Follow along with the video below to see how to install our site as a web app on your home screen.
Note: This feature may not be available in some browsers.
BEIRUT, July 12 (Reuters) - Syria's ambassador to Iraq has defected and urged the army to "turn your guns on the criminals" of President Bashar al-Assad's government, giving the anti-Assad uprising one of its biggest boosts in 16 months of bloodshed.
Nawaf al-Fares, who has close ties to the Syrian security services, was the first senior diplomat to desert Assad, following hard on the heels of Manaf Tlas, a brigadier general in the elite Republican Guard and a close friend of Assad.
Assad's swift and bloody crackdown on what began as a broad, peaceful pro-democracy movement helped turn it into an armed rebellion. But the insurgents cannot match the army's firepower, and instead need to erode the loyalty and conviction within Assad's establishment to loosen its hold on power.
Tlas, the son of a veteran former Syrian defence minister, has made no public comment since fleeing to Paris. But Fares posted a video statement on Facebook on Wednesday that repeatedly said government forces had been killing civilians.
"I declare that I have joined, from this moment, the ranks of the revolution of the Syrian people," he said.
"I ask ... the members of the military to join the revolution and to defend the country and the citizens. Turn your guns on the criminals from this regime ...
"Every Syrian man has to join the revolution to remove this nightmare and this gang," he said, accusing the Assad family and its allies of corruption and "destroying society" for 40 years.
The defection was seized on by Assad's opponents, but also by Western and Sunni Arab powers who insist, like the opposition, that Assad must leave power in any political settlement for Syria.
In Damascus, a terse government statement said: "The Syrian foreign ministry declares that Nawaf al-Fares has been relieved of his duties and he no longer has any link to our embassy in Baghdad or the foreign ministry. They embassy in Iraq will continue carrying out its normal duties."
Syrian Carnage in Hamma, Over 250 people killed today, 400 injured, most of them children.
For months, Syrian opposition groups have smuggled weapons and fighters into the country across the borders of Turkey and Lebanon. Now another of Syrias influential neighborsIraqsays its territory is being used as a base for al-Qaeda attacks against the regime of President Bashar Assad. Speaking to a handful of reporters in Paris on Thursday morning, Iraqs Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari said both U.S. and Iraq believe that Al Qaeda operatives are sneaking into Syria across Iraqs western border, despite the fact that the U.S. military during the Iraq War turned that remote desert area into the countrys best-secured frontier. It is very, very difficult to control 680 kilometers of borders, Zebari said, claiming that Al Qaedas infiltration into Syria was now a fact. For jihadis, he said, Syria is a good environment, because of the lack of security, the lack of control of the government.
The possibility that al-Qaeda might be involved in the Syrian revolt is hardly surprising, since al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri last February called on supporters to go join the fight. But Zebaris statement about Al Qaedas infiltration from Iraq was his second such warning in just six days. That is a measure, perhaps, of Iraqs mounting anxiety that the Syrian turmoil might increasingly be playing out within its own war-weary country, which is still digging out from the eight-year Iraq War; the last U.S. combat soldiers left just seven months ago. If Zebaris assessment is correct, it could greatly increase the chances of Iraq being dragged into Syrias 17-month conflict, with the upheaval spreading far further across the region. Zebari said Iraqi officials had told U.N. envoy Kofi Annan in Baghdad earlier this week that they feared the spillover from the Syrian crisis.
Until now, Iraq has claimed to be neutral in the crisisa stark contrast to its eastern neighbor Iran, which is one of Assads most crucial allies, and an ever-closer ally of the Shiite-dominated government in Baghdad. Iraqs southern neighbor Saudi Arabia, meanwhile, is backing Syrias revolution. Zebari said Iraq backed Annans plan for a transitional government in Syria, through dialogue between the opposition and the regime. Yet when TIME asked him whether Assad should leave, he said only, It is up to the Syrian people to determine their future and to choose their leaders.
But Iraqs stated neutrality is eroding. Instead, the spillover from the Syrian crisis might already have begun, as the devastating violence next door deepens Iraqs existing sectarian divisions, including those between Shiites and Sunnis. Earlier this week, al-Qaedas Iraqi affiliate claimed on its website that it was responsible for several bombings last month, which targeted largely Shiite sites, and in which hundreds were killed. There are those who support the [Syrian] regime and those who dont, says Salman Shaikh, director of the Brookings Institutions Doha Center. There is a real scenario here whereby the two conflicts [in Syria and Iraq] will feed off each other, he says. The Syrian conflict will expose Iraqs divisions more and more, the longer this goes on. That scenario, says Shaikh, is already at work in Lebanon, where ethnic conflicts have revived by the chaos within Syrian.
Far from Iraqs government being neutral over Syria, Shaikh believes Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is under pressure from his Shiite allies in Iran to assist Assad where he can. Zebari, a Kurd serving in a heavily Shiite government, denied that Iran was calling the shots. They have influence, there is no doubt about that, he says. But when it comes to matters of Iraqi national interest, we act independently.
According to a New York Citybased womens-rights organization, the Syrian government isnt just using artillery strikes and snipers to crack down on the uprising in its midst. Reports started coming in a few months ago: a Facebook post from a young girl; a shrouded woman in hijab telling her story on YouTube; foreign journalists recounting horrors whispered in refugee camps. These were the stories of women and children raped and abused by Syrian government soldiers and paramilitaries loyal to the embattled Syrian President Bashar Assad. The reports range from tales of groping to gang rape to women being held captive as sex slaves. Some include horrific accounts of womens genitals being burned or exposed to rodents.
For the past three months, Women Under Siege, an affiliate of Gloria Steinems Womens Media Center, has gathered data on sexual violence in Syria, spotlighting assaults carried out by Syrian government personnel. The group released its findings on Wednesday with a crowdsourced map that it hopes will be an effective tool to catalog and publicize how rape has become a weapon in war. A lot of that kind of information has been lost to history because of shame, stigma and even death, says Lauren Wolfe, one of the founders of the project.
The groups research includes 81 stories of sexual assault reported since the onset of the Syrian uprising in March 2011, with most of the alleged culprits being the regimes soldiers or shabiha (plainclothes militia). Almost 70% of attacks against women have been by Syrian government personnel, 90% of the women assaulted were raped and 42% of the women attacked were gang-raped. Young boys were also assaulted, with many of these attacks occurring while the boys were held in government detention. It remains unclear whether the culprits were acting on direct orders or of their own accord, but some of the reports include men claiming that they were told to rape the women they capture. Its suspected that many of the victims have some ties to the Syrian rebellion; their bodies have become another battlefield of the countrys bloody civil war. Some reports claim that rebel fighters have been forced to watch their wives and daughters be repeatedly raped.
Women Under Siege proposes a three-pronged solution to the problem. The map was one of the biggest parts of the project a visual aid to make people connect with an issue that many may simply turn from in disgust. It really, literally is putting womens stories of suffering in war on a map. I think its caused people to look more closely at what might be going on as opposed to seeing a story and just turning the page, Wolfe says. Second, the group hopes to pinpoint hot spots of sexual violence so that aid organizations working in Syria can focus their relief efforts in those areas. Finally, it hopes to gather enough concrete evidence that can eventually be brought to bear before a war-crimes tribunal.
It took Twitter five years to hire a Washington lobbyist. That was quick compared to Apple, which took 25 years to begin paying someone to represent its interests in the capital.
Violence had been raging in Syria for 14 months before the Free Syrian Army, the largest force in opposition to Bashar al-Assads regime, hired Brian Sayers to represent their interests in Washington. Of course, their needs are much more dire.
By United Nations estimates some 10,000 people have died since the Arab Spring reached Damascus and the violence has only increased in recent months with arms flowing in to both sides (as Simon Shuster explores from Moscow in this weeks print edition, and here). But, while Moscow arms Assads regime though theyve pledged no new sales, some $4 billion in contracts are outstanding the opposition is not seeking the same from the U.S.
The FSA is getting plenty of arms and cash from the Qatari, Saudi Arabian and, to a lesser extent, the Emirati governments, according to U.S. sources. What they want from Washington is a smarter way to use these weapons. Everyone says, just give them a bunch of weapons. Well, rocket propelled grenades are fine but ultimately what they need is intelligence support in order to bring down the regime, says Sayers, because ultimately the regime has more sophisticated weaponry. The FSA has nowhere near that kind of capacity. And so heres where the U.S. could do a huge amount of support and it could be done very covertly.
Currently, the U.S. is only providing Syrian political groups not armed ones like the FSA humanitarian aid, communications equipment and training. The State Department is carefully vetting these opposition groups to ensure they have no terrorist links. The U.S. stamp of approval then opens the floodgates for other countries such as Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the UAE to provide lethal aid as well.
Some say thats not nearly enough. If the U.S. is only going to be a facilitator of arms flows into the country, thats not enough to be stabilize things, to end the violence, says Ammar Abdulhamid, a Syrian dissident who has been in exile in Washington since 2005. In fact, it only makes things worse.
Adbulhamid wants Washington and NATO to impose a no-fly zone as they did over Libya and Iraq. But U.S. officials say there is little chance of that happening given Assads advanced anti-aircraft weaponry. The notion that we could pursue a military intervention and that would make the situation go away would not be one wed sign on to, says Ben Rhodes, deputy national security adviser.
Theres not an option that would make the situation better, he says. Not just because of the lack of a United Nations mandate, but because of the nature of the conflict. In Libya, you had huge swathes of the country that could be cordoned off by air power. Not so in Syria Also theres not a simple process where we could pick one group and arm them and that would tip the scales.
Syrian Carnage in Hamma,
Over 250 people killed today, 400 injured, most of them children.
Is the Syrian Regime Using Rape as a Tactic of War?
Yeah, "children". Yet another lie. In Hamma Syrian Army was conducting an anti-terrorist operation. The same as in other Syrian towns. Successful operations! That's why the West is getting hysterical.
Would you like to explain where you're getting your 'info' from that it's all 'terrorists' and such?
How did they manage to fool the Norwegian general who's in charge of the UN observer group ?
Yeah, "children". Yet another lie. In Hamma Syrian Army was conducting an anti-terrorist operation. The same as in other Syrian towns. Successful operations! That's why the West is getting hysterical.
Idiot assholes like this are so fucking stupid, I'm not even sure if its worth correcting them.
Use common sense: there is Assad and the government -- all supported by the vast majority of Syrian population as the elections showed. And all of a sudden, out of the blue, that very same Assad and that very same government decide to go and murder the very same population that supports them?!
Didn't "civilised community" use the same rhetoric to work up home support for the war on Serbia, Iraq, Libya? And then go and DELIBERATELY target CIVILIAN POPULATION and bomb them to ashes! How dumb one should be to fall for the same script every time!
Use common sense: there is Assad and the government -- all supported by the vast majority of Syrian population as the elections showed. And all of a sudden, out of the blue, that very same Assad and that very same government decide to go and murder the very same population that supports them?!
You ask people to use "common sense", and you tout the results of an election in one of the most oppressive dictatorships on the planet? .
Would you like to explain where you're getting your 'info' from that it's all 'terrorists' and such?
How did they manage to fool the Norwegian general who's in charge of the UN observer group ?
"The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a British-based group with contacts in Syria" is a dude of Syrian descent who never been to Syria and live by running a fast-food joint in London provides most "reports" from Syria while sitting in London -- is "the Norwegian general"?!
Use common sense: there is Assad and the government -- all supported by the vast majority of Syrian population as the elections showed. And all of a sudden, out of the blue, that very same Assad and that very same government decide to go and murder the very same population that supports them?!
There is no "peoples uprising" in Syria; as there was no "peoples uprising" in Libya. There are groups of mercenaries and terrorists recruited from all sides of the ME, some came from Libya. They are armed and directed by Western advisers and SF; Qatar and SA providing finances; Turkey provides most of the training and the bases.
But the difference between Libya and Syria is that while Gaddafi relied largely on armed population, Assad does have a well trained Army. And that Army was highly successful in destroying pockets of terrorists which prompted the West to send Annan in with his "initiative". To delay "civilised" attacking his country, Assad had to go along with Annan's proposals; but the "rebels" didn't. And now Assad had to re-start anti-terrorist operations!
Use common sense: there is Assad and the government -- all supported by the vast majority of Syrian population as the elections showed.
"Deliberately target the civilian population"...yes folks, we have Exhibit A of internet trolling by a likely .
