier, reportedly at Syria's request.

Al Jazeera's Zeina Khodr, reporting from Beirut, has more details.

Video Report from Lebanon's Border with Israel

May 15 2011: Violent clashes ensue as Palestinians commemorate the Nakba in Maroun al-Ras, Lebanon. CNN's Rima Maktabi reports.

ICC Requests Arrest of Libya Regime Trio

A rebel walks next to a cartoon depicting Moammar Gadhafi as Adolf Hitler, holding a book titled 'My green book' in the rebel Media Center in Benghazi, Libya, Monday, May 16, 2011. Luis Moreno-Ocampo, prosecutor of the International Criminal Court in The Hague, announced Monday that he would seek arrest warrants against the leader of Libya, Moammar Gadhafi, his son Seif al-Islam and the country's intelligence chief on charges of crimes against humanity (AP Photo via Daylife)

The Financial Times has the story:

The International Criminal Court chief prosecutor has requested arrest warrants for Colonel Muammer Gaddafi, the Libyan leader, his son Saif al-Islam, and the head of the country’s intelligence service, Abdullah al-Senussi, accusing them of crimes against humanity.

Luis Moreno-Ocampo, said his office had “strong evidence” that the three had ordered attacks on civilians in the weeks following the outbreak of the Libyan uprising. “We have direct evidence of each of them involved in the crimes,” he said.

Col Gaddafi had “personally ordered attacks on unarmed Libyan civilians”, in which armed forces shot demonstrators, fired heavy weapons on funeral processions and “placed snipers to kill those leaving mosques after prayers”, the prosecutor said.

The UN Security Council ordered the court to launch an investigation into war crimes in Libya as part of its Resolution 1970 in late February. Mr Moreno-Ocampo’s office will not identify any of the sources it has used in its investigation, but is widely believed to have gathered testimony from defectors of Mr Gaddafi’s regime.

The office says it has not used testimony from sources still within Libya in order not to bring them into danger of reprisals from the regime. But it said it was confident it could prove its case against the three accused.

...

Mr Moreno-Ocampo said co-operation from the UN Security Council, Arab League and African Union had enabled the court to move faster than ever before, investigating and issuing warrants even while war crimes were continuing to occur.

The court has no enforcement powers, relying instead on member states. Mr Moreno-Ocampo explained that the court expected the Libyan government itself to enforce the warrants and deliver Mr Gaddafi to justice.

That prospect seems unlikely, though the three could be arrested if they attempt to travel outside Libya.

...

Osama Bin Laden's Family Tree

Courtesy of BBCNews

Leb Web Digest 13.05.11

• Hussain Abdul Hussain: The Insecurity Council 
• NOWLebanon: Where are the Estonians?
• Michael Young: Syria Fortifies Obama in his Indecision
• Forbes: Home to Beirut
• The Guardian: Life in Syria's Psychological Prison of Fear
• The Atlantic: An Unholy Alliance - Iran, Saudi Arabia, Israel backing Bashar
• The National: Violence in Syria may prompt Turkey to "Get Tough"
• Al Jazeera English: Glencore - Profiteering from Hunger & Chaos
• Beirut Pursuit: The Last One in Saifi
  

The Syrian Regime Thinks You're Smart! II

Imad Moustapha, Syria’s ambassador to the U.S. (AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar via WSJ: Washington Wire).

I couldn't help myself, this brief letter sent to the editor of the NY Times by Syria's ambassador to the U.S.A. made me laugh out loud:

I wish to inform you that Rami Makhlouf, a businessman whom you interviewed at length, is a private citizen in Syria. He holds no official position in the Syrian government and does not speak on behalf of the Syrian authorities. The opinions he expressed are exclusively his and cannot be associated in any way with the official positions of the government of the Syrian Arab Republic.

IMAD MOUSTAPHA
Ambassador of Syria
Washington, May 11, 2011

The letter was in response to this interview (my slightly abridged version here) which formed part of a Syrian PR blitz consisting of a visit limited to one journalist (Anthony Shadid - who I think did a good job of accentuating and laying out the extortionist mentality at play in the regime's thinking) conducting two interviews with regime insiders - this while all other foreign journalists were expelled or "forcibly disappeared" (check here and here) from the country and local independent journalists were arrested ... or worse.

Ostensibly the aim of the two interview was to push out a new regime line (perhaps on advice from the ambassador himself?), you know something along the lines of threatening to degenerate the conflict into an all out sectarian conflict; threatening to use regime cells to extend the violence into vulnerable regional neighbours like Lebanon, Iraq, Palestine/Israel, and perhaps even Jordan (add Turkey to the list if you count Iranian's mobilization of some loyal Kurdish cells there); and threatening to "ignite" the Golan Heights front, which, it should be noted, hasn't seen a bullet fired in about 40 years.  The idea was also to present the international community with an all or nothing scenario, betting that it would not have the will to carry the confrontation with the regime to the end, and moving to choke out and/or limit to the extreme any evidence of popular revolt, thereby demonstrating that there would be nobody for the international community to deal with as an alternative to the regime - nobody except Islamic extremists, a point highlighted in another prong of the regime's PR offensive.

If nothing else, the talking points simply highlighted the regime's long standing modus operandi .  This should come as no surprise given the leaked document (check here and here) which showed the Syrian regime vying to scare Syrian Christians into abstaining from joining the revolution while inciting the Alawite community to actively take up arms in defense of the regime.  Tactics to be used to further incite sectarian divisions were attacks on religious sites and assassinations along clan and sectarian lines.

In order to bolster its threats, the regime employed them early in its favorite theater for violence, Lebanon, as the Arab Spring began to blossom in Syria.  In the Bekaa valley a group of seven Estonian tourists were abducted shortly after having crossed the border, and by most analyst accounts taken back to Syria to be held in captivity.  A clue as to the real identity of the abductors should have come to light in view of the relatively high degree of activity by Estonian diplomats and interlocutors in Damascus, in comparison to Beirut (Estonia has since resisted EU sanctions on Syria out of fear for the safety of its kidnapped citizens).  Indeed, the choice of Estonian captives was an astute one, they were European and therefore likely to draw attention, but they didn't come from the larger, more influential European powers, so that that attention could be well contained, and the repercussions limited.  Similarly, the bomb attack on a Syriac Orthodox church in the Lebanese Bekaa city of Zahleh sought to use a small, relatively powerless Christian sect as a consequence-free threat to the broader Christian community in Syria.

With the upcoming announcement of a Middle East speech by the US President, and US Senate initiatives on Syria (check here and here), the letter could be seen as an early sign that the the message didn't go down as anticipated and therefore attempt to back away from the more reprehensible talking points of the Makhlouf interview.

I guess we'll have to wait and see ...

Related Posts:

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• Syrian Regime Using Torture as Primary Weapon
• Syrian Regime Allies Push Sectarian Argument for its Preservation
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• Video: US Senator Joe Liberman: Assad Must Go
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• Turkey Going to "Plan B" on Syria
• Syrian Baath Party Resignations Amid Massacres
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US Senator Cardin on Syria Human Rights Resolution

Syrian Regime Using Torture as Primary Weapon

Activists of the international non-governmental organization 'Reporters sans frontieres' (Reporters without borders) based in France demonstrate on May 3, 2011 in front of the Syrian Embassy after splattering the facade with ink in Paris to protest against attacks on journalists in Syria as part of World Press Freedom Day. Grafitti on wall reads: 'Ink must flow not blood.' (Getty Images via Daylife).

The UK's Telegraph reports:

Photographic evidence collected by Western and local rights agencies indicate that children as young as 12 have faced heavy beatings at the hands of Mr Assad's feared secret police, the Mukhabarat. Men and women were said to suffer even more extreme punishment, ranging from electric shocks to the extraction of fingernails.

As Syria braces for an eighth consecutive weekly showdown between the security forces and demonstrators after midday prayers on Friday, graphic testimony is slowly emerging of the price paid for challenging Mr Assad's 11 year-rule.

Unable to quell the unrest through force alone, despite having killed hundreds of civilians, Syria's security forces have instead resorted to mass intimidation. Over the past week, the number of detentions has soared to more than 500 a day, bringing the total to more than 8,000.

With prisons filled to capacity, many of those detained are being transported by bus into schools that have been transformed into makeshift "concentration camps", according to the National Initiative for Change, a newly-formed Syrian opposition coalition.

Inmates who have been released in recent days said they were held in locked classrooms where they were so tightly-packed there was only room to stand. Many were taken down to the cellars where the Mukhabarat has set up instruments of torture.

"They suspended me in the air from my wrists," one protester said in emailed comments. "They demanded that I confess to working for the Mossad, or for the Saudis or for the Lebanese and when I refused they shocked me with a cable whose wires were sticking out."

Some inmates, according to testimonies collected by rights groups, had their finger nails pulled out, their toes smashed with hammers or their tongues squeezed and pulled with pliers.

Deprived of water for days at a time, many inmates were allegedly reduced to drinking from lavatory bowls.

The vast majority of detainees are usually released within three days, a deliberate tactic, opposition activists say.

"They torture them brutally and then release them into the community as messengers of fear," said Ausama Monajed. "But it is not working. It only fuels anger and makes the people more determined.

Ban Ki-Moon, the UN secretary general, telephoned Mr Assad yesterday to protest "the possible violation of human rights" in Syria.

His call came as the Syrian army announced it was pulling out of Deraa, the southern city that has seen some of the worst bloodshed during a week-long siege where snipers frequently shot at anyone leaving their homes.

...

Syrian Regime Allies Push Sectarian Argument for its Preservation

A protestor waves a placard criticising Syria's President Bashar al-Assad during a demonstration outside the Syrian embassy in London on May 7, 2011. The demonstration was called to show support for the uprising in Libya, Syria, Bahrain and Yemen (Getty Images via Daylife).

Michael Young does an excellent job exposing and debunking a propaganda piece by the US-based public relations representative of a pro-Assad/pro-Hizballah Lebanese political party led by Michel Aoun. Read the article in full, its well worth it, below is an excerpt:

...

A fear of Islamists was ... the gist of a revealing recent expression of Christian fright about events in Syria. In a Foreign Policy web article in late April, one May Akl, a Yale-based press secretary of Michel Aoun, went out of her way to argue that the revolt in Syria was different from that in other Arab countries. Why? Because the Syrian army had come under attack. A purported ambush of troops near the city of Banias, she wrote, proved that “a Jihad-like approach is a force behind the movement demanding reforms.”

Akl then went on to explain, “In the context of these leaderless revolutions that stemmed from rightful social, economic, and political demands, the only organized and well-structured group has been the Muslim Brotherhood. For 83 years now, the aim of this widespread movement has been to instill the Quran and Sunna as the sole reference for ordering the life of the Muslim family and state.”

What evidence did Akl present for her extraordinary claim that the Syrian army had been targeted by jihadists? She provided a link to an article from The Independent in London, which merely cited Syrian state television to that effect. How persuasive, or surprising, from an official outlet that has been a wellspring of disinformation during the weeks of dissension in Syria, overseen by a regime that has portrayed the domestic unrest as a rebellion by armed Islamists.

In fact, all the signs, if one bothers to look, have suggested the precise contrary. The anti-regime demonstrations have not been led by Islamists; they have been peaceful, despite the brutality of the regime’s security apparatus and praetorian guard; and the Muslim Brotherhood appeared to join the demonstrations relatively late, at least organizationally, only issuing a statement on participation two weeks ago. But Akl’s flimsy assertion was good enough in the service of a parochial Lebanese agenda feeding off communal paranoia.

...

Moving beyond the Christians, however, how many Lebanese can honestly look back upon four decades of the Assads with any sense of warmth? Yes, the Syrians did impose an end to the cycle of Lebanese wars in 1990, but the onerous price that Lebanon had to pay was a decade and a half of a near-total Syrian domination. And even this should not blind us to the reality that during our 15-year conflict, Syrian officials usually worked heroically to keep the violence alive. On numerous occasions their army bombarded civilians of all persuasions and religions, while the Golan Heights front remained dead quiet, reminding us of where the priorities of Arab militaries lie.

It’s a bad idea for the Lebanese to turn the events in Syria into grist for their domestic political disputes. Syrian society may be a mosaic of communities, just like Lebanese society, but it is also quite different in many respects. To interpret everything occurring there through the narrow prism of confessional politics is a mistake. Hopefully, democrats will emerge triumphant in Syria. They alone are the ones we Lebanese should consider with any feelings of sympathy.

Rami Makhlouf Speaks ... Confirms his Detestability

An excellent piece by Anthony Shadid on the Syrian regime's thinking and tactics in confronting the Arab Spring's arrival in Syria. The piece includes rare comments by a notorious regime insider, Rami Makhlouf. Abridged version below but the full article is well worth a read:

Syria’s ruling elite, a tight-knit circle at the nexus of absolute power, loyalty to family and a visceral instinct for survival, will fight to the end in a struggle that could cast the Middle East into turmoil and even war, warned Syria’s most powerful businessman, a confidant and cousin of President Bashar al-Assad.

The frank comments by Rami Makhlouf, a tycoon who has emerged in the two-month uprising as a lighting rod for anger at the privilege that power brings, offered an exceedingly rare insight into the thinking of an opaque government. Beset by the greatest threat to its four decades of rule, the ruling family, he suggested, has conflated its survival with the existence of the minority sect that views the protests not as legitimate demands for change but rather as the seeds of civil war.

“If there is no stability here, there’s no way there will be stability in Israel,” he said in an interview Monday that lasted more than three hours. “No way, and nobody can guarantee what will happen after, God forbid, anything happens to this regime.”

Asked if it was a warning or a threat, Mr. Makhlouf demurred.

“I didn’t say war,” he said. “What I’m saying is don’t let us suffer, don’t put a lot of pressure on the president, don’t push Syria to do anything it is not happy to do.”

His words cast into the starkest terms a sentiment the government has sought to cultivate — us or chaos — and it underlined the tactics of a ruling elite that has manipulated the ups and downs of a tumultuous region to sustain an overriding goal: its own survival.
...
“The decision of the government now is that they decided to fight,” Mr. Makhlouf said.

But even if it prevails, the uprising has demonstrated the weakness of a dictatorial government that once sought to draw legitimacy from a notion of Arab nationalism, a sprawling public sector that created the semblance of a middle class and services that delivered electricity to the smallest towns. The government of Mr. Assad, though, is far different than that of his father, who seized power in 1970. A beleaguered state, shorn of ideology, can no longer deliver essential services or basic livelihood. Mr. Makhlouf’s warnings of instability and sectarian strife like Iraq’s have emerged as the government’s rallying cry, as it deals with a degree of dissent that its officials admit caught them by surprise.

Mr. Makhlouf, a childhood friend and first cousin of Mr. Assad whose brother is the intelligence chief in Damascus, suggested that the ruling elite — staffed by Mr. Assad’s relatives and contemporaries — had grown even closer during the crisis. Though Mr. Assad has the final say, he said, policies were formulated as “a joint decision.”

“We believe there is no continuity without unity,” he said. “As a person, each one of us knows we cannot continue without staying united together.”

He echoed an Arabic proverb, which translated loosely, means that it will not go down alone.

“We will not go out, leave on our boat, go gambling, you know,” he said at his plush, wood-paneled headquarters in Damascus. “We will sit here. We call it a fight until the end.” He added later, “They should know when we suffer, we will not suffer alone.”

Mr. Makhlouf, just 41 and leery of the limelight, stands as both a strength and liability of Mr. Assad’s rule, and in the interview he was a study in contrasts — a feared and reviled businessmen who went to lengths to be hospitable and mild-mannered. To the government’s detractors, his unpopularity rivals perhaps only that of Mr. Assad’s brother, Maher, who commands the Republican Guard and the elite Fourth Division that has played a crucial role in the crackdown. Mr. Makhlouf’s name was chanted in protests and offices of his company, Syriatel, the country’s largest mobile phone company, were burned in Dara’a, the poor town near the Jordanian border where the uprising began in mid-March.

The American government, which imposed sanctions on him in 2008, has accused him of manipulating the judicial system and using Syrian intelligence to intimidate rivals.
...
“Maybe they are worried about using this money to support the regime,” he said. “I don’t know. Maybe. But the regime has the whole government, they don’t need me.”

He said he was aware of the anger, but called it “the price I have to pay.”

More than just an icon of outrage, Mr. Makhlouf represents broader changes afoot in the country. His very wealth points to the shifting constellation of power in Syria, as the old alliance of Sunni Muslim merchants and officers from Mr. Makhlouf’s Alawite clan gives way to descendants of those officers benefiting from lucrative deals made possible by reforms that have dismantled the public sector.

He serves as an instrument, too, in Mr. Assad’s vision of economic modernization, where Syria serves as a crossroads of regional trade and a hub for oil and gas pipelines that link Iraq and the Persian Gulf to the Mediterranean and Europe. Cham Holdings, a vast conglomerate with a portfolio of $2 billion, in which Mr. Makhlouf owns a quarter of the shares outright, is at the forefront of that faltering scheme.

Turkey’s recent anger at Syria’s crackdown has fed feelings of betrayal in the government because Turkey was viewed as a centerpiece in that vision. Concerns are growing, too, over the uprising’s economic impact, deepened by Syria’s growing isolation and flight of capital — a legacy that may very well prove more threatening to the government than the protests.
...

Related Posts:

• Syria Action Map 
• Video: US Senator Joe Liberman: Assad Must Go
• Video: Rima Maktabi with an Excellent Report on Syria
• The Syrian Regime Insiders
• Syrian Refugees Fleeing into Lebanon
• The Syrian Regime Thinks You're Smart!
• The Assad Inner Circle
• Turkey Going to "Plan B" on Syria
• Syrian Baath Party Resignations Amid Massacres
• Turkey and U.S. Discussed Welfare of Assad Family
• Easter Weekend Massacre in Syria: Enforced Disappearances
• Easter Weekend Massacre in Syria
• Video: Face the Nation - U.S. Perspectives on Syria
• Al Jazeera English Video Interview: The Syrian Police State
• HRW: Syrian Protesters Being Tortured
• Video: Al Jazeera English on Syria
• The Bloody Damascus Spring
• Syrian Secret Police (Intelligence) Memo 
• Syria Update
• HRW Documents Atrocities by Syrian Regime
• The Dismal State of Analysis on the Syrian Regime
• Released Syrian Activist Speaks Out
• HRW Condemns Syrian Regime for Killing Civilians
• American Student Describes 15 Days in Syrian Prison 
• Don't Expect Change from Bashar al Assad
• Video: Woman Attacks Bashar al Assad's Car After Speecha

Syria Action Map

Check BBCNews for the full clickable map.

Lebanese Police Bulldozer Burns

A bulldozer that was used by Lebanese police to demolish illegal buildings, burns after it was set on fire by owners protesting the demolishing process in the southern town of Adloun, Lebanon, Tuesday, May 3, 2011. Illegal construction is common in Lebanon, where many poor who cannot afford to buy land or apartments end up building on state-owned property (AP Photo via Daylife).

US Senator Joe Lieberman 05.05.11: Bashar Assad Must Go