Posted by OFF THE WALL
My city, the ancient place which has grown beyond reasonable limits in the years I have been away from its distinctively colored buildings is now thirsty, hungry, and bloodied. My mother, who in her eighty years never witnessed such atrocities, refuses to leave. So does my sister, who has been, along with her children hostages in the basement of their building for a month now not knowing when to expect the next of Assad murderous bombs.
Yesterday, the banality of evil was on full display with the regime intentionally targeted with its bombs the main water supply line to the city. Streets were, and to this hour continue to be flooded, and more than a million and a half people in the city, including regime supporters, are now threatened with dying of thirst. The price of bread is now 20 folds what it was two months ago after the regime has intentionally and systematically targeted bakeries during heavy demand hours, and after regime snipers, who continue to be present in several pockets around the city have made movement, especially if one is carrying a bag of bread, a capital offence. Medical relief continues to be a hazardous undertaking. And living is now the most hazardous thing to do for the act of living and remaining in Aleppo is in itself the strongest defiance of the Assads and their supporters.
Some may be familiar with the Millennium Development Goals, which are internationally agreed on targets of development adopted by governments worldwide and by the UN system. One of these targets called for significantly increasing the number of people with access to safe drinking water and sanitation by the year 2015. I have seen governments of many developing countries strive, rather diligently to achieve this target despite of incredible odds including water scarcity, and not concluding with little or no financial means. I am yet to see anyone, other than the assads, and in one single act, increase the burden on the world by adding more than a million people to those with no access to safe drinking water. Every single act of this regime is a war crime. There is no doubt, no relativity, and no bullshit that will let me think otherwise.
As I write, my very active Facebook page blinks with yet another post conveying the all familiar obituary of yet one more brilliant Syrian, whose life, cut short by bashar assad’s war crimes, was worth in every one of its seconds the entire history of the catastrophic assads and the cumulative value of the lives of the herds of hyenas supporting them. This time it is one of my own new friends whom I met in my travels across Europe. A young Syrian film maker, Tamer Al-Awwam, who left his safe residence in Germany to document the revolution in northern Syria including Idlib and Aleppo, has died earlier today as a result of shrapnel wounds he received during Assad’s bombing pogrom of the city while accompanying FSA fighters and documenting their fight for the freedom of Syria from the tyrant and his henchmen. On August 6, Tamer wrote on his face book
بين القذيفة والقذيفة تسألني المصورة النمساوية ما هو سبب القصف من مسافات بعيدة على المدينة ألم تتدربوا في الجيش السوري على آلية حرب الشوارع كونكم بموقع حرب مع الاسرائيليين….؟!
تسقط قذيفة جديدة وتقتل الاجابةBetween one shell and another, the Austrian camerawoman asks me: what is the reason for shelling the city from far distances, haven’t you in the Syrian army been trained on the techniques of street warfare being at war with the Israelis….?!
A new shell falls and kills the answer..
I spent two evenings with Tamer a few months back, we talked about the revolution, we talked about the need to galvanize the efforts and touched on the concerns regarding SNC, FSA, and we both held our after dinner sweet and dark tea cups high in salute of the Syrian awakening spirit. One thing I vividly recall, this younger man, touching my elbow to get my attention as I was expressing concerns about rising sectarianism, and saying: don’t be concerned, sectarianism will not win this round, nor any other round from now on. Tamer, you have left a long-lasting impression, and now you leave a void. Tamer never mentioned in either time his plans to go to Syria….But he went, nonetheless, and below is a recent production from him, from this young man, who graced and honored my life with his short, yet memorable presence, making those moments worth a lifetime of intellectual discourse. Please watch his work, it is titled: memories at the check point.
[youtube http://youtu.be/eb9a9pr794I?]Tamer joins more than 30,000 documented victims of the foolishness of the vain, narcissist, incoherent, hereditary butcher. He also joins a rapidly growing list of journalists murdered by this regime. And yet, there are those who still covertly and overtly support such an abomination. Curse them… and curse their filthy cowardly minds.
Defeating my own tears, I will try to get back to the issue. I will not analyze the situation in Aleppo, nor will I discuss the violations being committed in the name of the FSA for I have been involved, rather heavily and directly, in relevant activities aiming first to halt these violations and second to pressure the various armed groups in Aleppo to either unify under one national banner or be considered outlaws and servants of the regime’s policy, and finally to stop the nonsensical broadcasting of the movement and locations of FSA fighters during operations by Facebook activists, especially those who are immature teens.
Yes there may be more foreign fighters in Aleppo than in other cities, but that can’t be used as an excuse to belittle the revolution, to stamp it as a jihadist enterprise as covert regime supporters do. It further gives no excuse to the wanton murderous destruction assad gangs are inflicting on Syria as their barbarian regime finishes its transformation from a brutal dictatorial mafia regime into a sectarian mafia militia, equipped with the most lethal instruments of murder and ready to use them against innocent civilians for no strategic goal other than burning the country.
The battle with this regime is not about me, it is not about you, it is about humanity. My dear friends, i can now tell you why it has been very hard to write. Over the past few months, my closeness to some of the young and brilliant people of Syria has enriched my life, but it has also made the tragedy, and the mess closer than ever.
I will not forget, nor will I forgive. I will not seek revenge, but rest assured, I will seek justice. And defending this regime, even covertly, makes one part and parcel in the murder of the friends I have lost. My cursing the regime and its supporters is only an impotent response, but I, with the help of countless Syrians, lack no potency in following them through this planet and in making them pay by all legal means for their collusion with this abomination called assad and for their disgustingly inhumane efforts to cover the stench with slogans of resistance and nationalism. They will pay for the murder of my city, and all other cities in my Syria, for killing my friends and for making my mother, brave as she is, cry.
Click on image
CNN Report by journalist Adam Blitz about the Syrian acttivist, photographer Trad Al-Zhori from Al Qusair, Homs.
Begun by Syrian women, “Syrian Freedom Waves” is a free radio station organized by activists working in their individual capacities and not representing any entities, states, or organizations.
Mission and vision
The grassroots of the Syrian people has shown amazing bravery and resilience in demanding an end to authoritarian dictatorship and the opportunity to build a democratic Syria that guarantees human freedoms for all. The regime has met these widespread grassroots demands with horrific repression. Day after day, civilians continue to be disappeared, imprisoned, tortured and killed at the hands of a brutal regime.
SFW’s mission is to establish a free radio station that amplifies the voices of Syrians for broadcast in Syria, to emphasize:
The grassroots movement for a democratic civil society in Syria
Vision for a strong, unified, democratic and free Syria
Respect for the rule of law, due process, human rights and human dignity
Freedom of expression, opinion and assembly
Pluralism and non-sectarianism
Syrian Freedom Waves affirms the four original principles of this revolution:
Demanding the fall of the current regime in Syria
Rejecting sectarian bigotry
Pursuing nonviolent resistance
Rejecting foreign military intervention in Syria
To learn more about this much needed radio station..
http://syrianfreedomwaves.org/
Abdullah can’t understand why his fellow Syrian went home to fight with rebels after working for a year in Sudan.
“I tell him, he shouldn’t go,” says Abdullah. “He is Islamist… I don’t know what happened in his head.”
While more than 200,000 Syrians have fled to neighboring countries from the nearly 18-month revolt against President Bashar al-Assad’s regime, an unknown number like Abdullah and his compatriot have also reached Sudan in North Africa.
But Abdullah doesn’t consider himself a refugee.
He says he came to Sudan because he got a contract to manage a business, although the job offer arrived about the same time he saw protesters shot early last year in Daraa, an initial hub of Syrian dissent.
Many others have also reached safety in Sudan, says a businessman with family and relatives in Syria.
“They don’t say they come here as refugees. They say they come here for investment,” he tells AFP, adding nobody knows the number because they do not need a visa.
Although Sudan is beset by its own troubles, with unrest in the far-western Darfur region and rebellions in the states of South Kordofan and Blue Nile, the capital Khartoum is peaceful.
For the latest developments on Syria, follow @NOW_Syria on Twitter or click here.
Only 25% of a given NOW Lebanon article can be republished. For information on republishing rights from NOW Lebanon: http://www.nowlebanon.com/Sub.aspx?ID=125478
September 7, 2012
by Ahmad Diab
A Temporary People
One hot summer day in 2011, the residents of the beleaguered Homs neighborhood of Al-Khaldyeh were struggling to identify the bodies of two men. There was something unusual about the bodies even by the now morbidly gory Syrian standards. They were merely skeletons with worn-out fatigues, and a few personal belongings. The unearthing of their bodies was collateral damage to a stray bomb. They had been blown out of their unmarked shallow makeshift grave by the shells of the Syrian army against the rebellious neighborhood. The residents decided the belongings were clearly from the 1980s, the military fatigues were Palestinian. The story of Syrian Palestinians – like that of most Syrians – is one of many tucked-away skeletons that are thrown into the open, unannounced yet badly needing to be addressed.
Syria is home to some half a million Palestinian refugees, the great majority of whom were born into a dictatorship that oppresses them and its own people in the name of Arab unity and steadfastness in the face of Zionism and imperialism. Their imagined and lived geographies could not be farther apart. They know the streets of Homs, Aleppo, Deraa, and Damascus like the palms of their hands. Their schools, named after their villages and towns in Palestine, hoist the flag of the United Nations.
Like their Syrian brethren, once in tenth grade, they could be automatically enrolled in the Baath party. Their ID cards are identical to those of Syrians, with the only difference being the red words “temporary residence” on top. Their travel documents could be taken for a Syrian passport, were they not one shade of blue lighter – and the misspelled “Travel Document for Palestinian Refugies” on the cover. Many Syrian Palestinians live their temporary lives in shantytowns that are still called “camps.” They follow the news of Jenin and Gaza as if it were their own. They have never been allowed to set foot in either. They religiously commemorate the dates of Palestinian massacres, victories and defeats. They are also obligated to hold rallies saluting the Syrian regime and its victories. Most camps have their own resident Palestinian Uncle Tom. They hate that they need his permits to wed, work or travel, but they learnt the Syrian proverb all too quickly, “kiss the hand that slaps you, and pray [secretly] that it get cut.”
De jure, Palestinians are well integrated into the legal system and are treated equally to Syrians. Most of these rights are legacy amendments that predate the Baath regime.1
Some date back to 1956 parliamentary amendments; others such as issuing travel documents to Syrian Palestinians are a Nasserite legacy when Syria was in the United Arab Republic with Egypt. To its credit, once in power, the Baath did not reverse them. However, the logic behind the legal status of Palestinians is a paternalistic relic of a time when Arab countries were self-appointed custodians over the fate of the Palestinians. It went thus: unless constantly reminded, Palestinians would forget their land and cause. Therefore, while they have most of the civil rights of fellow Syrians, they cannot vote or hold Syrian passports. Furthermore, they are required to fulfill the military service requirement their fellow Syrians do. They are usually drafted into either the Syria-aligned Palestine Liberation Army or the Syrian Army. De facto, the Baath discriminates equally against anyone who does not abide by the official narrative. De facto no one has any meaningful rights under an authoritarian regime. One could say that the revolution started because the majority of Syrians felt they were not integrated into the Syrian state.
Dictatorship from the Standpoint of a Palestinian Refugee
Equality in political suffering does not confer social equality amongst the collectivity of sufferers. Syrians discriminate against Palestinians in ways that are not dissimilar to those in which they discriminate against fellow Syrians. Like the rest of eastern Mediterranean, Syria is a country where almost everyone fancies himself or herself a Professor Higgins. In Shaw’s “Pygmalion,” the professor of phonetics “can place any man within six miles.” Syrians can detect the subtlest dialectic nuances; one vowel shorter or longer and you are automatically cast as “other.” To other Palestinians, Syrian Palestinians sound a little Syrian; to Syrians their accents give them away as not quite from here (perhaps with the exception of Deraa province). Not being from here can make a world of difference in a place where having the right connections is a must to navigate the ubiquitous state security apparatus. Not being from here means you can live in a city all your life but can never be “Ibn Balad” or “of the city” nor enjoy any of the closely guarded tacit privileges conferred by such labels.
Half a century of brutal authoritarian rule means lived memory is livid: livid at the crimes of the regime but more at one’s own cowardice and helplessness in the face of the regime. Most Syrians have gone through a ritual of pacification. This means oppression seeps down one micro power stratum at a time. A refugee comes at the bottom. For each integrated Palestinian worker, painter, actor, and party member, there are at least two disenfranchised unemployed school dropouts. For each mixed marriage story with a Syrian, there is a story of elopement or stunted love on account of being “a piece of a Palestinian / a piece of a refugee.” Such problems plague all Syrians. Palestinians cannot escape them and are usually less equipped to maneuver them than their Syrian counterparts by virtue of their out-of-placeness.
Dictatorship erects what Syrians call a “wall of fear.” A virtual wall premised on the brutal retribution of the regime’s Amn or Mukhabarat (security and intelligence services.) There is nothing that is not housed within these walls. The memoirs of one Syrian political prisoner speak of a fellow prisoner who was detained for more than a decade because of a dream he had. Self-preservation necessitates silence. Apathy becomes the modus operandi of the average citizen while ignorance mushrooms on the wall of fear.
Palestinians have to leave UNRWA schools for public schools in the tenth grade. I remember on my first day in my new high school someone asking me “So you go back to Palestine everyday after school?” I laughed and told him “No. We live a five minute walk away.” As it turned out our house was closer to school than his. The naïveté exhibited in this question was not merely a fact of our young age at the time. He was Syrian; I was probably the first Palestinian he had met. In the collective imagination of Baathist Syria, Palestine was rendered theme, a topic and at best a place, dear yet always remote from the lived reality of the majority of Syrians. The ignorance displayed in my friend’s question was not a sign of ignorance of regional politics or that Syrians had a sizable Palestinian community of second and third generation refugees living in their midst. It was rather a symptom of life under dictatorship, namely the hindered knowledge of one’s own neighborhood, one’s own city.
Authoritarian rule meant that most questions were banned; the few that are sanctioned have ready-made state-manufactured/endorsed answers. It meant the highly diverse Syrian society had to become uniform and monotone. The result was a country where almost everything was reduced to a stereotypical caricature. Damascenes to the rest of Syrians were cunning capital dwellers, Homs the city of fools, Hamah to be visited only for its Halawet el Jibn (cheese-based) desert and only Alawites pronounce the “qaf” and drink maté. By extension, Palestinians were faraway victims celebrated daily on state TV and in school curricula. Today most Syrians are in a state of bewilderment. Like the Homsis of Khaldiyeh, they gaze as they try to make out the identities of the suddenly uncovered. How come they never knew their own country, their towns and villages, or their neighbors, not to mention their Palestinians? They heard of places like Jarjanaz, ‘Amouda and Kafr Anbel for the first time during the last 17 months of revolution. The places they thought they knew have only come alive through YouTube videos relayed on regional news channels.
The culture of ignorance spread by the Baath regime had damaging effects on Syrian society at large. When it came to the relationship with Palestinians, it buried all kinds of real historical affiliations and kinship between Palestinians and Syrians under a heap of official talk of Arab camaraderie that, with the passage of time, rang more and more hollow. Coupled with fear, this culture facilitated rampant distrust amongst the citizenry. Invariably, disenfranchised minority communities such as Kurds and Palestinians suffer the most under such conditions.
Revolutionary Times
A popular term born out of the precarious condition in which Palestinians found themselves during the Syrian revolution is “positive neutrality.” Its oxymoronic implications are not completely new to Palestinians, think Emile Habiby’s “Pessoptimist.” They delineate the paradoxical im/possibility of action available to the Palestinians. On the one hand, Palestinians are de facto Syrian in their lived experiences. They both understand and feel the oppression against which Syrians rose up because they were subjected to it themselves. On the other hand, their formal status as non-citizens and the fate of long-established Palestinian communities in the wake of regional upheavals (Libya 1990, Kuwait 1991, Iraq 2003, Lebanon 1975, 1982, 2006) serve as a concrete reminder of the evanescence of their status. With Israel’s decades-long objection to repatriating these Palestinians to their ancestral Galilean homes, once outside Syria, they are treated as stateless and most countries are wont to deny them entry.
From a purely Palestinian perspective, it could be argued that Palestinians have always had even more reason to rise up against the Assad regime than their Syrian counterparts. The regime oppressed them in the name of Arab unity and defense of their cause. Between the ardently apolitical UNRWA and overwhelmingly authoritarian regime, camps could offer no political refuge for Palestinians. This led to a complete standstill in meaningful political activism inside a community that has a long tradition of organizing and one that faces existential dilemmas daily.
For decades, the Baath regime subverted any radical or militant option available to Palestinians in Syria in the name of awaiting the Godotian right moment. Under the guise of opposing the Oslo agreement, it Syrianized the Palestinian political representation inside Syria and, for the most part, reduced it to a Palestinian carbon-copy of Syria’s own puppet National Progressive Front. Just like the Syrian parliament became a rubberstamp for the diktats of the regime, so was the nature and makeup of the Palestinian factions in Damascus restructured to accommodate the political needs of the regime. The legitimacy of these factions was ultimately derived from their regional strategic benefit to the Baath regime rather than from true local representation of the mood on the streets and alleyways of the camps of Homs, Hama and Deraa. This alliance between the leadership of Palestinian factions in Syria and the Baath regime worked well to keep both in power and circumvent the aspirations of both of their constituencies.
To the Baath regime, Palestinians have generally been one more card it could deal when and how it saw fit. In the early weeks of the uprising the regime scrambled to offer its own competing narrative. The feminist professor-of-literature-turned-presidential-spokesperson, Buthayna Shaaban, instructed reporters in xenophobic fear mongering. She found none other than the tiny impoverished Palestinian community of the coastal city of Latakia to scapegoat as shifty outsiders working to stir violence in the country. Cornered by the internal pressure from peaceful demonstrators in the early months of the revolution, the regime signaled to one of its crony Palestinian factions inside al-Yarmouk in a step unprecedented in its modern history that it would not stop a march to death towards its borders with occupied Golan. Palestinian refugees flocked in their hundreds on the 63th anniversary of the Nakba and unarmed broke through the border fence. In the predictable fire that followed four Palestinian lives were lost to a media stunt that ultimately did nothing to bolster the image of the crumbling regime. More recently, the regime tried (and largely failed) to recruit Palestinians as shabbiha (state-sponsored thugs) in Homs and Damascus to suppress and intimidate Syrians and fellow Palestinians.
Palestine and Palestinians in the Revolution
Culturally, the Syrian revolution has already won. The vibrancy of the new cartoons, slogans, and skits that have come to life during the revolution demonstrate that the mind has already been liberated from the monolithic mimicking of party-line official talk. A major feature of the cultural production emerging out of the beleaguered Syrian cities, towns and villages has been its inspiration by a long history of Palestinian resistance culture. During the siege of Baba Amr, slogans such as “Baqoon ma baqiya al-za’tar wal zaitoun” (we will stay in place, with the thyme and the olives) or “Haser Hisarak” (besiege your besieger) became part and parcel of the Skype-relayed dispatches of the Revolutionary Council of the City of Homs. Facebook pages of Syrian graphic artists both inside and outside Syria started featuring artwork with popular resistance poetry by Mahmoud Darwish against a backdrop of such photographs as the clock tower of the city of Homs, now a famous symbol of the revolution. Other artwork included modified Naji Al-Ali cartoons that satirize the Baath regime.1 Perhaps one of the many ironies of this revolution is that the Baath regime has finally succeeded in bringing the suffering of Palestinians into Syrian homes; this time in ways more intimate and effective than an official newscast.
On the ground, thousands of Palestinians in various capacities collectively and individually rose up alongside their Syrian brethren against the regime. According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights 150 Palestinians were killed in the last 17 months of the revolution; Zaman Al-Wasl puts the figure at 300.2
In discussing the question of Palestinian participation in the revolution one needs to take into account the conditions of their existence.
Two factors have historically impeded an honest assessment of the conditions of Palestinians in Syria: Lebanon and Al-Yarmouk. Lebanon’s notoriously bad treatment of its Palestinian population can make a shantytown with running water and functioning sewage system look luxurious. Therefore, it is misleading to use the living conditions of Palestinians in Lebanon as a measuring stick for other Palestinian (or any refugee) communities.
At the other end, the entrepreneurial vibrancy of Al-Yarmouk is the exception to the rule of Palestinian presence in Syria. Al-Yarmouk’s narrow, yet relatively prosperous streets, camouflage its many titles: camp, neighborhood, and suburb. They also camouflage its poorer sections and the various identities of its residents. About 150,000 Palestinians live in Al-Yarmouk but they constitute less than half or in some estimates a quarter of its residents. The rest are a collage of Syrians from other parts of Syria or Damascus who found affordable housing or job opportunities on its streets. Its relative proximity and inclusion in the city transport system facilitated a dynamic and ever-changing character. After 2003 the old refugees received new ones from Iraq before they dispersed into farther cheaper housing outside Al-Yarmouk.
The camp managed to remain a safe haven for the most recent batch of refugees from adjacent neighborhoods of At-Tadamon and Al-Hajar Al-Aswad. It has been increasingly pushed to militarization mainly but not exclusively by Ahmad Jibreel, the Damascus-based leader of Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command (PFLP-GC) and Tareq Al-Khadra the head of the Syria-based Palestine Liberation Army. Around 20 of its residents were killed in mortar bombardment in August 2012. Al-Yarmouk’s hodgepodge social makeup has made it hard for any party to political group to claim it as its own. Its size and political significance will only grow with coming days. About half the Palestinian population in Syria is concentrated in very densely populated camps roughly half a square kilometer in size. Most of these camps are isolated (Al-Nairab camp lies 15 minutes drive away from Aleppo City proper) and in some cases are even fenced in (the walls of Al-Baath University and its dormitory units sandwich Al-‘Adeen Camp in Homs). This renders Palestinians sitting ducks to the overwhelming firepower of the Syrian army at the slightest sign of sympathy with the revolution as was exemplified by the recent fate of the Deraa refugee camp. Since the first days of the revolution, Palestinians were killed while trying to smuggle food and medical supplies to besieged Syrians in Deraa proper.3 This unwavering support for the revolution earned the Deraa camp the wrath of the Syrian Army. The camp continues to be the target of repeated military incursions (June-August 2012), its residents are detained, tortured and summarily executed; whatever is left of it still stands with the revolution.
When the Syrian army launched an all out campaign on Baba Amr neighborhood in Homs in February 2012, the neighboring Al-‘Adeen camp sheltered hundreds of its terrified impoverished residents running for their lives. The camp’s “Bissan” hospital, the only operating hospital in the city, treated the wounded from Baba Amr. Its doctors and nurses risked their lives to save those coming from Baba Amr and beyond. The Security Services later handed its Palestinian resident shabbeeh a list of more than 100 wanted Palestinians with charges ranging from “carrying weapons” to “treating the wounded.” The small semi-walled camp continues to hang at the edge of a torn city, uncertain whether its walls will prove its survival or its undoing.
The Compass Loses Direction on the Road to Damascus
Syria’s revolution is one of the most divisive issues Palestinians face since the signing of the Oslo accords. Part of the problem lies in the assumption that past revolutionary credit (real or perceived/militant or rhetorical) can lend legitimacy to otherwise indefensible acts. Moreover, a strange mélange of Syrian state media, muted sectarianism and international interests have all worked to render an otherwise just struggle for freedom confusing. Syria presented an unconventional, and inconvenient, foe. On the one hand, some Damascus-based Palestinians have brushed the dust off their old revolutionary compasses and declared Palestine the pole. Anyone who points towards it is a friend; his enemies must also be the enemies of Palestinians. On the other hand, for Ramallah politicians, Syria has offered a rare and cost-free opportunity to score revolutionary points without needing to wipe the dust off their revolutionary guns. The positions of both are grounded in clear immediate and convenient political interests.
The pitfalls of some Palestinian intellectuals outside Syria and mostly within the (intellectual and physical) confines of the Empire have been far more serious if marginal in impact. For such intellectuals, anti-imperialism can easily elide more important and more basic “anti-”s. When they deem the struggle for dignity and freedom in Syria to be of a lesser value than the struggle against Imperialism, they fail to account for more than 60 years of complex history of post-independence Syria. They critique the universalizing aspects of American and European academies, but end up universalizing their number one opponent (the Empire) as everyone else’s. Until revolutionary Syrians do so too, their consciousness is false, their struggle futile, and their blood worthless.
Promises from the Storm
Already Palestinians from Syria are refugees anew in Jordan and Lebanon. Their Syrian travel documents abroad are as valuable as the Syrian pound. . . abroad. Only they cannot be exchanged for local papers. They already wonder how, unlike most things, seniority for a refugee invites more misfortune and maltreatment instead of respect and understanding. They wonder why their fellow Syrian refugees were, at least initially, able to enjoy the freedom of movement in Jordan while they are incarcerated in a dystopian internment camp called of all things “Cyber City.”4 They already ask, “Will the new Syrians remember what it felt like to be a refugee?”
As the Syrian state implodes and as the regime mutates into a super-militia (see the recent report by the International Crisis Group) what awaits Palestinians today is as murky as the fate of Syria itself. They have managed so far to defy the rising tide of sectarian classification and to stand to the extent possible with the revolution. Ultimately, they will no longer be able to maintain a stance of “positive neutrality” and the neutrality will have to become loudly positive. Will it remain positive or will it get Syrianized, sectarianized or weaponized? To a great extent, the answer depends on whether the revolution succeeds in toppling a militia that has its own air force. And if it does how many of its stated ideals will survive the deals it strikes along the way to the palace on Mount Qasyoun?
– Ahmad Diab is a Palestinian writer and Fulbright scholar. He is currently working on his PhD at New York University. His interests lie in the intersection between literature, film, and power structures. He wrote this analysis for Al Shabaka, the Palestinian Policy Network.
Footnotes
- 1Naji Al Ali Cartoons appropriated by Homs Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=461233163907984
- 2List of 218 Palestinian killed in Syria, compiled by Tarek Hammoud for Zaman Al-Waslhttps://docs.google.com/file/d/0B7KDBYy7Jj2HQ3JaUUZXR3VFZU0/edit,
- 3On 23/3/2011 Usama Al-Ghoul became the first Palestinian martyr in the revolution when was killed while trying to smuggle medical aid for the people of Deraa. http://zaman-alwsl.net/readNews.php?id=29452
- 4Jordanian Bias against Palestinians from Syria: http://www.trust.org/trustlaw/news/jordan-bias-at-the-syrian-border/
Violence part of daily life in Aleppo
- Pattern of Aleppo attacks appears designed to terrify civilians rather than target rebels
- In one strike rockets collapsed a two-story building with an extended family inside
- Locals pulled 11 bodies from the rubble and one baby survivor
- The baby boy was apparently protected from the blast by his mom as she breastfed him
Aleppo, Syria (CNN) — It is impossible to get used to. The roar of a jet overhead, the hum of helicopter blades hovering around your block, the sudden thud of a blast. When you hear it, at least you know you are safe.
Yet this has become daily life for residents of Aleppo. People living in rebel held territory, among whom the Free Syrian Army (FSA) mingle, and upon whom the Syrian regime’s wrath is visited.
The blasts continue throughout the day and also haunt the night. There is no perceivable pattern as to where they strike, for they don’t appear to aim themselves at the few targets the FSA present.
Their timing is also hard to follow: they hit most at dawn and dusk, yes, but the shells are sometimes few, sometimes sustained. And above all, they don’t follow a pattern that suggests the artillery weapons are trying to hit-and-miss their way towards an objective. They simply fire, strike, and then move to a completely different place altogether.
The only pattern to divine is that there is really no pattern, unless your aim is to terrify.
Girl hit by sniper bullet in Aleppo
Red Cross: Syria conflict must end
Are Syrian forces targeting civilians?
Showdown in SyriaThat objective is simple when your target is an unarmed civilian population, defended at times by an often motleyand ramshackle rebel army. The easiest way to discern there is trouble overhead is to see residents straining their necks upwards.
A sniper’s bullet, a dying child and a family’s desperation
One morning at 6 a.m., shells and rockets slammed into the al-Shaar neighborhood of Aleppo. In one home, 12 people from the same extended family were huddled, mostly asleep.
The rockets slammed into the roof, bringing the second floor down onto the first. We arrived four hours after the strike, once the neighborhood had had time to react and begun to dig its way into the rubble. It was a crowd of locals — fathers andneighbors — horrified at what was happening to their homes and community. The FSA stood around to rally vehicles to take away the wounded.
The digging was furious: hands and shovels trying to prize away huge slabs of dusty concrete. Faces covered in dust, frantic groups of men trying to be large enough in number to get the job done but small enough to leave space to work in the cramped confines of a half-collapsed building.
There is panic and frenzy, but finally a flurry of cries. “Alla u akhbar,” as they see a limb. Then a leg, eventually the limp body of a little girl pulled from the rubble. A blanket is rushed forwards to cover her face: they are too late, and preserving her dignity in death is all they can do.
The search continues amid the endless threat that the helicopters which fired the original rockets may strike again and the risk that the building’s half-filled second floor might cave in entirely.
When buildings collapse, the dead are often found in groups, huddled in the same room where they sleep. In this case, the father is found shortly after the daughter. A woman outside the rubble screams: “I swear to God we have been destroyed. I swear to God, Bashar al Assad is killing us”.
But the bodies kept coming, 11 dead in total, nine of them children. They are rushed by the furious FSA to the hospital, the children placed under blankets and laid in the back of a pickup truck. Aged from four to 11. Omar, Mohamed, Fatma. One of their fathers is too distraught to name all the dead — two related families, one of which had gone to visit the other.
But amid the incomprehensible brutality, the people in this corner of Aleppo find a gift. He is barely a year old and called Hussein. He was pulled from the rubble, a simple act of care having saved his life.
Hussein’s mother, Najah, was breastfeeding him when the rockets struck. Najah was killed by the rubble, but her body sheltered Hussein. He is brought to the hospital, the men cursing Syrian President Bashar al Assad as a “dog” and hoping Hussein will live to see him hanged.
They tear off his dusty clothes and clean his body, a symbol of their perseverance. Born into this bloody and continuing revolution, they pray he will grow up in a very different Syria.
Special to CNN
Editor’s note: Ole Solvang is researcher with the Emergencies Division at Human Rights Watch. The views expressed are his own. You can follow him on Twitter: @olesolvang
After a month investigating human rights violations in the northern Syrian province of Aleppo, we were hoping that the last day of our mission would be relatively quiet. It didn’t turn out that way.
We started the day at an emergency hospital in the opposition-controlled area of Aleppo city. As a nurse listed the names and ages of civilians who had been killed in artillery and aerial attacks in Aleppo city the last couple of days, we heard a strike. An artillery shell hit a house just 200 meters from the hospital, and within minutes, the wounded started pouring in. Someone brought in a little boy. There was nothing the doctors could do – half of his head was blown away.
We visited several sites of attacks around the city, speaking to witnesses and victims, examining the sites, looking at the remnants of ammunition, and taking photos. As we returned to the hospital in the afternoon, we suddenly saw people looking warily at the sky, and minutes later heard a fighter jet. We ran for cover just in time – a rocket slammed into a building two houses over from the hospital, collapsing the top floors. Five little kids, all covered in blood and dust, were brought into the hospital, while the neighbors were struggling to reach others under the ruins. Later, we learned that the attack killed two people and wounded 17, 10 of them children.
That day, aerial attacks continued outside Aleppo city. Just minutes before we returned to Marea, a town in northern Aleppo, a fighter jet dropped two bombs in the middle of the town, destroying several homes. Nobody was inside, but several children playing in the street were injured.
Opposition forces recently drove the Syrian military out of most of the northern Aleppo countryside and about half of Aleppo city. For the last month, the two sides have taken turns advancing and retreating, a couple of streets at a time, with neither party making much progress.
As part of their combat strategy, government forces have attacked areas away from the frontlines, using artillery, helicopters and fighter jets. We have documented that many of these attacks have killed and wounded dozens of civilians.
More from GPS: ‘They burned my heart’
Parties to a conflict are, of course, not allowed to deliberately target or indiscriminately attack civilians. Sometimes, civilians might be killed in lawful attacks on military objectives. But that does not seem to have been the case with many of the recent attacks that we have documented in Aleppo.
During an investigation of artillery and aerial attacks like these, one of our top priorities is to look for potentially legitimate military objectives – opposition military bases, checkpoints, troop movements, weapons’ depots – which might have been the intended target. We examine the sites and interview witnesses and local residents who can tell us exactly what was going on before the attacks.
In some cases, we were able to identify potentially legitimate targets. In the town of Azaz, for example, an aerial attack that hit a residential area might have been intended to strike an old Baath party building that opposition military and civilian leaders were using. The building, however, was located 300 meters from where the bombs landed. If the Baath party building indeed had been the target, the fighter jet completely missed it, destroying instead dozens of civilian homes, killing at least 46 and injuring more than 100.
Other attacks, such as the fighter jet attack that struck a house close to the hospital on the last day of our mission, didn’t seem to be targeting any legitimate military objective. We walked past the house five minutes before it was hit. No opposition troops were there and there was nothing in the debris afterward to suggest military activity.
Most disconcertingly, however, we found evidence suggesting that some of the attacks targeted civilians. In the course of three weeks in August, government forces attacked at least 10 bakeries in Aleppo province, sometimes killing and injuring dozens of civilians who had lined up to buy bread. In one of the deadliest attacks, on August 21, on a bakery in the Bab al-Hadid area in Aleppo city, a helicopter had been circling overhead for hours. When a line formed in front of the bakery as it was about to open in the early evening, a helicopter dropped a bomb, which killed at least 20 people standing in line, witnesses told us. One of the witnesses we spoke to gave us a video that he filmed right after the attack, showing dozens of people lying on the ground, some with missing arms and legs. We could see no weapons. It seemed that everybody wore civilian clothes, as opposed to camouflage clothes and ammunition vests usually worn by fighters, supporting witness accounts that all the victims were civilians. Reckless indiscriminate attacks and deliberate attacks on civilians are war crimes.
Thousands of people in Aleppo have fled their neighborhoods, or even the country, fearing these attacks. But many are still there. While some neighborhoods and towns are almost completely deserted, others are bustling with life.
Local activist groups say that August has been the deadliest month since the beginning of the uprising, with more than 4,000 civilians killed. Increased use of artillery and aerial attacks, some of which have been recklessly indiscriminate or deliberately targeted against civilians, have contributed to the high death toll. The international community should send a clear message to the Syrian government that such war crimes will not be tolerated.
| Post by: CNN’s Jason Miks |
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Amal Hanano (@AmalHanano) | September 9, 2012 at 14:33
Yesterday, there was a thick, glossy magazine on my counter, one I would have once flipped through with interest … in another life. Now I throw them away unread. I can’t remember the last time I read anything that wasn’t, in some way, about Syria. Every day I read about Syria to be informed. Sometimes I end up outraged at the criminal lies spewed by regime supporters and other times I’m inspired by the amazing stories of our defiant people. But sometimes, very rarely, I read something that is exactly what I need to read at exactly the right moment. Maysaloon does it. And so do you.
You’ve talked before about scorching Syrian land and now you describe floods in our Aleppo. What has the regime not done yet in attacking the Syrian people? It seems every criminal act and every environmental calamity have been used as weapons against the people.
Tamer’s loss is a grave one, as was every loss of the innocent, talented, brilliant lives of those who fought because of their unwavering belief in the people and their just cause. What your mother and sister are going through in Aleppo is devastating. But Assad has made death and suffering the norm and as you said, the act of living itself has become our people’s defiance. They resist by merely surviving even while they are hungry, thirsty, wounded, homeless… Our people have accepted everything but humiliation.
Since I heard about and saw the water flowing into the streets of Aleppo, I’ve felt numb. Like the first time I watched Baba Amr being shelled, or the first time I saw a charred body in Anadan, or the first time I watched someone pick up body parts of a man I knew off the pavement in Homs, watching our precious water spilled on the streets as carelessly as the precious blood that has been flowing for months left me unable to comprehend. What you wrote took me out of my numbness and forced me to feel again — feel both hope and despair. And your words did the almost impossible. They told me, despite it all, everything is going to be alright.
That’s why I read this blog.
I want to thank every foreign fighter who is present on the battlefield that was once the vibrant city of Aleppo for lending us a hand when everybody else failed us. While we are let down by the entire world, these brave souls are risking their lives. I remember how we used to applaud and glorify every Arab and non Arab including many Syrians who fought along side the Palestinians in 1948, that same act is now considered “the danger of foreign jihadists”. The spin doctors have no limits or shame.
In the past 300 years, there has never been a prolonged conflict without foreign fighters eventually taking part. If we want to see a war where foreign elements dominated the conflict, take a look at the Spanish Civil War. Syria has nowhere near that level of foreign involvement.
In the days of yore, the menhebakjis could at least seek refuge in the illusion that Aleppo was a pro-regime stronghold. But the fact that the Assad brigades (down from divisions) have not been able to recapture the city after two whole months speaks volumes about the true situation in Aleppo. Even Baba Amr fell after just one month, and Assad hadn’t even used his airforce. Aleppo has proven just as resilient, tenacious and dedicated as any town or city in Syria.